In their target article, Huang & Bargh (H&B) introduce and advocate the adoption of a novel explanatory construct in the domain of cognition and behavior, explicitly conceived by analogy to Richard Dawkins's “selfish gene.” H&B support their analogy by the apparent parallelism between genes using organisms as propagation vehicles “sometimes to the detriment of the host organism's life” and human goals that, whether consciously held or not, can impair the lives of those who pursue them. Analogies have their uses in science, as do metaphors, provided that – in either case – they are apt and apposite. To know whether the similarity between genes and goals just mentioned betokens more than the commonplace that functional mechanisms have limitations and sometimes malfunction, we must inquire into the typical function of genes and goals – which cannot be to impair the lives of their hosts – and ask whether any grounds analogous to those on which selfishness is attributed to genes exist for goals as well.
Genes are not only typically, but always “interested” (I will consistently use quotation marks for such metaphorical evolutionary shorthand) in making the living bodies they grow for their own “use” as perfect and successful as possible. Anything less impairs their own progress toward immortality. One of Dawkins's central points (following Hamilton Reference Hamilton1964) is that from a gene's “point of view,” a perfect host is one that in a crisis is capable of courting and meeting death to save a sufficient number of close relatives, because they carry that very same gene with known probability. Far from representing a flaw in the life and “design” of that host, such an act proves the host's perfect suitability to and fulfillment of the “purpose” for which that host was grown, namely to reproduce the genes that grew it.
If one switches viewpoint to the more limited perspective of one of these hosts, and explains to them that they had really been “designed” for their glorious act of self-sacrifice on behalf of close relatives by the genes that thereby kept their losses to a minimum in dire circumstances, then that host may feel “used” by the genes that thus furthered their own “interests” at the expense of his or her life. This is how the issue of a self-interest on the part of genes standing in opposition to that of their host arises. It is squarely predicated on the reality of genes, which furnish a causal entity to which a host-transcending self-interest can be attributed, albeit metaphorically. These macromolecular templates (DNA) slip from generation to generation through fertilized ova, growing from them the bodies they ride to the next sexual encounter, down the generations over aeons toward immortality.
In this relation it is the genes that are the enduring entity, causally efficacious in growing the dependent entity, a host body or “disposable soma” (Kirkwood Reference Kirkwood1977; Kirkwood & Rose Reference Kirkwood and Rose1991). That causal precedence gives them causal and logical priority over the living bodies they grow, and makes it possible to define a “self-interest” on their part relative to the hosts they “bud off” along their way. In the case of goals, on the other hand, there is no analogous causal nexus: they perish with the individual who entertains and pursues them. This makes them host-dependent in a way that genes are not, and leaves no causal continuity or mechanism analogous to the transmigrating genes on which to base the conceit of a host-independent self-interest on their part.
With regard to goals, the roles in fact are reversed: here, the host is the more enduring entity, for whom goals come and go, some ephemerally, some cyclically, and some others yet more enduringly, but none with a life expectancy beyond the life of the host. One might in fact analogize, albeit loosely, the succession of goals adopted (“grown”) by hosts in furtherance of their prospects during their finite careers on earth to the succession of host bodies the genes grow as instruments in their far longer and potentially endless careers. For goals, it is clearly the striving and erring host that is the causally and logically prior condition, and thus the entity to whom self-interest is to be attributed in relation to goals, and not the other way around, if we are to adhere to the Dawkinsian sense in which the self-interest of his “selfish gene” is defined.
Goals thus lack any causal mechanism such as the transgenerational continuity of genes on which to base host-independence, and with it a causal basis for defining a self-interest apart from that of the host. Should one propose a language-based mechanism of transgenerational transmission of culturally shared goals in this role, one would have to resign oneself to limit the validity of the theory to language-competent humans, and even then it would cover only some of their goals. Excluded would be a vast domain of goals adopted in response to situational happenstance, as well as idiosyncratically adopted personal ones (two sources of evidence cited in the target article), a restriction hardly matching the intentions of H&B. It goes without saying that some of these goals indeed qualify as selfish in the ordinary sense of the word (i.e., pursued at the expense of the self-interest of other hosts), but that is not the sense in which “selfish” figures in Dawkins's title, predicated as it is on the host-transcending nature of genes, nor in H&B's attempt to interpret goals in similar terms.
Unless, therefore, we are presented with some other mechanism, as yet unknown, by which the “selfish goal” envisioned by H&B might acquire a host-independent self-interest, it seems safe to conclude that when hosts are “done in” by the goals they pursue, the explanation is not to be sought along Dawkinsian lines, but in more mundane circumstances attending those pursuits. These range from idiosyncratic caprice to mental disorder and include a wide range of ways in which our innate propensities, such as our liking for sugars, can derail when expressed under circumstances different from those under which they evolved. Such matters are topics of active study in behavioral and evolutionary biology and have given birth to the new discipline of evolutionary medicine, where instructive examples can be found (Nesse & Williams Reference Nesse and Williams1995; Stearns Reference Stearns2012).
In their target article, Huang & Bargh (H&B) introduce and advocate the adoption of a novel explanatory construct in the domain of cognition and behavior, explicitly conceived by analogy to Richard Dawkins's “selfish gene.” H&B support their analogy by the apparent parallelism between genes using organisms as propagation vehicles “sometimes to the detriment of the host organism's life” and human goals that, whether consciously held or not, can impair the lives of those who pursue them. Analogies have their uses in science, as do metaphors, provided that – in either case – they are apt and apposite. To know whether the similarity between genes and goals just mentioned betokens more than the commonplace that functional mechanisms have limitations and sometimes malfunction, we must inquire into the typical function of genes and goals – which cannot be to impair the lives of their hosts – and ask whether any grounds analogous to those on which selfishness is attributed to genes exist for goals as well.
Genes are not only typically, but always “interested” (I will consistently use quotation marks for such metaphorical evolutionary shorthand) in making the living bodies they grow for their own “use” as perfect and successful as possible. Anything less impairs their own progress toward immortality. One of Dawkins's central points (following Hamilton Reference Hamilton1964) is that from a gene's “point of view,” a perfect host is one that in a crisis is capable of courting and meeting death to save a sufficient number of close relatives, because they carry that very same gene with known probability. Far from representing a flaw in the life and “design” of that host, such an act proves the host's perfect suitability to and fulfillment of the “purpose” for which that host was grown, namely to reproduce the genes that grew it.
If one switches viewpoint to the more limited perspective of one of these hosts, and explains to them that they had really been “designed” for their glorious act of self-sacrifice on behalf of close relatives by the genes that thereby kept their losses to a minimum in dire circumstances, then that host may feel “used” by the genes that thus furthered their own “interests” at the expense of his or her life. This is how the issue of a self-interest on the part of genes standing in opposition to that of their host arises. It is squarely predicated on the reality of genes, which furnish a causal entity to which a host-transcending self-interest can be attributed, albeit metaphorically. These macromolecular templates (DNA) slip from generation to generation through fertilized ova, growing from them the bodies they ride to the next sexual encounter, down the generations over aeons toward immortality.
In this relation it is the genes that are the enduring entity, causally efficacious in growing the dependent entity, a host body or “disposable soma” (Kirkwood Reference Kirkwood1977; Kirkwood & Rose Reference Kirkwood and Rose1991). That causal precedence gives them causal and logical priority over the living bodies they grow, and makes it possible to define a “self-interest” on their part relative to the hosts they “bud off” along their way. In the case of goals, on the other hand, there is no analogous causal nexus: they perish with the individual who entertains and pursues them. This makes them host-dependent in a way that genes are not, and leaves no causal continuity or mechanism analogous to the transmigrating genes on which to base the conceit of a host-independent self-interest on their part.
With regard to goals, the roles in fact are reversed: here, the host is the more enduring entity, for whom goals come and go, some ephemerally, some cyclically, and some others yet more enduringly, but none with a life expectancy beyond the life of the host. One might in fact analogize, albeit loosely, the succession of goals adopted (“grown”) by hosts in furtherance of their prospects during their finite careers on earth to the succession of host bodies the genes grow as instruments in their far longer and potentially endless careers. For goals, it is clearly the striving and erring host that is the causally and logically prior condition, and thus the entity to whom self-interest is to be attributed in relation to goals, and not the other way around, if we are to adhere to the Dawkinsian sense in which the self-interest of his “selfish gene” is defined.
Goals thus lack any causal mechanism such as the transgenerational continuity of genes on which to base host-independence, and with it a causal basis for defining a self-interest apart from that of the host. Should one propose a language-based mechanism of transgenerational transmission of culturally shared goals in this role, one would have to resign oneself to limit the validity of the theory to language-competent humans, and even then it would cover only some of their goals. Excluded would be a vast domain of goals adopted in response to situational happenstance, as well as idiosyncratically adopted personal ones (two sources of evidence cited in the target article), a restriction hardly matching the intentions of H&B. It goes without saying that some of these goals indeed qualify as selfish in the ordinary sense of the word (i.e., pursued at the expense of the self-interest of other hosts), but that is not the sense in which “selfish” figures in Dawkins's title, predicated as it is on the host-transcending nature of genes, nor in H&B's attempt to interpret goals in similar terms.
Unless, therefore, we are presented with some other mechanism, as yet unknown, by which the “selfish goal” envisioned by H&B might acquire a host-independent self-interest, it seems safe to conclude that when hosts are “done in” by the goals they pursue, the explanation is not to be sought along Dawkinsian lines, but in more mundane circumstances attending those pursuits. These range from idiosyncratic caprice to mental disorder and include a wide range of ways in which our innate propensities, such as our liking for sugars, can derail when expressed under circumstances different from those under which they evolved. Such matters are topics of active study in behavioral and evolutionary biology and have given birth to the new discipline of evolutionary medicine, where instructive examples can be found (Nesse & Williams Reference Nesse and Williams1995; Stearns Reference Stearns2012).