Evolution and Human Life
Prof. Marshall Abrams (mabrams@uab.edu; 205-996-7483; HB 418)
PHL 290-3A, MW 4:00-5:15, HB 435
Office hours: Friday 1:30-2:30 and by appointment
UAB, Fall 2011
Humans seem unlike other animals. We cooperate in amazingly diverse ways, all heavily influenced by our
complex and varied cultures. Is it plausible that human cooperation and cultural diversity are products of
natural selection? Can natural selection produce anything but instincts? Does the “survival of the fittest” favor
selfishness? Or could culture itself be part of the evolutionary process? Are we anything more than the tools of
“selfish” genes?
This lecture/discussion and writing-oriented course will investigate these issues, which have been the subject
of much discussion in recent philosophy of biology. The goal of the course is not to teach one “correct” view,
but to challenge students to think about how various ideas from evolutionary theory might—or might not—be
useful for understanding human behavior.
The debates which we’ll examine in this class take as their starting point the the scientific consensus view that
all organisms are the product of evolution. However, students don’t have to understand evolutionary theory
before taking this course, and those who know quite a bit about evolutionary theory will still learn new things
about it. (Though we won’t address sceptical arguments against evolutionary theory, students who are sceptical
about any aspect of evolutionary are welcome. Curiousness about questions that arise if humans are viewed as
the result of evolution is all that’s needed. Those interested in debates about evolution vs. intelligent design,
etc., may be interested in my course “The Scientific Enterprise”, which usually includes some discussion of the
scientific status of evolutionary theory and of some intelligent design arguments.)
Required readings:
• The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins (TSG below)
• Not by Genes Alone, by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (NBGA below)
• Handouts, online links, etc.
You must have these books. I don’t care whether you own them, borrow them, get them from the library, or
read them online. However, I recommend that you bring the assigned reading to class every day so that we can
refer to specific passages in the readings.
I’ll ask you to bring your books on the second week of class. If you can’t convince me that you have a way to
do the readings, I’ll ask you to drop the course.
Notes on the readings:
In contrast to some of Dawkins’ recent books, his early work The Selfish Gene is focused almost exclusively
on providing an introduction to Dawkins’ scientific and philosophical views about how traditional evolutionary
theory can explain adaptation and adaptive behavior. It lays out a gene-centered, sociobiological perspective,
and presents Dawkins’ early ideas about the study of cultural “memes”. We’ll read some responses to Dawkins
by philosophers and scientists.
We’ll also do some reading on evolutionary psychology, a recent movement which has been getting a lot of
press. Evolutionary psychology is based in part on the hypothesis that human behavior is largely the result of
cognitive “modules” which evolved for specific purposes in a particular prehistoric period.
Richerson and Boyd’s Not by Genes Alone provides a partial response both to Dawkins and evolutionary
psychology. Richerson and Boyd use a wide variety of illustrations from the social sciences to argue for a view
of culture that is more flexible than evolutionary psychology allows, and which treats culture as the result of a
kind of “cultural natural selection” which is more fluid than that allowed by Dawkins-style “memetics”. They
argue that both culture and genes evolve in response to each other. Richerson and Boyd also argue, against
Dawkins and evolutionary psychologists, that some human tendencies are the result of natural selection on large
social groups as wholes. However, this approach is still controversial, and not widely accepted, even though it
is gaining in popularity.
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Approximate, tentative schedule of topics and readings:
Week 1 (8/15–8/17): Course overview
First class is Wednesday, August 17.
Week 2 (8/22–8/24): Logic and argument
Handouts
Week 3 (8/29–8/31): Natural selection overview
TSG, Ch. 1, “Why are people”
TSG, Ch. 2, “The replicators”
Week 4 (9/5–9/7): Genes, organisms, environment, genes as “selfish”
No class Monday, September 5 (Labor Day)
TSG, Ch. 3, “Immortal coils”
Week 5 (9/12–9/14): Behavior, evolutionary game theory
TSG, Ch. 4, “The gene machine”
TSG, Ch. 5, “Aggression: stability and the selfish machine”
Week 6 (9/19–9/21): Special project week
No class this week. Project will be announced shortly.
Week 7 (9/26–9/28): Altruism toward kin, old-style group selection
TSG, Ch. 6, “Genesmanship”
TSG, Ch. 7, “Family planning”
Week 8 (10/3–10/5): Altruism toward non-kin, memes
TSG, Ch. 10, “You scratch my back, I’ll ride on yours”
TSG, Ch. 11, “Memes: the new replicators”
Dan Sperber, “An objection to the memetic approach to culture”
Week 9 (10/10–10/12): Criticisms of the gene’s eye (and meme’s eye) view
Laland & Brown, Sense and Nonsense, pp. 94–97, 100-103, from Ch. 3, “Human sociobiology”
Godfrey-Smith, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection: pp. 17–20, 24–25, 27–29, 31–40, pp. 109–121
Week 10 (10/17–10/19): Evolutionary psychology
Laland & Brown, Sense and Nonsense, page 133
Laland & Brown, Sense and Nonsense, Ch. 5, “Evolutionary psychology”
John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, 114–117 or 121 from “The Psychological Foundations of Culture”
Week 11 (10/24–10/26): Culture’s autonomy and interaction with biology
NBGA, Ch. 1, “Culture is essential”
NBGA, Ch. 2, “Culture exists”
Week 12 (10/31–11/2): Evolution of culture
NBGA, Ch. 3, “Culture evolves”
Week 13 (11/7–11/9): Culture as adaptive
NBGA, Ch. 4, “Culture is an adaptation”
Week 14 (11/14–11/16): Culture as maladaptive
NBGA, Ch. 5, “Culture is maladaptive”
Week 15 (11/21–11/23): Gene/culture/group selection interaction
No class Wednesday, November 23 (Thanksgiving)
NBGA, Ch. 6, “Culture and genes coevolve”
Week 16 (11/28–11/30): Gene/culture coevolution summary and criticisms
NBGA, pp. 237–245 from Ch. 7, “Nothing about culture makes sense except in the light of evolution”
Excerpts from Fracchia and Lewontin, “Does Culture Evolve?”
Film: “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” by Werner Herzog
Week 17 (12/5–12/7): Wrap-up
December 5 is our last class.
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Grading summary:
0%
20%
5%
10%
20%
20%
25%
Signed statement about plagiarism—required before turning in assignments.
Attendance, reading statements, participation, and email forwarding assignment.
In-class writing exercise
First paper
Second paper
Third paper
Final exam, Monday, December 12, 4:15pm–6:45pm
I’ll give you a schedule for paper due dates within a week of the beginning of the semester. Other details are
given below.
The assignments are an important part of this course. These assignments don’t just just provide a way to let you
show what you’ve learned; they also help you develop your understanding of what you’ve been learning. Learning
to write clearly about difficult ideas helps you understand them more thoroughly. You’ll get detailed feedback
on papers, including attention to the kind of clarity and cogency of arguments appropriate in philosophical
writing for a reader who is unfamiliar with your subject, as well as on grammar, usage, and mechanics.
Details about assignments and grading:
1. General information on papers (50%):
• 80% of the grade on each paper depends on clarity and content.
• 20% of the grade on each paper depends on writing style.
Paper assignments are designed to:
• Help you understand and think about the material in the course.
• Learn to express ideas clearly.
• Learn to convey ideas effectively.
I try to help you to express ideas clearly and thoroughly. Both content and style matter to this goal.
What I try to teach about writing might be a little bit different from what professors in other departments
emphasize, but what I teach will help you in other courses, jobs, or graduate school. I try to give you
helpful feedback on your papers so that your later papers will be even better.
2. Final exam (30%):
This will be in class, and will consist primarily of short answer questions, though it may include
a few multiple-choice questions.
3. Attendance, participation, reading statements (20%):
Everyone begins with an A on this part of the course. Material in this course is cumulative:
Later material builds on earlier material. In order for this to work, and in order for you to learn
as much as possible from the class, you must come to class, and you must come to class having
done the reading and having thought about the reading. Each class period counts as a week of
a normal semester, so it’s especially important not to miss a class. In order to maintain this
part of the grade, you should do the following for each class session:
• Come to class.
• Turn in a reading statement by one hour before class on the day for which the reading was
assigned. (I encourage you to turn it in earlier in the day or turn it in the day before.)
The statement should be emailed to me. The reading statement should give at least one
question or comment about each part of the reading for that class. (I’ll specify what the
“parts” are when I give each reading assignment the day before.) Feel free to give more
questions/comments. The questions or comments should show that you have read and
thought about the reading. If you don’t understand the reading, that’s completely OK as
long as you have thought about it enough to be able to ask two questions about it. I think
you’ll find that turning in the questions and comments will make class more interesting and
educational. It will also help me tailor class time to your interests and questions.
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Here’s how the grading works on this part of the grade:
1. Missing a class counts as one negative point.
2. Failing to turn in a reading statement on time counts as one negative point.
(Missing a class and failing to turn in a reading statement on time on the same day therefore
counts as two negative points.) NOTE: Because each class and each reading assignment corresponds to a week of work, there isn’t very much leeway. If you miss classes or statements, your
grade will drop very quickly.
negative points
0–4
5–8
9–12
13–16
17 or more
grade
A
B
C
D
F
3. Everyone ought to participate in class discussion regularly. If you participate regularly, I will
rid of one or two negative points.
It’s pretty easy to get an A on this part of the overall grade as long as you keep up with the
reading and come to class and participate regularly. For example, if you are sick twice during
the semester and don’t turn in a reading statement or come to class on those two days, you
would have four negative points, but you’d still get an A on this part of the grade.
If you’re on a UAB athletic team and have to miss a class because of a documented conflict,
you won’t lose a point for the absence. However, you still have to turn in the reading statement
on time. Please give me documentation for absences as soon as possible, ideally by the second
week of class.
There will be no extra-credit assignments. (Put your effort into doing well in the first place! And ask for help
if you’re feeling lost!)
I want everyone to succeed in this class and to get as much as possible out of it. If you are not doing well in
the course, you should arrange a time to meet with me or stop by during my office hours. If I think you’re not
giving the course what it needs in order for you to do well, I may ask you to meet with me.
Blackboard Learn:
You must use Blackboard Learn in this course. I will be distributing essential documents such as readings and
paper assignments through Bb Vista. It’s your responsibility to make sure that you know how to get into the
Bb Vista site for this course. If you’re unfamiliar with Blackboard Vista, that’s no problem—just talk me about
it. However, you should go to http://www.uab.edu/bb now, and make sure that you can log into the site for
this course. If you have trouble getting into the site for this course, contact me immediately (e.g. by email),
and tell me what you saw on your screen, what you tried, and at what point you had trouble. I should be able
to help, or to suggest ways to get help.
Policy regarding reasonable accommodations:
If you are registered with Disability Support Services (DSS), please make an appointment with me to discuss
accommodations that may be necessary. Students with disabilities must be registered with DSS and provide
an accommodation request letter before receiving accommodations in this class. If you have a disability but
have not contacted DSS, call 0934-4205 or visit DSS at 516 Hill University Center. More information may be
available at: http://main.uab.edu/Sites/students/services/disability-support .
Unpleasant (but unfortunately necessary) remarks about plagiarism:
When writing papers, if you copy sentences, phrases, or complex ideas from other people or other writings than
your own without citing your sources, it is against UAB rules, morally wrong, bad for you, and bad for the world.
Doing this is considered plagiarism. If you get caught plagiarizing, you may end up failing my course. I take
this seriously, and if I suspect plagiarism, I investigate. Perhaps students have gotten away with plagiarizing
in my courses, but some have gotten caught. (Remember that professors read students work and scholars work
over and over and over again. We are experts concerning writing in our fields. If you’re so rushed, behind,
tired, whatever, that you don’t have time to finish your paper and you try to use someone else’s work, what
makes you think that you will avoid tipping the professor off? Or if someone else who helps you promises that a
professor will not be able to tell the difference, what makes you think that they are honest and know what they
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are talking about?) I know that school is challenging and that it might not be the only important thing that
you need to deal with in your life. If you get stuck, get behind, etc., please talk to me rather than taking some
measure which might be academically inappropriate and which will not serve your own long term interests. I
won’t just give you a pass, but getting help or getting a reduced grade on a paper is better than risking getting
caught plagiarizing (and plagiarizing is not good for you in the long run even if you don’t get caught).
How to get the most out of this class:
In general you’ll get as much out of this class as you put in. You’ll get the most out of the class if you:
• Come to every class session.
• Come to class having read the assigned reading and having worked to make sense of it, even if you are
still confused.
• Listen actively, thinking about what is being discussed in class. Philosophy is not a spectator sport.
That’s true even if I spend the entire period talking while you listen. You cannot learn philosophy simply
by memorizing what I tell you. It is something you have to do, by thinking during class—by actively
trying to understand the difficult ideas that we discuss. Classes are designed to help you think about the
material we study, not simply to give you the main ideas.
• Take notes. Even though philosophy is not cut and dried, you should be taking notes every class, summarizing what you understand from the class.
• Reread the assigned material after the class in which it was discussed.
• Discuss the course material with others in the class outside of class time.
• Here’s a a secret that all teachers know: You can learn things better when you help others learn it, too.
So you will benefit if you help other students who don’t understand the material as well as you do.
• If there is any possibility that you might miss a class. . . then you should have at least two notes buddies.
Since that is a possibility: You need notes buddies. Notes buddies are people who you’ve introduced
yourself to and who have agreed to share notes with you. I’ll ask every student in the class to make
his/her email address available to everyone else in the class. That way, even if you don’t know anyone
in the class, you can contact others and ask them if they’d be notes buddies. You can of course, also
exchange phone numbers, and any social networking information that you want to exchange. Even if your
notes buddies can’t help you after you miss a class (maybe they missed it, too), you can email someone
new to ask if they’d share their notes. (Emails for the class will be available in Blackboard Vista.)
• If you miss a class, find out as much as you can about it from other students. Get copies of their notes.
Discuss the class with them. Even if you don’t miss any class, you might forget to write down something
in your notes. If you see it on a study guide later, but can’t find it in your notes and can’t find it in the
book, you’ll want to be able to look at other students’ notes. If you have trouble contacting your notes
buddies, just email a few people in the class. (You might make a new friend!)
• By the way, if you miss class, please don’t ask me later what we covered, what the readings are, etc., unless
there are very unusual circumstances that make it impossible to contact other students in the course. I
care very much about my students, and want to help you, but I also believe that you should be in class—or
that when life circumstances prevent you from being in class, it is your responsibility to have ways to keep
up with what we are covering. You can take responsibility for your own education in that way.
If you can’t do all of these things all of the time, still, the more of it you do, the more you’ll get out of the class.
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