Nothing. It's simply what mutation ensures for the survival of the animal, sufficient to breed. The more progeny, the greater likelihood of the survival of the species. This doesn't mean that there's any purpose or intent. There's no driving force behind it, purpose or any sort of destiny. Life exists and if the most destructive species, mankind continues on its destruction of the Earth's ecosystem, life will cease to exist on Earth.
Cold, webbed feet, cold heart.
In my mind that was the argument - just proposing a general principle. Perhaps beyond that there is a "pick your battles" approach I suggest.
I think you are saying that top-down or bottom-up social structures are both natural? Not sure actually. I suspect we are operating from a lot of different underlying assumptions. I would say that I see humans absolutely as animals with some more abstract reasoning ability - just enough to get them in trouble a lot of the time. I don't think humans are masterful of theories.
I don't know what romantic primitivism is as a known concept. I sometimes talk about wanting to live in a cabin, but that's a personal idea for myself to reject all of humanity. It's not a model for others at all in my mind. Life is hard without modern conveniences - I know because I've hauled snow, built fires to melt it, lived without heat, used hacksaws to chop wood, etc. When I hope for that life for myself I'm not thinking of any theories about humanity except for how scary they are in general. For me it's not dreamy and romantic - it's a way to still live in reality when I've pretty much decided to die. I don't operate from an internal global theory that informs all my ideas. Theories seem very fragmented to me, and packaged up perfectly until applied to reality.
There is a common sense issue here for sure. I was just pointing to a principle and not suggesting it be applied in a rigid, rule-based, absolute way all the time. I don't mean to point at something that happens in nature and automatically say all humans should do it. It's more an issue that if something occurs a lot, we should recognize that humans are also animals and some of the same tendencies apply to us. The need for territorial space is one example. Ways of expressing sexuality or forming social groupings in general are worth considering. It's about extracting the underlying principles that are reapplied to humanity because it's a different context, and then picking one's battles instead of always fighting nature.
It's a Brit idiom that can be applied in multiple scenarios but the gist of it is that it's a bit of a cautionary for people who are going somewhere/leaving. I found it strange that you used it, considering how I'm not going anywhere/leaving this thread. Next time, try 'agree to disagree', if that's what you meant.
Agreed. Just to frame this out more: evolution is often misrepresented as a carrot on a stick approach to explaining the variety and parallels between morphological similarities of different organisms. As a matter of comparison, to use the cliche phrase "phylogeny recapitulates ontology," where stages of an organisms evolutionary history are represented in its development to adulthood, homosexuality present in ape ancestors or presumably in recent hominins does not assume this will be expressed in modern H. sapiens - though there is a greater likelihood. (It doesn't help that Skene's glands and prostate gland stimulus are very much a carrot on a stick for sex-driven evolution) The social sexual culture of bonobo is an often cited example of unrestricted, exploratory, and playful sexuality present in a near-human ape ancestor, particularly for the prevalence of female to female, male to male, and dominant to subordinate members exchanging sexual favors for social harmony. Similarly, comparing examples of same-sex pair bonding among animals is extremely local and represents convergent evolution, not proof that human custom traces its roots to the 'naturalness' of given sexual preference. Same-sex mating is present in other big-brained relatives besides apes, especially Bottle-nosed dolphins. What's more, it's important to make distinct the differences of what is natural here: 1) there is limbic pair bonding, and then there's 2) reproduction, and again there's 3) sex for the sake of sex. Humans have to navigate all three at once given our physiological predilection for the latter and an exaggerated, culture-bound conception of the former - while reproduction itself is torn, labeled, and valorized or demonized in the same sentence. My point being that examples of same-sex pair bonding (in penguins) does not accurately mirror the concept of homosexuality in humans - just as avian intelligence seems analogous to human cognition though distantly related.
Well said. That's really the bottom line of this publicity stunt.
Functionally yes they certainly would express as a gender in behavior and identity. They know what they are attracted to and not all within a species generally exhibits homosexual behaviors, but certain individuals will and in certain environment more individual will. Just like humans actually. Also, people have often studied animal self-awareness using mirrors instead of scent which is phenomenally short-sighted. How many humans could identify "self" based on their own scent when given a basket full of dirty socks with the task to find their own. Then we dismiss animal identify because they aren't interested in mirrors.
It's 'Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' for the Recapitulation Theory.
Right, hence the "cliche phrase." I was poking fun and don't agree that Darwinian evolution has a goal, as you said, natural selection and evolution have no purpose or graded hierarchy.
More accurately: ontology creates phylogeny, or better yet, 'phylogeny recapitulates phylogeny'
