Re: Evolution, "adaptation", and what's currently adaptive
Bryant (mycol1@unm.edu)
5 Sep 1996 11:34:22 -0600
In article <lpiotrow.414.322EDD1B@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
Len Piotrowski <lpiotrow@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> wrote:
bryant said:
>>My "non-sex seeking" "argument," insomuch as that question was an
>>argument, was simply asked to make the point that not everything designed
>>by selection is manifest in juvenile organisms.
>
>Just so! You're proof of design by selection for the "jealousy trait" is
>missing.
The above was not an argument about selection favoring sexual jealousy--a
defense I abandoned seven or so posts ago. It was, rather, an attempt to
explain to you the inherent fallacy in your implied (and since abandoned)
argument that if a trait is not evident in juveniles, it is not "innate."
[ethnographic review snipped for brevity] ...That men compromise and put
up with giving other men sexual access to their women does not mean that
this inspires no resentment in the wife-sharers. Especially if it is not
a reciprocal relationship of some kind (in other words, if it is coerced).
>>You have yet to offer a sound rationale for rejecting emotions (or, more
>>precisely, the behaviors they motivate) as being subject to natural
>>selection.
>I think you've got it backwards. You have yet to offer convincing proof of the
>Darwinian efficacy of "sugar craving" and the "jealousy urge."
Yes, I do. Agreed. For the tenth time. We agreed, mutually, to move on
to more general topics.
Let me put the more general question to you this way:
Are emotions non-functional and is the neurological hardware which
conveys a capacity to feel them the result of the random accumulation of
alleles which have not been selectively favored through evolutionary
time? That's a nice, simple, yes/no question. Which, most probably, do
you think is correct?
Bryant
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