Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bobboau on March 03, 2004, 11:03:46 pm
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first off, if you are a creationist, this topic is beond the scope of the argument you are going to put forth, it assumes that we evolved and not created and all that "bull"(by bull I'm quoteing someone on your side about our belefes), so if this gets you into the mood to start debateing evolution please just make another htread.
ok, today a new issue of Discover came in the mail, and I'm thumbing through it,
and behold, an article on the relitivly new theory (wich I subscribe to) about how morality is an inbuilt, evolved, adaptation and not (entierly) learned. the theory goes that as socal creatures, humans who behaved in what could be described as a more moral behavoir tended to more reliably reproduce, and as a result moral behavior became an instinctave, inbuilt, property of humans, just like opposable thumbs. morality has a physical cause in the structure of the brain, wich means that our DNA shapes it (to at least some extent, I beleve to a signifigant extent), and is therefore a trait that is effected by heretity and subject to evolution.
quickly thumbing through Google on the guy's name has produced some material on the subject, if wanted I will scan in the entier Discover article.
http://www.umass.edu/preferen/mpapers/Greene-Haidt.pdf
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20010814042522data_trunc_sys.shtml
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/phil/AHRB-Project/Papers/YearOneVolume/19GreeneInnatenessVolume.pdf
and eh this, wich I'll quote becase you'd have to make an acount with some site that I wouldn't want you to have to do
I'll go look for some more, and more diverse sources.
Perhaps music serves as a mating display or a means of coordinating social interactions. Maybe religiosity serves as a group-level adaptation, allowing some to persevere over others. Some researchers, known generally as evolutionary psychologists, seek rigorous ways to investigate such complex human traits. In so doing, they're pushing the boundaries of scientific explanation and addressing aspects of human behavior once believed to be off-limits for scientists.
As a field, evolutionary psychology (EP) has the difficult, and some say untenable, mission of discerning whether complex human qualities--everything from sexual attraction to language--are adaptations honed through natural selection or just nonadaptive byproducts of a uniquely human collection of cognitive systems.
Born roughly 30 years ago from the study of adaptation and altruism by George Williams, W.D. Hamilton, Robert Trivers, Edward O. Wilson, and others, as well as from advances in cognitive science, primatology, and hunter-gatherer studies, EP gained further recognition with 1992's The Adapted Mind,1 an anthology that explored culture's evolutionary foundations, including language, parental care, environmental aesthetics, and sex. Wilson, now a Harvard professor emeritus, identified the field in the 1975 book, Sociobiology.2 He defines EP as "the study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior in human beings." He suggests that scientists dispense with the name sociobiology and call it EP, to skirt criticisms that the field championed racism and genetic determinism.
EP, though gaining acceptance, remains divisive. Proponents and practitioners face the challenge of empirically and methodologically using evolutionary history and rationale to decipher the motivations behind distinct human behaviors--to show how they might be adaptations hard-wired in the human brain.
KIPLING'S UNINTENDED LEGACY Twenty-five years ago, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and biologist Richard Lewontin3 criticized the so-called adaptationist program, charging that overeager biologists labeled some organisms' traits adaptations without real evidence. Many traits, they said, were actually byproducts, associated with adaptations, but not the result of natural selection. The bridge of one's nose will hold up one's glasses, but it's not an adaptation for such.
This so-called science, argued Gould and Lewontin, boiled down to little more than just-so stories--referring to Rudyard Kipling's century-old children's fables that offered imaginative explanations for certain animals' distinctive qualities.
"That was just a foolish paper," says Wilson. "All scientists deal in hypotheses and in scenarios. That's how they formulate and identify the problem that they hope to solve. [Gould and Lewontin] confused hypothesis formation with what they thought was just empty story-telling."
But as evolutionary psychologists address more complex cultural features, justly or unjustly, they haven't escaped the just-so criticism. Nevertheless, the field has become more accepted. Hires of evolutionary psychologists at psychology and anthropology departments are more common, says psychology professor Martin Daly, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, editor-in-chief of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, a major forum for EP studies.
SHOOTING BLANKS "What we're after is mapping the properties of universal human nature," explains John Tooby, codirector of the Center of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and coeditor of The Adapted Mind. Humans, suggests Tooby, have a variety of specialized evolved systems for handling the social and environmental challenges faced by their hominid ancestors. For instance, Tooby and colleagues propose that humans have a selected-for "kin recognition system" adaptation, which is linked to an "incest avoidance subsystem" and disposes persons to like and care about those unconsciously identified as their genetic kin. Tooby hypothesizes a "kinship estimator" that calculates kinship based on how long two individuals lived together in childhood, patterns of nursing, and other cues that would have accurately identified genetic kin. Such an estimator would help avoid the deleterious effects of incest and promote the beneficial effects of familial cooperation.
The evolutionary psychologist's role, explains Tooby, is to identify byproducts and adaptations. He has explicitly contested the notion that the brain is a blank slate, shaped almost entirely by learning, an extreme position labeled the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM). Rather, he says, natural selection parses the brain into behavior-specific modules. But David Sloan Wilson, a professor of evolutionary biology at Binghamton University in New York, worries that this "narrow school" of EP has become too polarized. "It turns EP into a counterweight rather than a theory of the whole mind," he says.
Regardless, whether or not the field can yet claim any significant advances in scientists' study of human behavior is still debatable. Even some practitioners aren't certain how fruitful EP will be. "Except for very few things, mostly to do with sex and violence, there haven't been really any cognitive breakthroughs that are the result of evolutionary psychology," says Scott Atran, senior research scientist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.
Atran, however, calls it a wonderful enterprise with opportunities to generate potentially fruitful hypotheses. But like Darwin's theory when first presented, most of EP, says Atran, currently entails consistency arguments: plausible but unproven rationales. It remains to be seen, he argues, whether EP will blossom into a fecund area of study like Darwin's work or go the way of phrenology.
MURDER, MUSIC, AND MASS APPEAL The field does have some obvious inherent methodological drawbacks. Focusing on the human as the primary object of study is both a blessing and a curse. Investigators can communicate with their subjects like no other; but resulting data often can be misleading. People are biased and have imperfect self-knowledge, says Daly.
He contends that the field has gotten better at zeroing in on the factors underlying people's judgments. The key, suggests University of Texas evolutionary psychologist David Buss, is to use multiple methods, including observations, physiological recordings, and comparisons with demographic data. Buss is studying the evolution of homicidal tendencies. He's asked normal subjects about the frequency, duration, and nature of any homicidal thoughts they've experienced, but he's also looked at police reports and eyewitness testimonies of 350 known killers. Using imaging technologies to isolate brain functions related to EP hypotheses is also becoming increasingly prevalent.
EP is no more speculative, argue proponents, than any branch of psychology. Indeed, EP may be less speculative since it incorporates evolutionary constraints. One important means of improving the field, says Marc Hauser, codirector of the Mind, Brain and Behavior program at Harvard, is to incorporate comparative animal data, particularly primate cognition data, something that hasn't been particularly commonplace in a human-centric field.
Limits exist as to what can be approached scientifically, says Steven Pinker, Harvard psychology professor and author of The Blank Slate,4 a treatise against SSSM thinking. In the case of music, for example, no one has successfully shown why, based on computer simulation, mathematical model, or physical analysis, listening to rhythmic and tonal patterns should bring about some effect on human reproduction. "In my mind, there's nothing to test for because there's no coherent theory in the first place," Pinker says.
But Hauser and others are tackling the topic. His lab studies consonant versus dissonant music in monkeys versus humans. They discovered that while human subjects preferred harmonious rather than unpleasant sounds, the animals were indifferent. Now, the question: Did a perceptual bias for linking sound structures with emotions evolve uniquely in our species or in other animals as well? "It begins to open the door and point out a method so that you can begin to ask that question," says Hauser, whose group also studies the evolutionary origins of language, mathematics, and morality.
Regarding the evolutionary significance of religious behavior, David Sloan Wilson, in Darwin's Cathedral,5 argues that based on extensive historical data, religion is actually a group-level adaptation. In the case of Calvinism, for instance, followers formed an adaptive unit that persevered better than some other groups, factions, or individuals. Atran has a different view. Religious behavior, he writes in his book In Gods We Trust,6 is not an adaptation per se, but a byproduct. Religiosity results from a group of innate psychological faculties, each of which has evolved to help deal with existential human dilemmas like death, pain, and loneliness.
The scope of EP will likely become clearer as the field continues to grow. "There's a lot of fashion to evolutionary psychology," says Atran. "A lot of people are getting into this because they think it's easy science. And the result is there's so much nonsense. My fear is that it's turning off some of the really good scientists."
Others take inconsistencies in the field in stride. "There's no question there's crap in the field," says Hauser. "But there's crap in a lot of fields."
Eugene Russo ([email protected]) is a freelance writer in Takoma Park, Md.
References
1. J. Barklow et al., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
2. E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1975.
3. S.J. Gould, R.C. Lewontin, "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme," Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci, 205:581-98, 1979.
4. S. Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, New York: Viking, 2002.
5. D.S. Wilson, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
6. S. Atran, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
if you do want to know were that was from
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2004/mar/research2_040301.html
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This whole theory, and it is a theory, relies on the idea that learned knowledge can be passed on genetically. While I don't discount the idea, it could also just be that moral parents taught their children the same morality and it was passed on like that.
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"relies on the idea that learned knowledge can be passed on genetically"
no it doesn't you don't understand what's being discused.
"it could also just be that moral parents taught their children the same morality and it was passed on like that."
that is the currently accepted theory, wich I disagree with (to an extent)
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Liberator: no it doesn't
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assuming evolution, then morality probably developed as instinct. after all, where else would it come from?
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it's clear that libby didn't read the entire thing
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Environment. Society. Things like "don't kill people" may well be instinctual, but it's highly improbable that, say, our sexual mores are.
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capuchin monkeys know when there getting riped off (http://existentialmoo.com/moo/archives/culture/2003/what_the_monkeys_can_teach_humans_about_making_america_fairer.php)
surely there is some socal preasures to behavoirs, that would be insain to say that an environment had absolutly no effect on people, but the fact that there is such strong and consistant behaviors in people throughout the world transendent of cultures there must be a built in functionality that shapes the general behavior of people.
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Probably to some extent. I just don't know how much, say, property concepts are based off of instinct. Stuff that's directly relevant to survival, yeah. But most of morality isn't, really.
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well I supose that depends on what you refer to as morality, I am refering simply to the understanding of right and wrong. religus and cultural specific things are obviusly not something your born in. no one is born muslum or jewish or christian. but I think most people are born with an understanding of the basics of morality (stealing bad, helping others god, sex with mother bad, ect)
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Well, duh. Right/wrong is basically a hazy offshoot of good/bad, which are concepts that come with the basic lizard-brain package. I don't think there's really any question that concepts like that food and reproduction are "good" to any critter's brain and stuff like getting eaten is "bad" are innate, seeing as they're kinda necessary for survival and all, and after all since morality at its most basic level exists to keep the population intact it's just an extrapolation of most of the same concepts, made more complex and abstract.
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But most of the things we consider moral are not what you described as "good / bad" in the sense of food=good, being food=bad.
I mean, most things we consider to be moral are selfless and caring actions. Usually, its self sacrifice and kindness that are considered moral. This is directly contradictory to animal instincts, which are "look out for #1, win at all costs".
I don't see how morality could help survival, unless its in the sense that by being moral to one another we strengthen the species and thus, united we stand. But that a pretty far fetched idea. Somehow, I doubt that ideas such as cooperation on such a large scale are animal instincts. Sure, animals hunt in packs, but they have no problem killing each other to gain leadership of the pack.
I'll comment some omre once I've read the stuff Bob posted.
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bee's work them selves to death, what works for the individual does not always make the strongest speciese, if you sacrafice your self to save your frends they would be more likely to look after your children after your dead.
more importantly, if your a huge ass hole you'r likely to get linched, and/or never get laid (though you could still rape someone, but odds are you'd be killed by her famely and your famely would posably come under atack)
see liveing in a society makes things more complecated than 'look out for yourself'.
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mo·ral·i·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-rl-t, mô-)
n. pl. mo·ral·i·ties
The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
Virtuous conduct.
A rule or lesson in moral conduct.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
we were supposed to be gregarious in the beginning, weren't we. so we could start off with the idea, killing me is bad, killing others good. then that extends to, killing people not in family good, killing family bad. then that goes to, ensure family survival.
which leads to, sacrifice self for family good. which then leads to all that selfless stuff, rictor, if you extend family to 'race'.
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and race to spicese, the whole thing boils down to you protecting 'your kind', however it is that you (your culture) perceve that.
now placeing culture into an evolutionary descusion may seem like I'm swiching sides, but human culture is simply and elaboration of the human famely structure. wich has bases in human behavior and IMHO largely influenced by instincts
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So, what you're saying is that humans exibit a more refined type of survival instinct. By having morals, you indirectly strengthen the species instead of looking out only for yourself. So, for example, lions that fight amonst themselves and kill each other for leadership and mateing rights, are infact weakening the species by infighting, though they are following their animal instint for self preservation..
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there are (male) lions that ban together to overthrough exsisting pride leaders. it is common in fact for a pride to be lead by two or three males, though there is in fighting.
more importantly in the case of lions though are the case of the females, who do not fight each other and look after each other's cubs, allowing the male to eat his fill even though he is useless, exept for defending the pride from other male lions (and other preditors)(this is a critical role).
but the females do have sex with the males who kill there cubs, so there are diferences.
compareing humans to lions is quite similar to compaireing apples to orenges.
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My philosophy teacher ( well, the one who used to be ) would tell you that humans have no instinct :p^
I think it's a bit of everything, to be honest.
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Originally posted by icespeed
assuming evolution, then morality probably developed as instinct. after all, where else would it come from?
:yes: Except for the morals that we clearly don't follow, because instincts are what we naturally follow, though morals often are not.
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If your general idea is that changes in genetics (through a process of natural selection) dictate the social interactions of subsequent generations of people, all I can say is:
[size=20]NO ****ING DUH![/size]
All this is, is evolution. There's nothing new. Nothing revolutionary. If some genetic trait works, it survives. Simple as that.
If people have a genetic predisposition to murder everyone, they do and their genes don't get passed on.
Though it's not so much actual morales that get passed on, more the chemical balances in the brain that push people towards certain behaviours.
The entire thing is just a rehash of the principles of natural selection.
This is why every civilization since the dawn of time has gotten more and more hedonistic. To survive, they've got to have "Let's ****" genes to make them somewhat amourous (sp?). As time goes on, the ones who have the "Screwing genes" combine them with other peoples' screwing genes and they get more and more concentrated until I can finally 'do a Caligula' without getting *****ed at.
The only thing keeping this in balance, I suppose, is religion and other acts of mindless stupidity (and obviously the occasional apocalyptic hedonistic cultural orgy that kills everyone).
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[color=66ff00]Bob, look up material by a guy called Steven Pinker he's a language specialist that puts forward some pretty good arguments for genetically determined morals.
Pretty scary when you think that people can be simply 'born bad'.
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That's like saying "Some people are born good runners".
It's like 10% nature, 90% nurture.
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I think An0n ( what the hell An0n means, anyway? ) put it up well, in fact. It's as new as water on Mars :p
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an0n: running ability is probably MUCH closer to 50/50
intelligence is 50/50
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Just because a computer has a 10Ghz processor doesn't mean the ****ty programming can run without stalling.
Sure, genetics might make it easier for you to learn, but that doesn't mean everything you learn is going to increase your intellect.
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an0n: *rolleyes* yes and yes
intelligence is known ot be 50% genetics 50% whether you freaking use it or not
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........Intelligence is entirely environmental.
And the genetics-to-intelligence thing is more of a modifier than a percentage, but that's just semantics I suppose.
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an0n I think you might of contradicted yourself there at one point... :p
If humankind were mostly instinctual and genetics being the main charge of behaviour, then we'd also be predictable.
Free will is something that goes against predictablity. If you cloned a child from birth. Brought them both up in exactly the same way, IE put em in identical rooms, interactions with others is done by actors with exactly same names, same reactions... etc
Would these clones be the same person? Would they make the same choices in the end?
Most probably similar but still they are different people.
This gets into the argument that there is a body a mind, and then the soul which is there but not there yet is what makes us unique. If you believe in the soul concept then, technically, true Artificial Intelligence isn't possible. If your a mind/body person then true AI is an acceptable possibity...
If a true AI was made tommorow, can you imagine the aftershock this would have on many religeons around the world?
Personally I don't think its possible with 1's, and 0's... If they find a way to emulate the brain tho... who knows... bio computers is the next step in tech I reckon...
Though you do have to be curious about identical twins feeling each others pain, and also know what their choices would be. There is usually a dominant twin and another. The non-dominant one recognises what choice the dominant one would make and then makes a different one out of a desire for individuality...
I watched this documentory on these monkeys that lived in a city somewhere in India. Anyway, it would be a group of females and 1 king male. These outcast males living outside the city, banded together and then chased him out into being an outcast all for the right to breed with the females. Then 1 of the outcasts became 'king' and chased all the other outcasts out. Then he killed all the children of the previous king and breed to make his own. The female monkeys resistant at first but week later they were all kissing his feet, and grooming him...
Survival of the fittest...? Is that how it goes?
Just remember that woman in human society used to be the same a while back, and still are in some society's. (Japan, Afganistan for example are male dominant societies...)
So is this human behaviour evolving? or is it woman becoming more male like to 'survive'? Its only in the past few centurys or so that the first woman were allowed in parlimant etc.
lol they're still not aloud in some golf clubs...
I myself, am half atheist, I believe in a 'possibility' of an all powerfull being exists... Religeon is a powerful tool. But at heart I do believe that everything in Bible was manmade...
Morals are what allow societies to exist. There is always some form of honour code, or rules emplaced... otherwise it just wont survive. Canibals for example, didnt all rush in and eat each other... They formed understandings not to eat healthy ppl in their tribe etc...
Many interesting things...
lol I always get drawn into these discussions... :p
-Grug :D
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For all its other flaws, I'll suggest everyone go read Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" AND a text a good text on game theory.
Between those two things, you can pretty much explain morality in terms of evolution, without really having to put morality into the genes, per se.
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Originally posted by mikhael
For all its other flaws, I'll suggest everyone go read Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" AND a text a good text on game theory.
Between those two things, you can pretty much explain morality in terms of evolution, without really having to put morality into the genes, per se.
I keep recommending the Selfish Gene. (I can't find my copy but am I mistaken in thinking that one of the Wilsons mentioned is the same one Dawkin's lambastes for talking about creatures doing things for the good of the species?)
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I'd recommend 'Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy', has some interesting views, and is a good comical book anywho. :D
-Grug
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Interesting articles, keep them coming please. :)
What about inter-species morality questions? Do they apply here?
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Originally posted by karajorma
I keep recommending the Selfish Gene. (I can't find my copy but am I mistaken in thinking that one of the Wilsons mentioned is the same one Dawkin's lambastes for talking about creatures doing things for the good of the species?)
Possibly. I have to say, I agree with Dawkins on that score.
The funny thing about The Selfish Gene was that I picked it up and I started reading it in the bookstore and I was like, "OMG! I wrote a book and didn't know it!" Well, not really. But I did see a lot of resonances between Dawkins' theories and my own meandering thoughts about the nature of generosity, charity and love, etc.
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It's a great book and the best thing about it is that although lay people can understand it I know some people doing a PhD in biology who don't understand the subject as well as I do even though all I did after simply reading it and The Blind Watchmaker (admittedly they didn't cover evolution much but still!) :)