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Robert Tulip 
Sophomore
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 251
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Location: Canberra
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 Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:09 pm Post subject:
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There is a story in today's edition of The Economist illustrating the evolutionary basis of exchange behaviour. The endowment effect: Mankind’s inner chimpanzee refuses to let go. This matters to everything from economics to law. See
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11579107 |
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Robert Tulip
Sophomore
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 251
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Location: Canberra
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| Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:12 am Post subject:
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| DWill wrote: |
I'm puzzling over something that has never occurred to me to question, and that I suppose is this matter of the randomness of variants that may appear. Having a variant of greater empathy appear at random is hard for me to grasp, and I don't see any scientific explanation offered for it, if by scientific we might mean an explanation of the regularities of a process. To call the appearance of variations random is to say that science doesn't have a handle on the deeper workings that might show order underlying an apparent randomness. Or, it might be to say that science, as practiced at least, cannot reach into this phenomenon because it may have an inherently unpredictable element of spontaneity.
DWill |
Hi DWill, your questions are well answered in evolutionary biology. Mutations are random, but only beneficial mutation improves reproduction, so the variance of evolution is anything but random. Rather, evolution is directed towards more complexity and greater adaptation to the niche barring external disasters. We see this adaptive explanation clearly operating in empathy. Maiden aunt birds help their sisters to feed chicks, in a behaviour that improves the transmission of their own genes. Humans live to be grandparents, due to the fact that children with caring grandparents were more successful that those without, so the gradual lengthening of human life after raising a family has a clear adaptive reason. Over time, whichever behaviours produce most offspring are favoured by natural selection. These are completely regular evolutionary processes. In human life, an instinctive concern for others has a whole range of benefits, as we can imagine a clan who has strong internal bonding having greater morale and trust than a clan who are cold and rude to each other. These traits are not universal, as the cold rudeness of modern life is probably rather adaptive in our technological globe where empathy has been outsourced by the community to the state, and people are falling back on the isolated household unit as the basic level of social organisation due to the powerful atomisation of life caused by mass media and technology. |
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DWill
Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2008
Posts: 383
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| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:23 pm Post subject:
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Robert Tulip said:
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We see this adaptive explanation clearly operating in empathy. Maiden aunt birds help their sisters to feed chicks, in a behaviour that improves the transmission of their own genes. Humans live to be grandparents, due to the fact that children with caring grandparents were more successful that those without, so the gradual lengthening of human life after raising a family has a clear adaptive reason. Over time, whichever behaviours produce most offspring are favoured by natural selection. These are completely regular evolutionary processes. |
I still feel that much of this is described by evolutionary theory but not really explained by it. A genetic mutation causing an increase in what we call empathy--what would that look like genetically? It is not bound to be simple. I'm gonna stick with my Missouri attitude on this--someone's gotta show me.
I don't really think that evolution cares at all about us old people. We've already passed prime reproductive age. More grandparents are around because we've been able to secure a food supply and get rid of most infectious diseases in the developed world.
DWill |
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Robert Tulip
Sophomore
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 251
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Location: Canberra
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 12:56 am Post subject:
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Hi DWill
This discussion of empathy opens the question of to what extent character traits are genetic or learned. The jury is still out on that, but de Waal is arguing that genetics has a bigger role than commonly understood in causing friendly behaviour. In an environment where empathetic individuals have more progeny, such as Bonobo paradise in pre-modern Congo, any genes which support this friendly tendency would increase within the population.
The evolution of humans to the biblical 'three score and ten' age shows that 70 has long been the normal life expectancy barring mishap, of which there were many more in earlier times. There is a clear adaptive explanation for human longevity, in that a mother who had living parents in a hunter-gatherer society would have more children survive. Sure, this genetic basis has been affected by modern technology, but it remains an underlying explanation for the abundance of elderly wisdom in our world  |
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DWill
Senior
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Posts: 383
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:24 am Post subject:
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Hello Robert,
There seems to be good evidence that empathy is innate. The kernel of empathy then can be 'trained up", or not, depending on the individual's culture/family. My puzzlement is over how traits like empathy occur through natural selection. I think that natural selection, though central, is not sufficient in itself, and that principles of self-organization having to do with complex systems must be at work before the selection even takes place. Not my own idea, of course; there is a growing body of work on complexity theory and self-organization. If you have time to look into Stuart Kaufmann's two most recent books, I think you might find something to like. He has a chapter in Reinventing the Sacred called "The Evolution of the Economy"--right up your alley! The difference between you and him might be that it is the principles of self-organization (or "order for free") that are similar in biological and human systems--not the manner in which forms are selected for survival. I can't travel that far with Kaufmann into the technical justifications, but I find his summary ideas to be potent and inspiring. His "mission" is to reclaim for us humans some of the ground we totally conceded to reductionistic science, reinvent the sacred, and restore a God who can be either the creator God of theism or the creativity in the universe of non-theism.
DWill |
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seeker
I can enter The Chamber
Joined: 16 Oct 2007
Posts: 57
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| Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 7:12 pm Post subject:
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"Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society."
-Richard Dawkins, The Washington Post Magazine
I had given up on this forum as being dominated by a bunch of reactionary social Darwinists, but this discussion is luring me back. I just ordered the book from Amazon. I hope I'm not too late!
Trish
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882) |
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