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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
Sometimes I think that scientists are so limited in their thinking.
The think that the ultimate reason the mother bird does this may be instinctual is one thing, but to reduce her action to only that is wrong.
I don’t believe the mother bird sees a fox approaching, and thinks, hmmmm, let me make sure my genetics survive in these chicklets. I believe she, like most mothers, simply figures out the best way to protect her babies. It has been demonstrated that birds show affection (not to say love since that annoys a lot of people - apparently humans are the only ones that are allowed to have that emotion) and it is that affection that will make the mother bird protect her babies.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
Oh, no... he wasn't letting humans have any more credit than the birds, actually. He roundly regarded the premise of "instinct" as an ingrained genetic response to assure that this particular genetic strain carries on.
I hate the brush-off tone with which many scientists use the word "anthropomorphizing" as much as it sounds like you do, Bel. This book was only so engaging to me because the author painted humans as just another animal, afforded no special byes just because we can walk upright.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
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Sometimes I think that scientists are so limited in their thinking.Aren't you possibly jumping to conclusions, here  ? If a scientist limits his statements to the area he feels competent of (unlike sociobiologists..), this does not necessarily mean that his thoughts are similarly limited. Personally I suspect that discussing altruism in the animal world is about as scientific as assigning a gender to a motorcar. Talking of altruism only makes sense for beings who can communicate their motives to us, humans. And even there, going farther than the OED's definition quickly leads onto marshy ground.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I suspect that discussing altruism in the animal world is about as scientific as assigning a gender to a motorcar.
If we're going to examine the origins of altruism in humans we must look at the behavior of animals. Even if you define altruism so as to seem to apply only to humans you'll have to adjust something when you find the so-called human traits appearing in other animals.
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
Well, I dunno about animal altruism.
When we owned a farmlet near Dunedin (NZ), Demmy, our 16-year-old dog, had a massive stroke that paralysed her. The vet came around that evening and put her to sleep in one of our outbuildings. We put an old rug over her until the morning, when we were going to bury her. In the morning, a friend who was staying with us offered to give me a hand to move her (she was a heavy dog) down to the spot where she was to be buried. He went out to get some gear and came back in looking a bit odd. "Come and have a look at this," he said.
I went out and looked. The rug had been pushed back from Demmy's head, and a vey dead rabbit had been dropped next to her mouth by one Lizzy, one of our cats.
I can only conclude that Lizzy WAS being altruistic when she attempted to "donate" a dead rabbit to her evidently ill friend, the dog.
Can anybody come up with a different but plausible explanation?
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475 |
about as scientific as assigning a gender to a motorcar
Cars do have grammatical gender, e.g., das Auto, but I agree with you, there's nothing scientific about language.
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526 |
We *ARE* animals.
I read Wilson's Sociobiology more than a decade ago. I read Blind Watchmaker, but not Selfish Gene, though it's on my list. It's far afield from my education, but I don't see that sociobiology (which Wilson refered to as "proto-science" in Sociobiology) is any less rigorous that the great bulk of sociology or psychology.
k
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Joined: Mar 2000
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027 |
We *ARE* animals. No doubt about that. We also consist of more than 50% water and several pounds of calcium phosphate. But the altruism bit applies essentially to those things which we have in addition to that.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
My father had a Chesapeake Bay retriever when I was three years old. At the beach, Rusty would let me just get the bottomof my bathing trunks wet, and he would trot over to me, take a hold of the seat of the trunks, and drag me out of the water. He knew I couldn't swim, and he, on his own,
decided I needed protection, and gave it to me, no matter
how indignantly I protested, and tried to strike him.
His only reward was my Mother's grateful amusement, which I
doubt influenced his repeating the maneuver when needed.
I think his behaviour was altruistic, in that he gave up his chance to play in the water, with no expectation of
reward.
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Joined: Jan 2002
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2002
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My grandparents lived for a while in Paducah, KY, and my brothers and I came to visit for a few weeks. They had a collie looking dog named Babes. We were supposed to play in the yard and not go out the fence, but there was a hole in the wooden fence we liked to slide through. When Babes would catch us sneaking out, she'd pinch the crap out of us with her teeth to get us to come back in. Never a pure bite, never draw blood - but a whole bunch of really painful bruises along one whole cheek of a butt.
k
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