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Instinct, ancestral memory (Psychology)
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Brian Ambrose



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My daughter is studying psychology (pity me) and currently the subject is evolutionary psychology. So naturally, I ask how it works, exactly. That is, how does behaviour get passed down the generations? It's in the genes, apparently. But saith I, I've heard all about how genes code for proteins (although not about how they are all co-ordinated, which according to the book Music Of Life, they aren't, life is a self making cake that just emerges from the ingredients so stop asking), but I've never heard about how one section or other of DNA codes for dam building (in beavers) or baby crying (in humans) etc. Or, take a spider. He doesn't go to spider school to learn how to build his web, clearly it is a complex algorithm which generates it. Surely the algorithm didn't originate whole with the first 'spider'. How did the bits of the modern behaviour get inherited and enhanced, and where is this instinct, this memory, this code, stored? The only place we know of which stores code is the DNA. In which case, why do (did?) biologists bang on about DNA being 95% useless? Surely this is the place to look for how instinctive behaviours are stored? There must be a lot of it. Why don't we hear about it?

Anyway, from an AE perspective we have the following:

1. Proteins (and processes, somehow) which build creatures are generated from instructions in the DNA
2. Instinct, or ancestral memory, is behaviour somehow restored from what is stored in the DNA (although this appears to be an area of careful ignoral)
3. For evolution of behaviour to occur, 'memories' must be written to DNA (otherwise, to my simple mind, evolutionary psychology is meaningless)

Nature is pretty efficient. Why have two mechanisms for storing memory? Maybe all memories are stored in the ubiquitous DNA, some of which are inherited?
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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There is a further complication in "change at a distance". When orthodox biologists see blue tits pecking the silver caps off milk bottles to get at the cream they assume that that the habit spreads by observation and then learning. This is unlikely because why don't other birds of other species learn too?

It cannot be a case of learning parent-to-chick because (apparently) it spreads too fast for this to be the mechanism. OK, so a vague theory emerges that blue tits only learn by observation of other blue tits.

But a better explanation is that somehow the genes can talk to one another over the ether. And that Lamarkism (the theory that acquired charateristics can be passed on) is more likely than neo-Darwinism (that characteristics can only be passed on via heredity).
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Mick Harper
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PS Obviously, Brian, you cannot tell your daughter about any of this if you want her to get a two-one or better.
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Grant



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I didn't realise until recently when I read Philip E Johnson (of the Intelligent Design movement) what the rationale for all this junk DNA is.

The problem Darwinists had was that DNA changes at the same rate irrespective of whether the creature actually changes its appearance. Now this is a pretty heavy blow to Darwinism and the way it was solved was to posit that most DNA is junk so that it can change with impunity.

Now if it was linked to ancestral memory, it would have to change.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Sorry. It's all wrong. But I have the explanation.

Forthcoming.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Ishmael wrote:
Sorry. It's all wrong. But I have the explanation.

Time for that later maybe... but for now House Rules demand positivity.

I for one, see no holes in Brian's reasoning.

From the first moment an organism interacts with its environment, it has choices to make... "do I eat it, or shag it?"... and even though the responses to those questions may be automatically triggered by external stimuli (visual, chemical, electrical or whatever) the correctness of those responses can only be determined from within the organism itself.

The only data the organism can call upon to ascertain the correctness of its responses are those encoded in its DNA.

Do we agree so far?
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Mick Harper
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Not entirely. Why can't the responses be encoded in, say, the neurones of the brain, and the brain (like all the other organs) are just replicas of the 'species brain'? You wouldn't exactly say "the leg is encoded in the DNA", would you?
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Mick Harper wrote:
You wouldn't exactly say "the leg is encoded in the DNA", would you?

Well, yes actually I would. We don't start out, at conception, with legs or neurons... but we do have DNA, which carries the code for their development.

The simplest organisms don't have legs (or neurons, as far as I know) but they still have decisions to make and they still respond to stimuli in a way that is unique to that (species of) organism.
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Mick Harper
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Yes, I appreciate that. It still seemed to me there was a difference but I won't press it. Perhaps it's what Brian's getting at. Do carry on.

PS I'm more and more perplexed about why other birds don't imitate blue tits. Can somebody enlightem me?
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N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
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Mick Harper wrote:
blue tits pecking the silver caps off milk bottles...It cannot be a case of learning parent-to-chick because (apparently) it spreads too fast for this to be the mechanism.

Here's a thought off the top off my head. If Horizontal Gene Transfer plays a greater role than generally thought, couldn't it be possible that viruses spread this sort of information.

The blue tits in Manchester get the latest round of bird flu, next thing they're all pecking milk bottle tops.

Maybe that's why colds are so common. They could have an evolutionary benefit. Maybe colds and influenzas are the Royal Mail of the genetic world.
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Mick Harper
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Just to answer my own question: is it because blue tits only recognise other blue tits as objects-of-emulation? And likewise presumably all other species which therefore cannot observe blue tits and milk bottle tops as anything to do with them.

This 'ability' to ignore all other species is presumably instinctive but again presumably ones' parents are the species one learns to observe, as it were. So how then do cuckoos learn?
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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N R Scott wrote:
Here's a thought off the top off my head. If Horizontal Gene Transfer plays a greater role than generally thought, couldn't it be possible that viruses spread this sort of information.

Yes, I think we've touched on this before... but even so, the first blue tit to come up with the idea would still have to encode it into its DNA for onward transmission.
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Chad


In: Ramsbottom
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Mick Harper wrote:
PS I'm more and more perplexed about why other birds don't imitate blue tits. Can somebody enlightem me?

Our good friends, the corvids, do it too:

Contamination from the campylobacter jejuni is also known to be transmitted by corvids such as magpies pecking at the milk bottle tops and contaminating the milk.
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N R Scott


In: Middlesbrough
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That's a good point actually, Chad. I never thought of that. I guess that's the entire point here. How's any behaviour encoded in DNA. Darwinism doesn't allow deliberate change in DNA, so accordingly no learning can be encoded at all. Only survival and non-survival.
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Mick Harper
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but even so, the first blue tit to come up with the idea would still have to encode it into its DNA for onward transmission.

Yes, but surely this is the core of (neo-) Lamarkianism. If the individual animal can acquire characteristics (or knowledge) it must mean that the genes can be changed more or less instantaneously. Or, I suppose more likely, the whatsits that underlie the genes. And that then use the unused genes to express the new stuff (otherwise other, existing characteristics would get changed).
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