Posted: Jun 25, 2016 1:56 pm
Jayjay4547 wrote:tolman wrote:Two problems here seems to be you choosing only to use perspectives which maximise antipredator weapon use while minimising or ignoring other uses, alongside taking a largely either/or approach to things.
Even if we just considered weapon use, wouldn't an ancestor which was a general weapon user be expected to be better at antipredator weapon use than one which somehow (how?) restricted its weapon use to attacking predators?
That’s an interesting point. My answer is that (a) defensive weapon use was essential for survival by a primate with short blunt canines and non-opposable big toes, in the face of a leopard-like predator, at night while (b) defensive weapon use in those circumstances was a higher skills-hurdle than successful hunting.
Even if someone agreed that at some time X, defensive weapon use somehow became rapidly essential for survival, that wouldn't be any argument that other kinds of tool use at time X (or before time X) were less likely.
Indeed, someone could reasonably take the view that if defensive tool use had become essential at time X, then a species which didn't already have reasonable tool-use skills would seem likely not to have survived.
Of course, that doesn't mean such survival couldn't have happened, as looking back on evolutionary history as a whole there are likely to have been many unlikely things which did happen.
Surely, someone who took a philosophical position of organisms as being pure puppets of the environment but without a particular predator fixation could (and would?) argue that the environment was responsible for all tool use, and that a species which had been shaped for countless millennia to be general tool users gradually becoming competent at wielding weapons against would-be predators is just as environment-driven as your seemingly narrower scenario.
Surely, you'd have to agree that even if you disagreed with them regarding the evolutionary importance of predator-defence for either simple species survival or as an enabling factor for ancestors occupying previously-denied habitats, someone with such a perspective would have no obvious philosophical need to focus on predators, and if they saw religious significance in their environment-entirely-controlling-evolution perspective, their view would be, in religious terms, as good and genuine as yours?
Your scenario might be more dramatic than theirs, but that doesn't necessarily make it more credible.
Jayjay4547 wrote:It was then essential that hominins had skills for reacting to a leopard. They couldn’t start with low skills to attack small predators and work up towards big ones: The big ones (leopard) were their night problem.
Even if you're claiming that leopards suddenly appeared as a problem, why would that preclude defensive skills having already been developed for use against 'lesser' predators, or tool-use motor skills in general having been gradually developed?
Wouldn't gradual improvement seem to be the way things work in evolution generally?
Is there any evidence that tree-climbing predators did suddenly appear, and did so at the time you're thinking of?
Jayjay4547 wrote:In the daytime sure one could visualise low level skills at hand weapon use providing some level of protection against small predators and weapon skill evolving towards better access to territory.
So are you suggesting some kind of non-transferability of skills from daytime to nighttime?
Jayjay4547 wrote:tolman wrote:It would seem from what you write that you have a basic and deep aversion to the idea of antipredator weapon use being part of a general suite of tool use competence, even in the context where earlier tool use wasn't meaningfully about fighting predators.
Yes I think that the notion of our ancestors having the smarts to develop tool use of which weapon use was one consequence, is a crock, it’s an exceptionalist approach that isn’t applied to the origin stories of other species. No-one would argue that the pom pom crab ancestors needed “smarts” to stick anemones on their claws. Rather in our case, leopards, sticks and stones drew our ancestor’s attention to how useful weapons were, and made our ancestors skilled in using them at speed with accuracy.
Yet you seem happy with ancestors having the wit and foresight to regularly practise using tools as weapons in order to be ready for future predator encounters.
Why do you try to suggest not only that any tool uses other than predator defence somehow require significantly more intelligence, but effectively claim that that's what everyone else must think as well?
Do you have any evidence that that's what everyone else actually thinks?
A gradualist, generalist approach to tool use doesn't seem to require much in the way of 'smarts' at all, since there's lots of time for behaviours and anatomy to co-evolve, with behaviours becoming significantly instinctual, as well as 'cultural'.
Jayjay4547 wrote:If our ancestors did habitually scavenge animals killed by predators then they would indeed have habitually had interactions quite similar to those when avoiding being eaten themselves by those same predators. For example there are many video clips of lion in battle royal with hyena. Make your mind up. Did Australopithecus shin up a tree whenever it saw a lion, or did they habitually drive lion off their kills? Or if there were no lion, sabretooth felids?
It's not only large predators which eat other animals, there are smaller predators/scavengers as well.
It would certainly seem that an ancestor which did use tools to assist in scavenging would be in a reasonable position to use those tools on more evenly-matched competitors if they were competing for access to a kill. A group of animals busy eating seems a rather better target for stone-throwing practise than something fast-moving intent on eating you, and if something more your size attacks or stands up to you when you're already carrying a stick and have some experience of using it to beat on dead animals, it wouldn't seem to require many 'smarts' to take a swing, or huge skill to at least put it off trying again.
Of course, if some competitor isn't determined to kill you and all you're competing for is food, outside famine situations where food is a life-or-death matter, taking on something where the risks were excessive would be a bad idea, but scavenging situations would seem to provide a whole spectrum of risk scenarios which would allow for starting small and gradually getting better over evolutionary timescales. That wouldn't require obvious 'smarts', since scavengers of all sizes seem generally capable of working out when to eat, and when to retreat.
Jayjay4547 wrote:tolman wrote:It would seem you'd recognise that as you went to seemingly strange lengths to avoid considering such a situation, to the extent of concluding ancestors 'must have' regularly practised with weapons to be better predator-fighters when such practise without obvious associated immediate reward would seem to be something requiring a meaningful amount of foresight and imagination in ancestors where you deride the idea of 'smarts', or a peculiarly specific instinct.
I actually likened weapon practice by ancestors to the play behaviour of juvenile monkeys, endlessly grabbing and biting, grabbing and biting. They don’t do that out of meaningful foresight and imagination. Or do they? What goes on in their furry little heads is obscure but I dare say they know and are hard wired into where and how they live. My point about weapon practice, which you make a big issue of, was just about how strange a troop of Australopithecus would seem, if one could have met them; how very different from a troop of other primates.
It seemed more like an attempt to deny the transferability of other skills by suggesting that to be any good at attacking predators, ancestors would logically have to have practised just to be good at attacking predators.
If you were thinking of play in general improving antipredator skills by being transferable, surely those general skills would have been available for other uses, and regularly using them for other uses would have improved antipredator abilities?
Why wouldn't the creative environment (were we to choose to anthropomorphise it) have used all the means at its disposal to 'improve' us?
Jayjay4547 wrote:Rather let’s say that any rational person modelling our ancestors as habitual scavengers would have to suppose them highly adept at defensive weapon use, because the primary predators would have habitually attacked them violently. It would be non-adaptive for predators to allow kleptoparasites just to stroll off with their kills.
As I said, scavengers (or animals-which-scavenge) in general seem to have abilities at assessing relevant threats, and are unlikely to go head-to-head with larger competitors.
Lions at a kill seem likely to be primarily occupied with eating, and what other lions are doing, and maybe with competitors who may be some immediate threat to their wellbeing, or their eating.
Running off after some ancestor of ours might get them a new kill, but it would very likely mean someone else literally ate their current lunch.
Jayjay4547 wrote:tolman wrote:Furthermore, would it seem reasonable to you that ancestors could be good at assaulting predators while being unlikely to have those skills and that belligerent attitude reflected in other aspects of their behaviour (like driving off competing species from food sources)?
I'm not suggesting that such ancestors roamed around like constantly-rage-fuelled psychopaths, and aggression does need to be controlled such that it isn't dangerous to the individual and their kin, but if the skills were there, not to use them where that would seemingly provide an advantage would appear to require some kind of explanation.
Sure, with also the worrying notion that when their ecological success led to hominin troops colliding with others, that could plausibly have led to warfare between them, like with chimps. Their antagonistic interface with the environment became less about predators and more about neighbouring troops of the same species.
Why would that be 'worrying' if the skills involved (whether solely regarding predators, or more widely regarding 'competitors as well) had already been developed for such uses before populations rose as a result which then led to conflict?
The 'credit' for the skills would still seem to be 'deserved' by the original uses which led to them.
Unless you're arguing that antipredator skills are not transferable (which you don't seem to be), you'd seem to be in a position where you think some subsequent uses of them which they had enabled both directly by existing and indirectly by improving survival would be some kind of threat to their 'evolutionary importance'.
And with regard to chimps, given that their fighting is largely weapon-free, would you suggest that the fact that groups do fight meant that the form of their canines, etc was meaningfully 'self-created'?
Jayjay4547 wrote:tolman wrote:Wouldn't an ancestor capable of making reasonably 'smart' associations between a weapon and a successful defence be capable of doing the same thing with regard to any tool which provided some immediate reward?
I don’t see where “smartness” comes in. Simply learning from the benefit. A rat learns pretty quickly not to press a lever that electrifies the bars of its Skinner box, and to press another lever that delivers water. For hominins, a tool that saved one’s life would draw more attention than one that helped draw termites out of a nest.
'Saving one's life' would seem a relatively advanced concept compared to things like the immediate pleasure-reward of eating.
It obviously isn't an 'irreducible complexity' argument, since potential pathways for gradually developing abilities without taking great risks in the process are clear.