View Single Post
  #10  
Old 11-21-2005, 07:05 AM
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default Re: if Evolutionary Psychology makes you cynical of people

[ QUOTE ]
So your view is that a person with no capacity to love would have just as high a chance to pass on his genes and have offspring that makes it to mature age as a person with this capacity?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes. Animals do just fine without it, including highly social animals. Their genes gets passed on just fine. But that's not my point. My point is that the ability to love is not a specific gene(s). The underlying architecture of the brain is what develops, love could be just a capacity we've gained along the way from a brain that developed via other selection mechanisms.

[ QUOTE ]
I study psychology, I can tell you most of our traits _especially_ psychological ones, can be attritbuted to be evolutionary adaptions, and that includes love.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, but...at what point did we develop them? The brain's pleasure pathways have presumably been around since the first mammals, and cruder versions exist in reptile brains. Emotions also developed a long time ago in our primitive mammalian brains, at a time when we had no capacity for individual thought or expression. Sexual arousal has been around even longer. So all of the traits and basic neurobiology required for 'love' already existed in a crude form. With an increase in brain size, intelligence, and awareness, the capacity to love could develop automatically without any selection pressure.

Looking at the last million years, was there ever a selection pressure that meant that people who experienced 'love' were better at breeding and more likely to pass on their genes? I don't think so. Until a few thousand years ago, life was (my fav quote) "nasty, brutish, and short". The most prolific breeders (those that passed on the most genes) were the strongest and/or smartest males and the healthiest, horniest and cluckiest females (as is the case today). And note that attending to a child's basic needs is not the same as loving.

So can we stop pretending that our shoehorning is scientific?
Reply With Quote