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@talin: I'd rather burn myself alive before reading a book by Richard Dawkins...
Jules

suthers wrote:@talin: I'd rather burn myself alive before reading a book by Richard Dawkins...
Jules

Each to his own. He's one of my biggest heroes!

Hi Suthers. Sorry for the late reply (just took a new job). Well, you have what is called a household language. This is a language you learn to speak from your household environment as a small child. Children are so influential and their minds are like sponges; they just mimic their parents until around their teenage years when they start to establish their own identities (it isn't fully formed until in their mid-twenties as the frontal lobe hasn't fully developed until about that age). This means that you do learn many of the basics from your parent, because you obtain your personalities from them. You learn a plethora of things from them when you are younger, such as disappointment (when your parents don't buy you that new transformer), or happiness (when they do), or sadness (when they punish you or start saying NO), or love (when your mother blows on your knee after putting peroxide on it because you wrecked on your bike), and so on and so forth. You may even learn lust from your parent as you might experience the Oedipus Complex (not me). You learn a lot once you start school too. You learn deception, and hate, and all the other more adult emotions we as humans posses. These are developed, yet we base what we learned from our parents on how we should deal with them or we natural seek advice (don't forget people do seek advice). There is no need for evolution in terms of the spirit of man; his emotional state. This is naturally concrete. Man hasn't learned to hate another over time, but he has learned to show more discretion. If anything has evolved it was what is morally exceptable. This is not a form of evolution this is simply reform. Your life is worth what you put into it, that is how you give something value; by putting a lot of work into it. If you think your emotions are fake and therefore worthless then they will be. That is why you should self-actualize so that you can see why even though the emotional state of man is technically synthetic, then you might see beyond that and realize the result is very much real. You may be running down the street blind; however, you are still running in traffic, but at least you can smile while doing it.

Firstly sorry or the late post, I was away for the week...
It's weird I had a feeling somebody was going to mention the oedipus complex in the answer to that post, but you don't actually learn the love, hate, etc...
You experience them for the first time and you learn how to channel them in different ways by seeing the reaction of the people around you to these emotions, and mimic them, so I think you learn how to react to certain emotions by mimicking your parents, but not how to feel them, those are in built....
Jules

Well if they are in-built then they are instincts. And if they are instincts then they could not be evolved. How could they evolve without any reference as to what is to come. If one species obtains the fear emotion, how will he pass it on and also how did he obtain it and store it as an instinct? I think the hypothalamus controls being scared (fight or flight syndrome), so it would have to be the hypothalamus which evolved, not the emotion. I would think if one introduces a new chemical to the body (such as adrenaline) the body would die or it would get use to it fast and learn to cope with the new chemical. If you were set to prove your theory you would need to prove that the brain has surely evolved and I doubt that we can measure that based on insects who are thought by evolutionists to denote "early brains" and our brains our the "modern brains"; this is a theory with no proof. Therefore, it is impossible to prove that emotions evolve without first proving that brains have evolved and I am pretty sure the fight and flight syndrome comes already included and has since the dawn of man. Once more, the way we perceive things are inherent, given to us at birth. As we grow and our minds develop we begin to give meaning to those feelings and we adapt and learn discretion which is what drives a civilization. Discretion is our laws and willingness to remain peaceful with each other. But even discretion is not a new and evolved thing, we are simply repeating what has already been learned and lost over time. Life is one big spiral, everything spirals and it is like the infinite for loop we use in our kernels; without it I think we would meet our max and ravage the planet (kind of like now). End Times?

@ Omega:

I didn't follow the whole thread, but just the last two posts.

Sorry to say it, but I think your grasp of what "evolution" means, and how it comes to be, is flawed. Evolution - at least the "real" evolution in the biological sense - is not about "passing on" something you learned.

Let's say there's an alien species that cannot feel fear. They lack the body chemistry. But out of a hundred children, by some rare combination of genes, five childs are born who can feel fear.

If feeling fear is a disadvantage, those children have a lower chance of growing to reproductive age and having children of their own. In the next generation, there will be only four or three children out of a hundred that carry this gene combination - "fear" will remain rare, possibly be rendered extinct after a couple of generations.

If feeling fear is an advantage, those children have a higher-than-average chance of producing offspring themselves, meaning that in the next generation the gene combination "fear" will be seen in six or seven out of a hundred children. Over time, it will stop being the exception, and become the rule - the species will have evolved to know fear, because it gives them a better chance to survive and procreate.

This is the biological part of evolution. Nothing could make someone feel fear if he doesn't have the biochemistry for it.

Of course, there is something like social evolution: Even the "fearless" members of the species could learn that it is advantegous to act as if you are afraid (e.g., running away from a predator). This knowledge can be taught to your children, possibly generating an advantage over those members of the species who never learned that particular lesson (and get eaten). But that is not what is meant when a biologist talks of evolution.

Only those who evolved to have the biochemistry will actually be able to feel the emotion. And thus we are back at the beginning of the argument: Fear, hate, love - all these are measurable in a human, by means of hormones and neural stimulation, even in a newborn baby. They are real. The only "learned" part about it is how you react on those hormones and nerve pulses, but emotions are not lies.

You should try to read the whole thread as I am now forced to repeat many things already stated.

I doubt you or I could successfully debate evolution and even come close to proving anything as you and I are merely laymen in this matter, unless you can confess that you are indeed a biologist which I am not. However, it is clear that you are less informed as I as I have placed many hours of thought, experimentation,and research in this very matter. From my findings I have deduced that emotions are fake as they are interpreted, developed, and learned; not inborn. Thus meaning that these things are merely an illusion in which you have placed meaning to overtime and could therefore be interpreted in another way, yet having the same chemical affect.

As fear could be just as well known as anxiety, or anxiety could just as well be known as anger considering the same chemical reactions occur during each of these emotional states. Just as I could blind you and tell you I will burn you with extremely hot water, yet I pour extremely cold water on you instead and I bet you will swear (if only for a split second) that you have been burned. It would take your rational mind to deduce otherwise, thus learned.

Now as for your fear example, this proves you are misguided. As if an emotion were something material like the brain. Yeah, perhaps through conditioning you could suppress fear, but until you cut the hypothalamus out of your brain, you are going to interpret fear no matter what you try. Bad example.

Fear is again nothing more than a chemical reaction interpreted by the mind and processed by the help of your senses. If I were standing behind you pointing a gun at your head, you wouldn't piss your pants until you turned around, until then you would be as easy as Sunday morning. Once you see my gun your senses would trigger the reaction which triggers your adrenaline, fight or flight response, and thus you interpret that feeling as fear and you fear (because you have learned that gun equals dead sometime in your life). Evolution (in a macro sense) is its self fake!

Moreover, emotions are fake as well, as they are simply nothing more than a label you placed on the chemical reaction in which your body underwent during some episode you had with the external world. You are simply an actor playing a part in this world, one of which is to annoy me (just kidding). So, YES, emotions are in fact synthetic, thus fake.

Yes, I agree that emotions are synthetic, but you have to agree that they are evolved, the biochemistry necessary to feel fear evolved in a small amount of the population because of a random mutation, because of this they ran away from predators, therefore they had a higher chance of survival and therefore passed on their genes more often and eventually we reached the state in which we are currently where all the population has this gene....
Your argument that if the body is exposed to a new chemical, it would dies/need to adapt to it...
In response to this, I'd like to ask you how many cases of penicillin poisoning you have heard of and have you ever heard of penicillin naturally occurring the body?
Even your idea that humans cannot emotionally evolve because they are meant to stay constant is flawed as that itself is caused by evolution, as the organisms who went by similar daily routines had a higher chance of survival, where as ones that went of on crazy adventures had a tendency to die....
I agree with your assertion that emotions are entirely a biochemical reaction, but I fail to understand how you can possibly refute the fact that emotions can be change by (macro) evolution....
Your assertion that this was in the brains of humans 'since the dawn of man' seems to indicate that you are some sort of proponent of twisted proponent of intelligent design who for some reason simultaneously believes that all emotions are synthetic, which is itself a contradiction, as a person who believes in intelligent design will have an unshakable belief in God and therefore would not want to believe that we are entirely controlled by biochemical reactions.... (explaining the use of the word twisted...)
By this I mean no offense, but I cannot understand how you can in anyway refute the fact that emotions have evolved, as they may be 'built in' and are part of our instinct, but if they come from our instinct, then where does the instinct come from, surely it comes from our genes, it is undeniable that these are effected by (macro) evolution, therefore they effect our instinct and indirectly our emotions, therefore emotions are 'evolved', well at least the basic biochemical reaction to certain event are, your reaction to these is governed by a plethora of different variables, from training to suggestion...
As for your example of conditioning using suggestion to make a person they have been burned by cold water, firstly to do this, you propose to blind a person, doing this places the brain in extremely unfamiliar environment and any results taken in these conditions can hardly be seen as typical...
Though it is obvious that blinding or putting somebody in some form of unfamiliar territory is not a necessity to condition somebody (though it does help), it can be done without, this is again a bi-product of evolution, we are adapted to believe, because it allowed us learn without having gone through an experience, combined with the stress that would be caused by blinding the person could easily make them believe that...
I still cannot understand how you could believe this, please expand on your views.
On another note, I had a thought, caused by a series of unfortunate events that have recently occurred to my family, my grand mother died this morning, my mothers car was broken into and set on fire by vandals and she missed a plain to Mumbay to go to my grand mother's funeral, all thought she was able to get a later flight...
When such things happen, people say that something good will happen to compensate...
Does anybody think that the ratio of good to bad in this world is fixed and that for every bad event something else happens to compensate and vice-versa?
I do not for one moment think that sizeof(good) == sizeof(bad), there is much more evil in this world unfortunately...
Only a huge 'epoch change' can change this balance, but do you think there is a basic balance?
Jules.

Omega wrote:I doubt you or I could successfully debate evolution and even come close to proving anything as you and I are merely laymen in this matter, unless you can confess that you are indeed a biologist which I am not. However, it is clear that you are less informed as I as I have placed many hours of thought, experimentation,and research in this very matter. From my findings I have deduced that emotions are fake as they are interpreted, developed, and learned; not inborn.

I studied Biology, Educational Science and Sports Science at the University of Bielefeld, 1993-1997. Several lectures (developmental biology, microevolution, psychology of socialization, etc.) touched that very subject. Also, I have two children, age 4 and 1.

Both my studies and my experiences as a parent suggest that you are wrong.

Whether you deem me qualified enough to believe me, or reconsider your POV, is up to you.

I have had all these doubts of emotions and feelings all my life. I always think of how a baby actually learns to 'fear' and all .I was wondering why hasn't anyone actually performed a simple experiment on a human being (or may be an animal) when it was a baby, of keeping it in an environment which wouldn't possibly create the 'social' effects that we talk about.
If we could create the test animal in an environment where it would not get that kind of social behaviour which makes it learn about the fears and all the worldly things, then we could really be able to see something different. We could create an atmosphere where 'reality' or may be as the topic of discussion goes 'fear' is never taught to the baby or the experience /environmental conditions are never given to the baby.

The problem, is it's hard to 'measure' emotions, as the only way of measuring them is by are reaction to them, which is modified quite a bit by how they are brought up, so it is very hard to measure actual fundamental emotions all we can measure is our reaction to them and when a person does not conform to normal social expectancies it becomes impossible, the best way to do this would to be measure it with an EEG...
There is the extra problem that we haven't studied animals emotional states much yet and there lack of languages doesn't help either and doing so with humans is perceived to be unethical...
Jules

salil_bhagurkar wrote:I was wondering why hasn't anyone actually performed a simple experiment on a human being (or may be an animal) when it was a baby, of keeping it in an environment which wouldn't possibly create the 'social' effects that we talk about.

Because it would be cruel in the extreme?

Check out hospitalism. Unfortunately the English Wikipedia doesn't have to say much on the topic, the German page is much more detailed, but at least there are some links to get you started. It is well known what happens when you deprive children of empathy...

I was wondering why hasn't anyone actually performed a simple experiment on a human being (or may be an animal) when it was a baby, of keeping it in an environment which wouldn't possibly create the 'social' effects that we talk about.

This has already been done in both humans and animals and in both cases the child or animal became severely limited psychologically and physically and/or died. The opposite of depravity has also occurred in humans where fear of soft things like toy rabbits, teddy bears, etc (things one should never fear) was classically conditioned into a small child; who was later reported to still have a fear of fluffy things even into his adulthood. Not cool!

I studied Biology, Educational Science and Sports Science at the University of Bielefeld, 1993-1997. Several lectures (developmental biology, microevolution, psychology of socialization, etc.) touched that very subject. Also, I have two children, age 4 and 1.

Both my studies and my experiences as a parent suggest that you are wrong.

Whether you deem me qualified enough to believe me, or reconsider your POV, is up to you.

This is based on your own POV. What you think you see in your children may just as well be an illusory correlation, like assuming a polar bear's hair must be white, but in reality it is not white, it is clear; you just didn't know the facts, so you based what you thought was rational (though wrong) in the place of fact, but on accident. Which is why laymen should never debate a scientific matter. But, I fancy this debate and will pursue it only if you are.

I hardly consider attending a lecture as qualifying you as an expert, for 1) you may have taken notes, but exactly what percentage of it does your mind currently posses? Your college studies on this subject stopped 12 years ago. You can say as a parent your education of human behavior has carried on steadily, but I would find that hard as you haven't the time to devote to truly studying the child's behavior, nor have you tested the child; or at least you failed to mention that. For example, you may have noticed that you had to teach your children not to put things in their mouths lest they eat something awful. If this is true, then you have instilled in your child the seed of a more complexed notion, boundaries perhaps. You may not have noticed just how much you are influencing your child's development/identity nor foreseen just how similar you and your children will be in time.

I don't see why I should change my point of view based on seemingly stale knowledge of a subject that I am actively studying. In fact, last semester I wrote a 10 page research paper on Evolution v. Creation. I also had a course in Behavioral Psychology and next semester I am taking a course in Human Nutrition and Biology. I take the same position as Stephen Hawking's in relation to his Origin of the Universe Theory, as I do not think that macro-evolution exists. As for micro-evolution I have already taken a stand for that side as I totally believe in micro-evolution. This is what is beautiful about God's design because it was made with the ability to adapt, so that the living creatures of the earth could survive the Ice Age, and Deforestation, diet change, elevation change, etc.

Anyway, I may not have made this clear for failure to articulate myself properly, so let me say that the fetus forms the pineal gland at around 45 days of conception. This gland pumps into the body serotonin and melatonin; one awakens you and the other makes you sleep, and dream. I would think you might start to adjust your biological clock and develop it enough to sleep a full (how many hours baby sleeps and is healthy). You already have the primitive brain even before the aforementioned and that controls the bodies major things like the breathing, movement, etc. Perhaps lurking in here is the creatures primal emotions such as mad, glad, sad. Then it takes the frontal lobe to add some logic to the mix so the other emotions such as jealousy, rage, etc all must be developed later once the frontal lobe is more developed, probably quite soon in child development (ages 2 - 8). It's usually between this age when a child will begin demonstrating parental attachment classified as the Oedipus Complex. So, we know by at least 2 years of age a child will demonstrate the ability to possess a more advanced range of emotions; because he is learning at the speed of light. Therefore, emotions are fake. I don't know how else to describe it, because it is nothing more than an electro-signal interpreted by different parts of the brain which are then recognized somewhere else and you act upon it either out of confusion or from experience. It isn't like your brain came equipped with a help manual, you have to write your own and normally the parent does that for you and then your peers and teachers help a lot, and then around your mid twenties you start taking more control over who you are. Thus, later in your life the more advanced your emotions become such as developing Mysophobia.

Furthermore, and lastly, your theory doesn't support cases involving multiple personalities (or bi-polar disorder), phobias, mental disorders, etc. Your theory doesn't support homosexuality, can you tell me how living creatures who need the opposite sex to procreate can somehow evolve to prefer the same sex? No you cannot at all explain that, because it doesn't suit the macro-evolution myth.

So I was right, so you believe in intelligent design, yet simultaneously you believe that emotions are synthetic, might I ask how you can reconcile these two beliefs?
Because if you believe that everything is purely determined by chemical reactions, you believe that all human behavior is fundamentally deterministic, which would refute the existence of the soul and even of free will.
Or are you just like that?
So you believe that what we pass on what we learn through are life to our offspring by word off mouth and that no evolution occurs, then how do you explain that as you pointed out, our ability for basic emotions seems to develop at a fetal stage, or is this intelligent design again?

Well your idea of us passing on stuff to our offspring seems to be an offshoot of Lamarck's theory...
@Mods: Can we ban somebody for being a Lamarckist? Joking...

but anyway before I continue, I have to say that insulting Solar's abilities is completely unnecessary and that from his other activities on this forum, you should know that he is very capable in many fields and his points of view shouldn't be dismissed like you are doing...

Might I ask why you seem to constantly re-use the example of the Oedipus complex, it is barely a common affliction...
But I will agree that things like phobia's and complexes are probably developed outside the womb and are not only completely genetic, but have a strong basis in our nurture...

Well anyway, might I ask why and how, in the face off all the evidence for evolution, you can still refute it in favour of intelligent design?
(Please don't give the common: "The evidence as planted by God to test our faith" answer...)
By the way before I am not an atheist, I am a practicing Christian, I just believe that the Bible is the truth in the sense that everything in it teaches us something important about daily life and not necessarily historical truth...

Anyway, there is a lot of evidence that Genesis was written by Hebrew scholars to try and explain the existence of the world, hardly a good historical reference...
There is also evidence that the text was still evolving and changing up to the 5th century B.C.

Well anyway, might I ask, how you can deny evolution in all this?

Jules