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From: friedman@h-sc1.UUCP (dawn friedman)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Avoiding Anthropomorphism
Message-ID: <562@h-sc1.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 16:55:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: h-sc1.562
Posted: Fri Aug 30 16:55:35 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 12:39:39 EDT
References: <42@decwrl.UUCP> <5631@tekecs.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard Univ. Science Center
Lines: 63

> > > It's also a mistake to assume that human motivations are different than
> > > animal ones. 
> > >  
> > 
> > L S Chabot  
> 
> Thank you, Lisa, for proving that men are not the only ones who, after
> misunderstanding someone's posting, proceed to take all kinds of cheap
> shots at them, generally raising the net-blood pressure in the process.
> Your response was insulting and inappropriate, and I'll try to show you why.
> 
> Human beings are animals. It is reasonable to expect that they share some
> behaviors with other animals, while other behaviors are unique to humans.
> Some behaviors which are unique to humans may be an evolutionary descendent
> of other animal behaviours. Still others have probably evolved in only
> humans. IT IS A MISTAKE TO **ASSUME**, A PRIORI, THAT A HUMAN BEHAVIOR HAS A
> DIFFERENT CAUSE THAN AN ANIMAL ONE. To do so encourages the idea that
> humans are some sort of special, priveleged species that can stomp on
> whatever they want to with impunity. Although, come to think of it, that
> does bear some resemblance to your net behavior. 
> 
> 					Jeff Winslow
I cleverly missed one week of net.women and am not as sure of what's
going on as I ought to be, but I suspect it has something to do
with something I tried to say earlier.
One:  It is natural to enjoy a few cheap shots at something that seems
remarkably stupid and/or annoying to you.  Often, it turns out that 
the thing that seemed so stupid did so because you misunderstood it.
This can be pretty embarrassing, and I try to keep myself from taking
cheap shots on short notice because of it, but I don't always succeed
and I hardly expect others to.
Two:  "Some" behaviors of humans are undoubtably similar enough to
animal behaviors so that we can learn more about one by reference
to the other, which is my criterion of similarity.  (I still hold
that we know so damn little about either that we ought not do 
make the comparison blithely, as if we were talking about rival
pitchers.)  But surely we can make some judgement about WHICH
kinds of behaviors are likely to fall into this category?
I am ***not*** a behaviorist, the sort who thinks everything can
be reduced to stimulus and response; I realize that we cannot know 
what is going on in a gorilla's mind, or a tarpon's, or a sea-cucumber's;
but we have to make some assumptions or we may as well give up
on describing animal behavior at all.
Can we assume:
less nervous system a creature has, the less likely its behaviors
are to resemble those behaviors controlled by the human brain?
(I am thereby excluding things like spinal-cord reflexes, if you
want to call those behaviors.)
               2)   The more recent the common ancestor of
and vic    
               4)   (related to 1 and 3)  Human behaviors
that are most recent, most culture-dependent, most variable in time,
most obviously learned, and so forth, are least likely to have
animal analogues.  
   
These are just a start.  You are all welcome to start shooting holes
in them.  But if the general principle of "we can decide if a
behavior is likely to be analagous" is to be challenged, I'd like
to hear what kind of ethology can be done without it.
  
                                                         dsf
                                                     (dina ansieri)