Hi, Dave,
Thanks for your response. Iind of you to give the paper a second reading. I
have larded your comments below. I am trying to make sense of what Glen sent
me which seems very pertinent but appears in foggy type of my screen. I feel
likeI missed a memo.
Where ARE you, by the way? You have become like Roger; a disemgeographied
voice.
Nick
From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, August 5, 2025 6:25 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Group Selection IS a metaphor.
Nick,
I wish to embody the fear of being dragged away from what you think you are
supposed to be doing, to be engaged in the topic you raise in your paper.
I have read the paper before and, as then, I find it meritorious, well written,
and reasonable in argument. I am, basically, convinced.
However; two points:
First, your use of the concept, "metaphor," is the way that I use the term, in
a manner that glen pointed out is inconsistent with the literal definition of
the term. I speak of metaphor when there is some thing of which I think I know
something and I have a suspicion that some other thing might be of the same
ilk. I use what I think I know to craft a 'model', one that suggests particular
points and particular relations that, if my suspicion is correct, will have
direct analogs in the unknown thing. I check them out individually and in
combinations and, if substantiated, confirm my suspicion. If unconfirmed, the
metaphor is refuted.
NST==> You understand me precisely. The only thing I would add is that as one
works out the analogues, one is required to (1) decide which ones one has a
commitment to and then decide whether the metaphor is still useful if one
disclaims a particular entailment. The metaphor of the selfish gene is an
interesting example because of the ambiguity between whether the gene does nice
things for itself or whether it is a gene for doing nice things for the holder
of the gene. Genes, on the whole, are decisions; they don’t make them. <==nst
This seems to me to be what you are doing in the paper, albeit it more
abstractly and academically. Please correct me if wrong.
Second, and here is the real time sink, would it be possible to make your ideas
concrete, real groups with actual history and demonstrated differential
"success." If you were amenable to such a conversation, I would propose the
Mormons as a test case.
NST==> DS Wilson’s The Darwinian Cathedral explores this territory. I don[t
remember whether the Mormon’s are mentioned explicitly, but they are an
excellent example of wone feature of religions which is their adoption of
alienating beliefs. There are some Mormon believes whose whole purpose is to
serve as markers of faith. If you could believe that than you MUST be a good
member. This is why I always get nervous when people point out how clearly
wrong many MAGA beliefs are. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature. <==nst
One of 20 or so "religions"/"societies" to emerge from the "Burnt Over
District" of western New York. The only one still extant.
Disproportionately successful, (in material and social terms), to their
neighbors. Smith was living in a two-story New England style home while down
the road, Abe Lincoln, was living in a log cabin with mud floor.
A schism immediately after Smith's death, with the Reformed LDS barely evident
while the main group flourished. (Last time I checked, Mormonism and Sokka
Gokai, in Japan, were the two fastest growing religions.)
In Utah there was a concerted effort to spawn multiple small groups by sending
out colonies. Because each group was originally "seeded" with four or five
families, you get a strong genetic/heritance component as well as "traits." (It
is still possible to identify what part of Utah someone is from (especially
females) by their physical appearance.)
Some interesting "adaptations" at the trait level, e.g., when Smith was alive
blacks were included in the community and held the priesthood—something that
Missourians, at the time, could not abide. Brigham Young 'suspended' (restored
in 1978 with the admission that the suspension was not for theological, but
merely political reasons) black priesthood membership and gave up polygamy (de
jure only) to appease the Federal Government and avoid a second martyrdom.
NST==> I think you might get quite a kick out of the Darwinian Cathedral.
<==nst
davew
On Tue, Aug 5, 2025, at 1:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Dear Colleagues in FRIAM,
Sometimes, if I am going to get anything done, I just have to ignore Friam, and
keep my head down, and work at the thing I am working at. It always seems, on
that occasion, that you-guys dangle in front of me some enticing topic so I
must scream and put my fingers in my ears to keep focus on my work. So it was
that when I decided I must fish or cut bait on entropy or it would take me to
my grave, that almost immediately you-guys started not one but two
conversations close to my heart: on the centrality of metaphor to science and
on the group selection controversy.
A couple of decades ago I brought those two interests together in a paper
called “Shifting the Natural Selection Metaphor to the Group Level. There are
two things about this paper that make it salient for me. The first is that I
think it is the best paper I ever wrote. The second is that for each of the
two people whom I most hoped to reach when I wrote it, D. S. Wilson and Elliott
Sober, it is a piece of crap. In it, I try to show that the problem with
metaphors is not with their use in scientific thinking: on the contrary, it is
with their ill-disciplined use. Metaphors need to be worked in a systematic
way, not simply flung out in a gust of poetic exuberance. This lesson I try
to teach by working the natural selection metaphor in a systematic way to show
that if it had been treated seriously in the first place, the whole dispute
about group selection might have been avoided. Thus the paper is not only
arrogant, but meta-arrogant.
Nothing is more pitiable than the retired academic who would do anything to
have anybody read his moribund essays. But, alas, I simply am such a person.
So, I am attaching a copy of the paper in the hope that it will have some
value to you within the context of your two discussions.
Mumble,
Nick
--
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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