We can start with the forces that erased possible variations on the bee, for example, just to keep things kind of simple. Possibilities are: extremes of temperature, gravity, radiation from the sun, availability and nature of building materials (elements like hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.), presence of predators, particularities of food sources (e.g. shape of flowers), wind, rain, earth's electromagnetic field, etc. The list goes on and on. In the original thought experiment, a bee can exist that weighs 12 tons and uses argon, helium, and gold as the building material for its body, but in reality a bee can't be 12 tons because it would fall straight out of the sky. Nor could it procure enough calories to sustain such a large body. Nor could that body be made from argon, helium, and gold because these elements are too scarce (plus their natures don't lend themselves to the reactions that allow for life, though I'm not sure why). Anyway, the bee as we know it is a pared down version of a huge range of theoretical versions that couldn't exist due to the particular environmental forces in which it exists.
That set of forces that erased all those theoretical variations is what is known as the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. This is a key concept in understanding human nature. Just like the bee, we are only one version of a huge range of theoretical versions of our alternative selves. So I want to pose the question: what are some of the forces that have erased our alternative selves?
So physics and chemistry are evolutionary erasers, correct? Bees weighing 12 tons never evolved because their potential precursors, say bees weighing twice as much as a typical bee, failed to thrive and survive long enough to reproduce due to limitations placed upon them by gravity. Consequently, they were erased. Sadly, I don’t know enough about organic chemistry to draw a similar conclusion about argon-based bees, but both examples seem to share a common characteristic. They are mal-adaptations to existing environmental conditions. I imagine other erasers exist within the context of environmental conditions. Aren’t scarcities, competition, climate change, and catastrophes typically regarded as big erasers? I recently watched a documentary (name unknown) which hypothesized that the species of fish that adapted to a terrestrial environment did so because it was losing the battle for its food source to a more aggressive competitor.
ReplyDeleteThere are undoubtedly more, but I don’t quite understand the significance of these to evolutionary psychology? Perhaps I don’t understand the basic concept, but the phrase suggests, to me anyway, an examination of the evolutionary process that resulted in the present state of human consciousness, its various instantiations, and perhaps speculation about the potential of human consciousness now and in the future. To follow the analogy, it seems the question is what erased the possibility of self-conscious bees, not to mention self-conscious cue balls?
The importance of the concept of the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness is that it is like the extremely faceted crucible that stamped out humans. I watched a documentary today that showed that master chess players' brains rely heavily on the area of the brain that codes for and recognizes faces. Obviously we and our ancestors didn't evolve playing chess, so it can't be considered a facet of the EEA, but other humans were a facet of the EEA. Knowing and being able to recognize which humans were kin, allies, and enemies was highly important to our survival. Children who recognized a face as their mother's were more likely to survive to reproductive age than was the child who couldn't recognize their mother's face. People who recognized the face of someone who had cheated them or were violent in the past were better able to avoid them in the future. But chess has just co-opted and capitalized on this facial recognition ability (I forgot to mention that there are people whose facial recognition area has been damaged and are completely unable to recognize faces, not even close friends' and relatives'. Weird, anyway). So although chess isn't part of our biological nature, our relationship to it is similar to our relationship to the EEA, in other words the EEA is the crucible that formed us, and we are the crucible that formed chess (and every other cultural product). Our shape is the positive to the crucible's negative and chess's shape is the negative to our shape. So in order to understand our nature, the particular shape that our species has taken, it is helpful to understand the shape of the environment in which we evolved. The main thing I think is that other humans are one of the most important facets of that environment.
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