John Edser wrote:


> 
> JE:-
> Once the tribe becomes the best means of
> maximising Darwinian individual fitness 
> for humans, nature can naturally select for a bizarre
> psychological adaptation: fight and die for your
> tribe if such an event is called upon because
> your own Darwinian fitness depends on it.

Yes.  In the most brilliant species ever, organisms
are so incapable of surviving that, once excluded
from a group, their odds of surviving are so minimal
that nature has programmed them simply give up.
Pretty funny stuff John.  Have you considered gettin'
into the standup comedian business?   :)


> 
> PR:-
> As such, I have attempted to explain some of
> the biological craziness we observe in man in terms of a simple
> postulated mechanism in which:
> 
>     'an increase in cognitive objectivity (knowledge, intelligence,
>      wisdom, cognitive competence, etc.) "facilitates" an increase
>      in valuative objectivity (impartiality)' IRRESPECTIVE OF ITS
>      ADAPTIVENESS.
> 
> JE:-
> The above does not make any sense to me. In the end, unless
> the total number of fertile forms per Darwinian selectee
> trends to an increase, all "the cognitive objectivity 
> (knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, cognitive competence, etc)"
> moves to extinction.


Its widely assumed that, man's ecological niche, intelligence/
rationality/knowledge, etc. has been highly adaptive.  I'm merely
supposing that it has been so adaptive that mother nature has
been willing to "tolerate" a maladpative byproduct of this
marvelous adaptation, i.e., an incrase in valuative objectivity.
For example, only humans are smart enought to appreciate the
fact that anothers assessment of one's self is likely to be
more objective and, as such to have a significant impact on
one's own assessment of one's worth.  Of course, this becomes
particularly acute when the judgement of another is that of
an attractive member of the opposite sex, etc.   In such
cases (e.g., being jilted) the emotional effects can be
devastating, downright incapacitating as a matter of fact.


> 
> 
>>snip<
> 
> 
> PR:-
>     'Terrorism is the result of poverty.  Not a poverty of
>      material things, but a poverty of dignity' (Egyptian
>      philosopher on recent TV documentary).
> 
> JE:-
> Yes, but "a poverty of dignity" is not a
> scientific concept. 

I would say that if you are coming from a philosphy of
science that makes it "unscientific" to take not of the
central motivational factor in human thought and behavior
that maybe you ought to think about getting a new philosphy
of science.  Roy Bhaskar's 'A Realistic Theory of Science'
might be a good place to start, or Manicas and Secord,
'Implication of the New Philosphy of Science' at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5476/N_T_abs.htm

The sort of scientism you are espousing is precisely
why our understanding of human nature is still in the
middle ages, IMHO:

    "Discussions of scientific method have tended to stress
    problems of testability, while neglecting...those
    aspects of the universe which in some sense are most central
    and significant for the area of reality with which the
    science deals." "It has been frequently assumed that only
    those events which in principle can be simultaneously observed
    by multiple observers ... are to be accepted as constituting a
    legitimate observational basis for science." "I am suggesting
    that the more general and, to me, acceptable, objective intended
    by the criterion of interobserver agreement would be...the criterion
    of repeatability....a more general trust in one's own experience"
    ...and the abandonment of "a corresponding uncritical acceptance
    of the significance of verbal reports."  (Karl Zener - 'The
    Signifance of Experience of the Individual for the Science
    of Psychology, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science)



   One of the characteristics of the majority of modern psychological
   theories, aside from the arbitrariness of so many of their claims,
   is their frequently ponderous _irrelevance_.  The cause, both of
   the irrelevance and of the arbitrariness, is the evident belief of
   their exponents that one can have a science of human nature while
   consistently ignoring man's most significant and distinctive attributes.
   (Nathaniel Branden).


PR
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