Peez

Thank you for the clarification. I believe that this is virtually always the case with creationists: it is not the evidence that has lead them do doubt evolution, but that for philosophical reasons they do not wish evolution to be true. A simplification, perhaps, but it is important to note that science works from the evidence up. The evolution of living things by descent with modification from common ancestors is accepted by scientists as a fact because of the overwhelming evidence for it and the complete lack of evidence against it. The theory of evolution is accepted as the explanation for this fact because it has proven extremely successful in generating empirically testable hypotheses, has been extraordinarily good at predicting outcomes, and has done a remarkable job of explaining how evolution can proceed. Plus, there is no other scientific explanation worth considering. Of course, there are plenty of unscientific explanations out there, but they are not the subject of scientific inquiry.In your post that I was responding to, you stated:One of the definitions that I gave, in the post that you were responding to, was:However, you are still confusing the fact of evolution with the theory of evolution. I agree that, but problematic for common descent, not the mechanism of evolution. The "nested hierarchies" referred to are common descent. By the way, note that "hairy fish with digits" is not a good example of "combined characteristics of different nested groupings" (the nested group that incudes all fish also includes mammals). A "placenta-born feathered crocodile" would be better, such a creature would certainly challenge the pattern of evolution that has been accepted, but would not have anything to do with the mechanism of evolution.It has nothing to do with reciprocal altruism.As I have explained, human behaviour is complex and not well understood. You have, if I understand you, argued that altruism could not have evolved by the mechanisms of the theory of evolution:I have simply shown that altruism can evolve by simple, natural mechanisms.You would first have to demonstrate that any such animals exist. Even so, it would not be that hard to explain. Natural selection is not prescient: it does not favour traits that will, only in the future, become useful. Also, evolution by natural selection is not a perfecting process, it is an opportunistic process. For example, a spider can easily starve to death while standing on a pile of food 10,000 time its own mass, just because it won't eat it. It has evolved behaviours that don't include feeding on things that don't move.?It does not address maternal instincts and it was not presented to describe human altruism.I am afraid that you are not aware of the difficulties involved in such a simplistic attempt to distinguish these concepts. In any event, you have only replaced one set of terms for another, rather than actually define them.This is far from obvious.This is a non-sequitur.Instinct is not the same as programming.I do not agree. If nothing else, it seems to contradict your own definition:The cult member mentioned apparently did sacrifice their own needs, and they did so specifically to provide for the needs of others (in the perception of the cult member, however misguided).You are making yet more assumptions. Did neanderthals go extinct, or did they meld with other Homo sapiens? Did they starve, or did they freeze to death, or did they die from disease, or were they slaughtered by other H. sapiens, or were they eaten by bears? Did they become cannibals at the end as they were starving? I really do not understand why you are dwelling on neanderthals anyhow.Actually, they could. However, there is no need to assume that they did. We are talking about natural selection, and what adaptive advantage cannibalism might have. If behaviours that make one a cannibal reduce the individual's chances of survival and reproduction, natural selection will tend to remove such behaviours whether or not the organisms in question have any idea that cannibalism might be a bad idea.I never suggested that the knowledge that cannibalism was bad was an issue.Again, the knowledge is not the issue (even though you have not demonstrated that neanderthals did not, or were even unlikely to have, known that dead bodies can be hazardous).Please don't muddy the waters with excessive jargon. I have presented a model of how altruistic behaviour can evolve.Please explain exactly how it is that human minds make decisions, moral or otherwise. A brief explanation of what thought is should help to put this in context. That is not an example I would have chosen.It can be argued that kin selection is responsible for altruism, but we don't even have to here. Since you brought up ants, there are ants which "enslave" ants from other colonies to work for them. These enslaved ants work away, without any benefit at all. Why? Because their behaviour is not perfect, they can be "fooled." A behaviour that has evolved through kin selection (cooperation with other colony members) has been generalized so that the ants are doing something that natural selection certainly does not favour. In the same sense, altruistic behaviour that evolved through kin selection in humans (cooperation with other tribe members) could easily be generalized to include cooperation with other humans. (Please do not insult both of us by suggesting that this would make altruistic humans slaves. I am simply explaining how a behaviour can be generalized.)You have chosen one particular example of altruism, and ignored all the rest. Not only that, but you have not established that it is "qualitatively different than the kind (you're) calling human altruism."No.I don't see this at all, in fact I see the opposite. However, what altruism does now is not so relevant as what it did as we evolved. It has taken us about 6,000,000 years to evolve from our most recent common ancestor with chimps, and we were likely already living in small tribal groups then. For the first 5,990,000 years or so since then, we all seem to have lived in small tribal groups, and very few of us lived in anything larger for the first 5,999,000 years or so.What is an "evolutionist, exactly? I think that what you mean here is "scientists" (are you a gravitist? A heliocentrist? An atomist? ). More to the point, you seem to be trying to divide up altruism based on how it evolved, rather than any difference in the altruism.Many assumptions are being made here. First, it should be noted that most people that I know would not sacrifice their life for an idea, religion, or boundary on a map. I do know many who might sacrifice their life (or at least risk their life, which is not the same thing) for their family. I can easily imagine that kin selection was responsible for the evolution of behaviours that tend to make an individual willing to risk sacrifice for the good of a small tribal group that shares many of the individual's alleles. Once these behaviours evolved, they would be advantageous as long as these individuals remained in small tribal groups. Once these tribal groups had grown, and accumulated technology, and become urbanized, and individual organisms found themselves in a very different social environment, the behaviours might still be an advantage or they might not, but either way they would not disappear instantly. Trying to base models of selection on the current human condition is vain.War is exactly what one would expect if altruism had evolved as a behaviour that tended to make one sacrifice for one's own group.

Peez

Peez

Please excuse the off-topic post, but this is from a favorite quote of mine that we have to share:- Thomas H. Huxley


Peez

Albert Cipriani

Dear Maj,
No. Fish rained on medieval villages. Did those medievalists need to establish the existence of the pond wherefrom the fish came before they could believe their eyes? Did they have to know that a waterspout, like a straw, could suck a pond dry?

Fact is, facts don’t always arrive with a calling card of explanation. If you refuse to admit into your parlor an uncouth fact on account that it cannot be accounted for, is not cognitively attired, or lacks the requisite niceties of common sense that would allow it to mix in your polite society, you may soon find yourself alone in an empty room. At the very least, your parties will be more boring.

I never said it did. Just because the theory of evolution does not explain human altruism is no reason to ashcan the theory’s many other valid explanations. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Peez

Let's try to keep the tone respectful, if we can. No doubt NPM will respond, but I will just note that humans evolved on one continent, in fact from one population of apes, and it took at least 6 million years (plenty of time for memes to move around the world many times. Spurious arguments like this are not helpful.

Peez

Peez

Sorry, I cannot resist this one.

A scientific theory is not "supposed to articulate what is most probable." A scientific theory is "the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another" based on reasoning and empirical evidence, and generates empirically testable hypotheses. It stands or falls based on its ability to explain natural phenomena with natural explanations, and whether or not hypotheses generated from the theory can be empirically falsified.

Peez

Majestyk

[aside] I hope these "server is busy" messages are not personalized.[/aside]

Dear Albert,

Is the uncouth fact that I am refusing to admit to my party, the non-naturalistic nature of altruism? If, so then, you are getting ahead of yourself. No such fact has been established.

I also fail to see where the Theory of Evolution failed to account for the development of altruistic tendancies. Could it be that you simply refuse to accept that such tendancies could have a naturalistic source?

Perhaps you should consider my observation on the tendancy towards insanity as well? It is as much a shared trait as altruism.

Doubting Didymus

There is a confusion here, and I will seek it out!

There is a division in this thread between what Albert is calling 'true altruism' and what the rest of us are envisioning. Evolution can and does produce altruism where there is a positive cost/benifit outcome for the organism, such as in peez's gronks, who benifit from their gronk egg refusing tendancies even when they apply to gronk eggs they might otherwise have safely eaten.

Albert's definition is slightly different, If I read correctly. Albert is specifically speaking about altruistic acts that have absolutely no benefit to the organism. Such a tendancy can have no selective benefit, and I think albert is quite right to wonder where such a tendancy might have its origin.

First, it is important to note that such behaviours are extraordinarily rare. I can not think of any animal other than humans and possibly occasionally in chimpanzees. Also, even among humans such behaviour is extraordinarily rare. Most of our 'everyday' altruism appears to have selectively plausible impetus: sharing food, for example. We are often quite willing to lay out for a good meal for all our friends, and buy a round or two while we're at it. However, it is a rare man indeed who is willing to let this occur every night, with no-one else ever sharing with him in return. Our close friends are percieved as family (no doubt family groups are the situation in which such tendancies evolved), and we can 'missapply' kin selection to them: leaping on a landmine to save their lives. It is a rare man who throws himself on a landmine for someone he cares nothing for, however.

However, altruism can occur in humans where no return benifit is involved at all. Brave individuals are known to risk their lives for the lives of total strangers, that they have no reason to expect return benefit from or imagine are family. It is possible, but tenuous, that humans have an instinct to protect all other humans, but it is not generally seen in other species.

Sometimes humans are even altruistic toward other species! The other day I swerved on the road to avoid hitting someones ugly little dog. It would have been much, much safer for me to simply flatten the hideous little thing, but I simply didn't want to. One of my most burning desires is to see the siberian tiger protected from extinction. I can think of no benifit to myself that I get from such a tendancy, and I certainly don't think I have a species protection instinct.

It is my belief that evolution by natural selection does not directly explain altruism where no benefit can be exacted. I believe that such altruism comes from me. I have a complex brain and I have free will to make the choices I please. Just as I can apply my mind to contemplating the morphology of a fungus at the cellular level, NOT something that any natural selection in my ancestors could have intended, I can apply the same mind to acts that make the world just slightly better for other creatures, even when I don't reap the reward myself (I hate that little dog). How is this possible? It's possible because evolution has armed me with a device of supreme flexibility, which I am able to apply to a million unintended uses: the brain. It is this device, that allows me to choose whatever actions I like regardless of whether they are good for my genes or not, that allows me and every other human to act in a selfless way, if only they choose it. The brain itself is a spectacular selective advantage, so explaining ITS origin is not difficult.

Majestyk

Okay. So far, this is a hair that I can see being split. If, by "non-natural", we are limiting the term to the products of humanity then, yes; there are aspects to the character of individuals, which, are not a direct result of natural phenomena.

It wasn't "natural" for refined metals to be propelled out of the solar system. Or for sustained nuclear fission to appear on the planet. Or for abstract concepts to be shared worldwide thru the transmission and reception of electromagnetic energy. No, these things are not "natural". Nor are they supernatural.

I've been contemplating the idea of technological societies retarding the process of evolution but it's still in an amorphous state.

Albert Cipriani

Bravo Doubting!
You have spoken rightly. Thank God for that hateful ugly little runt of a dog. But if that’s what it took to veer you off your predetermined naturalistic course into my creationist camp, amen.

Seriously, thanks for the clarification. I totally agree with what you wrote. Over only the following statement might we quibble: I think they seem rare because we are too dull to recognize them in microcosm. It takes a macrocosmic martyr or a dead hero to capture our attention because we are guilty of binary thinking, that is, either someone selflessly sacrifices their life or not. But our life need not be sacrificed in total; it can be squandered by degree. Indeed, a continuum of self-sacrifice stretches between sociopaths and saints.

If we simply redefine our lives as a temporal rather than a biological phenomenon, if we view our lives not as our life but the time in which we have to live, then any sacrifice of any moment of our lives qualifies as human altruism. For example, instead of tuning in music, I turn to the news for my daily dose of humanity’s poison. This kind of behavior is very common. It is synonymous with prayer, i.e., it transcends our naturalistic roots and qualifies as a supernatural fruit. Even people as evil and godless as Hitler, no doubt, engaged in this kind of behavior, what I’m calling human altruism. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Majestyk