luvluv

Please do but I'm not sure that would answer my point. Whatever it is which constrains birds to their families constrains them more effectively than that which constrains humans to their families. It does not take the threat of a predator for a human mother or father to abandon their young. Some just don't want to deal with the consequences of their actions.

A bird just never wakes up one morning and says "From now on, I'm looking out for number one" and takes off.

Do they?

Karen M

Good Morning luv


>>>But my point is that humans also instinctually care about our offspring, but that doesn't mean we always stick around and take care of our young. But if I understand instinct correctly, birds ALWAYS take care of their young. In other words, there is no fatherlessness among birds, and no evidence of birds arbitrarily abandoning their young because they don't want the burden of caring for them. It would seem the instinct to take care of the young is more compelling in birds than the emotions of guilt surronding human behavior about his family.<<<

First of all, as Coragyps already stated, birds and other animals actually DO abandon their young from time to time.

Second of all, humans have a slight problem when it comes to following instincts. It's called thinking. When evolution came down to either having a large brain and the ability to comprehend complex topics or following instincts more effectively, it choose the brain because it is more capable at survivial.


>>>No my argument is strictly about the parenting instinct, not just the instinct for sex. The instinct that makes the male bird stick around and care for his kid, and defend his family with his life if necessary. Wouldn't it be more efficient for human fathers to have an instinct with this kind of, for lack of a better word, compulsion.<<<

Unless we are talking about later traits, I simply meant that the bird would protect it's mate more [such as making sure they didn't fall off something or making sure they knew if a snake was nearby]. I didn't mean quite so extreme as one parent sacrificing their life for their mate.


>>>I know all human fathers BELIEVE they would do these things before hand, many human fathers abandon their children. Is there an observable phenomenon amongst mating animals of them ever simply abandoning their off-spring?<<<

Yes.


>>>I am saying that whatever instinct is in bird's heads, it obviously works better than whatever instinct is in a human's heads, because human fathers routinely take off. (And women often abandon their children).<<<

Instinct may work better in birds because birds probably do not have to think about the large responsibilities and consiquences of bringing up a child, where as these things might turn off human parents.


>>>I very heartily disgaree. There are anguished fathers who feel tormented over abandoning their children years earlier.<<<

This does not stop him from being guilty because he has still hurt his relationship with someone. The guilty instinct would still have evolved to encourage him to stay with the child, but, as you said, not all humans have to do everything all their instincts tell them to do. I don't see how this would disqualify evolution as a reason for the existance of emotions?


>>>Or think a soldier who runs away from his platoon in a fire fight out of fear. All these people are disobeying their moral instincts. The father's morality is telling him to stay and raise his children. The soldier's instinct is telling him to stay and fight.<<<

This is the same type of example I told you before; one instinct, in this case the will to live, has overriden another instinct.


>>>Yet they disobey and feel guilty about it. The very "feeling guilty" is proof that humans often do disobey the morality they hold for themselves.<<<

They feel guilty because they could not do both and they chose one [or perhaps feel guilty because they look back on it and now would choose a different choice].

Look at it this way: You have two children. They both have a very deadly disease and you only have enough medication for one of them. You must choose between them and so you choose Joe. Does that stop you from feeling guilty that Mike is still going to die? In the case of most people, probably not.

The soldier had a choice between his life and staying in a fire-fight. He probably would have choosen both if possible but in the end, he decided that he wanted to save his life. Just because he made the decision modivated by self-preservation does not mean that he is not going to feel guilty about other choices he could have made. I don't think he purposely signed up knowing that he would run away [which WOULD be immoral to himself if he knew he would put himself in this situation], he probably signed up thinking he would stay and only when confonted with the actual thing did he become scared [which overrode the need for relationships].

Basically, I think, for most people, when it is between their life and the life of someone else, they instinctivily choose their own life.

On the other hand, again, I don't see how a soldier running away from a battle means that emotions didn't evolve?


>>>Nevertheless, I would always see that as a strict disadvantage this creature would have to it's fellows.<<<

Not really.


>>>I can't see how for the first moral creatures it would at all have been an advantage to it personally to protect it's mate or care for it's progeny. I don't think it is neutral because anyway you slice it caring for two or more beings as much as yourself, and defending them as you would defend yourself, is a risky proposition.<<<

I never said it would defend them as it would defend itself; I said that it would have an instinct to protect them.


>>>For example there is a bird who builds a nest near my house every year, and who engages in very dangerous confrontations with my cat. Now the first bird (or whatever) to display this kind of willingness to defend his mate must surely have had a much higher mortality rate than the rest of the birds (or whatever) who didn't care.<<<

More advanced protective instincts [such as attacking a cat] probably would have come much later. All I am saying is that it probably started out with a simple willingness to make sure their mate was in no danger [as in, with the bird case, chirp at them to tell them that there is a cat there or to make sure they don't fall off something before they get their wings spread; just basic things that do not require you to kill yourself ]


>>>Also, most conflict does not originate from an animal being a murderer or having evil intent, it simply evolves from selfishness, which ALL animals are unless that selfishness is checked by some other instinct. If you need evidence of this, go to a local nursery A parent defending her young would have to defend it against it's fellows or predators, simply becase it's fellows and predators all have a "me-first" mentality.<<<

I'm not denying that most animals have a me-first state of mind; I am saying that this me-first state of mind would probably make them want to avoid conflict and not put themselves in danger [in other words, it wouldn't make them want to kill everyone just for the hell of it ].


>>>With all due respect, I believe this is wrong. I've been around recovering addicts and they have OVERWHELMING feelings of guilt. They don't simply believe they choose one instinct over another, they believe they chose the WRONG instinct. Also, in that case it is not a case of one natural instinct being overriden by another, but of all natural instincts being overcome by a chemical addiction.<<<

Yes, and they feel bad because they know that they have lost control of their addiction. Addiction is what happens when the urge to do something becomes so great that you can not control your actions. Again, I don't see why feeling guilty over drug addition problems means evolution didn't play a role in creating guilt?


>>>Also, we both know it does not take drug addiction for a man to abandon his family. Often just pure selfishness will do.<<<

Yes, some people are more selfish than others. Selfishness has a clear advantage in evolution. Selfishness probabaly evolved along with emotions; we have many competing instincts that all encourage many different things.


>>>I think you are ommitting feelings of guilt from your arguments, and that actually is what I am most concerned about: where did these feelings of guilt come from and what is the advantage of having them?<<<

If you feel guilty it is likely that you have done something that has hurt your relationship with someone else. Guilty feelings encourage you to make it up to them. On the other hand, the "guilty feeling instinct" is not perfect, so it works on most anything when you have hurt your relationship with someone and it can not tell whether you can actually make it up now or not [ like the two children example; though you will feel guilty for not choosing Mike, you can not make it up now because he is already dead]


>>>As to my official affiliation, I am somewhere in between being and Old Earth Creationist and a Theistic Evolutionist. I guess you could call me an evolution agnostic . Most of the theories of evolution make sense to me except the origin of life theories.<<<

Evolution is not full of "theories;" it is ONE theory. The Theory of Evolution simply states how living things addapt to the environment around them. It makes no claims as to how life began. Life could have been put here by God, Primordial Soup, magically came together by the Force, or blown out by the great supernatural whale. It doesn't matter.


>>>I have a hard time believing that life originated from non-life.<<<

You are talking about the Primordial Soup hypothesis? That is not included in The Theory of Evolution. Neither is the Big Bang [which is also commonly mistaken for evoltuion].


Have a nice day

Karen

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: Karen M ]</p>

RufusAtticus

Simple answer.

Humans are social animals. Morals allow us to function as social animals. There are clear evolutionary advantages to living in tribes, although it is not necessary for the survival of every species. Rules of behavior evolve along with tribes to insure that the members of the tribe peasefully cooperate as much as possible. In humans, we've just elevated these rules to the status of morals.

-RvFvS

NialScorva

A rather simple answer to your parental instinct question:

IMO, humanity's best adaptation is that it has reprogrammable instincts. Far more than any other species, we learn rather than react. The problem, of course, is that all it takes is a couple bad situations, and you've polluted the learned instincts for generations. Bad parenting usually runs in families. There will be mistakes, and there will be cascade problems, but that's expected under evolution, while it poses a nontrivial problem for absolute moral codes.

From an evolutionary standpoint, bad parenting and a decline in morals isn't necessarily a bad thing for survival. However, we *can* say that historically, cooperation and morality have been positive traits for the survival of populations, and there doesn't seem to be any reason to think things are going to change. There's an entire area of math dedicated to working out cooperation problems, and quite often, cooperation is more effective than greed for populations.

Peez

What are you basing this opinion on? Do you know anything about bird nesting behaviour? The fact that you are talking about "birds" rather than a species or group of species suggests that you do not (birds vary greatly in their nesting behaviour). I do not mean to be rude, but you seem to have some vague notion about birds acting certain ways, and I am afraid that you are mistaken. Human behaviour is certainly very complex, but there are plenty of examples of humans abandoning (or outright killing) their young when it was economically preferable to do so. Birds don't talk. Of course, if they could, they would sometimes say just that. By taking care of their offspring, they are "looking out for number one" as that is the best way to pass on their genes. Birds (and many other animals) abandon their offspring when long term reproductive success is favoured by that strategy.

Peez

P.S.: By the way, in many birds (and other animals), siblings kill each other to increase their own chances to survive and reproduce.

Coragyps

Luvluv: I can't find the article: maybe I dreamed it. Anyway, as Peez says, there is great variation in how birds behave. Cowbirds and some cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests and never revisit, or even send child support checks; some of the geese and swans, OTOH, allegedly are model parents.
In today's human culture, predation is usually not a real hazard anyway. I think that the sabre-tooth cat has been replaced by the landlord, the repo man, and the finance company. At least, one of those is probably almost always involved when daddy splits for parts unknown.

Dr Rick

Is instinctive behavour learnable? If it is, what distinguishes it from non-instinctive behavour?

If a behavour can be willfully avoided, how can it be instinctive? Humans do have many different types of urges, but urges are stimuli whereas instincts are behavours. One can choose to ignore a stimulus or urge, but how does an organism "disobey" or avoid an instinctive behavour?

scombrid

Have you ever come home and your faithful dog greeted you at the door but something was off? Perhaps her tail wagged more slowly than usual or she just had a sad look on her face. You don't know she's done anything wrong but she looks guilty. Later you find out that she has broken a house rule. This happens whenever my dog breaks a rule. She has lived with me for 13years and we can read each others body language quite well. Therefore I can tell that she has done something wrong just by her expressions. She exudes guilt before she has been caught. What does that have to do with morality as an evolved instinct?

Dogs are pack animals. That is why they're so damn useful to humans as workers and companions. Loyalty to the group is bought partly through guilt. The guilt is an instinctual expression of having broken the social order. One must learn the social order to be able to feel guilt but the guilt is built in. When my dog arrived as a strey she killed my parakeet and brought it to me smiling. She quickly learned that animals in the house were off-limits to her. Just going in the bird room is against the rules. If she has been snooping in there I usually find out first by her body language.

Some will argue that is just her self preservation kicking because she fears the consequense if caught. First, the same could be true of all human guilt. Second, let us contrast the behavior of a misbehaving cat. I also have cats, not social other than from an oportunistic standpoint. They don't exhibit the guilt. If a cat has been up to no good they will either disappear until the coast in clear or they will act as if nothing has happened. They are very consequense oriented. I know you guys have been discussing guilt in the relm of parenting instinct and birds but I just wanted to throw out a quick example of guilt as an instinct selected for in social groups. You can't tell me that my pooch doesn't have that sinking feeling in her gut when she has broken the social order just as I do if I forget my mother's birthday.

luvluv

I just used birds for the sake of argument, it was the first mating animal where the father participated in rearing it's young that I could think of.

I understand that some birds leave the nest out of duress, I was asking whether or not there is a record of a bird just leaving it's young for no reason.

scombrid, I disagree on the issue of cats not having a guilty feeling. I have a cat and when it makes a mistake and does it's do in the house it definitely looks guilty. She hides and doesn't come when I call her. And as soon as the door opens offering her a way out, she takes it. Then she comes back a few hours later kind of sheepishly, hoping that I have forgotten everything.

Vorkosigan

Luvluv, there is an entire field called "Evolutionary Psychology" that studies the evolution of morality and cognition in humans. Try The Adapted Mind by Tooby and Cosimides. See also Human Universals by Don Brown. Or the work of Buss, Pinker.....or start with this primer:

<a href="http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html" target="_blank">http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html</a>

Evolution + culture is more than enough to take care of any moral development. No god necessary.

Michael

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: turtonm ]</p>