Thursday, February 20, 2020

Anthropological Psychology

THIS IS ANTHROPOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Survival Of The Nicest? A Theory Of Our Origins Says Cooperation-Not Competition-Is Instinctive

CB: Darwin’s principle is actually survival of the _fertile_ in the first place ; the fit may be more fertile .

Being nice , cooperative is a better way to be fertile .

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/is-human-nature-social-or-selfish-i.html

" The decisive battle between early culture and human nature must have been waged on the field of primate sexuality…. Among subhuman primates sex had organized society; the customs of hunters and gatherers testify eloquently that now society was to organize sex…. In selective adaptation to the perils of the Stone Age, human society overcame or subordinated such primate propensities as selfishness, indiscriminate sexuality, dominance and brute competition. It substituted kinship and co-operation for conflict, placed solidarity over sex, morality over might. In its earliest days it accomplished the greatest reform in history, the overthrow of human primate nature, and thereby secured the evolutionary future of the species."

— Sahlins, M. D. 1960 The origin of society. Scientific American 203(3): 76–87.

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2014/05/our-mother-nature-antoinette-blackwell.html

Blackwell chose to highlight balance and cooperation rather than
struggle and savage rivalry. She criticized Darwin for basing his
theory of evolution on "time-honored assumption that the male is the
normal type of his species".[7] She wrote that Spencer scientifically
subtracts from the female and Darwin as scientifically adds to the
male.[6]


 FIT in the sense of bodily fit for success in the struggle for existence ( the Darwinian term of art for longevity in an individual organism ) surviving , getting enough to eat , not getting eaten , not falling out of a tree or off a cliff , not freezing to death , not overheating to death BEFORE REPRODUCING   , BEFORE BEING FERTILE, passing on one’s genes to next generations .

In Darwin's theory of natural selection concerning living beings, the

"struggle" in the struggle for existence, to live, is not between

Individual Selves of the same species to the point of Individual Bodies, somebodies,of the same species killing each other except very rarely. Most of the deaths before passing on genes to the next generation, are due to

failures in struggles with some Individual Body of _another_ species.,

plant and animal, as predator and prey; or struggle against bad

weather, heat exhaustion, sunburn

It is easy to see how some people get a misconception of Darwinian

natural selection because it _is_ posed in most of it prime

formulations with a sort of emphasis on the fact of indirect

"competition" in the sense that for the typical bodily form of a

species to change under Darwin's theory, some members with genes that

change species typical traits must more successfully pass them on than

members with species typical traits over successive generations until

the new trait is universal and the old typical trait is extinct. But

this does not necessarily or even conventionally imply direct physical

conflict between Individuals of the two types but the same species in the day-to-day struggle for existence to survive as Individual Bodies.

This is demonstrated by the famous anthropological micro-evolutionary

study of sickle cell genes on pages 44 to 46 of _The Essence of

Anthropology_.  There is no direct physical competition between the people of

the various genotypes with different fitnesses in the different

environments in the study.

It is not an Individual , but a species, a group of the same type who

"evolve", "adapt" or "survive". Individuals must live their individual

life long enough to reproduce for the species to survive.  However,

every individual eventually dies. "Survival" of the individual means

living long enough to pass on genes or a geno-type to the future

generations. If mutated genes, changed geno-type, are passed on, there

is a potential unit of evolution between the parent and the offspring.

That is evolution occurs between Individuals of different generations, not in one Individual Self.  If the

mutated genotype results in a phenol-typical  trait that is adaptive

in some significant way, it may become an evolutionary change by the

species through several individuals.

https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2018/04/male-supremacy-greed-and-war-are-not-in.html?m=1

day, April 30, 2018
Male supremacy, greed and war are not in our genes
The male supremacist family, private property (classes; greed), and the state ( special repressive apparatus ) arises as a complex together circa 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.  They are still together in a complex that dominates the human species in 2018. Before that for the about 2.5 million years of the Stone Age ( true Civilization) there was gender equivalence, sharing and peace in the species; that's when we were substantially "hardwired " genetically . So, Male supremacy and class divided society and war are not in our genes.


Sacha : “"In particular, the immunocompetence handicap hypothesis proposes that sexual dimorphism indicates good immune function during development because the sex hormones, particularly testosterone in men, required for the development of sexually dimorphic facial features also taxes the immune system. Therefore, only healthy males can afford the high level of testosterone for the development of sexually dimorphic traits without compromising their survival. Researchers have suggested that a similar mechanism via the effects of oestrogen might also explain male preferences for female femininity."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513820300350”



Sacha Quatre Pattes Beautifying the beast hypothesis of female sexual selection of human face :

Smaller teeth make more room in the skull for brain   . So beautified face with smaller teeth allowed bigger brain . And a smaller face is not as rough a kisser.

Thus Genus homo beauties beautified the male "beasts ." We have a historical memory of this in the "Beauty and the Beast " myth, parable , story , in codes form of course, metaphor .

Importantly , this is the positive feedback loop causing brain to evolve bigger from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens .
Bigger brained individuals are more adapt at culture , especially courting culture . This is the main cause of selection for bigger and bigger brains. Bigger brains get more mating .

Thus Blackwell's critique of Darwin and Spencer is correct.  Cooperation ( especially between females and males ) and balance drive human evolution , not savage rivalry and competition .

Already in Darwin's founding text of physical or biological anthropology , _The Descent of Man_, Darwin steers us away subtitle from "adaption to the environment" to "Sexual Selection !" For with culture, human select their environment rather than their environment selecting them. So, the predominant force in human selection is sexual selection.

But Darwin still has a masculinist focus on competition between males for mates; rough and toughness .

Antoinette Blackwell's revolutionary critique of Darwin ( in correspondence with Darwin) is that it is the gentlemen who are selected for mating by females, not the rough tough guys ! Human evolution is predominantly Beautifying of the Beast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sexes_Throughout_Nature
Sent from my iPhone


Dear Maria,

Preparing for class to  discuss the conflict between the theory of inheritance of characteristics and the theory of random genetic mutation I thought :

1) Darwin had a) no theory of the cause of variety in a species b) no theory of _how_ characteristics are inherited,

2) Darwin had no conflict with LaMarck on inheritance because Darwin didn't have one . Actually, I don't know that LaMarck had much of one either.
3) Darwin had no variety theory either so no conflict with LaMarck's explanation of variety.

4) Furthermore, LaMarck's was a natural selection theory !  In his famous giraffe example, the giraffes that stretch their necks are selected for by their environment ; stretching the neck is an adaptation .

Inheritance of acquired characteristics conflicts with random genetic mutation , discovered post Darwin.

Culture as inheritance ( in brain cells, language and memory, instead of gamete cells) of acquired characteristics (not body cells , but extra-somatically , in objective reality) is more efficient adaptive process than genetic mutations that occur randomly relative to the adaptive problem they solve. Because, cultural inventions (acquired by one generation and passed on to the next) are caused by the adaptive problem they solve and do not arise randomly relative to the adaptive problem they solve.

Thus, there is the population expansion of homo erectus and then Homo sapiens out of Africa with the origin of culture in the Stone Age.

Maybe ?

Charles


1) I'm thinking of our culture bearing species as having a LaMarckian-LIKE adaptive ability in that culture allows inheritance of acquired adaptive characteristics by one generation from parent , grandparent and dead generations of the species; acquired by human invention.

2) This creates a Darwinian neo-teleology for Natural History ( replacing the theological teleology with "Man" as the direction toward which natural history tends that Darwin's theory negated); because culture as a LaMarckian-like adaptive process does not depend on a random and coincidental fit between the survival problem posed by the environment and the genetic solution to the problem . What is inherited , extrasomatically, is designed to solve a survival problem posed by the environment .

///

On the origin of culture and humanity: Perhaps upright-bipedalism/ ORIGIN OF HANDS was selected for because , NOT BECAUSE HANDS ALLOWED THE INVENTION OF TOOLS FOR HUNTING OR PROCESSING MEAT  BUT AS THE FIRST INSTRUMENTS OF LANGUAGE, SOUND MAKERS -MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS.  So, Homo Habilis had language as music. Also, dancing or body language . Culture ! Culture as communicating symbolically with music was one selective advantage of hands.  No stone tools until Homo Habilis because no use for production . But culture originates with hands as sound communication-music.

More importantly music conferred mating -courting advantage on the musician . Especially music and dancing.  In general , culture bestows all around superior courting skills, manners. They are the original manners.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly , erect posture exposes genitalia of both sexes to sight more than on all fours. It is sexier .   So, erect posture gives the ultimate selective advantage compared to on all fours: superior differential fertility !

Beautifying the Beast theory of prettifying trend in morphology among hominins ( hominids with hands):

Why this trend of reduction of sexual dimorphism , rough and big and protruding faces ? Because human females were the first scientists of genealogical and reproductive  physiology ; noticing a correlation between appearance of their children and which male they let fertilize them .  Mother Nature selection or Mother as natural selector .

With the invention of culture, symbols , naming, phylogenetic kinship (totemism) , humans select their environment; their environment doesn't elect them. With culture , Human evolution in the tool age is sexual selection a la Blackwell (and Darwin in part)

This derives theoretically from Antoinette Blackwell's feminist critique of Darwin's masculinism, validated by modern Darwinisms recognition that differential fertility is more important than differential mortality in determining fitness