This discussion will never end.  The statement:

"Why did our brains become so large, so quickly?" which often boils down to "How do/did they contribute to fitness?"

seems to be clearly begging the question unless you firmly believe that
all features of a species must be an adaptation to something.  Of course
this is one of the main points of contention around the legitimacy of
ev-psyc  Putting this out as if it is a legitmate starting point seems
to me to indicate that while many of the criticisms of sociobiology have
been absorbed into ev-psy literature, it seems as if these may be more
for the sake of cya rather than any real concern for the actual
scientific content of the controversy.

As far as I understand, a brain like any other biological feature arises
out of a combination of adaptations, exaptations, and randomness.  It is
possible that the developments in the human brain are the result of side
effects of other adaptations.  Unless strong evidence can be presented
that this can be ruled out, it seems to me the starting point of this
position has to be questioned.  Let alone the rest of the narrative with
untestable speculation and a lack of interest in any divergent points of
view, etc.

-- Ivan

Ian Pitchford wrote:

>Human Nature Review  2002 Volume 2: 187-194 ( 13 May )
>URL of this document http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/barash.html
>
>Essay Review
>
>What's A Brain For?
>by
>David P. Barash, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington (Seattle),
>USA.
>
>A Brain For All Seasons
>By William H. Calvin
>341 pp, University of Chicago Press (2002)
>
>The Mating Mind
>By Geoffrey Miller
>503 pp, Doubleday (2000; in paper Anchor Books: 2002)
>
>I recall an old joke - of the type known generically in the US as a "shaggy-dog
>story" - that involved a "potfer." After several minutes of lengthy and
>irrelevant narration, the joke's victim is led to ask, "What's a potfer?"
>whereupon the joke-teller triumphantly announces the punch-line: "Cooking." So,
>what's a brainfer? Most people would answer "Thinking." Most evolutionary
>biologists, however, are likely to disagree, pointing out that the adaptive
>significance of brains isn't thought but rather, promoting the fitness of
>bodies within which they reside . or, more precisely, the fitness of those
>genes that are responsible for producing the brains in question.
>
>Brains may or may not be good at making sense of the world, or thinking great
>thoughts, or providing vivid subjective experiences to its possessors, or
>adroitly controlling their bodies. It is even possible, one can imagine, to be
>too brainy for one's own good, which brings up another story, this one told by
>the late Ian McHarg: It was the aftermath of World War III and our planet had
>been reduced to radioactive cinders. In the deepest recesses of the ocean, the
>few exiguous survivors - a motley group of primitive, amoeboid creatures - have
>just decided they are going to try once again, but before they separated, ready
>to initiate, once again, that old evolutionary process, they take a solemn vow:
>"This time, no brains!"
>
>Brains, in short, can be a problem. For evolutionary biologists, they
>definitely are. The question is "Why did our brains become so large, so
>quickly?" which often boils down to "How do/did they contribute to fitness?"
>The answers have not been easy to obtain. Or rather, they have been too
>forthcoming. Just as Mark Twain once pointed out that it was easy to stop
>smoking - he had done it hundreds of times! - it is easy to identify the
>adaptive significance of the extraordinarily large human brain: it has been
>done dozens of times.
>
>Full text
>http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/barash.html
>
>Other reviews at
>http://human-nature.com/nibbs/contents.html
>
>LETTERS TO THE EDITOR should be addressed to [log in to unmask]
>

--
Ivan Handler
Networking for Democracy
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--
--
Ivan Handler
Networking for Democracy
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