Usage of death reps is inevitable

Kirkpatrick and Navarette’s (this issue) first spe- cific complaint with TMT is that it is wedded to an out- moded assumption that human beings share with many other species a survival instinct. They argue that natu- ral selection can only build instincts that respond to specific adaptive challenges in specific situations, and thus could not have designed an instinct for survival because staying alive is a broad and distal goal with no single clearly defined adaptive response. Our use of the term survival instinct was meant to highlight the gen- eral orientation toward continued life that is expressed in many of an organism’s bodily systems (e.g., heart, liver, lungs, etc) and the diverse approach and avoid- ance tendencies that promote its survival and reproduc- tion, ultimately leading to genes being passed on to fu- ture generations. Our use of this term also reflects the classic psychoanalytic, biological, and anthropological influences on TMT of theorists like Becker (1971, 1973, 1975), Freud (1976, 1991), Rank (1945, 1961, 1989), Zilborg (1943), Spengler (1999), and Darwin (1993). We concur that natural selection, at least initially, is unlikely to design a unitary survival instinct, but rather, a series of specific adaptations that have tended over evolutionary time to promote the survival of an organ- ism’s genes. However, whether one construes these ad- aptations as a series of discrete mechanisms or a gen- eral overarching tendency that encompasses many specific systems, we think it hard to argue with the claim that natural selection usually orients organisms to approach things that facilitate continued existence and to avoid things that would likely cut life short. This is not to say that natural selection doesn’t also select for characteristics that facilitate gene survival in other ways, or that all species or even all humans, will al- ways choose life over other valued goals in all circum- stances. Our claim is simply that a general orientation toward continued life exists because staying alive is es- sential for reproduction in most species, as well as for child rearing and support in mammalian species and many others. Viewing an animal as a loose collection of inde- pendent modules that produce responses to specific adaptively-relevant stimuli may be useful for some purposes, but it overlooks the point that adaptation in- volves a variety of inter-related mechanisms work- ing together to insure that genes responsible for these mechanisms are more numerously represented in fu- ture generations (see, e.g., Tattersall, 1998). For exam- ple, although the left ventricle of the human heart likely evolved to solve a specific adaptive problem, this mechanism would be useless unless well-integrated with other aspects of the circulatory system. We be- lieve it useful to think in terms of the overarching func- tion of the heart and pulmonary-circulatory system, even if specific parts of that system evolved to solve specific adaptive problems within that system. In addition to specific solutions to specific adaptive problems, over time, natural selection favors integrated systemic functioning (Dawkins, 1976; Mithen, 1997). It is the improved survival rates and reproductive success of life forms possessing integrated systemic characteris- tics that determine whether those characteristics be- come widespread in a population. Thus, we think it is appropriate and useful to characterize a glucose-ap- proaching amoeba and a bear-avoiding salmon as ori- ented toward self-preservation and reproduction, even if neither species possesses one single genetically en- coded mechanism designed to generally foster life or in- sure reproduction, or cognitive representations of survival and reproduction. This is the same position that Dawkins (1976) took in his classic book, The selfish gene: The obvious first priorities of a survival machine, and of the brain that takes the decisions for it, are individ- ual survival and reproduction. ... Animals therefore go to elaborate lengths to find and catch food; to avoid being caught and eaten themselves; to avoid disease and accident; to protect themselves from unfavourable climatic conditions; to find members of the opposite sex and persuade them to mate; and to confer on their children advantages similar to those they enjoy them- selves. (pp. 62–63) All that is really essential to TMT is the proposition that humans fear death. Somewhat ironically, in the early days of the theory, we felt compelled to explain this fear by positing a very basic desire for life, because many critics adamantly insisted, for reasons that were never clear to us, that most people do not fear death. Our explanation for the fear of death is that knowledge of the inevitability of death is frightening because people know they are alive and because they want to continue living. Do Navarrete and Fessler (2005) really believe that humans do not fear death? Although people some- times claim that they are not afraid of death, and on rare occasions volunteer for suicide missions and approach their death, this requires extensive psychological work, typically a great deal of anxiety, and preparation and immersion in a belief system that makes this possible (see TMT for an explanation of how belief systems do this). Where this desire for life comes from is an interest- ing question, but not essential to the logic of the theory. Even if Kirkpatrick and Navarrete (this issue) were correct in their claims that a unitary self-preservation instinct was not, in and of itself, selected for, it is indis- putable that many discrete and integrated mechanisms that keep organisms alive were selected for. A desire to stay alive, and a fear of anything that threatens to end one’s life, are likely emergent properties of these many discrete mechanisms that result from the evolution of sophisticated cognitive abilities for symbolic, fu- ture-oriented, and self-reflective thought. As Batson and Stocks (2004) have noted, it is because we are so intelligent, and hence so aware of our limbic reactions to threats of death and of our many systems oriented to- ward keeping us alive that we have a general fear of death. Here are three quotes that illustrate this point. First, for psychologists, Zilboorg (1943), an important early source of TMT: “Such constant expenditure of psychological energy on the business of preserving life would be impossible if the fear of death were not as constant” (p. 467). For literature buffs, acclaimed novelist Faulkner (1990) put it this way: If aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual con- fronting with that which over a long period of bewil- derment and dread it has been taught to regard as an ir- revocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it. (pp. 141–142) And perhaps most directly, for daytime TV fans, from The Young and the Restless (2006), after a rocky plane flight: Phyllis: I learned something up in that plane Nick: What? Phyllis: I really don’t want to die. An important consequence of the emergence of this general fear of death is that humans are susceptible to anxiety due to events or stimuli that are not immedi- ately present and novel threats to survival that did not exist for our ancestors, such as AIDS, guns, or nuclear weapons. Regardless of how this fear originates, it is abundantly clear that humans do fear death. Anyone who has ever faced a man with a gun, a doctor saying that the lump on one’s neck is suspicious and requires further diagnostic tests, or a drunken driver swerving into one’s lane can attest to that. If humans only feared evolved specific death-related threats like spiders and heights, then a lump on an x-ray, a gun, a crossbow, or any number of weapons pointed at one’s chest would not cause panic; but obviously these things do. Of what use would the sophisticated cortical structures be if they didn’t have the ability to instigate fear reactions in response to such threats?