Biological Determinism and You

I see the theme of biological determinism popping up in my life a lot lately. First, there was the post from Roissy on one liberal's dawning horror at the realization that much of what we do and who we are is programmed. Then, while trolling the virtual libraries for self-control-based research for a literature review I've been preparing at work, I come across some fascinating recent brain science. It turns out self-control hinges largely on people's ability to metabolize glucose.

More critically, it appears self-control can be traced to the operations of a specific area of the brain, called the dorsolateral prefrontral cortext (DLPFC). The DLPFC works by modulating the valuation signals that originate in another area of the brain, the ventrimedial prefrontal cortext (vmPFC), which tells you what you like and what you don't like. If we listened only to our vmPFCs, civilization would grind to a halt as people lose the ability to engage in goal-oriented behavior, opting instead to satisfy their immediate sexual, emotional, and appetite-based desires. The DLPFC allows you to take higher-order abstractions, such as justice, fair play, truth, or personal well-being, into consideration, modulating those valuation signals and enabling you to look at the bigger picture.

Troublingly enough, when glucose is too low or unable to be mobilized, people do, in fact, descend into degenerate barbarism, as witnessed by at least one study that found that localized glucose mobilization deficiencies in the DLPFC in murderers.

So much of this makes sense in the context of much of the alternative right's despair over, say, the war between the sexes. Women know that men with neck tattoos and sideways hats and so on are bad news, that they'll impregnate them and probably beat and rape them and that, if they acknowledge and behave like fathers at all, they'll live out the rest of their lives in homes suspended on wheels (or cinder blocks). But the part of their brain that would allow them to actually make decisions on the basis of this information is simply not interfacing with them. And so they act on immediate urges, immediate impulses, immediate wants and needs, even at the expense of their long-term prosperity. Or their children's well-being. Or their own lives.

Is this it, then? Is man merely a machine -- with parts made of protein, rather than platinum -- strung along by nervous impulses and dietary quirks? Are we all genes and metabolic processes and electrical signals flitting along neural pathways? It's a wonder some days that more philosophers haven't gone mad or killed themselves.

Comments

[H. L. Mencken II]

In a physical sense, we are indeed a collection of proteins and electricity. But this does not preclude the notion of purpose, or a meaningful life.

Life wants to live forever. This is readily observable in the natural world. And nature has rather quickly discovered that the objective of individual mortality is a fool's errand. The universe is dynamic, and diversity is the best bet against an uncertain future.

So we reproduce by mixing up our genes with another. And we develop technology so that our species may thrive. We are thereby rightly dominant in this world, for who else has a chance of getting life off this rock before the sun goes supernovae? Probably not the trees.

The purpose of life can therefore be considered to live in the most life-promoting fashion possible. And this provides clarity in the areas that need clarity - for instance, gender relations - and leaves plenty of leeway in areas where the best choice is unknowable and all you can do is bet on what you think might be best for the future of life - for instance, your career. This is enlightened self-interest at its best.

I know that you have now become a Roman Catholic. I think there is a tremendous amount of functional overlap between that faith and what I briefly espouse above. While I have not personally been able to find any resonance with the explanations behind Christian doctrine, I do accord greatly with said doctrine, because it is staunchly pro-life (pun intended).

I mention this only because a large-scale return to religiosity may not be feasible for the brightest members of modern society. Since it bodes ill for society if its brightest members are essentially nihilist, a doctrine that accords with Christian views but derives from secular logic could be the solution.

Roissy is fond of saying "Biomechanics is God." It took me years to realize that does not actually demand base hedonism and cultural collapse; careful examination actually speaks to the contrary.