Morality and “Hardwired Behavior”

“Hardwired Behavior” is one of the many books dealing with innate human behavioral traits that have been popping up like mushrooms lately. Like many of the others, it focuses on morality and moral behavior. Perhaps the most interesting thing about all these books is not that so many of them are being published, but that they are being published at all. Three or four decades ago, the authors of books like this would have been vilified as “fascists,” scorned as “pop ethologists,” and dismissed as delusional right wingers. Marxists and other ideologues would have shouted “Not in our Genes,” determined that no truth that contradicted their narratives would ever see the light of day. In the intervening years those shouts have been drowned by a deluge of facts, thanks in large part to the rapid advance of brain imaging technology. The ideologues who sought to rearrange reality to conform to their preconceived notions have gone the way of the Intelligent Design crowd, who would alter the speed of light, shorten the age of the earth to 6000 years, and redefine the word “firmament” to make the “truth” fit the Book of Genesis. The basic fact of innate human behavior has been obvious to anyone with an open mind since at least the days of Darwin. Now it is a fact that can no longer be denied, or at least not by anyone interested in maintaining some semblance of intellectual credibility.

“Hardwired Behavior” stands out somewhat from the rest of the pack in that the author, Laurence Tancredi, is both a lawyer and a psychiatrist, with expertise in neuroscience thrown in for good measure, and so approaches the subject as one who has seen some of the extremes of human behavior, and has devoted a great deal of thought to the interesting ramifications of our new insights into the workings of the human mind as they relate to our system of justice. Take, for example, the question of moral culpability. Tancredi describes cases in which heinous crimes were committed by people who do not fit the legal definition of criminal insanity, and yet whose actions, at least in his opinion, were motivated by emotional impulses that “trumped rational control.”   He describes the notion that moral choices may be biologically driven as a “revolutionary concept,” which it decidedly is not, at least in terms of the length of time the idea has been around.  Be that as it may, what Tancredi calls the “mad versus bad” distinction inherent in current legal theory is becoming increasingly blurred in the light of our expanding understanding of the mind.  In fact, the very distinction between good and evil has always been a subjective one.  That, however, doesn’t alter the fact that we perceive the distinction as absolute, and, given our nature, have no alternative but to act within the context of moral rules.  Under the circumstances, the notion of moral culpability, whether fiction or not, may be one we cannot dispense with from a legal point of view.

Tancredi is apparently aware of the earlier suppression of the very ideas he presents as such commonplaces.  See, for example, the discussion on pages 21 to 24 of his book under the subheading, “From Mind to Brain:  Completing the Circuit.”  He begins by defining the term “physicalism” in the broad sense of characteristics that are “innate to humankind,” and describes its long intellectual history.  He then suggests that the scientific revolution of the 19th century, with its insistence on intellectual rigor and the scientific method, “…brought about major changes in our perception of morality.  Natural law, or anything resembling a naturally endowed moral sense was discarded as fundamentally wrong.”  This is an absurd yarn, but an interesting one nonetheless.  It amounts to a rationalization of the ideologically motivated suppression of theories of innate behavior, including moral behavior, as something that was done in the name of “science.”  The reality, apparent enough to anyone who cares to go back and look at the source material, amply documented in the books of Robert Ardrey, is that these theories were immediately plausible to a host of scientists, including Darwin himself, that they have actually been not only plausible but obvious, at least since his time, and that they were suppressed, not for any “scientific” reason, but because they flew in the face of preferred ideological narratives that required humans to be other than they actually are.  Look at the nature of the opposition to such ideas 40 or 50 years ago.  That opposition, in the case of Ardrey, Konrad Lorenz, and many others did not take the form of dispassionate scientific debate.  Almost invariably, it was accompanied by demonization, vilification and ridicule.

That deep lacunae exist in Tancredi’s perception of the nature of this debate is apparent from the statement, “The idea that biology was basic to human behavior and the workings of social groups didn’t reappear in a major way until E. O. Wilson published his book “Sociobiology” in the mid-1970s.”  Thus, with a wave of the hand, the works of the likes of Ardrey and Lorenz are brushed aside as if they never existed.  In fact, as a work of popular science, “Sociobiology” was a mere afterthought to such works as “African Genesis,” “The Territorial Imperative,” and “On Aggression.”  The idea that it was somehow more significant than these earlier works in opening people’s minds could only be taken seriously by navel gazers in the ivory towers of academia.  Wilson is a brilliant thinker whose work has enlightened many.  Ardrey, however, playwright, statistician, and “pop ethologist” that he was, was a greater still.  He took little trouble to jump through all the hoops that would have made him socially acceptable in the hallowed halls of academia, but the man was a genius, with a rare gift for seeing the big picture and revealing it to others.  “African Genesis,” published in 1961, already contained most of his fundamental worldview, and his works are full of accounts of the work of other brilliant scientists, including a host of animal behaviorists whose elegant work can only inspire wonder that so many of the modern workers in the field can somehow never trouble themselves to mention them.  To the extent that Ardrey is mentioned at all today, his work is usually distorted and bowdlerized as the “Killer Ape Theory.”  Here, in a nutshell, is what Ardrey said:  “Innate predispositions have a profound influence on human behavior.”  Here, in a nutshell, is what his many academic opponents said:  “Human behavior is almost entirely determined by culture, and is “Not in our Genes.”  Ardrey was right, and they were wrong.  Obviously, academia is still having a very hard time swallowing that unpleasant fact.  As a result, instead of having the simple decency and intellectual honesty to admit that he was right, they ignore him.

Well, those of us who lived through those times know the truth, and, in any case, a man like Ardrey would surely have welcomed the victory of his ideas more than his personal vindication.  It’s unfortunate he couldn’t live to see that victory.  We are left to contemplate the implications of this whole affair for the advance of human knowledge.  Once again, we have seen the limitations of our intelligence.  Once again, we have witnessed our uncanny ability to deny the world as it is when it doesn’t conform to the world the way we want it to be.  We have learned little from the experience.  Now we see the ideological battle lines being drawn once again over the issue of global warming.  Ideological in-groups that would surely have been familiar to Ardrey dominate the debate on both sides of the issue.  They have already convinced themselves that they are bearers of ultimate truth, and that their opponents are criminals or fools.  They will filter the facts accordingly until a bludgeon in the form of another ice age or sea levels up to our necks comes along to knock them back to their senses.  Meanwhile, let us cross our fingers and hope for the best.