Humankind Advancing, Vol.2, No.2 April 1991

Theme: On Cooperation and Dissent

CONTENTS

Quote from Toynbee

Editorial

Quote from Bunge

Quotes from Mumford, Jones, Salk

On the Nature and Necessity of Cooperation
Robert Axelrod -- [The Evolution of Cooperation; discussion]
Quote from Burke
Hanna Newcombe -- [The Roots of Cooperation; discussion]

In Praise of Dissent
Lewis Mumford -- [The Transitions of Man; discussion]
Quote from Desert Museum and from Wicken
David Stover -- Science Fiction and the Future
Quote by Bunge

The Need for a Balance
Garrett Hardin -- [Stalking the Wild Taboo; discussion]

Beyond Enlightened Self-Interest
Ernst Mayr (quotes)
Iroquois Theme
William Ophuls -- [Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity; excerpts]
Quote by Mumford

Beyond Materialism
Roger Sperry

Reflections

Quote by McDermott

References


I suspect that a worldwide totalitarian movement of the communist-fascist kind may overthrow existing institutions -- such as local sovereignty, political democracy, economic private enterprise -- and that at the eleventh hour some such totalitarian movement will stabilize human affairs by taking drastic actions in which indispensable fundamental reforms will be intertwined with atrocious acts of injustice.

Arnold Toynbee, 1976


Editorial:

This journal is published with the intent to avoid the scenario described by Toynbee.

The need is for responsible, realistic attitudes that would steer advancing humankind safely between the dangers of too much optimism and too much pessimism. -- Too much optimism leads to unrealistic expectations -- expectations that cannot possibly be met and would be followed only by disappointment, despair, or cynicism. -- Too much pessimism leads to paralyzation.

To rally the best in human nature, freedom is indispensable; but freedom only provides us with an opportunity. Unless that opportunity is used, the precious gift of freedom is wasted.

Between the dictatorial regime Toynbee describes and the licence that would destroy our culture and our life support system lies the responsible use of our freedom with the help of what Solzhenitzyn calls "a second government": the words of great writers. (See Vol. 1, No. 3) -- Such words are the focus of this journal's search and attention.

The present issue will concentrate mainly on the topic of cooperation vs. competition or dissent.


When did mankind start to think rationally in general and use abstract terms? Perhaps as recently as 2500 years ago, i.e. the last 1/4 of the history of homo sapiens. And how much longer may we enjoy this newly acquired privilege? Not much if we continue to refuse applying it to the solution of the current apocalyptic world problems -- the excess of people, weapons, and power, and the shortage of energy, food, and cooperation.

Mario Bunge, 1980

* * * * *
The need to become human is man's first need, and perhaps it remains his deepest one.

Lewis Mumford, 1956

* * * * *
It is difficult to conceive of a more valuable character than one in which keen and realistic awareness of the complexities of life is combined with a refusal to despair and a readiness to act vigorously, cheerfully, and decisively.

W.T. Jones, 1965

* * * * *
Crises worsen if either/or choices have to be made. They are resolvable if both/and choices are possible.

Jonas Salk, 1983


On the Nature and Necessity of Cooperation

Robert Axelrod

In his book The Evolution of Cooperation (1984) Robert Axelrod shows how cooperation can evolve independently of inherited traits and even independently of basic compatibility. -- The following questions are asked: How can cooperation germinate and grow among egoists? How can it survive?

Axelrod describes computer tournaments comparing different strategies, and reports that among all of them, no matter how sophisticated, there was always one consistent winner, a very simple strategy used by Anatol Rapoport of the University of Toronto.

The tournaments were based on the variation of a game, called "Prisoner's Dilemma," widely used to discover the best policy for the achievement of lasting maximum gain. (Originally, the dilemma con-sists of two prisoners being questioned separately about one another and tempted to reveal the partner's crimes to obtain their freedom.) The variation, which involves trade, has been compared with that of two persons, exchanging goods in the dark of the night in closed bags and having to steal away immediately afterward. As in the original situation, the temptation to cheat is enormous, and the cheater will have immediate and considerable advantage.

All this changes dramatically, however, if both know that they will meet each other afterward -- for instance, if the traders exchange their unseen goods night after night. One short-term advantage through unfair exploitation of the partner would destroy trust permanently and the situation would become hopeless. But trust might be unwarranted in the first place and lead to immediate loss.

How did Rapoport solve the problem? Be honest, he said, during the initial exchange; thereafter always do what the other person did previously. If the other person cheats, there is, of course a small initial loss, but if he or she is honest, a lasting and sound trading relationship will develop, advantageous for both sides.

This strategy (called "Tit for Tat"), repeated with numerous unknown partners, always succeeded in accumulating most of the points (i.e.goods) for the player using it -- although he never once beat his opponent in the sense of having more points than he or she had. "In fact, he can't," Axelrod says, "it is the nature of the game that your success is dependend upon, and a consequence of, the success of your "opponent."

That is an idea extremely difficult to grasp in a world of competitors used to thinking in terms of victory at the expense of the rival. Axelrod described how he explained the superior strategy to his students again and again, and yet they continuously reverted to their old "win-lose" mentality -- at their own disadvantage. (*)

Yet the "win-lose mentality" is not an ingrained part of average human nature. Honest trading developed naturally even among enemies during World War I, as Axelrod describes in detail.

According to Axelrod, cooperation, is based on enlightened self-interest. But it can also occur without foresight or even consciousness. Its development is rooted in principles broad enough to be valid from bacteria to nations. Wherever cooperation would be beneficial, uncooperative individuals simply eliminate themselves (and their offspring) as the evolution of symbiosis, multicellular organisms, hunting packs and so on in non-human nature shows. -- If consciousness and foresight are present, however, they can speed matters up enormously and may prevent fatal catastrophes.

Thinking about the Rapoport-game, for instance, it becomes evident that the concept of envy has no place in a maturing humanity, and Axelrod himself warns of it. "Envy is self-destructive," he says, and "Tit-for-Tat won the tournament not by beating the other player, but by eliciting behavior from the other player which allowed both to do well." (P.112)

- - -
(*) But Axelrod also warns of a too strict following of the Tit-for-Tat rules, which would lead to an endless continuation of feuds, once they have been started. Alan Newcombe, director of the Peace Research Institute-Dundas, therefore suggested the "Queen's strategy," a variation that returns mistrust not always with equal mistrust but occasionally with trust again to test whether insight and learning have occurred and cooperation will be answered with the same. If this does not happen, losses will be greater, but if it does, a lasting mutually productive relationship may be initiated.

Trust, however, could be fatal -- for instance during confrontation of world powers possessing nuclear weapons. For such cases, a strategy of "Graduated Reciprocal Initiatives in Tension Reduction" (GRIT) has been suggested by Charles Osgood, who introduced it as an alternative to "either Red or Dead." This strategy -- strongly promoted by Alan Newcombe and others -- has actually now been effectively used to initiate and further the reduction of tension between the two major powers.

Charles E. Osgood, professor of psychology and research professor in Communications has served as consultant to the Air Force, the Navy, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Books by both, Osgood and Newcombe, describing their strategies, are listed in the references.

- - -
Just as I was completing these lines, a pre-publication paper from Hanna Newcombe (co-director of the Peace-Research Institute-Dundas in Canada), not only on the same topic, but also containing a review of Axelrod's book, arrived unexpectedly. -- Several additional important points had attracted her attention:

1. The "Tit-for-Tat" strategy, though repaying misconduct with the same and therefore immune to exploitation, is also forgiving; that is, as soon as the opponent reverts to cooperation, an immediate cooperative response will be the answer.

2. Although in an uncoperative society, pervaded by mistrust, an isolated cooperator, or even a few of them, cannot normally succeed, there is a special method that will lead to success even in such a seemingly hopeless case: if the cooperators work together, or mainly together, they can give each other winning points. They must, in H. Newcombe's words be "maximally discriminating." (Tit-for-Tat is a `maximally discriminating' strategy.)

3. A "Hobbesian situation of `war for all against all'" can through such "clusters of cooperarators" be transformed into a stable fully cooperative society.

* * * * *
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite is placed somewhere, and the less there is within, the more there must be without.

Edmund Burke

* * * * *
Hanna Newcombe

Listing The Roots of Cooperation as "kinship, reciprocity, contract, utility, equity, and universality," H. Newcombe describes six points of view by six different authors or schools of thought.

Kinship. Sociobiologists see cooperation rooted in the concept of the "selfish gene." The closer two cooperators are related, the more of their offspring will survive. This kind of helpfulness -- based on the conception that the tendency to cooperate is inherited -- is described by H. Newcombe as working in "concentric circles.... `I against my brothers; I and my brothers against our cousins; my brothers and my cousins against outsiders'." It is "the basis of family solidarity, tribalism, patriotism and nationalism."

Reciprocity. The description of reciprocity is based on Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation, discussed in the preceding. Here, not the gene, but enlightened self-interest is described as the root of cooperation.

Contract. "Although cooperation can develop spontaneously by reciprocity...it is useful to legitimize it by explicit contract," Newcombe says and bases that part of her work on the views of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls, all of whom used a "sociological fiction," the social contract, that would legitimize beneficial and punish detrimental behavior. Humans "`in the wild'" are either intent on continual mutual robbery [and] murder" (Hobbes) or they are trusting and cooperating "noble savages" (Rousseau). In either case they are "one and all" sensible enough to decide that "fairness" and "justice" ought to be institutionalized -- even before a government exists.

H. Newcombe inserts here some very thorough thoughts. It was Rousseau's ideal of the good in human nature, she notes, which led to the execution of dissenters and to the terror of the French revolution -- and the same was repeated in the Russian revolution. "I have some doubts," she writes, "that the terror in both cases was the result of the depravity or fanaticism of one man, Robespierre or Stalin; it is more likely that the fault lies in the ideology itself, and the fanaticism it arouses."

One version of the contract (Rawls'), however, recommends the maximization of individual freedom, as long as it does not interfere with the freedom of others (as recommended by Mill) and is promoted by Newcombe -- except that she deplores the absence of environmental consciousness. She also questions the assumption that growth beyond a certain point produces more happiness.

Utility. Here, H. Newcombe says, the boundary is crossed between theories based on selfishness and those based on ethical considerations. And why, she asks, should we consider interests of others for their own sake? -- Her strong feeling that this is right is explained by the thought that all people consist, mentally and spiritually, of the same essence - her Principle of the Shared Essence (PSE).

Utilitarianism therefore aims for the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.

Equity. There are problems with utilitarianism, discussed in detail by the author. "The sense of equity, or fairness," (well-known by everyone) she says, would require not only the maximizing of happiness, but also the minimizing of individual differences of each individual's share in it.

Universality is the expansion of the principles of utility and equity beyond a limited place and time. It is the development of a conscience that includes the web of interrelated life on earth and the future of our descendents.

And it is the development of that conscience on which the survival of our species and the quality of its future depends.


IN PRAISE OF DISSENT

Though the advantages of cooperation are obvious and desperately needed at present, it would be dangerous to therefore close our eyes to its disadvantages. These disadvantages are described with moving power by Lewis Mumford in his book The Transitions of Man (1956).

Lewis Mumford

"To secure human survival..." Mumford says, and "also to bring forth a more complete kind of man than history has yet disclosed," it is necessary to break "through the boundaries of culture and history which have so limited human growth." (P.217)

The need is for "a person not indelibly marked by the tatooings of his tribe or restricted by the taboos of his totem; not sewed up for life in the stiff clothes of his caste or calling or encased in vocational armor he can't remove even if it endangers his life." (Pp.217/218)

"This breakthrough would enable modern man to take advantage of the peculiar circumstances today that favor a universalism that earlier periods could only dream about....The resources for this transformation have been available for only little more than a century." (P.218)

Mumford describes four main stages of man's inner development: (1) the primitive or archaic stage in which man's mind was veiled in magic and myth, self-consciousness had not yet developed, and a self, apart from an individual's group, was non-existent; (2) the stage of civilization, in which the discovered ego became active but also so unruly that external curbes had to be placed on subjectivity; (3) the axial stage that led to religious consciousness, internal curbes, and the perception of a human being, even if unknown, as a brother; (4) the stage of science -- or the mechanistic view -- that led to "exhilarating inventiveness," but at the price of sacrificing the meaningfulness of subjective experience.

Inventiveness, according to Mumford, could not have originated at the archaic stage when the individual and the group were one. The initiation of a new idea starts with dissent from tradition, from the views of the group. Only after such dissent had been achieved -- and the dissenter succeeded to survive -- could a progressing forward move of our culture begin.

But while each transition to a new stage broke old fetters, new ones were constantly placed upon the developing human spirit. During the stage of civilization, a powerful God-king would conquer and destroy other populations and much of value with them; while his own subjects, too, had to bend to his will and whim. Even when the transition from personal to abstract love was achieved in the age of the great religions, much of the inner natural potential of the individual had to be sacrificed.

Mumford reports that Phillip II of Spain -- at the very eve of vast changes the scientific method brought to Western Europe -- still classed innovators and inventors with heretics.

Increasing freedom was not without a price, however. With progress in civilization came internal struggle, competition, tension, conflict. -- And yet, the movement at least proceeded "into the direction of widening the human circle, and in time produced personalities and ideas that transcended its own limited assumptions."

Nevertheless, a completely autonomous person remained rare throughout human history. Many thousand years had to pass before the attributes of royalty were treated as natural attributes of man. At the beginning of the Egyptian civilization, only the pharaoh dared to lay claim to a soul. The conception of the soul as universal had to wait for the emergence and spread of the great religions. To overthrow established thinking habits is immensely difficult.

How and why do new ages emerge? There is some correlation with unusual disturbances of traditional ways and with suffering in humankind; but even that may be born with apathy, unless exceptional thinkers become influential. In small, isolated groups, such an event is very rare. According to Mumford's calculations, if there is likely to be a person of exceptional ability in every generation in, say, ten thousand people, a group of only a thousand people may have to wait many generations before it has the advantage of a superior mind; and, he adds, "that mind, by its very isolation, may find nothing to nourish it."

Mumford emphasizes that none of the great transformations permitted expression of all of humankind's potentials. Each time new depths were discovered and opened up in the human being, other parts of his nature were resealed or left unexplored. -- The present suffers from uninhibited adolation of mechanistic objectivity, while the profundity and meaning of subjective thought is ridiculed, neglected, and left to whither. -- A new transformation is needed, Mumford believes, that allows the expression of all humankind is capable of, and that would lead to a new perspective encompassing the entire globe.

"Cast away [your] masks -- some weakly benign, some monsters -- that so long concealed the living features of man!"

The ideal, says Mumford (who does not belong to any religion or nation), is to become what he calls "ideologically naked," that is, to throw off the shackles of any ideology to be free for the purest and most encompassing love.

* * * * *
"700 million years ago sponges developed evo-lutionary dead ends. They never evolved into any-thing more complicated than themselves. Living relatives of them still exist."

Label on a display of sponges at the Desert Museum near Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A.

* * * * *
Progress is a movement toward self-determination within a context of increasing global awareness.

"Opening" is the word. As the world increases in freedom, so does its consciousness and its moral capacity. Evolution has moved from the blind and necessary to the seeing and volitional. It has been an opening-up of possibility. The human responsibility is to continue this process of conscious manifestation -- not just for our children or for specific others, but for possibility in the ongoing process of Creation whose torch we carry.

Jeffrey Wicken, 1989

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Science Fiction and the Future

by David Stover

Science fiction demonstrates one uniquely important characteristic:

It admits the possibility of change.

Not change in the life of an individual character or family; not the cyclical change of the seasons or the ebb and flow of political life. No, I mean real change: scientific change, societal change, changes in the very nature of the species. Ultimately, science fiction can encompass the entire sweep of geological and astronomical time.

Our world is now gripped by rapid and terrifying changes -- political, environmental, scientific. To survive, humanity must adapt. But most of us don't even want to admit change is occurring, much less adapt to it. Politicians and ordinary people alike try to ignore it.

Science fiction, on the contrary, is about change. Though many specific predictions about the future made by science fiction writers will prove false, that doesn't matter. What does matter is the fact the best science fiction is based on the premise that the world does change and that there are scientific, technological, and historical forces humans must reckon with.

As early as the 1930s, science fiction stories pointed out the dangers of resource depletion and pollution. Science fiction predicted the atomic bomb and, more important, the danger of nuclear stalemate. Forty years before Chernobyl, similar situations were played out in the pages of science fiction magazines. In the 1950s, science fiction writers like Frederik Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth, and Isaac Asimov dramatized the dangers of overpopulation. Today's science fiction writers are exploring the exhilarating yet chilling possibilities of nano-technology and artificial intelligence.

Nor is science fiction entirely a literature of dystopias. Much of it conveys an unquenchable optimism humanity will survive and mature. Even Star Trek, science fiction of a particular broad-based, mass media kind, brings to television viewers a vital message: the future can be a wonderful place if we work to make it so. What more important message could we convey to young people than that?

Sure, science fiction is entertainment. So is all good literature, back to the Odyssey. And I would be the first to admit that science fiction is no substitute for detailed, scholarly analyses of the human predicament and future. Science fiction, however, can reach elements of the population sober scientific treatises and complicated mathematical models will leave untouched, instilling both an awareness of the inevitability of change, and a hope that humanity can survive, mature, and move forward into the limitless future that awaits.

- - -
David Stover is the author of about two dozen articles, mainly on science, editor of four regional histories, and co-author with Erika Erdmann of Beyond a World Divided, a study of Roger Sperry's work on values and science. He works in publishing and lives with his wife in Toronto, Ontario.

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The early evolutionists stressed competition at the expense of cooperation. -- We have learned since that the struggle for life involves both.

Mario Bunge, 1980


THE NEED FOR A BALANCE

Garrett Hardin

While Axelrod promotes cooperation and Mumford emphasizes the need for dissent, Hardin points to the necessity of a balance. Competition is advocated, but not without curbes. Like Axelrod, Hardin sees human nature essentially dominated by self-interest; in fact, there seems to be no place for Mumford's "civilized man" or the impact of the "axial religions." It is taken for granted -- without regret or despair -- that Mumford's "mechanized man" is directly grafted onto his "archaic man," that is, the person without sensitivity to the needs of his fellow men (unless these are his close friends or relatives).

In such a world, Hardin -- who goes so far as to use the phrase "deeply pathological" for the wish to maintain "absolute constancy in a system" (that is, in our world, ultimate perfection without waste of human life or potential, and without suffering) -- describes laissez faire economics as "having a strong emotional appeal" and being "somehow right."

But even he -- and his arguments should have a special impact because of his utter rejection of illusions -- warns of ruthless and relentless competition: it would destroy the very freedom it's promo-ters defend.

How? Hardin points out that positive feedback in any area (economics, population increase) leads invariably to an exponential growth curve -- that is, a sharply accelerating increase in time -- which in a finite world (such as ours) would end in utter catastrophy.

Negative feedback, on the other hand -- a mechanism in which success does not accelerate but diminish the rate of growth or output and vice versa (e.g. a thermostate in the field of engineering) -- will lead to a healthy "homeostatic plateau" around which fluctuation occurs, and to a safe future. The idea is displayed graphically with the word "death" shown at either extreme. (P.175)

The lack of negative feedback in the field of economics -- that is full freedom among competitors (the dream of the laissez-faire defenders) -- would, Hardin argues, invariably lead to a monopoly by one single person and thus to the end of all freedom. That person, in his or her hunger for power, would not hesitate to exploit every possible means to retain the position once achieved.

Therefore, such negative feedback as graduated taxes, Hardin maintains, is desirable for the maintenance of freedom itself -- independently of considerations of justice.

On the other hand, Hardin warns of improvements of our world without considering the consequences. We live in a system, he says, in which every change has multiple unforeseeable effects, many of them undesirable. Examples of this truth are everywhere around us, and Hardin cites several of them. The discoveries of Pasteur, for instance, and the following world-wide increase of sanitary habits, led to healthier, longer lives, to reduced infant deaths, and to a consequent exponential population increase with the prospect of mass-starvation.

Should we have avoided the benefits brought to us by Pasteur? - No, says Hardin; but we should have expected their effects and immediately coupled them with information about, and demands for, birth-control. Every change in our system must proceed with the utmost caution and be carefully considered and constantly monitored.

Not only the nature of a change, but also its timing is crucial. "An act which is harmless when the system is well within its homeostatic boundaries may be quite destructive when [it] is already stressed near one of its limits."

Although Hardin argues against a planned society, he is not against a designed one -- that is, a society set up to contain the most desirable kind of negative feedback. "I would submit," he says, "that the proper role for conscious action is the ethical evaluation of many possible homeostatic systems, the selection of the best possible one, and the refinement of its design so as to make the homeostatic plateau as broad as it can be, thus maximizing both social stability and human freedom."

- - -
Garrett Hardin is a leading human ecologist and conservationist. -- This discussion of his views on competition is based on pages 158-187 of his book Stalking the Wild Taboo (1973).


BEYOND ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST

Ernst Mayr

...to share food and other kinds of behavior evidently beneficial to the recipient but at least potentially harmful to the actor....can be favored by natural selection because it enhances the genotype of the altruist. ...it is, looked at critically, egotistical rather than altruistic behavior. -- Some authors seem to think that all human ethics is more or less raw inclusive fitness altruism.

[But though] I discern many remnants of inclusive fitness in the human species....genuine human ethics emerged from the inclusive fitness altruism of our primitive ancestors.... ethical behavior is based on conscious thought that leads to the making of deliberate choices. The altruistic behavior of a mother bird is not based on choice; it is instinctive, not ethical.

The shift from an instinctive altruism based in inclusive fitness to an ethics based on decision making was perhaps the most important step in humanization. (Pp. 76/77)

From: Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (1988).

Ernst Mayr is one of the most eminent biologists of the United States.

* * * * *
Iroquois Theme:

"In all our deliberations we must take into account the wellbeing of the seventh generation to follow ours."

(Great law of the Haudenosaunee)

* * * * *
Excerpts from
Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity
by William Ophuls

To the posterity that has never done anything for me. (Dedication.)

The earth is teaching us a moral lesson: the individual virtues that have always been necessary for ethical and spiritual reasons have now become imperative for practical ones. (P.238)

It seems extremely unlikely that a real commitment to stewardship could arise out of enlightened self-interest. (P.231)

Ordinary human beings simply do not see that they are part of a delicate web of life that their own actions are destroying, yet any viable solution will require them to see this....A fundamental transformation of worldview must precede concrete action.

At this juncture, any specific set of solutions would immediately be criticized as politically unrealistic. Indeed, what else could it be? Current political values and institutions are the products of the age of abnormal abundance....As John Maynard Keynes pointed out, we are all prisoners of dead theorists; the ideas of John Locke, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and other philosophers of the Great Frontier in effect define reality for us. -- Before we can even see what the problem is, we must tear off their fetters on our imagination. (P.223)

The mere summation of equally regarded individual wants into Rousseau's "will of all" has become ecologically ruinous. (P.227)

The essential task...is...to devise design criteria...as effective and compelling as those of nature...but neither so ruthless nor so cruel. In other words, what are the humane alternatives to nature's wars, plagues and famines? (P.229)

- - -
William Ophuls is a political scientist who served as a Foreign Service Officer for the United States.

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Science is dualism in reverse, it achieved unity by ignoring subjective expressions.

Lewis Mumford, 1956


BEYOND MATERIALISM

Roger Sperry

In arriving at an objective understanding of the mental phenomena it will be helpful to keep the subjective qualities in mind and not be misled into thinking of these emergents of neural events as being "nothing but" or "identical to" the neural events themselves. A neural event, or,...brain process...includes the physiology of nerve-impulse traffic, the underlying chemistry, plus all sorts of subatomic low- and high-energy physical phenomena. [But these] are not the conscious phenomena. The latter are distinct causal properties that emerge only at upper levels of the brain hierarchy and with certain special types of cerebral events, unique as far as we know and yet to be discovered -- hardly to be identified with what has heretofore been termed the neural events.

Introduction of mental phenomena into the causal sequence of brain function means, among other things, that values of all kinds ... must now be recognized as positive factors in human decision making -- as must all other components of the world of inner subjective experience... By uniting the subjective mental phenomena with the objective cerebral events within a single monistic continum in the brain, [the new perspective] serves also to bridge in principle the long-standing gap between science and the humanities. (Pp. 175/176)

From: Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function, in Consciousness and the Brain, edited by G.G. Globus, G. Maxwell, and I. Savodnik, pp. 163-177 (New York: Plenum, 1976).

Nobel Laureate Roger Sperry is a pioneer brain researcher with early roots in psychology and the humanities.


REFLECTIONS

How can we advance safely into the right direction? Our brains are not constructed to handle the overwhelming onslaught of constantly changing events, discoveries, insights, and recognition of errors. Thus, we crave for guidelines to help us select and decide with a superior aim in mind.

The value of cooperation -- and of trust and trustworthiness on which it depends -- achieve a new and vital significance as facts and thoughts proliferate and become unmanageable.

The editor

* * * * *
One should select activities that are compatible with one's temperament, talent, and current situation of life and meet these responsibilities with sensitivity to the mosaic of activities others are undertaking.

W. Basil McDermott


Acknowledgments: I wish to thank David Stover for his original contribution and W. Basil McDermott for permission to quote from personal correspondence.


REFERENCES

Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.

Bunge, M. (1980). The Mind-Brain Problem. New York: Pergamon Press.

Hardin, G. (1973). Stalking the Wild Taboo. Los Altos, CA: William Kaufman, Inc.

Jones, W.T. (1965). The Sciences and the Humanities. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

McDermott, B.W. Quote from his letter of 3.1.1990.

Mayr, E. (1988). Toward a New Philosophy of Biology. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Mumford, L. (1956). The Transformations of Man. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Newcombe, A. (1969) Initiatives and Responses in Foreign Policy. Canadian Peace Research Institute. Republished by the Peace Research Institute-Dundas, Canada, 1970.

Newcombe, H. (199l). The Roots of Cooperation. In: Peace Research Reviews, January issue. Dundas: Peace Research Institute.

Ophuls, W. (1977). Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity. San Francisco: Freeman.

Osgood, C.E. (1962). An Alternative to War or Surrender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Salk, J. (1983). Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason. New York: Columbia University Press. Reprinted in 1984 by Praeger (New York), now Greenwoord, Westport, CT.

Sperry, R.W. (1976). Mental Phenomena as Causal Determinants in Brain Function. In Consciousness and the Brain, edited by G.G.Globus, G.Maxwell and I.Savodnik, pp. 163-177 (New York: Plenum).

Stover, D. Science fiction and the future. (Original contribution).

Toynbee, A. and Ikeda, D. (1976). Choose Life. London: Oxford University Press.

Wicken, J.S. (1989). Toward an Evolutionary Ecology of Meaning. Zygon, 24 153-184.