Evolu on

Origins and evolu on of human beings

Glossary
• Anthropology (paleo-anthropologist), the science of human beings.
• Ethology, study of animal behaviour, especially under natural condi ons.
• Gene cs, branch of biology that deals with the hereditary and varia on of organisms.
• Non-human ancestors
• Crea onism, doctrine or theory holding that ma er, the various forms of life, and the owrld
were created by God out of nothing, usually in the way described in Genesis.
• Fixity of species, xism, species of living things were created once and for all and, therefore, are
immutable, and that there is a sharp separa on between human beings and the rest of
animals.
• Order of Primates, suborders strepsirrhini and haplorhini (tarsiers and simians -hominidae or
great apes - genera Homo - Homo sapiens.
• Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Carl von Linné, Swedish biologist, the father of modern taxonomy,
formalised binominal nomenclature (generic name, genus; and speci c name). First to include
in the group of Apes.
• Taxonomy, classi ca on, in this case of living things.
• Jean-Ba ste Lamarck (1744-1829), French naturalist, biologist. Proponent of the idea of the
biological evolu on according to natural laws. The func on makes the organ, inherit of
acquired features.
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882), English naturalist, geologist and biologist, all species of life have
descended from a common ancestor, evolu on according to natural selec on, where struggle
for existence happens.
• Natural selec on theory.
• Psyche, psychism, soul, personality, the totally of elements forming the mind.

What is the di erence between human beings and the rest of the animals?
What should be our rela onship with other living things and nature in general?
Paul Riceur considera que la idea según la cual el

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 “At a me when it was ge ng harder and harder to say what it was that made human beings
"human," Haraway asked: what are the real di erences between humans, animals, and machines?
And to answer her own ques on, she argued that our historical opinions about those di erences
have always pro ted society's most powerful people. So, when it's assumed that animals don't
have souls, it's that much easier to use them as resources. And when it's assumed that men are
naturally be er than women, or that certain "races" of men are be er than others, that's how
centuries of oppression, slavery, and genocide get jus ed.

Haraway is down with cyborgs because they aren't hierarchical: their hybridity does away with any
ques ons about who, or what, is "naturally" best. Forget Western philosophy and its decrees
about mind over body, man over woman, humans over animals, and everything on this planet
being put here just for male, white folks to use up to their hearts' content. Let's have a cyborg
poli cs instead! We'll explore our similari es with animals and machines, and we'll challenge all
the kinds of exploita on we can nd!”

Contribu on of sciences.
Philosophy takes into account date provided from di erent sciences like, naturalism,
anthropology, paleo-anthropology, gene cs.

Origin of human beings

There some marginal theories that are opposed to the idea of evolu on of humanity from non-
human ancestor, like crea onism and xity.
Fixism was the main theory in science un l the 19th century.

Carl Linnaeus, the founder of modern taxonomy, and creator of the modern concept of species
and its classi ca on -binominal nomenclature, the prac ce of naming each species by two
names. He was xist, nevertheless.

Example: the dog is names canis canis, and the wolf canis lupus -he rst name is the genre to
which both belong to, the second, their speci c group, the species.

Human beings belong to the Order of Primates.

Evolu onary explana ons

Jean-Ba ste Lamark´s theory of evolu on

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 He presented his theory on 1809. Although it was the rst evolu onary theory it didn’t prevail.
This theory stated that living things have an impulse to become increasingly complex. The
simplest species, those that don’t have any other simpler species to come from, were created by
spontaneous genera on. Individuals tend to adapt to the circumstances, crea ng useful organs
for new circumstances. Then he formulated his two main principles:
1. The func on makes the organ: when a change in the circumstances take place, the beings are
forced to exercise the organ or faculty that could improve its adapta on.
2. The acquired characters are inherited: through this mechanism, the o spring inherits the
new organs or facul es.
Charles Darwin´s theory of evolu on

He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and theology in Cambridge, but his real
passion was collec ng beetles. Through a friend of him, a professor in Cambridge, he managed to
contact Captain Fitz-Royal who wanted to share his cabin with a young volunteer naturalist
interested in embarking in the Beagle, “without any economic retribu on”. The trip lasted ve
years, from 1831 to 1836, and during which, he collected fossils and observed varia on of
species according to their di erent environments. These observa ons showed a much slower
evolu onary me than that that could result from Lamarck’s theory. He published his own theory
in 1859, in his famous book, The Origin of the Species. Later, he published his The origin of man,
1871, where he stablished our kinship with the order of primates.

The logic of Natural Selec on theory: according to Darwin’s observa ons, changes occur at a very
slow me, plus these changes show that species get a be er adapta on to their habitats. Being
this the case, his theory states that evolu on happens by natural selec on of random muta ons
in the species.

Ini ally, the theory of the natural

selec on was harshly rejected, and
Darwin ridiculed, but was admi ed into
its essen al elements throughout the
nineteenth century. At that me, gene cs
was almost unknown, but this science
was incorporated to the theory, especially
Mendel’s laws of the inheritance, and
Caption
other eld discoveries, resul ng in the so-

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 called synthe c theory of evolu on, or neo-Darwinism. Darwin’s theory shows that evolu on is
a process without a guide or a goal se les by a higher being or by the individual itself.

Caption

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 Human Speci city

Ins ncts vs. acquired behavior

Every animal is endowed with a cogni ve system, decision centres, and execu on organs. The
rst one, the cogni ve system, reports on favorable, threatening or neutral situa ons; the second
ones, decision centres, ac vate the locomotor apparatus and predispose it to react in the proper
way; the third ones, execu on organs, excuse or carry out the corresponding conduct.
Both animals and humans share a lower psychism with regulates behavior based exclusively on
sensi ve knowledge ins nc vely executes, responsible of performing certain ac ons in an innate
way. Innate behaviors. Animals are naturally programmed for certain behaviors according to this
mechanism:

1. This programming allows the animal to recognize certain s muli.

2. In those s muli, an innate trigger mechanism is red.
3. This mechanism leads to the corresponding behavior that the ac on ful lls.

Un l a few years ago it was believed that animals always used innate behaviors, but progress of
ethology has highlighted that in the behavior of many animal species, along with the innate
elements, they have acquired others, that is, that animals can learn new behaviors.

Here we have this text from Rene Descartes, one of the most important philosophers of the
Modern mes, that in uenced greatly our vision on animals for many centuries:

“I desire, say I, that you would consider that these func ons all follow naturally in this machine
solely from the disposi on of its organs, neither more nor less than the movements of a clock or
other automaton [follow] from those of its counterweights and wheels, with the result that it is
not at all necessary to conceive for their opera on any other vegeta ve or sensi ve soul in it or
any other principle of movement and life than its blood and spirits, agitated by the heat of the re
which burns con nuously in its heart and is in no way of another nature than all the res that are
in inanimate bodies.” (Oeuvres de Descartes 11: 202).

Types of learning

Classical condi oning

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 Form of learning in which certain condi ons of s mula on of the environment produce the
appearance of behaviors that were not produced beforehand in that same situa on or that
occurred with a lower frequency.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was the rst researcher who began to study learning by condi oning.
The process of condi oning consists in the temporal con guity of two s muli presented several
mes as followed:
1. A neutral s mulus (NS) that not causes any response at the beginning (the sound of the
bell).
2. An uncondi oned s mulus (US) that causes automa c re ex response. This response is
called uncondi onal response (UR).
3. A er repeatedly pairing the two s muli (NS-US), in the presence of only the NS, the response
(originally the UR) is produced.
The change of behavior is due to the fact that the NS has come a condi oned s mulus, CS, which
produces a condi oned response, CR. The condi oning for Pavlov is the subs tu on of one
s mulus for another.

Caption

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 Operant condi oning
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was who analyzed this type of behavior in detail and applied it to
educa on, clinical and social problems. An example of operant condi oning is the experiment of
the so-called skinner box.

A small cage with three smooth walls and a fourth one where there were a lever and a small
container for food. When introducing a hungry rat in the box, an exploratory behavior occurs in
the animal, and, sooner or later, in its wandering through the box, the rat presses the lever. At
this me, a certain amount of food falls into the container. From that moment on, the rat pays
more a en on to the wall of the box where the lever and the food container are located. A er
the lever is pressed again by casual and exploratory movements and then the food is consumed,
the rat places itself near the lever, presses it and immediately gets the food. The animal
alternates then rapidly the movements of pressing the lever and ea ng. It has been condi oned
to lower the lever in order to consume food.
Skinner dis nguish two types of behaviors: respondent behavior (behavior triggered by a given
s mulus), and operant behavior (behavior simply emi ed by the body). What is important in
operant condi oning, unlike the classic one, is not the con guity of the s muli, but the
consequences of the behavior emi ed by the organism. This way, a certain behavior is
reinforced.

Skinner box
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 Insight learning (learning by comprehension)
This form of learning consists in establishing a new restructuring of the elements of a situa on in
such way that signi cant rela onships appear between the elements: the response in this case is
guided by a reworking of previous experiences and present elements that are carried out
suddenly. This type of behavior was studied by Wolfgang Kohler observing the behavior of
chimpanzees and their ability to solve problems. In all the studied cases there is a new use of
elements that were in that situa on and ini ally were not signi cant for the subject. Therefore
we can conclude that animals share with man the ability to learn behaviors new ones as well as
ins nc ve behaviors. But due to our intellectual and voli onal facul es, we humans can
a enuate or modify and annul our ins nc ve inclina ons. This is the reason because we don’t
talk about the nature of human beings, but about the condi on of human beings, which mostly
depends on our capacity of reshape our environment. José Ortega y Gasset refers to this
condi on by saying that we human beings are projects, as we are essen ally free to build our
personality in a modi ed environment.

Clase de bachillerato

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 Intelligence and conscience
Animals have a certain intelligence, so they must be aware. Conscience is the “capacity to
realize”. We can realize the immediate things that surround us in what is called spontaneous or
direct awareness. This kind of consciousness is possessed by animals and humans. But there is
another type of consciousness, re ex or self-consciousness, that fact that we are aware of our
limited me, our mortality. The evidence of burial sites in paleoanthropology is considered a sign
of the appearance of consciousness in the history of the evolu on of human being from our non-
human ancestors (elephants are one of the species that share burial sites as well as us).

Our capacity for self-consciousness gives us the capacity to: develop an abstract knowledge, to
know our own cogni ve contents, to know our own facul es, to dis nguish our mental
opera ons from their contents, to know our own personal iden ty, to orient our life, and to
accept our responsibility.

Human narcissism

According to Paul Ricoeur, the theory of evolu on is the second serious humilia on of human
narcissism.

Freud habló magní camente de esta "resistencia" a la verdad en un famoso, y a menudo citado,
texto: "Una di cultad del psicoanálisis"
(1917). Dice allí que el psicoanálisis es la úl ma de las "graves humillaciones" que "el narcisismo,
el amor propio del hombre en general, haya sufrido hasta el presente por parte de la inves gación
cien ca". Primero tuvo lugar la humillación cosmológica que le in igió Copérnico, y que arruinó
la ilusión narcisista según la cual el habitáculo del hombre estaría en reposo en el centro de las
cosas; luego fue la humillación biológica, cuando Darwin puso n a la pretensión humana de estar
separado del reino animal; nalmente, advino la humillación psicológica: el hombre, que ya sabía
que no era ni el señor del cosmos, ni el señor de los seres vivos, descubre que ni siquiera es el
señor de su psiquis.
Paul Rocoeur, Hermenéu ca y psicoanálsis

Transhumanism
Philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the enhancement of the human
condi on by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can
greatly enhance longevity, cogni on, and well-being.

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 Human beings, like any other component or subsystem, must be localized in a system architecture
whose basic modes of opera on are probabilis c, sta s cal. No objects, spaces, or bodies are
sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the
proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language.
(Haraway,A Cyborg Manifesto)

Philosophical posthumanism
A philosophical direc on[7] that draws on cultural posthumanism, the philosophical strand
examines the ethical implica ons of expanding the circle of moral concern and extending
subjec vi es beyond the human species.

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