UGD230S Evolution, Human Nature and Behavior Learning goals: Knowledge mastery Critical thinking Personal growth Evolutionary principles Multidisciplinary approach Psychological basis Evo perspectives: Nature vs. nurture Instinct vs. Consciousness Stone aged mind & EEA

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select: doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” – John B. Watson “Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.” – B. F. Skinner

“but these individual natures are merely the indeterminate material that the social factor molds and transforms. Their contribution consists exclusively in very general attitudes, in vague and consequently plastic predispositions which, by themselves, if other agents did not intervene, could not take on the definite and complex forms which characterize social phenomena.” -- Emile Durkheim 人之出，性本善，性相近，习相远，苟不教，性乃迁. >

As The Moral Authority of Societies Standard Social Science Model, SSSM “Consequently, the positions of individual scholars with respect to the SSSM have taken to imply allegiances with respect to the larger social and moral conflicts around the world. Thus, to support the SSSM was to oppose racism and sexism and to challenge the SSSM was, intentionally or not, to lend support to racism, sexism, and, more generally, “biological determinism.” -- John Tooby & Leda Cosmides

SSSM rests on a faulty analysis of nature-nurture issues… the idea that the phenotype can be partitioned dichotomously into genetically determined and environmentally determined traits is deeply ill-formed, as is the notion that traits can be arrayed along a spectrum according to the degree that they are genetically versus environmentally caused. Without this evolved structure, we would have no competences or contingent environmental responsiveness whatsoever. The system could not respond to “the environment” (that is, to selected parts of the environment in an organized way) without the presence of mechanisms designed to create that connection. -- John Tooby & Leda Cosmides

Proximate explanation: How? Ultimate explanation: Why? Our brain was “designed” to solve problems of EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness) refers to the Pleistocene (2mya to 10,000ya) and its survival challenges faced by small kin-based, hunter- gatherer societies. Much of our mind is instincts and unconscious - “Students often ask whether a behavior was caused by “instinct” or “learning.” A better question would be “which instinct caused the learning?” - “We come to a problem already knowing a lot about it.”

Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside-down? The common man can only say, Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden… William James, Father of American Psychology Nothing is commoner than the remark that Man differs from lower creatures by the almost total absence of instincts, and the assumption of their work in him by 'reason.' Man has a far greater variety of impulses than any lower animal; and any one of these impulses, taken in itself, is as 'blind' as the lowest instinct can be.

In a split of a second

:53 = Agriculture, 10,000 years ago 11:57 = Civilization, 5,000 years ago EEA: For most of the 12 hours, we lived as hunters and gatherers for at least a million years.

:00:00 hominid and chimpanzee lineage split 6 MYA 8:00:00 Australopithecus emerged 4 MYA 10:00:00 Homo erectus migrated out of Africa 2 MYA 11:00:00 Homo sapiens emerged in Africa 1 MYA 11:59:24 The beginning of agriculture 10,000 YA 00:00:00 African and Asian apes split 12 MYA 11:54:00 Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa 100,000 YA 11:59:42 The dawn of civilization 5000 YA

12:00 Midnight: 4,500 million years ago The Earth has formed, along with the other bodies in the solar system, from a cloud of dust and gas swirling around the sun. The Precambrian era has begun. Midnight

2:00AM: 3,750 million years ago. The very first life emerged in the form of simple, single- celled organisms which would last over 1500 million years or about 4 hours.

6:00AM: 2,250 million years ago With half of earth history elapsed, the first multicelluar organisms were just appearing.

Fish (tetrapods) came out of water ( MYA) and insects began to colonize earth ( MYA), both within the last hour before 12 noon. Dinosaurs came and went (245 – 65 MYA), lasting about 26 minutes. Hominids (Australopithecus, 4 MYA) appeared about 39 seconds ago Modern humans (homo sapiens) have been on earth for the past 6 seconds. Civilization is less than 1/20 of a second. 12 Noon