From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 




[email protected] wrote:
> 
> In article <[email protected]>,
>   [email protected] wrote:
> 
> I haven't picked up what features of human nature are being referred to
> here. 

An increase in other-interestedness (compassion, morality, non-self
serving concern for others, etc.) and a decrease in self-interested
ness (volatility in self-worth), both of which, when taken together,
constitute a maladaptive increase in valuative objectivity/impartialisty 
relative to the "ruthless selfishness" (with special and limited 
exceptions) presumed optimal for maximizing reproductive fitness.

> FWIW I am having trouble with the apparent presumption that we are
> generally a 'nice' social animal. On your website, Phil, there was some
> reference to the question of why we turn out more like Mother Theresa
> than Josef Stalin and my answer would be that we don't and that there are
> still people who think of Stalin as the saviour of their forebears rather
> than a monster. 

One of the problems you encounter with the study of human nature, is 
that in addition to an increase in morality and emotional instability,
rationality also apparently begins to produce a stupendous increase
in individuality, both at the cultural and the individual level of
description (e.g., compared to alligators or tree shrews).  As such,
you have to become far more reliant on stratification, abstraction,
generalization, metaphor, then is cusotmary in the physical sciences.
So, what you are doing here, is one uping me on my own little trick
to get people persuaded to my way of thinking, in which I point to 
selflessness extremes such as Albert Schweitzer, by pointing to 
selfishness extremes such as the foks who think of Stalin as a hero.
But, IN GENERAL, most humans do not think of Stalin as a normal 
human being, but rather as someone who was subhuman.  Interestingly
enough, he was also much closer to the naturalistic ideal, given
our current understanding of natural selection.  So, generally
speaking, I am supposing that a normal human being is far more
valuatively objective/impartial (e.g., most of us care about 
unnecesary cruelty to animals) than natural selection predicts 
(how does it help our DNA to be concerned about cruelty to 
animals -- it doesn't, as a general rule).


> I think there is an intellectual danger in presuming that
> we are as our ideals ask us to be, or to put it another way "Believing
> our own press releases". Is it really charitable, humane and generous for
> countries which spend _trillions_ of dollars on weapons to _lend_ money
> to countries stricken by famine? Is it really a just and right moral
> position to take for countries which throw millions of tonnes of food
> away every year to impose economic sanctions on countries which are
> already poor because their leader is (cough) less than appealing, thus
> causing the malnourishment or death of many of that country's children? I
> find the fundamental thesis of human beings being surprisingly 'selfless'
> and interested in the well-being of the broad scope of humanity is not
> well made. There is something to it, yes, but there are many other
> factors involved and self-interest of various sorts is served by much of
> this supposed selflessness.
> 

Pretty much agree.  But as far from the ideal we would like to think
of ourselves as having, we are still considerably less selfish than
we should be.  Think of feeding time at the zoo, if you want to get
a little better idea of what the calculus predicts.  Earlier I 
mentioned G. C. Williams data, that the siblicide rate in our nearest
phylogenic species is 2000 times greater than in homo sapiens in
even the roughest big cities.

Also, don't forget, I am supposing that nearly all cases of selflessness
in humans, is actually PHYSICAL selfishness for emotionally selfish 
reasons.  So maybe we are pretty close here.  Mother Teresa was
far from the ideal some folks would like to think she was.  But
even so, she was a long way from the selfishness of hyena.

Of course, physical
sacrifice is the only thing which is naturalistically anomalous,
so my claim that it is emotioanl selfish doesn't help much in trying
to "explain" it, at least not on the surface.  But it does, if you
can come up with a biologically tractical explanation for why
self-worth is itself essential for survival.  In that case, emotional
selfishness itself could be seen as having a cost/benefit payoff,
and you could make the physical selflessness make more sense in
terms of its adaptiveness, of course.



-- 

                  Phil Roberts, Jr.

       The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism:
Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock
     http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/