[MD] The Unsocialised Ape

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ian]
So the previous social pattern isn't fossilized in all its glory in the 
future biology, but it does preserve traces / shadows, which reinforce 
the advantage on the next cycle, and so on.

[Arlo]
But clearly you mean that these traces/shadows are recorded in some form 
of genetic sequence or code, no? Now, I do think, as I've said (and 
Tomasello describes) that there is feedback from the social level 
influencing biological patterns.

There is fossil evidence, for example, that since the Late Pliostene (~2 
million years) human morphological evolution showed the greatest changes 
in increasing brain size and reduction of the bony skull superstructure 
coinciding with the first evidence of what we would consider 
sophisticated social behavior. Clearly, the trajectory of human neural 
evolution owes in large part to the "flexing" of certain neural areas, 
rather than simply evolving in response to the inorganic environment.

This I will agree with, that the neurobiology of the human brain has 
evolved over the past million years specifically adapting to social and 
(later) intellectual activity. In this case, yes, the human is 
"predisposed" to enter the world with the tools necessary to quickly 
assimilate and appropriate culture and intellect.

But, this is a bit different from suggesting (if you are) that social 
and/or intellectual patterns become embedded in the genetic sequence so 
that even a human devoid of human culture (and hence human intellectual 
activity) will be able to spontaneously reproduce those patterns in some 
way.

[Ian]
Hmmm - need to wind my brain back to old discussions - but use of the 
word social behaviour here with social animals (and ants and bees ?) is 
not necessarily the same as Pirsigian social level patterns, is it?

[Arlo]
No, its not. Pirsig had stated that the social and intellectual levels 
are reserved for humans, and that is probably the one point of 
contention I have with his ideas.

[Ian]
Surely we need symbolic communication and sharing of social patterns 
between the individuals - not just instinctive, biological , biochemical 
"social" behaviours ?

[Arlo]
Right, and my point about wolves includes more than just instinctual 
behavior. I think we do see evidence of (perhaps very crude) symbolic 
mediation. Certainly nothing even remotely as sophisticated as the most 
primitive human languages, but I also see the levels as gradations that 
begin with extremely simple patterns of activity and scale to the 
ultra-complex patterns we see near the next point of emergence.

To me, then, the distinction between the very crude symbolic 
communication among wolves and their instinctual biological behavior is 
really right there in that fractal point between the two levels.  To 
make a point, the more sophisticated symbolic communications among 
primates and certain other species (humpback whales, perhaps), even 
being crude by human standards certainly far far outsurpasses what we 
see among wolves. So don't think when I say we see evidence of social 
activity among wolves that I think wolves have some elaborate language 
and barter goods and invent myths and hold ceremonies, etc.

[Ian]
This is why I always qualify these points with the self-other individual 
consciousness aspect.

[Arlo]
Tomasello's main argument in "The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition" 
is that deep in phylogenetic history, a biological adaptation in a group 
of primates would cause them to evolve along a unique trajectory away 
from the other herds of primates and into what would become the human 
species, and this singular biological adaptation was the ability to 
perceive conspecifics as intentional-- and later, mental--  agents like 
the self.

To be clear, Tomasello would not argue that this specific neural 
adaption was FOR this to occur, it likely had some other significance, 
but it nonetheless became the springboard by which the entire edifice of 
the social level was able to launch. He calls it the ability for "shared 
attention", and while that sounds like "self-other" I think its worth 
noting that for Tomasello the key is that the other becomes an 
intentional agent like the self. As I said, a mouse has the awareness of 
"self" and "not self" in the sense that it has an awareness of where its 
body ends and "not me" begins. But that isn't enough, according to 
Tomasello, the "self" has to also recognize that an "other" shares the 
same intentional attention as the self, that is it sees others as not 
just "not me" but "like me".

One final note, Tomasello's position is likely more in line with 
Pirisg's than my own, in that for Tomasello, social and subsequently 
intellectual endeavors are unique to the human species.

[Ian]
Did I mention I was reading Ian Gilchrist ?

[Arlo]
You mean Iain McGilchrist? :-)