I am you trolling nitwit. Read my other posts. — schopenhauer1

I apolgise, I must have missed it. Which of the sources have you tackled? I've scanned back through the posts but can't see a reference.

But is it amenable to science is the question. — schopenhauer1

Hence the four quotes I selected from your OP. All are theories about human nature. Presumably you're not claiming you were born with that knowledge (that would automatically undermine your position about cultural acquisition), nor, I assume, are you claiming you acquired it by divine revelation?

So how did you come by it? Observation, and testing.

So you've answered your own question.

Evolutionary psychology conceptually is perfectly fine. The general idea that we have psychological features that were developed in response to environmental pressures, like any other features we have, makes perfect intuitive sense.

But beyond the general idea of it, it seems very speculative, and it seems inherently so - I don't see a path out of the speculation for most hypotheses in the evo-psych realm.

I think that pretty much sums up what I think of evo psych - the basic tenet of it is pretty much obviously true, but any specific hypothesis is probably untestable, unverifiable, unsatisfiable. — flannel jesus

Yes, these are my thoughts on it too. Pretty much summarized it. :up:

I apolgise, I must have missed it. Which of the sources have you tackled? I've scanned back through the posts but can't see a reference. — Isaac

The New Yorker article is a good jumping off point from which I quoted heavily. Thanks Wayfarer. The Wikipedia article itself had some good ones.

You can trash the sources, but then you are simply circling the topic and not engaging it. Posturing, trolling, whathaveyou. Your elitism isn't a defense. The field has always had these criticisms. No, this isn't on the level of genetics, molecular biology, atomic physics, etc. It's a particularly sticky topic because it assumes a framework that may not be the case (biologically adapted rather than sociocultural, or even where the delineation or combination would start or end etc.).

You can either engage with the topic or don't.
Sorry for calling you a nitwit. Rather, you are just condescending :razz:. You clearly know how to do this well, so that would not be a nitwit.

Hence the four quotes I selected from your OP. All are theories about human nature. Presumably you're not claiming you were born with that knowledge (that would automatically undermine your position about cultural acquisition), nor, I assume, are you claiming you acquired it by divine revelation?

So how did you come by it? Observation, and testing.

So you've answered your own question. — Isaac

Observation and testing doesn't prove it is right. This is notoriously fallacious thinking in the social science fields. The assumptions prior to testing, the test subjects, the conclusions can all be up for interpretation. Going through the motions of testing does not confer divine truth to the project. Departments can also simultaneously reinforce arbitrary assumptions and/or have diverging assumptions, making the initial assumptions questionable.

Besides which, as I bolded in the quote laid out nicely by the New Yorker:

Joseph Henrich and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia concluded recently that U.S. college kids are “one of the worst subpopulations one could study” when it comes to generalizing about human psychology. Their main appeal to evolutionary psychologists is that they’re readily available. Man’s closest relatives are all long extinct; breeding experiments on humans aren’t allowed (they would take far too long, anyway); and the mental life of our ancestors left few fossils. — Gottlieb

That is to say, most of the empirical markers are not amenable to observation or experimentation.

Now, finally, you conflate two things from my OP. I am NOT saying "so LeTs CaNceL EvoPsycholgy".. Rather, I am just questioning its usefulness in determining human nature. You seem to think I am making that point. I am not.

Just from this article alone, we get these criticisms (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-psychology/#MasModHyp):

Arguments against evolutionary psychology

Over-attribution of adaptations based on apparent design:

Critics argue that evolutionary psychologists often rely on apparent design to explain adaptations, leading to the creation of "just-so stories."
Gould and Lewontin (1979) expressed concerns about explaining apparent design solely through adaptation, and Williams (1966) cautioned against excessive attribution of adaptation as an explanation for biological traits.

Ignoring alternative evolutionary processes:

Elizabeth Lloyd (1999) derives a criticism from Gould and Lewontin's views on sociobiology, highlighting how adaptationism in evolutionary psychology overlooks alternative evolutionary processes.

Buller (2005) argues that evolutionary psychologists excessively emphasize design and assume that evolution is finished for the traits they study, instead of recognizing ongoing evolutionary changes.

Misconception of adaptations and variation:

Evolutionary psychologists assume that adaptations are universal, unvarying traits, while genetic variants are considered evolutionary noise with little adaptive significance.
This constrained notion of adaptation fails to acknowledge that adaptations can still exhibit variation and be subject to ongoing selection.

Different types of adaptationism:

Philosophers of biology have proposed various types of adaptationism, including Godfrey-Smith's "explanatory adaptationism."

Explanatory adaptationism aims to address questions about apparent design in nature and distinguishes evolutionary psychology from creationism or intelligent design but doesn't provide clear constraints on evolutionary explanations.

Flawed method of testing:

Evolutionary psychologists often rely on cross-cultural psychological tests to support their view that universally distributed traits are adaptations.

Critics argue that this method is flawed since the presence of a trait across cultures doesn't necessarily prove it is an adaptation but neglects the wider scope of evolution as defended by philosophers of biology.

Insufficient consideration of alternate hypotheses:

Critics argue that evolutionary psychologists give insufficient weight to alternate hypotheses that can explain the data as well or better than their preferred hypotheses.

Buller (2005) highlights the importance of introducing alternate hypotheses, such as assortative mating by status, which may better account for certain mate selection data than high-status preference hypotheses.

But beyond the general idea of it, it seems very speculative, and it seems inherently so - I don't see a path out of the speculation for most hypotheses in the evo-psych realm.

I think that pretty much sums up what I think of evo psych - the basic tenet of it is pretty much obviously true, but any specific hypothesis is probably untestable, unverifiable, unsatisfiable. — flannel jesus

Perhaps it is important to mention that what can be learned about human nature from evolutionary psychology is only a portion of a large complex picture.

I don't know of any evolutionary psychologists, who if asked, "Nature or nurture?", are going to respond with 100% nature. or even 50% nature. EP is most appropriately understood as simply a part of a very complex picture.

In case anyone is interested the following link will take you to a forum thread where I make use of evolutionary psychology based thinking:

Does being in a blaming state of mind amount to Monkey Mindedness?

I'm afraid it starts off quite inchoate, and there is a lot of context behind some comments that I'm not going to try to fill in. Still, perhaps some will recognize some usefulness to it.

The New Yorker article is a good jumping off point from which I quoted heavily. — schopenhauer1

No it isn't. A newspaper article isn't a source in an attempt to undermine an entire academic field of enquiry - not even close.

You can trash the sources, but then you are simply circling the topic and not engaging it. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. How is that any different from you trashing all the papers, books and articles produced in favour of evolutionary psychology? It's a complex topic, one which has been wrangled over by some very dedicated professionals. It's perfectly possible they're all deluded (it happens), but, as I'm sure you've heard, we generally hold that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Declaring an entire field's worth of researchers to be deluded needs more than a newspaper article.

Observation and testing doesn't prove it is right. — schopenhauer1

My point was that your argument relied on them. You could not have written the post without those assumptions being the case, so if you say "we can't possibly know" then your argument falls down. You've made assumptions about what is 'human nature' and you've used those assumptions to present an argument throwing doubt on the ability of scientists to conduct research into human nature. So how did you do that research if they can't?

Evolutionary psychology is flawed. It's flawed by methodological issues which are mainly to do with experimental design and statistical analysis, some of which your later citations touch on.

What it's not flawed by (and no serious academic has accused it of) is a general inability to tell the difference between human nature and culture at all levels, which is what you'd need to further your "sex drive isn't biological in humans" project. No one is seriously suggesting such a thing, and you're clutching at straws trying to connect the two.

The effects of the endocrine system on behaviour are pretty easy to document, study, and draw relatively robust conclusions from and I don't know of a single academic in the field who questions that.

No it isn't. A newspaper article isn't a source in an attempt to undermine an entire academic field of enquiry - not even close. — Isaac

Yes it is plus infinity! As I said, it's a suitable "jumping off point", then provided more.

I’m discussing it on a casual philosophy forum. Know your forum bruh.

Rather than reprimanding someone for questioning evolutionary psychology, it is more productive to engage in respectful and constructive discussion. Fir

Just a general comment here. I think you're missing the point of the field.

There are a lot of areas where people assume they know roughly what the explanation of some human behavior is, even if they don't know the details, and that explanation often begins with a broad gesture at history and culture.

But sometimes there is a kind of explanation available that is really quite different. Often what the sort of explanations I have in mind have in common is that they contest the generally "intellectualist" approach to human culture and behavior. There are classic examples in the work of anthropologist Marvin Harris, who offered what we might call "material" explanations for things like religious dietary restrictions. Just as curious is the reverse: the emphasis on culture as shaping economics in the work of Marshall Sahlins. Harris in his day was about as controversial as Robert Trivers is in ours.

All of this to say that I think evolutionary psychology is valuable at the very least for moving the Overton window here, in much the way that anthropologists like Harris and Sahlins did -- what if we don't assume we already know how this works but try, you know, the opposite? In the case of human behavior, what if we don't assume it's all cultural, but consider that maybe a great many facets of our lives make perfect sense if you remember to think of as animals first and foremost and expect that to be more than sort of the bare substrate upon which we grow our rich and marvelous cultural lives.

What's the alternative? We're born animals but leave all that behind almost immediately? After the last 150 years of biology and psychology that sounds like a non-starter.

In the case of human behavior, what if we don't assume it's all cultural, but consider that maybe a great many facets of our lives make perfect sense if you remember to think of as animals first and foremost and expect that to be more than sort of the bare substrate upon which we grow our rich and marvelous cultural lives. — Srap Tasmaner

We can do that. I am not saying we shouldn't, but it is a competing idea amongst many, so this is more a critique as to how efficacious it is in this endeavor. So I think it is helpful to delineate two kinds of "evolutionary psychology". There is Evolutionary Psychology and evolutionary psychology. The capitalized "EP" is to highlight that it is a more thoroughly modular approach. All sorts of behaviors are thus studied to see if they somehow have a correlate to some evolutionary trait. Lowercase "ep", recognizes that of course the brain is an organ shaped by evolutionary forces, but that it is more general. And these general processing components then have a much less defined way of shaping behaviors and thought-patterns. Rather, the farther up the limbic system to the neocortex, it is more about plasticity, learning, individual variation and preferences, and cultural markers, etc.

Perhaps the mirror neuron system was coopted to imitate tool use, and this then got exapted for use in language acquisition, and then the need for long distance communication selected for the FoxP2 gene to be used in vocal communication.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440963/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00698/full
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15301747/

Interesting quote I just came across today:

On the one hand, reading acquisition should “encroach” on particular areas of the cortex—those that possess the appropriate receptive fields to recognize the small contrasted shapes that are used as characters, and the appropriate connections to send this information to temporal lobe language areas. On the other hand, the cultural form of writing systems must have evolved in accordance with the brain’s learnability constraints, converging progressively on a small set of symbol shapes that can be optimally learned by these particular visual areas. — Stanislas Dehaene and Laurent Cohen

The spot for the recognition of letters and such is right next the area dedicated to recognizing faces. I love the suggestion that on the one hand we have a largely innate capacity for recognizing faces, but that the writing systems we developed were designed to take advantage of just that sort of capability, so with a little specialization we get this. It's not that our writing systems are innate, but it's also no coincidence that we have the writing systems we do.

I don't know much about the whole war over modularity, but I don't understand how lesion studies make any sense if the brain just gives us one big general intelligence. Some degree of modularity seems really obviously right.

On the other hand, the great bulk of our behavior is going to draw on many, many modules in the brain. Exceptions might be things like flinching, ducking, those basic reflexes. But not, you know, art, or modeling someone else's beliefs, or making dinner.

Maybe that puts me -- as if I had any expertise here, and I don't! -- in your lowercase "ep" camp.

it is more productive to engage in respectful and constructive discussion. — schopenhauer1

It's funny how often this is levied. You opened a thread dismissing an entire field of enquiry on the basis of some stuff you reckon about it. In what way do you think that is 'respectful' to the decades of work those researchers have put in to their study. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to produce a paper for publication? And it takes that much work because we spend a considerable amount of time checking sources, checking methodological commitments and ensuring the results are meaningful. Of course we fail at that a lot of the time, but doing so shows a damn sight more 'respect' for our reader's intelligence than the sorts of posts we so frequently see here thinking they've dismantled the whole thing from their armchair... because philosophy.

It's funny how often this is levied. You opened a thread dismissing an entire field of enquiry on the basis of some stuff you reckon about it. In what way do you think that is 'respectful' to the decades of work those researchers have put in to their study. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to produce a paper for publication? And it takes that much work because we spend a considerable amount of time checking sources, checking methodological commitments and ensuring the results are meaningful. Of course we fail at that a lot of the time, but doing so shows a damn sight more 'respect' for our reader's intelligence than the sorts of posts we so frequently see here thinking they've dismantled the whole thing from their armchair... because philosophy. — Isaac

Yawn. I don’t care about righteous indignation. The question is the question. Deal or go away.

I don't know much about the whole war over modularity, but I don't understand how lesion studies make any sense if the brain just gives us one big general intelligence. Some degree of modularity seems really obviously right. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure but isn't that basic cognitive psychology? Evolutionary psychology tries to go beyond that to how. With EP, it is basically trying to figure out what the earliest human environment looked like, and what could have taken place to shape our cognition and psychology based on these assumptions. It is reconstructing some kind of environmental conditions that our ancestors faced and conjecturing about that reconstruction, how it is that humans adapted to it or selected for it (assuming it was adaptation and not some other mechanism).

Just so we are on the same page. IEP breaks this down well:

In this broad sense, evolutionary psychology is a general field of inquiry that includes such diverse approaches as human behavioral ecology, memetics, dual-inheritance theory, and Evolutionary Psychology in the narrow sense. — IEP

So we are on the same page, I am using this as my definition of Evolutionary Psychology (in the narrow sense):

Evolutionary Psychology thus rests on a couple of key arguments and ideas: (1) The claim that the cognitive mechanisms that are underlying our behavior are adaptations. (2) The idea that they cannot be studied directly, for example, through observation of the brain or our overt behavior, but have to be discovered by means of a method known as “functional analysis,” where one starts with hypotheses about the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors, and then tries to infer the cognitive adaptations that must have evolved to solve them. (3) The claim that these cognitive mechanisms are adaptations not for solving problems prevalent in our modern environment, but for solving recurrent adaptive problems in the evolutionary environment of our ancestors. (4) The idea that our mind is a complex set of such cognitive mechanisms, or domain-specific modules. (5) The claim that these modules define who we are, in the sense that they define our universal human nature and ultimately trump any individual, cultural or societal differences. — IEP

Changed title

I'll go and read the IEP article, thanks. It looks better than the New Yorker piece.

My first reaction to what you've quoted is that this a damned clever idea, based on the simple insight that we evolved when and where we did, and so it's the conditions then that have the most explanatory value. That strikes me as obviously true.

For instance, there's a related theory kicking around, because climate change is on everyone's mind: Africa had long periods of being stably dry and long periods of being stably wet, but there's a brief period -- maybe 40,000 years or so? -- when the climate of Africa was swinging wildly back and forth, massive lakes here today gone tomorrow, that sort of thing; and it's right around then that home sapiens emerges, so the theory is that we represent in part a hominid that is somehow more climate-adaptable than others. ---- You could have just looked around at where humans ended up living and seen that, but that's not an explanation for why we are capable of living everywhere. -- But this theory does not seem to be committed to a "climate module" or something, but maybe someone has tried that.

Rather than me just going through the same stuff you're reading and also responding to it, are there specifics in what you quoted that bother you?

I can look at what you bolded.

(2) sounds kind of speculative, right? But it does make sense: we face severe evidential constraints theorizing the mental faculties of early humans, but we can still figure out what their physical environment was like, so that's a way in. It's a clever idea.

(4) is just true, isn't it? Or at least it's known that the human brain does have a considerable number of somewhat specialized modules, and that a lot of the more complex behavior we engage in (including cognition) is enabled by those modules being linked together in various particular ways. (It's all very reminiscent of Smalltalk because Alan Kay wanted computing to take biology as its model.)

And (5) is just saying that we're stuck with our biology, isn't it? You and I choose to write different things, but the biology that enables us to read and write is almost identical.

Here -- I'll just make what I assume is your point. Sometimes it appears we can actually overcome some habit of thought or behavior that goes so deep it might as well be innate. The example I have in mind is color constancy. There is reason to think visual artists can in some sense overcome the slightly misleading way we think about what we see. The example you have in mind is that we're programmed to reproduce but we can overcome that by moral reasoning.

I would be interested to know what exactly painters are doing when they "see what colors are really there". Is that an after-market un-correction of the mis-correction our visual processing engaged in? The eyes do take in the "real" colors but presumably all the "original" data is destroyed without making backups. Maybe it's a matter of attention? Maybe you can train yourself to exclude contextual information about the ambient environment? --- For one thing, I assume not even painters do this all the time, but still see my blue Corolla as a kinda uniformly blue car. (There's some fading, some dirt, and some rust -- even I can see that.)

For your point, obviously people can choose not to reproduce, so I'm puzzled about why you feel like you need to prove that, or why you think evopsych might be trying to prove that they can't.

@schopenhauer1 When I reflect on the behavior of animals (setting human animals aside for a moment) they seem to have very similar behavior within their species. Chickens avoid deep water, ducks prefer it. Squirrels build characteristic nests, so do robins. Dogs, with which are very familiar, all exhibit quite a few specific behaviors. And so on.

How is it that animals behave in characteristic ways? We think they evolved to behave in certain ways that worked for them in the environments in which they exist(ed). Behavior, we think, is governed by brains--brains that have evolved, and through some mechanism (which I don't understand) produce consistent, somewhat predictable behavior.

Consistent, predictable behavior is what enables us to manage animals, and animals to interact with us. (I'm thinking of university campus squirrels, for instance, that are expert at spotting potential free food, and will "reach out" to said sources, maybe even climbing up a pant leg, if the subject stands still.)

Every animal learns new information, but they come from the mint with a package of behaviors which enable them to succeed (if they aren't eaten, run over, get shot, get sick, starve, etc.).

When it comes to the paragon of animals--our esteemed selves--a lot of people are squeamish about US evolving.

We aren't separate from the rest of nature, we are nature, and the workings of life have produced in us the kind of animal that we are. Just like it did everything else.

That's my basis for thinking that our behavior evolved, and how we developed technical abilities. There was a long stretch of time--hundreds of thousands of years--between the first stone tool (a rock to crush nuts) and the first brick. Between the first camp fire and the first fired brick, between the first club to kill something, and the first metal spear tip. Millions of years between the incessant chattering of our direct predecessor in an African tree and the equally incessant chattering of French intellectuals.

There is reason to think visual artists can in some sense overcome the slightly misleading way we think about what we see. — Srap Tasmaner

That reminds me of Alexander Melamid's and Vitaly Komar's book, Painting by Numbers, edited by JoAnn Wypijewski, It is not 'hard' science, maybe not hard 'social science' either, but it is interesting and relevant here. The authors wanted to know what different broad cultural groups preferred in paintings and colors. (The authors produced their own paintings for the surveys.) They found broad preferences in groups. Blue was the most popular color, orange the least. Representative art (like landscapes) was much more strongly preferred over abstract paintings. Most groups preferred occupied landscapes (presence animals or people). Blue sky, green hills and grass, water.

It seems reasonable to me that people would like landscapes more than, say, abstract expressionism, for the same reason that people tend to find parks with trees, grass, flowers, etc. more pleasant than the the most splendidly designed concrete plazas.

Boston City Hall Plaza is an architectural failure, in my opinion. I like many brutalist (bare concrete) designs but this one failed to incorporate humane relief. The building dates to 1963. Some recent efforts have been made to change the building, ranging from demolition to redesign. Like many "urban renewal" projects, City Hall replaced what was described as a seedy but vibrant area. Can't have seedy! (Minneapolis did the same thing with Block E, a very seedy and very lively block in the middle of the downtown area. Once leveled, that part of the city died, and nothing they have tried has brought it back to life.

Boston City Hall



Boston Public Gardens

So the questionable part is not if human brains were directed by evolutionary forces. Rather, it is whether certain contents of our thoughts and supposed "motivations" for behaviors are somehow mostly shaped by evolutionary (biological) pressures. That is the EP (not lowercase "ep"). That is to say, everything from how we interact with friends, supposed mating strategies, how we are influenced or influence others, are all somehow based on some brain module/mechanism that is inbuilt from the pressures our ancestors faced. It is that stronger stance that I am questioning.

If you want a "foil" for some kind of alternative theory, it is clearly something akin to simply cultural development and how social dynamics (perhaps "social psychology" or even "sociology") plays out. I am thinking something akin to Yuval Noah Harari's theory of how "stories" often are how humans become motivated and give reasons for their actions. We create a narrative and buy into it, more-or-less. But this is all from a brain that has the ability to form language, has strong self-awareness, and clearly needs cultural and social inputs to get by. All of this itself, one can say was predisposed from brain substrates and mechanisms that were in place from evolutionary forces, but that is not necessarily the Evolutionary Psychology explanations I am discussing. No one is denying that psychology is shaped by a mind/brain that had certain selected factors. It is when complex behaviors are reduced to selected behaviors where the "just-so" stories come into play.

This does have broader significance. Because of our (human) self-awareness, we can create feedback loops that self-reinforce something we think we know. So if X trait is supposed to be some sort of selection factor, people act that way because that is what was supposedly selected for. Thus the behavior is not necessarily instinctual or natural, but reinforcing around the narrative they heard.

Because of our (human) self-awareness, we can create feedback loops that self-reinforce something we think we know. So if X trait is supposed to be some sort of selection factor, people act that way because that is what was supposedly selected for. Thus the behavior is not necessarily instinctual or natural, but reinforcing around the narrative they heard. — schopenhauer1

Do you honestly think the proclivity to reproduce might not have been selected for? That it might be merely cultural?

Do you honestly think the proclivity to reproduce might not have been selected for? That it might be merely cultural? — Srap Tasmaner

Reproduction is another complex scenario of biology interplaying with sociology and culture. There isn't a clean cut answer. How do you know the origins when there are so many variants of many reinforcing mechanisms feeding into each other?

Here is an example:

Someone grows up with culture reinforcing X, Y, Z traits as attractive markers. These are the things that should get your attention, in other words. This then becomes so reinforced that by the time of puberty, indeed the connections are already made that this is the kind of things that are generally attractive. Of course, right off the bat there is so much variability in people's personal preferences (beauty is in the eye of the beholder trope), but EVEN discounting that strong evidence, let's say there is a more-or-less common set of traits that attraction coalesces around. Again, how do we know that the attraction, or even ATTRACTION simplar (just being attracted to "something" not even a specific trait) is not simply playing off cultural markers that have been there in the culture since the person was born and raised? There is the trope in culture, "When I reach X age, I am supposed to be attracted to someone and pursue them or be pursued (or mutually pursue or whatever)".

Even a biological response (like be sexually aroused), may be culturally driven. Sexual arousal can come from a number of factors including simply hormone responses to stories. People get aroused by stories.. But stories are imaginative mental projections that one is doing. That is to say, all of this can be in some sense self-learned. People pick up cultural cues and then reimagine them in their heads such that attraction, sexual response, is all tied together in a narrative of how it is "supposed to play out". It is culture reinforcing itself, then the individuals taking it as just "natural".

It seems reasonable to me that people would like landscapes more than, say, abstract expressionism, for the same reason that people tend to find parks with trees, grass, flowers, etc. more pleasant than the the most splendidly designed concrete plazas. — BC

Reminds me of E.O Wilson's theory of Biophilia.

I confess that I do not know how to separate out influences of evolution from all the other natural factors that shape us; or how to separate biological factors from cultural factors.

I further confess that I do not have much knowledge about all the evolutionary pressures our ancestors faced. Lions, tigers, and bears--an obvious pressure; finding enough food--another obvious pressure. Mating and successful child rearing, finding shelter from the stormy blast and a safe place to fall into unconsciousness for 8 hours, +/- every day. Some of that may explain why we don't just lay down on on a busy sidewalk and go to sleep and similar things we don't do.

The bands of hunter gatherers who are our kind since a few hundred thousand years ago also had social pressures. Of course the social pressures they had to deal with were simpler than ours -- they didn't have to coordinate their shoes, socks, trousers, jacket, shirt, and tie else be made fun of. (These days people wear all sorts of shit in public, so maybe evolution is entering a new phase.) I am pretty sure that questions like "who's in charge" was an issue. In other social animals, who is top chicken, top cow, top dog, top chimp is contested. That a social characteristic we seem to have inherited in spades. "Who does what" was, I suspect, also a recurring issue. I'm thinking less of gender roles here and more social status roles. Who gets the biggest hunk of meat, for instance. Who decides whether this or that rock outcropping makes a good place to stay for the night?

I don't think the paragraph above is a story. Though, why wouldn't Harari's story telling theory be an example of evolutionarily produced behavior? (I agree, though, that story telling is regularly used by humans to do everything from getting up in the morning (against the body's unwillingness) to why we should send a sample of our species to Mars.

Some of that may explain why we don't just lay down on on a busy sidewalk and go to sleep and similar things we don't do. — BC

Yet homeless learn to do it, and the ones that like the lifestyle prefer um, "urban camping" (and not saying all or most homeless people do of course).

I am pretty sure that questions like "who's in charge" was an issue. In other social animals, who is top chicken, top cow, top dog, top chimp is contested. That a social characteristic we seem to have inherited in spades. "Who does what" was, I suspect, also a recurring issue. I'm thinking less of gender roles here and more social status roles. Who gets the biggest hunk of meat, for instance. Who decides whether this or that rock outcropping makes a good place to stay for the night? — BC

But how can that really be parsed out beyond regular sociology? Look at the !Kung. They developed a system whereby they downplay the person who made the kill during the hunt so that they don't get any ideas of superiority. It is more of a signal that "we are all the same whether you directly contributed or not to the obtaining of meat". So perhaps feelings of justice and fairness are more innate. I'll give you that. But culture plays so much that even inborn ideas of justice (babies being pissed when you don't give them their deserved reward or something) can be quickly curbed such that maybe its more of a trait that is not even that significant. Again, all speculation, but it's all speculation, and that's my point. Because culture overlays so much on top of "innateness" it is almost impossible to extricate it. But beyond that point, perhaps there is nothing to extricate, as the content of our actions are self-projected stories all the way down ("turtles all the way down"). It's a self-aware, linguistic mechanism constantly reinforcing learned traits. So only much more general things like "language" and "social learning" can be gauged for selection and not "hierarchies of alphas" or "mating strategies", and complex behaviors such as these.

I don't think the paragraph above is a story. Though, why wouldn't Harari's story telling theory be an example of evolutionarily produced behavior? — BC

I guess let me clarify, the "ability to make up complex conceptual frameworks" might be evolutionarily evolved, but the specific "stories" within those frameworks, perhaps, were not, is what I am suggesting.

Reminds me of E.O Wilson's theory of Biophilia. — schopenhauer1

I haven't read E. O. Wilson (yes, I should have but...) so I didn't get any ideas from him directly.

A lot of this discussion is revolving around whether our behavior is "essential" (bred in the bone) or constructed (taught). We are not one or the other, of course -- both come into play.

Some people think that homosexuality is constructed. I say NO, but the way homosexuality is executed is largely culturally constructed. An otherwise culturally isolated homosexual community probably won't develop a black leather and chains fetish sub-group--unless there were some male motorcycle clubs around wearing hot looking black leather and chains. Probably won't cook up rainbow flags, either, or call one another 'miss thing'.

Heterosexuality is not constructed either, but it is certainly culturally constructed. There is nothing essential and biological about the oft-cited Leave It To Beaver lifestyle of suburban living, (I never watched the show; we didn't have television at the time.). Suburban living was LITERALLY constructed.

An otherwise culturally isolated homosexual community probably won't develop a black leather and chains fetish sub-group--unless there were some male motorcycle clubs around wearing hot looking black leather and chains. Probably won't cook up rainbow flags, either, or call one another 'miss thing'. — BC

:rofl:

Heterosexuality is not constructed either, but it is certainly culturally constructed. There is nothing essential and biological about the oft-cited Leave It To Beaver lifestyle of suburban living, (I never watched the show; we didn't have television at the time.). Suburban living was LITERALLY constructed. — BC

Definitely. But I asked an even more radical question in a post above. I'll just quote the whole post here though because you may have some comments:

Do you honestly think the proclivity to reproduce might not have been selected for? That it might be merely cultural?
— Srap Tasmaner

Reproduction is another complex scenario of biology interplaying with sociology and culture. There isn't a clean cut answer. How do you know the origins when there are so many variants of many reinforcing mechanisms feeding into each other?

Here is an example:

Someone grows up with culture reinforcing X, Y, Z traits as attractive markers. These are the things that should get your attention, in other words. This then becomes so reinforced that by the time of puberty, indeed the connections are already made that this is the kind of things that are generally attractive. Of course, right off the bat there is so much variability in people's personal preferences (beauty is in the eye of the beholder trope), but EVEN discounting that strong evidence, let's say there is a more-or-less common set of traits that attraction coalesces around. Again, how do we know that the attraction, or even ATTRACTION simplar (just being attracted to "something" not even a specific trait) is not simply playing off cultural markers that have been there in the culture since the person was born and raised? There is the trope in culture, "When I reach X age, I am supposed to be attracted to someone and pursue them or be pursued (or mutually pursue or whatever)".

Even a biological response (like be sexually aroused), may be culturally driven. Sexual arousal can come from a number of factors including simply hormone responses to stories. People get aroused by stories.. But stories are imaginative mental projections that one is doing. That is to say, all of this can be in some sense self-learned. People pick up cultural cues and then reimagine them in their heads such that attraction, sexual response, is all tied together in a narrative of how it is "supposed to play out". It is culture reinforcing itself, then the individuals taking it as just "natural".

So the bolded part is the "radical" part. So I guess your experiences (or memories of said experiences) might provide a counterexample. That is to say, when you were younger, you thought nothing of any of it but by puberty, you were attracted to men, and this wasn't the popular cultural trope, so it must be a natural instinct. But this is where we must be careful not to misconstrue my argument. I am not saying that preferences aren't somehow "innate" or at the least, "individual to the person", but rather attributing those preferences or even BEING ATTRACTED ITSELF as somehow selected for rather than a cultural thing. That is to say, the culture reinforces being attracted AT ALL to SOMETHING.

I'll get even MORE controversial. It is possible to get aroused and climax without any external stimuli. But by the time of puberty (not all but many) people pick up the habit of projecting (like a story!) onto a fantasy of SOMEONE or a proto-type of SOMEONE such that sexual arousal GETS ATTACHED to the constructed story of a particular type being the OBJECT for arousal. In other words (and this is now paralleling not deriving from Freud), a general sexuality becomes DIRECTED (by social and cultural cues) towards an SUBJECT (a person presumably) such that people then tie the two together AS IF they are ("innate"/"natural instinct") when in fact it was riffing off cultural cues all along.

I guess let me clarify, the "ability to make up complex conceptual frameworks" might be evolutionarily evolved, but the specific "stories" within those frameworks, perhaps, were not, is what I am suggesting. — schopenhauer1

Good point. EP may produce all sorts of behaviors, but what we are going to be able to parse out is mostly pretty general.

But culture plays so much that even inborn ideas of justice (babies being pissed when you don't give them their deserved reward or something) can be quickly curbed such that maybe its more of a trait that is not even that significant. — schopenhauer1

Never mind babies. In experiments with chimps (not to make unflattering comparisons) when a subject was either not rewarded or was rewarded with an inferior snack (a cucumber slice instead of an apple slice they stopped cooperating with the experimenter. Dogs were a little more forgiving. They cheated dog would stop cooperating if one dog was rewarded and they were not. If they each got a reward (even if one got meat and the other a cracker) they were satisfied.

The animal evidence suggests that some sort of "fairness standard" operates in some social mammals, at least.

It isn't just "turtles all the way down". It's a meatloaf of biology, evolution, and culture all the way down. This meatloaf is the mostly unobservable brain -- by unobservable, I mean I don't know what most of my brain is doing, never mind my knowing what your brain is doing. We just know that small conscious bit. I can scan your brain with a fMRI which tells me just about nothing about culture and evolution.

Never mind babies. In experiments with chimps (not to make unflattering comparisons) when a subject was either not rewarded or was rewarded with an inferior snack (a cucumber slice instead of an apple slice they stopped cooperating with the experimenter. Dogs were a little more forgiving. They cheated dog would stop cooperating if one dog was rewarded and they were not. If they each got a reward (even if one got meat and the other a cracker) they were satisfied.

The animal evidence suggests that some sort of "fairness standard" operates in some social mammals, at least.

It isn't just "turtles all the way down". It's a meatloaf of biology, evolution, and culture all the way down. This meatloaf is the mostly unobservable brain -- by unobservable, I mean I don't know what most of my brain is doing, never mind my knowing what your brain is doing. We just know that small conscious bit. I can scan your brain with a fMRI which tells me just about nothing about culture and evolution. — BC

I think I can agree with all or most of this and still retain it is mostly stories all the way down (in the case of humans). Babies also have an innate reflex to suckle and the "palmer reflex". However, these go away. And presumably emotions such as "fear" and something like fascination is innate. But yeah how that plays out when culture is such a huge factor, really is very hard to tell and can become something like a genetic fallacy for many ideas.

Suppose we start with some ancient single-cell organisms, alike in every way except their proclivity to reproduce. Natural selection is just the process by which the descendants of those with the higher proclivity to reproduce will swamp the descendants of the others in short order.

Presumably then the instinct (let's just call it that) to reproduce is about as old as anything could be and shared across almost all living things. But even if this is a problem natural selection had to solve multiple times, for whatever reason -- population separation, for instance -- it would, every time, exactly the same way. If anything is in natural selection's wheel-house, this is.

You would want to argue that somewhere along the way, in the evolution of hominids. culture became self-reinforcing enough that natural selection no longer needed the instinct to reproduce and could kind of slough it off, just not bother selecting for it because culture had that covered, and that in essence this could have happened without people ever noticing. One day our ancestors had an instinct to reproduce, the next they didn't but culture had already taken the baton. And this would only have happened with us because we're the only species with rich enough cultural lives to have pulled this off.

Okay that's a just-so story. Might even be true. Is there any evidence of the sloughing off mechanism? Is that even a thing that can happen? Maybe some of our ancestors ended up with junk instead of the reproducing-gene and it didn't make any difference because culture. Maybe we're a mixed lot now, some with it, some without, and it's hard to tell one from another because culture. I have no idea.

Also possible that there is no instinct to reproduce per se, but in our case an instinct for sex, because that leads to reproduction, which is what natural selection is actually aiming at. Kinda tricks us into it. Possible. Maybe even likely, since "I will now reproduce" is not really a sensible intention, one you can reliably put into action. But "I will now have sex" sure is. Should really be having sex whenever you're not doing something else you absolutely have to.

But the whole point here is that natural selection is simply unable to leave this to chance, without changing its name to "natural something or other". Reproduction is the only thing natural selection really cares about, and everything else is a means to that end.

Look at it this way. Copulation doesn't always lead to reproduction, which is why it makes sense to say we can't have a reproducing instinct but only a sex instinct. But natural selection is also responsible for the fact that sex is not, among us, guaranteed to result in reproduction. Why did it allow that? With a lot of other species, we see clear seasonality of reproducing, clear indicators of readiness (like, right now readiness) to reproduce, and so on. If we don't see that with Homo sapiens, that's what needs to be understood first. All natural selection can do is change the prevalence of alleles among offspring, it's all based on reproduction, and evidently at some point this version of hominid sexuality and thus reproduction won out. How did that happen and why?

And if I remember right even Darwin thought sexual selection was probably a thing among our hominid ancestors, so there's more mud in the water.

I have no idea if there's evidence for any of this.

Still seems risky to me. Surely the chances of genetic drift are by definition higher where sexual behavior isn't selected for. Culture's good, but it's not as good as your genome. It seems like natural selection will just keep stepping back in to reward those with the instinct to knock boots, so long as there are any left.

Suppose we start with some ancient single-cell organisms, alike in every way except their proclivity to reproduce. Natural selection is just the process by which the descendants of those with the higher proclivity to reproduce will swamp the descendants of the others in short order. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep, pretty much agree there. Variation leading to selection through population niche in the environment.

Presumably then the instinct (let's just call it that) to reproduce is about as old as anything could be and shared across almost all living things. But even if this is a problem natural selection had to solve multiple times, for whatever reason -- population separation, for instance -- it would, every time, exactly the same way. If anything is in natural selection's wheel-house, this is. — Srap Tasmaner

Well now you are putting the cart before the horse and assuming the very thing I am arguing (for humans that is). That is to say, you can have reproduction be more to do with culture than with instincts. And if you want to say well THIS is natural selection then, fine, I'll agree to that but then you are really widening the scope of the use of that term. That means anything cultural is now "natural selection" which is a category error.

You would want to argue that somewhere along the way, in the evolution of hominids. culture became self-reinforcing enough that natural selection no longer needed the instinct to reproduce and could kind of slough it off, just not bother selecting for it because culture had that covered, and that in essence this could have happened without people ever noticing. One day our ancestors had an instinct to reproduce, the next they didn't but culture had already taken the baton. And this would only have happened with us because we're the only species with rich enough cultural lives to have pulled this off. — Srap Tasmaner

You are strawmanning a bit here. I am not saying it was "one day" necessarily. Certainly by the time full-blown language and conceptual frameworks could be implemented. I could not provide you the details from one to the other or even how long that took. Then I would be giving a "just so" story of course.

Okay that's a just-so story. Might even be true. Is there any evidence of the sloughing off mechanism? Is that even a thing that can happen? Maybe some of our ancestors ended up with junk instead of the reproducing-gene and it didn't make any difference because culture. Maybe we're a mixed lot now, some with it, some without, and it's hard to tell one from another because culture. I have no idea. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep.

Also possible that there is no instinct to reproduce per se, but in our case an instinct for sex, because that leads to reproduction, which is what natural selection is actually aiming at. Kinda tricks us into it. Possible. Maybe even likely, since "I will now reproduce" is not really a sensible intention, one you can reliably put into action. But "I will now have sex" sure is. Should really be having sex whenever you're not doing something else you absolutely have to. — Srap Tasmaner

Well that's just it though. "I will now have sex" is indeed a cultural thing more than anything. Pleasure feels good, but everything from initiating with a person, to when and where to do it, is cultural. Even more rudimentary, it is simply satisfying a preference for something that "feels good". However, the fact that it has to be "that person" giving you the pleasure and in "such and such" proscribed way is very much something conceptual driven. It isn't innate. There are many cultural cues that this is what is to be done. In other words, there is "something" one must direct one's preference for pleasure "to" or "for".

But the whole point here is that natural selection is simply unable to leave this to chance, without changing its name to "natural something or other". Reproduction is the only thing natural selection really cares about, and everything else is a means to that end. — Srap Tasmaner

This is using "natural selection" in two different ways. The "natural selection" for which we mean genetics leading to variations that lead to survival is one thing. But "natural selection" as simply a "strategy" (like certain stories that work) that work towards survival is different, and I think we should use a term like "cultural strategy" or something like that.

Look at it this way. Copulation doesn't always lead to reproduction, which is why it makes sense to say we can't have a reproducing instinct but only a sex instinct. — Srap Tasmaner

Again, I even question this. Pleasure feels good is about all we can say here. "Pleasure feels good so now I am going to X" can be culturally derived.

But natural selection is also responsible for the fact that sex is not, among us, guaranteed to result in reproduction. Why did it allow that? With a lot of other species, we see clear seasonality of reproducing, clear indicators of readiness (like, right now readiness) to reproduce, and so on. If we don't see that with Homo sapiens, that's what needs to be understood first. All natural selection can do is change the prevalence of alleles among offspring, it's all based on reproduction, and evidently at some point this version of hominid sexuality and thus reproduction won out. How did that happen and why? — Srap Tasmaner

I think you may not be counting for simple contingency. The cultural preference to direct ones pleasure "towards someone else" and the tropes that surround that just so happened to work in place of natural selection (as used in the biological sense).

I have no idea if there's evidence for any of this.

Still seems risky to me. Surely the chances of genetic drift are by definition higher where sexual behavior isn't selected for. Culture's good, but it's not as good as your genome. It seems like natural selection will just keep stepping back in to reward those with the instinct to knock boots, so long as there are any left. — Srap Tasmaner

Again, culture could have contingently been "good enough" to take the place of some naturally selected instinct.

To be a bit graphic for an analogy:
1) To have a bowel movement is natural.
2) To have a bowel movement feel vaguely "relieving" or "good" is natural
3) To have a bowel movement in a toilet bowl is cultural.

Yet homeless learn to do it, and the ones that like the lifestyle prefer um, "urban camping" (and not saying all or most homeless people do of course). — schopenhauer1

The homeless are outliers. Many of them are drunks and drug addicts, or MI, and as such, are destitute. Some of the homeless are destitute and don't have CD or MI issues. People sleep on the sidewalk (or in doorways, on steam grates where such things exist, or in shelters of some sort) where there is simply no alternative. The CD homeless can't use in in shelters, and the MI may not be stable enough to be housed in shelters.

99.99% of the population consistently avoid sleeping in the streets.

I am not saying that preferences aren't somehow "innate" or at the least, "individual to the person", but rather attributing those preferences or even BEING ATTRACTED ITSELF as somehow a cultural thing. That is to say, the culture reinforces being attracted AT ALL to SOMETHING. — schopenhauer1

Reminds me of this Jefferson Airplane chorus, particularly the imperative last line:

Don't you want somebody to love?
Don't you need somebody to love?
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love!

Music has been flogging the importance of love for decades. All you need is love sung in 10,000 different songs. Quite often "love" is another term for sex.

On the one hand, hormones are the primary motive for us to go find somebody to fuck. Cultural expectations are secondary, but more elaborate. Fucking is fundamental. On the other hand, culture decorates the urge and gives it a more elaborate shape. There are culturally defined standards for prospective sex/love objects. Just any old slob won't do; a very exciting partner might be too unpredictable. We are expected to find a beautiful or handsome mate, curvaceous or muscular, blond or brunet, nicely dressed, etc. People are judged on the quality of their partners--someone you could confidently take home to meet your folks.