ION, GENERAL CONCEPTIONS, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, MENTAL INDIVIDUALITY. It would be very difficult for any one with even much more knowledge than I possess, to determine how far animals exhibit any traces of these high mental powers. This difficulty arises from the impossibility of judging what passes through the mind of an animal; and again, the fact that writers differ to a great extent in the meaning which they attribute to the above terms, causes a further difficulty. If one may judge from various articles which have been published lately, the greatest stress seems to be laid on the supposed entire absence in animals of the power of abstraction, or of forming general concepts. But when a dog sees another dog at a distance, it is often clear that he perceives that it is a dog in the abstract; for when he gets nearer his whole manner suddenly changes, if the other dog be a friend. A recent writer remarks, that in all such cases it is a pure assumption to assert that the mental act is not essentially of the same nature in the animal as in man. If either refers what he perceives with his senses to a mental concept, then so do both. (44. Mr. Hookham, in a letter to Prof. Max Muller, in the 'Birmingham News,' May, 1873.) When I say to my terrier, in an eager voice (and I have made the trial many times), "Hi, hi, where is it?" she at once takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, and generally first looks quickly all around, and then rushes into the nearest thicket, to scent for any game, but finding nothing, she looks up into any neighbouring tree for a squirrel. Now do not these actions clearly shew that she had in her mind a general idea or concept that some animal is to be discovered and hunted? It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if by this term it is implied, that he reflects on such points, as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth. But how can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shewn by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures or pains in the chase? And this would be a form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as Buchner (45. 'Conferences sur la Theorie Darwinienne,' French translat. 1869, p. 132.) has remarked, how little can the hardworked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses very few abstract words, and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence. It is generally admitted, that the higher animals possess memory, attention, association, and even some imagination and reason. If these powers, which differ much in different animals, are capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability in more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of abstraction, and selfconsciousness, etc., having been evolved through the development and combination of the simpler ones. It has been urged against the views here maintained that it is impossible to say at what point in the ascending scale animals become capable of abstraction, etc.; but who can say at what age this occurs in our young children? We see at least that such powers

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ase1887/22/257/22_257_458/_pdf

The descent of man and selection in relation to sex

View a collection of videos on Professor Wilson entitled "On the Relation of Science and the Humanities"In his new preface E. O. Wilson reflects on how he came to write this book: how "The Insect Societies" led him to write "Sociobiology," and how the political and religious uproar that engulfed that book persuaded him to write another book that would better explain the relevance of biology to the understanding of human behavior.

On Human Nature

Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding

Sexual fluidity has been defined as a capacity for situation-dependent flexibility in sexual responsiveness, which allows individuals to experience changes in same-sex or other-sex desire across both short-term and long-term time periods. I review recent evidence for sexual fluidity and consider the extent of gender differences in sexual fluidity by examining the prevalence of three phenomena: nonexclusive (bisexual) patterns of attraction, longitudinal change in sexual attractions, and inconsistencies among sexual attraction, behavior, and identity. All three of these phenomena appear to be widespread across a large body of independent, representative studies conducted in numerous countries, supporting an emerging understanding of sexuality as fluid rather than rigid and categorical. These studies also provide evidence for gender differences in sexual fluidity, but the extent and cause of these gender differences remain unclear and are an important topic for future research.

Sexual Fluidity in Male and Females

We often pigeonhole our surroundings into dualistic categories, e.g., nature/culture. Perhaps evolutionary forces favoured dichotomous brains, or dualistic categories may be only social constructs. These lines of thought led to my research question(s): Do juxtaposed mechanisms of dichotomous black-and-white (essentialist) cognitive patterns exist; and, if so, how do such mechanisms affect cultural and scientific concepts of reality? My thesis focusses on four classic modes of othering (Human–Animal, Human–Machine, Male–Female, Heterosexual–Homosexual) oft-cited in biological anthropological studies, aiming to reconstruct the developmental forces that can bring about, stabilise or modify such binaries. My thesis therefore also is situated in discourses of sociology, psychology, animal studies, AI theory and gender/sexuality studies. I explored how rigid – respectively, fluid – the above exemplary alterities were by gathering data on the perceptions of their boundaries as reflected in electronic archives covering 16 years of newspaper reporting in the UK (1995–2010) and then subjecting this data to both a quantitative and qualitative analysis, measuring the fluctuation of ambiguity tolerance. My results strongly indicate similar temporal patterns of ambiguity tolerance across three out of four dichotomies – including a distinct “millennial effect” of intolerance – and a remarkably stable Male–Female dichotomy. This suggests firstly that received understandings of concrete descriptions in evolutionary theory such as “human”, “animal”, “species”, “tool (machine)”, “homosexual” and “heterosexual” may function as cultural concepts considered to be natural kinds, but also are temporally malleable in both popular and academic discourse; and, secondly, that we may have natal (arguably plastic) gender schemata. I show quantitatively and qualitatively that essentialist thinking – as expressed by ambiguity (in)tolerance in socially empowered individuals – functions as an infrahumanisation mechanism to protect one’s perceived ingroup, be that humans, males or heterosexuals. I argue instead for an ultrahumanisation that may allow for less anthropocentrism, less androcentrism and less heterocentrism.

The evolving binary: perspectives on infra- and ultrahumanisation

Given the primacy of reproduction, same-sex sexual behavior poses an evolutionary puzzle. Why would selection fashion motivational mechanisms to engage in sexual behaviors with members of the same sex? We propose the alloparenting hypothesis, which posits that sexual fluidity in women is a contingent adaptation that increased ancestral women's ability to form pair bonds with female alloparents who helped them rear children to reproductive age. Ancestral women recurrently faced the adaptive problems of securing resources and care for their offspring, but were frequently confronted with either a dearth of paternal resources due to their mates' death, an absence of paternal investment due to rape, or a divestment of paternal resources due to their mates' extra-pair mating efforts. A fluid sexuality would have helped ancestral women secure resources and care for their offspring by promoting the acquisition of allomothering investment from unrelated women. Under this view, most heterosexual women are born with the capacity to form romantic bonds with both sexes. Sexual fluidity is a conditional reproductive strategy with pursuit of men as the default strategy and same-sex sexual responsiveness triggered when inadequate paternal investment occurs or when women with alloparenting capabilities are encountered. Discussion focuses on (a) evidence for alloparenting and sexual fluidity in humans and other primates; (b) alternative explanations for sexual fluidity in women; and(c) fourteen circumstances predicted to promote same-sex sexual behavior in women.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470491301100202

Born both ways: the alloparenting hypothesis for sexual fluidity in women.

Sexual fluidity in women: How feminist research influenced evolutionary studies of same-sex behavior.

Several researchers have reported their attempts to document and analyze graffiti that appears in relatively private locations, such as public bathrooms. However, most reports have been sociological or descriptive in nature, and none have seemingly examined Canadian bathrooms. Given that graffiti have existed throughout human history and is readily apparent across cultures, we propose that an evolutionary perspective may be advantageous for understanding the content of graffiti. To explore this possibility, we examined the themes that emerge in the graffiti of men’s versus women’s bathrooms in order to investigate evolved sex differences, as evidenced in content. We propose that the sex differences in graffiti reflect those that may be expected due to intrasexual competition and mate preferences. The graffiti in men’s bathrooms included far more “tagging” (i.e., signatures or personal logos), potentially indicating territoriality or self-proclamation of status, while the graffiti in women’s bathrooms focused on love and relationships. We conclude with directions for future research based on an evolutionary perspective that may further contribute towards an understanding of graffiti.

/pdf/sex-differences-in-the-topics-of-bathroom-graffiti-39xrl36vxa.pdf

Sex Differences in the Topics of Bathroom Graffiti

Darwinian literary analysis is a way to examine texts and arrive at conclusions about evolved human behaviors, motivations, and emotions (Carrol, 1995, 2011). That is, by analyzing texts, it is possible to indirectly analyze human nature. Recently, scholars have examined the works of Jane Austen (Strout, Fisher, Kruger, & Steelworthy, 2010), Harlequin romance novels (Fisher & Cox, 2010), and folktales (Gottschall, Martin, Quish, & Rea, 2004) for this purpose. Although this prior work has been informative, it has only included heterosexual relationships. Symons (1979) noted that lesbian and gay populations are a vital group to gain insight into evolutionary sex differences, as their relationships involve only same sex individuals, thus highlighting dominant female and male mating behaviors. Therefore, in this paper, our primary goal is to analyze lesbian pulp fiction to better comprehend women's evolved mating strategies. We also consider the era that these books were most popular and explore the cultural climate in relation to the characters in the novels. In general, the way the characters are described and their relationship dynamics are consistent gender stereotypes concerning masculine versus feminine women.

Sarah Radtke

Papers

Born both ways: the alloparenting hypothesis for sexual fluidity in women.

Sexual fluidity in women: How feminist research influenced evolutionary studies of same-sex behavior.

Sex Differences in the Topics of Bathroom Graffiti

AN EXAMINATION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEMES IN 1950s- 1960s LESBIAN PULP FICTION