Offensive Squid

Post edited 9:11 am – August 21, 2010 by twnf

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Hljothlegur said:

I was a little hesitant about the way consciousness is being pictured as distinct from "neural processes" because anything that occurs in the CNS is neural process

And therein lies the problem. They are assuming an non-neural basis for volition which implies a non-physical basis for consciousness. For me this makes the rest of their argument irrelevant. You can't claim that the purpose of the evolution of consciousness (a physical process) is volition and then take the position that volition is non-physical. 

Yes, but corvids have larger brainbuckets for their body size than most any other bird. Also, there are evolutionary trade-offs. Crows and ravens have extended maturation cycles, taking two or three years to reach full maturity.

I'm not saying processing power = big meaty brain. I'm saying processing power = evolutionary tradeoff somewhere else.

Don't know about that freaky spider.

Post edited 8:31 pm – August 21, 2010 by Flanders

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sheila said:

 

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So, I'm recapping the discussion here with my companion. I bought your examples of trade-offs pretty easily (I remember thinking about them too) but he's arguing against negative selection in the case of difficult childbirth because at that point the mother has reproduced, and the child will probably be taken care of by the other members of the group.

 

I told him that I was reaching the limit of what little I know of paleoanthropology or whatever I'd need to have a handle on how likely it was that an infant would survive past the death of its mother. Does anyone here know?

I'm pretty sure that the death of the mom would reduce the chance of the survival of the offspring.

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Difficult childbirths have been known to kill infants, too. Just sayin'.

Paleoanthropology aside, there's also the curious notion that one might need to have more than one child. Humans need to maintain a 2.3 child-per-couple ratio to maintain population levels, in order to cover both parents and individuals who die before reproducing, so if the mother dies delivering her first child, that's 1.3 babies that need to come from somewhere else. Also, more babies = larger presence in the gene pool.

Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker covers this in detail.

Post edited 2:50 am – August 22, 2010 by mtm

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sheila said:

I told him that I was reaching the limit of what little I know of paleoanthropology or whatever I'd need to have a handle on how likely it was that an infant would survive past the death of its mother. Does anyone here know?

I'm pretty sure that the death of the mom would reduce the chance of the survival of the offspring.

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There is this one recent study http://www.countdown2015mnch.o…..tdeath.pdf
but to quickly recap: In Bangladesh the survival of children to 10 years of age if their mother is alive is 89 % but if their mother is dead it's only 24 % while the effect of father's death was neglible. Of course there are other factors in survival but considering that this is a society with very close knit communities and this is still the outcome, the role of mother becomes quite important. I have also seen how babies, whose mother's were in intensive care teetering on the edge of dying/living, were more or less abandonded by the father and the family while they concentrated on the survival of the mother, leaving the baby to be cared for in the nursery. And there have been many stories how babies are blamed for the death of their mother, especially in certain cultures if the baby is a girl and although not directly neglected, they haven't been cared for properly. This leads to not being as attuned to the children as a mother would be, sometimes causing the missing of signs of serious illnesses and death that way.

 

And yes, difficult childbirth that kills the mother usually also kills the baby, especially if no speedy medical intervention is available. It's more the complications after delivery that can kill the mother leaving the baby behind.

Post edited 11:15 am – August 22, 2010 by keanani

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mtm said:  And there have been many stories how babies are blamed for the death of their mother, especially in certain cultures if the baby is a girl and although not directly neglected, they haven't been cared for properly. This leads to not being as attuned to the children as a mother would be, sometimes causing the missing of signs of serious illnesses and death that way.

This is true.  Certain cultures view females as not as valuable.  I remember Maxine Hong Kingston's book, "Warrior Woman", and the value of females in her world, was revealed with her phrase "girls are maggots in the rice".  Cultural traditions can also serve to help mothers and children in tasking care of their children.  In traditional Hawaiian Culture, the practice of "hanai" is still attempted today, although under U.S. and Hawaii State Law, it is not "legal".

hanai:

~To raise, rear, feed, nourish, sustain; provider, caretaker.

~Foster, adopted. Keiki hānai, foster child.

Hawaiians culturally regard the "ohana", or family, which includes everyone and anyone related, whether by blood or not, as "family".  The practice of "hanai" entails that a child would be given away to another relative, for caretaking, as an adoption, or in many instances to give childless couples, or women a child of their own if they could not have a child or to replace a lost child.

My mother went through this after her father drowned when she was four.  My grandmother was a lot younger than my grandfather, and they were not legally married.  So my grandmother gave my mother to relatives, that included my mother's grandparents, great aunt and great uncle and an assortment of cousins, some in the same hanai boat.  I guess my grandmother needed to lead her single life for a few years as my mother was raised without her mother making much contact.  My mother's great grandparents, a man of Hawaiian & English ancestry, and a woman of Hawaiian ancestry, hanai'd a child of Japanese ancestry orphaned by the death of her Japanese immigrant parents.  The Hawaiian people (ethnically) were very open to people of all ethnicities and tended to intermarry with every ethnic group that came to Hawaii's shores.  Children tended to be an assortment of all sorts of ethnicities and mixtures.

 

If a culture has a stong sense of family that includes the extended family of relations that have some connection, whether blood, marriage or even hanai'd, it serves the parents and children well that there is someone who will not allow a child to be lost or not taken care of.

A grandparent, and elder is known as a "kupuna".  Grandchildren are called "mo'opuna".

mo'o~ lizard; succession in genealogy.

puna~ short for "kupuna"; cuttlebone of an octopus.

Flanders said:  Paleoanthropology aside, there's also the curious notion that one might need to have more than one child.

It must be that notion of immortatlity and needing to replace the two parents with at least one child each…

Flanders said:  Look up "fistula"…

http://www.fistulafoundation.org/

http://www.fistulafoundation.o…../faqs.html

http://www.halftheskymovement