Darwinian Archaeology / Cultural Evolution

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Thanks.

 

[Piggy]

Yes, this is correct. If one assumes naturalism/materialism/determinism then one inevitably arrives at your conclusion. If one does not, then one might equally arrive at mine.

Quite so. But this does not make your position a challenge to Darwinism.

Which tenet have I rejected? I don't think I have rejected any part of Darwinism.

If you claim that some other force than natural selection is primarily responsible for the emergence of a significant, inborn, species-wide behavior (i.e. altruism), and if you claim that the laws of biology which describe all other animals cannot be assumed to apply to human animals, then you are rejecting fundamental tenets of Darwinism.

I am claiming that a full explanation of human behaviour requires more than Darwinism.

You have been claiming something much more specific than that from the get-go and you darn well know it. You can pee in my ear, but don't try to tell me it's raining.

Darwin's theory is about the origin of species, not the entirety of existence or of human life. I'm not challenging Darwinism. I am challenging it's universalisation.

When the topic has come up, it seems we've all been in agreement that Darwinism is not sufficient to explain the entire gamut of events in human life.

When the going gets tough, you change the subject, pretend you haven't posited altrusim as a challenge to Darwinism. You're a weasel.

 

[supercorgi]

Quite so. But this does not make your position a challenge to Darwinism.

Not complaining about your post Piggy. You have great points and I appreciate your posting.

However, I wish people wouldn't use the term "Darwinism." It makes it sound like a movement or a philosophy. The topic is evolution by natural selection. Just because Darwin proposed the idea, doesn't mean we should name it after him. He sure didn't. He postulated an explanation for the variation he saw in nature. It's a scientific theory, not an ideology. Creationists like to use the term Darwinism because it sounds like a religion and they can contrast it to their religous theory that has no scientific basis. We should oppose their labeling and talk about the scientfic theory as it is. It's science supported by a huge amount of facts, not an ideology.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Well said supercorgi

 

[Robin]

Yes. I mean that given a specific situation we could actually have taken a different decision to the one we did make. At some point in the process, mere determinism is being transcended. If you could rewind history then it would be possible that human X made a different decision to the one he actually made, even though every physical thing in the Universe is identical. This would be libertarian/co-creational/incompatibilist free will, as opposed to compatibilist free will which simply claims that we are free from outside interference. For the compatibilist, determinism is still true so if you replayed history then exactly the same thing would occur, hence no real freedom whatsoever - only the illusion of freedom.

OK, now take one such decision call it f. Let's call the precise state of a human's mind at the point of the decision X (and we only need the precise state of the mind since the human experiences the universe that way).

So we have f(X)=a; f(X)=b; and a!=b;

Would there be anything at all that accounted for the difference between decision outcomes a and b or would this difference be purely arbitrary?

 

[CrossHair]

That means that we are fundamentally unlike any other creature which has ever evolved. We are an evolutionary novelty. ...

OK, any ideas concerning WHY we humans are 'unique'? It's because humans, long ago, killed off the competition! Any other developing 'animals' that competed with humans in the brains department were a threat and one side wiped out the other. Humans won and we are unique because of it. All fits in with evolution and even fits with your theory about our default moral system.

 

[Z]

This is where the position you defend goes completely insane, IMO. Politics and religion are not the cause of the problem. Human nature is the cause of the problem. Politics and religion are merely failed attempts to solve the problem.

You have at least hit the nub of why I am making the comments I am making. It is precisely this tendency to blame religion and politics for the very things they were invented to tackle that I wish to challenge.

Well, that is a worthy challenge, to say the least. Yet, honestly... were religion and politics invented to tackle the miseries of the world, or were the reasons for their invention and propitiation darker and less honorable?

Suggestion: start by researching the history of religion and politics. Look closely at the development of what would come to be known as the Judaic culture, through the earliest tribes of Israel, and compare the motives and actions of the earliest Priest-clans of Israel to the motives and actions of other spiritualists of the time. Look at the development of organized, monotheistic religion, and of organized political systems.

Of course, this course of study is going to be complicated by the fact that archaeological records are hard to come by; and what we have has largely been interpreted, re-interpreted, and mis-interpreted by several generations of men with their own agendas to colour what is there...

Nevertheless, I'd say you're going to have your hands full trying to prove that religion (and politics) are attempts to solve the problems of human nature, rather than being the causes of so many problems in the world.

Best of luck!

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, that is a worthy challenge, to say the least. Yet, honestly... were religion and politics invented to tackle the miseries of the world, or were the reasons for their invention and propitiation darker and less honorable?

Sounds like you are purveying conspiracy theories.....

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Every product of an animal is natural, by definition.

...from which it follows that absolutely nothing is artificial. Which is silly.....

 

[Z]

...from which it follows that absolutely nothing is artificial. Which is silly.....

No, which is why clear definitions are required, if you want to separate 'natural' from 'artificial'.

I think, though, a more appropriate comparison is between 'natural' and 'unnatural'...

 

[Z]

Sounds like you are purveying conspiracy theories.....

No reason for paranoia, ol' bean... after all, it's you who seems to think human nature is dark and vile.

Still - what does the evidence point to?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

OK, now take one such decision call it f. Let's call the precise state of a human's mind at the point of the decision X (and we only need the precise state of the mind since the human experiences the universe that way).

So we have f(X)=a; f(X)=b; and a!=b;

Would there be anything at all that accounted for the difference between decision outcomes a and b or would this difference be purely arbitrary?

You would have to appeal to apparent indeterminism in physics, e.g. QM. There would need to be something in the system which looks random to us.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Quite so. But this does not make your position a challenge to Darwinism.

It's not my fault that you have spent this thread misunderstanding me. I was never trying to topple Darwinism. I was trying to topple a specific application of Darwinism.

If you claim that some other force than natural selection is primarily responsible for the emergence of a significant, inborn, species-wide behavior (i.e. altruism), and if you claim that the laws of biology which describe all other animals cannot be assumed to apply to human animals, then you are rejecting fundamental tenets of Darwinism.

I have not broken any of the laws of biology either. You seem to believe that if free will exists, then it follows that Darwinism and biology are falsified. I have no idea where you got that notion from. Not from me, anyway.

You have been claiming something much more specific than that from the get-go and you darn well know it.

I think you are trying to pigeon-hole me into a hole I don't belong.

When the going gets tough, you change the subject, pretend you haven't posited altrusim as a challenge to Darwinism. You're a weasel.

A weasel!

Maybe what has actually happened is that I'm defending a position that you haven't debated against before....?

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

...from which it follows that absolutely nothing is artificial. Which is silly.....

That is not much like an answer. If anything, its an emotional response. If you mean that "artificial" has a clear meaning in everyday use, we agree in that the definition is useful.

But, if you are going to say that "human made" is different from "natural" in any significative way then you will have a hard time arguing.

Oh, and if you do want to argue to draw a clear separation, you will have to present your case, instead of just appealing to the authority argument.

 

[chriswl]

I'm getting confused about this thread now. Geoff is arguing against the position that all human altruistic behaviour is biological. But that is not a position that anyone holds, is it?

Human behaviour is a mixture of genetically, environmentally and culturally determined behaviour. This doesn't stop it from beng deterministic.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

I'm getting confused about this thread now. Geoff is arguing against the position that all human altruistic behaviour is biological. But that is not a position that anyone holds, is it?

Human behaviour is a mixture of genetically, environmentally and culturally determined behaviour. This doesn't stop it from beng deterministic.

Or a natural product of evolution. Apparently he is introducing the old ghost of dualism here??? Seems unlikely, lets see what he has to say to avoid it.

 

[chriswl]

Or a natural product of evolution.

Yes, well that would be the interesting question. To what extent is our cultural behaviour arbitrary and to what extent is it constrained by our genes? And is there a process that parallels evolution so that well-adapted cultures displace badly adapted ones?

 

[Robin]

You would have to appeal to apparent indeterminism in physics, e.g. QM. There would need to be something in the system which looks random to us.

I was really just looking for confirmation that you meant that the choice would be arbitrarily different rather than details of where this arbitrariness would come from.

That does not really seem to be free will though. An arbitrary portion to a choice would be beyond our control and therefore not part of the will.

Free will would necessarily be determined. Aprt from the many factors beyond our control like environment, heredity, possibility, randomness our choice would be determined by mental entities such as intelligence, reasoning, attitude, belief, emotions, skill, memory, likes, dislikes etc.

Once you remove all these determinants from the system what is left?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm getting confused about this thread now. Geoff is arguing against the position that all human altruistic behaviour is biological. But that is not a position that anyone holds, is it?

Sure it is. Some of them teach at my University.

Human behaviour is a mixture of genetically, environmentally and culturally determined behaviour. This doesn't stop it from beng deterministic.

This statement is correct. If determinism is true, then it sometimes operates via culture.

The claim is not that all human altruistic behaviour is biological. The claim is that all human altruistic behaviour can be explained in terms of Darwinism - in this case Darwinism applied to cultural information which is inherited/learned i.e. non-biological darwinism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes, well that would be the interesting question. To what extent is our cultural behaviour arbitrary and to what extent is it constrained by our genes?

This is certainly part of the question, yes - but not the part I am most interested in. I am interested in the more general question of whether all instances of human altruism are ultimately being driven by self-interest. All the darwinist explanations involve direct or indirect self-interest as the root explanation of all instances of altruism. It follows that there is no such thing as real altruism - there is always some hidden self-interest.

And is there a process that parallels evolution so that well-adapted cultures displace badly adapted ones?

The central hypothesis of the field of cultural evolution is that there is. I agree that there is, but I am questioning the scope and power of that explanation. I am claiming it only provides a partial answer, and that a full answer requires an inter-disciplinary approach. See the opening post quote from Maschner.