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Post by Tamrin on Feb 8, 2012 13:45:55 GMT 10
I distrust things that cannot be measured. I also distrust flat statements that don't account for statistical and practical significance.
Just a short note before falling out for much needed sleep. I was a bit light in my thinking that I would be finished as soon as I thought. Hang with me for a bit longer. More work to do. The beauty of flat statements is that they are, at least in principle, highly falsifiable, i.e., good science. Please bear-in-mind that social learning also evolves — its memes spread and are often very persistent: It is not however innate (genetic). Also consider how some customs and usages are veritable imperatives. Reading from Umberto Eco's satirical, Foucault's Pendulum (pp.362/3), we find the character Lia trying to explain this to the protagonist, saying: Then too, we often imitate animals. However, no one would suggest that in our being inspired by spiders to weave nets that such behaviour is innate.
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Post by Smithee on Feb 8, 2012 19:26:02 GMT 10
Then too, we often imitate animals. However, no one would suggest that in our being inspired by spiders to weave nets that our behaviour is innate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimicry
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 8, 2012 20:38:13 GMT 10
Then too, we often imitate animals. However, no one would suggest that in our being inspired by spiders to weave nets that our behaviour is innate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimicry
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 11, 2012 11:57:22 GMT 10
To date, no researcher has claimed that genes can determine sexual orientation. At best, researchers believe that there may be a genetic component. No human behavior, let alone sexual behavior, has been connected to genetic markers to date.—PFLAG (Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians And Gays), "Why Ask Why: Addressing the Research on Homosexuality," 1995 (more at "Gay Gene" Critique Quotes)
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Post by Smithee on Feb 11, 2012 22:44:31 GMT 10
Stephen Jay Gould -
"Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower" animals with simple nervous systems arise as genetic products of natural selection, then human behavior should have a similar basis."
"Sociobiology is not just any statement that biology, genetics, and evolutionary theory have something to do with human behavior. Sociobiology is a specific theory about the nature of genetic and evolutionary input into human behavior. It rests upon the view that natural selection is a virtually omnipotent architect, constructing organisms part by part as best solutions to problems of life in local environments. It fragments organisms into “traits,” explains their existence as a set of best solutions, and argues that each trait is a product of natural selection operating “for” the form or behavior in question. Applied to humans, it must view specific behaviors (not just general potentials) as adaptations built by natural selection and rooted in genetic determinants, for natural selection is a theory of genetic change. Thus, we are presented with unproved and unprovable speculations about the adaptive and genetic basis of specific human behaviors: why some (or all) people are aggressive, xenophobic, religious, acquisitive, or homosexual."
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Post by brandt on Feb 12, 2012 14:57:35 GMT 10
This of course is a null hypothesis and one cannot universally prove a negative. However, if mistaken, it is easily falsified by positive proof of human instincts: Until then it stands. The ball is in your court. A typical fallacy of hypothesis testing that ignores Bayesian statistics and structural equation modeling as well as nonlinear dynamics. Before something is cast out it should be examined. Behaviorism was given its day, more than its day actually, and has been found to more than wanting. The so-called cognitive revolution should have finally put that to bed. The religious argument that all human behavior is the result of learning cannot move beyond a circular argument because of a certain logical failure. While I don't believe that it is proper to ever ask someone to prove a negative we should keep in mind two other things. First of which is that the lack of evidence does not constitute the evidence of absence. Second, the probablity of the hypothesis given the data is not the same as the probability of the data given the hypothesis.
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Post by brandt on Feb 12, 2012 15:01:48 GMT 10
The only absolutist ideologies in a discussion like this are those that believe that human behavior orginates only from social learning, in other words - behaviorism. The position that I am coming from takes into account that humans are just another animal and it does have an innate nature.
Sure social learning is important or we would not have to teach and discipline children. It would be stupid to think that teaching has no effect. It is equally stupid to think that an animal is not being taught. There are tabula rasas with humans.
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Post by Smithee on Feb 12, 2012 15:19:36 GMT 10
While I don't believe that it is proper to ever ask someone to prove a negative we should keep in mind two other things. First of which is that the lack of evidence does not constitute the evidence of absence. Second, the probablity of the hypothesis given the data is not the same as the probability of the data given the hypothesis. Does this mean you will not be providing any of the evidence you have kept promising? Remember the onus of proof is on you.
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 13, 2012 9:31:46 GMT 10
Does this mean you will not be providing any of the evidence you have kept promising? Remember the onus of proof is on you. Please don't be too impatient Alan, Bro. Brandt has priorities beyond this forum.
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Post by Smithee on Feb 15, 2012 21:15:25 GMT 10
"For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and start a new kind of evolution of their own."
"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation."
"When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell."
- Richard Dawkins
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