if Evolutionary Psychology makes you cynical of people

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Maybe you like to reference some scientific sources that could explain traits like love at the person level. here's the relevent bit;

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In the modern synthesis, "evolution" is defined as a change in the frequency of alleles within a population from one generation to the next.
An allele is any one of a number of viable DNA codings of the same gene (sometimes the term refers to a non-gene sequence) occupying a given locus (position) on a chromosome. Two alleles together comprise a gene.

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Must......not....post....ORLY.....Bird!

[chezlaw]

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Read you post but if you think that any evolutionary advantage exists at a non-gene level then I wonder how you think any physiological trait persists through time.

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Of course it does not exist at a "non-gene level". It might very well exist on the "person level" as well as on the "gene level". Such are many if not most "psychological tendencies".

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I saw your dismissal of Wiki (is that because it described the theory of evolution at the gene level?).


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I don't dismiss it at all. Again, there is no necessary contradiction between those two "levels", especially when discussing such a broad pshychological concept as "the ability to love". An "evolutional theory" with regard to the usefulness of love between parents and their children can be given without any need for an explanation at the "level of genes", and it will still be perfectly valid. You assume of course that such tendencies and others are carried on with specific genes, as you can do with regard to any kind of common human behaviour, which you wonder about the "importance" of its existence.

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So now I don't see where you disagree with what I said in the first place. Of course an explanation at the person level will often suffice (simply because people are evolved to want what is in the interest of our genes) but it will often be misleading.

Explaining love as giving so that we will later recieve is extremely misleading. In fact it is wrong or the currently accepted theory of evolution is wrong.

chez

[PrayingMantis]

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Explaining love as giving so that we will later recieve is extremely misleading.

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I agree that this is in no way an explantaion. However, "love" (ignoring for the minute the inifinite ways to define it), can be "evolutionary explained" as having a big part in a deep and complex sharing system between individual human beings, which might be critical to the relative success of our partiulcar species as a whole (there are many ways to explain why it is so, and quite a few psychologists do this). To be quite honest here, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about most "evolutional psychology" explanations, as they can indeed be quite confused and misleading. Regardless, they can still be consistent in most senses with the theory of evolution.

What's really funny about this thread is how not a single person has addressed Bruiser's most excellent point:

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take emotions for what they are, at face value, if you feel love for someone just leave it at that, it is just love because you are a human and humans love.

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Excellent point Bruiser. Just out of interest, does anyone understand what he's actually saying? It's really quite profound.

OK, carry on folks.

[Rduke55]

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What's really funny about this thread is how not a single person has addressed Bruiser's most excellent point:

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take emotions for what they are, at face value, if you feel love for someone just leave it at that, it is just love because you are a human and humans love.

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Excellent point Bruiser. Just out of interest, does anyone understand what he's actually saying? It's really quite profound.

OK, carry on folks.

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You do realize this is the Science, Math, and Philosophy board.

[chezlaw]

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What's really funny about this thread is how not a single person has addressed Bruiser's most excellent point:

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take emotions for what they are, at face value, if you feel love for someone just leave it at that, it is just love because you are a human and humans love.

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Excellent point Bruiser. Just out of interest, does anyone understand what he's actually saying? It's really quite profound.

OK, carry on folks.

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I'd like to think that bits profound as I've been banging on about it for longer than this forum has existed. Except for the 'lets leave it at that' - evolution interesting you know.

chez

[chezlaw]

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Explaining love as giving so that we will later recieve is extremely misleading.

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I agree that this is in no way an explantaion. However, "love" (ignoring for the minute the inifinite ways to define it), can be "evolutionary explained" as having a big part in a deep and complex sharing system between individual human beings, which might be critical to the relative success of our partiulcar species as a whole (there are many ways to explain why it is so, and quite a few psychologists do this). To be quite honest here, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about most "evolutional psychology" explanations, as they can indeed be quite confused and misleading. Regardless, they can still be consistent in most senses with the theory of evolution.

[/ QUOTE ]An outbreak of agreement between us, I hope. I wasn't suggesting that the reason for love was simple, there could be complex reasons as to why its beneficial for our species/genes.

chez

[RJT]

I agree with you, chez. I don’t see it as simple as Phil. This gets to the heart of the main debate on Religion, I think. Did we evolve into a species that loves? What causes us to love? I think this is where ideas of the “soul” and God come in for the believer.

I would understand if one says “just leave it at that for now ”; because now science does not know. But for science to leave it at that makes no sense to me.

And you must be correct too that it is interesting, otherwise this forum would lack a lot of its content.

RJT

My post here relates to not the immediately preceding post by chez, but the one before that. He is too quick for me and posted another in between my readiness.

[chezlaw]

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If the underlying architechure of the brain develops, so does the genes. But that is really besides the point, there is no need to bring genes into the picture at all, but even if you do, it will not change the discussion at all. Genes are just the mechanics of heritage. As the previous poster so well stated, the theory of evolution precedes any theories of genes.


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Its true that genes themselves didn't need to be discovered before the theory of evolution but its a strange point. Cosmology existed before the existence of curved space was known about but curved space is now a vital part of cosmology.

Its also true that the basic theory of evolution didn't change much with the discovery of the gene but part of Darwin's (and others) triumph is that it implied some mechanism for passing on successful traits before any such mechanism was discovered.

chez

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I think you misunderstand my point...


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missed this one, sorry I wasn't disagreeing with what you said. I was just pointing out that the existence of a theory before genes were discovered was not an argument against modern evolutionary theory being about genes.

I do think its wrong to say that the discussion is not altered at all by understanding genetics although its impressive how far you can get without it.

chez

[PrayingMantis]

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An outbreak of agreement between us, I hope.

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Oh happy day! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]