A Popperian View of The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Problem

Richard Dawkins, in the "Preface to the 1976 edition" of The Selfish Gene wrote:

We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Though I have known it for many years, I never seem to get fully used to it. (1989, v)

Although I never finished the book, I read enough of it years ago to understand, and accept, what Dawkins was selling—that these inanimate molecules were selfishly controlling evolution.

I believed this narrative for many years—actually, until recently. Then, having become ever more familiar with Karl Popper's philosophy and his evolutionary epistemology, I came to believe Dawkins's narrative was false for reasons I will attempt to explain.

For those readers who are not familiar with Popper's work, some introductory remarks are in order. For a wider review of Popper's most important works, see Rafe Champion's Popper: The Champion Guides.

The Tetradic Schema

Popper expressed his evolutionary, trial-and-error epistemology in a "tetradic schema":

     P₁ → TS → EE → P₂

This schema may be read as Problem situation 1 produces Tentative Solutions that undergo Error Elimination, leading to the new Problem situation 2. The schema represents an infinite process, as each new P₂ becomes a new P₁. Note that TS may represent an array of possible solutions.

Popper linked his thinking to Darwinian evolution in his early works, writing in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, "We choose the theory which best holds its own in competition with other theories; the one, which by natural selection, proves itself the fittest to survive" (1959, 108). In his  "Of Clouds and Clocks," Popper made the connection between his tetradic schema and evolution, writing that it describes "the fundamental evolutionary sequence of events" (1972, 243).

Three Worlds

Popper divided the world into three categories:

1. World 1: the world of physical objects.
2. World 2: the world of mental states.
3. World 3: the world of objective—that is, intersubjectively criticizable—knowledge.

Much as Mises discussed action in the context of humans, Popper focused on the human component of these categories, while acknowledging a glimmer of world 3 in the preconscious animals. Examples of the latter would be a spider's web (1972, 112) or a bird's nest (1972, 117). He did assert a connection between animal knowledge and genetic information:

This statement of the situation is meant to describe how knowledge really grows. It is not meant metaphorically, though of course it makes use of metaphors. The theory of knowledge which I wish to propose is a largely Darwinian theory of the growth of knowledge. From the amoeba to Einstein, the growth of knowledge is always the same: we try to solve our problems, and to obtain, by a process of elimination, something approaching adequacy in our tentative solutions. (1972, 261)

World 3 in a human context contains the consciously-constructed results of conjecture and refutation that Popper called objective knowledge. For the process of refutation or error correction, the conjectures being evaluated must be in a form to be criticized. For that reason, world 3 objects are generally represented in world 1 objects like books or recordings. I believe, in the case of humans, they may also be represented in myths and ballads that are passed on through retelling and memory.

Genetic Dualism

In "Evolution and the Tree of Knowledge" (1972, p 256-284) Popper proposes a conjecture:

"The problem to be solved by [my conjecture] is the old problem of orthogenesis versus accidental and independent mutation—Samuel Butler's problem of luck or cunning. It arises from the difficulty of understanding how a complicated organ, such as the eye, can ever result from the purely accidental co-operation of independent mutations.
"Briefly, my solution of the problem consists in the hypothesis that in many if not all of those organisms whose evolution gives rise to our problem—they may include perhaps some very low organisms—we may distinguish more or less sharply [at least] two distinct parts: roughly speaking a behavior-controlling part like the central nervous system of the higher animals, and an executive part like the sense organs and the limbs, together with their sustaining structures." (p 273)

Popper calls this conjecture "genetic dualism" and suggests that it "strongly resembles mind-body dualism."

In the cases which we wish to explain, certain inherited dispositions or propensities like those of self-preservation, seeking food, avoiding dangers, acquiring skills by imitation, and so on, may be regarded as subject to mutations that do not as a rule induce any significant change in any organs of the body, including the sense organs, except those organs (if any) which are the genetic carriers of the dispositions or propensities referred to. (p 273)

Popper goes on to explain that changes in the executive part that occur independently of the behavior-controlling part are likely to be unfavorable, while changes in the behavior-controlling part prepare the way for taking advantage of later changes in the executive part. He concludes, now referring to the behavior-controlling part as the "central propensity structure":

Once a new aim or tendency or disposition, or a new skill, or a new way of behaving has evolved in the central propensity structure, this fact will influence the effects of natural selection in such a way that previous unfavourable (though potentially favourable) mutations become actually favourable if they support the newly established tendency. But this means that the evolution of the executive organs will become directed by that tendency or aim, and thus 'goal-directed'. [emphasis in original] (p 278)

If we consider the context of all known living organisms, the possibility that world 3 is not simply a human phenomenon, and the conjecture of genetic dualism we find an argument against Dawkins's theory.

Are We Slaves of Libraries*?

Just as humans need books, and by extrapolation, libraries, to pass on knowledge, so too must cells have the capability to encode their knowledge to pass on an organism's characteristics. To do so, cellular processes must have discovered or even created DNA and used it to store genetic information. Perhaps this discovery occurred through random combination, or through some method yet to be understood that might be called "unconscious intelligence." In relation to the latter there are a number of competing hypotheses including vitalism, panpsychism, holism, etc., all of which are speculative and might be called "skyhooks" by the likes of Daniel Dennett. The primary point here is that the acting or behavior-controlling part is cellular processes, while genes fulfill the role of the executive part. Applying Popper's conjecture to cells, genes would be relegated to a passive role in the same relationship to cellular processes and libraries are to humans. The question then becomes, are we slaves of libraries?

In Denis Noble's book, The Music of Life, he presents two possible alternatives for genes. The Dawkins version is that living things are the slaves of genes, while the other is that genes are the prisoners of organisms. Each of these choices seems somewhat silly (as Denis Noble has informed me, they were meant to be, as alternatives between which there was no way to choose through experiment). After all, are we slaves of our libraries, or are libraries our prisoners? I would suggest that neither is the case, and that we create libraries as world 3 extensions of ourselves with which we interact, enhancing our survival (Popper, 1994).

Evidence for Genetic Dualism

In the second part of the Homage to Darwin debate held at Oxford (41:36) (also documented in (MacAllister, 2009, p 16)) Noble points out that implanting a genome of one species in the egg cell from another is only able to develop so far before "freezing."

There are extremely few cases of cross species cloning that lead to a living organism. What that tells me is that the genetic 'program' --if we can use that metaphor--lies as much in the cell as in the genome.

I suspect that this observation is in agreement with Popper's genetic dualism in that the control apparatus, the cellular processes, are not able to process the DNA presented to them.

Conclusion

Whatever Dawkins may have thought he was doing when he wrote The Selfish Gene, he fostered a belief that there was some control of evolution exhibited by genes. But when we apply Popper's thinking to the problem, we come to a completely different conclusion—that cellular processes are the world 2 behavior-controlling part that makes evolution appear goal-directed while the world 1 object, DNA, performs the world 3, "library" function.

*I use the word "libraries" to represent those world 3 objects that are represented in world 1 form.

MacAllister, James (2009). "A Commentary on Homage to Darwin Debate." Retrieved June 5, 2018 from NanoPDF: https://nanopdf.com/download/homageto-darwin-debate-commentary_pdf.
Popper, Karl R., (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Popper, Karl R., (1972). Objective Knowledge. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press.
Popper, Karl R., (1994). Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem: In defence of interaction. (M. A. Notturno, Ed.), London: Routledge.

In Support of Methodological Monism

The appeal of methodological monism – as Popper put it, "the view that all theoretical or generalizing sciences make use of the same method, whether they are natural or social sciences" (1957, 130) – seems undeniable (think Occam's Razor), and it has a number of supporters.¹ On the other hand, some in the social sciences – notably members of the Austrian school of economics – suggest methodological dualism or, in the case of Bruce Caldwell (Caldwell, 1982), even methodological pluralism. It appears that these different camps are difficult to reconcile, and to this point no resolution has been found.

English: Karl Popper in 1990. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When difficulties of this sort arise – where there exist multiple views, all seemingly reasonable, yet
irreconcilable – it is possible that a solution may be found in appealing to a higher level of abstraction. In this case we look to Karl R. Popper's formalization of the scientific method in the following schema (Popper, 1972, 119):

P₁ → TT → EE → P₂

Where P₁ is the initial problem state, TT is a tentative solution or theory, EE is the error-elimination process applied to the theory, and P₂ represents the new problem state that has been generated by the process. This concise representation is simply that of a Darwinian or evolutionary approach to knowledge.

In this discussion our focus is on the error-elimination step. If one thinks of Popper's formulation as "the method", the error-elimination step may be modified as circumstances warrant without altering that method. Popper also referred to this step as "attempted elimination through critical discussion" (1999, 13-4). To acquire new knowledge, we always use this method, substituting the appropriate critical component.² With this understanding we may actually suggest that Bruce Caldwell is a methodological monist, as he specifically states that his reason for supporting methodological pluralism is that theories require different forms of criticism (Caldwell, 1982, 1-2).

English: Ludwig von Mises in his library (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ludwig von Mises, a strong advocate of methodological dualism (1969, 1-2),³ presents a slightly more difficult case. His dualism differentiated the method in the social sciences from that of the physical sciences by asserting that its axioms were a priori true,⁴ and that criticisms of the logic used to deduce its theorems were the best method of refuting them. A clarification of Mises's approach (Smith, 1996),
 explicity identifying and defending its axioms as synthetic rather than analytic, has tied it more closely to the real world. This clarification has increased the credibility of the approach even though tentative theories, in Popper's view, need no justification. To illustrate Mises's emphasis on criticism we offer the following quote:

Man is not infallible. He searches for truth – that is, for the most adequate comprehension of reality as far as the structure of his mind and reason makes it accessible to him. Man can never become omniscient. He can never be absolutely certain that his inquiries were not misled and that what he considers as certain truth is not error. All that man can do is submit all his theories again and again to the most critical reexamination. This means for the economist to trace back all theorems to their unquestionable and certain ultimate basis, the category of human action, and to test by the most careful scrutiny all assumptions and inferences leading from this bases to the theorem under examination. It cannot be contended that this procedure is a guarantee against error. But it is undoubtedly the most effective method of avoiding error. (Mises, 1966, 68)

The critical component in the method is composed of the examination of premises and validation of logic.

When viewed in this more abstract light, Mises's method fits Popper's formulation and does not contradict methodological monism. This fact is comforting as we suspect that the idea that there is only one fundamental method of obtaining knowledge is itself an a priori truth.

In a previous post we suggested that Mises was incorrect in claiming that economics was a subject unconnected with any other science, linking the action axiom with Popper's suggestion that "all life is problem solving" and to the science of biology. Here we have claimed that Mises's method fully complies with the scientific method as formulated by Popper, and that it is only the use of an appropriately different approach to error elimination or criticism that differentiates it from the physical sciences. If we have succeeded in our project it seems clear that economic methodology, as described and practiced by Ludwig von Mises, is scientific, and that the resulting discipline of economics is science.

Footnotes

¹ See (Blaug, 1992, 42-47), (Wilson, 1998), and (Cziko, 1995).
² I am grateful to Rafe Champion for bringing this point home.
³ For Mises's discussion of his method see (2003), (1966, 1-142), (1969) and (2006). For discussions by others, see (Boettke, 1998), (Boettke, 2012), (Kirzner, 2001, 69-92), and (Selgin, 1990, 11-18),
⁴ Mises recognized the observational, i.e. synthetic, component of his axiom (Kirzner, 2001, 88-9).

Bibliography

Blaug, M. (1992). The Methodology of Economics: Or how economists explain (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Boettke, P. J. (1998). Ludwig von Mises. In J. Davis, D. W. Hands, & U. Mäki (Eds.), The Handbook of Economic Methodology (pp. 534-40). Aldershot: Edward Elgar Publishing. Retrieved October 24, 2013, from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1531088

Boettke, P. J. (2012). Was Mises Right? In P. J. Boettke, Living Economics: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow (pp. 192-212). Oakland, California: The Independent Institute.

Caldwell, B. (1982). Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Cziko, G. (1995). Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Kirzner, I. M. (2001). Ludwig von Mises. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books.

Mises, L. v. (1966). Human Action: A treatise on economics (3rd ed.). Chicago: Henry Regnery.

Mises, L. v. (1969). Theory and History: An interpretation of social and economic evolution. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House.

Mises, L. v. (2003). Epistemological Problems of Economics (3rd ed.). Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Mises, L. v. (2006). The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An essay on method (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund.

Popper, K. R. (1957). The Poverty of Historicism. Boston: The Beacon Press.

Popper, K. R. (1972). Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject. In K. R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (pp. 106-52). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Popper, K. R. (1999). The logic and evolution of scientific theory. In K. R. Popper, All Life is Problem Solving (pp. 3-22). London: Routledge.

Selgin, G. A. (1990). Praxeology and Understanding: An analysis of the controversy in Austrian economics. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Smith, B. (1996, Spring). In Defense of Extreme (Fallibilistic) Apriorism. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 12(1), 179-192.

Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Ludwig von Mises, the Action Axiom, and Biology

Introduction

In the pursuit of science little can be said to be of greater importance than the epistemology employed.  In this regard the epistemology of the Austrian School of economic thought has been roundly criticized and rejected by mainstream economists.¹  This reaction was primarily due to Ludwig von Mises's firm stand on apriorism and the claim that praxeology, of which economics was the most developed discipline, was a new science, unconnected to previously acquired knowledge (Mises, 1966, 1-10).

English: Ludwig von Mises in his library (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Much of the Austrian literature on epistemology since Mises's exposition² has been to explain and defend, ever more loudly and vociferously, apriorism and the apodictic certainty of conclusions derived from Mises's action axiom.  A notable exception to that literature is Barry Smith's tract on fallible apriorism (1996), which elaborated and extended Rothbard's thesis (1957) by showing that a priori knowledge, although independent of observation, is derived from observation and, hence, is synthetic a priori knowledge.

With Smith's introduction of fallibilism into Mises's system, some of the distance between it and Karl Popper's concept of conjectural knowledge was reduced.  This reconciliation has been visible in a number of efforts that attempt to bring Mises's approach into the methodological housing of Popper and other philosophers of science, notably Imre Lakatos.³  More on that in another post; but, at this moment we have another issue to address — Mises's claim that economics, and its encompassing science, praxeology, are new sciences unconnected with previous knowledge.  This claim did not sit well with those who believe all knowledge to be connected and do not have an anthropocentric view of the universe.

The Origins of Action

Mises went to great lengths to deny that human action is in any way related to action in our evolutionary ancestors, even stating that "The newborn child is not an acting being," and that "Beings of human descent who either from birth or from acquired defects are unchangeably unfit for any action... are practically not human" (1966, 14).  To do so seems to strike at the very notion that we have evolved from species that have less flexibility than we, and from whom we do not stand apart in the universe.  In this context Mises formulated what has become known as the action axiom — man acts, aiming at the improvement of his situation relative to his values (1966, 13-14).

English: Karl Popper in 1990. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an address given in 1967, Karl Popper made a more general statement — that "Animals, and even plants, are problem-solvers" (1972, 145).  The idea was later stated more simply as "All life is problem solving" (1999, 100).  By this statement he meant that each life form represented, either anatomically or behaviorally, a hypothetical solution to the problem of its environment. Darwinian evolution supplied the criticism or falsification of that hypothesis.

At this point we must ask, "what problem is being solved?"  The answer lies in the action axiom — the problem of improving the situation, or survivability, of the organism.  Each organism acts, in the way it understands, to improve its situation.⁴  It appears that Popper's statement stands as a powerful axiom — possibly the basic axiom of biology — in support of Mises's more specific one and reveals biology as the epistemological basis of economics.  In fact economics is not separated from all of the other sciences, but is an outgrowth of biology.

This conclusion would most likely suit Edward O. Wilson who said "It is in biology and psychology that economists and other social scientists will find the premises needed to fashion more predictive models, just as it was in physics and chemistry that researchers found premises that upgraded biology" (1998, 206); however, Wilson did not expect the basic premise to come from a philosopher or support the Austrian methodological approach.

We do not argue here that economics has that much to learn from biology, although Wilson certainly believes it does.  Economics is clearly a human science — the most fundamental theorems depend on activities that are observable only in humans.  What we do argue is that biology supplies an axiom that is fundamental to all life that strengthens Mises's action axiom, supporting it with what Rothbard would have called a "law of reality rather than a law of thought" (1957).

At this point we must question why Hayek did not see this connection.  He knew, and was friends with, both Mises and Popper, as well as having a deep understanding of their work.  He also came from a family of biologists.  His father was a serious botanist as well as being a doctor, and Hayek helped him with botanical work and attended society meetings (Ebenstein, 2001).  At this point we can only speculate, but he may have seen Mises's and Popper's works as irreconcilable and never even contemplated a reconciliation of their views.  Perhaps he was reluctant to start down a path that could have resulted in the loss of one or both of his closest intellectual associates.  In any case, it is unfortunate that a person of his stature did not complete Mises's work by linking economics with the rest of knowledge.

Conclusion

With the modification of Mises's viewpoint on action yet another objection to the epistemology of the Austrian School can be overcome.  This modification is hardly a blow to Mises's overall system as it supports, rather than rejects, his action axiom.  At the same time it ties economics more closely to the sciences, a goal that we can only believe Mises would have supported.

¹ See (Blaug, 1980, 81-2) and (Samuelson, 1964, 736).
² Mises wrote extensively on methodology and epistemology, producing a volume of essays in 1933 that was later translated into English (Mises, 1960) and his final published book (Mises, 1962).
³ See (Champion, 2013), (Di Iorio, 2008) and (Rizzo, 1983).
⁴ This is not to say that there is some super-human intelligence in operation, but that natural processes have been evolutionarily selected that make the organism's choices the most likely to succeed.

Bibliography

Blaug, M. (1992). The Methodology of Economics: Or how economists explain (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Champion, R. (2013, March 11). The Common Ground of Parsons, Mises and Popper in the 1930s: The Action Frame of Reference, Praxeology and Situational Analysis. Retrieved from the Rathouse: the philosophy site of rafe champion: http://www.the-rathouse.com/EvenMoreAustrianProgram/Convergence.html

Di Iorio, F. (2008). Apriorism and Fallibilism: Mises and Popper on the Explanation of Action and Social Phenomena. Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine(2). Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://www.imtlucca.it/whats_new/_seminars_docs/000195-Di_Iorio_MISES_and_POPPER.pdf

Ebenstein, A. (2001). Friedrich Hayek: A Biography. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin's Press.

Mises, L. v. (1960). Epistemological Problems of Economics. (G. Reisman, Trans.) Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.

Mises, L. v. (1962). The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc.

Mises, L. v. (1966). Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (3rd revised ed.). Chicago: Henry Regnery.

Popper, K.R. (1972). Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject. In K.R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (pp. 106-52). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rothbard, M.N. (1957). In Defense of 'Extreme Apriorism'.Southern Economic Journal(23), 315-20.

Rizzo, M. J. (1983). Mises and Lakatos: A Reformulation of Austrian Methodology. In I. M. Kirzner (Ed.), Method, Process, and Austrian Economics: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises. New York: Lexington Books. Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://mises.org/books/methodprocess.pdf

Samuelson, P.A. (1964, September). Theory and Realism: A Reply. The American Economic Review, 54(5), 736-9. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1818572

Smith, B. (1996, Spring). In Defense of Extreme (Fallibilistic) Apriorism. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 12(1), 179-192.

Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Related articles

• Mises' Sectarianism

The Observational Evidence for a priori Knowledge

Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, quite clearly supports the concept of a priori knowledge. Not knowledge as in knowing the laws of gravitation, but knowledge as in knowing about and how to deal with gravitation.

In the essay "The Epistemological Position of Evolutionary Epistemolgy" in the essay collection All Life is Problem Solving, Popper suggests that life must know something about the universe in order to survive through even the first few minutes of its existence.

For the adaptation of life to its environment is a kind of knowledge. Without this minimal knowledge, life cannot survive.

The observable fact that life exists tells us that this knowledge, which Popper calls "genetically a priori," also exists.