Philosophy of Genetics

David Duchovny's "addiction" to become a disease in 2012

David Duchovny recently entered rehab for an addiction.  Or perhaps it should be called a compulsion?  In any case, according to the New York Times:

Sex addiction is not listed as a disorder in the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the bible of psychiatric disorders, but it is being considered ... for inclusion in the next edition, the DSM-V due in 2012.

So Duchovny's lack of willpower in 2008 (for which he is responsible) will become a treatable disease in 2012 (for which he is not responsible). An act of free will is transformed -- magically! -- into an affliction, by the American Psychiatric Association, publisher of the DSM.  I smell conspiracy, Mulder!

In an age where certain drugs can trigger complex behaviors (like gambling), it's not to hard to see how our genes can cause "addictions" as well.  Duchuvny has free will to do whatever he wants, but he can't choose his wants themselves, since they're genetic. Your genes are not something you have, they are something you are.

What is Behavioral Genetics?

Our genes have a number of functions, including the construction of bodily structure (muscles, bones, connective tissue), the gross anatomy of the brain, and the creation of a signal and receptor system (e.g. hormones and nerves), among others.

Our genes, thus, can affect our behavior by implementing the following control structures throughout our body and brain:

1. Situation recognizers (the "inner eye")
2. Signal receptors
3. Behavior enactors (e.g. maternal instinct)

First, our genes implement the brain circuitry required to recognize certain scenarios in the environment.  This circuitry then reduces these scenarios to a simple signal, like a hormone or nerve signal, that can be relayed throughout the body.

Second, our genes are responsible for the development of a distributed signal detection system (e.g. hormone and nerve receptors) throughout our body (including our brain), to act as remote listening devices for the signals detected.

Third, the genes must implement the response circuitry (e.g. motivations) in the brain, to be activated once the receptors receive the signal.  Such instincts may require tuning in the actual environment, yet are still 100% genetic.

How does it all work?  Here's an example.  Scientists recently found that a drug used to treat Parkinson's disease can trigger compulsive gambling.  That drug is short-circuiting the brain's signal/response system.  Yet it begs the question, why do humans have a signal/reponse system to trigger a complex instinct, like gambling?  Our genes have already established receptors for the "gambling signal", otherwise that drug could not have this side-effect.

Once the signal is detected, people start gambling.  Gambling behavior is obviously immensely complex, requiring planning, forethought, and deliberate action.  Before someone can gamble, they must develop to maturity.  They must develop skills that allow them to carry out the high-level genetic directive (to gamble).  But it must be genetic, because the receptors and enactors are all there, simply requiring a small, simple molecule to switch on the behavior, like well-trained soldiers waiting for the simple command from their general.

How is the motivation to gamble implemented in the brain circuitry, such that it can be triggered from an "off" to "on" state so easily by a single drug molecule?  There is no "gambling-ness" inherent in the molecule itself.  Therefore, the innate motivational circuitry (that causes gambling) must:

1. Recognize a situation where gambling is possible
2. Compell the person to engage in the activity

That's the frontier of genetics.... understanding how this motivational circuitry works, in the context of expected, built-in environmental factors, as implemented by the intelligent matter of the human brain.

Yes, but society tells you to...

Most of us are motivated to listen to society (friends, neighbors, parents, doctors, authorities), when their words resonate with our own innate preferences.  When a child is largely in agreement with his parents, he'll say things like "my parents raised me right" or "my parents made me who I am", as if he was born a formless lump of clay, waiting passively to be molded into an adult.

Yet our assumptions are wrong.  Most of us "choose" to conform to social expectations — and we assume we're making a free choice — when it's merely a happy coincidence of our inborn desires meshing with social expectations.

But what happens when our innate desires are in conflict with the words of society?  For example, what if society tells you to "act like a boy" but you really want to act like a girl? A recent story on NPR shows what happens, when a young boy has an obsessive preference for "girls' things"

From his earliest days [Bradley] had chosen girls' dolls, identified with female characters and gravitated toward female children. [Bradley simulated girl's hair] with a brown tea towel. ... He would wake up every morning and put the towel on his head. When [his mother] tried to remove it, he would protest...

[A psychologist] explained to Carol that she and her husband would have to radically change their parenting. Bradley would no longer be allowed to spend time with girls. He would no longer be allowed to play with girlish toys or pretend that he was a female character.

But instead of conforming to social expectations, little Bradley rejected everything society told him (depite teasing, taunting, and bullying):

[Bradley's mother] would find female action figures stashed between couch pillows. Rainbow unicorns were hidden in the back of Bradley's closet. Bradley seemed at a loss, she said. They gave him male toys, but he chose not to play at all. ... [He] would color and draw for hours and hours and hours. ... Bradley would populate his pictures with the toys and interests he no longer had access to — princesses with long flowing hair, fairies in elaborate dresses, rainbows of pink and purple and pale yellow.

In other words, we listen to the words of society as long as those words resonate with our inborn preferences.  If not, then society's words have relatively little impact on us (except to cause stress).  Since perhaps 90% of us are hardwired to prefer what society tells us, we don't realize that we wouldn't heed those words if it wasn't in our innate programming.

Father kills stepdaughter on the Nature Channel

Lions kill their young.  Or, rather, when an arriving male lion wrests control of a pride of lionesses from another male, he often kills the cubs that were fathered by the outsted male.  The new father kills his own stepchildren.

This instinctual behavior in lions could be called evil, since who in their right mind would kill their stepchildren?  But it's also part of the lion's nature, in their DNA.

In human society, we have many instincts as well, retained from our animal ancestors through evolution.  If someone had the instinct to kill his stepchildren (and it seems likely that at least some humans retain these genes, due to genetic diversity), would he be responsible for his actions?

The answer is, of course, yes.  Genes are not something we have, they are something we are.  They define us.  If someone had the genes to motivate him to kill his own stepchildren, it would feel to him that he was expressing his own free will when he carried it out.  It would feel natural, just like a lion, because that's the way his brain would be wired to behave.

But more likely, an instinct to kill would be in conflict with other emotions and feelings he had (like guilt).  Humans have more instincts than animals, not less, and these often conflict with each other.

However, the less conflicted our instincts, the more they feel like free will.

Our moral laws are written in this context of free will.  Everyone is wired to behave differently, with a different set of instincts, numbering in the hundreds.  (What are motivations, if not another type of instinct?)  Our laws were written by people in the context of the free will around them.  Laws label some expression of free will as good, and other free will as bad.  If we kill, we are punished, because this is how one instinctive set of creatures (the law writers) wants to interact with another set of instinctive creatures.

I like to use the example of quantum physics as a metaphor that "you can't step outside the system".  Laws were written by genetic (instinctive) beings, to judge the behavior of other genetic (instinctive) beings.  There is no privileged position outside this system from which to judge, unless, of course, you are God.

Schopenhauer’s free will

I’m generally in agreement with Arthur Schopenhauer’s concept of the Freedom of the Will:

• We can do as we will, but we cannot will as we will
• Character is determined by nature, not by the environment
• Humans can respond to abstract concepts, therefore human action is not merely determined by objects that are immediately present.  But a man [can’t] get up from his chair before being driven by a motive

However, I believe human motivations (while generally consistent through our lives) are more probabilistic on a daily basis.  If you’re a jealous person, but you happen to look the wrong way at the wrong time, you may miss becoming inflamed by a situation that would stoke your jealousy.  Similarly, if you have a low threshold to anger, but live in a peaceful neighborhood, your anger will not flare as often.

Still, all it takes is a single incident – if you’ve got a low threshold to anger – to change your life forever (i.e. getting so angry that you kill someone, and go to jail for the rest of your life).  So in that sense, probabilistic daily motivations may lead to similar outcomes over time.  Often, the interaction between our nature and nurture is one-directional, and the outcomes can't be undone, due to latching effects.

Free will

Here's a nice summary of current scientific understanding on free will, written by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times:

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control. [Our] conscious brain [is] only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain [is] already doing.

In other words, our unconscious (genetically programmed) brain perceives the world for us, motivates us toward some situations over others, colors our experiences with pre-wired dispositions (emotions), and triggers our reactions.  The higher brain is left to make up (confabulate) reasons for why we did what we did, based on the illusion of free will.

One concern raised in the article is whether "talking about this in public will fan the culture wars," as if scientific truth should be subjected to a popularity contest.  Scientists are supposed to follow the facts, and do the right thing in the face of opposition, not bury their noses in the sand!  Fortunately, it seems British publications are willing to be less politically correct than Americans.  For example, the Economist magazine recently reported another case against free will:

In the late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to be sentenced to prison for his crimes, he had his brain scanned. He had a tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies went away. When it started growing back, they returned. When the regrowth was removed, they vanished again. Who then was the child abuser?

It's easy to see how a brain tumor could remove your capabilities (like ability to speak or walk), but how was it in this case able to add new (albeit evil) complex desires and motivations, unless these already existed in the brain (merely unleased by - not caused by - the tumor)?

The same question arises with gambling.  Certain people -- who previously never felt the urge to gamble -- suddenly became addicted to gambling after taking a certain drug.  Drugs are very simple molecules... there is no "gambling-ness" in the drug itself.  The drug is simply unlocking a complex behavior that we already have inside.

Determinism vs Conscious choice

Does our human consciousness allow us to make any choice we please? How far does our free choice go? Can we always override our natural impulses? Are we responsible for our actions when we can't?

Because we live in the real world, we are exposed to different situations every day that lead us to feel jealousy or greed. What stops us from acting on our impulses?  Is it some sort of rational choice?

The psychologist Jonathan Haidt instead suggests our innate moral sense leads us to control our impulses. Emotions and feelings like awe, gratitude, sympathy, compassion, empathy, guilt, shame and embarrassment, all contribute to the moral sense, which can override the more negative emotions.

I would add that we're also kept in line by our innate desire to please authority figures, like bosses, priests, and government officials. The ability to feel awe for higher beings is innate, and is designed to be spurred by social institutions like churches.

So some human emotions and impulses (greed, lust) are kept in check by other emotions ("the moral sense"). This leaves little room for rational choice.  Instead, the mind is like the "whack-a-mole" game, where moles (emotions) keep popping up to our conscious attention. Consciousness is like a spotlight, that allows us to focus on our feelings (both negative and moral), weigh them against each other, and act on them. We only have one body, and many desires, which is why our consciousness must prioritize our actions.

Our moral sense is designed to be given shape and tuned by external institutions (although it can also be affected by drugs).  We want to believe in our leaders, and others in positions of authority.  We have a strong innate pre-disposition to believe what they tell us, at least for a while.  If a well-known artist says that a piece of art has merit, we want to believe him, even if it's just his own "social construction" of reality.  If a so-called "great leader" (like Chairman Mao, for example) says it would be a great leap forward if we all lived on collective farms, he is exploiting our innate tendency to trust leaders.  But people are not infinitely flexible.  Our sense of duty and allegiance toward leaders is only one of several innate emotions that our consciousness must juggle when making choices.

Our emotions didn't just arrive yesterday, in the same way that genes are not just normal matter.  Emotions serve as dispositions toward objects and situations that evolved over billions of years.  Genes are experience made manifest.  In other words, the experience of our ancestors is transported through time into the present, in the form of our genes and innate emotions. Having the ability to recognize greed-inducing situations is a developed capability of the brain.  You have to perceive before you can react!

Being accountable (to society) for your actions is not the same thing as having a free choice and being responsible. If you have a strong sense of greed, but a weak moral sense, you will probably steal things from other people, and society will throw you in jail once you're caught. Perhaps you weren't free to make another choice. But as Gandi wrote, you are always accountable for your actions, and you must accept the punishment. Social punishment will thus be part of your new environment, and it acts as a deterrent to others (or perhaps instead your civil disobedience will inspire others to overthrow the current government). It is the environment you choose, of your own free will, but it is deeply rooted in the interplay of innate emotions.

Intense spiritual experiences

It's always interesting when a small molecule (ingested as a pill) has a dramatic effect on human behavior. Clearly, the molecule itself can have no effect on us unless it exploits something which already exists in the brain.

For example, ingesting the psilocybin molecule (found in some mushrooms) switches production of one of the brain's neurotransmitters (serotonin) into overdrive.  If your brain produces too little serotonin, you're depressed.  A little more serotonin, and you feel excited.  But if the brain produces a lot of serotonin, you'll have a mystical "feeling of sacredness or awe, and deeply felt positive mood like joy, peace and love".

There's nothing abnormal about this.  The brain is designed to behave normally with varying levels of serotonin, as an automobile is designed to drive normally at slow, medium or high speeds.  The fact that the brain leaves itself open to be exploited by an ingested chemical (like psilocybin), shows that the brain is waiting for signals, for which it is designed to respond.  A slight change to the psilocybin molecule's form itself, and the brain would simply ignore it.

Certainly, it's appropriate to get excited by certain of life's events.  Excitement ensures that our memories of the event are stronger and more important than other memories.

But the psilocybin molecule can make us excited when there is no event.  We simply ingest the pill, and feel that something very important and transcendent took place.  We may even end up a permanently changed person, more "compassionate, loving, optimistic and patient".

The point is -- the brain has this complex response built-in already. Psilocybin doesn't cause it; it evokes it.

Who I am, vs. What I choose

One way to understand free will is to realize that "we are our genes".  Our genes define our wants and motivations -- they are not something that we have; they are something that we are.

In other words, I am someone who is defined by 20,000 gene variants, like an identity card.  Some subset of those gene variants can predict my personality, including what choices I will generally make in most situations.

For example, if you are an INTP personality type, you won't want to lead or control people.  That will be your choice, based on who you are (i.e. what you genetically want).  It will not be a choice based on free will, unless you define free will as "doing what you genetically want".  Your genes define who you are, and your choices are based on who you are.

Beyond Good and Evil

In order to understand genetics, especially related to questions of "free will", we need to be able to stand outside ourselves as human beings.  We need to develop an out-of-body perspective.

This is not easy to do.  We humans have evolved a commonsense understanding of human behavior, both in ourselves and in other people; our innate sense of "folk psychology".  These explanations are so obvious and intuitive to us, that we often laugh or feel irritated at alternative explanations.

Our need to explain human behavior in intuitive terms makes us feel comfortable, and allows us to safely categorize other people.  We have a strong sense of how things "should be", and we want to be emotionally engaged with other people.  If someone commits a crime, we get angry.  If someone is helpful, we feel happy.  Our emotions and dispositions serve a practical purpose.

However, we fail to get it right, and psychologists are the least reliable people to ask about human nature, as it really is.  For example, before the Milgram experiment was conducted, 39 psychologists were asked to predict the outcome, and they predicted only a 0.1% chance of a certain outcome, whereas the actual outcome was 65%!  Psychologists tend to see people as they believe they should be, not as they really are.

In order to truly understand human behavior, you need to be rather cold and objective, not politically correct.  You need to regard people as interesting robots.  What would cause the robot to act that way?  What do we know about how differently configured robots (i.e. people with different genes) react differently in the same situation.

Don't disregard people who are not like you.  If you think Donald Trump is "evil", don't assume that everyone else agrees with you (or even that they should agree with you).  If you are in a liberal university setting, don't assume that the people around you are representative of the general population (only 30% have a college degree).

Only by taking an "amoral" stance, without making value judgements, can you truly understand human nature.  That's why it's important to treat this as a "day job", and not take your work home with you.  Studying human behavior and "being human" are different things, a dichotomy like Descartes' "mind body problem", where the mind and body are separate and unequal. 

Be "amoral" when you study, but be human when you walk down the street and say "hi" to the neighbors!

How to become hyper-sociable, through genetics

An interesting article from the Salk Institute shows that having certain gene variants can provide you with the following abilities:

• Enhanced drive to greet and interact with strangers
• Enhanced ability to remember names and faces
• Eagerness to please others, and empathy with others' emotions
• Unusually adept language skills

So far, studies have focused on children with Williams Syndrome, which is so extreme that those children suffer from mild mental retardation.  But a milder form would certainly be desirable to most people.  Pharmaceutical companies should isolate the target, and create a new hyper-sociability drug, a guaranteed best seller, to be sure.

Social Anxiety and Selective Mutism

Social anxiety is not a free choice. It’s estimated that 7 in 1,000 children have "selective mutism" (SM), one type of social anxiety that renders children absolutely silent in public (e.g. they never speak up in class), even when they are normally talkative at home.

According to an article in Time magazine, SM has a strong genetic component because it runs in families. Until about 15 years ago, the condition was known as "elective mutism, which suggests the silence is willful and controlling. It was seen as a power struggle that manifested as a refusal to speak … Now it is characterized as a failure to speak". Until the late 1980’s, SM was falsely attributed to "emotional or physical abuse … even though there was no proof".

So, yet again, the notion of free will is found to be hollow. The interesting question now is understanding how the brain manifests SM. Clearly, a learned ability (i.e. recognizing that one is in a public place) is exploited by the genes, which then switch off another learned ability (i.e. the ability to speak). This implies that the development of the brain decides where to place those abilities, so it can later harness the neurons involved for other purposes.

Another interesting question is determining why the incidence of SM is 7 in 1,000 children.  Over the course of evolution, it must have been determined that having this rate of SM was beneficial to society, in the overall distribution of traits.

Social anxiety is not a free choice. It’s estimated that 7 in 1,000 children have "selective mutism" (SM), one type of social anxiety that renders children absolutely silent in public (e.g. they never speak up in class), even when they are normally talkative at home.

According to an article in Time magazine, SM has a strong genetic component because it runs in families. Until about 15 years ago, the condition was known as "elective mutism, which suggests the silence is willful and controlling. It was seen as a power struggle that manifested as a refusal to speak … Now it is characterized as a failure to speak". Until the late 1980’s, SM was falsely attributed to "emotional or physical abuse … even though there was no proof".

So, yet again, the notion of free will is found to be hollow. The interesting question now is understanding how the brain manifests SM. Clearly, a learned ability (i.e. recognizing that one is in a public place) is exploited by the genes, which then switch off another learned ability (i.e. the ability to speak). This implies that the development of the brain decides where to place those abilities, so it can later harness the neurons involved for other purposes.

Another interesting question is determining why the incidence of SM is 7 in 1,000 children.  Over the course of evolution, it must have been determined that having this rate of SM was beneficial to society, in the overall distribution of traits.

Genes and antisocial behavior

According to a recent scientific article, a specific variant of the COMT gene can predict whether a child will develop "early-onset antisocial behavior accompanied by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder".

I'm not saying that this is the gene variant that leads one to become a sociopath.  Yet, I can't help wondering whether the process of evolution intended for some of us to be anti-social.  People with anti-social tendencies could be the ones who inspire wars.  Since death is the mechanism by which natural selection occurs, having more battles would certainly speed the process of evolution.

A gene for timidity

The journal Cell reports that reducing the activity of the so-called stathmin gene "may allow people to overcome innate or learned anxieties. Dr. Shumyatsky said doctors already had a drug that acts on the same brain molecules as stathmin does; it is Taxol, a cancer drug."

Already, a study done in mice shows that removing the gene "can turn normally cautious animals into daring ones, mice that are more willing to explore unknown territory and less intimidated by sights and sounds that they have learned can be dangerous."

Complex behaviors caused by a drug, or, another nail in the coffin of free will

Most people believe that gambling addiction is a failure of willpower, not an innate behavior designed to be switched on an off by our genes.  However, according to a recent article:

Researchers have identified a strange side effect to a treatment for Parkinson's disease: excessive gambling. Some patients taking medications known as dopamine agonists developed the problem within three months of starting treatment, even though they had previously gambled only occasionally or never at all. "This is a striking effect," remarks J. Eric Ahlskog of the Mayo Clinic, a co-author of the new study. "Pathological gambling induced by a drug is really quite unusual."

If a drug (really just a small molecule) can trigger us to gamble, the implication is that the gambling impulse (and associated behavior) was there all along (part of our DNA), and the drug is simply switching on something we were born with.  It's not a free choice.

Trust and Free Will

Why do we mistrust strangers?  Is it a rational and logical choice based on self-preservation (i.e. "I don't know that man, therefore he may be dangerous, so I'd better avoid him")?  In that case, why do children with Williams syndrome approach strangers without fear?  Are they making a different rational choice?

A recent discovery has found that a simple chemical signal (oxytocin, given as a nasal spray) can turn a group of college students into a bunch of gullible, credulous suckers - willing to trust others more readily.

Therefore, any gene variant which regulates the amount of oxytocin in the brain may also regulate the amount of trust we are willing to have in others.  It's hardly a rational choice.  With the right chemicals, we could all have Williams syndrome.

Can anyone become President?

Fred: So why aren't you running for President?
Joe:  I could if I wanted to.  I'm just not really motivated, that's all.
Fred: Why don't you motivate yourself?  Buy an inspirational book.
Joe:  Maybe it's my mood, or maybe my willpower is not strong enough.
Fred: Anybody can do what they put their mind to...
Joe:  Hey, I made a choice, of my own free will.  I decided not to run for President, OK?  I just don't want to.  It's my choice.

People often separate their "wants" (what they perceive as their free choices) from their underlying motivations, moods, and -- ultimately -- genes.  They believe they have a free choice to do anything, and that they can summon the willpower and motivations to support any freely made decision.

But this is the major confusion with the notion of free will.  The "wants" that guide our choices are based on our motivations and moods and desires, which are innate (since how would you teach someone to crave leadership?).  Because our moods and motivations change over time and situation, we don't think of them as being a permanent part of us.  We think they are something that "happens" to us.

And, in the same way, the desire to be a follower is also innate.  Followers are easily excited by a charismatic leader, who smiles at them and gives them praise.  Do followers freely choose to get excited, or is it something that happens naturally (for some people)?  Then, when they "want" to follow that leader, is it a free choice?  Or a choice based on their mood?

Does everyone have the same mood when they listen to a charismatic speaker?  Can everyone become a charismatic leader?  No.  A charismatic can smile in the face of disapproval.  Many people are simply not able to smile in that situation - they feel uncomfortable, and cannot bring themselves to smile.  The charismatic can confidently make statements about how the world should be.  Other people are highly motivated when someone is speaking confidently to them, and they are willing followers.