Re: Singing as prerequisite (or aid) to language.

William Morse wrote:
> John Wilkins <j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> news:d99ls4$14rd$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>
>
>>William Morse wrote:
>>
>>>John Wilkins <j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
>>>news:d96v3q$7i2$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>From: EKurtz99@xxxxxxx
>>>>>>It might be argued that grooming is absent in humans because
>>>>>>languge has displaced it;
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>When my sister was teenaged, she and her boyfriend would sit in our
>>>>>front-room for hours picking each other's pimples. Does that count
>>>>>as "grooming"?
>>>>>
>>>>>[moderator's eeeewwwww: Eeeewwwww! That's disgusting, that is. And
>>>>>no, it's not. - JAH]
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Yes, it is. Social bonding, hygeine (of a kind - pimples can get
>>>>nasty infections), and reciprocal altruism. That's bonding. There's
>>>>also the point that when they are *that* gross, nobody else *wants*
>>>>to bond with them...
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Which raises the point (amply illustrated by the general use of
>>>jargon in many contexts and the use of references to Monty Python by
>>>cognoscenti in t.o. as a particular instance) that isolation
>>>mechanisms are a common feature of evolution. The question is why?
>>>What advantage does this give to the isolationists - in the above
>>>example the teenage couple? Why would they want for nobody else to
>>>bond with them?
>>>
>>
>>They don't. But all humans are in a situation where they must play the
>>social dominance games with what they have, and if they have
>>acne-propensities, then that is what they must use to form in-group
>>alliances for mutual benefit.
>
>
>>A recent paper reported by Eureka Alerts noted that in-group
>>confidence correlated with the cooperative capacity with competitor
>>groups in Northern Ireland. Humans need other humans to make do - this
>>causes assortative associations. In other words, any social group is
>>better than none.
>
>
> Good answer. This would indicate you are positing that, among humans,
> group selection is predominant over individual selection (I don't have a
> problem with this).

Actually, no (although I too have no great problem with most kinds of
realistic group selection). I posit that we evolved through selection for
status maximisation *because* it increases one's fitness by improving the
chances of survival progeny will later have.

There may also be sorting of groups which have these traits above the
threshold needed to improve the average fitness of the group.

> But isolation mechanisms then imply that there is a limit to the size of
> the group that can be selected. So now my question is what determines
> this limit.

I think these are density-dependent traits, and so they will not necessarily
have a size limit of the population, so long as the local group (which may not
be discrete or isolated) has the right overall composition for the
status-maximising trait to be fit. Obviously in a patch of defectors it is not
going to increase in fitness, but I wonder if such a group is even plausible.
>
> Yours,
>
> Bill Morse
>


--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"Darwin's theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other
hypothesis in natural science." Tractatus 4.1122

.

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