Jackalope

Albert, where in the world did you get the idea that neaderthals ate 97% meat? Their teeth, their suborbital arches and their other skull structure would tend to suggest a largely plant-based diet. In fact, a tougher variety of plant material than homo sapiens was eating. So neanderthals not eating their dead isn't all that suprising. And even then...the evidence is still pretty contradictory. This article shows evidence that the neaderthals may indeed have eaten their own dead, at least under some circumstances.

Homo sapiens sapiens, on the other hand, has a well-established behavior of canibalism. The latest uproar has been evidence that "peaceful" Anasazi may have been cannibals. And with more and more evidence turning up, it's getting harder to argue that the Anasazi didn't practice cannibalism at least on some occasions. Biochemical evidence of cannibalism, article from Nature.

Then there's the find that suggests the ancient celts may have also practiced cannibalsim. Discover article on english find Problem is, without the biochemical evidence (prehistoric poop samples), one can't say whether the flesh was actually consumed or whether the bodies were simply defleshed as part of funerary ceremonies (still done in Tibet).

The Wari are another example of cannibalsim, in this case ritual. In
Giving Canabalism a Human Face, the author argues that the dead are consumed out of respect and as a way to help the survivors deal with their own grief.

So cannibalsim is probably a poor example to use for this argument on either side.

Non-praying Mantis

[aside]
WOOHOO!!! Post Number 666!
[/aside]


All quoted material originally posted by Albert Cipriani:








Hmmm...I must be on one of those vibrating electric football games, because the goalposts keep moving!

Albert, it seems, from the above selected quotes from this thread, that you make your definition of human altruism to be whatever you want it to be at the moment. Perhaps this is because:



Pushover is right!



Obviously, "we" weren't clear on any definition of "altruism."

Albert, why don't you, once and for all, decide on your definition of altruism, and be done with changing it. Then, maybe we can seriously debate this topic! Or, perhaps I am acting "altruisticly," because according to one of your definitions:



I appear to be sacrificing my time for you with no benefit!
:banghead:

NPM

Peez

A worthy goal.It is worth noting that Albert has used a number of different definitions of "altruism," as Non-praying Mantis has noted. At least some of these can easily be explained by the gronk model.You seem to be assuming, at least implicitly, that evolution by natural selection should be expected to produce infallible behaviours. I have pointed out that a pattern of behaviour may evolve by, say, kin selection and then be generalized to include entirely "altruistic" (absolutely no benefit, direct or indirect) behaviour. I also noted that we live in a very different social environment than the one in which we evolved.You make a good point about the brain, but it is still possible to explain the evolution of altruism by the theory of evolution (without automatically assuming that it did).

Peez

Albert Cipriani

Dear Peez,
I think we’ve taken this as far as we can. I’d like to sum up our differences and see if we can at least agree on what it is that we disagree on.

Peez: Albert: You’ve only shown how the kind of altruism exhibited by non-humans evolved (kin selection or reciprocal altruism), not what I call human altruism. The former is autonomous, repetitive, and reflexive while the latter is deliberate, unpredictable, and reflective

Peez: OK. Fair enough. No one promised us a rose garden. Fine distinctions are the province of refined minds. We ought not to shy away from them.

I think we agree that some altruistic-like human behaviors can be extrapolated from kin selection. For example, we may sacrifice ourselves because we are able to imagine our nation as our kinfolk or even of all humanity as our brothers.

But human altruism gets us to sacrifice ourselves for separate species and even for rocks. Think of all the people who have died trying to defend or gain access to the Holy Sepulcher (which is nothing more than a rock). Or as a scientist, imagine what you yourself would not be willing to sacrifice to block some commercial enterprise from harvesting the rings of Saturn. I dare say, like with my crusading Christian forefathers, such a territorial power-grab would be a secular casus belli. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Albert Cipriani

Dear NPM
I was clear in my own mind, just not in the form of pixels on your screen, evidently. Which illustrates an epistemological truism, that meaning leapfrogs over the words we use to express meaning. That is, thought precedes language.

We see evidence of this in children using words and colloquialisms appropriately tho they, if asked, cannot tell you what those words mean.

For example, I remember as a child correctly using the expression “keep an eye peeled” to mean “pay attention.” One day I distinctly remember spontaneously understanding the meaning of the term as “keeping one’s eyelids peeled back, that is, open.” I was shocked and disgusted at the grossness of this literal meaning. The actual definition of this expression conjured up images of pealing a grape or skinning an animal. So I resolved not to use that expression anymore.

That childhood experience stands as proof to me that we can talk meaningfully without literally or even actually comprehending the definitions of the terms we employ. Indeed, we acquire most of our vocabulary, not by definitions, but by the vagaries of usage. Thus, I believe the manifold ways in which I used the phrase “human altruism” should have made its meaning reasonably clear to you.

If not, human altruism may be technically defined as nonreciprocal (or, stated positively, “loving”) self-sacrifice. Human altruism may be religiously defined as the Golden Rule. Mankind’s instinctual understanding of this non-naturalistic capacity of his is what has caused him to construct all of his religions, even Satanism, around sacrifice.

You are quite right. Your attempts to straighten me out constitute an example of human altruism. Goes to show you didn’t need a more precise definition after all. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Peez

I disagree. First, you certainly seemed to object to the possibility of kin selection leading to the evolution of altruism: Second, you have not established the basis for your whole line of argument:A very compelling argument can be made that virtually all healthy human beings exhibit no "altruistic" tendencies (in the sense of there being no benefit at all). I am not trying to make such an argument, but you have provided no reason to think that your claim is true.

Third, you have not explained how human behaviour works, and therefore the distinctions that you are trying to draw between "human altruism" and "altruism" in general. You have not explained what you mean by "autonomous," "repetitive," "reflexive," instinctual," "conscious," "deliberate," "unpredictable," or "reflective." Since you are basing your argument on distinctions among these terms, it is important that you are clear about what you mean when you use them.

Fourth, I have explained how "human altruism" (in the sense of behaviour that provides absolutely no benefit to the individual or any of its kin) could evolve by the theory of evolution. To summarize and simplify:

1) Kin selection favours humans that help familiar humans (humans at this time live in small tribal groups, anyone who is familiar is also likely related).

2) Increasing communication allows humans to become more familiar with other tribal groups, which causes them to tend to act altruistically towards them, even though there is no benefit to doing so. This is simply a "mistake" of the general behaviour of helping familiar humans.I was not referring to "altruism vs. human altruism," I was referring toI also stated:The point is that you are being quite vague here.Your meaning here is not clear to me. I would agree that kin selection could be responsible for the evolution of altruistic behaviour through the generalization of "kinship" with a wider group of humans or even other animals. However, the humans in question do not need to imagine anything for this to work.You have claimed thatyet I think that you will find the number of people willing to sacrifice their lives for a rock rather small. Even so, there is a wider issue: what does the rock represent? It may be argued that sacrificing ones-self for a holy rock would actually be selfish - insuring one's good fortune in the afterlife. But even if that is ignored, our patterns of behaviour are not perfect, so we should not expect that they will always work in the way that natural selection favoured them (particularly since our social conditions have so radically changed). I have brought this up before, but you have not addressed it. You have failed to establish that humans tend to be "altruistic" in an absolute sense, but despite this I have explained how such absolute "altruism" could evolve.

Peez

Albert Cipriani

Dear Jackalope
From a recent PBS special about Neaderthals. Somehow they could tell that Neaerthals' diet was 97% meat based upon trace markers in their bones. I agree that we've beaten the dead horse of canabalism beyond recognition and am willing to walk away from that carcass. -- Albert the Traditional Catholic

Wounded King

You can find the paper with that analysis of carnivorous behaviour in neanderthals here.

Wounded King

I can see that the topic swayed back to more abstruse questions of morality and altruism after its detour into kin selection. There is a just recently published paper, possibly not yet published in fact, discussing the importance of indirect genetic effects (IGEs) as an environmental factor in evolution. IGEs are those environmental factors which are due to another individuals genetic make up, such as the genes regulating nurturing behaviour in parents. The paper also discusses the role of IGEs on kin selection and altruistic behaviour.

The paper is

Wolf JB.
Genetic architecture and evolutionary constraint when the environment contains genes.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Apr 15;100(8):4655-60.

And it is on the cover, woo hoo!

Non-praying Mantis

Albert, I want to make a few comments here:

A "meme" is an idea. Examples of memes are: jokes, philosophical points, songs, ditties, jingles, etc. Any information, specifically ideas, that can be transfered from one human mind to another is a meme. As to your disbelief of transmission:

1) Today, I can infect a person on a far continent with an idea. Just today, I received an email from Lunachick, and she lives in New Zeland (about as far away from where I live as you can get without leaving the earth!). If she sent me a joke, that I repeat here, then this would be an example of meme transfer. In the information age, we get an overload of memes every day from the media, internet, collegues, etc. Just about any human communication can transfer memes.
2) Memes that are "successful" are memes that make their spread more likely, and these memes can spread throughout human culture and across cultures. One example of a popular meme is "Why did the chicken cross the road? - to get to the other side!" You know this meme, so do I and probably billions of other people. But memes are not limited to just jokes. The concept of democracy is another popular meme which has spread across the planet.
3) I am not suggesting that primitive Homo sapiens had the internet, but memetic transfer was also possible then. For an example of an altruistic meme that could spread is a tale about an altruistic hero saving the life of someone transferring between family groups as stories told by travelers.

Actually, the idea of altruism could be implanted on one's mind by hearing the story of a successful hero who saved a child. Whether or not you actually attempt to save the life of a child yourself depends on your actual thought process when you are presented with the opportunity. You weigh the situation, and then act. Don't you think that hearing a story such as the one above might influence whether or not you attempt to save the child?
Soul, God, whatever you call it. You have proposed a supernatural solution (albeit a very undefined one...) to the puzzle of human altruism, and we have attempted to show you how natural means could be responsible.

NPM