What I find interesting about the Serengeti model is this: Think about what the “classic” Serengeti looks like … say between Mbuzi Mawe and the southern plains, or north to the Mara where there are open plains dotted with occasional trees etc. etc. (the image in the minds of the evolutionary psychologists) compared to other areas, say to the west, where things can be more hilly and there is more forest and woodland (not so much in their minds). THen think about where the primates, primarily baboons and vervets, are. Those big grassy plains with the antelope and zebra, under the constant watchful eye of sleeping lions, is not primate country. I doubt it would be hominid country, untill much later; Food, water, shelter, coverage while traversing the landscape, smaller game, and scavenging opportunities not already monopolized by superpredators would put hominids in habitats OTHER than the classic open plains.

The problem is most EPs have spent no time in Africa, or if any, they visted Nairobi Game Park and Serengeti and otherwise are mainly working off impressions. It would be like trying to understand US culture by only watching CSI tv shows.

Achrachno: Thanks, working on it!

(I do like the ideas that we were all bar tenders on the Serengeti once, though. But I doubt it – I’ve been involved in teaching folk out here to mix sundowners and can assure you it doesn’t come naturally (Red wine by the shot was the best I think!))

According to Darwinian psychology, (traditional) various behavioral capacities that are known to exist (the usual flight-fight mechanisms, fear, sensory processing, etc.) in mammals are generalized mechanisms that are fine tuned by natural selection to be more appropriately responsive to the environment the organism has been busy evolving in. So medium to large ungulates run while small ones hide given similar situations, for example. There is co-evolution between the brain, the rest of the nervous system, and the various sensory or other parts, and this all predisposes an organism to develop appropriate behaviors. Generalized mechanisms are fine tuned only to some extent by selection and then more refined during life with experience.

EP is about humans and not mammals in general, but EP often cites animal behavior generally, usually mammal behavior, either generalized (which is dangerous) or specific cherry picked species of interest, as models. That’s will be relevant later.

OK, you can imagine that generlized behaviors together with fairly specific experience might cause the development of an individual’s brain to be good at a certain thing. A person who spends a lot of time living on the Serengeti and perhaps even had a mentor would eventually know where to drive their Land Rover at the end of the day to have a good camping spot based on how the terrain looks. The camping spot would have certain characteristics that would enhance survival. By the way, since Australopithecus and friends in South Africa are known to have been found in caves that were near tree stands in an otherwise grassy area, EPists believe that a place with a few trees surrounded by an expanse of grassland is a good camping spot in the Serengeti. But I digress

Anyway, the ability to think through a problem can emerge in an individual from a combination of innate capacity and experience. The soccer coach is good at soccer strategy, the race car driver is good at racing in a car, an accountant is good at managing the books, an experienced file clerk is good at filing things efficiently and an experienced bartender is good at guessing when a potential customer is lying about his or her age.

EP simply specifies that these abilities are supported by task-specific brain mechanisms that are called modules, that exist mainly in the cortex but make use of other brain regions; That these modules emerge in normal individuals because they are specified by genes; and that these genetic systems that specify the modules are shaped and fine tuned in detail by natural selection, which occurs over a period of time called the “Environment of evolutionary adaptedness”; They also further specify and hang tenaciously to the concept that the EEA for humans is 2 million years long, looks like the main grasslands of the Serengeti, and was inhabited by australopithecenes and other hominids that acted on a day to day basis like the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of the Kalahari studied by Lee and DeVore.

I’m not making any of this up.

Therfore, they say and have data to back it up, if you give a bunch of unintiated undergraduates (and I’ve done this experiment myself a dozen times with thousands of students, and it really does work) a certain test you can prove it. The test is a logical test where they must observe a simple logical problem and provide a simple logical answer. When the test is couched in terms of file clerking (you are a file clerk, you took a vacation, while you were gone a temporary worker fucked up your files, so you’ve got these five files on your desk and you need to inspect the smallest number of files to figure out what is wrong, which files do you look in?) the students do very poorly. Our species were not file clerks in the EEA so we do not have an evolved brain mechanism for figuring out files. Alternatively, the students are given a test whereby you are a bartender and five people are sitting at a table and have ordered various drinks, some alcoholic, some not. You have to ask the minimum number of customers for their ID, who do you ask? This question is answered redily and easily and with a high rate of correct answers by the sample of students given that problem. This is becuase in the EEA, we were all bartenders … no, wait, … we were all living in social settings (of bushmen on the Serengeti) and we needed to know who was telling the truth vs. who was telling lies in order to have higher RS. Etc.

I no longer think the crocodile argument I was trying to make can be made (at this time). Too messy, not enough information. But what I was TRYING to do is this:

I was thinking that if mammals in general had modules, then Wildebeest would have a croc module. But it seems that they don’t have a croc module. Since they should have one but don’t that’s a single nail in a medium sized coffin suggesting that ungulates don’t have brains with modules. Many evolutoinary psychologists would respond that it does not matter, because only primate brains have the expanded cortext for these modules to live in, especailly apes, especially humans because the modules must live in the forebrain which is very large in humans.

Then, of course, we have a problem, because a very large range of supposed human behaviors adapted as modules in the brain are defined by EPs and the nature and character of these behaviors are taken from animal models across the board, but mostly mammal, some primate, but among the non-primates, many ungulates (but also pinnepeds). For example, male humans are supposed to act like male elehpant seals, red deer, or bison, in their approach to society. I personally have no problem with a generalized model of male vs. female mammal behavior given internal fertilization and lactation, but such a model is limited. What I’d like to do if possible is to simply cut out the non-ape models entirely, though, when it comes to evolved modules. That’s part 1

Part 2 is this: We know a fair amount about how the neural circuitry of the expanded frontal regions develops, and the main thing we know is that it develops and hooks up not in relation to some underlying complex coding that could possibly produce EP style modules, but rather, in response to the development of the rest of he cortex. It is simply not possible to specify how EP modules would emerge developmentally in human frontal cortex. In other words, they can’t so they certainly don’t. So if a comparative model drives the modules into the frontal region, then there they will die the ugly death of a pretty hypotheses being speared to death my a phalanx of ugly facts. Or perhaps in this case it is a monstrous hypothesis being run to ground by a troop of beautiful facts. Either way ….

Otherwise, I have to confess I’m not familiar enough with EP to understand when an argument is traditional Darwinian and when you might call it EP. They certainly don’t cross in places where crocs are obvious though – the problem is that not all of them are ever obvious, even to 1000s of eyes, and they can only go a certain distance away from one obvious croc before they come to another obvious croc, and they can’t possibly be expected to spot all crocs anyway. It’s even more striking when they come to drink at a waterhole where they know there are crocodiles (and lions) – beyond not being the first to drink, there’s no real choice: pick your drinking site as far from obvious crocs as possible, pick a site with very shallow water where they’re going to be more obvious as they come to attack, take lots of friends with you, try not to be first there (probably not too important, from my observation), drink as fast as possible, have an amazingly quick response to anything surprising. EP or not, I really can’t think what better approach is possible – you certainly can’t put off drinking for ever.

“Now that said, these animals really do show massive fear when approaching water either to cross or to drink – they know there’s a risk. But what sort of response would you expect them to evolve? ”

A two part answer: 1) I’d expect them to evolve generalized fear mechanisms, herding, etc. which they have evolved, and which conforms with expectations based on a traditional Darwinian model of evolution of senses, emotions, and responses in mammals. 2) If they were going to be able to have a finely tuned mechanism vis-a-vs an evolutionary psychology model, well, to be a real evolutionary psychologist I’d first see what they had evolved and then claim that as what I expected …. but since I’m not, what I’d want to see minimally is the ability to assess whether or not crocs are present and to act accordignly (i.e, going around the water if possible, or adjusting vigilance based on what they observe)

“BTW to talk of losses happening ‘during the migration’ is somewhat strange – the migration is essentially a more or less continuous process, ”

Some sources do that, and yes it is a bit strange. I’m not entirely sure it’s relevant and it did not make a lot of sense.

People often do have differing ideas on what the migrationlooks like. When I’ve had tourists in the Serengeti (as a guide) I would tell them on day one “I’ll show you the migration tomorrow” then the next day we woulds see some zebras and wildebeest and I’d say “see those? They’re different than the ones that were in that exact spot yesterday. Migration!” (Or, “See those guys way over there? They were way over THERE (pointing the other way) when we arrived yesterday afternoon)

You can get a Hollywood style migration going with a helicopter but it is normally not allowed.

I have decided that crocs are a dramatic source of mortality to wildebeasts, hence of footage in nature videos, but they are probably not an important source of mortality. There are apparently just not enough crocs.

Antelopes are unlikely to evolve problem specific modules. This may also be unlikely in other orders of mammals, possibly mostâ?¦

It remains to be seen if they emerge in primates, or apes, or humans, but we can leave it on the table as a possibly.”

My next quibbles arenâ??t with you, theyâ??re more with evo. psych. in general. My early exposure to evo. psych. left a somewhat sour taste, since what little I read then seemed to be a repackaging of gender role stereotypes in fancy cognitive science and evolutionary theory terminology (q.v. Buss, in all his glory, nicely dismantled here: http://digilib.bc.edu/reserves/ps531/tami/ps53107.pdf).

I take it as self-evident that our brains are products of evolution, and so brain functions, such as cognition, are products of evolution as well. I not sure that weâ??ve established too much beyond that. Which cognitive processes can we state confidently are problem specific adaptations to early hominid environments? There I waver a bit.

For example, auditory stimulus discrimination and recognition is a pretty common cognitive function in mammals â??is that a predator, the wind, a swarm of insects, a luxury safari tour group in Land Rovers, etc.?

Letâ??s refine it a bit. Is that John Coltrane, the Sex Pistols, or the high school marching band? Also auditory stimulus discrimination and recognition. How problem specific is it?

As is often the case, Iâ??ll go off on a tangent.

The language of cognitive modules is laden with the analogy to computer processors, and evo. psych.â??s seem especially enamored of the metaphor of computer processors (and parallel processing, and algorithms, etc.) to describe cognitive processes. This reminded me of a great essay by John Daugmanâ??â??Brain Metaphor and Brain Theoryâ??:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/metaphors.pdf

â??â?¦perhaps nowhere else in the history of ideas has there been a more striking patter of reliance on metaphors than in the history of reflection about the brain and the causes of behavior, and about the enigmatic relationship anong brain, mental life, and personhoodâ? (pg. 23).

The key bit for this conversation:

â??At its core, the computational metaphor of brain function invokes the notion of formal rules for the manipulation of symbols, as well as certain ideas about data structures for representing information. Surprisingly, given the pervasive popularity of this metaphor, there remains today no well-established evidence of symbolic manipulation or formal logical rules at the neurobiological level in animal physiologyâ?. (pg. 31)

Iâ??d characterize â??modulesâ??, and even â??modularityâ?? as variants of â??data structuresâ?? and â??formal logical rulesâ??, and as such, reified metaphors.

We can get hung up debating whether they are â??domain/problem/species specificâ?? or not, when such modules exist only as conceptual markers for the presumed neurocognitive substrate for observed behaviorsâ??something in the brain, or some product of brain processes must produce the observed behavioral patterns. Saying, with specificity, that it is a stable neuropsychological process (module) that was selected for in ancestral environmentsâ??I think that sort of evo. psych. claim has less substance than assumptions about existence of a Higgs boson, and no credible way to test the claim as yet.

… brb …

OK, found it. Something has changed to cause some comments to go to a strange place.

I hope to actually read it soon. Thanks for letting me know it was stuck!