Genetics and behavior

[eddieg]

I seek help regarding the issue of genetics, behavior, and free will.

Tell me, how would you respond to the claims made in these short commentaries? (Now, just so you know, this guy claims he works for a biotech company. Maybe he's biased? I don't know. He also claims that intellect and leadership abilities are innate and that it's a waste of time to even try basically.)

- freewill.typepad.com/genetics/2005/03/nature_vs_nurtu.html (Nature vs. Nurture; The tale of the Elevator and the Thermostat)

Compares us to a thermostat or an elevator, which claims that we can change, but only within our limits: "I believe human behavior and variation is (nearly) 100% nature, and 0% nurture, because the only nurture we are capable of responding to must be part of our very design. Two elevators on different floors are not different. The differences in outcome are based on planned branching points in the design itself. They are the same - in the same way that a penny may land heads or tails yet still be the same penny!"



- freewill.typepad.com/genetics/2005/03/the_problem_wit.html (The problem with Heritability)

"If the variation in height between identical twins (who have identical genes) is 2 inches, this is 0% heritable, because it's not based on genetic differences (there are none). It must be explained by differences in their environment (food, disease, etc). Yet this idea breaks down, when the environment (nurture) is inherent (and anticipated) in the design of the organism (nature) itself, especially when the nurture acts as a trigger, for which the organism is designed to respond. Also, genes are like algorithms. They accept complex inputs, and can react with complex outputs over time, often using memory to delay their effect. (By "genes" here, I mean the entire set of interacting brain structures, nerves, hormones, transmitters that are built through the activity of proteins described by the genes.) A "gene" by this definition includes "detection" circuitry, so it knows when environmental triggers occur. Consider an imaginary "niche seeking" gene. Teenagers are always trying to find their own unique niche, to make them different from their friends. If two teens have the same "niche seeking" gene, they'll want to be unique from each other and avoid duplicating the other’s behavior. When one lifts his arm, the other (after observing this action) lifts his leg instead. When one goes outside, the other stays inside. When one rolls his eyes, the other one sneezes, just to be different. Same gene, different outcome.Although the ability to recognize abusive scenarios is shared in the twins (since how could a gene have any effect unless it recognizes the various scenarios for which it is designed to be affected?), only one individual received this environment. Yet both twins have the same innate branching circuitry. If situation A, then outcome B. If situation C, then outcome D. Just because the outcomes are different does not mean that the behavior isn't 100% genetic. The environmental scenario detection is built into the design of the genes (i.e. the brain circuitry designed by the genes)." [Note: I didn't include everything he said in the article, I skipped some things to focus on what's relevant]


- freewill.typepad.com/genetics/2005/09/everyone_has_th.html (Everyone has the genes for every human trait, but an "on switch" for very few)

"It's important to understand that not all of our genes are put to use. A shy person may have their "outgoing genes" permanently switched off [My own emphasis here] by a few "master genes". Most of the 1% difference among humans can be found in the genes that act as master keys."

- freewill.typepad.com/genetics/2005/03/we_only_retain_.html (We only retain or seek out experiences (nurture) which resonate with our genes (nature))

"We only retain or seek out experiences (nurture) which resonate with our genes (nature). Parents can try to force their daughters to play with fire trucks and baseball bats, but girls will usually reject them, and return to playing with the dolls they love. Most people deny this simple fact, until they have children and then sheepishly admit it.

The larger question still remains as to what invariants, fuzzy and inexact as they are, the inner eye can recognize in the environment, and what "trigger points" or "branching points" are set up in the inner eye to respond. The inner eye has little power except the recognition of vague landmarks in the environment (as a frog can recognize blurry dots in the sky and associate them with flies for its dinner)."

So, the third quote worries me the most. He's saying that some personality genes are permanently switched off, which, logically, would imply that some are permanently switched on.

The second thing that worries me is that according to him (especially the second point here, "The problem with Heritability"), we basically all act the same when the appropriate environmental input is given to the appropriate gene which in turn is permanently turned on or off by a master gene, etc. I am not including "thoughts" and your "own beliefs" as part of this because I'm using the environment to mean strictly that which you come into contact with. I know people use it differently, but I'm trying to make a point so as to highlight the role of personal responsibility, and personal choice above mere environmental inputs.

I think the only way out of this is by claiming that in the end, it's your own decision as to how you react to the environment. E.g. a child can refuse to obey his or her parents and thus, though "their genes" came into contact with the environmental input, their genes did or didn't express because of their refusal. There is some evidence that mental activity can affect gene expression, and it comes from epigenetics:
- articles.latimes.com/2010/may/03/health/la-he-epigenetics-side-20100503
- blog.webgenomeproject.org/epigenetics-your-thoughts-can-set-you-free/#
- www.brainhealthhacks.com/2008/07/31/meditation-can-change-gene-expression/
- esciencenews.com/articles/2011/01/12/attention.ladies.and.gentlemen.courtship.affects.gene.expression


My problem is, how can our thoughts control everything if some genes are "permanently switched on or off"? Do our thoughts also affect master genes?

However, there's something about this that doesn't make sense (to me, personally, that is). If our genes are so fixed in place, how are we supposed to adapt to our ever-changing environment? How does it make sense that "the only nurture we are capable of responding to must be part of our very design"? Well, in that case, aren't we in trouble from a survival point of view? It's this "master gene" thing that confuses me. So this guy admits that genes respond to environmental inputs, but only the ones that our master genes allow us to respond to?

What would make sense to me is that our conscious self can, through its own choices, direct which of the personality traits already in your genes becomes "active", and which don't activate due to gene expression.

My only problem is that this guy claims some master genes permanently switch on or off the genes responsible for behavior, which makes little sense considering how much the environment affects gene expression. Plus, there has to be at least some influence the mind has in controlling behavior.

Please add your input.

Thank you,

-Eddie

[unkleE]

G'day Eddie, and welcome to this forum. Things seem to be a little slow at the moment, so I'm sorry you haven't had any answers yet. I think this is a difficult and specialist subject, so most of us may have little to offer, but I will make a brief comment.

I have read a few books on neuroscience, and I observed an interesting thing. All of them spoke about neuroscience in ways that suggested to me that the logical conclusion of their thought was that we had no real freewill - everything we do is determined in our brains by processes that "we" do not control, because there is no "us" apart from those processes. Those processes are determined by our brain chemistry, and ultimately by our genes and our inputs.

Yet not one of these books drew any attention to this obvious conclusion, and all of them used language like "should" and "ought" and "choice" which implied some level of freedom of choice.

I drew the tentative conclusion that these scientists were unwilling , and probably unprepared, to venture into more philosophical areas like freewill. But if they did, they would assume determinism because that was the only conclusion their science, with its naturalistic assumptions and methodological naturalism, could come to.

But there are other philosophical viewpoints - dualism is the obvious one - but scientists, whether cosmologists or neuroscientists, have trouble allowing ideas outside science to intrude. For example, one writer on neuroscience - Alwyn Scott in Stairway to the mind - said this:

"Although dualism cannot be disproved, the role of science is to proceed on the assumption that it is wrong and see how much progress can be made."

Now you are talking about nature vs nurture and not dualism, but I think the two are related, and the responses of scientists are similar. If determinism is true, then the limited role of nurture will seem more likely (I think), whereas if one is a dualist (which I think I am), then choice plays a greater role, and nurture is part of this.

Thus for example, the elevator and thermostat examples are built on a reductionist view of human beings based (I presume) on a reductionist view of natural selection. But as a christian, I have a "higher" view of human nature, and think God created us via the process of evolution and natural selection, and think that design included free choice.

Finally, I don't see why we should be worried about his statement that we have all genes but some are switched off. If that is the neuroscientific truth, what difference does it make practically? For whatever reason, none of has all the abilities and we need to be part of communities where many different abilities are being expressed. Thus our choices are limited - I would love to play guitar like Eric Clapton or Mark Knopfler, but i never will - I'll just have to listen to them. But within my abilities, my choices make a difference.

Not sure if that answers any of your questions, but that's my inital thoughts.

[himself]

You will notice that the genetic triggers are always assumed, never displayed. The shy person has the "socializing" gene, but it is "switched off." Wonderful. And if a person is outgoing, the gene must be "switched on." Which gene is this, again? Surely, it is a marvelous theory that can explain any outcome whatsoever. Since most people are creatures of habit -- something like 80% of life must be lived on auto-pilot -- it is all to easy simply to declare that habituated behavior is genetically determined. But try going back and substituting "habit" for "gene" and it makes as much sense.

None of this matters for liberum arbitrium. The usual translation is "free will," but it actually means more like "free judgment." Late Moderns and Postmoderns seem to think that classical theologians and philosophers running back to Aristotle and Plato have never encountered drunkards, knee-jerks, habits, and the like. In fact, genetically-induced acts would also fall under what Aquinas called "habit." So would acts that were culturally molded and directed.

Free will is not random choice, uninformed choice, unpredictable choice, unmotivated choice, or anything of the sort. It is simply a necessary consequence of the primacy of the intellect. This may be hard to grasp among those who accept the triumph of the will, which is the notion that our desires come first.

In classical thought, the will is simply the intellective appetite: the desire for products of the intellect; i.e., for concepts. This is analogous to the emotions, or sensitive appetites, which are desires for the products of sensation and percepts; i.e., for percepts. [BTW, if the proper object of the will is the concept, it should be obvious that "scientificalistic" tests involving switch-flipping or finger-twitching are not tests of the will, per se.]

Besides which, when someone tells yu to pick something more or less at random, don’t you go into a mode where you clearly feel more “moved” than “mover”? Don’t you actually try to surrender your faculty of choice? When someone says “pick something random” isn’t the experience something like this: you try to suppress any criteria and just “go with the flow” of your mental processes? Is it any shock that the brain forms some determination before we decide? Weren’t we trying to make it do this? -- James Chastek

It should be obvious that you cannot desire what you do not know. Hence, if you know some good perfectly, you cannot help but desire it. Yet, we do not know goods perfectly, but only "as through a glass, darkly." Thus, we may have a vague notion of "world peace" but have no clear concept of what this might look like, how it might be achieved, and so forth. And in this uncertainty of the intellect lies the freedom of [or "play" or "looseness" in] the will.

But if I truly desire, say, peace, and desire follows knowledge, then if the knowledge is indeterminate then the desire is indeterminate. But isn’t an indeterminate desire the opposite of a determinate desire? So isn’t this an undetermined desire- a free will? -- James Chastek

Take the example in which Mandrake the Magician holds out a deck of cards and says, "Choose one." The freedom of the will is inherent in the request: not in the term "choose" [that would beg the question] but in the term "one." To which of the cards does the word "one" refer? It is indeterminate; and so the will is indeterminate as to which card to pick -- even if Mandrake has stacked the deck or if one has a predisposition to choose cards from the right side.

The following will be intertesting:
Determinism as a cause of free will thomism.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/determinism-as-a-cause-of-free-will/

Free will and electrodes thomism.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/free-will-and-electrodes/

Ramble on free will thomism.wordpress.com/2009/12/29/ramble-on-free-will/

[James Hannam]

Dear Eddie,

Thank you for your post. It raises some interesting questions, but we need not be too worried.

The key word to note is "determined". Materialists tell us our behaviour is determined but in fact the evidence does not show this. It shows our behaviour is "influenced" by genes which is very different. Back in the 4th century, St Augustine realised that human beings have propensities to behave in certain ways, and that our rational minds know that some of these propensities are wrong. He also realised that these traits are inherited. That is quite an insight.

Today, genetics has caught up with St Augustine. There is about a 50% correlation between genes and our intelligence, personality etc. There is a correlation of 10% or less between environment and behaviour etc. So, environment has a much smaller influence than our genes. For liberals this is highly controversial because it shows that all their social engineering schemes are doomed to failure.

For the rest of us, note that there is only a combined 60% correlation between genes (50%) and environment (10%) with our personalities and traits (the maths is more complicated than that, but the fact remains there is a big unexplained gap). Also, these are averages so some people will be less influenced than others. Overall, science leaves a gap of about 40% for what I call self-determination. We can influence ourselves within wide limits.

Materialists say they will explain the 40% gap and that it can't be freewill because that does not exist. But this is just a question of faith for them. As long as we remember we are influenced by our genes, as St Augustine realised, not determined, we don't need to worry about science dissolving freewill.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

James