All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Schopenhauer, 1788-1860. My next book won’t come out until January, and reviews of it will appear in the weeks and months after that. But now, a year in advance, I want to make a prediction about the main objections that will be voiced. In particular I predict that two of the most common responses will a particular opposing pair.
It could be that the world has long been divided into cynics and idealists, and your book makes standard cynic claims. Then it would be no contradiction for the cynics to say your claims are old news while the idealists decry your lack of evidence--the only bad intellectual behavior by either camp would be their failure to acknowledge the other.
(In reality your cynical claims are far from standard, though)
The thing is, if act X has both a pro-social and a selfish explanation (you give to charity because you want to help people vs you give to charity because it makes you look good to others) then the answer can still be "both" without the selfish motive undermining the genuineness of the pro-social one. Selection, natural and otherwise, cares about selfish benefits, but there's a simple and effective, if often costly, solution the problem of how to appear to be a good person: actually be a good person! So selection creates good individuals because being good looks good, but individuals often act good because they really are good.
Which is how both criticisms can co-exist: people are good (and you haven't proven otherwise, how dare you accuse us of low motives) but they were made good by a process that rewards the appearance of goodness (duh, of course the ultimate source of goodness is the selfish rewards to goodness). Adaptation-executors, not fitness-maximizers!
"it is hard to find a set of positions from which one could endorse both responses."
How about this set of positions:Your thesis has been stated for centuries, by many scholars, each offering little evidence, and you are only the most recent to do so in this way.
Not that I necessarily agree with this, but it would seem to tie those two responses into a coherent position.
I'll go with the second though I think it needs a qualification. I think we all know this to be true to some extent, but that we try to focus on positive sum areas where everyone can be selfish but limiting the impact of that selfishness on others, and that egregious selfishness is as condemned as modest selfishness is encouraged.
It could be that the world has long been divided into cynics and idealists, and your book makes standard cynic claims. Then it would be no contradiction for the cynics to say your claims are old news while the idealists decry your lack of evidence--the only bad intellectual behavior by either camp would be their failure to acknowledge the other.
(In reality your cynical claims are far from standard, though)
The thing is, if act X has both a pro-social and a selfish explanation (you give to charity because you want to help people vs you give to charity because it makes you look good to others) then the answer can still be "both" without the selfish motive undermining the genuineness of the pro-social one. Selection, natural and otherwise, cares about selfish benefits, but there's a simple and effective, if often costly, solution the problem of how to appear to be a good person: actually be a good person! So selection creates good individuals because being good looks good, but individuals often act good because they really are good.
Which is how both criticisms can co-exist: people are good (and you haven't proven otherwise, how dare you accuse us of low motives) but they were made good by a process that rewards the appearance of goodness (duh, of course the ultimate source of goodness is the selfish rewards to goodness). Adaptation-executors, not fitness-maximizers!
"it is hard to find a set of positions from which one could endorse both responses."
How about this set of positions:Your thesis has been stated for centuries, by many scholars, each offering little evidence, and you are only the most recent to do so in this way.
Not that I necessarily agree with this, but it would seem to tie those two responses into a coherent position.
We don't know that without comparing their book to past papers or books. Could you list two or three that you have in mind?
I think the second response has more truth in it, but you certainly have brought things together more than people generally did in the past.
I'll go with the second though I think it needs a qualification. I think we all know this to be true to some extent, but that we try to focus on positive sum areas where everyone can be selfish but limiting the impact of that selfishness on others, and that egregious selfishness is as condemned as modest selfishness is encouraged.