Subject: Re: Evolution and Cognition

From: Brian Todd Schwartz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:31:21 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 28 Aug 1995, Bryan D. Caplan wrote:
> What instincts do I think human beings possess?  First, I suggest
> that humans incline instinctively to a crude Hobbesian egoism
> , modified only to include concern for blood relatives. 

	What is Hobbesian egoism, specifically?
	On the blood relative point:   I interpret the 
above to say the people have an instinctive tendency to be more concerned 
with blood relatives than other people, all other things being equal. 
	Now, if that is instinctive, would a person not have to know who his 
blood relatives are, consciously?  Imaagine that we set up an experiment 
where we can test the hypothesis that a human has an instinctively 
greater concern for blood relatives. Would we find that 
our subject would act any differently to people who were related to him, 
or those not, if he did *not* know which people he interacted with were 
related to him, or not.
	The bottom line question is then, not whether people have, innately, a 
mentality of self-preservation, or kin preservation, but, more generally, 
same race preservation??  All other things being equal, will a human 
being tend to aid those with the most in common with him genetically?
	Gosh, I hope not.

"Know fear, or be ruled by it."			|Brian Schwartz   \

---

From: Michael Hardy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 16:53:21 -0500 (CDT)

Bryan D. Caplan <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I have come more and more to doubt Rand's view that human beings
> have no instincts, that we are _tabula rasa_

	Is saying that we are born _tabula_rasa_ the same as saying we
have no instincts?  Why could one not hold that we have instincts _and_
we are born _tabala_rasa_?  Besides, was it Rand who said we have no
instincts?  Nathaniel Branden wrote something to this effect, and she
may perhaps be considered to have endorsed it to some extents by being
his co-editor in a jointly journal, or at least not to have objected to
it.  Rand said we are born _tabula_rasa_ (I think this is in ITOE
somewhere?) but I'm not convinced that is the same as saying we have no
instincts.  Rather it only means that we don't know anything when we are
born.

	Mike Hardy

-- 
Michael Hardy
School of Statistics
University of Minnesota
[email-masked]