Re: Origins of our minds?

On Oct 21, 8:39 pm, Al <alwh...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 22, 12:12 am, r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 00:00:57 -0400, Walter Bushell <pr...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In article <a0alh359n6p2jb0pncie4lfcr6n9jtg...@xxxxxxx>,
r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The argument is that rape is the result of natural selection and
adaptive; it acts to increase fitness. As such it will be
automatically be misinterpreted as beneficial in some sense and also
as justifiable legally -- how can you hold a person responsible for
behavior that is inborn, instinctive, part of human nature?

The same way we hold people responsible for theft.

It wasn't my argument but one that caused rather a great deal of
attention a few years back. The real problem with evolutionary
psychology is the same problem with early sociobiology -- the
excessive role given to evolutionary precursors and genetic
determinism in the control of behavior of modern humans. I agree that
there was an earlier extremism in the opposite direction -- that no
human behavior had any evolutionary backdrop. But the response should
not be to go as extreme in the opposite direction.

The real issue is that some idiots still link "natural" or similar
terms to "Good". IE: If someone says action A is something evol;ution
has selected for in certain circumstances then it must be "good", or
that because it's "natural" to have a certain level of infant
mortality to encourage selection that that also is good.
Understanding the evolutionary process shouldn't somehow enforce us to
encourage it. If you take a deep look into Evo Psych, then you
rapidly get a view-point almost directly opposing it. ie: evolution
has done a lot of "evil" things to our brains. It has of course also
provided us the mechanisms for looking for bad things and promoting
good things. And in general I think it can be used to understand why
our morals are one way, but it should never be used to define our
morals.
Certainly rape occurs in various ape species, but that still doesn't
make it defensible. For that matter, there are well documented cases
of premeditated murder among chimps.

And there is a supposed observation that stepchildren tend to fare
worse than one's own biological children, which may parallel
infanticide in other species. If so, that observation, in itself,
isn't condoning the behavior, but showing there's a putative tendency
that, if we are to fight against nature as TH Huxley maintained, we
should realize that we have engrained mentality issues to deal with as
uncomfortable as that makes us feel.

Shifting to another topic altogether: People love to eat sugar and
fats. Sugar and fats are *natural* food components, but that does not
make them good. We have problems in this modern world of easily
accessible high-calorie food (fast food drive thrus) of obesity,
diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Our tendency to crave sugars and
fats apparently goes back to ancestral food scarcities. That does not
make overeating (the "mortal sin" of gluttony) right. Our ancestors
didn't have deep fried french fries, chicken wings w/ ranch dressing
and cheeseburgers on the savanna or EEA.

But we have modern disorders of body image. Women want to look like
Barbie and men like GI Joe. Women force themselves to puke in toilets
to stay thin in relation to their dysmorphically distorted ideal and
men spend tons of money on protein/carb powders, explosive diarrhea
inducing supplements and steroids to live up to the body builder
ideal. What the hell is that all about?



.

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