My inspiration for this post was Genes Aren’t Destiny in the New Scientist, specifically the following passage:
“The more we learn about genetics, the clearer it becomes that “genetic determinism” – the idea that genes and genes alone fix our destiny – is a myth. A given set of genes has the potential to produce a variety of observable characteristics, known as phenotypes, depending on the environment.”
The authors’ idea here is not that determinism is wrong, only that genes alone do not determine human characteristics. Rather, these characteristics “are produced by interactions between genes and environments” (Carroll et al, 2017). In this usage, “environment” refers to anything outside the gene that influences human functioning, from upbringing, culture, social relationships, temperature, stress, and diet to cellular processes that regulate gene expression. According to this theory, then, whatever we think, feel, say, and do is a product of gene-environment interactions.
Which got me thinking: if human experience and behavior is the product of gene-environment interactions, what does liberty even mean? The dictionary says liberty is “the condition of being free from control or restrictions”, but being a “product” of genes+environment doesn’t leave any room for being free from control. A lot of discussions of liberty get around this conundrum by assigning liberty and determinism to difference spheres, one political, the other philosophical, as in the following:
“In modern politics, liberty is the state of being free within society from control or oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behaviour, or political views. In philosophy, liberty involves free will as contrasted with determinism.” Wikipedia
“Nature constrains us. Yet, we don’t feel oppressed by nature – it isn’t trying to hurt us or limit us, it simply is what it is, and we can use it as we wish too. Our bodies are part of nature, after all. It is when other people force us to obey, use violence against us, or simply intimidate us, that we feel constrained and abused. … We should be allowed to do whatever we want, so long as we don’t hurt others.” - Paul Rosenberg/Freeman's Perspective
But would being free in the political sense be such a burning issue if we felt we weren’t truly free in a philosophical or empirical sense? For some people, probably not. And yet I don’t feel conflicted even though I value liberty and accept that there is nothing I think, feel, say, or do that is independent of my genes or environment. That’s because I consider humans to be goal-directed agents whose choices continually change the nature of the gene-environment interaction. For example, lifestyle choices may influence the cellular environment in which our genes are switched on or off.
Genes and environment may constrain our options, but they don’t prevent us from making choices, which in turn changes the whole gene-environment equation. They act on us; we act on them. This is not an anti-scientific point of view. The human brain is a decision-making machine, whose function is to produce behavior - which by definition is goal-directed. By acting on our goals, we change what acts on us.
Freedom lies in our power to choose and act and our decisions change the world that constrains us.
Reference:
Joseph Carroll, John A. Johnson, Catherine Salmon, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Mathias Clasen, & Emelie Jonsson. (2017). A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of Beliefs about Human Nature, Culture, and Science. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 1(1), 1-32. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.26613/esic.1.1.2