Bad To The Bone.

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Well, she has her parents completely wrapped around her little finger, so it's not in fear of punishment.

You're incorrect about 'no survival benefit,' though; it would benefit humans to be curious observers of others, and to not harm others unless necessary - both to solidify their position in a social community (necessary for a social species like our own), and to avoid wasting potential resources down the line. Humans have had symbiotic relationships with other species for a long time, long enough that their genes have been changed to match them to us and long enough that our genes have been changed to match us to them. Those of us that come from dairying populations have evolved adult lactose tolerance, just as one of the most recent examples - a gene that became nearly fixed in European populations within the last several thousand years. We've lived with dogs and other animals for longer than that. If you're nice to the dog, it's going to want to protect you and share what it hunts for with you; if you're nice to the cat, it's going to help keep your granaries free of the vermin that not only steal your food, but carry disease.

If behavior can be selected for, and if reactions to other animals can be selected for or against, and if cooperation with other humans can be selected for or against, it is entirely probable that people who are cooperative and who get along with animals have a selective advantage over those who are not and do not.

You are correct, animals can be a benefit to humans. However, this would point to human behavior towards animals being inclined towards personal benefit.

i remember reading about a 5-year-old girl who was walking with her mother on a shopping trip in some big city, and the little girl saw what appeared to her to be a starving gaunt homeless old man, and she burst into tears and ran up to the man and gave him all her pocket change. i wonder where did this little girl get that conscience?

Last edited by auntblabby on 21 Oct 2013, 12:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

@ Sherlock: the fact that altruism and compassion can have a hard-wired, evolutionary cause does not make them less admirable. Love may be a chemical reaction in the brain, but it still feels good.
You seem to want to neither have your cake nor eat it.

Actually, I would say that altruism is a learned response and not innate. I don't believe there is any credence to the belief that humans were born with moral knowledge already configured in our heads by genes. On the contrary, I have stated that I believe we are born with a basic instinct towards self survival, which would be deemed bad or savage behavior in the eyes of a polite society. I don't understand your comment about cake. Do you mean I want to be miserable, or that I prefer to see the bad in everything?


Well, we certainly are not born with the instinct to donate pocket change. Therefore, the behavior must have been learned or taught.

ok, just how could she have learned this at such a young age? how did she "learn" the visceral emotional response?

It's not that surprising considering children of that age are very impressionable. Believe it or not I did similar things when I was that age (minus the emotion). First, at that age money does not seem as valuable as it does later in life. Second, children are often read books and shown movies that praise such behavior. Within such an environment, it does not seem surprising to me that children would replicate an observed behavior. For instance if you were to take that exact child and raise her by Fagin, then she would be a new artful dodger. Look at your own political ideology. Chances are you have a very "visceral emotional response" to political topics that reflect the fortunes of environment. Ask yourself, when did you first establish your opinions. Did they originate from your own mind or someone else. Were they governed by chance experience or by logic?

an old preacher back in the day, said words to the effect, "there are none so tender as those who have been skinned" - she is too young to have been "skinned" so i wonder how she got that visceral reaction?

I have seen kids break down and cry over breaking a crayon and two seconds later are laughing and smiling. There are also kids who cry to get attention,; either way it is highly unlikely that the child tapped into some form of genetically encoded empathy.

so the question remains without a real answer.

Chimpanzees sometimes murder each other or kill the offspring of sexual rivals.

They are not cute animals at all.

ruveyn

No, I think the answer is self apparent. The behavior is not normal for a child of that age but it can be caused by environmental factors. Therefore, the emotion is learned:nothing less nothing more.

the question remains, WHERE did she learn the visceral emotion? the behavior of generosity can be taught but NOT the emotion! this was the first homeless person she saw.

Yes, I have even heard that they may eat their rivals but humans engage it torture, which is also not too cute.

On the contrary emotion can be taught. Its called conditioning and it can cause an individual to respond in terror at something as simple as a feather. Maybe you have a dog and are happy to see it when you come home, or cry when you loose it. All these are emotions that were learned. Even pain the most visceral reaction can be conditioned by environment so that you are more or less prone to the feeling.

ok, if you were a parent, how would you teach a little girl that she should be overwhelmed with tearful sympathy by the sight of the first homeless person she saw?