{"id":1918,"date":"2016-11-01T06:21:32","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T13:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/blog\/archives\/biology_and_the_freedom_to_love"},"modified":"2017-05-29T17:48:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T00:48:41","slug":"biology_and_the_freedom_to_love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjayoord.com\/index.php\/blog\/archives\/biology_and_the_freedom_to_love","title":{"rendered":"Biology and the Freedom to Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent decades, biology has moved to the fore of research on love. \u00a0Evolution, the function of genes, selection pressures, and group interaction play a prominent role in contemporary biological discussions of the possibility of love. But does biology allow for the freedom apparently necessary for love?<\/p>\n

As I define it, love require some degree of freedom. Chance and entirely determined events, if such exist, should not be called acts of love.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe creatures possess limitless freedom.\u00a0 Unlimited freedom does not exist. \u00a0“Love” that is entirely coerced or unintentional is not love at all. \u00a0Even if one\u2019s nature necessarily includes love \u2013 as I believe is the case for God \u2013 some measure of freedom must be present if love is to be expressed.<\/p>\n

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There must be some freedom in expressions of love.<\/a><\/div>\n

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Freedom and Genetics<\/h3>\n

Contemporary theories in biology rely heavily upon the role of genetics.\u00a0 Unfortunately, genetic-oriented theories in biology tend to describe organisms as genetically programmed or controlled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Biologists rarely attribute freedom and spontaneity to the organisms they study. They do not do so, in large part, because biological theory is thought to be based upon the work of examining external results while ignoring any possible internal experiences.<\/p>\n

Biologist Sewell Wright summarizes this prevailing assumption in biology when he says, \u201cscience must restrict itself to the external aspect of things.\u201d\u00a0 Wright continues that science is \u201cconcerned with the external and statistical aspect of events and incapable of dealing with the unique creative aspect of each individual event.\u201d<\/p>\n

The practice of restricting scientific purview to observations of external behavior and refusing to infer what such behavior suggests about internal motivations is, however, not actually a restriction many biologists practice when they offer explanations of what\u2019s \u201creally happening.\u201d Richard Dawkins, for instance, uses language suggesting creatures are entirely controlled by their genes.<\/p>\n

Contemporary biology rejects questions of freedom and self-organization, in part because it rejects the view attributed to an early evolutionary biologist: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.\u00a0 Today, Lamarck is mainly known for the view that creatures can intentionally pass to their offspring the traits acquired through their own efforts.<\/p>\n

The giraffe is the Lamarckian\u2019s classic example of a creature that, through its own efforts, can change its own characteristics and passed those changes to its children.\u00a0 As giraffes intentionally stretch to reach leaves residing high in trees, Lamarckians believe that they gradually lengthen their necks.\u00a0 Their offspring inherit longer necks as a result of their parent\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of scientists today, however, reject the view that traits acquired during a creature\u2019s lifetime can be passed to offspring.\u00a0 Each generation must learn these behaviors anew by imitating their elders.\u00a0 Beneficial behaviors, such as giraffes stretching for leaves atop trees, are not transmitted through genetic encoding.<\/p>\n

The Baldwin Effect<\/h3>\n

A view accepted in contemporary biology, however, is the Baldwin effect.\u00a0 Named after James Mark Baldwin and first proposed at the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century, this theory says that the sustained behavior of a species or group in response to its environment is gradually assimilated into the group\u2019s genetic structures.\u00a0 Learned behaviors cannot be directly inherited, said Baldwin.\u00a0 But the general propensity to act well in the organism\u2019s environment is supported by genetic mutations and becomes part of the offspring\u2019s genetic inheritance.<\/p>\n

Science-and-religion scholar, Ian Barbour, uses bison and horses to illustrate how the Baldwin effect works.\u00a0 The common ancestors of bison and horses may have either charged enemies or fled their enemies.\u00a0 Strength, weight, strong skulls, and other bison-like qualities would have enhanced the survival of those who charged their enemies.\u00a0 Those who survived by fleeing enemies would have benefited by speed, agility, and other abilities we see in horses.\u00a0 \u201cThe divergence of bison and horse,\u201d suggests Barbour, \u201cmay have arisen initially from different responses to danger, rather than from genetic mutations related to anatomy.\u201d\u00a0 Barbour concludes, \u201corganisms participate actively in evolutionary history and are not simply passive products of genetic forces from within and environmental forces from without.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Baldwin effect offers a way to account for the free initiatives of organisms to have significant long-term consequences. Barbour speaks of creaturely \u201cinteriority\u201d that evolves \u201cstarting from rudimentary memory, sentience, responsiveness, and anticipation in simple organisms, going on to consciousness with the advent of nervous systems, and then self-consciousness in the case of primates and human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it is not difficult to attribute freedom to complex creatures like humans, chimps, canine, and dolphins, most biologists are reluctant to infer that less complex creatures also possess a measure of self-determining agency. To argue that organisms at varying levels of complexity exhibit self-organization, spontaneity, or self-determination, however, does not require one also to argue that less complex creatures are free to the same degree as more complex creatures.\u00a0 Nor does it require one to deny the powerful influence of a creature\u2019s genes.\u00a0 Instead, one can appeal to the possibility that creatures of varying complexity possess varying degrees of freedom, interiority, or self-organization.<\/p>\n

The late biologist Charles Birch suggests that degrees of creaturely freedom are of great importance. \u00a0\u201cDeterminism by genes is not an all-or-none affair,\u201d says Birch. \u00a0\u201cThere can be different degrees of freedom.\u00a0 There is all the difference in the world between 100 percent determination and 99 percent determination.\u00a0 One provides no room for choice and purpose.\u00a0 The other does not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freedom at the Micro Level?<\/h3>\n

Speculating that organisms at all levels of complexity possess some measure of spontaneity does not, of course, scientifically demonstrate that freedom is present throughout existence.\u00a0 But speculating that creatures are robots blindly programmed by their genes is also not scientifically demonstrable.<\/p>\n

It may be that freedom and self-organization emerged at some point in the evolutionary process.\u00a0 Relatively simple organisms may not possess self-determination. Instead, freedom emerged as creatures increased in complexity.\u00a0 This view, often called \u201cemergence,\u201d is attractive to those who wish to acknowledge the freedom apparent in human experience and apparently present in other complex creatures.\u00a0 This version of emergence also allows one to resist the claim that the least complex entities of existence — atoms for instance — are to some degree free.<\/p>\n

Theologian and philosophers of science, Philip Clayton, advocates this emergent view of creaturely self-determination.\u00a0 Clayton argues that human freedom should be \u201cunderstood in terms of a developmental story that includes the role of physical laws, biological drives, and the increasing latitude of behavior in more complex organisms \u2013 features both shared with other animals and distinguishing us from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ian Barbour argues for a different emergent view, which posits a minimum of interiority at even the most basic levels.\u00a0 Barbour\u2019s argument is partly, as he says, for \u201cthe sake of metaphysical consistently and generality.\u201d\u00a0 Barbour says that we ought to generalize from the human experience of freedom.\u00a0 \u201cWe are part of nature,\u201d he argues, and \u201ceven though human experience is an extreme case of an event in nature, it offers clues as to the character of other events.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which version of emergence theory \u2013 the one Clayton advocates or the one Barbour advocates \u2013 best accounts for biology is debatable.\u00a0 Resolving the question, however, may not be necessary for love research in the biological sciences.\u00a0 Even if molecules have interiority and subjectivity, few scholars are likely to describe molecular activity as loving.\u00a0 But as creatures increase in organizational and mental complexity through evolution, the importance of freedom rises.<\/p>\n

If humans share significant continuity with their nonhuman companions, it seems plausible that freedom and intentionality are present in the earliest biological stages of evolutionary history. Whatever the case, we would do well to speak today about creatures capable of love as also possessing at least some degree of freedom.<\/p>\n

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Freedom and intentionality are present in the earliest biological stages of evolutionary history.<\/a><\/div>\n

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