Babies can tell if yer good or bad

I didn't realise stealing psychology textbooks was such a universal human experience, mine's a:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychology-AS-Level-Michael-Eysenck/dp/1841693782/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195828044&sr=1-4

Anyone want to buy it while we're here?

serious? At undergrad level too!

nah we did about co operation in pack and herd animals, I also remember doing some kick ass hit about ants and bee's how there hives were organised and how they passed on knowledge. I remember it well cause I started busting out some kropotkin shit that the teacher loved. Seriousl though how the fuck do you begin studying animals behaviour without dealing with evolution, that's just batshit insane.

Hymenoptera are more closely related to their sisters than to their children due to haploidiploidy, hence it benefits their individual genes to sacrifice their lives to the colony. Kropotkin had some species selection theory going on, but I guess you can't blame him since he was writing before the modern synthesis.

well said

yes but like I said evolution only frames things in the most obvious banal ways, the complexity of human culture and how we actively shape our environments in ways that massively dwarf any other species means to say anything interesting we have to move way beyond evolutionary perspectives.

Nah but it was'nt like it was restricted to just that, it feed into issues about social psychology, child development, the innateness of intelligence and language, sex and gender differences. The problem with evolutionary psychology is that it's simply shit at explaining human behaviour in anything beyond banalities. I mean by what criteria is studying animal behaviour in terms of evolution not 'evolutionary psychology'?

I wouldn't go as far as to say that evolutionary biology does not come up with anything interesting, but I am not disputing the thrust of your argument. Obviously cultural evolution joins genetic evolution once brains evolve to a degree that is capable of supporting memes, and for a certain period of time mental development helps bootstap genetic evolution via the baldwin effect (see the extremely rapid development of the human brain in under 5 million years, an instant of evolutionary time). Then a point is reached at which the fitness curve is so levelled off at the top due to brain plasticity that genetic evolution becomes totally insignificant, and we are purely in the realm of social and cultural evolutuion.

However, this is not to say that human nature is infinitely malleable, far from it (see Donald E Brown's list of human universals). As Wilson put it, the genes hold culture on a leash. Now that leash may be pretty long, but the genotype still prescribes the limits of human behaviour. In our brains we still retain all the hallmarks of having evolved in smallish primitive hunter-gatherer communities, and this is betrayed by many of our behavioural idiosyncrasies. Our minds are not multi-purpose ideally rational computers, but an assortment of specialised gadgets adapted to various functions required in primitive life. Now we may hijack these gadgets for other purposes, exapt them, but we cannot entirely shake off our evolutionary heritage. (For example, a child can pick up a language and speak it fluently effortlessly, because the brain is equipped with the tools specialised for this purpose, but learning to read and write will always be a struggle for a child, will be a slower process and will require much hard graft, because, writing not having been around when we were evolving, the selection pressures did not exist that would have allowed us to evolve specialised reading/writing modules in the brain).

Banalities? I think the best thing about evolutionary psychology is how it uncovers our shared evolutionary heritage and ubiquitous human universals. It can effectively demolish bullshit cultural relativism, which is a plus in my book.

oh dears, this is exactly were we part company.

Plus, evolutionary psychology is a very useful tool for studying the brain and mental faculties, which is pretty much the last great mystery we have yet to start really tackling.

Hah, let's save this one for another thread I think. But in the meantime, have a look at this:
http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/universals.html
I need to read this sometime:
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Universals-Donald-E-Brown/dp/007008209X

but it wasn't just an aside cos we did about it in relation to human development and behaviour, it was aside in so much as all evolutionary psychology is an aside or reading off animal behaviour. of course my encounters with it were much more on a meta level,looking at it's approach and assumptions rather than using those assumptions and methodology to study behaviours, i'd imagine to be studying EP in that manner you'd have to be doing a post grad or a specialised undergrad module.

I went camping last summer. A man (who i did not recognize) came striding purposefully into camp as if, well, he owned the place. (In fact, I later learned he owned the adjoining property, and had come to make sure i knew where the property line was.)

My dog, twelve years old, had never threatened to bite anyone not reaching for his food bowl. But he went nuts over this guy. I had to phsyically restrain him. When i found out what the bougie bastard's mission was, i sorta wished the ole hound had accidentally slipped his restraints.

No, I'm not arguing that dogs are inherently class conscious. But still, I found the matter strange since, as i say, 1- my dog never offers to bite, even people i dislike (and i meet tons of those types), and 2- i had no ill will towards this fellow initially, at the time my dog kicked into attack mode. He picked up on some initial clue, that i missed.

There. You can always count on this random anarchist for a tangentially relevant anecdote.

So you are saying writing is the selection pressure that could have developed writing? Clearly, its been a good many years since I've studied genetics and evolutionary biology (albeit on a limited basis), but this strikes me as a very limited way to describe what could have been a selection pressure to favor quick uptake and mastery of reading and writing skills.

More likely, there was some favored ability to reproduce sounds in pictoral form and replicate images. I imagine this would to some extent (unclear how much) favored individuals or groups who had these traits. Both in terms of social status (of course, in some societies certain traits beneficial in another environment might render one an outcast) and of course, survival and reproduction.

And I recall Gould writing about some theories of the development of wings. Obviously, something does not usually go from having no wings or a small appendage to having full-blown wings. This does not mean that the ability to fly caused the selection of those with better wings, or that wings developed to permit flying. Rather, there was another value had from whatever came along with the expression of this pre-flight trait, such as balance, structural stability, etc.

And some times, certain traits just "come along for the ride," eh?

No. Obviously writing is a cultural invention, and has nothing to do with genetic evolution. My point is that in the hunter gatherer environment in which we evolved, writing had not yet been invented, and therefore there was not obviously a specific selection pressure in favour of learning to read/write per se. This is not to suggest that other modules in the brain specialised for different tasks could not be trained by sustained practise to read or write (which is what happens in primary school). However, this is an entirely different phenomenon to learning to speak, which infants pick up automatically, due to specialised brain software 'designed' for this very task through genetic evolution. I really don't see how this point can be disputed, I didn't think it to be at all contentious when I wrote it.

No. Writing is an extremely recent invention in evolutionary time, and there is no way that its after its sudden appearance in the environment there could have been time for it to affect genetic evolution and alter brain structure. I think you are mixing up cultural and genetic evolution. Of course this does not mean that abilities like hand-eye coordination, and various mental faculties that evolved to deal with different tasks, cannot be exploited by us for a different function when we learn to read. If we didn't have these preexisting faculties, we would never learn to read/write at all, but on the other hand, if writing had been a common feature of our environment for millions of years (maybe aliens put it there) and the ability to read it had affected the differential survival of individuals, then probably learning to read would be as effortless as learning to speak.

I'm not a big fan of Gould, given his anti-adaptionist stance, but what he says about exaptation isn't contraversial at all. But in this case about wings, it's actually much more likely that wings were selected for flying ability (of course, in stages as proto-wings developed, allowing longer jumps, then gliding, then rudimentary flying etc). His theory about most complex adaptations being epiphenomenons isn't convincing, and it's akin to creationist arguments ( who will often point to the complexity of the eye for example, and argue that it could not have come about in one macro-mutation and therefore could not have evolved at all...the answer of course, is that 1% of an eye is better for seeing with than 0%, and this is enough of a selection pressure for evolution to work with, in little steps).

]But the thing is, he was so determinedly anti-adaptionist that he didn't. If you look in the post above about wings, there's clearly the assumption that nothing short of about 90% of a wing is enough for selection pressure for, specifically, development of wings for flight, to work on. Gould franticly put forward theory after theory, trying to somehow knock adaptionism off its pedestal, but the irony is that every theory he did put forward merely strengthened the case for adaptionism! For example, there is nothing inherently anti-adaptionist about his theory that most adaptations are exaptations; natural selection exploiting some feature of the phenotype that originally arose in response to an entirely different selection pressure.
However, there is a difference between this entirely commonplace observation, and the implication in what he said that the driving force for complex adaptations is not natural selection (which he supposes can only fine tune things), but that they arise as side-effects / epiphenomenons of other selection processes. As far as I'm concerned this is a load of bull. The odds of any complex adaptation arising as a side effect are second to none. This basic idea has been taken up by those such as Chomsky and Penrose, who reject the computational theory of mind and evolutionary psychology, and put forward batty versions of Gould's theory to account for intelligence. Chomsky things that the entirely specialised, mind blowingly complex organisation of the brain is an epiphenomenon arising from selection for larger brains (what use is there in having a big head? If anything it decreases fitness...Chomsky has got his causation backwards, a large head/brain is clearly an epiphenomenon of selection for smarter / more specialised brains, and for once the term is justified!). Penrose on the other hand, thinks that intelligence is an epiphenomenon of various features of quantum mechanics. (What??? Why the hell do they let physicists do biology, this idea is beyond stupid...just GAH!).

Well, punk eek is another example of a theory devised by Gould to combat adaptationism that backfired by strengthening neo-Darwinism. Yes, when populations go through bottlenecks, evolution can speed up due to increased genetic drift, and of course geographic isolation is the driving force behind allopatric speciation. There's nothing contraversial in that. And the main point is that close up, Gould's 'saltations' or leaps look exactly like gradualism. The only look like leaps when you look at them on a huge scale of millions of years. But again, there are two different ways of looking at the implications of the theory. The non-revolutionary, non-contraversial basic insight, that populations go through long periods of equilibria, has been absorbed into neo-Darwinism. But as with the theory of epiphenomenon's, there's also a kooky reading of the theory, ie/ that complex adaptations arise fully formed in 'leaps'. This is the idea that Gould was using to try and tear down the central idea of neo-Darwinism that complex adaptations arise gradually, from natural selection altering allele frequencies, and beneficial micro-mutations accumulating, so that the species evolve in little steps. The idea that beneficial macromutations could arise in one fell swoop is ludicrous, and I think it is not to Gould's credit that he did not differentiate between the different readings of his theories.

For a better critique than I can give, I reccomend these books:

Daniel Dennett - Darwin's Dangerous Idea (includes a whole chapter critiquing Gould, which covers exaptation, punk eek, and more, and a whole chapter critiquing Penrose).
Stephen Pinker - The Language Instinct (includes a critique of Chomsky's ideas about the mind...also see Dennett's 'consciousness explained' for more)
Richard Dawkins - the extended phenotype (includes a long critique of punk eek, and also of 'not in our genes' by lewontin/rose etc)

EDIT: Quote tags fixed

Dennett is a philosopher, but he seems to read practically every biology journal ever and is well up on his theory, so I'd give him another chance, seeing as he's just as up on his facts as any biologist, and is able to inject a good deal of clarity of thinking and logic into thorny theoretical issues.

Ok, here is a quote from Gould, (quoted in an anti-Darwinian book by a Jehovah's Witness!!!):

"We avoid the excellent question, What good is 5 percent of an eye? by arguing that the possessor of such an incipient structure did not use it for sight"

By suggesting it is an 'excellent question', he surely implies that 5% of an eye is worthless for sight, which as you've just demonstrated, is entirely false.

Well I got the quote from Dawkins' 'the Blind Watchmaker' and he's usually pretty generous to Gould and gives him the benefit of the doubt in situations where there are double meanings of his writings (as I mentioned above), and I'm also sure he would have fact checked.

Granted. But also there's a whole body of misrepresentation of orthodox neo-Darwinism by Gould and co!

Yeah it's a total cop out. But I guess a lot of scientists just want to get on quietly with doing science and be left in peace, and the easiest way to do that is not to court controversy. To trumpet Dennett yet again, he's written some good stuff on this topic too. And his 'Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon' is alright, though it's written for a lay rather than a scientific audience, and while reading it I wished it was a bit more meaty. I get that it was written to be accessible to the average Christian though (not that many would read it), and its tone is very measured, so I guess it's a slightly more subtle weapon than 'the God Delusion.

What good is 5% of an eye? There is a difference between 5% sight and 5% of part of an eye, which might result in no sight at all.

However, if the 5% of an eye did not contain any disadvantage the trait might persist and then further mutation might result in a beneficial characteristic, or it would propagate for a reason other than sight. Additionally, sometimes characteristics present in a population as a variation will continue to exist, but will come to predominate as the environment changes, such as markings on insects during the Industrial Revolution.

Even possessing a few photosensitive cells (0.1% of an eye?) confers an advantage in fitness. And it is easily conceivable how a fully developed eye could evolve from this beginning, in little stages, each step providing a slight improvement in sight, and hence in fitness. The argument is not over whether 5% sight is better than 0% sight, it is whether a rudimentary eye-like structure would confer an increase in fitness, and only Gould and the Creationists seem to suggest it wouldn't.

Ok, I don't think you thought this through very well. Imagine an organism that by a serendipitous macromutation evolved '5% of an eye' (the odds against this occuring are huge) but that this proto-organ was entirely useless for sight. Even if the 5% eye itself did not have any deleterious effects, its presence would still represent a decline in fitness and hence there would be a selection pressure against it. To grow that 5% eye, energy from food would be required, that would be better spent on survival or growth or reproduction. Natural selection is the ultimate economiser - any feature that does not withstand a rigorous cost-benefit analysis will be selected against, hence the loss of any features that are surplus to requirements (even our appendix has a role in the immune system).
Really, only stuff like genetic drift in introns (non-coding DNA that is not expressed and therefore doesn't affect the phenotype) counts as entirely neutral variation. (Though genetic variation in itself can be sustained by natural selection, due to the increased fitness conferred by heterzygosity). So 5% of an eye could not be sustained unless it increased fitness either by offering limited sight or, as Gould suggests, by offering some other advantage (though I think this unlikely).
As for those goddamn speckled moths, obviously a change in environment alters selection pressures. I don't quite understand your point? Before everything started getting blackened by soot, the darker moths would be a very rare variant with a large selection pressure against them, and their level would tend to stay down at the mutation equilibria.