I was actually meaning to ask you to repeat your post in this thread, so don’t think it went unappreciated. It’s just that my memory is shit. 
I think you were better off having forgotten and not remembered. That comment has a striking ability to kill threads.:rolleyes:
Well now, I’d like to see some evidence these things are actually true. I can’t read the article that you linked to, but based on the abstact it appears that you’re leaping way ahead of what the evidence actually says. The abstract merely says that certain subregions of the cortex may be associated with very basic motions that involve more than one muscle, such as reaching with the arm. It’s a long way from that to saying that specific regions of the cortex have a direct relationship to actual behaviors like climbing, eating, or having sex. As for the “behavioral homunculus”, I was rather under the impression that the idea of the homunculus bit the dust several centuries ago and hasn’t been seen since. I searched for that term with Google and was unable to find anything that confirms your claims. Indeed, I was unable to find anything at all.
As for the experiment with taping the kittens legs, if your description of the experiment and the results is accurate, that would seem to me to argue against your position rather than for it. Everybody agrees that the signals which control the motion of the body come from the brain. The question is, are the behaviors that prevail in the brain of a certain individual determined by that individual, or are they determined before birth by the person’s genes. Experimental evidence suggests that the form of the cortex (and other portions of the brain as well) can be radically changed by the choices and actions of the individual. If that’s the case, then it’s obviously not the case tht the physical form of the brain is determined by genes prior to birth.
That said, of course, results for animals prove nothing about humans. One could easily enough prove that animals can’t read, but that doesn’t mean humans can’t read.
Okay, that’s the sort of evidence I would like to see more of: actual studies involving the human genome, rather than mere speculation. Unfortunately once again I can’t read the full text of the article, so I’m left wondering about a few things. The summary is vague about the actual results, with ambiguous terms such as “less likely” and “scored lower”. I’d like to know the exact numbers in order to see whether the relationship was actually significant or not. Any statistics students knows that there are dozens of tricks by which one can make a relationship appear where none actually exists. Also I’d like to know what exactly was measured on the questionnaire. How do they define a “relationship crisis”? It seems to me fairly obvious that there are a lot of ways to have a relationship crisis beyond the man’s decisions about bonding. Likewise, marriage is affected by a whole lot of factors.
Nonetheless, that appears to be good research, unlike most of what gets thrown around in this field. I’d be interested in hearing whether anyone has reproduced the result.
Apparantly you didn’t read the same abstract that I read because Graziano’s entire career is dedicated to demonstrating exactly that point.
And lets look at another one of Graziano’s papers. Let me assure you that this sophisticated representation does not develop by accident. It is encoded for by your genome.
I like this paper too:
I’m not just stating the bleedin’ obvious here: it’s an important point. You can’t possibly prove that animals can’t read, because you’re reading right now, and you’re an animal.
We’re all animals. There are some qualitative differences between us and other animals, but most of the differences are matters of degree. (In fact, there may be just one significant qualitative difference: the use of a sequential combinatorial language).
Studies about animals, even when they’re studies about nonhuman animals, can absolutely shed light on humans. Or do you think the smallpox vaccine was discovered through serendipity?
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Yeah, I’m starting to get that impression, too. The abstract that I’ve read, which is the one you’ve posted three times, does not mention climbing, eating, or having sex. It does not mention any synonyms for those things. It does not give any reason to believe that Graziano has ever published research which backs up your claims. Here is what you actually said:
“Putting an electrode in monkey motor cortex forces the monkey to perform activities based on the site of stimulation. The longer the stimulation, the more sophisticated the behavior. For example, its trivial to get the monkey to get out of his chair and try to climb, eat or have sex with nothing. This rule obviously follows for humans as well. The development of such representations is of course a gene/environment interaction, but there is no doubt that these behaviors are encoded in your genome.”
Nothing that you have posted so far backs up this claim. You’re trying to argue that behaviors, preferences, and beliefs which we choose are actually chosen for us, by being encoded in our genes. Our genes can makes us prefer A over B, or decide to do C rather than D, or believe E while rejecting F.
Now what’s described in these abstracts, what the authors describe as “ethologically relevant movements”, is obviously at a level far below that. They’re refering to movements that involve several muscles coordinated together, but which occur automatically. for example, when we reach forward, we aren’t consciously aware of all the muscles involved in the process. The act of “reaching” is coordinated for us in the cortex, if these papers are correct.
However, nothing suggests that the decision to reach originates in the cortex, much less that it is encoded in our genome. We reach for a lot of different things in a lot of different situations. Whether we reach for a loaf of bread, a copy of The Iliad, a porno magazine, a bow tie, or any one of a thousand other things: that is not determind in the cortex. The same would be true for any of the other “multijoint actions”.
In short, if I judge by the abstracts (and I have no other choice) these papers simply are not relevant to any of the claims you’re making.
I’m afraid I going to need more than your assurance. That abstract says nothing about the genome. Maybe the paper itself does; if so, please quote the relevant part.
My patience for you is running out. The abstract says,
I’m telling you what Graziano does in his research. He first anesthetizes the monkey. Then he performs a craniotomy. Then he allows the monkey to wake up. He sticks an electrode into a well known area of motor cortex and applies a tetanus. The longer he holds the electrode there the more sophisticated the behavior is. The behaviors cover the entire range of behaviors with ethological value.
You can refuse that this is a fact as long as you want. I’m not explaining it again.
I think I’ve located the source of our disagreement. You seem to think that “interactions between the hand and the mouth, reaching motions, or defensive maneuvers” means the same thing as “climbing, eating, or having sex”. I, on the other hand, think that they do not.
Good, because I don’t want you to explain it again. I instead want you to provide a citation for it. If the citation comes from the papers listed above, quote the relevant portion. If it comes from somewhere else, tell me where.
First of all, there are a great many significant differences between humans and animals. Second, in most cases, those are differences in kind, not in degree. Human beings can do a great many things that no animal can do in any amount. Off the top of my head:
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Humans can philosophize; animals cannot.
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Humans can hold moral standards of what is right and wrong; animals cannot.
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Humans can have aesthetic standards for what makes good art and what doesn’t; animals cannot.
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Humans can reason abstractly; animals cannot.
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Humans can plan many generations into the future; animals cannot.
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Humans can study the distant past; animals cannot.
etc…
There are phyiscal and chemical similarities between the bodies of humans and animals. Nobody’s denying that. What I’m saying is that we cannot learn anything about the conscous decision-making process of humans by studying animals.
No - you think that “such as” means “this is an exhaustive list.” I’m done here. You may continue basking in ignorance. You ought not do it on these forums IMHO.
In the simplest sense perhaps, but your statements are demonstrably false in several respects:
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There are clearly behaviors that are in some species learned and in other species are innate, such as swimming.
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There are in humans some behaviors that are automatic (heart beat), some that are automatic by default but can be consciously overridden (breathing) and some that are purely conscious (sports). But even within that range, purely automatic behaviors can in individuals with training and concentration be modified; conversely purely conscious activities eventually become rote when learned to a significant degree.
How do you explain breathing? It’s a behavior, so by your reasoning it cannot be genetic. But for the most part it is fully automatic - nobody teaches us to breathe when we are babies. So how do we know how to do it? But suppose it is genetic. When we get older and take yoga class or go swimming, we can decide to hold our breath or slow it down. By your reasoning, things that are genetically based can never be consciously modified. So how do we change our breathing patterns?
Current research is largely concerned with first order phenotypes - proteins and simple genetic disorders. Psychological and behavioral effects are the result of non immediate phenotypic effects and/or combinatorial phenotypic effects. In other words, a single gene is not likely to be responsible for these sorts of things, in the same way that there is not a single gene for making a liver.
There are certain precise and complex behaviors in the animal world that are quite clearly and demonstrably innate and not learned. How do you account for those?
That’s a problem with specific theories, not the inherent worth of the science.
The examples you give seem more like internet fluff, or at best pop science books, than actual examples of scientific research. Certainly doesn’t resemble the sorts of papers I’ve seen on the subject which talk more about the propensity for religion and certain spiritual experiences being side effects or unintended consequences of other evolved features of the brain and nervous system. Note propensity - that our biology creates a more nurturing environment for religious behavior, not that it specifically codes for mandatory religion.
My own personal feeling is that our behaviors are a fairly even mix of genetics/biology and memetics/culture.
There are broad behavioural similarities between humans and other animals as well, most obvious in the whole coupling-and-mating complex of behaviour, but also in regard to caring for offspring and ritualistic mutual social care, particularly when one looks at our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. In fact, variations of behaviour within the animal world are far greater than the differences between us and other hominids, I’d wager – just look at how differently a gorilla and a lobster go about their daily business. So, that human behaviour is of some different origin than animal behaviour is a hypothesis that you would have to substantiate before one could give it any credence.
And I’d like to ask again, are you advancing the position that genes play no role in human behaviour at all?
What similarities would those be? Human beings can get legally married, hire prostitutes, hold covert liasons in hotel rooms, sue each other for sexual harrassment, compose and read love poetry, and to a great many other things related to coupling and mating that no animal ever does. As regards caring for offspring, humans have day care centers, hired nannies, and so forth. Trying to cram human behaviors into animal models on these topics requires us to leave out almost all human behaviors.
Well, you seem to operate under a somewhat strange definition of behaviour, since all of these seem to be more achievements of human civilization rather than innate human characteristics – you only need to look somewhat past your own sphere of human culture to see a great many humans that actually can’t really do any of these things (I believe sexual harassment lawsuits are virtually unknown among the Yanomami in Brazil, for instance).
But even so, quite a few animals are known to hold monogamous relationships (elephants are even rumoured to die of grief when their mate dies, they just lie down and shed tears incessantly, refusing any food), Bonobos are known to use sex as a kind of social currency, female doves stray from the nest quite a bit, sometimes rearing offspring conceived with another male with their nest partner, and mating rituals can get quite complicated and poetic even in the most diminutive species – in the humble mosquito, wing beats per second typically vary between the males and the females, but when searching for a partner, they will gradually approach each other’s frequency, until they meat in the middle and find each other by the beat resulting from their individual songs’ near harmony. I dunno about you, but I’ve read poems worse than that. Also, pack animals will routinely take care of others’ young, lactating elephant cows often suckle orphaned baby elephants that are not their own, chimps raise the young of family members, and cuckoos are quite apt at getting others to raise their young, too.
By the way, I’m finding it rather hard to have a honest discussion with you on the subject if you refuse to clarify your position – do you or don’t you think that genes play a role in human behaviour? I’m asking this because I’d like to know where exactly your disconnect with the subject lies – if genes do in some way determine our behaviour, then our behaviour is at least to some extent part of our phenotype, and thus subject to the evolutionary algorithm. And our body chemistry certainly does influence our behaviour, just think about what happens when you alter it with alcohol or other drugs, for instance; however, our body chemistry is a direct result of our genetic makeup, thus, our genes do at least to some extent determine our behaviour, thus, EP, while it does have its limitations (as I’ve hinted at in my first post in this thread), is not completely bunk.