Mike Waller

When the US 8th Airforce deployed to England and started their air campaign against Germany, they suffered far heavier losses than had been expected. As many of these arose from fighter attacks, some bright spark came up with the idea of using the bomber force to destroy the factories that built fighters or made their components. The result was even heavier losses because, understandably, the Germans had anticipated such attacks and established a lethal combination of flack and fighter defences around such facilities. Summing up this disastrous new strategy, one commentator said that it was an attempt to resolve a very difficult problem (dealing with the fighters) by tackling an impossible one. What has this to do with the present topic? My feeling is that I have successfully dealt with a very difficult problem in that, after decades of effort, I have come up with an explanation for the evolutionary persistence of depression and it its physiological consequences that fully accords with the genetic theory of evolution, itself, in my opinion, the only fully coherent explanation for the evolutionary process currently available. My difficult is that considerations of good manners are now confronting me with an impossible task: that of explaining my ideas in terms of Questionposters world view, something which remains as impenetratable to me now as it did when he or she first joined the debate. If there are those out there who can act as intermediaries, I should welcome their assistance. Otherwise, as I have previously suggested, I feel that QP and I shall simply have to agree to differ. I also have a more general point to make. I have proposed that people (and other organisms) can be led to act other than in accordance with their personal evolutionary interests by considerations of family reputation. This should not be taken to imply that such considerations are at the forefront of their minds when they so act. As long as what they do has the effect of protecting family reputation, their proximate motivation could be as simple as a burning conviction that what they are doing is somehow "right".

Reversal of Fortune A poor man, oppressed by life, seeking to hang himself, Climbs to fix the noose. Seeing, hid high upon a shelf, A bag of gold, he leaves rejoicing. Finding it not there, The owner then takes up the rope and dies in black despair. Thus the human mind, when sent reeling by some blow, Seems somehow constrained to quickly end the show. The above is my reworking of a short poem said by the original translator to have been based on an epigram composed in Ancient Greece. If so, it is another example of the timelessness of the phenomenon which I have sought to make compatible with the genetic theory of evolution. At risk of boring those who have followed this topic, I restate my solution as follows: 1. For species whose method of reproduction includes careful selection of mates, the fact that prospective partners only express half the genes they carry presents a serious problem in gauging their true adaptive worth. 2. An obvious way round this is to use close kin as a guide to those hidden genes. It works for stockbreeders, it works for insurance companies, and when we look, we usually find that natural selection has long preceded us. 3.As natural selection can be viewed as an endless series of strategies and counter-strategies, the use of kin as a guide to true adaptive worth will almost certainly have favoured the emergence of a counter-strategy. 4. In this context the most probable counter-strategy would be the self-elimination of individuals whose performance was sufficiently poor in relation to close kin as to do them reputational damage in the context of mate selection that will have quantitative and qualitative reproductive consequences far in excess of the likely genetic throughput of the under-performing individual. 5. The most likely way of bringing this about would be for the usual processes of natural selection to progressively forge a link between a sense of failure (as induced by the reactions of significant others) to low mood, and then a further link between low mood and the range of dire physiological consequences we know now it to have. This rational is either fatally flawed or one of the most important insights yet achieved in seeking to understand the human condition. I should much appreciate hearing from anyone competent to judge.

During the course of a 30 minute BBC radio interview with Chris Springer a couple of day ago, it was suggested that during the 1960/70s it was generally thought that humans evolved from Neanderthals. Yet I am fairly sure that when I was growing up in the 1950s the then conventional wisdom was that we were descendants of Cro Magnon man, and had not direct relationship with Neanderthals. Am I misremembering, or was there a subsequent switch of view which went unnoticed by me?

If you click on the following web address you will find a blog from the BBC's Home Editor with the title "Friends are a matter of life and death". It arises out a recent remark by a UK Government adviser that "Loneliness is probably more dangerous to our health in retirement than smoking". This, in turn, arose from a meta-analysis carried out by academics at Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16989689

In an attempt to stimulate more debate, I make the following claim which is of relevance only to those who, as I do, believe that the metaphorof the selfish gene offers the best available way of understanding why we and all other life forms come to be as we are. Both here and in my paper "Family stigma, sexual selection and the evolutionary origins of severe depression's physiological consequences", I have contended that major depressive episodes reduce life-expectancy in the many ways they are now known to do because of a lethal interaction between mate selection pressures and those of inclusive fitness, acted out in the contest of the phenotype/genotype disparity. By this I mean that as individuals only express some part of their genetic inheritance, observation of a prospective mate's close kin offers the best chance of identifying the adaptive quality of those genes currently unexpressed but which are still likely to be transmitted to young. Against such a background and in a naturalistic setting, a mechanism which moved from sustained negative feedback with regard to performance, on to chronic depression and thence to an early death would be a very unpleasant, but evolutionarily effective, means of eliminating family members who, by performing well below the average for the family, would others inflict severe reputational damage on their siblings and other close relatives. In accordance with the postulates of selfish gene theory, the sole evolutionary beneficiaries of such a process would be the genes which defined the mechanism. It seems to me that to those who accept selfish gene theory, there are only two possibilities with this idea. Either it is fatally flawed in terms of that evolutionary logic, or it offers one of the most profound insights into the human condition yet to emerge. Regarding the former, if it is so, it would seem kindest were I to be relieved of my misconceptions as soon as possible. As I have indicated, I do have many otherinterests which, if I am mistaken in this, could be more profitably explored. If, on the other hand, my logic is as compelling as it seems to me, is it not of considerable importance that we would at last have a clear insight into the reasons why we seem so hag-driven to trash the planet as each individual strives to secure the physical evidence of comparative success, an endless struggle which results in so many living out their lives under life-destroying clouds of depression? If, as I am claiming, we are all born with a life or death need to secure the approval of others, is it any wonder that so many of us do scrabble so intently for the trappings of success? Similarly, with the approval of others so crucial to our self-esteem, is it surprising that, when we buttress this fundamental requirement with pride in country, we are prepared to be organised to die and kill by the many millions, as the twentieth century all too clearly demonstrated? On a more prosaic scale, cannot we suddenly see the underlying potency of advertising tag-lines such as "because you're worth it" and the enticing invitation to be "the only kid on your block with......" Does not the idea also explain Freud's conviction that thereis a death instinct, Thanatos, standing in opposition to the procreative urge; and in the world of literature, Victor Hugo assertion that "Man lives by affirmation even more than he does by bread";and Cervantes having given Sancho Panza these lines, over 400 hundred years ago: "Ah, don't die, Master, but take my advice and live many years; for the foolishest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die without rhyme or reason, without anybody killing him, or any hands but melancholy's making an end of him"? Comments please.

I think the opposite of what you do. I think first of all, when early humans entered Europe, they found the neanderthals, and if we look at people today using your logic, they would have mated. Why? Well people have sex with goats, trees, and even leather boots. Why not a new type of hominid ? I once heard somebody remark (or, perhaps, quote), "They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but, from my observation, it mostly just breeds".

At last, a kindred spirit!!! It is the genes that define the mechanism that reap the evolutionary reward. Though they, of course, are in competition with rival alleles who operate in precisely the same way, with, as usual, those who do the job most effectively achieving ascendancy. Effectiveness in this case is being not so over-active as to take out too many marginal threats to familial reputations, nor so lax as to allow too many to persist. More generally, I think this the only sensible way of looking at the evolutionary process. Although "we are all gene theorists now", many still seem to have pointless debates on topics such has why sexual reproduction has persisted in that it seemingly halves the chances of any given gene getting through. The only sensible answer is that it had proved a brilliant way for the genes defining sexual reproduction to persist over massive evolutionary timescales. Amongst species that go in for assortative mating, this is achieved by using the organism's own brain to identify the mate most likely, by coupling some of its genes with those of the mate-selector, to carry the sexual selection genes through into future generations. As we know, this is an effective strategy in environments where genetic variability pays big dividends in terms of environmental adaption, including parasitic resistance. In such circumstances asexual reproducers run a much greater risk of being driven to the evolutionary wall by parasites, or whatever, perfectly attuned to their relatively unchanging genetic inheritances. The field is thus left clear for the sexual reproducers. From this standpoint, we can see that the genes defining the sexual selection mechanism are locked in an unending contest with the genes that define the mechanism I am proposing. The former seeking to get as much high quality information out of a prospective mate's kin as possible before making a mating commitment; the latter continually striving to mask familial weaknesses and secure mating opportunities better than their real adaptive merits would attain. The irony is that both genes are carried by all individuals.

I am deeply touched to be linked with Einstein even if only in terms of his ultimately unsuccessful quest. And whilst we are in the realm of back-handed compliments, may I commend you on your remarkable capacity to impute to others opinions they do not hold. For example, I gave as an instance of non-human reasoning a crow that used a piece of wire as a hook. Yet you reply with a claim that I haven't considered that "words are not the only way to consciously process or perceive information". Indeed, given the extreme recency of language in the evolution of the organisms who eventually became humans, it would seem to me self-evident that most, if not all, reasoning is other than language-based. As for your claim that "cells can't reason", it seems about as insightful as an observation that cells can't run. In my view the answer to both propositions is "No, but they build structures that can". Everything you have said notwithstanding, I remain convinced that anybody who accepts the genetic theory of evolution would find the following propositions conceptually irrefutable 1. Given that when proprioception is disabled by trauma or viral attack, the conscious mind loses its sense of control over the entire body, yet the body continues to operate seemingly as normal, that sense of control is unlikely to be anything more than an adaptive illusion. 2. Whilst it is perfectly possible for individuals within species who carefully select their sexual partners, to come into being with little or no interest in the careful election of sexual partners, the genes defining such indifference would be rapidly out-competed by genes favouring the opposite approach. 3. Again, with in such a species, using kin as an indicator of a prospective mate's true genetic worth would be of such adaptive value that once genes favouring such a strategy emerged, they would rapidly be generalised. 4. Once they were in place, inclusive fitness considerations would mean that individuals would cease to be, in terms of sexual selection, sole traders. Instead, their performance, good orbad, would impact upon the perceived mate-worthiness of all close kin. 5. Under such a regime the point can be reached at which an individual inadvertently does so much damage to his/her kin's' perceived mate-worthiness that the aggregate reproductive cost significantly outweighs that individual's probable personal gene-throughput. 6. At this point, in the very unpleasant world that is shaped by natural selection, self-elimination starts to pay bigger evolutionary dividends than does continued existence.

I think that you first need to define what you mean by "reason". Would you consider the use of calculus (sadly,a closed book to me) an example of reasoning? I ask, having read that billions of folk who would claim no such capability routinely use it, for example, in catching a ball. This is particularly so when the curving flight of a baseball or cricket ball hit high requires complex positional calculations if it is to be caught. Again who was doing the reasoning that kept your car out of trouble when you were thinking about how to reply to me? Folks remarking that "they" don't remember covering some part of their journey is fairly common in my experience. My expectation is that you will say that you actually mean is high level reasoning as in "Who should I vote for?" or "What does freedom really mean? ; but to me, privileging this kind of mental function over all others would be the equivalent of giraffes privileging long necks were they the dominant species. Giving thought to such things is just something we do because that is the kind of species we are. Big brained, opportunistic problem-solving, environmental exploiters have to have a second-order, option-consideration box in which to work out the approach most likely to be most beneficial. I learned recently from a programme dealing with the career of a female academic who had spent her life studying them, that amongst birds the Corvus (crow) family are (a) some of the most intelligent and (b), in proportion to their cerebral capacity, brilliant at problem-solving. Last night, on the TV quiz cum comedy show, QI, they made the same point and showed a clip of a crow said never to have seen the artefacts to which it was being experimentally exposed. Having rapidly investigated its new surroundings, it used its beak to pick up a piece of hooked wire and then used that to hook out a small pot with a handle that had been put deep in a larger container that precluded direct access by the crow. The smaller pot contained food. And what else did the female academic have to say about crows? To everybody's surprise, they had recently been shown to display some of the behaviours taken in primates to be indicative of self-awareness. Again this suggest to me that seeing this kind of thing as some kind of ineffable mystery is no more than intellectual snobbery operating, superficially at least, at the species level. I say superficially,because it seems to me that those most likely to beat the drum about it already believe it to be a characteristic with which they are particularlywell-endowed. To finish on a lighter note, if my prose won't convince, perhaps my poetry will. Here is smething I wrote a few years ago: O May NoSome Pow'r the Giftie gie us............ I think old Rabbie got it wrong, Our world would not last very long If we could see with steely eye The self that's seen by passers-by. The human brain's perhaps the best But in one way it fails the test. In planning all our clever acts We need a mind which faces facts. Yet one such fact we deeply fear: There ain't much point in being here. As billions of us come and go, From whence and whither we don't know, Our egos need stout walls and roof To shield them from this dreadful truth. So, whilst outwardly there's no sign, Inside ourselves we build a shrine. There, raised upon a noble plinth, Which stands within a labyrinth, There dwells the sacred sense of self So crucial to our mental health. These gods, who hold us all in thrall, Demand delusions shared by all, Which serve to fool the human race That everyone's a special case. So when your mind to ego turns Forget about old Rabbie Burns. As of yourself you take a view, Wear spectacles of rosy hue. MikeWaller

You might be right; perhaps it is all impossibly complicated and we will never get a handle on it. However, it's not a story I buy. It seems to me that if you took a piece of battery driven electronic technology back to the twelfth century and then showed folks what it could do, they would first rip it a part and say that these seemingly inert pieces simply could not produce what they had just heard and they would then burn you as being in league with the devil! In short, our lack of understanding does not mean that things cannot eventually be understood. Yes, of course it is hard for single cell organisms to start coalescing and then move on, over the generations, into ever increasing complexity; but at each step all they have to attain is a tiny edge over what had previously been conspecifics or make a successful niche shift. No doubt in most cases they failed, but complexity is built on the very rare exceptions that succeed + almost unimaginable periods of time. When complexity starts to produced large brained creatures in response to turbulent environments, it is heading for an existential crisis. As I have already suggested, fully to exploit such environments an organism needs a capacity to review its options in advance of acting. And, in my mind at least, that essential capacity is what we know as conscious. The problem is that once consciousness develops to the level at which we possess it, it starts throwing up annoying questions such as, "What's it all about?". The difficulty is, if the account I have given is to be relied upon, the answer to that is, "Nothing". You then have three choices: share with others a belief in a deity; take it on the chin; or find solace in the conclusion that the whole thing is ineffably complex. In terms of my theory, the first and last carry a major adaptive advantage that the evolved desire to be well regarded is met in part by a god considering us important or a sense that one is an integral part of that ineffable mystery. I should perhaps say that if it works for you, I should stop trying to fix it!

Natural variability is one of the bedrocks of evolution. A re-occuring mutation which might once have been an actual disadvantage or a disadvantage in terms of acceptability in the context of sexual selection, suddenly becomes something positive. There does not have to have been an environmental factor that favoured it previously. Which is not, of course, to say that there wasn't something that did so favoured it.

It might perhaps be considered a matter of good list etiquette. I have no strong views either way but was very annoyed on the occasion on which I first hear the idea aired to see the guy who had the imagination to put it forward simply given, as we say, a good kicking for his troubles. This has never seemed to me a good way to progress the scientific debate. There may, of course, be incontravertible evidence of some kind that proves the two events were wholey unrelated; but failing that it seems to me obvious that the interplay between proto-humanity and fire would be a lot subtler that that of the more hairy individuals simply getting burned to death. Off the top of my head I would say that fire confers at least four major advantages: the cooking of food stuffs which, I think, aids digestion; the giving of illumination at night so that work can be done at a time when it would otherwise be impossible; providing some protection against predators who either fear the fire itself or the lighted brands that can be taken from it; and land clearance. Assuming as you say, that hairier individuals, having be burned by it, chose to avoid it altogether, the adaptive advantage on those who decided to stick with it would be substantial, And it would seem to me obvious that the less hairy would be prominent amongst the stickers. Incidental years ago I read a folk tale from China which gave an account of how the Chinese came to eat pork. It turned upon a pre-pork eating society (but why would they have pigs?) in which a particular peasant's pig house burned down. Experimentally trying the meat, he found it so delicious that he had to have more and thus the world received the gift of sweet and sour pork! . Whatever the truth of that, it does seem to me pretty likely that groups of hominids coming across burned corpses following forest fires would find meat not entirely charred very much to their taste and would seek out way of producing this to order. Certainly I have never know a dog turn its nose up at cooked meat.

Thank you for your detailed contribution to the scientific debate!!!!!!

A controversial idea put out about 20 years ago was that the use of fire was the key event; the point being that hairy creatures playing with fire are quite likely to incinerate themselves. Many on the the list I was then on were very strongly opposed to this (to a degree that was well beyond the merits or otherwise of the suggestion) but when I experimentally put a match to the hair on my forearm I was surprised at how much it flared up. I should say that I suffered no permanent harm!

You raise a key point, but I am scrupulous in sticking within the bounds of inclusive fitness theory. To make matters simple, let us imagine 4 siblings born to parents who both carry a single copy of the same deleterious recessive gene. Amongst the siblings, one is entirely free of it, two carry it as a recessive and in the forth, who has two, it is fully expressed. Because it is a very much an under-researched area, the evidence of mate selectors using kin as to key guide to the genetic worth of a prospective mate, is limited. However if you read my paper you will see that I have found some, and amongst humans (including stockbreeders, insurance companies, and marriage brokers) the evidence is overwhelming. Indeed, modern Western ideas of romantic marriage are very much the exception – most societies consider the family background an essential consideration – and even in the West, evidence of negative family traits can still have a powerful effect. My paper includes material taken from an island study in which a terrible genetic disease is a key determinant of which families are considered eligible for marriage, whether or not the individual under consideration actual has the condition. Against such a background there seems to me to be an impelling logic to the idea that if the forth sibling's hereditary problems are sufficiently serious, the mating prospects of the other three would be very much enhanced were he or she not around to, in effect, give evidence against them. I think it clear from the above that I place no reliance whatsoever on group selection theory. That said, when I started out on this quest, I mistakenly thought the group advantages crucial. That there are group advantages seems to me indisputable. Take for example the established fact that depressives actually move more slowly than those not depressed, then transpose this to a prey species. If group A have this characteristic and it is linked to individuals recognising – or being made to recognise - that they are adaptively sub-optimal, then the prey animals will forever be picking off the weaker brethren. Put another way, this form of self-elimination will act as a multiplier on the normal processes of natural selection. As a result, group A will be refined by such processes far more quickly than group B in which, no matter how mal-adapted, every individual runs like hell. With the second group, natural selection and the laws of probability will still act to improve the average level of adaptedness, but nowhere near as quickly. Result? Game, set and match to group A. Eventually I came to realise that this is a flawed argument as it is too open to cheating. Within group A, seemingly, any family group that lost the self-destruct genes, would out-breed those that carried them, so that Group A would fairly rapidly become indistinguishable from group B. I was stuck at that point for some time until I suddenly realised the reputational implications in the context of sexual selection for any families with young markedly less well adapted than the preponderance of their siblings. Ironically, once inclusive fitness opens up the way for such a process to evolve, the group level benefits come into play unhindered. It's a funny old world! As to how detrimental traits are identified, my answer is just as they are in the context of sexual selection. In species which practice assortative mating, we readily accept that that those choosing mates have a capacity to discriminate between a number of suitors. I am just talking about the same kind of judgement being applied to self and to kin. As to identifying who is related to whom, I include in my paper a fascinating study in which peacocks hatched away from their family groups, nonetheless formed leks disproportionally comprising kin when released into a naturalistic setting. My guess is that it is all down to pheromones. Regarding what happens in groups of unrelated individuals, my feeling is that in the natural groups of about 250 in the context of which we evolved, evolution did not favour as a default condition "You're bloody marvellous unless told otherwise". What we seem to need, to a greater of lesser degree, is some kind of continuous positive regard. That is why, as I detail in my paper, those without close friends and family tend to do badly in terms of health and longevity. The effect of this need for emotional buffering when individuals find themselves on their own in the nation states and mega-cities of the modern era, can be pretty devastating in terms of the mechanism I am suggesting. That said, when my paper first came out a group of American researchers looked at the national suicide statistics and reckoned that they were highest in rural communities. So it could just be that being ignored by our metropolitan neighbours is not half as bad as the all too critical attentions of neighbours and family members in a small community! The key thing, perhaps, is that in such communities our shortcomings do much more reputational harm. As for predictions, I make four in my paper and test them all. Have a look and see what you think. All you have to do is put "Family stigma, sexual selection and the evolutionary origins of severe depression's physiological consequences" into Google.

What I have being saying about consciousness for about 20 years is entirely consistent. I believe it to be real in the sense that itis a very valuable "app" strongly favoured by natural selection in specieswhose main strategy is a combination of cooperating with and seeking to outwit their own kind plus continually seeking new ways of exploiting their environment.Much as engineers and scientists use computer models to carry out project pre-tests or conduct otherwise impossible experiments, so we evolved a large brain to pre-restnew social tactics and other novel behaviours. And to provide the essentialaction criterion in such circumstances, a sense of self evolved as a means of determiningwhich of various options is most likely to prove most beneficial to the thinker. Because (on the planet Earth at least) we seem to be the supreme exemplars of this kind of strategy, our ego needs drive us to accord what is no more than a neat little app, quasi-mystical status. Where the idea of an illusion comes in is that it has also proved evolutionarily adaptive to come hard-wired with the idea that "consciousness" runs all the important bits of the entire organism. Yet we have known for years that this is not so. In the early 1960s the British neurosurgeon, W. Grey Walter,carried out an experiment in which he implanted electrodes into a subject's motor cortex and linked these to the advance mechanism on a slide projector. He then gave the subject a dummy button which supposedly advanced the slides. What happened came as a complete shock to the subjects. If the sequence actually went consciousness, motor cortex, muscles, slides, the subjects would have noticed no difference.Instead, the subjects said the projector was somehow ahead of them. Just as they were thinking about pressing the button, but before they had actually decided to do so, the projector advanced the slide. To me what is happening is obvious. A decision process which is not embedded in consciousness decides that it has seen enough of the current slide. It then triggers the appropriate motor response whilst in parallel giving consciousness the "heads up". Consciousness then "decides" in accordance with the decision already made and thus maintains its illusion of control. Simply by cutting out the muscles' role in this, GreyWalter brought his subjects to a very uncomfortable appreciation of what was actually going on. As for determinism, it is not really germane to what Iam talking about. It could be that, as you suggest, QM makes a deterministic world impossible. Alternatively, it could be, as others have suggested, that the Newtonian model has worked so well throughout humanity's evolution that our brains simply cannot cope with some illusive logic within QM. Who knows? However, as I am just operating at the level of questions such as what caused the giraffe's long neck to evolve, determinism is simply not my bag. Ditto with "better" or "superior" decisions. I am interested in what can or cannot evolve; not value judgements and comparative morality. And I say yet again, in the context of assortative mating, kin are a very valuable source of data concerning recessive genes a prospective mate may carry. It follows from this that a point can be reached where the reputational damage caused by an evolutionarily underperforming individual hits a level significantly greater than the genetic throughput she or he is likely to contribute to the family group's overall throughput. Given this, inclusive fitness theory suggests that the evolution of a self-elimination mechanism would be virtually certain. And that is why, I believe, so many life threatening conditions and behaviours seem to follow on from major depressive illnesses, and, in a world in which socio-sexual success and celebrity have become so hugely important to many of our young, suicide is now cutting a swathe through their ranks.

I increasingly feel that you are making things unnecessarily complicated. My opening premise is that genes can code for physical characteristics, biological processes, and behaviours. Simple examples would be the giraffe's long neck, the digestive processes from mouth to anus, and the kind of drive which has female salmon struggle relentlessly to the spawning grounds, producing the next generation and then dying. The key evidence for this is that the same patterns are to be observed in the same species, generation after generation. The next stage is to accept - as virtually all evolutionary biologists do - that all such gene defined phenomena are initially but pale shadows of the fully developed form and these shadows arise out of genetic mutation. Thereafter, natural selection acting on marginal differences between competing alleles, carries out the process of refinement. If you accept all that, my ideas are but a logical extension; it you do not (a) you and I can never have a meeting of minds, and (b) almost the entire weight of modern biological theory is on my side. Assuming that you do accept it, all I am saying is that much as natural selection, on 3 or 4 occasions, has taken what was most probably no more than a mutant patch of light sensitive skin and turned it very slowly into an eye, it has also taken a modestly adaptive piece of behaviour which had losers backing down in the face of challenges from more powerful rivals ( he who fights and runs away......) into something which literally takes out individuals who judge, or are who are led to judge, that their performance is so sub-optimal that they are doing reputational damage to kin with negative eproductive consequences significantly in excess of any gene throughput that individual is likely themselves to contribute. To me at least, if you accept the opening neo-darwinist premise, my corollary is difficult if not impossible to refute.

I think that you are straying into the realm of metaphysics and leaving science behind. Yes, in the world of very small things quantum mechanics holds sway and fundamentality challenges that which we hold to be reality. However, in the world in which we seem to have our being Newtonian physics and the laws of cause and effect seem to have pretty powerful predictive capabilities. You have two choices (a) take your line and conclude that causality is an illusion and that we live in world of random and ultimately inexplicable events; or (b) take the view that it is the business of theoretical physicists and kindred scientific workers to struggle towards a reconciliation between QM and NP whilst the rest of us strive to continue making the immense progress in our understanding of the world that has been achieved in the last 400 years, not least by a belief in cause and effect and the significance of experimental replication. And surely it is obvious that neither position can secure a knock blow over the other. My inclination is to think that you are reaching back over 2000 years to Plato's theory of the cave which postulated that we can never know anything with any degree of certainty; you think I am identifying patterns where none exist. As I have always though Plato's cave a clever put ultimately pointless mind game, I am never likely to warm towards your 21st century reformulation. Nor would I think that any other hard-nosed neo-darwinist would feel any better disposed to your point of view. What I should stress is that my approach is so prosaic that I do not buy in to any of the notions you hang round my neck in the final paragraph. I do not think that life is either essential or inevitable, or that it is necessarily driven by some will to survive. My basic premise is that that genes are the only known currency of evolution and that if a gene- a mindless speck of DNA - happens to code for something that will lead to its reproduction generation after generation, it will, self evidently, so replicate. A gene that does not so code will- equally self-evidently - not replicate. The whole thing is entirely without higher purpose, but to those of us with an enquiring mind it explains an great deal about the world in which we operate. More specifically, I think it explains why we seem so hag-driven to succeed in terms largely derived from others or pay an horrendous physiological price if we fail to do so.

You now have two answers for the price of one! I didn't think that yesterday's had got through. Will deal with your latest response in a couple of days. If you seriously think that cheating only arises when personal survival is at stake, I suggest that you reflect of the film “Wall Street” and the actuality of the 2008 banking crisis. That said, I repeat again, I am not arguing from a simplistic selfish gene = selfish people perspective. My central thesis is that we come hard wired to seek the approval of significant others in order that they will think well of both us and our kin in the context of mate selection. If we perceive ourselves to have seriously failed in this endeavour, then similarly hard-wired process speed our exit from the gene pool. However, what constitutes success is not predetermined. For opportunistic problem-solvers such as ourselves that would be maladaptive. Pre- the ice ages, muscle-bound heroes may well have been every girl’s dream, but when falling temperatures started to undermine old certainties, mates with the bigger brains that produced new ways of coping became the flavour of the month. That, I think, is why what is known as the great encaphalization coincided with the ice age. Indeed, in our own time, at what price did what we now know as “computer nerds” trade in the mating game before we realised that they were the new masters of the universe? So, too, with compassion. Seemingly not much admired amongst the Spartans, but if my son’s experience is anything to go by, attractive to at least some modern women. Nor should we be surprised if female rats share a similar taste. If some prospective mates happen to be drawn to displays of compassion and such displays prove to be good indicators of effective parenting, then compassion will become a fixed characteristic. If they do not, then compassion will not come to the fore. Consciousness has very little to do with this other than being the route through which a pre-disposition towards compassion can be directed towards classes of external objects not previously benefiaries. Even here, its role is more analogous to the company’s training officer than its CEO.

That rats show compassion comes as no surprise to me. What worked with my son, no doubt works for rats. If compassion is a good indicator of being what we would call a caring mate, then males or females who happen to be attracted by it will select caring mates and thus out-breed rivals who do not have a similar taste for the compassionate. Obviously, this being the equivalent of an arms race, there will be individuals who give displays of compassion to secure mates and then do not follow through. In HG Wells' "The History of Mr Polly" there is an episode where having seemed sweetness and light during their courtship, Mr Polly's first wife - once the nuptials are over - growls at him, "You've 'ad your fun, now you've got to pay". Once again, checking out the characteristics of the potential mate's close kin before committing, is a very smart idea. Regarding consciousness and free-will, I think we may have to agree to differ. For my money, what you have to say is not grounded in scientific discovery, but in a form of self-delusion that natural selection has strongly favoured. By this I mean that consciousness makes a better contribution to the welfare of the organism as a whole if it is brought to believe, falsely, that it is in charge. Indeed I find it hard to see why you do not find the nature of proprioception as compelling in this context as I do. Once it has been shown - as it has - that the body continues on in its merry way after the software that makes it appear to consciousness that it is running the show has been knocked out, surely it is game over? It also seems to me more and more obvious what the practical purpose of consciousness is. About a month ago I hear an academic who has devoted her life to the study of the crow family, say that they, too, demonstrate self-awareness and a basic theory of mind. The reason why seems to me clear. Like us they are opportunistic problem solvers; and that means that they have to think of ways of exploiting novel situations. One example I have recently seen is birds dropping hard shelled objects on roads for cars to crush. Some even showed a preference for pedestrian crossings where interruptions to traffic made it easier to recover the contents. In working such things out, a sense of self must be a sine qua non. I mean by this that coming up with such a strategy requires the mental manipulation of self in relation to factors such as food source, problem shell, cars, roads etc. No doubt animals who, no matter how hazily, start on this process of mentally manipulating self in relation to objective and potential tools have an adaptive edge over conspecifics who do not. There is also an obvious upside limit: too big a brain and you cannot get off the ground!

Worth googling B F Skinner who was once so well known that he was said to have the third most recognised name in the US. BTW, the word I was looking for was "proprioception". From the theoretical standpoint, the problem with altruism is that it has always seemed vulnerable to cheating. As in "You scratch my back and then I'll clear off". Here, I think, reputation in general and familial reputation in particular have a crucial role to play. By cheating, individuals demonstrate their unreliability and also advertise the fact their kin may have similar characteristics. In contrast and within bounds, displays of altruism can have a very positive effect on potential mates. Our family pet was a rather nervous female whippet. We once had her with us on a fairly crowded London underground train. To keep her out of the way of other people's feet, my then recently married son carried her in his arms, talking to her as he did so. According to him, when he looked up he had become a centre of human female attention to an extent he had never previously enjoyed. We reached the conclusion that his new admirers were subconsciously reasoning that "If he's that good with a dog, what would he be like as a dad?". My son was somewhat chagrined, having discovered the aphoristical effects of a whippet a few months too late!

B.F. Skinner is alive and well, but now trading under the name "questionposter"! [] I had thought the idea that we were no more than bundles of learned behaviours was long since dead, but seemingly not. That said, I certainly do not believe that we are entirely coherent wholes. Indeed, one of the arguments I use to support my argument that "conscious" is not more than a second level, evolutionary bolt-on is that we have what some call our sixth sense, the proper name of which is now eluding me (pro...ception?) which fools consciousness into believing it is running the show. When injury or a viral infection destroys the relevant "software", victims have the extraordinary sensation of feeling total detached from their bodies with the latter going about its business as usual. What your model misses out is the crucial importance of motivation or "drives". This is not to say that I believe in some mystical life force; it is simple that natural selection will strongly favour any organism which is driven to pursue goals which are themselves conducive to the replication of the genes that encode the drives. Ultimately it is entirely circular and without any kind of higher level purpose; the only thing is, from an evolutionary perspective, in FW Taylor's immortal words, "It works".

I don't think its a nice or not nice idea, I think things work more neutrally and that w/e. Everything isn't tied to some single thing, some things just couldn't exist if what you were saying was completely true. It is true that a lot of people are not so kind to other people because of some kind of competitiveness, but just as there those people, there are people who don't compete at all, don't expect to be famous, don't expect to make money or etc and are still altruistic. Really, there's no grand thing determining our every action, we can chose to do whatever we want, and in fact a lot of things seem to do what they want, which is why things might seem to work the way your describing at times. This post has been edited by questionposter: 7 January 2012 - 05:53 PM I read what you are saying as the standard "strawman" attack on selfish genery i.e. if genes act as if they were selfish, their carriers must all be selfish and, as clearly not all humans are selfish, anything based on the selfish gene thesis must be wrong. In my view this is a wholly false view, its refutation not helped by Dawkins' decision to switch to selfish animals about a third in to The Selfish Gene. As I have already written above, my "human motivation of a T shirt" is: Compete, complement, deviate or die, which I think just about covers all the various possibilities you have listed. The sole consideration is "Don't do things that your feel will wreck the mating prospect of your kin, unless you are confident that you can personally make up the genetic losses". It has always been a puzzle to evolutionary theorists why in countries such as the US and the UK, the populations of which have a very wide genetic background, it is still possible to produce individuals willing to make the supreme sacrifice in a military context. Whilst I am in no sense saying that the consideration of family reputation is the sole consideration in the minds of such brave people, it does explain the behaviours' evolutionary persistence. It is at its clearest amongst terrorist organisations which employ suicide bombers. These should be evolutionary no-nos. However it turns out that amongst the societies which support their action, the family stock arises enormously as to do the marital prospects of kin. Conversely, amongst, for example, the Palestinians, where individuals are found to have spied for Israel, not only are they killed, but their wider family are shunned. If you an want example from literature, in the Wimslow Boy, by Terrence Rattigan, once a young man at naval college is dismissed having been falsely accused of theft (this was closely based on a real event) the sister's fiance immediately dumps her. The whole thing turns upon the values of the wider group. I have just read the wonderful "Once a Warrior King" by David Donavan which centres on his service in Vietnam. As he makes clear, once public opinion swung against the war, it was the warriors who were vilified, and those not wishing to be drafted who started to enjoy widespread support. I suspect that in WW2, post pearl harbour, only the most crudely self-serving would have sought to dodge the draft and they and their families would have paid a very high price. One other area in which we differ fundamentally is that of personal choice. As I have already said, I think consciousness spends much of its time rationalising to itself decisions that have already been made elsewhere in the brain. Indeed, on a TV programme I saw on Saturday which involved serious neuroscientists being interviewed about what brain scans told us about human responses to paintings, films etc, one guy casually mention that his work had shown only 15% of brain activity was in the areas now associated with consciousness. Elsewhere the decision centres that were running the organism pre-consciousness are still getting on with their jobs.

Using your numbering, I reply as follows: 1. The problem all researchers have when dealing with animals is that we cannot actually know what goes on in their minds. It is relatively easy to make an educated guess with experimental animals, but it is very, very difficult in a naturalistic setting. Regarding the latter, the very modest offerings I have to put forward is the common place observation that prey animals seem to somehow sense which of their con-specifics the predator is likely to go for, which, to me would suggest that they are picking up on the bodily behaviour of those who themselves feel themselves likely to be losers in the struggle for life. The only direct observation I can offer was of a stray cat that lived near our home. Several peoples gave it food, but no one took it in. Then one neighbour did. She made a great deal of fuss of it and the transformative effect was frankly astonishing. It was more than just looking fatter and healthier; it look like what we call "the cock of the walk" and this, I think, arose from it having a living entity that made it feel valued again. This suggest to me that depression is not just a function of captivity. Regarding experimental animals, a book of which I make a lot of use ("The Sickening Mind" by Paul Martin, interestingly sold in the US as "The Healing Mind"!) devotes its full 350+ pages to the phenomena that interest me. It says "The sheer volume of animal research in this field makes it impossible to describe more than a tiny and rather haphazard selection of examples.....We humans are not the only animals whose physical health can be damaged by upsetting events". 2. Nor is it just a luxury of first world countries. As I mention in my published paper, one of the warnings given by the WHO to the Asian countries affected by the Tsunami what that they should expect about a 40% increase in the levels of clinical depression. Although on a simplistic understanding the law of evolution ought to be "when the going gets tough, the tough get going", practical experience tells us that even with people who had little in the first place to whom live is a daily struggle, terrible misfortune can induce depression and for many this brings forward death. 3. It is common knowledge that exercise triggers the release of endorphins that bring about a sense of well-being. It also gives you another dimension in which to tell yourself don't I do this well. The puzzle is why people who are depressed don't routinely seize this wonderful self-medication. That they have just given up seems to me a very plausible explanation. 4. Again as I make clear in my paper, I totally agree with this point. In a small group the old against one individual being so poorly adapted that he or she ruins, or seriously reduces, the mating prospect of kin are very small. In that context, the mechanism I am describing is simply a neat little app which gives a marginal edge which inevitable counts in the long run. In the globalized world in which we live, it is devastating. I have heard people speak of "The Friends Effect", this being a sense of dissatisfaction induced in the minds of those following the series because their lives come nowhere near those portrayed by actors selected for their physical charms and then given lines written by brilliant screen-writers. It is a lot harder to deal with than being not quite as pretty/hansome or smart as the most attractive peer in the small breeding group. I think it very similar to sickle cell anaemia. Whilst as humans we naturally view it as a pathology, what natural selection is, in effect, saying, in terms of a classic Punnet square, is that adaptive advantage lies in the sibling without either of the SCA alleles dying of a malaria and the sibling with both dying of SCA where that enables the other two to survive and replicate. This, of course, only applies in environments where malaria is so common as otherwise to make the death of all four highly likely. Just shows how tough natural selection can be! I have already accepted the point that modern conditions make the thanatic processes far more likely to be triggered. This is why I think it crucial to bring the idea to a wider audience.