In writing my reply (still pending) to Maria's last post I stumbled upon a conundrum regarding my theory of the super-adaptive instinct. I was caught in a conflict of likelihoods between the possibility that the super-adaptive instinct is an emergent system on one hand (and therefore, not specifically the product of a genetic mutation) or an adaptive, biological mutation on the other. Of course, it's possible that both factors could be involved, but as complex systems theory is still a bit foreign and perplexing to me (much of that has to do with its jargony, new vocabulary that favors very abstract terms), I didn't feel comfortable either rejecting or embracing it overmuch.
My first intuition was that, as an instinct, the super-adaptive instinct resulted from a biological mutation. But my thinking about the
ego favors more of an emergent system theory. That is, our conscious sense of self is, in my opinion, an emergent property of the various modular brain systems that operate in "consciousness" or working memory. If we carefully introspect and study our thought processes (and behavior), we begin to see that the ego is made up of elements that are really not so much "spiritual" or transcendent or even "intelligent" as they are systematic, strategic, and unconscious. Our sense of identity is a kind of abstraction or fantasy of this complex system . . . or, in more Jungian terms, a symbol of the ego-complex that we use to relate to ourselves and to relate ourselves to others . . . just as we might use a symbol of a personage or god or character to relate to an instinctual archetype like the hero or the animi.
In other words, this "fantasy" of selfhood is an emergent property. It lacks corporeality in the way that brain modules and instincts exhibit that trait. Ego-development, then, seems to be significantly provoked by socialization . . . with various formulations of "egoism" generally corresponding to the kind of social structures the ego develops and exists in.
But my notion of the super-adaptive instinct holds that this instinct is responsible for "ego-creation and maintenance". This is based in the observation that the phenomenon I associate with the super-adaptive instinct (a kind of alchemical Mercurius or Jungian transcendent function) clearly comes from the unconscious and "behaves like matter". That is, it self-regulates the organism (or the organ of the ego) with a Will that encourages adaptation to the environment. When we do the Work (or a devout individuation), we interact with the super-adaptive instinct and its various manifestations (like the animi and hero). We do not have conscious control over it. In fact, progress in the Work is largely a matter of properly identifying and surrendering to the process the super-adaptive instinct wills.
The perceived materiality and Otherness of the super-adaptive instinct disinclined me to consider that it itself is an emergent system (with the emergent property of the ego developing out of the super-adaptive instinct). But in my limited grasp on archeology and human evolution, I have felt it necessary to address the problem that the human brain fully developed about 100,000 years ago, but humans didn't show many signs of cultural innovation until about 40,000 BP. And agriculture (which had the most significant change on human sociality) didn't begin until about 10,000 BP. Why did we keep making our simple stone tools in precisely the same way for more 60,000 years (stone tools like this date back from before we became
homo sapiens, to 2.5 million BP)? That seems unlikely to me, when we look at modern humans (unlikely, but not impossible). We are extremely innovative animals.
The super-adaptive instinct is something I associate with human innovation. If it is true that we leapt forward in innovativeness 60,000 years after our brains reached their current state of development, this seems to give more weight to the notion that what I call the super-adaptive instinct is not so much an instinct as an emergent system. Obviously a great deal more data would be required to formulate this into anything more than very abstract speculation.
So this was where I was stumped: is super-adaptivity an instinct or an emergent system? What jumpstarted human innovativeness if not specifically genetic mutation? Is it possible that our species lived for over 60,000 years with an evolved but dormant capacity for advanced innovation? Why did the capacity evolve in the first place then? What purpose would it have served? Was it a side-effect of another mutation . . . a side-effect that only became adaptive when our environment created higher demand for it?
That is, what we can gather from archaeological artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic (around 40,000 BP), at least in my guess, is that tribes of humans were differentiating themselves with cultural practices. That suggests tribal splintering was occurring . . . and therefore, population growth (I haven't found a source that links this period with population growth yet; not that I have looked . . . but this is my guess, and if I find evidence that refutes this hypothesis, I will revise my theory accordingly).
So, the need for tribal differentiation could be the environmental change that enabled a dormant capacity for advanced innovation. That's one theory, at least. This environmental change could have also enabled an emergent system to evolve (conscious discrimination and impetus for innovation based on the need to define and differentiate tribal identity).
I certainly don't know which . . . and probably nobody else does yet either. The data is still too limited.
But today, I serendipitously stumbled upon an article in the New York Times that provides a potential biological, evolutionary explanation for the super-adaptive instinct. "
From a Few Genes: Life's Myriad Shapes" by Carol Kaesuk Yoon.
Used to lay out body plans, build beaks and alter fish jaws, BMP4 illustrates perfectly one of the major recurring themes of evo-devo. New forms can arise via new uses of existing genes, in particular the control genes or what are sometimes called toolkit genes that oversee development. It is a discovery that can explain much that has previously been mysterious, like the observation that without much obvious change to the genome over all, one can get fairly radical changes in form.
“There aren’t new genes arising every time a new species arises,” said Dr. Brian K. Hall, a developmental biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. “Basically you take existing genes and processes and modify them, and that’s why humans and chimps can be 99 percent similar at the genome level.”
This is precisely what I have proposed with the super-adaptive instinct (albeit, intuitively or from observing psychic phenomena). But although the mutation of a toolkit gene might account for the coordination of other, older instincts (for mating, aggression, etc.) by the newer, super-adaptive instinct (and thus give some small support to the notion that the super-adaptive instinct does indeed behave like an instinct, like matter), this still doesn't account for the problem that the emergence of increased human innovation (Upper Paleolithic Revolution) doesn't seem to have been the direct and immediate product of a genetic mutation (insomuch as human skull size and shape didn't change in this period).
A later passage from this article gives a little more definition:
Tetrapods include cows, people, birds, rodents and so on. In other words, the potential for making fingers, hands and feet, crucial innovations used in emerging from the water to a life of walking and crawling on land, appears to have been present in fish, long before they began flip-flopping their way out of the muck. “The genetic tools to build fingers and toes were in place for a long time,” Dr. Shubin wrote in an e-mail message. “Lacking were the environmental conditions where these structures would be useful.” He added, “Fingers arose when the right environments arose.”
And here is another of the main themes to emerge from evo-devo. Major events in evolution like the transition from life in the water to life on land are not necessarily set off by the arising of the genetic mutations that will build the required body parts, or even the appearance of the body parts themselves, as had long been assumed. Instead, it is theorized that the right ecological situation, the right habitat in which such bold, new forms will prove to be particularly advantageous, may be what is required to set these major transitions in motion.
Of course, here we are still talking about genetic mutations . . . but the notion is very much the same as emergence of complex systems. More digging . . .
from the article "
No Last Words on Language Origins" by Constance Holden:
To some researchers, these dramatic transformations imply that one more biological change, beyond the expansion of the brain and the change in throat anatomy, had taken place, making humans capable of fully modern language. [Richard] Klein, for example, posits a "fortuitous mutation" some 50,000 years ago among modern humans in East Africa that "promoted the modern capacity" for rapid, flexible, and highly structured speech--along with the range of adaptive behavioral potential we think of as uniquely human. He doesn't see how anything else, such as a social or technological development, could have wrought such "sudden and fundamental" change, which modern humans then carried out of Africa and around the world.
Steven Mithen of the University of Reading in the U.K. also believes evolution did a late-stage tinkering with the brain, one that produced what he calls "fluid" human intelligence. Both apes and early humans, he believes, operate with what he calls a "Swiss army knife" model of intelligence. That is, they have technical, social, and "natural history" or environmental modules, but there's little cross talk between them. This could explain, for example, why humans were deft at shaping stones to butcher animals, but it never occurred to them to transform an animal bone into a cutting tool. At some point around the 40,000-year mark, Mithen believes the walls between these modules finally collapsed, leaving Homo sapiens furnished with the ability to generalize, perceive analogous phenomena, and exercise other powerful functions of the integrated human intelligence. Only then would language have been fully mature.
Others say that instead of reflecting a final step in brain evolution, language might have crystallized as part of a social change, perhaps triggered by population growth. "I don't subscribe to the cognitive model of a new bit gets added on," says Clive Gamble of Cambridge University. "I would argue it's changes in the social context"--for example, the complexity of behavior needed for large numbers of people to live together.
I just tracked this down in mid-post. So, at least some experts are barking up the same tree as my intuition . . . as either a late genetic mutation (that reorganized brain activity without changing brain size or shape) or a population increase would resolve the major mystery of the super-adaptive instinct's origin.
Here's another article I found that tries to puzzle out the same mystery: "
Contextual Focus: A Cognitive Explanation for the Cultural Transition of the Middle/Upper Paleolithic". It summarizes (and rejects) a few theories . . . but I am not convinced by the author's conclusions. Still possibly worth a read.
While I scoured the web all day, and it seems this thing I'm trying to dig up info on (the Upper Paleolithic Revolution) is a great mystery even among anthropologists and biologists.
For now, I'm going to stick with the phenomenological data (i.e., the SE instinct behaves like a biological instinct and not an abstract, emergent system like the ego) and continue to work with the hypothesis of a super-adaptive instinct. Still, for this theory to ever become more that pure speculation, I think a biological origin explanation of it needs to be discovered. I feel that this will be possible since the phenomenon I have given this name to behaves entirely like an instinct. That is, the fact that I can't find a satisfying explanation for its evolutionary origin doesn't in any way negate the fact that it is perceivable or active in our psychic experiences.
The super-adaptive instinct is especially illusive, though, because it is
indirectly adaptive. That is, it seems to coordinate and interrelate other instincts to achieve a more plastic adaptivity. But it "vanishes" into the background behind these instincts.
Well, enough head-scratching for now. Live to think again another day.