What is it like to be Homo Sapiens?

Uneducated Pleb

Homo sapiens "...a daring act to classify human beings within the same framework used for the rest of nature."

Another thread about population size hit upon a question I think about quite a bit and wanted to take a moment to focus on a dimension of it here for some feedback. It is formulated (loosely) on Nagel's thought experiment of "What is like to be a bat?" relating subjective experience vs objective fact, but focuses on how the facts of biology, behaviour, and other "brute facts of Nature" are expressed through human conventions like culture, politics, economics, ethics, and religion, to name a few.

A short thought experiment for foundation. Consider the following scenario:
A woman has a new boyfriend move into her apartment that she previously shared with her child from a former relationship. She then becomes pregnant and gives birth to the new boyfriends child. The couple are on the lower end of the socioeconomic strata and they both struggle to maintain themselves financially. This often causes arguments between them and in general this economic issue is a constant underlying problem causing anger and discord in the household. After a particularly vehement argument one evening, the new boyfriend kills the woman's first child from another man.

Contrasted with this:
A new male lion, after defeating in battle the older male leader of a pride, takes the dominant role in the pride vacated by the former. The new male proceeds to kill all surviving cubs in the pride, even when the females put up some resistance.

So, my questions are -
Are these scenarios fundamentally different?
What causes us to see these scenarios differently?
Are there other scenarios (that we can see highlighted in nature as objective facts) present within human populations but have been defined or categorized as "social", "economic", or "political" issues, yet are really the "human-washed" version of the same root biological, brute facts of Nature?

Obviously, one scenario involves fellow human beings, the other involves lions. The first is a "cold blooded and callous disregard for life" that is viewed morally and legally as "evil" or at least "bad". However, when we look at the lion version of events, we see the cold calculus of genetic survival and the tradeoff between energy spent on one's own offspring vs. anothers. We do not, however, these days call the lion "evil" or anything of the sort.

If we take the lion scenario and make it a human one, it changes from "natural" to "evil". After all, even our closest relatives the chimpanzees practice infanticide for biological reasons. To see that the same behaviour manifests in human mated couples and groups, it requires an objective lens to equate the behaviour. It is, biologically speaking, the same dynamic. But when those lenses come off, we are "human" again and see the behaviour as cold, barbaric, and unfathomable. Yet, the same biological underpinnings that run through the other primates (and all life for that matter) run through us.

In relation to other issues, like overpopulation and its effects on individuals of the population, objective biological facts become apparent for an outside "observer", but "what is it like" for the member of the observed population?

As a second example, from this summary of work here we see, as a result of research from overcrowding psychology that the following is true for both rat populations and human populations - "Normal behavior and reproductive habits fail." We see from human data that "human animals do seem to exhibit much lower fertility rates in cities than is true in rural areas."

We don't assign agency to a rat's "inability to reproduce", whereas we would with a human. A young man or woman heading to the city to live the fast paced life of a young professional becomes the 80+ hour per week executive who wants to focus on their career and not have kids. They don't have the time and don't have the patience for kids. They want the good things in life for themselves. They are happy with a cat or a dog, a non ritual-bound spouse substitute, and all the freedom in the world to spend what time they do not spend at work doing leisure activities like travelling to Europe, playing squash, and eating out at the most posh and avante garde places. No kids but a great stock portfolio.

So, how come the rat in the same situation gets labeled with "Normal behavior and reproductive habits fail." whilst the human is "above" any biological and physical constraint of the same sort? "I was too busy with my career." is the veneer covering the objective "Normal behavior and reproductive habits fail.". In another portion mentioning effects of crowding, "Further, people who suffer from the effects of crowding self-select into lower density living conditions to self-treat their condition." Does "self select into lower density living conditions" fundamentally equate to "We just want that nice house in the country where we can raise our kids without worry."? It seems like the answer, as a human response, is no. It shifts a category. But, from the objective side it is the same thing.

What else in our cultures and civilizations (if not all), fall under this shifting of categories?

To the eyes of an alien scientist looking at humans as though we look at rats, could we theoretically align our "culture", "politics", "economics", etc with "social hierarchy selection", "social dominance battles", and "resource competition"? And if so, what would that feel like? What uncomfortable biological truths become exposed human conventions in organization and relations?

schopenhauer1

This may fit better with the conversation already taking place here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2886/instinct-vs-cultural-learning-in-humans/p1

BC

↪Uneducated Pleb

It is my belief (don't have file cabinets full of evidence) that instinct and genes do play a significant role in human behavior. Humans, however, have a lot of behavioral flexibility so it isn't always obvious that dysfunction is occurring, or why, or how.

For instance, rates of marriage and births outside of marriage have risen and are rising (at least among some strata). Over all birthrates in reasonably affluent strata are falling. Children's outcomes seem to suffer. Is this a dysfunction or a result of more freedom? I suspect it is a dysfunction, but I don't know precisely what to attribute as a cause. Fewer sanctions on out-of-wedlock births plays a role, but why are there fewer sanctions?

Fathers don't often kill the offspring of previously fathered children in a new relationship, but men do abandon children fairly often. Is this instinct or a social dysfunction? Infanticide is a not-altogether uncommon respond to social pressures: the desire for male offspring (thinking of India, here). This strikes me as a dysfunction in response to rigid social norms (boy babies are better).

On the matter of crowding: What is "too crowded" for humans? One can keep adding rats to the cage until one starts to see dysfunction appear. People keep adding themselves to cities, yet dysfunction doesn't seem to appear--very dramatically, at least. People actively seek out short term periods of overcrowding--who wants to spend an evening looking for sex in a bar that is practically empty? Deadly. Much better to have crowding -- but not too much. There is an optimal level of crowding that provides just the right number of potential candidates who will concur that you and he are a good match, and a fine time will be had. Based on my experiences in gay bars, I'd say "ideal" is well under the maximum capacity of the joint. If max is 300, then maybe 150 to 200 is ideal.

One of the problems in talking about the density of cities, is that starting in the 1800s, horse-drawn street cars and reasonably good strategically placed roads (and later electric street cars and autos), made it possible to engineer reduced density. It isn't that density was an enemy to be conquered. It was that a city full of people was a large market for suburban housing, located, positioned, and built to attract affluent urban dwellers. Fine housing could have been built in the city, but it was much, much more profitable to build it in the unoccupied farm lands next to the city. This kind of engineering is also typical human behavior.

If I remember correctly, one of the things that some rats do in over-crowded settings is withdraw and isolate. They burrow into the bedding and avoid the rat-crowds. I sympathize with the isolating rats. I like bouts of social activity, but after too much exposure, I want to burrow into the bedding on the floor of my cage and avoid my fellow rat-beings for a while, like a couple of days or longer.

Premier Parisien: "Le peuple se révolte!"
Second Parisien: "Oui, ils le sont certainement."

First Parisian: "The people are revolting!"
Second Parisian: "Yes, they certainly are."

Joshs

↪Uneducated Pleb

What if we tried the reverse tactic. What if we attempted to explain the dynamics of rat societies via the perspective of a Marxist scientific materialism or Foucaultian genealogy?
The idea immediately appears ludicrous because these philosophical templates presuppose decelopment and transformation as the key to understanding human social behavior. Within other animal societies, however, social transmission of culture is minimal , so a equilibrium ecological model makes pragmatic sense.
On the other hand, an unreformed sociobiologist would likely minimize the role of culture and instead see human behavior as essentially unchanging in its most general forms.

Pseudonym

Are these scenarios fundamentally different?
What causes us to see these scenarios differently? — Uneducated Pleb

Yes the scenarios are fundamentally different, because Lions live in prides with a dominant male who has mating privileges with the harem of females and relies on the genetic identity of the harem's collective offspring to ensure the survival of it's genetic material. Humans are broadly polygamous pro-social creatures where the male's relationship with a female is long-term. The survival of his genetic material is ensured by the stability of the relationship (human young are vulnerable for quite some time) and by the success of the social group to which he belongs (meaning that it is almost as valuable for him to bring up a relative's child as it is to bring up his own).
So If the male murders his partner's former child it is unlikely to be because of some instinct. Instincts such as that, if played out in our evolutionary past would be unlikely to produce successful groups as in-group cohesion was a more important survival factor than genetic purity.
That's why we don't see male-initiated infanticide in other very pro-social groups. Male ants do not try to kill the larvae of other males, male meercats do not try to kill the offspring of their brothers and cousins, etc.
The error here is a common one. evolution can produce any strategy that works in the environment it works in. Each species will have a more-or-less unique strategy, looking at any specific other species (not even vaguely related to humans) and suggesting that our behaviour should be in any way similar to theirs is to not understand the way evolution works)
This article gives a good overview of the many causes of infanticide in the animal kingdom, as well as a few examples of species in which it is entirely absent.

Yet, the same biological underpinnings that run through the other primates (and all life for that matter) run through us. — Uneducated Pleb

No, that's what makes us a different species. Similar biological underpinnings run through us, not the same ones, otherwise we would be chimpanzees and we're not. As Jared Diamond put it "Humans are unique... but there's nothing unique about being unique"

What uncomfortable biological truths become exposed human conventions in organization and relations? — Uneducated Pleb

Why do you presume they would be uncomfortable? What is it (apart from a latent anti-nature prejudice I'm sensing) that makes you think all biological instincts must be 'bad' and all human things we do to avoid them must be 'good'?

What is it like to be Homo Sapiens?

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