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How Darwinian Reductionism Refutes Genetic Determinism

in Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology

This chapter considers the subject of genetic determinism. Since the eagerness to refute the thesis motivates so much of the resistance to reductionism about biology, it is truly ironic that the ... More

This chapter considers the subject of genetic determinism. Since the eagerness to refute the thesis motivates so much of the resistance to reductionism about biology, it is truly ironic that the strongest argument against the thesis rests on evidence we would never have acquired but for pursuit of the reductionistic research program of molecular genetics. The chapter concludes this book's articulation and defense of Darwinian reductionism by showing exactly how its research program makes genetic determinism untenable even for its paradigm cases, the so-called inborn errors of metabolism.Less

Thinking About Change and Stability in Living Systems

Gillian Barker

in Beyond Biofatalism: Human Nature for an Evolving World

Evolutionary psychologists' thinking about stability and change in human cognition and behavior has been shaped by two bad metaphors: the "blank slate" and "hard-wired" human nature. These metaphors ... More

Evolutionary psychologists' thinking about stability and change in human cognition and behavior has been shaped by two bad metaphors: the "blank slate" and "hard-wired" human nature. These metaphors can be corrected by examining the underlying conceptions of internal and external causes of change, and of how these interact to enable organisms to be robust to some environmental changes by actively responding to others.Less

Of Dogs, Daycare, and Discipline: A “Genetic Guide to Parenting”?

James Tabery

in Beyond Versus: The Struggle to Understand the Interaction of Nature and Nurture

Depending on which gene a child has, being sent to daycare can either increase or decrease a child’s chances of developing allergies. Likewise, children with one form of a gene respond better to an ... More

Depending on which gene a child has, being sent to daycare can either increase or decrease a child’s chances of developing allergies. Likewise, children with one form of a gene respond better to an empathy-oriented approach to discipline, while children with the other form of the gene respond better to a punishment-oriented approach to discipline. Research on these cases of gene-environment interaction raises the prospect of a “genetic guide to parenting”—the idea being that information about the child’s genome would inform parental decisions about everything from whether or not to send a child to daycare, to how to respond to the next temper tantrum. As calls for the whole genome sequencing of newborns increase and the goal of a $1000 genome grow near, the reality of a genetic guide to parenting becomes more likely. This chapter considers what a genetic guide to parenting might look like, evaluating the promises and perils of this new technology as they relate to concerns about medicalization and genetic determinism.Less

The New Realism of the Factish and the Political Ecology of Humans and Non-Humans: Bruno Latour and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy

Monika Kaup

in New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory

This chapter explores Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory side-by-side with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, focusing on Latour in the first, and Atwood in the second part. The chapter argues ... More

This chapter explores Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory side-by-side with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, focusing on Latour in the first, and Atwood in the second part. The chapter argues that independently but closely paralleling Latour’s call to overcome what he calls the “modern constitution,” the MaddAddam trilogy pictures the formation of a cross-species ecology of humans and non-humans. Critiquing genetic determinism, Atwood’s novels are shown to envision to autonomous ontogeny and cultural history of artificial species that have gone feral after the destruction of modern civilization. Supreme instances of Latour’s hybrids, these artifacts of laboratory experimentation acquire autonomous modes of existence in the post-apocalyptic world. This development is epitomized by the Crakers, a peaceful breed of humanoids, who undergo an ontological transformation to become full-fledged actants. The chapter suggests that the specifically ecological critique of modernity formulated by Latour also underpins the MaddAddam trilogy. After the ecological collapse, artificial species and human survivors, stripped of their power to subject nature to their will, join forces to form a trans-species collective, embarking on an unprecedented biological and cultural evolution that interconnects natural and artificial species.Less

Genetics

Daniel B. Sinclair

in Jewish Biomedical Law: Legal and Extra-Legal Dimensions

This chapter sketches an outline of a general halakhic approach to modern genetics and addresses a number of issues in somewhat greater detail. These issues include the abortion of genetically ... More

This chapter sketches an outline of a general halakhic approach to modern genetics and addresses a number of issues in somewhat greater detail. These issues include the abortion of genetically defective foetuses, the preservation of genetic privacy, the theological issue of genetic determinism, and cloning.Less

Practical and ethical considerations in personal genomics

Joel T. Dudley

in Exploring Personal Genomics

This chapter discusses the reasons and considerations that are often taken into account whenever someone wishes to obtain their personal genetic information. It stresses the importance of being ... More

This chapter discusses the reasons and considerations that are often taken into account whenever someone wishes to obtain their personal genetic information. It stresses the importance of being mindful of the risks and benefits, as well as current limitations and ethical issues that may be encountered along the way. The capacity to understand and acknowledge these limitations of personal genomics is crucial, especially to the proper interpretation of a personal genome. More specifically, the chapter emphasizes caution against a notion of ‘genetic determinism,’ which is a misinformed belief that genetics is the primary determinant of most human traits, including behavior and intelligence. This is because there are numerous other unstudied genetic factors, environmental factors, and combinations thereof that may have an influence on the final phenotype — or a disease, trait, or drug response. Thus, the chapter invites for full understanding of the interpretation of a personal genome, rather than a deterministic, or even fatalistic view.Less

Foundations of a Neo-Darwinian Approach to Morality

Dennis L. Krebs

in The Origins of Morality: An Evolutionary Account

In this chapter, three refinements in Darwin’s theory of evolution and three criticisms of evolutionary approaches to human behavior that have important implications for morality are discussed. The ... More

In this chapter, three refinements in Darwin’s theory of evolution and three criticisms of evolutionary approaches to human behavior that have important implications for morality are discussed. The first refinement stems from the discovery that genes constitute the primary unit of inheritance. The second stems from the models of social evolution developed by game theorists, and the third stems from the use of evolutionary theory in deciphering the design of proximate mental mechanisms. Evolutionary approaches to human behavior have been falsely accused of advocating a strong form of genetic determinism and neglecting the role played by the environment in the determination of social behaviors, of assuming that all evolved traits are adaptive, and of making up “just so” stories to account for the evolution of traits.Less

Coming of Age and the Other: Critical Posthumanism in Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities

Lars Schmeink

in Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World

Paolo Bacigalupi, known for his eco-fiction, sets his Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities in dystopias of flooded environments controlled and exploited by huge corporations. Everything is ... More

Paolo Bacigalupi, known for his eco-fiction, sets his Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities in dystopias of flooded environments controlled and exploited by huge corporations. Everything is commodified, including children’s bodies. Lars Schmeink demonstrates how the adolescent protagonists Nailer and Mahlia resist genetic determinism and find hope as they create alternative value systems. The animal-human hybrid Tool, common to both novels, also resists his supposed DNA-determined behavior as mindless warrior and frees himself to become tool to no one. Critical, or ethical, posthumanism offers a vision for creating subjectivities that embrace the Other and forge paths to a better future.Less

Making Hay Out of Straw? Real and Imagined Controversies in Evolutionary Psychology

Robert Kurzban and Martie G. Haselton

in Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for social scientists

Debates should move past mischaracterizations and toward a discussion of genuine issues of contention. In order for fruitful debates to occur, all parties will need to agree that evolutionary ... More

Debates should move past mischaracterizations and toward a discussion of genuine issues of contention. In order for fruitful debates to occur, all parties will need to agree that evolutionary psychologists already argue the following: (i) the environment is extremely important to any organism's development; (ii) organisms have parts that are not adaptations, but by-products or noise; (iii) hypotheses that do not yield new insights are not useful; (iv) there are multiple levels of explanation for any given phenomenon; and that (v) claims for adaptation require support, usually in the form of evidence of special design.Less

“I Am the Baby’s Real Mother”: Reproductive Tourism and the Transnational Construction of Kinship

Laura Harrison

in Brown Bodies, White Babies: The Politics of Cross-Racial Surrogacy

This chapter considers the transnational circuits of reproductive labor, particularly what is known as reproductive tourism, from the United States to India. Broadly speaking, “reproductive tourism” ... More

This chapter considers the transnational circuits of reproductive labor, particularly what is known as reproductive tourism, from the United States to India. Broadly speaking, “reproductive tourism” is a relatively recent term coined to describe the increasing travel across national boundaries by individuals seeking fertility services, including donor eggs and sperm, procedures such as in vitro fertilization, and surrogacy. Reproductive tourism is motivated by a number of factors, such as legal restrictions, long waiting lists for donors and surrogates, and expensive prices that can be greatly reduced by “shopping around” for services. Further, this chapter examines how notions of race and genetic determinism are mapped uneasily onto surrogacy in India. Intended parents benefit from the racial and economic “difference” between themselves and Indian surrogates.Less

Are There Really Informational Genes and Developmental Programs?

in Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology

The motivation for seeking a refutation of the claimed uniqueness of the gene in the causation of development is very strong. The details of attempts to refute genetic determinism by undermining ... More

The motivation for seeking a refutation of the claimed uniqueness of the gene in the causation of development is very strong. The details of attempts to refute genetic determinism by undermining genocentric accounts of development resolve themselves into the five questions outlined in Chapter 2, and especially resolve themselves into arguments against the informational role of the gene, and indeed against the very coherence of the notion of the gene altogether. This chapter is devoted to exploring these latter two issues.Less

The Genographic Network: Science, Markets, and Genetic Narratives

Marianne Sommer

in History Within: The Science, Culture, and Politics of Bones, Organisms, and Molecules

Continuing the developments of the preceding chapters, this one engages with the novel constellations of science, markets and identity politics. The role of databanks and the internet is discussed ... More

Continuing the developments of the preceding chapters, this one engages with the novel constellations of science, markets and identity politics. The role of databanks and the internet is discussed for the global nature of these networks. However, symbolized by the term genographic network, it is shown that in the case of human population genetics, these networks are glocalized structures. The Genographic Project has a commercial branch that sells direct-to-customer genetic ancestry tests. Through this genetic-ancestry tracing branch, it is connected to other companies in the US and Switzerland. All of these make profit from the novel genetic technologies and the mtDNA and Y-chromosomal systems. But they also offer tests that are customized to their particular clientele: American Jews, African Americans, and Europeans respectively. It is shown how for human population genetic data to be meaningful for customers, it has to travel with images and narratives. Such sense-generating narratives are popularized in books and films, and they raise issues of similarity and difference, of ‘tribal, ethnic, racial, etc. affiliation’.Less

Neo-Orthodoxies

Daniel Belgrad

in The Culture of Feedback: Ecological Thinking in Seventies America

Toward the end of the seventies, the culture of feedback came under attack by conservative critics who challenged the mainstays of ecological thinking. Molecular biologists reasserted a reductionist ... More

Toward the end of the seventies, the culture of feedback came under attack by conservative critics who challenged the mainstays of ecological thinking. Molecular biologists reasserted a reductionist genetic determinism in descriptions of natural selection, dismissing the theory of coevolution as unscientific. These neo-Darwinists relied on game theory to argue that even altruistic behaviors could be fully explained as the result of competition among “selfish genes.” Similarly, conservative economists applied game theory to the problem of “stagflation” and arrived at a neoliberal solution. Their supply-side economics recommended an end to government regulations in order to “free” the market. These economists positioned the competitive marketplace, rather than the ecosystem, as the final arbiter of human destiny. Supported by supply-side economic theory, the cultural politics of Reaganism mobilized a popular blend of individualism and optimism to flout ecology’s accepted truth that there were natural limits to economic growth. Consonant with a regressive notion of individualism, Reaganism emphasized closing borders and strengthening barriers in order to protect a traditional American identity. This ran counter to ecological thinking’s core belief that identity was emergent from the complex dynamics of interdependency characteristic of nested open systems.Less

Biotech Patronage and the Making of Homo DNA

Jaqueline Stevens

in Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience

This chapter examines genetic iconography, which has sensationalized rather than elucidated contemporary bioethical crises by placing the causes of public health and agricultural problems into the ... More

This chapter examines genetic iconography, which has sensationalized rather than elucidated contemporary bioethical crises by placing the causes of public health and agricultural problems into the genetic domain, rather than the political-economic domain. It elaborates on artistic creations that reinforce genetic determinism and other dominant ideologies, and uses three recent museum exhibitions as case studies to unveil the influence of biotech corporations on the types of works being shown, as well as on the context in which these works were being presented. These are “Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution,” Gallery Exit Art, Downtown New York City, September 9 to October 15, 2000; “The Genomic Revolution,” American Museum of Natural History, May 26, 2001, to January 1, 2002; and “Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics,” Seattle, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, April 6 to August 25, 2002.Less

Proximate and Ultimate Information in Biology

Paul E. Griffiths

in The Philosophy of Philip Kitcher

Paul E. Griffiths defends an account of biological information that can be used to buttress Kitcher’s causal democracy principle. He argues that we can combine the insights of interventionist ... More

Paul E. Griffiths defends an account of biological information that can be used to buttress Kitcher’s causal democracy principle. He argues that we can combine the insights of interventionist accounts of causation with Shannon’s information theory to develop an account of proximate information in terms of causal specificity. Moreover Griffiths defends an ahistorical notion of biological teleology that can figure in proximate explanations of development. Both notions of information are consistent with Kitcher’s principle, since both leave open which causal factors—genetic or environmental—might be carriers of information. Hence Griffiths argues that rather than being a barrier to understanding gene-environment interaction, such notions of biological information might prove useful in vindicating Kitcher’s principle.Less

Lessons from Development, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology

Gillian Barker

in Beyond Biofatalism: Human Nature for an Evolving World

Two concepts from other areas of biology can shed important light on human nature and its implications for the prospects for social change: phenotypic plasticity and niche construction. Clarifying ... More

Two concepts from other areas of biology can shed important light on human nature and its implications for the prospects for social change: phenotypic plasticity and niche construction. Clarifying what these are and how they interact shows the need for substantial revision to the tradition evolutionary perspective on human nature.Less

Review: ALLEN BUCHANAN, DAN W. BROCK, NORMAN DANIELS, AND DANIEL WIKLER (2000), From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice

Martha C. Nussbaum

in Philosophical Interventions: Reviews 1986-2011

This chapter reviews the book From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (2000), by Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler. The book argues that we should use our new ... More

This chapter reviews the book From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (2000), by Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler. The book argues that we should use our new genetic knowledge to treat impairments against a baseline of some core human functions and abilities, but not necessarily (in most cases) to offer enhancements of human abilities above that baseline; that we should zealously protect reproductive freedom and oppose most (though not all) attempts to persuade parents or to require parents to have a particular sort of child; that genetic counseling and certain types of genetic services should be offered in all health-insurance packages; that society must evolve toward greater respect for and inclusion of the disabled, but this concern should not make us shrink from treating serious genetic impairments to the extent that we can do so. The authors also launch an assault on the ideological function of genetic determinism and conclude that we can to some extent separate the idea of genetic improvement of people from the hideously flawed ideals of the old eugenics.Less

Posthuman Potential and Ecological Limit in Future Worlds

Phoebe Chen

in Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World

Phoebe Chen analyzes three representative YA dystopic novels in which characters face ecological disaster and finds them lacking, inadequate to address posthumanist possibilities. Ecological ... More

Phoebe Chen analyzes three representative YA dystopic novels in which characters face ecological disaster and finds them lacking, inadequate to address posthumanist possibilities. Ecological posthumanism stresses connections—between self and Other, human and environment, present and past—erasing borders that constitute liberal humanism. Earth Girl, Of Beast and Beauty, and Orleans all feature female protagonists living in ruined eco-systems whose subjectivities are massively influenced by their environments. Jarra, as an archaeologist on Earth, heals through recovery of the past; Isra reclaims the human traits of compassion and sacrifice to embrace the Other; and Fen survives (for a while) in the flooded streets of Orleans by embedding herself into the environment, thus losing her posthuman dignity. Chen describes such novels as being an “imaginative platform” for speculating about being human in ruined environments, a likelihood we all will face.Less

Evolution, Ideology, and Human Nature

Riane Eisler

in Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future

If, as some evolutionary psychologists claim, we are inexorably driven by evolutionary imperatives of ruthless selfishness, it follows that we cannot solve problems such as violence and oppression. ... More

If, as some evolutionary psychologists claim, we are inexorably driven by evolutionary imperatives of ruthless selfishness, it follows that we cannot solve problems such as violence and oppression. If genes trap us in nasty and cruel behaviors, there is no point in trying to build societies that are more humane. This chapter explores a very different evolutionary perspective that recognizes the human capacities for change and choice and emphasizes biocultural interactions over determinism. This emerging perspective on human origins and behavior hypothesizes, on the basis of much data, that the default tendencies in our species are toward prosocial helping and caring behaviors and concludes that, although we cannot create a world that is totally free of violence and cruelty, we can construct cultures with low levels of violence and oppression where our capacities for creativity, caring, and consciousness are allowed to develop and flourish. It points to a plethora of evidence—from ethnography, history, and psychology to genetics, neuroscience, and ethology—that provides a shock-and-awe set of counter-arguments to the assumption that selfishness and violence govern human nature (including what Darwin had to say about this) and uses the Biocultural Partnership-Domination Lens to show how gene-environment interaction differs in cultures orienting to either end of the partnership-domination social continuum. This chapter melds what we are learning about brain development and functioning with multiple avenues of scholarship to reveal otherwise invisible patterns that can help us move forward.Less