I think your view is that animals are fitness maximizers, the essay argues that the process of evolution itself is what is a fitness maximizer, animals themselves are adaptation-executers. The programmer is goal-oriented, not the program.
Another issue is (this is my own opinion, not sequences based) while evolution is clearly about the survival, or more like the spreading of genes, the term survival is too closely linked, connotationally, to the survival of the individual. This would be clearly a wrong view. You aren’t a survival machine, you are a gene spreader machine. Any mutation that makes you have 100 kids before you are 20 and then die a horrible death in a fire is an adaptive mutation and spreads. Survival of the individual is merely one of the helping tools in gene-spreading and not even the biggest tools AFAIK if I look at rabbits, fecundity can matter more. What is worse than for humans sexual selection seems to play a rather big role. A lot of the traits your male ancestors got selected for can be described as “Pick Up Artist-machine”. And some HG behavior is far worse. And the selective traits of your female ancestors could be described as “baby cannons”. And all this does not look like something that makes a good ethic. Most importantly, survival of the individual as such is lost amongst all these considerations.
Back to sequences. I think you need to consider how stupid, inefficent and just sheer wrong-headedly engineering evolution can be:
But to praise evolution too highly destroys the real wonder, which is not how well evolution designs things, but that a naturally occurring process manages to design anything at all.
So let us dispose of the idea that evolution is a wonderful designer, or a wonderful conductor of species destinies, which we human beings ought to imitate. For human intelligence to imitate evolution as a designer, would be like a sophisticated modern bacterium trying to imitate the first replicator as a biochemist. As T. H. Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog”, put it:
Let us understand, once and for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.
Huxley didn’t say that because he disbelieved in evolution, but because he understood it all too well.
The definition of ethical fitnessism can be found in “Ethical Fitnessism. The Ethic of the Fittest Behaviour”, which is mainly in Swedish but there is an English abstract. In the abstract you find the definition:
…the ethic whose behaviour tends to be maximized as a consequence of natural selection.
Exactly which behaviour that is is a scientific question. Dawkins’s central theorem of the extended phenotype:
An animal’s behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes ‘for’ that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing the behaviour. [Dawkins, 1982, The Extended Phenotype, Oxford University Press, p. 248]
seems to suggest that the behaviour which is maximized is the behaviour which follows the following rightness criterion:
An action is right for an individual if and only if the action maximizes the survival of the genes for this individual’s behaviour.
Of course this is up for debate and further scientific research is necessary. There is no disagreement, I think, that animals are adaptation-executers, but still natural selection will favour certain behaviour over other behaviour. It is also evident that evolution by no means leads to perfection, for example we have vestigiality.
The focus of ethical fitnessism is not survival of the individual, but the survival of the behavioural genes of the individual, not short term but in endless time. Since most individuals share behavioural genes to a great extent with other individuals there are good reasons for not causing harm to related individuals. If I had the option to sacrifice myself for the guaranteed continued survival of humanity and its successors for millions of years I would do so and I believe that natural selection would favour such a behaviour.
A strong argument for ethical fitnessism is that by definition natural selection will cause organisms to tend to act according to ethical fitnessism. Fitnessist behaviour will out-compete other behaviour, such as for example the behaviour that hedonistic utilitarianism promotes. This means that hedonistic utilitarian behaviour in the long run cannot survive in a system affected by natural selection. But the argument doesn’t end there. Let us ask ourselves what behaviour conscious beings will believe is right to perform. That natural selection would favour conscious belief in a behaviour which is distinctly different from the behaviour which the organism is actually performing, seems unlikely. Most probably natural selection favours conscious belief in the behaviour which the organism is actually performing.
A strong argument for ethical fitnessism is that by definition natural selection will cause organisms to tend to act according to ethical fitnessism.
Err… no.
Organisms do not act according to ethical fitnessism—you define fitnessism as whatever behaviour was picked by natural selection. Accordingly, there is no “strong argument”, it’s just the definition of your neologism.
Fitnessist behaviour will out-compete other behaviour
No, because if you’re looking backwards in time, conditions change and what used to be adaptive might be counterproductive now. And if you’re looking forward in time, you have to make guesses about what will be selected for in the future and I don’t know why would your guesses be correct.
It is true that “organisms do not act according to ethical fitnessism”, but that is not what I stated. What is true is that organisms tend to act according to ethical fitnessism, which is what I stated. It is true by definition. I believe that a strong argument for a moral theory is that it is being practiced more than other moral theories.
As a consequentialist it is hard to predict which actions in fact will maximize the intrinsic value and in retrospect a behaviour that might have been seen as favourable at the time can have been a huge mistake in the long run and such behaviour will not be favoured by natural selection. Natural selection might seem short-sighted but it is not.
What is true is that organisms tend to act according to ethical fitnessism, which is what I stated. It is true by definition.
This might be a language issue, but no, this is not true because it flips the causation.
Saying that A (organisms) tend to act according to B (ethical fitnessism) implies that B came first and is the cause of A’s behaviour. This is not true in this case. Here A’s behaviour came first and you just stuck a label on it which says “B”.
What is true is that organisms tend to act according to ethical fitnessism, which is what I stated.
does not imply any causation.
Natural selection favours certain behaviour, and ethical fitnessism is simply defined as:
…the ethic whose behaviour tends to be maximized as a consequence of natural selection.
Which behaviour that is is an open scientific question. There is no claim that ethical fitnessism causes organisms to perform any behaviour; natural selection is the cause.
I think these considerations are a main part of the sequences, and arrive to rather different conclusions:
Most imporrtant: http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessmaximizers/
I think your view is that animals are fitness maximizers, the essay argues that the process of evolution itself is what is a fitness maximizer, animals themselves are adaptation-executers. The programmer is goal-oriented, not the program.
Another issue is (this is my own opinion, not sequences based) while evolution is clearly about the survival, or more like the spreading of genes, the term survival is too closely linked, connotationally, to the survival of the individual. This would be clearly a wrong view. You aren’t a survival machine, you are a gene spreader machine. Any mutation that makes you have 100 kids before you are 20 and then die a horrible death in a fire is an adaptive mutation and spreads. Survival of the individual is merely one of the helping tools in gene-spreading and not even the biggest tools AFAIK if I look at rabbits, fecundity can matter more. What is worse than for humans sexual selection seems to play a rather big role. A lot of the traits your male ancestors got selected for can be described as “Pick Up Artist-machine”. And some HG behavior is far worse. And the selective traits of your female ancestors could be described as “baby cannons”. And all this does not look like something that makes a good ethic. Most importantly, survival of the individual as such is lost amongst all these considerations.
Back to sequences. I think you need to consider how stupid, inefficent and just sheer wrong-headedly engineering evolution can be:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/l5/evolving_to_extinction/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ks/the_wonder_of_evolution/ This one seems to deal rather directly with your idea:
Then:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_of_group_selectionism/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kt/evolutions_are_stupid_but_work_anyway/
The definition of ethical fitnessism can be found in “Ethical Fitnessism. The Ethic of the Fittest Behaviour”, which is mainly in Swedish but there is an English abstract. In the abstract you find the definition:
Exactly which behaviour that is is a scientific question. Dawkins’s central theorem of the extended phenotype:
seems to suggest that the behaviour which is maximized is the behaviour which follows the following rightness criterion:
Of course this is up for debate and further scientific research is necessary. There is no disagreement, I think, that animals are adaptation-executers, but still natural selection will favour certain behaviour over other behaviour. It is also evident that evolution by no means leads to perfection, for example we have vestigiality.
The focus of ethical fitnessism is not survival of the individual, but the survival of the behavioural genes of the individual, not short term but in endless time. Since most individuals share behavioural genes to a great extent with other individuals there are good reasons for not causing harm to related individuals. If I had the option to sacrifice myself for the guaranteed continued survival of humanity and its successors for millions of years I would do so and I believe that natural selection would favour such a behaviour.
A strong argument for ethical fitnessism is that by definition natural selection will cause organisms to tend to act according to ethical fitnessism. Fitnessist behaviour will out-compete other behaviour, such as for example the behaviour that hedonistic utilitarianism promotes. This means that hedonistic utilitarian behaviour in the long run cannot survive in a system affected by natural selection. But the argument doesn’t end there. Let us ask ourselves what behaviour conscious beings will believe is right to perform. That natural selection would favour conscious belief in a behaviour which is distinctly different from the behaviour which the organism is actually performing, seems unlikely. Most probably natural selection favours conscious belief in the behaviour which the organism is actually performing.
Err… no.
Organisms do not act according to ethical fitnessism—you define fitnessism as whatever behaviour was picked by natural selection. Accordingly, there is no “strong argument”, it’s just the definition of your neologism.
No, because if you’re looking backwards in time, conditions change and what used to be adaptive might be counterproductive now. And if you’re looking forward in time, you have to make guesses about what will be selected for in the future and I don’t know why would your guesses be correct.
It is true that “organisms do not act according to ethical fitnessism”, but that is not what I stated. What is true is that organisms tend to act according to ethical fitnessism, which is what I stated. It is true by definition. I believe that a strong argument for a moral theory is that it is being practiced more than other moral theories.
As a consequentialist it is hard to predict which actions in fact will maximize the intrinsic value and in retrospect a behaviour that might have been seen as favourable at the time can have been a huge mistake in the long run and such behaviour will not be favoured by natural selection. Natural selection might seem short-sighted but it is not.
This might be a language issue, but no, this is not true because it flips the causation.
Saying that A (organisms) tend to act according to B (ethical fitnessism) implies that B came first and is the cause of A’s behaviour. This is not true in this case. Here A’s behaviour came first and you just stuck a label on it which says “B”.
The sentence:
does not imply any causation.
Natural selection favours certain behaviour, and ethical fitnessism is simply defined as:
Which behaviour that is is an open scientific question. There is no claim that ethical fitnessism causes organisms to perform any behaviour; natural selection is the cause.