Robert King
Hi.
Thanks for taking the trouble to have a look at my work. If you are a taxpayer--then you paid for it--so your interest is appreciated and reciprocated.
I am a mid career researcher--interested in evolutionary theory, philosophy of mind, and human reproduction.
My training is in analytic philosophy, empirical psychology, and biology.
I am based at University College Cork Department of Applied Psychology as well as visiting at LSE.
I maintain a (more or less) monthly blog at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hive-mind
where I discuss the work we do here and often publish in Quillette (https://quillette.com/author/robert-king/)
I don't have social media accounts, but feel free to email me at r.king@ucc.ie if you want to discuss my work (or yours)
I have just finished a book about research into the nature and function of female orgasm. This is for Taylor Francis and is out now
https://www.routledge.com/Naturally-Selective-Evolution-Orgasm-and-Female-Choice/King/p/book/9781032444758
Supervisors: Jay Belsky
Phone: 00353(0)874 64 1200
Address: School of Applied Psychology
UCC
Ireland
Thanks for taking the trouble to have a look at my work. If you are a taxpayer--then you paid for it--so your interest is appreciated and reciprocated.
I am a mid career researcher--interested in evolutionary theory, philosophy of mind, and human reproduction.
My training is in analytic philosophy, empirical psychology, and biology.
I am based at University College Cork Department of Applied Psychology as well as visiting at LSE.
I maintain a (more or less) monthly blog at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hive-mind
where I discuss the work we do here and often publish in Quillette (https://quillette.com/author/robert-king/)
I don't have social media accounts, but feel free to email me at r.king@ucc.ie if you want to discuss my work (or yours)
I have just finished a book about research into the nature and function of female orgasm. This is for Taylor Francis and is out now
https://www.routledge.com/Naturally-Selective-Evolution-Orgasm-and-Female-Choice/King/p/book/9781032444758
Supervisors: Jay Belsky
Phone: 00353(0)874 64 1200
Address: School of Applied Psychology
UCC
Ireland
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http://www.ucc.ie/en/philosophy/events/fullstory-456457-en.html
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Introduction
Distinguished Professor, Evolutionary-Developmental Area Head University of New Mexico
Steve Gangestad is a psychologist at UNM, where he is best known for his work on evolution and development using quantitative methods. For many years he has been working with collaborators—notably Randy Thornhill—on the question of whether, in humans, female estrus is (as some scholars aver) truly lost.
similarly capable of love and social interaction in later life. A paper by colleague Pat Draper (Draper and Harpending 1988) changed all that. Viewed from the perspective of life history theory, human notions of good and bad parenting take a back seat to effectiveness of passing genes on to the next generation – and this is true whether you are a human or a haddock. Viewed through this radical lens, violent and abusive human parents are preparing their offspring for a world where trust and love will not be rewarded. The fact of this being a social and moral evil says nothing about its being a reproductive dead end. This perspective, life history theory, has informed most of Belsky ’s subsequent work
Hamilton’s rule is that an altruistic behavior can be selected for in a population under the circumstances that
1) The behavior is heritable (variance explained by genetic difference) and that
2) The gene underlying it provides a benefit to those who share that gene by common descent that is higher than the cost exerted, multiplied by the coefficient of relatedness.
This is usually simplified to r B – C > 0. In this formulation r is the relatedness co-efficient between actor and beneficiary of behavior; B is the reproductive benefit provided to the recipient; and C is the cost to the actor in terms of direct reproduction.
Introduction
The term “paradigm shift” should come with a health warning. Hamilton’s rule, formalizing inclusive fitness, is one of those very few developments in science that genuinely deserves the accolade. Inclusive fitness is a central, axiomatic concept in evolutionary biology. Darwin’s discoveries, concerning descent with modification from common ancestry directed by natural selection, were the result of years of painstaking observation and the synthesis of vast amounts of empirical data. Hamilton’s rule is an extension of Darwin’s insight, based on pure deductive reasoning as laid out in (Hamilton, 1964) and further developed in papers of equal mathematical sophistication (e.g. Price, 1972).
While the complexities of these original papers are rarely directly engaged with, the take home message seems simple: Namely, that altruistic behavior can be selected for just in case that the benefit bestowed on the recipient (B) multiplied by the coefficient of relatedness between actor and recipient (r) minus the cost to actor (C) is greater than zero.
This is typically expressed as r B –C < 0.
Rarely has such a deceptively simple formulation had such profound consequences, or provoked such large misconceptions and fights over interpretation. It has been argued that the rule as it stands is too simple to permit simple predictions on the basis of it (Frank, 1998). Whether or not this is true, it has been tempting for scholars to rush to predictions based on it, perhaps in a version of physics envy. The upshot of this haste can then be that, following a supposed failure of Hamilton’s rule to apply, scholars seek for other explanations for the source of a social behavior. In this vein it is worth emphasizing that there are a large number of things that Hamilton’s rule does not imply and does not apply to—much though it may appear to.
Why does all this matter? It is not hyperbole to say that Hamilton’s rule explains the otherwise miraculous. Miracles are, strictly speaking, things that cannot be explained by appeal to natural laws. Darwin’s insight explains how the world appears to be designed but without needing a designer. Hamilton’s extension of Darwin’s insight is no less momentous. It explains how moral behavior—which at its bedrock requires the capacity to benefit others at a net cost to oneself (in other words, true altruism) can come into the world without a divinity to underwrite it.
Throughout history, humans have typically sought for supernatural explanations for the way that the universe contains both beauty and goodness. As Kant famously put it “Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.” Darwin’s discoveries showed us that no designer was needed to create functionality—and in the process reminded us that not all functionality was beautiful. Hamilton’s rule unites all of nature in terms of how genuine altruism—a crucial social behavior--can exist at all without supernatural interference. In the process he similarly showed us that our intuitions about what is truly good cannot be relied on. Of course, this mathematical extension of evolution by natural selection has far more implications than simply that, it is the most general formulation of natural selection yet devised.
Introduction
Distinguished Professor, Evolutionary-Developmental Area Head University of New Mexico
Steve Gangestad is a psychologist at UNM, where he is best known for his work on evolution and development using quantitative methods. For many years he has been working with collaborators—notably Randy Thornhill—on the question of whether, in humans, female estrus is (as some scholars aver) truly lost. Typically, primates advertise their fertile phase through conspicuous displays. Humans do not do this. However, Gangestad has argued that a raft of behaviors indicate that estrus is concealed in humans rather than lost. This implies that there are two distinct types of sexual behavior in women. The first, during the fertile phase, and the second—extended sexuality—during the non-fertile phase. Humans are not unique in having sex outside of fertile phases (bonobos and cetaceans also do this) and Gangestad’s work aims to root the study of human sexuality within the general phylogeny of vertebrates