Why is the human-being the only animal which developed learning skill?

[cypress]

It is normally postulated that both genetic as well as phenotypic variations account for differential development of novel forms. Whether it is advantageous or not depends on the overall fitness of the organism which is screened by Natural selection.

 

Yet without repeatable experimental confirmation, this remains unconfirmed. It is conjecture. We don't know how or why novel forms were derived, correct?

 

Modern biological experimentation seems to indicate that neither genetic or phenotypic variations provide the ability to generate the even basic precursor components of novel protein folds, new protein to protein binding sites, new expression control binding sites, developmental control cascades, etc. required to begin the pathway to novel form much less complete the pathways within the timeframe required by the geologic time scale. It appears that the processes invoked by the modern synthesis does account for adaptation but not novel form. Without a scientific basis for generating novel form, the question posed by the OP cannot be answered scientifically.

 

Yes it is possible for a population to have multiple simultaneous divergent paths. It doesn't have to be the case where all the advantageous divergent paths for producing highly specialized sense organs where somehow induced only into human populations. It doesn't have to require any teleological assistence. Even other hominid populations might have had advantagoues divergent path for the development of sense organs. The fact that they survived the evolutionary race for some period of time shows that even they had advantageous divergent paths.

 

The point where I think our population was lucky is that our population exploited the environment in rather different ways which was not possible for other hominids. We have to remember that development of new pathways helps the organisms to interact with new ecological niches. The environment induced different changes to our population and it might not been possible for other hominds to have the same environmentally induced phenotypic changes as it is highly unlikely that they would have had similar inputs from the environment or similar responsiveness to these inputs.

 

The concept is not the problem, the problem comes in when one attempts to apply the concept to what is known about biological systems.

 

When attempt is made to apply it in a practical way, this does not make sense. If there are two favorable evolutionary pathways available whereby each step of each pathway offers advantage, and since both pathways proceed by random mutation with equal probability, then both should advance. If one is advantageous over the other, then that alone should proceed. It is only of neither offers advantage would one observe divergence. But without advantage, the theory looses explanatory power since without advantage no pathway can be established in a reasonable period of time. In this paper, the researchers model the expectation time for for two mutations to take place in a gene regulatory sequence one to deactivate it and a second to modify and reactivate it. Here is a key finding:

 

"Consistent with recent experimental observations for Drosophila, we find that a few million years is sufficient, but for humans with a much smaller effective population size, this type of change would take >100 million years."

 

Over one hundred million years to wait for just one novel transcription binding site involving a hypothetical two mutations in humans despite the reality that many binding sites involve five to ten specific differences. Yet humans contain many thousands of difference far greater than this in comparison to our closest presumed relative and each evolutionary pathway requires far more than a single change in expression control to derive a novel function. It also requires coordinated changes to multiple well fitted proteins, developmental control cascades, inventory control, transportation and placement controls and tools etc., etc. Combining this and one can see that the geologic timeframe for evolutionary development of humans is off by many orders of magnitude. but it is worse because this study presumed the initial mutation was neutral. I instead any of the intermediary required mutations are detrimental and the the time-scales shift by several more orders of magnitude.

 

I hope this satisfy you.

 

I appreciate the conceptual explanation, but in keeping with the scientific paradigms of which I am certain you agree, the model you propose does not fit with experimental results and the models that are developed to extend these results in geologic time.

[Mr Skeptic]

I don't understand your comment. I believe that I am more complex than an amoeba. My biological redundancy, mechanical abilities, the capacity to alter my environment, let alone cognitive functions have 'emerged' over a progressively more complex evolutionary development process. I believe in Nature and natural laws. I have the chance to observe Nature in a variety of diverse settings (medical, biological, agricultural, social etc). All I can see is a tendency to create situations that lead to greater complexity. Any loss of complexity is associeted with loss of function, and eventually death.

 

Well, each of your cells are clearly inferior to an amoeba cell. In fact, they'd pretty much just starve to death if they didn't die from harsh environment before that. By working together your cells can create for themselves a very nice environment and so can become simpler inasmuch as they neither can nor have to deal with such a harsh environment. Now, it is the information needed to build your cells that is encoded in your DNA, and that is simpler than that of an amoeba. In case you're wondering, the haploid human genome is 3 billion base pairs long, diploid is twice as much but it is almost entirely a copy. Since there are 4 possibilities per base pair, that comes out to 1 byte every 4 base pairs, so those 3 billion base pairs come out to about 3/4 gigabytes, or roughly the amount of data that fits on a CD. Are we more complex than that? Yes, but that's not in the DNA -- our cells are such that we have trillions of them with quadrillions of interconnections or so, and they can store additional information in the details of their interconnections. And not just that, but we store additional information beyond that in external means, such as books. Also we have even more information available to us due to our capability to interact with each other. Thus despite the simplicity of our cells, when taken as a whole at each level the simple cells form very complex structures both with themselves and the environment. We're complex, yes, but not because our cells nor genetics are.

[Mrs Zeta]

We're complex, yes, but not because our cells nor genetics are.

 

I am more than the total sum of my cells and genetics. I don't care if my individual cells are complex or not, what is important for me is my self as a whole entity. The same is true for every level of organisation: Our cells are more complex than the total sum of their individual components, our society is more complex than the sum of all the behaviours/actions of the people forming it etc. With each level of organisation there is emergence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) of new behaviours that have properties over and above those of their individual components. Not only that, but each level (from molecules to cells, to brains, to whole organisms, to societies, to global integration) influences all the preceeding and all the following ones by 'reciprocal causation' and so for example, our society (e.g. an enriched or a deprived environment) affects our DNA through epigenetic changes. There is a lot of research supporting this.

[michel123456]

(...) our society (e.g. an enriched or a deprived environment) affects our DNA through epigenetic changes. There is a lot of research supporting this.

 

Interesting. I thought epigenetics do not act upon DNA.

[swansont]

The concept is not the problem, the problem comes in when one attempts to apply the concept to what is known about biological systems.

 

!

Moderator Note

The validity of evolution is not something to be addressed in this thread. That's not the topic.

[cypress]

It is easier to explain if you think about you life. During your life you (or anyone) achieves only a few truly remarkable things, the rest of your time has been spent on mundane things such as brushing your teeth, standing around, sleeping and watching television etc. But those things are necessary in order for your achievements to materialize. The same with life in nature, we are a much more complex species, but the other less complex organisms are generally needed in order to support our development directly or indirectly. Even within the human species there are individuals who are much more sophisticated than others. Some are destined to become very sophisticated creatures, others (the majority) are just going to remain as 'human plankton'.

 

Can you demonstrate though that your observations about human behavior apply to historical populations and that this distribution of accomplishment should also apply to genetic distribution of functional traits? How would one show that?

[Mrs Zeta]

Can you demonstrate though that your observations about human behavior apply to historical populations and that this distribution of accomplishment should also apply to genetic distribution of functional traits? How would one show that?

 

My comment is speculative. It does not apply to historical populations because this complex intellectual sophistication is just beginning to influence modern humans, so there is no precedent. Also, I believe that evolutionary pressure will shift from the current genetic model to a future neuronal level, i.e. the evolution of humans will not be primarily based on the DNA, but will dependent, instead, upon the brain (intelligence). I accept that this is speculative, but it is based on empirical observation just beginning to appear.

[jcmmanuel]

Maybe Chomsky's language theory would give an indication of very strong, solid processes available for complex tasks to be achieved. But of course, it doesn't explain why it was available to humans alone this way. Fact is that in human beings the brain is extremely dynamic - its one hundred trillion synapses in the brain are not static connections. They change when it is required so (see, for instance, Andrew Neuberg & Mark R. Waldman's "How God Changes your Brain" (a book written by scientists and not from a religious point of view by the way). The thalamus for instance gives emotional meaning to our concepts as we learn them - including but not limited to concepts of God. This offers a capacity to come to a holistic sense of the world - clearly animals show no signs of having any such capacity available. It is easy to see - although it is not yet fully understood - that at some point humans became capable to make major leaps towards real learning.

 

This in turn may not have been just a matter of how brains evolved, but a matter of how the human mind (whatever *that* may be) sort of *required* from the brains to change this way. In stead of the (ugly) term "intelligent design" that ID-proponents advocate, we could think of an almost predestined urge to leap forward towards intelligence. But at the same time we also got upon us these responsibilities related to norms, values (also not known to other 'animals' as we are familiar with it). How this happened, technically? We know that natural selection isn't random, it rather selects for successful phenotypes, characteristics that may actually work, and it is very successful in doing so.

 

As a Christian I can only marvel about all of this. The more we discover, the more we may marvel about how ingenious we have been 'made' - and the word 'making', or 'creating' of you want, is just that: this sense of creativity that we have as human beings. From there on, we always discover that we want to 'make sense' of things that would otherwise be 'meaningless'. This is our great human faculty, we simply create meaning. And 'meaning' is exactly what supports our 'learning process' in a magnificant, brilliant way - because we want to understand all the bits and bytes in the grand scheme of things. The 'bit' and the 'it' (Weinberg). The meaning of be-ing. We learn because we 'are' who we are.

 

So the answer is, as it were, only possible by means of retrospection. We know that it happened in some way along those lines. But we only know it because this is how we make sense of it.

[Mrs Zeta]

Maybe Chomsky's language theory would give an indication of very strong, solid processes available for complex tasks to be achieved. But of course, it doesn't explain why it was available to humans alone this way. Fact is that in human beings the brain is extremely dynamic - its one hundred trillion synapses in the brain are not static connections. They change when it is required so (see, for instance, Andrew Neuberg & Mark R. Waldman's "How God Changes your Brain" (a book written by scientists and not from a religious point of view by the way). The thalamus for instance gives emotional meaning to our concepts as we learn them - including but not limited to concepts of God. This offers a capacity to come to a holistic sense of the world - clearly animals show no signs of having any such capacity available. It is easy to see - although it is not yet fully understood - that at some point humans became capable to make major leaps towards real learning.

 

This in turn may not have been just a matter of how brains evolved, but a matter of how the human mind (whatever *that* may be) sort of *required* from the brains to change this way. In stead of the (ugly) term "intelligent design" that ID-proponents advocate, we could think of an almost predestined urge to leap forward towards intelligence. But at the same time we also got upon us these responsibilities related to norms, values (also not known to other 'animals' as we are familiar with it). How this happened, technically? We know that natural selection isn't random, it rather selects for successful phenotypes, characteristics that may actually work, and it is very successful in doing so.

 

As a Christian I can only marvel about all of this. The more we discover, the more we may marvel about how ingenious we have been 'made' - and the word 'making', or 'creating' of you want, is just that: this sense of creativity that we have as human beings. From there on, we always discover that we want to 'make sense' of things that would otherwise be 'meaningless'. This is our great human faculty, we simply create meaning. And 'meaning' is exactly what supports our 'learning process' in a magnificant, brilliant way - because we want to understand all the bits and bytes in the grand scheme of things. The 'bit' and the 'it' (Weinberg). The meaning of be-ing. We learn because we 'are' who we are.

 

So the answer is, as it were, only possible by means of retrospection. We know that it happened in some way along those lines. But we only know it because this is how we make sense of it.

 

 

 

This is actually a rather good post, touching on some difficult concepts. I agree with most of it. A unique characteristic of a human is that (s)he asks questions and tries to come up with the answers.

[jcmmanuel]

This is actually a rather good post, touching on some difficult concepts. I agree with most of it. A unique characteristic of a human is that (s)he asks questions and tries to come up with the answers.

 

Thank you. I'm honored to hear this from someone with your degree of education (I just saw your wikipedia page).

 

You have emphasized the question / answer issue, and this is indeed interesting. This seems to be demonstrated in our philosophical activity as human beings. Philosophy, not in the (old) sense of philosophical systems, but in the (modern) definition of systematic knowledge gathering. In this sense, philosophy is science without an established methodology and set of rules (for the simple reason that these rules could not yet be agreed upon for this or that particular domain of research). It is comparable with the less 'exact' rules in other sciences such as sociology, or history - where it doesn't work as in the exact sciences.

 

By the same token could we posit that a good scientist will always keep an eye on the philosophy behind almost everything (including their own discipline), not least with regard to the perennial question of existence and all questions directly related to it. Scientists normally do realize that science is not to be confounded with someone's mindset. It is a toolbox and our differences (e.g. theist vs. atheist state of mind) will use this toolbox in interesting, divergent ways. Our state of mind (or mindset, or worldview) may be less open than is good for us, so the toolbox may be ignored too much, or it may be overused (taking it for an 'explanation' of who we are altogether, for instance). In all these cases we clearly fail to be the questioning beings that we normally are. We invented the toolbox in the very first place because we wanted to improve our questioning.

 

Of course, this IS a 'philosophical position'. The word question relates our word quest, and a lot of people (including scientists) would agree with a statement like: "life is a quest (by very definition)".Of course, I would be very interested too, to understand the underlying 'wiring' for this behavior, and how this came to be. But the very nature of science, and how science came about historically, predicts that those answers will cause new questions. The paradox of us as meaning-creating beings is that the more we understand our "building blocks" (or wiring, our natural and physical constitution, even our astrophysical past as 'star stuff' and so on), the more we marvel and the more we tend to be on a quest for the meaning of it all. And this we will always express through arts such as music, or through spirituality and/or religion, and philosophical world view prototypes. And that, in turn, makes us again want to dig a little deeper into the 'how' of it all - which is how science came to exist in the first place.

 

I sometimes suspect that the writers of Genesis 1 were better philosophers than we tend to think. The ancients had their good philosophers too. They knew the Babylonians and Sumerians were very ancient cultures already - not just 6000 years old. Genesis 1 has a focus on the human being as unique being, it is ancient philosophy, not modern science. The 6000 years would be laughable even 4000 years ago - if to be taken literally. But of course, the ancients may not have been aware that we might have been here for, say, 30,000 years (first signs of real 'objects', not just stone axe-alike materials).

 

Less so could they know we were here already for some 140,000 years (back to our mitochondrial Eve). But even knowing that would not have been enough to answer your own question. Because we separated from the Great Apes for far longer, some 10 or 15 million years. No one can really understand what 10 million years means in terms of our own 'humanology' - this is far beyond our mental grasp. Let alone 4,5 billion years (planet earth), or the meaning of 13,7 billion years. But our mental understanding of meaning may not even go back 11,000 years. And if Julian Jaynes would be right, a "bicameral mind" would have lasted until some 3,500 years ago - which would not be very helpful in terms of understanding the "learning skill" of mankind you are looking after here.

 

I'm not a fan of Jaynes, but it could well be that the key to understanding the human learning skills may rather be found in close relationship to research on human consciousness, not in terms of, for instance, our DNA. And that, in turn, means that at some point, we happened to learn our self to become people capable to research 'their own story'. Now if that is true, then the answer to your question would be something like finding out who wrote the first intelligible 'book'...

[Thea]

Hmm...good question, of course. My baliwick is sociology, so I can't hazard an informed "scientific" answer in any detail--BUT! As a sociologist, I can offer maybe an avenue to pursue for consideration: memory. It occurs to me that we humans (despite any quibbles about omniscience) have pretty good memories, not merely for individual datum, or collections of data, but for patterns and processes (which introduces a temporal aspect, which is not necessarily only linear). If you have enough memory for a virtually unlimited reiterative/recursive process (never mind a whole BUNCH of them that are interrelated), then how much data can you slam into that process before it begins to take on "a life of its own," in which the results you get cannot be completely accounted for by simply summing up the data?

 

I don't think it can be completely successfully argued that human beings are the only animal that developed learning skill--many other higher mammals (so far as we're able to tell), for instance, exhibit behaviors that indicate at least a limited ability to learn (as opposed to being dependent solely on pre-programmed instinct). So, there's potential there (if it hasn't already been done) for research on the effect of memory vs learning skill. Even within our human population, we can see that differing levels of ability to "memorize" deliver different levels of ability for learning (and no, I have no intention of engaging in the question of ethics this observation immediately poses--at least not here).

 

Too, quantum physics begins to suggest (to me, anyway) that there may be more to being human than being human--at least insofar as we may have a particular (neurological?) relationship that is physiological, genetic AND may have to do with, for lack of a better way of describing it, an ongoing desire to learn, with our environment (ah, which environment includes each other) that is not shared, or only partially shared, by other entities or creatures. What the history of this relationship might be, if it does indeed exist, is likely unknown at this point.

 

That help? Lol!

[AsterC.Linn]

Hello,

 

My profession is not genetic, but I have a general knowledge on development of races and human evolution, so please forgive me if I write a wrong notation.

 

According to the evolution theory, humanbeing was in same genetic family as all the ape kinds, we were one of the ape kinds with a primitive brain. Then for a reason, humanbeing developed his learning ability, developed shelters (like cave houses), hunting technics, cooking, discovered fire, new transportation technics, built up new human relationships, culture and civilizations. Finally we became superlative creatures in the planet.

 

My question is "how" or "why" humanbeing developed his learning ability altough all the other ape kinds have kept their primitive brains?

 

If you answer like "There was a threat to humankind, so they developed this skill with his surviving instinct", then I will ask you back like "Then there must be similar threats to other apes too, and there has been hundreds of different ape types, many of them had a very similar brain structure to human brain structure. Why didn't any of these ape kinds develope its learning skills?"

 

Thanks,

 

Gürol

 

 

You've hit the nail squarely on the head Gürol! Great question in favor of, 'genetic engineering by an advanced intelligence?'

 

Bearing in mind the proven scientific fact that, 'learned knowledge is transmitted from one organism to another by the transfer of certain cells.' Which, realizing that cells; made of matter are transporting and transmitting 'learned knowledge,' i.e., something spiritual (of the Mind) abstract and non-material to another organism (made of matter) is in itself profound! (Like using brain cells - gray matter - with which to think*?).

 

And (apart from obvious physical differences) as the ego, I, that which is conscious and *thinks part of the mind is the only (1.6% genetic) difference between chimpanzees and Man. And because nothing comes from nothing and no organism can transmit to another organism that which is not inherent in it's own (genetic) makeup.

 

There had to be (and was) a genetic manipulation, i.e., the implantation of a trace of advanced-intelligence DNA in a Homo erectus hominid's egg cell. When? Some 200 000 years ago. Who were these 'people?' Ever heard of the 'sons of God who took wives of the daughters of men?' Well clearly these 'sons' had a father (god) and a mother (goddess) - who were on earth in those days - and also afterward. And expertly-deciphered fresh evidence*, regarding not a 'fragment' of the story behind the so-called 'Big Bang' (theory) and Man's true origin and heritage - but the whole story is now (thankfully) available.

 

PS: after an independent, twenty-six year study of a certain 'ancient manuscript' - I have discovered (and decoded) a 'higher message' previously concealed in its structure - which is all about 'molecular genetics' - and fully substantiates the *fresh evidence recently brought to light. However, at this stage, that is another story.

 

Kind regards,

 

Aster C. Linn.

Author: (Teleplay) Original Innocence and (quiz): Forbidden Fruit

[Mrs Zeta]

PS: after an independent, twenty-six year study of a certain 'ancient manuscript' - I have discovered (and decoded) a 'higher message' previously concealed in its structure - which is all about 'molecular genetics' - and fully substantiates the *fresh evidence recently brought to light. However, at this stage, that is another story.

 

Kind regards,

 

Aster C. Linn.

Author: (Teleplay) Original Innocence and (quiz): Forbidden Fruit

 

Although I believe in conventional, traditional science I am also open minded (just like some people here - not all though). So, tell us about it...

[seismic dunedain]

To say we developed high intelligence because of appendages and sense organs to me sounds glib. Just because someone has a wrench does not mean he can build a car. Also, the other primates already had these appendages and sense organs and so this does not explain the leap between the Homonid species from our predecessors. Am I unclear about something? I guess I find a lot of the explanations here unsatisfying.

 

 

[lemur]

Generally, any time you encounter claims that humans are radically distinct from other species, it is based on failure to identify analogous aspects of other species. Human learning is really not that different than other animals. Human cognition and emotions may seem to differ markedly from other animals only because these aspects of learning are not directly observable externally the way that behavioral learning is. You can argue that human learning enables much more complex activities, but who is to say that is more special than, say, and elephant's ability to drink with its nose? Generally, it would help objectivity to control for anthrocentrism in species comparisons, but that is nearly impossible if not completely since we cannot study organisms from any perspective that isn't human.