Diorama of a Stone Age man as he might have lived some 15,000 years ago was photographed at the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York CIty.
Image: Grant Delin
In Brief
- Among Charles Darwin’s lasting legacies is our knowledge that the human mind evolved by some adaptive process.
- A major, widely discussed branch of evolutionary psychology—Pop EP—holds that the human brain has many specialized mechanisms that evolved to solve the adaptive problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
- The author and several other scholars suggest that some assumptions of Pop EP are flawed: that we can know the psychology of our Stone Age ancestors, that we can thereby figure out how distinctively human traits evolved, that our minds have not evolved much since the Stone Age, and that standard psychological questionnaires yield clear evidence of the adaptations.
Charles Darwin wasted no time applying his theory of evolution to human psychology, following On the Origin of Species (1859) with The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Ever since, the issue hasn’t been whether evolutionary theory can illuminate the study of psychology but how it will do so. Still, a concerted effort to explain how evolution has affected human behavior began only in the 1970s with the emergence of sociobiology. The core idea of sociobiology was simple: behavior has evolved under natural and sexual selection (in response to competition for survival and reproduction, respectively), just as organic form has. Sociobiology thereby extended the study of adaptation to include human behavior.
In his 1985 critique of sociobiology, Vaulting Ambition, philosopher Philip Kitcher noted that, whereas some sociobiology backed modest claims with careful empirical research, the theoretical reach of the dominant program greatly exceeded its evidential grasp. Kitcher called this program “pop sociobiology” because it employed evolutionary principles “to advance grand claims about human nature and human social institutions” and was “deliberately designed to command popular attention.”
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
144 Comments
Add CommentBuller is well known in the community he is attacking for misrepresenting the claims of the literature, ignoring evidence that contradicts his views, and generally engaging in academic malpractice. (He also doesn't understand the most basic principle in evolutionary biology, adaptationism.) Responses to these criticisms, which he has made before, are gathered here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/buller08.htm
Buller gets many things wrong in that article, including the entire scientific agenda of the field he is critiquing. What is puzzling to me is why editors print such silliness,
Are you kidding me? What kind of nonsense is SciAm publishing. I guess the brain is magical and is immune from evolution (sarcasm). I guess David Buss's study of 10000+ participants in 37 different cultures means nothing (sarcasm). I guess the last 20 years of advancements in evolutionary psychology doesn't matter (sarcasm).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's often worth it to print the controversial even when it's tragically flawed to get debate and publicity going. Scientific American, like all facets of journalism, has to engage in the tabloid antics of sensationalism to maximize readers, to attract advertisers, to maintain and raise revenue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce again, capitalism (catering to the lowest common denominator) trumps responsible journalism which should be catering the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a good rebuttal paper which tries to answer the critique here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.pitt.edu/~machery/papers/MAchery_Barrett_%202006_Buller.pdf
Having read both, but as a complete outsider to this field, I think there is some merits to the Buller's arguments: evolutionary psychology may provide intriguing hypotheses about evolutionary origins of our psychological traits, but the empirical evidence and required process models are currently unavailable to seriously evaluate most of those hypotheses.
As they were, at one time, unavailable to seriously evaluate the world's being round and orbiting the sun. The very temporary absence of these is no excuse for all that Buller's guilty of. And if that's the only argument then you've just shown it doesn't take a four page article to state it. Anyone willing to argue for Buller is either a coconspirator or a fool just as much as anyone who is willing to argue for creationism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis approach to something as important as evolutionary psychology is really astonishing. We have a brain, we have a mind, they do things. Why do they do things? Buller says if there is no absolute proof of the origins of these things we should not speculate or theorize on that subject. No proof equals no right to question and wonder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI finished reading the book "The Brain that Changes Itself." This book describes the utter plasticity of the brain and the wonders that it can do. These are clearly the result of evolution. One of the findings reported in this book is "what fires together gets linked together." This is finding is certainly a product of evolution. It has good and bad features. Could not Buller have elucidated this rather than blather on about "no proof?"
And of course, everyone ignores once again the elephant in the room. To wit: the documented medical cases of humans with normal intelligence and no significant brain tissue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1930510020070720
Did you not bother to read the article? Or are you exaggerating its claims on purpose? BTW, nice paradox: elephant in the room/tiny brain. I get it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrgough,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat do you mean by normal intelligence? The man was a CIVIL SERVANT! Most of them get by with no brain at all!
Well, the whole evolutionary psycholgy seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You as if find human nature when you find human nature then follows some behavior. When some behavior emerges then you find human nature. Consequently, what are the intervening variables between evolution, and the mind, I wonder?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Buller is correct about any of his four main points, wouldn't the study of animal behavior be unaided by evolutionary considerations? Are any of his points unique to humans? If they apply to humans they should apply to animals as well. But if Buller were to take a gander at any evolutionary biology or behavioral ecology research he would see biologists positing domain-specific mechanisms based on ancestral selection pressures and using it to understand, predict and document animal behavior.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, this was no surprise to me. That man is mostly still a barbaric animal. Look at the corruption in our society from the last 'alpha' males in charge! 'Nuff said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a disappointing article, starting with the misleading title. The article is not about psychology, but about a subset (EP) of psychology. But the bigger letdown is the author's approach to the subject. Not only does it feel unreasonably dismissive (I will need to look further to see if the all-out rejection has merit), but the position that "we may never know" feels distinctly unscientific. At the very least the author (and editors) could have provided a set of alternative views on the subject to provide context. What's left is a void in the discussion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn earlier correspondent inadvertently (I suspect) mentioned the elephant in the room. Is this the elephant referred to in the poem, 'The Blind Men and the Elephant? In the poem, the blind men were distributed around the elephant, each thinking that his position was typical of the elephant as a whole: the elephant was thus 'seen' as a great serpent, tree, and other familiars of their 'known' world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's the great difficulty in scientific investigation for everyone studying a phenomenon to understand where at the metaphorical elephant he or she stands, relative to where everybody else is standing.
The earlier correspondent who referred to the elephant in the room may have inadvertently brought out an common difficulty in the investigation of any natural phenomenon: what and how are you looking at it. The poem, the Blind Men and the Elephant should be internalized by any scientist. In the poem, the blind men are distributed around an elephant and share their views of what an elephant is like: at the hind leg-- a tree, at the head-end-- a great serpent, for example. The great difficulty for anybody studying a thing, a phenomenon (something appearing in Greek), a process, a history (e.g., a life, a civilization, an evolution) must know where at the metaphorical elephant he or she is stands and where others studying the same thing are standing. From the comments, one can infer that several correspondents should take another look at the metaphorical elephant's anatomy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think some folks in the comments here are a wee bit quick to leap to the attack.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article restricts itself to a subset of evolutionary psychology, "Pop EP". That being the case, and given the sorts of behaviours Pop EP actually discusses, the four fallacies discussed are not exactly surprising.
Noone, least of all the author, is claiming that science should restrict all speculation that goes beyond what is observable (although that in itself wouldn't be a completely unreasonable assertion.) Instead the author points out that Pop EP makes certain specific claims about "human nature" that require a very specific set of facts (historical, social and neuropsychological) to be true, and that the vast majority of those facts seem to have been declared abritrarily, instead of independently verified.
Pop EP starts with an observable (human behaviour) and attempts to construct a story about how this particular behaviour must have been an adaptation at a previous prehistoric time in human evolution. It's the way that Pop EP constructs that story that causes problems, because there are far too many unverifiable assumptions in the stories that are told to grant them the status of a genuine scientific hypothesis.
A good (if distressing) example is the Pop EP explanation for rape: that during one point in our evolution, rape served as an adaptation in ensuring that physically strong and aggressive males produced more children. Furthermore, there must still be a specialised "mental organ" that produces this behaviour in modern humans.
You can immediately see the problems with this story: it assumes that the "point" of rape is to reproduce, something that isn't backed up either by common sense or by crime statistics. It also assumes that men who rape are doing so out of a (possibly misguided) drive to have children, something that I am sure would come as a surprise to many rapists. It also comes dangerously close to legitimising the "men can't help it" excuse. And for the story to overcome all this, it would need either (A) evidence of this "mental organ" that Pop EP claims to exist, (B) detailed evidence of how sexual violence was perpetrated during the Pleistocine, or (C) how an alleged "adaptation" that is so socially unacceptable could continue to be present in a population, including the biological mechanism for its transmission.
Looked at in this light, the claims of Pop EP start to seem less like "scientific theories" and more like pseudoscience.
SKurzban, it totally sounds to me like Buller knows what he is talking about. What exactly do you mean "He also doesn't understand the most basic principle in evolutionary biology", and exactly what portion of his article leads you to this conclusion (quotation please)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am shocked and disappointed that the editors of Scientific American would publish such a negative article on evolutionary psychology without so much as a rejoinder or response in the same issue. This is neither objective nor balanced journalism. Furthermore, as a member of the American Philosophical Association, I am equally surprised and disappointed in a fellow philosopher (the author, Buller) perpetrating (wittingly or unwittingly) the "straw man" fallacy. He not only misrepresents the types of evidence used (e.g. Buss and others draw on a large body of naturalistic observation, not just questionnaires!) but he also fails to appreciate or acknowledge the important heuristic function of adaptation in evolutionary psychology. By considering the adaptiveness of recurrent behavior patterns (such as attraction), psychology can better understand these behaviors and potentially formulate more realistic expectations and hypotheses for their modification. Perhaps it is expecting too much to hope for a correction by the author in a future issue, but it is not expecting too much to hope the editors will find a way to redress this journalistic imbalance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a physical scientist I have watched the to and fro augments of nature vs. nurture with keen interest from the sidelines for forty years. Seldom have I seen such a one sided treatment of the subject. Starting with the highly prejudicial label for the other side as POP EP , continuing with his choice of four myths that I am not aware anyone on the other side would support and finishing by referencing several philosophers for support but not a single anthropologist or biologist. I found the article more of a political diatribe than a serious scientific article. It certainly doesnt hold up to the usual high standards of your magazine. Given the complexity of the human brain we probably will never know for sure what traits are inherited and which are learned but to conclude as Buller does that we should not even try is more a response from philosophy than from science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismagazine december 2007 are we living with alien cells
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispage 65 silicon life is living in tree is living are in my back
yard have seen at least 30 new silicon animals have large
growing creatures on them would you be interested in them
please respond asap thank you
I have to say that the whole "special issue" on evolution was dumbed down to a point where most of it was too basic or intellectually unchallenging. Years ago such an issue would have featured articles by the leading scientists in evolutionary biology (think Massimo Pigliucci, Robert Trivers, Niles Eldredge, Francisco Ayala, John Raven, David Sloan Wilson) but instead we get Steve Mirsky and Gary Stix explaining evolution to 3rd-graders. What a shame. The article by Buller is just terrible. Where is his photo by the way?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"we know that some emotional systems subsequently evolved to promote the pair bonding that is ubiquitous among human cultures but absent in our closest primate relatives."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm surprised that SciAm would print an article with such a blatant error. Pygmy chimps or bonobos are well known for their sexual behaviour that goes beyond mere reproduction or as a method of stress relief. Pair bonding between all members in a community is strengthened through sex, the sole exception being mothers and their own sons over six years old.
Someone hasn't done their research!
Pseudoscience galore!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Evolutionary psychology" is an application to human behavior of Wilson's "sociobiology", which is an application to social animals, of the general approach to behavior co-founded by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen in 1935, (which for lack of a better name, I label European ethology).
All three approaches to behavior are pseudoscientific, because European ethology is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, "instincts" in behavior, and in the erroneous conviction that an "instinct' can be identified by not being learned. But genetically predetermined traits do not exist at all, as stressed by Schneirla's School in Behavior, which is based on a combination of Morgan's Canon, with the added conclusion that all ontogeny occurs under inseparable effects of both genes & environment; "instincts" therefore cannot exist. Since 1935 Shneirla's School has, thus, had a very long, ongoing controversy with European ethology.
The well-known honeybee "dance language' (DL) controversy, launched in 1967 by Wenner & his team, at ucsb, has long become the most important specific reflection of that general controversy. Wenner * his team published a critique of v. Frisch's famous claim to have discovered that honeybee-recruits "instinctively" obtain & use spatial information contained in foragers'-dances to help them find the foragers' food-for this claim, later provided by very many others, was based on distributions of new-arrivals, but Wenner & his team found out, and published in 1967, that such distributions are totally independent of DL information. By then v. Frisch's DL hypothesis had already become a revered ruling paradigm, and instead of being rewarded Wenner & his team were quickly turned into pariahs. Eventually it turned out that that in claiming that recruits use only odor, they had unknowingly re-discovered what v. Frisch had already discovered and published long before the inception of his sensational DL hypothesis, and later hid through an act of outright scientific fraud, disguised by a deliberate cover up, because, he and many others, became erroneously convinced that the honeybee DL simply had to exist to provide a conceivable adaptive value to honeybee-dances, that are not learned, and were, therefore, assumed to be "instinctive".
The controversy over the existence of "instincts", which is part of the general nature-nurture controversy, has a very long history, which I shall skip here, because I can now dismiss the claim for the existence of genetically predetermined traits, in a very short shrift. Consider the following: Fertility clinics regularly freeze human embryos that had undergone the first few cell-divisions. (I suppose they wait after the first few cell-division to insure the embryo is not damaged.) As long as the embryo is frozen, (by environmental factors), it remains very much alive, and can be defrosted, and implanted to develop into a human baby that could then grow to a ripe old age. But, as long as the embryo remains frozen, in spite of all the genes it has, it does not have to develop into anything else beyond that stage!
In 1973 v. Frisch was erroneously awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for the discovery of (the non-existent) honeybee DL. The Prize was, not surprisingly , shared with the two co-fouders of European ethology, because the "discovery" of the honeybee DL, provided the most spectacular "evidence" for the existence of 'instincts".
This was the worst disaster to ever hit the whole field of Behavioral science. It helped inundate the whole field with a tremendous amount of pseudoscience, and gave us, among others, Wilson's "sociobiology", that spawned "evolutionary psychology". But overturning a decision of the Nobel Committee concerning a scientific issue, turns out to be almost as difficult as "making the mountain come to Mohamed".
Pseudoscience galore!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Evolutionary psychology" is an application to humans of Eilson's "sociobiology", which is an application to social animals of European ethology co-founded in 1935 by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen. European ethology is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as "instincts" in behavior, and presumably identifiable by not being learned.
This led to a controversy with (and all the ideas which led Lloyd C. Morgan to formulate his well-known Canon), plus the conclusion that all individual traits (including behavioral traits), of all living organisms develop ontogenetically under inseparable effects of both genes & environment, which means that "instincts" dop not exist at all.
The well-known controversy about the existence of the "instinctual" honeybee "dance language" (DL), launched in 1967, by Wenner & his team, at ucsb, has long become the most important reflection of the general controversy in behavior, with DL opponents quickly turned into pariahs, (because by then the sensational DL hypothesis had already, erroneously, become a revered ruling paradigm), even though all of v. Frisch's evidence for the existence of the honeybee DL, (and most evidence later provided by many other DL supporters) was based on distributions of new-arrivals, and Wenner & his team already showed in 1967 that such distributions are totally independent of DL information.
In 1973 the "discovery" of the "instinctual" DL was awarded the Nobel Prize, not surprisingly shared by the two cofounders of Europoean ethology.
Eventually it turned out that the sensational DL hypothesis was none other than a stillborn hypothesis, rooted in outright scientific fraud, disguised by a deliberate cover up. Prior to the anouncement of the "discovery" of the honeybee DL v. Frisch believed that recruits use only odor, and no information about the location of any food. But, after the inception of his sensational DL hypothesis he came to believe that his initial belief must have been an error, and "eliminated" the results of his early tests on honeybee-recruitment, which fully justified thatr "error", and already grossly contradicted the expectations from his sensational DL hypothesis, in terms of the response of recruits to round dances. Such dances contain the information that the foragers' food is near the hive, and according to the DL hypothesis, they are expected to result in recruits finding food only near the hive, within not more than 100 m. from the hive. The results of the early tests, which ysed only round dances, grou
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pseudoscience galore!
"Evolutionary psychology" is an application to human behavior of Wilson's "sociobiology", which is an application to social animals, of the general approach to behavior co-founded by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen in 1935, (which for lack of a better name, I label European ethology).
All three approaches to behavior are pseudoscientific, because European ethology is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, "instincts" in behavior, and in the erroneous conviction that an "instinct' can be identified by not being learned. But genetically predetermined traits do not exist at all, as stressed by Schneirla's School in Behavior, which is based on a combination of Morgan's Canon, with the added conclusion that all ontogeny occurs under inseparable effects of both genes & environment; "instincts" therefore cannot exist. Since 1935 Shneirla's School has, thus, had a very long, ongoing controversy with European ethology.
The well-known honeybee "dance language' (DL) controversy, launched in 1967 by Wenner & his team, at ucsb, has long become the most important specific reflection of that general controversy. Wenner * his team published a critique of v. Frisch's famous claim to have discovered that honeybee-recruits "instinctively" obtain & use spatial information contained in foragers'-dances to help them find the foragers' food-for this claim, later provided by very many others, was based on distributions of new-arrivals, but Wenner & his team found out, and published in 1967, that such distributions are totally independent of DL information. By then v. Frisch's DL hypothesis had already become a revered ruling paradigm, and instead of being rewarded Wenner & his team were quickly turned into pariahs. Eventually it turned out that that in claiming that recruits use only odor, they had unknowingly re-discovered what v. Frisch had already discovered and published long before the inception of his sensational DL hypothesis, and later hid through an act of outright scientific fraud, disguised by a deliberate cover up, because, he and many others, became erroneously convinced that the honeybee DL simply had to exist to provide a conceivable adaptive value to honeybee-dances, that are not learned, and were, therefore, assumed to be "instinctive".
The controversy over the existence of "instincts", which is part of the general nature-nurture controversy, has a very long history, which I shall skip here, because I can now dismiss the claim for the existence of genetically predetermined traits, in a very short shrift. Consider the following: Fertility clinics regularly freeze human embryos that had undergone the first few cell-divisions. (I suppose they wait after the first few cell-division to insure the embryo is not damaged.) As long as the embryo is frozen, (by environmental factors), it remains very much alive, and can be defrosted, and implanted to develop into a human baby that could then grow to a ripe old age. But, as long as the embryo remains frozen, in spite of all the genes it has, it does not have to develop into anything else beyond that stage!
In 1973 v. Frisch was erroneously awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for the discovery of (the non-existent) honeybee DL. The Prize was, not surprisingly , shared with the two co-fouders of European ethology, because the "discovery" of the honeybee DL, provided the most spectacular "evidence" for the existence of 'instincts".
This was the worst disaster to ever hit the whole field of Behavioral science. It helped inundate the whole field with a tremendous amount of pseudoscience, and gave us, among others, Wilson's "sociobiology", that spawned "evolutionary psychology". But overturning a decision of the Nobel Committee concerning a scientific issue, turns out to be almost as difficult as "making the mountain come to Mohamed".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPseudoscience galore!
"Evolutionary psychology" is an application to human behavior of Wilson's "sociobiology", which is an application to social animals, of the general approach to behavior co-founded by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen in 1935, (which for lack of a better name, I label European ethology).
All three approaches to behavior are pseudoscientific, because European ethology is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, "instincts" in behavior, and in the erroneous conviction that an "instinct' can be identified by not being learned. But genetically predetermined traits do not exist at all, as stressed by Schneirla's School in Behavior, which is based on a combination of Morgan's Canon, with the added conclusion that all ontogeny occurs under inseparable effects of both genes & environment; "instincts" therefore cannot exist. Since 1935 Shneirla's School has, thus, had a very long, ongoing controversy with European ethology.
The well-known honeybee "dance language' (DL) controversy, launched in 1967 by Wenner & his team, at ucsb, has long become the most important specific reflection of that general controversy. Wenner * his team published a critique of v. Frisch's famous claim to have discovered that honeybee-recruits "instinctively" obtain & use spatial information contained in foragers'-dances to help them find the foragers' food-for this claim, later provided by very many others, was based on distributions of new-arrivals, but Wenner & his team found out, and published in 1967, that such distributions are totally independent of DL information. By then v. Frisch's DL hypothesis had already become a revered ruling paradigm, and instead of being rewarded Wenner & his team were quickly turned into pariahs. Eventually it turned out that that in claiming that recruits use only odor, they had unknowingly re-discovered what v. Frisch had already discovered and published long before the inception of his sensational DL hypothesis, and later hid through an act of outright scientific fraud, disguised by a deliberate cover up, because, he and many others, became erroneously convinced that the honeybee DL simply had to exist to provide a conceivable adaptive value to honeybee-dances, that are not learned, and were, therefore, assumed to be "instinctive".
The controversy over the existence of "instincts", which is part of the general nature-nurture controversy, has a very long history, which I shall skip here, because I can now dismiss the claim for the existence of genetically predetermined traits, in a very short shrift. Consider the following: Fertility clinics regularly freeze human embryos that had undergone the first few cell-divisions. (I suppose they wait after the first few cell-division to insure the embryo is not damaged.) As long as the embryo is frozen, (by environmental factors), it remains very much alive, and can be defrosted, and implanted to develop into a human baby that could then grow to a ripe old age. But, as long as the embryo remains frozen, in spite of all the genes it has, it does not have to develop into anything else beyond that stage!
In 1973 v. Frisch was erroneously awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for the discovery of (the non-existent) honeybee DL. The Prize was, not surprisingly , shared with the two co-fouders of European ethology, because the "discovery" of the honeybee DL, provided the most spectacular "evidence" for the existence of 'instincts".
This was the worst disaster to ever hit the whole field of Behavioral science. It helped inundate the whole field with a tremendous amount of pseudoscience, and gave us, among others, Wilson's "sociobiology", that spawned "evolutionary psychology". But overturning a decision of the Nobel Committee concerning a scientific issue, turns out to be almost as difficult as "making the mountain come to Mohamed".
Pseudoscience galore!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Evolutionary psychology" is an application to human behavior of Wilson's "sociobiology", which is an application to social animals, of the general approach to behavior co-founded by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen in 1935, (which for lack of a better name, I label European ethology).
All three approaches to behavior are pseudoscientific, because European ethology is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, "instincts" in behavior, and in the erroneous conviction that an "instinct' can be identified by not being learned. But genetically predetermined traits do not exist at all, as stressed by Schneirla's School in Behavior, which is based on a combination of Morgan's Canon, with the added conclusion that all ontogeny occurs under inseparable effects of both genes & environment; "instincts" therefore cannot exist. Since 1935 Shneirla's School has, thus, had a very long, ongoing controversy with European ethology.
The well-known honeybee "dance language' (DL) controversy, launched in 1967 by Wenner & his team, at ucsb, has long become the most important specific reflection of that general controversy. Wenner * his team published a critique of v. Frisch's famous claim to have discovered that honeybee-recruits "instinctively" obtain & use spatial information contained in foragers'-dances to help them find the foragers' food-for this claim, later provided by very many others, was based on distributions of new-arrivals, but Wenner & his team found out, and published in 1967, that such distributions are totally independent of DL information. By then v. Frisch's DL hypothesis had already become a revered ruling paradigm, and instead of being rewarded Wenner & his team were quickly turned into pariahs. Eventually it turned out that that in claiming that recruits use only odor, they had unknowingly re-discovered what v. Frisch had already discovered and published long before the inception of his sensational DL hypothesis, and later hid through an act of outright scientific fraud, disguised by a deliberate cover up, because, he and many others, became erroneously convinced that the honeybee DL simply had to exist to provide a conceivable adaptive value to honeybee-dances, that are not learned, and were, therefore, assumed to be "instinctive".
The controversy over the existence of "instincts", which is part of the general nature-nurture controversy, has a very long history, which I shall skip here, because I can now dismiss the claim for the existence of genetically predetermined traits, in a very short shrift. Consider the following: Fertility clinics regularly freeze human embryos that had undergone the first few cell-divisions. (I suppose they wait after the first few cell-division to insure the embryo is not damaged.) As long as the embryo is frozen, (by environmental factors), it remains very much alive, and can be defrosted, and implanted to develop into a human baby that could then grow to a ripe old age. But, as long as the embryo remains frozen, in spite of all the genes it has, it does not have to develop into anything else beyond that stage!
In 1973 v. Frisch was erroneously awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for the discovery of (the non-existent) honeybee DL. The Prize was, not surprisingly , shared with the two co-fouders of European ethology, because the "discovery" of the honeybee DL, provided the most spectacular "evidence" for the existence of 'instincts".
This was the worst disaster to ever hit the whole field of Behavioral science. It helped inundate the whole field with a tremendous amount of pseudoscience, and gave us, among others, Wilson's "sociobiology", that spawned "evolutionary psychology". But overturning a decision of the Nobel Committee concerning a scientific issue, turns out to be almost as difficult as "making the mountain come to Mohamed".
See the wikipedia.org quote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Applying evolutionary theory to animal behavior is uncontroversial. However, adaptationist approaches to human psychology are contentious, with critics questioning the scientific nature of evolutionary psychology, and with more minor debates within the field itself.[35][36] Criticisms of the field have also been addressed by scholars."
That says it all; humans are arrogant; which I suppose is an adaptation in and of itself.
I studied Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. After learning about Social Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Behaviorism, even Economics, and all the the experiments done there always seemed to be something missing or wrong. After learning not just about the Theory of Evolutionary Psychology, but about all of the experiments and actual scientific support, the difference was astounding. There is a massive amount of evidence supporting Evolutionary Psychology and it is not just an infant theory anymore. It has not been for over a decade.
By the way I have canceled my subscription to Scientific American since it seems they do not take real science serious anymore.
Wikipedia is not the final arbiter regarding any scientific issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou were obviously given a good amount of "brain washing" when you studied "evolutionary psychology" at the Univ. of Texas. Consequently, you were completely unable to understand my comment about it, where I showed how misguided considerations about adaptivity, in a case that concerns strictly sub-human animals, i.e. honeybees, gave us the disaster of the Nobel Prize winning "discovery" of the non-existent honeybee "dance language".
Considerations of adaptivity do not exist in a vacuum. "Evolutionary psychology is ultimately based on European ethology, co-founded by Lorenz & Tinbergen, with their groundless belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as "instincts" in behavior, and the misguided conviction that an "instinct" can be identified by a behavior not being learned.
Considerations of adaptivity by "Evolutionary psychologists' are, therefore, inevitably based on the European ethology, and are bound to be misguided, because so is European ethology.
The 1973 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, was a misguided attempt by the Nobel Committee to impose European ethology as the ruling paradigm over the whole field of Behavioral science. The Committee decreed that the existence of the "instinctual' honeybee DL is not open to any further doubts, and, consequently, neither is the existence of "instincts". This effectively made Behaviorism, and Schneirla's School in Behavior, obsolete in the eyes of most scientists in the Behavioral field. The discrediting of Behaviorism was justified, though not at all because "instincts' exist. The discrediting of Schneirla's School, which is (in my humble opinion), the most advanced and constructive approach to the study of Behavior, has been a totally unjustified disaster.
However, thanks to the decree of that Nobel Committee few bother to even try to understand what Schneirla's School really stands for; which is very easy to understand. Why should they bother with a general approach to Behavior, decreed to be obsolete by the Nobel Committee!? And far fewer try to learn to apply the paradigm of Schneirla's School to individual cases, which is very difficult, because each case requires understanding the ontogeny of that specific behavior.
Try a very brief, good introduction to Schneirla's School, provide in the 1969 book "Principles of Animal Behavior", by his disciple and former student W. Tavolga. It just might open your mind to things "not even dreamed of in your philosophy".
You entirely missed the point of the quote. Also my current position is based on scientific research; not belief, politics, or history; which are all inferior. You are entirely misled by the nonsense of human politics and sensibilities. What does any of the Nobel committee silliness have to do with hypothesis and experiment. If X behavior is not an evolved adaptation I should be able to disprove it by conducting Y experiment. I simply have seen too many experiments demonstrate support rather than falsifying the adaptation hypothesis. Reality does not care about the assorted history of sociobiology which has nothing to do with modern psychology. Modern psychology is now dominated by evolution, neuroscience and genetics as it should be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust read some of the actual research!
Selection is better than instruction
Your present "scientific reality" does not exist in a vacuum, and is inevitably affected, and infected, by the past history of that "reality". Your studies of evolution, neuroscience, and genetics are all heavily laden by their past histories. But you are totally unaware of that!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe truth of the matter is that I do not even understand what you mean by stating that "evolutionary psychology' is based on evolution, genetics & neurobiology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know, however, that any psychology must be based on a correct approach to Behavior, and "evolutionary psychology", as practiced by its disciples, is based on the general approach to Behavior co-founded by Lorenz & Tinbergen, which is incorrect, because it is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as "instincts" in Behavior.
I have read more than enough of the"just so" stories, presented as serious science by disciples of "evolutionary psychology", to care to read any more.
I also know that, contrary to your belief, a hypothesis does not gain any validity just because you happen to know of more cases that fit the expectations from that hypothesis, than cases that contradict these expectations. You can "prove" any hypothesis you may wish, no matter how silly, or crazy, by dismissing the cases that contradict it, but the "proof' is obviously utterly worthless!
You need to examine how you came by the beliefs you now hold about science, and the only way you can do that is by studying their history.
I do not believe in anything. I simple subscribe the the most current and best supported theories and concepts science offers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGenetics does not equal predetermination: this is a very common mistake.
"Evolutionary psychology is based on evolution, genetics & neurobiology"
What I mean is it is behavior is a result of your brain which have adaptive highly specific neural architectures that produce mind and behavior. It does so in a much more complex and beautiful way than any other explanation and come close to. It is not predetermined since many of the assembly modules compete for expression and do so at the molecular and genetic level. Emergent properties arising from the massively complex of adaptive modules in the brain do more that most can begin to imagine. This is the current basis whether intended or not for modern behavioral science.
There is no such thing as absolute proof in any system of knowledge: G�del's Incompleteness Theorem
We have to choose the best supported and most rational Theories.
Any history of science or anything else teaches us about the past. But its use towards an experiment or results is called a genetic fallacy.
"The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. This overlooks any difference to be found in the present situation, typically transferring the positive or negative esteem from the earlier context."
Also I am more than aware of the scientific method since it was pounded into me for more than a decade.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour quote:
"You can "prove" any hypothesis you may wish, no matter how silly, or crazy, by dismissing the cases that contradict it, but the "proof' is obviously utterly worthless!"
This is not the case at all for most of us working in behavioral neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. We use the harshest most ridged scientific methods we can. That means no stories, antidotes, no correlation studies or quasi experimental interpretations. Many writers use this to spice things up to win there case since the average population gets board with pure science.
I don't see here my last comment, which apparently was not posted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn that comment I asked you, instead of speaking of abstract Xs & Ys, to provide a concrete case of a specific behavior, and explain in concrete term how you intend to test whether the behavior is adaptive, or not, so I can see where & how exactly you employ evolution, genetics, or neurobiology, in your experimental designs, and/or your interpretations of data.
I also challenged you with a case of my own, which I shall not repeat here.
But let's have your concrete example!
Never heard of any adaptive modules in the brain. I have no idea what you are talking about, and I'm sure you have no idea either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpare me any more of your "tutorials". I adamantly refuse to pursue this exchange any further!
I would suggest that the problem is not with Evolutionary Psychology, but with Psychology for neglecting the evolutionary perspective. All psychology should be evolutionary psychology. It was either Ernst Mayr or Theodosius Dobzhansky who said, Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. I will give one example of the neglect of the evolutionary, phylogenetic, ethological approach. Many studies have been carried out on the expression of hostility in depressed patients, but none have reported whether the hostility was felt or expressed to a person of higher social status of to one of lower social status. Before the first world war, a Norwegian schoolboy called Thorlief Schjelderup-Ebbe was interested in farmyard hens, and he noticed that if a hen pecked a lower ranking hen, nothing much happened, but if it pecked a higher ranking hen, all hell broke loose and it was severely punished. The same applies to humans. There is all the difference in the world between kicking your dog and punching your boss on the nose. Because the researchers did not realise that humans share with animals some basic rules about social behaviour, a lot of time and money was wasted, and a lot of useful information failed to be provided. Even though just-so stories cannot be proved, they should be told, and psychologists should be aware of them when planning their research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my first post to this topic I stressed that "Evolutionary psychology' is ultimately based on the general approach to behavior (which I labeled European ethology), co-founded by Lorenz & Tinbergen in 1935. I pointed out that this is a misguided & misleading approach to behavior, because it is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as"instincts" in Behavior).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI then dismissed the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits by referring to the case of the viable, early-stage human-embryos, regularly kept frozen in fertility-clinics.
It has since then occurred to me that I could have dismissed the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, by relying , instead, on the ancient seeds made to sprout, or on the viable bacteria found in very ancient permafrost.
!. One can find on the Internet many links to reports about hundreds of years old seeds that scientists were able to cause to sprout. In fact the oldest known seed made to sprout (by scientists in Israel), is one of 3 date-seeds preserved in a very dry desert climate for about 2000 years.
What this means is that the one-celled fertilized egg contained inside the ancient seeds that sprouted, was perfectly alive, but, in spite of all the genes each such cell contained, they did not develop into anything further, as long as the seeds were not provided with the specific environmental (!) conditions required to enable them to sprout. Obviously the presence of the genes did not alone suffice for the development of any further traits.
2. One can also find on the Internet many links to reports about far more ancient bacteria found frozen in permafrost. Many different species of such bacteria were found to be perfectly viable, and were made to continue to develop, but only after being provided with the proper environmental conditions.
Specific genes may be essential for the ontogeny of a specific trait, but they are never sufficient for such a development. to actually occur. All individual traits (including behavioral traits), of all living organisms, develop ontogenetically under inseparable (!) effects of both (!) genes & environment, (of course, inseparably also from the effects of that which already exists at each point along this ontogenetic process).
Scientists need to hear "just so" stories like they need a hole in the head! This, incidentally, is an American expression borrowed from Yiddish, because the English language did not have an expression fit to describe the utmost preposterous stupidity only imaginable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are so many examples of proven neuro-behavioural adaptations I would not know where to begin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuite simply instinct, as you are so interested in, has been beyond much question since the 1960's. Behaviorism slowly faded from favor since it was not supported by research. Perhaps the harm it created as illustrated in the following book:
http://www.amazon.com/As-Nature-Made-Him-Raised/dp/0060192119
Lets use some common sense here: Hunger is an instinct and is adaptive.
I think this is fully apparent so we have at least one instinct. It is not predetermined we can choose not to eat but we are adaptively hard wired to be hungry when our blood sugar levels are low. We have a specific neuro-module (set of neuro-mechanisms) that regulate this drive. This is not a "just so" story, it is fact.
When I first saw my son born, I simply cannot claim to, with such immediate force, love someone so much by choosing to. I am not that good, and I am not some sort of god that has that much power. The proof of instinctual bonding with a child has been shown at the neurochemical level. Parental hormone changes in the brain:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-403W3KX-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f4ac72c6bd2bcdf09e01fc69a27023dc
http://www.slate.com/id/2168389/
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=paths-to-enrichment-better-digs-and
Either God or evolution, both or something else put them there but we certainly have instincts. The more an organism has the smarter they are.
Do you have any?
Ad hominem
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject."
Some more research and information:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/evpsychfaq_full.html
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Group/BussLAB/pdffiles/psychbull-2003.pdf
Once the brain evolves to the point of plasticity, it becomes capable of learning, a far more efficient means of adaptation than biological evolution, even in its primitive, unconscious, conditioned mode. And self-directed learning, that is, the conscious direction of one's attention toward questions of one's own construction, is even more efficient. Add to this the effects of written language, which allows for an idea to "become" a distinct thing apart from what it is an idea of, and thereby creates a paradigm of more complete and self-conscious abstraction that what prevailed previously. Human cultures have institutionalized the preservation of new discoveries about the world, and established purposeful education as a widespread custom. These all contribute to human adaptation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this___Though some sort of selection continues to operate as long as we reproduce, the capacity to learn from experience is so much more efficient a means to adapt that it obviates much of the need for our minds to evolve biologically. As we shape our environments, as we have for 5,000 years, some of the selection isn't natural, but artificial. Cultural evolution can profoundly shape the selective forces that determine who reproduces.
___Though it is common to talk of infancy as a time of the most rapid learning, the superficiality of psychological experiments precludes much in the way of empirical demonstration of WHAT is learned. Little things like depth perception can be tested, but how does one test for the degree to which an infant is conditioned to behave in accordance with a world whose nature is somewhat uniform? And how does one test whether an infant is conditioned to attend to certain sense-data clusters as separable entities in the world, and not as mere coloration-differences? And given that conditioning grows stronger over time, what is the degree of entity-distinctness cognition that an infant attains at, say, 2 months of age? Science is limited to observations of manifest physical events, and the rest is to a degree interpretive, and hence, speculative. And science is not presuppositionless. It never transcends its status as a human enterprise, and its restriction to the means by which humans render the world intelligible. All of its questions and all of its explanations fall within the means of human intelligibility, which do not necessarily encompass reality completely.
___And it is never finished. Few today believe that science will ever come to know "everything there is to know," and run out of new questions, as some believed in past centuries, but from the heat generated by issues like this one, it seems that there are many who nurture some sort of control-freak, final-answer mastery issues.
___You'd think that the paradoxes and indeterminacies of the physics of the past century would brought some circumspection regarding the limits of causal explanation and the possibilities for shoehorning the whole of reality into the category of "knowledge," but it seems to have spawned defensive bitterness instead. Chill out.
The brain is modular in its function. Although more complex than most can visualize semi localized and consistent modular functionality has been demonstrated by fMRI, surgery stimulation of brain areas while testing patient’s mental faculties, and experiments involving other mammals that are consistent with humans. Over 30% of our genome is dedicated to building our brain. Although there is much to be learned many traits have been mapped from the genome to structurally specific neural networks to behaviors. The question is not so much whether behavior is adaptive, I think most would agree it is, but if the adaptation is innate and modified though the process of evolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow if someone has a problem with evolution itself this may be an entirely different discussion. If someone has an issue whether evolution has had any effect on the 30% plus part of our genome that builds the brain, then one would need to demonstrate, above and beyond the current and most reasonable approach, that there is a better explanation. I think the claim that behavior is not at all, innate, evolved, and adaptive, is an extraordinary claim and needs an extraordinary explanation why this would be the case. How is the brain immune from evolution? Answer that and maybe you can become a Nobel laureate. The burden is on the skeptic in this case.
I do agree with you and emergent properties do not violate or contradict evolutionary psychology. However learning is less efficient than structural specificity of evolved or designed system. This is both true biologically and information science (such as with microchips). Learning is metabolically expense, lacks insight or understanding (such as associations, and categorization) and is very slow in comparison. Its benefit is that it is flexible but should be reduced as much as possible (by evolution of designer for a computer system). Intelligence had more to do with structural specific neural networks than capacity to learn.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLanguage for example is mostly NOT learned. The arbitrary sound need to be learned but there is much that is taken for granted. Grammar, and categories are immediately present beneath the learning of words and phases. If they were not if would take us decades to talk.
Contrary to your opinion, all individual traits (including behavioral traits), of all living organisms, develop ontogenetically, under inseparable (!!!) effects of both (!!!) genes & environment. I have provided more than sufficient evidence for that!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe inseparability means that no individual trait, including human ability to use a language, can be for the most part NOT learned. The ability to use a human language, like all other human traits, develops under inseparable effects of both genes & environment.
And, as Schneirla's School in Behavior correctly stresses, the fact that a behavior is not learned, is no evidence that it is genetically predetermined, (innate), in the sense that if an organism has the genes necessary for ontogenetically developing a specific trait, the trait must develop.
I'm going to give you an example of a behavior that is occurs regularly under the natural, (or, rather, favorable) conditions for the species, is not learned, and is not adaptive at all:
When honeybee-foragers dance, dance-attendants invariably change sides in relation to the dancer, each time the dancer performs a waggle-run (or even a reversal of direction without any waggling, which commonly occurs in round dances).
DL supporters erroneously assume that honeybee-dances, which are not learned, must be "instinctive", i.e. genetically predetermined, and must, therefore be adaptive. James Gould, a well-known DL supporter, therefore, suggested somewhere in print, that the side-switching must somehow enable dance-attendants to obtain more accurate DL information, even though he is unable to even remotely suggest how this could be the case.
I know, however, that this side-switching is not "instinctive", nor adaptive at all, because I have a pretty good idea what causes this switching. And I arrived at that idea only by ignoring the paradigm of European ethology, and relying, instead, on the paradigm of Schneirla's School. (I seem to have run out of space for a more detailed explanation here.)
But you don't want to know anything about that School. So suit yourself, but spare me any more of your "tutorials"!
You criticize me for a "straw man" of your own creation. I object only to the belief in the existence of innate traits, if by "innate" you mean genetically predetermined, in the sense that it an organism has the genes that are necessary to develop a specific trait, the trait will develop no matter what. Necessary means only necessary. It does not mean both necessary & sufficient.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not going to win any prizes for that, because it has already been stressed by many others before me!
To continue about the issue of the side-switching by dance attendants: According to DL supporters dance-attendants obtain both distance-information & direction-information from the waggle-run. They must, therefore, keep the most strict contact with the dancer, while it is performing a waggle-run. According to my highly plausible explanation of the dance, when the dancer turns into the direction of the waggle-run, dance-attendants, totally unaffected by that direction, are apparently thrown, due to their inertia (!), to the other side of the dancer's body. They quickly break, and resume contact with the dancer. According to this explanation, dance-attendants maintain the flimsiest contact with the dancer, or even, briefly, lose all such contact, just at the time when according to DL supporters, they must keep tin perfect contact with the dancer!
You still have a lot to learn about Behavior, but since you are determined to avoid that, suit yourself!
In my humble opinion you err grievously by assuming that individual human life starts after (!) a baby is born. Individual human life starts at the moment of conception, and I'm not concerned with any moral issues here. Thus, even though the human embryo, and then fetus, depends for survival on contact with the mother's uterus for about another 9 months, it already exhibits pretty complex behavior long before it is born. Human fetuses are well known to pretty vigorously move their limbs, which is sensed by the pregnant mother as "kicking", and they also suck their thumb!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI stress again that all individual traits, (including behavioral traits), of all living organisms, develop ontogenetically under inseparable (!) effects of both (!) genes & environment, and that the present of specific genes necessary for the development of a specific trait, does not (!) mean that the the presence is also sufficient for the development of this trait.
You ignore all this at your own peril!
Humans are not bonobos. You use the same terminology for what you perceive as "pair bonding" in humans & bonobos, and then you proceed to confuse the two, as well as greatly oversimplify human behavior, as well as bonobo behavior.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I understand it in bonobos each reproductive female mates with all reproductive males in the group, to the point where it is impossible to determine without DNA tests, who fathered a specific offspring of a specific female! How does that compare with "pair bonding' in humans?
"Pair bonding" in humans usually, but not invariably, involves sexual relations, but, in each human culture, it invariably involves cultural customs and laws! Whenever did bonobos develop legal systems?
When I have the time, I may take a look at the second link you provided. I wouldn't bother with your first link, which undoubtedly deal with work done at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology, at ucsb.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMembers of that center are apparently far too busy, producing nonsense, to pay attention to that which has transpired at the Dept. of Life Sciences, at ucsb, where Adrian Wenner worked, to understand that he had efficiently discredited the existence of the "instinctual" honeybee "dance language" (DL), which provided European ethology (with its belief in the existence of "instincts") its most impressive, but non-existent, validation, in the eyes of the 1973 Nobel Committee. I have dealt with this issue here, before, and pointed out that "evolutionary psychology" is ultimately based on the misguided European ethology, and will not do so again.
I might take a look at your second link, just out of curiosity, but I don't really need to be told "just so" stories!
If you are trying to suggest that I resort to ad hominem arguments, you never even began to understand any of them!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBehaviorism deserved to be discredited, though not at all because the existence of "instincts" has ever been confirmed. And Schneirla's School in Behavior, even though labeled by Lorenz as "inclusive behaviorism', should never be identified with Behaviorism! It is very critical of Behaviorism for its concentration on learned behavior, which by no means covers all behavior. And it fully concurs with European ethology in concluding that some behaviors are not learned. It rejects, however, as utterly nonsensical, the conclusion of disciples of European ethology that if a behavior is not learned, it must be genetically predetermined. I've dealt with this issue before, here, and will not do so again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHunger in humans can be "instinctive" only if you ignore all the ontogeny that led to the development of a mechanism that affect the level of sugar in the blood after a long fast. Such a mechanism does not exist in any single-celled fertilized human-egg, but develops ontogenetically, like all other individual human traits, invariably under inseparable effects of both genes & environment.
The love of a father for his new-born son is not "instinctive", but affected by very thick cultural layers, with their almost endless stories about the love of a father for his children, including the story about God' s "unquestionable" love for his human children, in our Western culture.
The idea that a man's love for his son is "instinctive" is tragically shown to be utterly bogus, in view of the man who very recently murdered his 2 year old son, after being ordered by the court to pay child-support.
Hunger is developed? Wow I do not even know what to say about that!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParental love cultural? Do you really believe that?
You are a very elegant writer (certainly better than me) and obviously intelligent. But after reading your posts thoroughly I realize you will not change your view no matter what evidence we give you.
Many of us have been inculturated to believe in learning, social development, and the over simplified gene vs environment dichotomy; all of which are so far removed from the vastly complex beauty of who we are, it saddens me that it is rejected by so many out of fear and anger.
I guess we agree to disagree.
I'm not sure whether in this, or another post, you mention the "blessings" of the relatively new technique of MRIs. I have, become completely disenchanted with the hubris of scientists who presume to interpret what actually happens in the human mind on the basis of MRIs, ever since I read, years ago, the preposterous claim, based on MRIs, that men & women perform arithmetic calculations differently.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing wrong with MRIs, as long as you understand that they provide evidence about activity in specific parts of the brain, but can tell you nothing about the specific thoughts and feelings that are that are taking place in the brain.
The greatest sin if such scientists is that they completely ignore the obvious fact that our brains are capable of dealing simultaneously, (or at least to the point where all the underlying activities show up simultaneously in an MRI), with many different issues.
Just consider what we need to do when we are trying to express a specific idea in speech. We need to know the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of our language. We need to know how to pronounce the sounds of our language, and express in our speech the accents and punctuation marks we wish to convey to the hearer. WE need to understand the whole logic of the idea we are expressing. We need to keep tag of that which we had already uttered, and of what we intend to say next. A lot of this, especially as far as the ability to use our language, has undoubtedly become "automatic" ("hard-wired", if you wish), but the execution can still never skip an activity of the brain. So when you examine an MRI, how can you determine which part of the brain is dealing with what? You can't!
Those "geniuses" who compared MRIs of the brains of men & women while those "guinea pigs" were performing some arithmetic calculations, discovered that a specific part of the brain lit in most women, and in very few of the men. They then concluded that this provides evidence that man & woman perform arithmetic calculations differently, which is preposterous, because we are all basically taught to perform such calculations in exactly the same way.
However, the possibility that the part of the brain that lit in most women, and very few of the men, was not involved in the arithmetic calculation, but might have been involved instead in the apprehension that most women may sense when being tested on arithmetic calculations, after being "brainwashed" in our culture, for years, to believe that women are genetically pre programmed to do poorly in math.
Human instincts are basically innate drives that have evolved to insure survival and reproduction. Much of what the brain does is drive reduction; strategizing to reduce drives even when they are competing. These drives include things like morality, sexual drive, survival, competition, aggression and our search for knowledge (generally speaking).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are several major divisions in the brain which developmentally and ontologically represent the most primitive to the most complex processing of then human mind. The brain stem for example regulates breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. The hypothalamus regulates, body temperature, emotions, hunger, thirst, and circadian rhythms. cerebral cortex functions include thought, voluntary movement, reasoning, language, and perception.
This seems simple enough but when the brain develops there is a complex interplay of genes, environment (mostly nutritional), and learning. The human brain and mind is greater than the sum of its parts: emergence. But this does not mean we have escaped evolution or our instincts. And we still have a choice between acting on our impulsive drives, or not; although they still exist.
If instincts did not exist we would not be able to function.
Autistic learning for example is not necessarily slower than a "normal individual" (it is sometimes faster) but because of structural abnormalities that disrupt adaptive functioning they have trouble coping (in or out of society). The raw processing power or ability to learn does not matter as much as structural specificity.
Structural specific adaptive modules in the brain that have evolved help make us smarter, adapt to the world, develop technology and civilization.
I agree MRI's show activity in certain areas of the brain corresponding to a patients activity or thought. One should always be careful of interpretation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"women are genetically pre programmed to do poorly in math"
I would certainly not make such a claim nor do I believe it is supported by any actual evidence. This is not the sort of thing serious researchers said. Although there are always fringe groups that misuse information.
I found an interesting article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://wellknowntrolls.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/ruth-rosin-aka-prickly-pear/
Humans function for the most part pretty well without "instincts" which do not exist at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Instinct" is just a meaningless word.
There isn't even any meaningful, useable definition that can enable us to identify an "instinct". You may find many definitions of "instincts" in various dictionaries, but they all turn out to be meaningless, once the definition is properly analyzed.
I have repeatedly tried to explain to you that genetically predetermined traits (behavioral, or otherwise), do not exist at all, but everything I've said on this issue must have gone over deaf ears. So I won't try again.
Before you
The sensation of hunger exist only due to the mechanism that affects the level of sugar in our blood after a long fast, and that mechanism does not exist in the one-celled fertilized human egg. So, obviously it must develop ontogenetically. The problem of how that mechanism leads to a sensation of hunger needs to be investigated, instead of being dismissed by using the meaningless word "instinct", which, being meaningless, explains nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBabies supposedly cry when they are hungry, but the use of a "pacifier" which provides no food whatsoever, often stops their crying. So the issue may be far more complex than you believe. You undoubtedly know about "pacifiers", but unlike me, you do not try to enlist, and check everything you already know, when you deal with problems in human behavior, before jumping to the rash conclusion that you are dealing with an "instinct"..
Human parental love is undoubtedly affected by culture. You only need to consider all the known cases of child-abuse by their own parents, ( all the more so in cultures that prefer male-children, where baby-girls are often neglected, and even starved to death, especially where the law allows a couple to have no more than one child), to quickly discard your naive, groundless conviction that humans have a parental "instinct".
The explanation of rape provided by "Evolutionary psychologists' is certainly an example of a "just so" silly story concocted by "Evolutionary psychologists", and it is only one example of very many.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no question that a man who fathers a child has a greater chance to transmit some of his genes to future generations. But for a man to have such a the sex-act, irrespective of whether it involves rape or not, has to result in a pregnancy, and the pregnancy must result in a live birth, all of which may, or may not happen at all. More importantly, for a new-born baby to transmit any genes to future generation, the baby must first be raised for years until it can fend for itself, and then grow into a reproductive adult, preferably in good health. Rapists contribute nothing to that. But the taking any of that into account seem to be too much of an effort for the"dormant, if not dead" brains of "Evolutionary psychologists".
I have done more than enough to bash "Evolutionary psychology", and I'm finally getting off this issue altogether.
As a seasoned, well educated debater, and an expert in behavioral science I am embarassed to be taken by this infamous Internet troller.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell I guess I got to talk about the things I enjoy.
Ruth Rosin (a.k.a. Prickly Pear) is a crazy troller sometimes called the bee lady who has no interest in rational discourse or finding the truth.
These people are obsessive and narcissistic and are out to get a reaction and force there point. Her verbage is all over the internet, copied and pasted many time over.
http://wellknowntrolls.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/ruth-rosin-aka-prickly-pear/
Engage her with the right information on your side.
Your sweeping criticism of my posts on various sites on the Internet., without referring to even a single specific point, only shows that, in spite of all your self-aggrandizing claims, you know very little about human behavior. and nothing about the proper general approach to the whole field of Behavioral science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not out to force anything on anyone, but only to explain. No explanations can, however, penetrate a completely blocked mind!
I won't bother with you any further. You are simply not worth wasting any more of my time. But I hope your attempts to clog the minds of all other participants in this discussion will become a miserable failure!
The fury my posts about "Evolutionary psychology' have unleashed in a loser (!) like you, is a joy to behold.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI promised not to discuss "Evolutionary psychology" any further here. It is plain pseudoscience, not worth wasting any more of my time, nor any one else's time, for that matter.
I am leaving this discussion for good.
"... learning is less efficient than structural specificity of evolved or designed system. This is both true biologically and information science (such as with microchips)"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, in the case of microchips and information sciences, there are outside, intelligent agents (chip and systems designers) contributing to the structural specificity of the designed system. So the determination of the overall efficiency of the designed system has to take into account their contributions. In this regard, human intelligence is pretty much self-contained and on its own, UNTIL it begins learning, and since the world is somewhat intelligible, or can be rendered intelligible, this is as close as we can get to incorporating outside "intelligence" in our design.
"Language for example is mostly NOT learned.... Grammar, and categories are immediately present beneath the learning of words and phases. If they were not if would take us decades to talk."
Not categories, but the ability to discern categories. In a world in which similarities and differences obtain, half the work is already done by the context. Remember that children acquire language only after many months of life, and have a lot of conditioning by the world before language appears. Inconspicuous portions of the peripheral sensory context can be singled out as separable physical objects, despite gravity and other adhesions and the complicating effects of sense-differences that do not correspond with physical object boundaries. Now whether or not our brains have evolved to a point of instinctive abstractive-distinction-making and synthesis, or learn the cognitive skills involved, aided by a brain that has more vague and primitive capabilities is not a matter easily separated, except conceptually. The world is also structured in such a way that its portions can be synthesized into aggregate structures, some of which are quite simple. Language imitates this facet of the world, too, allowing for the possibility that we are conditioned prior to language-acquisition so that our cognitive behavior is trained to respond to a world so structured.
And setting aside both the notions of capabilities acquired through evolution or learning, there is the fact that we are ourselves worldly physical objects. That the world is characterized by separability and synthesis means that our biological processes are also, and that the brain's processes involve these dynamics (among other things), and the cognitive processes it's capable of may reflect them in ways that don't fall under either evolution or learning.
I do realize you are correct in your assertion that computer design and biological systems are intrinsically different. Perhaps I should clarify my position a bit more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImagine in a more abstract mathematical model where you have networks of units and connections that can contain and process information. You can have flexibility between the connections that can adapt to changes in the information inputs. If you have a generalized network where all of the units are laid out in a grid and each is connected to the same amount of units in the same way this will yield the most flexible and generalized type of system. However it will also be relatively slow and take a very large amount of information processing (programming: learning) for the system to yield the desired results. If however you take the desired outcome and structure the networks to almost automatically produce these results the first time, via structural specificity, then the network is very fast and efficient. When an information network grows in units and connections, its total content capacity increases exponentially. If you limit the connections between the information units to create specific patterns that now do not have to be programmed (learned), rather the intrinsic structure does it, it is more efficient than its more generalized counterpart. The information content grows even more (exponentially on top of the generalized network).
So when we look at the brain we see nothing but very specific structures. Such as pitch where a series of neurons having short to long connections to measure different pitches. A general learning machine would be lost, it would have to learn how to learn, learn what to learn, learn where to put it, and learn hyper organization of relationships. Every area of the brain has been shown to have structurally specific networks that are isomorphic of the information they process. These structures are there before birth.
All that said yes I agree there is much that happens when life is played out. We do not have an iPhone module for example. Learning is very important for adapting to a dauntingly complex world. It is ultimately genes, development and environment that participate in who we are. I just think it is more genes than development and environment.
Here we go all over again. You state that: " It is ultimately genes, development and environment that participate in who we are. I just think it is more genes than development and environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOntogenetic development invariably occurs under inseparable effects of both genes & environment. You cannot separate the effects, no matter what, (not even by studying identical twins raised in the same, or in a different environment, or fraternal twins raised in the same, or a different environment), even though not a few scientists have deluded themselves into believing otherwise.
Since you cannot separate the effects, you can never determine what part of learning is due to the genes, and what part is due to the environment. The statement that learning is due more to genes is, therefore, a nonsensical contradiction in terms.
You already understand that ontogenetic development involves effects of both genes& environment. However, since you do not understand that the effects are inseparable, just consider the following example borrowed from honeybee biology:
A haploid, unfertilized, honeybee-egg can only develop into a drone (male) that only feeds in the hive, and flies out to mate with queens, and is thrown out of the hive to die, during periods of food-shortage. One and the same fertilized honeybee-egg, can never develop into a drone. But (depending on environmental conditions), it can develop into a queen that never forages, but flies out to mate, and spends the rest of her years long life laying eggs; or a worker that cannot mate, and never lays eggs, but performs all the other "chores" in the hive, and also foragers, but once she becomes a forager she lives for not more than a couple of weeks; or into a worker that still cannot mate, but can lay eggs, that can only develop into drones (since they are not fertilized); or into a worker that lays unfertilized eggs, and also continues to forage.
Like all arguments against evolutionary psychology I've seen, this one relies heavily on fallacies of irrelevance, in particular, straw men. I'll quote two egregious examples:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If we recognize that aspects of our psychology are holdovers of prehuman evolutionary history, we get a very different picture."
Which evolutionary psychologist (pop or not) claims or implies that aspects of human psychology are not holdovers from prehuman evolutionary history?
"Even its very best, however, may never provide us knowledge of why all our complex human psychological characteristics evolved."
Which evolutionary psychologist (pop or not) claims or implies that EP can discover why all (as opposed to merely some) of our complex human psychological characteristics evolved?
David Buller needs to wag his finger more precisely, if he wants his accusations to merit taking seriously.
Meanwhile, I take comfort in signs of retreat. In past times, I've seen that those who opposed sociobiology or evolutionary psychology attacking the entire discipline without exception. Now I see they start their accusations with the careful disclaimer that "some" evolutionary psychology is good science, though they don't specify any examples, prior to rubbishing evolutionary psychology in a manner that, without the disclaimer, would seem to be a blanket accusation. I don't know if David Buller started this trend, but I've seen this style of argument a handful of times recently.
This retreat reminds me of the retreat of creationism, which has lately resorted to saying that "microevolution" (whatever that is) is fine, but "macroevolution" is evil, while not bothering to specify what they mean by the distinction.
That's not really normal intelligence. An IQ of 70 is generally considered retarded, between 71 and 84 is borderline. The man's IQ is reported as 75, which is borderline, close to retarded.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know about retreats, but I reject, as pure nonsense, any (!) conclusion, in any (!) field of Biology, that is based on the false belief in the existence of genetic predetermination in ontogenetic development!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone who still believes in the existence of "instincts" (which I do not), is urged to read the following publication: Beach, F. (1955). The decent of instinct. Psychological Rev. 62(6): 401-410.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomeone in this discussion brought up the presumed human depth-"instinct" which is "clearly evidenced" by the well-known tests, where crawling babies refused to cross the gap, covered by a sheet of transparent glass, between two tables. I, therefore, want to give this "instinct' the decent burial it deserves.
Schneirla's School stresses the need to understand the ontogeny of any specific behavior you are trying to study. Now, a baby that has just mastered crawling cannot answer any questions about how it learned to crawl, and what it learned while doing that. But, I can easily figure out that what happens is most probably this:
A baby that has not started crawling yet, extends its hand towards a person, or object, it wants to touch. After a while it gets tired and drops down its hand, without having gotten any closer to the object. After repeated striving, it is able to extend its arm a bit further, and when it drops its hand, the hand gets a bit closer to the object. After further striving, it is able to haul its body a bit forward. Then it repeats the same action with its other hand and arm. And eventually it is able to reach the object by crawling towards the object. As it practices crawling, the activity becomes associated in its mind with the tactual sensation of touching the substrate at the spot where it places the hand of its over-extended arm, then, with seeing that spot before it touches it, and eventually (by using stereoscopic vision), to gage where it should see such a spot, even before it raises its arm.
Now you try to coax the baby to crawl from one table to another, with the gap between the tables covered by a transparent sheet of glass, which the baby cannot see. The baby crawls until it reaches the gap. It does not see ahead of it any substrate it could reach by crawling further. So it stops crawling.
The baby's response is most probably not due to any depth-"instinct", but to the effects of its previous experience. R.I.P. depth-"instinct"!
My intelligent guess is that if you caught a baby that has reached the stage where it is just capable to begin to learn to crawl, you could easily teach it to crawl across a glass-covered gap. But, of course, you do not want to do that. In fact, adults do their best, (in many different ways), to prevent a still poorly experienced crawling baby from accidentally trying to crawl over a void, lest it should fall and hurt itself.
I do no want to even bother with all the language-"instincts" that Noam Chompsky attributed to humans. They exist only in his own mind. But I gave you something substantial to chew on.
So now, goodbye to you all!
And goodbye to you, too. I hope you enjoyed your straw-man rant about how the expression of genes is always influenced by the environment, as if anyone was saying otherwise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm still here. I was not "ranting" (as you label my very serious scientific theses), against the belief in the possible existence of ontogeny that occurs under the effects of genes alone, i.e. without an effect of the environment (which by now seems to have been almost generally discarded), but against the many who still, erroneously, believe that the effects of genes & environment in ontogeny can be separated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have beenhanging around out of curiosity to find out whether my debunking the existence of the depth-"instinct" has finally alerted participants of this discussion to the what Schneirla's School in Behavior is capable of accomplishing. Haven't seen any comments about that, yet.
Who drew the illustrations for this article- They are excellent. How can I get in touch with the artist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you
The drawing illustrations were great. Who is the artist who did them? Does any one know how the artist could be contacted? They reflect emotion so clearly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI need to enter a correction here, which I made because you confused me by insinuating there was no need to "rant" against those who do not accept the invariable involvement of both genes & environment in ontogeny, since everyone knows that both are invariably involved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did "rant" against "Evolutionary psychologists", for relying on European ethology, which is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as "instincts" in Behavior. European ethologists believe that a behavior can be either acquired or innate. By "Acquired", however, they erroneously mean learned, and by "innate" they erroneously mean inherited, which became equated with genetically predetermined, with the advent of genetics.
Schneirla's School, however, points out quite correctly, that a behavior that is not learned, is not innate, i.e, it does not develop under the effects of genes alone. Learning is only one of many different ways in which the environment can affect ontogeny (of course, invariably, inseparably from the effects of genes).
You might say that European ethologists (and hence also "Evolutionary psychologists" do not understand that the effects of genes & environment in ontogeny are inseparable. Consequently they believe they can separate the effects and determine the extent (percentage) of the effects of the genes as separate from the effects of the environment. This leads them to believe that the effects of the genes alone can vary between 0% and 100%, and when the effects are 100%, what you have is an "instinct".
It is easy to get confused here, because the concept of "instinct" as defined by European ethologists, has been repeatedly criticized, which led them to repeatedly revise the concept to the point where no one knows anymore what an "instinct" is. And it is almost impossible not to get confused when you criticize those who believe in the existence of "instincts" when no one really knows what they mean by "instinct".
Is Family Special to the Brain?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne interesting experiment (this century!) I found interesting is specialized recognition of family members. To skeptics of an evolved brain take a look at this recent study:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0D-4V88FWN-B&_user=10&_coverDate=12/30/2008&_alid=850777986&_rdoc=8&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=4860&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=646&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=db4017e038ab03c955a8fa6dd97242b4
So previous experience affects ontogeny, i.e. the development that occurs in an individual organism. So what else is new?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut you are discombobulated, to the point of confusing ontogeny with evolution that never occurs in an individual organism!
Another classic example in EP I like is Dr. Devendra Singh's study of Waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). He discovered that the waist-hip ratio (WHR) is a significant factor in judging female attractiveness. This is across all culture and is universal. Even if in different cultures men prefer larger or smaller woman the WHR remains the same. The ideal is .7 where the waist is 70% the size of the hips. A good WHR also strongly correlates to female health and fertility. There is a even evidence of a moderate correlation between WHR and intelligence of offspring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce again the blank slate hypothesis is shown to be in error!
This study does not show the genes and neuro-correlates involved but clearly it demonstrates an adaptation that is not learned. The genes and neuro-correlates involved will someday be learned as they have been in other studies since we have clearly understood cellular molecular, genetic, development, and behavioral relationships for quite some time now.
I just thought of John DeFries Institute for Behavioral Genetics
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUniversity of Colorado. They have been using the classic twin and adoption studies of behavioral genetics; and with the use of DNA markers are locating genes that influence behavioral characters.
With the rise of Bioinformatics we are beginning to go from DNA, to protein and cellular regulation, to neuro-mechanisms, to behavior. This will not only bring in a golden age of behavioral science but more importantly medicine.
One counter intuitive result from all of the classic adoptive/ twin studies in behavioral genetics is that heritability actually, in general, increases with age. Another words genetic influences get stronger as we get older (we turn into are parents? - yuck! lol).
Once again the blank slate hypothesis is shown to be in error!
Adoption and twin studies are important in separating out the genetic from the environment using statistical models:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhenotype (P) = Genotype (G) + Environment (E)
With variances: Var(P) = Var(G) + Var(E) + 2 Cov(G,E)
Many of the adoptive monozygotic twins studies have useful results since 2 genetically identical humans are raised in different environments and sometimes even different cultures. When comparing the data to dizygotic twins and siblings we get and even more clear picture of heritability variance.
Singh's study proves nothing because the report on the study cannot be anything other than a grossly exaggerated fake!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo one ever could have studied anything like that in ALL (!) extant human cultures, let alone in all human cultures that have long become extinct, without leaving behind much evidence of what they were like.
The effects of genes & environment in ontogeny are inseparable, for ever! Studies of the type bring up (like the studies on adopted twins), are utterly useless in any attempt to separate the inseparable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou study identical twins raised under identical environments, and all you get are the effects of their genes under the very specific (!) environmental conditions under which they were raised, but not under any different environments. And so on, for all other tests that presume to achieve the impossible!
You can never get a clearer picture, or any picture at all, of heritability variance, because you cannot raise an infinite number of individuals with identical genes (even if you restrict yourself to only one specific set of genes), under all the different combinations of environmental conditions imaginable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm now going to leave this discussion for good, because I've had it!
Can't resist returning briefly to further ridicule "Evolutionary psychologists" like Singh & Krohleder, because I just remembered the Crinoline dresses, which gave women corset-squeezed waists, but completely hid their hips. The predecessors of such dresses were worn only in very high society, both in Europe & the Americas. But Crinolines were worn by women of all classes, and are still worn today in lavish weddings and the like.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also remembered the thick seal-skin furs that completely hid the shape of the human body, and were worn by both women & men in the Arctic; and the many layers of skirts worn today by poor native women in the Andes.
But, don't confuse "Evolutionary psychologists" with inconvenient facts!
You cannot determine the variance of heritability before first determining the extent of heritability, and this you cannot do, because "heritable traits, as such, do not exist". If I remember correctly, it was Julian Huxley who first described the situation in these terms, in the first edition of his book: "Evolution: The new synthesis".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe statement is fully valid as long as what you mean by "heritable" is genetically predetermined. In other words, if you inherited the necessary genes, (in a one-celled egg), you inherited the trait, i.e. you must develop (The statement, of course, does not apply to cases of asexual reproduction, common in plants and various low multi-cellular animals. For instance, when a sea anemone reproduces asexually by splitting into two anemones, each "daughter" already comes with practically all the traits the "mother" had.)
Mono zygotic twins have identical DNA therefore the differences measured are non genetic such as developmental environment. Heritability variance is the measure of genetic versus other factors using statistical modeling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is really not that hard to understand!
Corset-squeezed waists exaggerates the waist to hip ratio as a prime example of culture driven by evolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the example!
I was there I believe he did. His research was very methodical also and asked much more critical questions than you are asking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch as what about different races (shapes vary yet the ratio is the same)?
There are some great questions out there that could really cause me difficultly answering. You happen not to ask any of them. This is unfortunate for the purposes of rational discourse leading us hopefully closer to the truth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow I am sure you are going to come back and rant some more.
One of biggest names in the field of evolutionary psychology (EP) is Dr. David Buss. http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/buss.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe wrote a book called evolution of desire which is was based on a vary large study.
It involved over 10,000 participants in 37 different culture aimed at establishing the universality of mate selection.
For example many attributes that females prefer in males correspond to the ability to acquire resources. Even in countries who though war (many men died) woman had most of the resources; they still had the same preferences. Men seeking things like youthfulness and physical attractiveness, and woman seeking things like ambition, and commitment, help support the adaptation hypothesis for behavior.
"Because women in our evolutionary past risked enormous investment as a consequence of sex, evolution favored women who were highly selective about mates,"
Anyone interested or skeptical about EP should read this book.
It is impossible to understand, because it is plain nonsense! Whenever you raise an individual organism under specific environmental conditions, all you get are the effects of its genes inseparably (!) from the effects of the specific environmental conditions under which it was raised. You raise it under different environmental conditions, and you get different effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no such thing as the effects of genes that are independent of one set of environmental conditions, or another, i.e. effects of genes that are identical under all environmental conditions only imaginable.
I already mentioned that you can freeze a human embryo after the fertilized egg had undergone only a couple of cell-divisions, and as long as the embryo remains under the environmental conditions (!) that keep it frozen, it will develop into nothing further, in spite of all its genes. You defrost & implant it, and with exactly the same genes it had before, it may develop into a baby and then reach a very ripe old age, with all the morphological, anatomical, physiological & behavioral traits that an old human, and the embryo did not have at all.
But you never understood the obvious implications! And I've just had enough!!!
All you need is to quickly examine womens clothes in different cultures, and different periods, to realize that Singh's findings are not a universal rule, but a universal fraud, which cannot be found to exist, wherever women wear clothes that hide the shape of their waist, or hips, or both. I mentioned only Crinolines, and seal-skin furs worn by Eskimos. but I could add muu muus, sarongs, Princess Anne dresses (that loosely cascade down from just below the breasts, kimonos (that hide the hips, and are belted by so many layers of an obi, as to completely distort the size of the waist), ponchos, jackets & dresses that flare out from the base of the sleeves on down, (which I myself wore when they were very fashionable), and very many more cases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour interpretation of the effect of a Crinoline is both funny & very silly, because the minimized size of the corseted waist, and the size of a Crinoline at the height of the hip, do not at all fit Singh's "universal" rule of WHR, that is supposedly attractive to men!!
I wouldn't even bother looking up Singh's study. But, can you quote for me the answers he obtained when he put his questions to the Pygmies in the Kalahari desert, the Yanomono in the deep forests of Brazil, or the extremely orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. I'm sure the latter would drive him out of the community "tarred & feathered", if he only dared put such questions to them. What about all the many human cultures that had become extinct long ago, without leaving any traces about which women their men preferred, and where no man could be asked any questions about it? And what about homosexual men that do not find women attractive at all? Of course, "Evolutionary psychologists" may believe that homosexuality is genetically predetermined, but like all other individual traits, it is not genetically predetermined, and neither is heterosexuality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I only wanted to, I could concoct much better "just so' stories than the utterly silly ones, (based on cultural "brainwashing, possibly with a good dash of wishful thinking), you quoted from Buss.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThroughout human evolution (until the very recent development of paternity tests), having to carry a baby to term gave women an advantage that no man could have. Women alone could know for certainty that the child they bore was their own biological offspring. Under the circumstances I could claim (tongue in cheek), that it is most adaptive for women to strive to mate (surreptitiously, if need be), with men that that possess excellent health, vigor, and brain-power, in order to give their children superb genes. And it is most adaptive for men to strive to help raise their women's children, and hope that the children are their own biological children!
I had already made it quite clear that i am not interested in any questions raised by anyone who believes in the possibility of separating the effects of genes from the effects of the environment. Such questions are non-questions, because the separability does not exist!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are quite wrong about what I'm going to do. I do not want any further discussions with you, because you (!) can not think straight, and I (!) do not suffer fools gladly!
It's a mistake to suppose that if clothes modify a woman's superficial appearance in a particular way, this means that men like a woman with that shape. The obi that covers a Japanese woman's waist does not mean that Japanese men liked a woman with a thick waist. Quite the contrary. Part of the usefulness of an obi is that it can disguise (to some extent) the fact that a woman has a thick waist. The corsets and bustles that Victorian women wore had the same disguising effect, by different means.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo "MooseOnTheLoose":
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll I claimed is that Singh's "universal" rule cannot apply where women wear clothes that hide the shape of their waists, or of their hips, or of both.
Why? Very simply because such clothes make it impossible to determine the "extremely important criterion that makes a woman attractive to men", i.e. her WHR.
Before departing permanently, I shall also openly claim that , generally speaking, "Evolutionary psychology" is founded on the based of an incredible ignorance of the complexity, richness, and diversity of human behavior, human customs, human traditions, and human cultures. There is really no need to waste any more time on "Evolutionary psychology"!
Yes you are right and even more to the point some woman use clothing both to enhance or even cover up there shape. Married woman very often cover there shape in effect blocking cues of reproduction from other men. There are many complexities with clothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMen have a whole host of adaptations for the cuckold scenarios. It is not just a story when you conduct a study that supports the story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust a story: I tell a story
Supported story: I use scientific methods to test the story and it becomes supported.
Ok I this one you are asking some good questions:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I'm sure the latter would drive him out of the community "tarred & feathered", if he only dared put such questions to them."
They did not. however the purpose of the study was not fully explained; that would create bias.
"What about all the many human cultures that had become extinct long ago, without leaving any traces about which women their men preferred, and where no man could be asked any questions about it?"
We can only use what we have now. If we had a time machine science would go much more quickly.
"And what about homosexual men that do not find women attractive at all?"
Good question. Adaptation typically falls in the norm of human behavior. There is always biological variation that is not entirely adaptive. This does not really matter unless homosexuality or some other non-adaptive trait (in terms of reproduction) became main stream.
The error in this example:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It's a mistake to suppose that if clothes modify a woman's superficial appearance in a particular way, this means that men like a woman with that shape."
Male and Female evolution occurred before clothing. Then they killed a Mammoth, or some other animal and through on a pelt of fur to keep warm. This had nothing to do with the evolved male preference for the female shape.
Later when we had better control over clothing design we began to use it for various purposes. Sometimes for reproduction and sometimes not. It does not change the cross-culture measure of waist to hip ratio preference in males; that just so happens to correlate to the health and fertility of the female.
Also during ovulation water weight moves the female WHR towards the ideal as one cue of mating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Singh, Dr, Buss and many others started out questioning the "just so stories" of behaviorists who went out studying different cultures to establish the blank slate (learning) hypothesis. Countless stories of how humans do not have a "nature" and we have all of this observation of cultural variation to prove it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe blank slate (learning) hypothesis has been shown to be wrong. By countless studies and experiments that have led to a much richer understanding of human nature.
Of course, it goes without question that when "Evolutionary psychologists' become interested in the problem of what kind of women men find attractive, they specifically mean sexually attractive, because they are ridiculously obsessed with sex!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour comment about the extremely orthodox Jews only justifies my claim that "Evolutionary psychology" is founded on an incredible ignorance of human behavior and human cultures. One of the 10 commandments, which orthodox Jews consider holy, prohibits a man from desiring another man's wife. Consequently, extremely orthodox Jews have developed a culture with various complex customs, specifically intended to suppress the possibility that a man would never get away with asking such a man what kind of women he finds attractive, even if you did not explain the purpose of your questions, because you would be insulting him to the very core of his soul. But you are, of course, completely ignorant of that.
In a later comment you assume that the only other alternative is learning. I had already stressed that not all behavior is learned, but that does not mean that a behavior that is not learned is "innate", i.e. "instinctive", i.e. genetically predetermined. Schneirla's School correctly points out that can affect ontogeny, of course, invariably inseparably from the effects of genes.
But you do not want to know anything about that!
I have long given up on trying to knock some sense into the brains of an "Evolutionary psychologist". I shall not waste any more time on you, and the likes of you!
Kindly provide a full reference (including name & e-mail address of corresponding author), of any study that found a correlation between women's WHR, and their health and fertility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI never heard of any such study. I do not believe any such correlation inane "Evolutionary psychologists", are running around with measuring tapes, and insisting on measuring the WHR of women.
I gleefully stress again that throughout most of human evolution only women could know with certainty that the child they bore was their own biological offspring!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe know, of course, of the various means men employed in attempts to gain the same advantage for themselves. All those means, where, however, employed only very late in human evolution, after humans developed the necessary techniques, and even then, they were often unreliable.
"Chastity belts" came into use only after humans discovered how to forge metals.The employment of eunuchs to guard harems, could not have been employed before humans developed the technique required for performing castrations. The employment of eunuchs was also never fully reliable, because human "nature" (that you are trying to discover), being what it is, guards can be easily bribed,Besides, through eons humans most probably survived as hunter-gatherers. And when the men went away on a hunting, or marauding expedition, they could not afford to leave their women jailed, because the women had to go out to do the gathering.
Now, how do "Evolutionary psychologists" deal with all that in their schemes, other than by ignoring it?
Re the health benefits conferred on women with an ideal WHR: LOL!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou do not expect me to believe that anyone has ever discovered that in areas where certain diseases, like Malaria (and many other diseases), are endemic, an ideal WHR confers on a woman better protection against infection with the disease, or against the ill-effects that result from the disease?
Malarial parasites are "disturbed" by the presence of a gene for sickle-cell-anemia. But I'm sure they couldn't care less whether a woman has, or does not have, an ideal WHR!
Devendra Singh, Ph.D. Professor:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/faculty/singh/singh.html
To determine if you have a healthy waist to hip ratio:
http://www.healthcalculators.org/calculators/waist_hip.asp
"Of course, it goes without question that when "Evolutionary psychologists' become interested in the problem of what kind of women men find attractive, they specifically mean sexually attractive, because they are ridiculously obsessed with sex!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse:
Well since sexual reproduction is a bit important to reproduction which in turn is important to the natural selection process.
Interestingly enough sex itself has evolved from disease. Why should an organism give up 50% of its genome when you can keep 100% though asexual reproduction? Because one virus can wipe out an entire population if not species. Also genetic errors begin to accumulate. Bacteria in fact will engage in sex when a pathogen is introduced. They will swap segments of DNA in response to the introduction.
"Your comment about the extremely orthodox Jews only justifies my claim that "Evolutionary psychology" is founded on an incredible ignorance of human behavior and human cultures. One of the 10 commandments, which orthodox Jews consider holy, prohibits a man from desiring another man's wife. Consequently, extremely orthodox Jews have developed a culture with various complex customs, specifically intended to suppress the possibility that a man would never get away with asking such a man what kind of women he finds attractive, even if you did not explain the purpose of your questions, because you would be insulting him to the very core of his soul. But you are, of course, completely ignorant of that."
Response:
Talking to religious men or woman about attraction does not yield fundamentally different conversations in my experience.
Religion: UC San Diego's discovery of the "God module" supports the notion that the human brain may be hard-wired for religion.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/zygo/2000/00000035/00000004/art00003
"In a later comment you assume that the only other alternative is learning. I had already stressed that not all behavior is learned, but that does not mean that a behavior that is not learned is "innate", i.e. "instinctive", i.e. genetically predetermined. Schneirla's School correctly points out that can affect ontogeny, of course, invariably inseparably from the effects of genes.
But you do not want to know anything about that!"
Response:
I do not assume the only other alternative is learning.
Ontogeny (development) is not inseparable from genetics. Genetically identical twins are born, there differences are development: just measure it! There is no principle that blocks us from looking at DNA (genetics) and development before it happens, as it happens, and after it happens even at the molecular level.
"I have long given up on trying to knock some sense into the brains of an "Evolutionary psychologist". I shall not waste any more time on you, and the likes of you!"
Response:
Emotional Appeal and Irrelevancy Fallacy
"I gleefully stress again that throughout most of human evolution only women could know with certainty that the child they bore was their own biological offspring!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse:
Yes that is a benefit woman have.
"We know, of course, of the various means men employed in attempts to gain the same advantage for themselves. All those means, where, however, employed only very late in human evolution, after humans developed the necessary techniques, and even then, they were often unreliable."
Response:
There is no evidence to support this claim. I am not really sure fully what you are trying to say here.
""Chastity belts" came into use only after humans discovered how to forge metals.The employment of eunuchs to guard harems, could not have been employed before humans developed the technique required for performing castrations. The employment of eunuchs was also never fully reliable, because human "nature" (that you are trying to discover), being what it is, guards can be easily bribed,Besides, through eons humans most probably survived as hunter-gatherers. And when the men went away on a hunting, or marauding expedition, they could not afford to leave their women jailed, because the women had to go out to do the gathering."
Response:
Yes man have evolved adaptations such as jealousy and paranoia to deal with infidelity. Less intelligent or aggressive men reproduce less.
"Now, how do "Evolutionary psychologists" deal with all that in their schemes, other than by ignoring it?"
Response:
We do not ignore it: read evolution of design by David Buss, he goes over these issues over and over again.
Medical importance of waist to hip ratio (health benefits):
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v25/n5/abs/0801582a.html
I am not interested in determining whether I have a healthy WHR, according to Singh's criteria.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI demanded evidence that in areas where diseases like Malaria are endemic, women with his "ideal" WHR, are less likely to be infected with the disease, or less likely to suffer the ill-effects caused by the disease
You simply evaded my quest!
This is a very brief, condensed rebuttal of all your latest claims:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wouldn't bother to read anything published by David Buss, or Devendra Singh, because the little that I already know of their wok more than suffices for me to conclude that they are egregious fools.
I do not accept, and I do not have to accept, your pronouncement that sexual reproduction evolved from disease.
Jealousy was unknown among the Eskimos, who lent their wife to a stranger to live with him as husband and wife, when he went on a long arctic voyage. One can bring up many other examples where male, (and for that matter, female), jealousy was completely unknown
You obviously never even tried to discuss women's attractiveness with men in the kind of extremely orthodox Jewish community to which I referred.
Religious beliefs, like any other human beliefs, can become "hard wired" after (!) they are practiced to the extent that they become "automatic", but never before.
There is no need for evidence that the use of eunuchs, or of "chastity belts", could not have occurred before humans developed the necessary technology.
There is no question that sex was essential for human reproduction, before the recent development of artificial insemination. But sex alone contributed nothing to insuring that a man's biological child would transmit any of the man's genes to any future generations.
If I have overlooked any of your comments, so be it. I can't waste any more time dealing with your endless, and frankly, evermore repulsive, drivel.
"I demanded evidence that in areas where diseases like Malaria are endemic, women with his "ideal" WHR, are less likely to be infected with the disease, or less likely to suffer the ill-effects caused by the disease"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse:
Straw Man Fallacy
" I wouldn't bother to read anything published by David Buss, or Devendra Singh, because the little that I already know of their wok more than suffices for me to conclude that they are egregious fools."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse:
Appeal to ignorance and Personal Attack fallacy
I do not accept, and I do not have to accept, your pronouncement that sexual reproduction evolved from disease.
Response:
You do not have to accept it but there is compelling evidence that suggests otherwise.
Jealousy was unknown among the Eskimos, who lent their wife to a stranger to live with him as husband and wife, when he went on a long arctic voyage. One can bring up many other examples where male, (and for that matter, female), jealousy was completely unknown
Response:
This is overall a myth. A few Eskimos do engage in reciprocal spouse exchange, much like our swingers (exists in every culture). This is an adaptation driven by men to increase the number of females they have sexual access to.
You obviously never even tried to discuss women's attractiveness with men in the kind of extremely orthodox Jewish community to which I referred.
Response:
I have in great length. Judaism rejects the notion of original sin and human nature I think (unlike Christianity) which I believe is the real source of your issues with evolutionary psychology.
Religious beliefs, like any other human beliefs, can become "hard wired" after (!) they are practiced to the extent that they become "automatic", but never before.
Response:
You may be right there is no evidence of where this module comes from. Learning or life usage does not create structurally specific regions though so it is unlikely.
There is no need for evidence that the use of eunuchs, or of "chastity belts", could not have occurred before humans developed the necessary technology.
Response:
I do not understand this statement.
There is no question that sex was essential for human reproduction, before the recent development of artificial insemination. But sex alone contributed nothing to insuring that a man's biological child would transmit any of the man's genes to any future generations.
Response:
Except adaptive behaviors to increase the probability of reproduction such as "spreading ones seed" (promiscuity). Also jealousy helps.
If I have overlooked any of your comments, so be it. I can't waste any more time dealing with your endless, and frankly, evermore repulsive, drivel.
Response:
Personal Attack fallacy: You are free to do what you want and I respect that.
Re your comment about the Eskimo custom of a man lending his wife to another man who is planning a long solo voyage in the frigid arctic climate, you need to read the autobiography of the famous Danish Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen, (who lived for many years with the Eskimos in Greenland, adopting their way of life, and eventually also marying an Eskimo woman),
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisto understand that the custom has nothing to do with wife-swapping (Freuchen did not even have a wife at the time), but can easily make the difference between life and death for the voyager.
Incidentally, Freuchen To compare this with the wife-swapping among well to do swingers, who live in sunny, warm California, and have the luxury of becoming bored with his spouse, is outright obscene!
What you label my "fallacies" are anything but fallacies. However, what you see as personal attacks against you, are unabashed, and very deliberate attacks on an obscene charlatan!
"Re your comment about the Eskimo custom of a man lending his wife to another man who is planning a long solo voyage in the frigid arctic climate, you need to read the autobiography of the famous Danish Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen, (who lived for many years with the Eskimos in Greenland, adopting their way of life, and eventually also marying an Eskimo woman),
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisto understand that the custom has nothing to do with wife-swapping (Freuchen did not even have a wife at the time), but can easily make the difference between life and death for the voyager. "
Response:
I think the custom although ritualistic is still "wife-swapping".
"Incidentally, Freuchen To compare this with the wife-swapping among well to do swingers, who live in sunny, warm California, and have the luxury of becoming bored with his spouse, is outright obscene!"
Response:
I somewhat agree with you.
"What you label my "fallacies" are anything but fallacies. However, what you see as personal attacks against you, are unabashed, and very deliberate attacks on an obscene charlatan!"
Response:
The fallacies are in your logic.
Read "The Dangerous Passion" by David Buss about jealousy to learn more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read about a culture where young women used to collect money for their dowry, which they needed in order to marry, by having sex with strangers for money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read about a culture where a young women is sent to live for several years with an older man who teaches her about sex.
I read about a culture were most men are too poor to pay a bride's price. Two of them (often brothers), then pool their resources and buy one wife which they share. You might claim that since the men are brothers, when one fathers a child, he may pass to the child some genes he shares with his brother. Nonetheless, in terms of passing genes to children a man would have been much better of if he didn't have to share his wife with anyone. But I've heard of no jealousies there.
The Old Testament deals with a society where a woman's status in society was based on the number of children (and especially male children), she bore her husband.The Book tels of at least 3 different cases where a woman who could not become pregnant soon enough, gave her maid to her husband so that he could father children with the maid. The children were born onto the mistresses lap, and were considered her children. Not everything recounted in the Old Testament is based on fact. But I assume that the incidents I mentioned must have been based on an actual custom.
In view of what I already know about male-jealousy & female-jealousy, I wouldn't bother to read Buss. In fact, I wouldn't bother to read any of the rubbish published by "Evolutionary psychologists". Their whole attitude towards Psychology is based on false premises, including a revoltingly narrow-minded, shallaw attitude towards the extreme diversity of human attitudes and human culture, to produce anything worthwhile reading!
So you think the Eskimo custom I mentioned is still "wife swapping", even though Freuchen did not have any wife to swap at the time, and his Eskimo-host didn't need any "swapped wife" to accompany him on a long solo arctic voyage, because he had his own wife to do that, if he ever wanted to undertake such a voyage? You simply can't think straight, which is not surprising, since thinking straight is a luxury "Evolutionary psychologists" cannot afford, lest it exposes to them their own incredible stupidity!
I shall not continue to monitor this discussion, because all I get is evermore boring and revolting rubbish from an "Evolutionary psychologist" like you!
“I read about a culture where young women used to collect money for their dowry, which they needed in order to marry, by having sex with strangers for money.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse:
Prostitution is very consistent with evolutionary psychology. Where is the reference? What culture are you talking about?
“I read about a culture where a young women is sent to live for several years with an older man who teaches her about sex.”
Response:
I sure that old man did not mind that at all but I am not sure what this demonstrates. Where is the reference?
“I read about a culture were most men are too poor to pay a bride's price. Two of them (often brothers), then pool their resources and buy one wife which they share. You might claim that since the men are brothers, when one fathers a child, he may pass to the child some genes he shares with his brother. Nonetheless, in terms of passing genes to children a man would have been much better of if he didn't have to share his wife with anyone. But I've heard of no jealousies there.”
Response:
Paying for access to a female that would otherwise not have is not in consistent with evolutionary psychology. I am sure there would be some jealousy going on. Where is the reference? What culture are you talking about?
“The Old Testament deals with a society where a woman's status in society was based on the number of children (and especially male children), she bore her husband.The Book tels of at least 3 different cases where a woman who could not become pregnant soon enough, gave her maid to her husband so that he could father children with the maid. The children were born onto the mistresses lap, and were considered her children. Not everything recounted in the Old Testament is based on fact. But I assume that the incidents I mentioned must have been based on an actual custom.”
Response:
The Old Testament (Bible) has many wonderful examples for evolutionary psychology. Thanks for the example.
“In view of what I already know about male-jealousy & female-jealousy, I wouldn't bother to read Buss. In fact, I wouldn't bother to read any of the rubbish published by "Evolutionary psychologists". “
Response:
The view is backed by research.
“Their whole attitude towards Psychology is based on false premises, including a revoltingly narrow-minded, shallaw attitude towards the extreme diversity of human attitudes and human culture, to produce anything worthwhile reading!”
Response:
Your claim is not supported by your evidence and irrational arguments.
“So you think the Eskimo custom I mentioned is still "wife swapping", even though Freuchen did not have any wife to swap at the time, and his Eskimo-host didn't need any "swapped wife" to accompany him on a long solo arctic voyage, because he had his own wife to do that, if he ever wanted to undertake such a voyage? You simply can't think straight, which is not surprising, since thinking straight is a luxury "Evolutionary psychologists" cannot afford, lest it exposes to them their own incredible stupidity! “
Response:
The Inuit had a different family structure and definition for a wife was different than western culture. The Inuit behave in a consistent manor with the principles of evolutionary psychology. The original interpretations that the Inuit are peaceful, and devoid of most our own emotion, is a myth.
“I shall not continue to monitor this discussion, because all I get is evermore boring and revolting rubbish from an "Evolutionary psychologist" like you!”
Response:
Personal attack fallacy.
I tend not to believe you given the many times you have already said you are leaving. You have proven yourself unreliable in this and many other regards.
I can't give you references to the specific cultures I mention, because I read about different cultures for pleasure, and not for the sake of conducting a proper scientific survey. But I clearly remember that both cultures existed somewhere in the Far-East.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSending a young woman to cohabit for several years with an older man was not intended to please the older man, (as only someone with your prurient mind can imagine), but simply to teach her about sex, (what the older man knew, but she didn't), so that she could then teach it to her young husband, who was always younger than her..
According to Freuchen, (who undoubtedly knew more about the Eskimos of Greenland, and about Arctic expeditions, than you ever did), had he gone on a very long Arctic expedition all alone, without a woman to share his bed, he would have simply frozen to death during sleep. When he was active, the heat created by his muscular activity helped keep him warm; which was not at the case during sleep. He apparently could not afford to waste the time and energy required to build a new igloo at a new spot, each time before he went to sleep; nor add the heavy weight of many additional furs, (for protection from the frigid climate during sleep), because his single sled was already overburdened with all the essential provisions he needed, including food that had to last him throughout a very long voyage. Having a woman with him obviously meant that she had to share some of his food. But the warmth of their bodies as they huddled against one another during sleep, was simply a matter of bare survival. It helped protect both of them from freezing to death. The idea that he could have shared his bed with another man for warmth, or that when he slept with a woman during a very long Arctic voyage, they should have abstained from sex, (because the woman was another man's wife), apparently never even entered the Eskimo mind!
I had already stressed repeatedly that I refuse to waste any time to read conclusions that are based on the misguided belief, held by "Evolutionary psychologists", that it is possible to separate the effects of genes from the effects of the environment in ontogeny.
You never understood that?! Never mind! I quit!
“I can't give you references to the specific cultures I mention, because I read about different cultures for pleasure, and not for the sake of conducting a proper scientific survey. But I clearly remember that both cultures existed somewhere in the Far-East.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponse:
By Far-East I am assuming you mean Asian. I know Asian culture very well and it does not at all resemble your description. I will remain skeptical until shown otherwise.
“Sending a young woman to cohabit for several years with an older man was not intended to please the older man, (as only someone with your prurient mind can imagine), but simply to teach her about sex, (what the older man knew, but she didn't), so that she could then teach it to her young husband, who was always younger than her..”
Response:
I do not believe your vague reference. The intention of pleasure: Not intended to please the older man!? What planet are you from?
“According to Freuchen, (who undoubtedly knew more about the Eskimos of Greenland, and about Arctic expeditions, than you ever did), had he gone on a very long Arctic expedition all alone, without a woman to share his bed, he would have simply frozen to death during sleep. When he was active, the heat created by his muscular activity helped keep him warm; which was not at the case during sleep. He apparently could not afford to waste the time and energy required to build a new igloo at a new spot, each time before he went to sleep; nor add the heavy weight of many additional furs, (for protection from the frigid climate during sleep), because his single sled was already overburdened with all the essential provisions he needed, including food that had to last him throughout a very long voyage. Having a woman with him obviously meant that she had to share some of his food. But the warmth of their bodies as they huddled against one another during sleep, was simply a matter of bare survival. It helped protect both of them from freezing to death. The idea that he could have shared his bed with another man for warmth, or that when he slept with a woman during a very long Arctic voyage, they should have abstained from sex, (because the woman was another man's wife), apparently never even entered the Eskimo mind!”
Response:
Even the most knowledgeable person from that period knew less, compared to a child of the 21st century (the one we are currently living in). Many have made assumptions which have not been demonstrated as true. Conversely subsequent research has shown a completely different story. The marital customs among the Inuit were not strictly monogamous which is simular in many culture of the past and even some in the present. Evolutionary psychology typically claims that humans, at best, are serially monogamous; mostly not though. The Inuit have language and novels depicting lust, romantic love, greed, jealousy and revenge. This would be difficult if they did not have these ideas. I am not talking just about post western influence either. Inuit culture lacking jealousy is not just wrong it is insulting to them.
“I had already stressed repeatedly that I refuse to waste any time to read conclusions that are based on the misguided belief, held by "Evolutionary psychologists", that it is possible to separate the effects of genes from the effects of the environment in ontogeny.”
Response:
You have repeated this yet there is no principle (such as the uncertainty principle) that blocks our investigation of gene and environment ontogeny. Belief is irrelevant. Furthermore I have shown multiple examples and sources that demonstrate the measure, description, and support for genetic effects on behavior. You can refuse to accept this but it is based on irrationality.
“You never understood that?! Never mind! I quit!”
Response:
Do not confuse disagreement with misunderstanding. Given your untrustworthiness I do not believe you are actually quitting.
You continually criticise me for "straw-men" of your own creation. It's too revolting for me to even bother to elaborate. And I'm completely disgusted with that too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, I an quitting, and you will never hear from me again! I can't deal with any more garbage!
"You continually criticise me for "straw-men" of your own creation. It's too revolting for me to even bother to elaborate. And I'm completely disgusted with that too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, I an quitting, and you will never hear from me again! I can't deal with any more garbage!"
Response:
If your argument is a Straw man fallacy I did not create it, unless I am posting under your name as well my own.
Good by Ruth Rosin, I think...
Finally, somebody that reads, analyzes and thinks, before writing a comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the comments against the article have suspicious elements of emotional reaction in their choice of words. People who experience visceral anguish when reading the article should refrain from commenting, including the physical scientist below. I'm just a layman in this subject, but to me, the article makes perfect sense, in a world of "easy" pop science, where few bother to do the numbers.
The commentator seems to believe that a comment should be judged by its tone, instead of its content. And this causes me visceral anguish "right smack in my funny bone!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour article on pop evolutionary psychology (EP) puzzled me to say the least. EP is blessed with so many good scientists who are also good writers and conversant with the recent state of their discipline, like David Buss, Steven Gangestad or Steven Pinker, to mention only a few. Most EP researchers come from psychology, anthropology and evolutionary biology. However, in your Darwin issue the EP-topic is covered by a professor of philosophy who probably does no empirical research in the field, and it is not just about EP, it is about a critique of EP, no, not EP, but Pop EP, which is defined as EP with flaws. In fact it is the EP of the Barkow and Cosmides aera 20 years ago. David Buller gives us his account of how he digested these early writings and he arrives at new insights, for instance, he discovers an "alternative interpretation of human mating psychology - "we posses competing psychological urges". Well this is no news to EP, not even to pop EP. And does our mind house a stone age mind ? Harping on this catch phrase seems to me like equating Darwin�s theory with the ill conceived phrase the survival of the fittest and then concluding that this theory is flawed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour magazine has forfeited a chance to inform your readers about the progress of a Darwin inspired discipline, which has accumulated a fairly stable body of knowledge and which improved by correcting its mistakes. For an example see the review of changing theories about human female sexuality in Thornhill and Gangestad (2008). You also forfeited a chance to entertain your readers with recently won insights, eg in the evolutionary orgins of moral feelings or in the motivational design of human sexuality.
The problem seems to me not to be a conflict between pop EP and EP, or between EP and science, but between EP and political correctness, Ideas and empirical findings of science are not guaranteed to be in accordance with what most people like to believe, and this holds true especially for EP - see Steven Pinkers Blank Slate (2006) for an extensive treatment. So where are the loyalties of the Scientific American in such a conflict?
Buller misses the point, once again. The idea is not to prove evolution of the mind. I am guessing Buller is not a creationist, although you never know- creationism comes out out an attitude towards human specialness rather than specific religious dogma. No- the idea is to explore the implications of the fact that the mind evolved. In other words- to provide testable hypotheses. This is the meat and drink of science. Where scientists get their ideas from is utterly irrelevant to the testing. Einstein claimed his inspirations came in dreams. Ramanujan prayed for his. A mathematican friend of mine swears that his psychic cat sends him theorems. So what? What matters is the testing. An unkind part of me wants to say that perhaps Buller should roll up his sleeves and do some actual science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPop Ep is, I suspect, a straw man. Buller hates EP in general but has been forced to retreat, presumably because it is becomming increasingly untenable to deny that humans evolved. Thus he constructs "pop ep" to have punt at. Who could disagree? And, of course, there is much out there of "men can't help but be pigs- it's in their nature" sort of pop rubbish. But this misses the point. We need testable hypotheses in science. Appreciation of the constraints that our evolutionary history provides generates these. Some are supported (cheater detection) some are not (loser male hypothesis of rape). This is science in action!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are arguing with a well-known troll. http://wellknowntrolls.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/ruth-rosin-aka-prickly-pear/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs entertaining as this is to outsiders, its probably not a good use of your energies!
It was Theodosius Dobzhansky who title a piece "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". He is correct, of course. And nothing in psychology makes sense except in thatlight either. How could it unless a miracle is positted?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt really surprised me and my fellow professors to find such an article as Bullers� in a special issue devoted to evolution. Some of the earlier comments give us some light on the selection of the editor. It is a shame.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUASD
This, for want of a better word, discussion reminds me of Mr Auden commenting on Archaeology where he says:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe archaeologist's spade
delves into dwellings
vacancied long ago,
unearthing evidence
of life-ways no one
would dream of leading now,
concerning which he has not much
to say that he can prove:
the lucky man
Knowledge may have its purposes,
but guessing is always
more fun than knowing.
I don't doubt that your erudite readership will point out that Mr A. was in his dotage when he did say so and thereby exonerate him from mischief.
There were several statements in Mr Bullers piece which I thought credible. This was because, unfortunately, and regrettably frequently my gast is totally flabbered, in the local vernacular, by the apparent omniscience of the biologists who write about the factors involved in particular instances of the observable fact of evolution. As a very slight example: Mr Orrs piece tells us that Flower colour largely explains& why two species of monkey flower are pollinated by bees and birds respectively. This suggests, or requires, that he can account for the differences in the way that photons interact with the visual systems of each of himself, the birds and the bees; which species of flower was around first; and what then was the comparative population in its usual environment of birds, bees and any other occasional pollinating agent. I wouldnt know whether he is right or wrong about that explanation but it does seem to me to be excessively easily questionable.
The credibility of scientific pronouncements is terrifyingly crucial to my grand-childrens quality of life/survival because there is a very, very large community who are eager to doubt them and to act perversely. So, please, you guys, say clearly what you know and separate out what you believe. You can only then usefully support Darwins legacy [of] a larger, richer, more diverse set of theories than he could have imagined.
Good luck
The either/or posited here makes me recall "Never ascribe to malice that which can can be adequately explained by stupidity". Were you being malicious?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe either/or comment brings to mind "Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity". I guess I have to assume you are not malicious. And certainly not presenting of reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBad news: there is no such a thing as 'mind'. Simply put: the brain is attributed some mystical/magical powers, that it does not have/possess, as it enters sleep ... same goes for the soul/spirit etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCompare the brain to the heart that keeps a-pumping while asleep or to the kidneys that keep a-filtering or to the lungs that keep us a-breathing and so on, all those organs perform as they are built to perform ... supposedly the brain enters a realm -yuuukk- that does not even exist while resting, talk about being delusional ... the brain is a lying/failing organ at best and must be kept under watch at all times as it -hard to fathom- lies to itself. It even lied to itself into 'thinking up' all that ethereal CRAP.
To further the point there is no such a thing as death either -death as it is believed to be the portal to 'another world'. Think of it this way: you are born (that is the start), you then live and then you stop living. There is nothing before being born- you are not in the metaphysical world of the souls or angels (yuuukkk), are you? You are not 'there' planning to come 'here' are you?
After life, it is the same. You are not into the realm of 'death', you have not reached a 'higher plane' (yuuuckkk) ... jesus mother fucking christ, humans and their brains are so insanely/dangerously stupid. I am 14 years old and know all of this, why don't you?
The word death is for explaining the body stopping ... for longer a period of time than the ususal few hours while it sleeps. Simple is it not? But there lies the problem: the brain having been told and believed what it told itself -that it was such a complicated organ, it cannot accept a simple thing, too easy, it must talk itself into a maze first and then coming out of that maze it congratulates itself for the double feat it just did.
Simpler: the heart pumps blood, the brain fires neurons and 'sees' the explosions in colors and amuses itself .... look at humans around you and call me back if you notice any 'intelligence' being used.
There is nothing para, supra, meta, super or whatever prefix you care to affix to the words normal or physical.
EVERYTHING is of the physical world, even the brain. The test is simple: try to gauge how much of a liar your brain is- yes sonny it sometimes has to tell you the Truth when you press it- and then you will see how much trust you should invest in such a failing organ. I hope this will not prevent you from killing yourself if you so desire but the brain is a simple organ like all the other organs of the human body
Bad news: there is no such a thing as 'mind'. Simply put: the brain is attributed some mystical/magical powers, that it does not have/possess, as it enters sleep ... same goes for aoul/spirit etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCompare the brain to the heart that keeps a-pumping while asleep or to the kidneys that keep a-filtering or to the lungs that keep us a-breathing and so on, all those organs perform 24/7as they are built to perform ... supposedly the brain enters a realm -yuuukk- that does not exist while resting, talk about being delusional ... the brain is a lying/failing organ at best and must be kept under watch at all times as it -hard to fathom- lies to itself. It even lied to itself into 'thinking up' all that ethereal CRAP.
To further the point there is no such a thing as death either -death as it is believed to be the portal to 'another world'. Think of it this way: you are born (that is the start), you then live and then you stop living. There is nothing before being born- you are not in the metaphysical world of the souls or angels (yuuukkk), are you? You are not 'there' planning to come 'here' are you?
After having lived, the same. You are not into the realm of 'death', you have not reached a 'higher plane' (yuuuckkk) ... jesus mother fucking christ, humans and their brains are so insanely/dangerously stupid. I am 14 years old and know all of this, why don't you?
The word death is for explaining the body stopping ... for longer a period of time than the usual few hours while it sleeps. Simple is it not? But there 'lies' the problem: the brain having been told and believed what it told itself -that it was such a complicated organ, it cannot accept a simple thing, too easy, it must talk itself into a maze first and then coming out of that maze it congratulates itself for the double feat it just did.
Simpler: the heart pumps blood, the brain fires neurons and 'sees' the explosions in colors and amuses itself .... look at humans around you and call me back if you notice any 'intelligence' being used.
There is nothing para, supra, meta, super or whatever prefix you care to affix to the words normal or physical.
EVERYTHING is of the physical world, even the brain. The test is simple: try to gauge how much of a liar your brain is- yes sonny it sometimes has to tell you the Truth when you press it- and then you will see how much trust you should invest in such a failing organ. I hope this will not prevent you from killing yourself but the brain is a simple organ, although dangerous, like all the other organs of the human body.
Does Buller ever claim that evolution has no impact on our brains? He just criticizes the excesses of EP such as the massive modularity thesis, strong nativism, etc. I think natural selection has more resources than a human engineer who solves problems by dividing them into tiny subproblems. I'm not sure what is the the alternative but when I observe the enormous flexibility of human mind, I really doubt whether it is composed of dumb, specialized algorithms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi everyone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome people here have alleged that Buller is against evolution of mind. After reading this article, i am a bit surprised at this claim.
Please read this excerpt from this article:
"Among Darwins lasting legacies is our knowledge that the human mind evolved by some adaptive process. After all, the human brain is even more costly to run than an internal-combustion engine these days, consuming 18 percent of the bodys energy intake while constituting merely 2 percent of its weight. We wouldnt have such an organ if it hadnt performed some important adaptive functions in our evolutionary past."
I think this shows that Buller is not at all against evolution, but is against specific claims made by a very vocal section of psychologists. In fact if you look at Buller's argument about infedility, he is supporting evolved psychological mechanisms, but is not supporting the specific sex-specific mechanisms that EVO-PSYCH people argue for, because according to him, the results do not justify such claims.
I believe that arguments against Buller should be made on rational grounds with arguments.
Statements like "Anyone willing to argue for Buller is either a coconspirator or a fool just as much as anyone who is willing to argue for creationism" are not just unscientific, but also serve to suppress rational discourse.
EVO-PSYCH claims are about specific claims regarding mental mechanisms--and these claims can be disputed without evolution being targeted. Science can do without hysterical claims which no one dares to dispute because of fear of being labeled. To simply label people who critique results sound very unlike science, and if i may say so, seem more akin to the ploys of religious orthodoxy and 'creationists' themselves.
I hope commenters can try to be more rational and reasoned in their arguments against Buller. It is disgraceful for science to see a man attacked, in the name of science, in an unscientific manner.
Less fatwas / heresy proclamations, and more reasons please.
Jealousy has more to do with loss of self-esteem than mating priorities!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJealousy is more to do with loss of self-esteem than mating priorities!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's something to debate. Self awareness was born out of the move from flight only responses to flight or fight. Why? Becuase to decide whether to fight would require the ability to guage ones own strengths against your oponents strength's and to do this you would have to be aware of your own physical and mental condition. So you would have to be self-aware! Also this transitions might well have been the beginning of the problem solving mind. There is a great deal of decision processing required to decide whether to give flight or fight and what course of action the fight should take.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust some thoughts!
I can't say for the rest of evolutionary psychology, but most 'Pop EP' reads a lot like a high school exam essay by a student who can only remember one fact and now has to write 40 marks' worth of support for it, somehow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Question 1. Um. I asked my mum and her friends if they could read maps. So, women can't read maps. This is because, um, in the Stone Age they didn't have maps, so only men hunted, so women didn't learn to read maps so today women can't read maps. This is why my mum can't read maps. Next question."
That sort of nonsense casts a shadow over all the rest of evolutionary biology.
The research and the discoveries of the behaviorist Konrand Lorenz and his group of biologists have already proved to the world that the human and the animal behavior is not determined by natural and sexual evolution but shaped by behavioral programs. These programs exist a priori in the learning mechanism of all animals, including the human being, guaranteeing their survival in a hostile environment where they have many enemies, even before they have the chance to learn this behavior for imitating other animals of the same species. Darwin’s conclusions were too superficial. The evolutionary process of all organisms is pre-determined and doesn’t depend on the conditions of their environment. The human mind has not evolved by an adaptive process but following the process of development already pre-determined in its learning mechanism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this