I’ve got to disagree with this one. Let’s take a concrete example, say pity. The ability to feel pity is a complex adaptation, and so all persons feel pity. However HOW MUCH any one person feels pity for others is a highly variable quantity. It varies dramatically from person to person, and from situation to situation; moreover, some people, (eg psycopaths) don’t feel any pity at all: their pity mechanism is broken, defective. Therefore the only conclusion you can draw from the alleged “Psychological unity of humankind” is that they will feel some unknown amount of pity in a certain situation, unless of course, they feel none at all.
The possible scale for pity ranges from 0 to some (unknown) maximum. Alleging the “psychological unity of humankind” gives you no additional information.
You can make the same null statement about every other human psychological trait, from conscientiousness to competitiveness.
You can’t even state ” ‘Smorgraph’ does not exist, since I have never felt it” because of course, your smorgraph generator or detector may be defective.
Lastly, since human beings were, until a couple of hundred years ago, in relatively isolated breeding pools, with fairly limited transfer of genetic materials between pools. This is still the case, although to a lesser degree. (compare the amount of gene transfer between Lima, Peru and Ontario, Canada vs the amount of gene transfer within the city of Toronto). It is highly likely that differential evolutionary pressure drove evolution in different direction in different sub-populations. The most famous examples of these are physical adaptations, like sickle cell anemia, an adaptation against malaria, and the ability to digest milk sugar, etc, but the same kind of evolutionary pressure no doubt also drove expression levels of psychological adaptations. Psychological mechanisms are obviously heritable and shaped by evolution. ie, in some ancestral environments, no doubt it was MORE ADVANTAGEOUS to be highly loyal, or to be very calm and dispassionate, or to be extremely vengeful and quick to anger, or to be deeply concerned about the well-being of your children, or to be very lustful, or extremely conscientious. These are adaptations, and your evolutionary environment is going to slide them up or down, based on differential survival rates.
Thus, it is HIGHLY PROBABLE that people in one ancestral sub-population are far more like EACH OTHER psychologically that they are psychologically like other human beings. The examples of this, which are legion, are commonly called ‘prejudice’. Prior probability would probably be a more scientific term.
‘The psychological unity of mankind’ is nothing more than a fairy story, something good hearted (or weak headed) people WANT to believe, because they are afraid that people ‘being different’ will lead to pogroms and lynching and blind discrimination. Well, probably it does. But, it’s still TRUE.
I’ve got to disagree with this one. Let’s take a concrete example, say pity. The ability to feel pity is a complex adaptation, and so all persons feel pity. However HOW MUCH any one person feels pity for others is a highly variable quantity. It varies dramatically from person to person, and from situation to situation; moreover, some people, (eg psycopaths) don’t feel any pity at all: their pity mechanism is broken, defective. Therefore the only conclusion you can draw from the alleged “Psychological unity of humankind” is that they will feel some unknown amount of pity in a certain situation, unless of course, they feel none at all.
The possible scale for pity ranges from 0 to some (unknown) maximum. Alleging the “psychological unity of humankind” gives you no additional information.
You can make the same null statement about every other human psychological trait, from conscientiousness to competitiveness.
You can’t even state ” ‘Smorgraph’ does not exist, since I have never felt it” because of course, your smorgraph generator or detector may be defective.
Lastly, since human beings were, until a couple of hundred years ago, in relatively isolated breeding pools, with fairly limited transfer of genetic materials between pools. This is still the case, although to a lesser degree. (compare the amount of gene transfer between Lima, Peru and Ontario, Canada vs the amount of gene transfer within the city of Toronto). It is highly likely that differential evolutionary pressure drove evolution in different direction in different sub-populations. The most famous examples of these are physical adaptations, like sickle cell anemia, an adaptation against malaria, and the ability to digest milk sugar, etc, but the same kind of evolutionary pressure no doubt also drove expression levels of psychological adaptations. Psychological mechanisms are obviously heritable and shaped by evolution. ie, in some ancestral environments, no doubt it was MORE ADVANTAGEOUS to be highly loyal, or to be very calm and dispassionate, or to be extremely vengeful and quick to anger, or to be deeply concerned about the well-being of your children, or to be very lustful, or extremely conscientious. These are adaptations, and your evolutionary environment is going to slide them up or down, based on differential survival rates.
Thus, it is HIGHLY PROBABLE that people in one ancestral sub-population are far more like EACH OTHER psychologically that they are psychologically like other human beings. The examples of this, which are legion, are commonly called ‘prejudice’. Prior probability would probably be a more scientific term.
‘The psychological unity of mankind’ is nothing more than a fairy story, something good hearted (or weak headed) people WANT to believe, because they are afraid that people ‘being different’ will lead to pogroms and lynching and blind discrimination. Well, probably it does. But, it’s still TRUE.