Sociobiology?
- Thread starter Lark
- Start date
Interesting topic.
I tend to side with determinism, which may be linked to my training in biology, specifically molecular biology where the smallest changes affect physiology (and behavior).
I find sociobiology fascinating. I think there is a lot to be learned there, and expect sociobiology and psychology to merge in the future. I studied animal behavior for awhile and really enjoyed it. I feel like people tend to not view themselves as animal and I think that is a mistake. Personally, it is much easier to confront my feelings and deal with them if I understand what is going on biologically - things like hormones and blood sugar levels really affect behavior, and these are in turn controlled at the molecular level.
Things like brain damage and SNRI or SSRIs can also affect behavior. I feel like there is a lot of evidence for biological control of behavior.
That said, I think that chance affects things a lot. Also, as a toxicologist, I wonder how much environmental contaminants are affecting human (and wildlife) behavior. Think about all of the antidepressants in the water supply. They are there, and current water treatment doesn't do a thing to get rid of them.
What about you, thoughts?
I tend to side with determinism, which may be linked to my training in biology, specifically molecular biology where the smallest changes affect physiology (and behavior).
I find sociobiology fascinating. I think there is a lot to be learned there, and expect sociobiology and psychology to merge in the future. I studied animal behavior for awhile and really enjoyed it. I feel like people tend to not view themselves as animal and I think that is a mistake. Personally, it is much easier to confront my feelings and deal with them if I understand what is going on biologically - things like hormones and blood sugar levels really affect behavior, and these are in turn controlled at the molecular level.
Things like brain damage and SNRI or SSRIs can also affect behavior. I feel like there is a lot of evidence for biological control of behavior.
That said, I think that chance affects things a lot. Also, as a toxicologist, I wonder how much environmental contaminants are affecting human (and wildlife) behavior. Think about all of the antidepressants in the water supply. They are there, and current water treatment doesn't do a thing to get rid of them.
What about you, thoughts?
I think it is interesting but then I dont think its as promising as a lot of people believe it is.
I dont believe that the human as animal idea should be discarded but the reality is that humans are very, very unique among animals for their consciousness, its not really comparable to anything else in the animal kingdom and probably the basis for much of the early theorising about instinct as an animal trait and reason or cognition as a human one. Although I think its a good thing that thinking has moved on in some respects to identify things that a lot of commonsensical or practical reasoners already believed such as the theory that domestic dogs have an emotional life comparable to that of a child, the patterns of attachment behaviour would seem to suggest so.
Evolutionary psychology, of which sociobiology is kind of a school of thought in my opinion (I know its just my opinion), has as many untested and untestable axiomatic statements and basis as other schools of thought in psychology, I know people like to rag on the unempiracal, untestable/unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific basis of psycho-analysis but they arent a million miles apart I dont think.
It ranks away down the list of my personal folk demons compared to the whole self illusion cognitivism or some behaviourist schools of thought though.
I agree, human cognition makes it a whole different game. I do view it as a continuum, with apes, dolphins etc. below but probably closer than a lot of people realize in the effects of reasoning skills on behavior.
I love the dog example - I enjoyed the "dogs have emotions" work that came out: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214001237
This made me think of the cat video that has been circling so much recently: http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/family-cat-saves-boy-dog-attack-23718134
I'm a big nerd and started wondering about why the cat would do that - it's not a very "cat" thing to do. Was its motive actually to protect the kid, or was it being territorial? Territorial makes sense to me in an evolution of behavior sense. But protecting a member of another species? It doesn't make as much sense. Is the cat emotionally attached to the kid? Is it just protecting the beind that brings it food? Or would it have attacked the dog anyway, and the attack on the child was separate from motivations.
I'm so much more an animal person than human, in that I only study animals. Psychology is fascinating, but apart from a few just-for-fun abnormal psych classes in undergrad I have no training. Animal behavior is a different story, though.
Enough rambling.
I love the dog example - I enjoyed the "dogs have emotions" work that came out: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214001237
This made me think of the cat video that has been circling so much recently: http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/family-cat-saves-boy-dog-attack-23718134
I'm a big nerd and started wondering about why the cat would do that - it's not a very "cat" thing to do. Was its motive actually to protect the kid, or was it being territorial? Territorial makes sense to me in an evolution of behavior sense. But protecting a member of another species? It doesn't make as much sense. Is the cat emotionally attached to the kid? Is it just protecting the beind that brings it food? Or would it have attacked the dog anyway, and the attack on the child was separate from motivations.
I'm so much more an animal person than human, in that I only study animals. Psychology is fascinating, but apart from a few just-for-fun abnormal psych classes in undergrad I have no training. Animal behavior is a different story, though.
Enough rambling.
I agree, human cognition makes it a whole different game. I do view it as a continuum, with apes, dolphins etc. below but probably closer than a lot of people realize in the effects of reasoning skills on behavior.
I love the dog example - I enjoyed the "dogs have emotions" work that came out: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214001237
This made me think of the cat video that has been circling so much recently: http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/family-cat-saves-boy-dog-attack-23718134
I'm a big nerd and started wondering about why the cat would do that - it's not a very "cat" thing to do. Was its motive actually to protect the kid, or was it being territorial? Territorial makes sense to me in an evolution of behavior sense. But protecting a member of another species? It doesn't make as much sense. Is the cat emotionally attached to the kid? Is it just protecting the beind that brings it food? Or would it have attacked the dog anyway, and the attack on the child was separate from motivations.
I'm so much more an animal person than human, in that I only study animals. Psychology is fascinating, but apart from a few just-for-fun abnormal psych classes in undergrad I have no training. Animal behavior is a different story, though.
Enough rambling.
This may sound dumb but I read an evolutionary psychologist responding to news stories about lioness' befriending lone parentless gazelles before and they described how on some level the lionness' psychology, for them, had to have substituted "this is the funniest looking cub I've seen" for "this is food". There's lots of anecdotal and humourous allusions about things like this, dogs believing that their humans are part of a dog pack and just funny looking dogs etc.
Personally, the deterministic theories which carry the greatest weight for me, are those involving attachment, the making and breaking of affectional bonds, if animals have any sort of emotions and affects, and if those are theorised as being those of a child or infant, then those attachment systems are going to firing the whole time and 95% of their behaviour is going to be attachment behaviour.
I listened to a bit of this on the radio today, the "self-illusionists" were on speaking, I hate those guys, they were talking about the idea of free will was totally mistaken because of the temporal issues involved, that bio-chemical and even nervous electro-chemical systems had determined anything such as raising an arm before the apparent conscious thought of "I will raise my arm" appeared in the "mind", so really consciousness was late to "know" and really kind of like the ultimate "rationalisation" for what was happening, a post-event "making sense".
That's all perfectly and apparently logical but I think its totally bogus, Henri Bergen to the best of my knowledge made arguments IN FAVOUR of free will on precisely the basis of temporal errors he felt the determinists of his day were making, he was a philosopher and not a psychologist though.
The thing is that I do believe in "soft" determinism, sociology, social psychology, micro sociology all posit that there are socially or culturally induced states of somnambulance and "sleep walking", I agree with Erich Fromm, who himself was just taking up the so called schools of skepticism, ie freud and marx, that there are illusions but that self isnt one of them. Behaviourism, cognitivism, cognitive-behaviourism and then sociobiology, evolutionary psychology etc. seem to want to fight this corner until they're doomed. Theoretically and abstractly its one thing but practically no one could abdictate personal responsibility and sovereignty in quite the ways their theories predicate without serious consequences.
Personally I find its incredible if all the theories that humans are prey to determism are correct that there is so much crime, deviance, delinquency with us yet, people seem remarkably unimpinged by the obvious and not so obvious social engineering which is going on.