I accept your summary of the physiological effects of grief - but who actually grieves when they are in imminent danger? In fact, someone recently reminded me that grief is one of the later stages of dealing with a loss; i think denial and anger both came before - and both of those are more likely to be better suited to facing a dangerous situation. (Denial of the loss, of course, not denial of the danger).

For most normal people: If, in the midst of grieving for a lost loved one, the kitchen caught fire, would not their grief be forgotten as they battled the blaze?

Now, I could definitely be wrong about this, and welcome any criticism, but I do not believe that the particular emotional responses that people have in some particular situation has much to do with evolution; or if we did evolve to have strong tendencies, these are easily trumped by culture, as well as personality and the habits of one's thoughts. Even the fight/flight response to danger can depend on our perception/conception of the danger.

the same logic could be applied to virtually any emotion that reduced the physical or mental acuity to any degree.

That’s a good example of where I’m hanging up on the whole issue of emotions being product of evolution. I can’t imagine any evolutionary, pro-survival reason for that particular response. In fact, it seems to me to be be contra-survival. It blurs the vision, uses up energy, slows reaction time and limits physical and mental acuity in general, at a time when death is close at hand. But there it is. A virtually universal reaction that is contra-survival. I don’t see how evolution could produce such a mechanism.

Reducing mental acuity is not necessarily against survival, nor does it necessarily equate to a negative thing. There are mental factors which affect one's well-being. The bigger picture could provide the benefit that the smaller one does not recognize.

Evolution doesnt give a dam.

Changes occur, they are either selected against or not. However how those changes interact with facets of culture can effect survival, this makes the processes of evolution more then random mutation and natural selection.

Evolution is the whole bucket, random mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, unnatural selection, and how genes effect behavior are all drops in the bucket.

Yes the bigger picture is group cohesiveness.

Mammals like us are all about safety in numbers. Emotions can bring us together, or rip us apart, anger serves a purpose when there are limited resources and two tribes vying for control of the resources, but when resources are not the issue then groups grow larger, large groups needs rules, the emotional responses to people braking rules are what make rules meaningful. Remember evolution is a bucket, everything that effects survival fits into the bucket, finding out where it fits is the challenge.

It all makes perfect sense to me.

Reducing mental acuity is not necessarily against survival, nor does it necessarily equate to a negative thing. There are mental factors which affect one's well-being. The bigger picture could provide the benefit that the smaller one does not recognize.

Emotions are NOT selected against.

That needs to be set forth first and foremost ONLY behavior can effect survival.

So in fact the example is a good one and the switch is the evolutionary advantage built to deal with emotion when emotions are not whats important for survival. That is just a single such switch, there may be many others . . . I believe there are.

from the amigdala of course! where the hell did you go to school man!

Where do emotions come from?

I heard they hide in little hobbit holes.

n the other hand, I think that being in a state of grieving would necessarily lower one’s ability to deal with any emergency (or even any mundane situation of any kind). So how could it ever be considered a pro-survival, evolutionary trait? That’s what I was trying to get at.

And really, the same logic could be applied to virtually any emotion that reduced the physical or mental acuity to any degree

Well sure. If everything is random, then everything is random and there is no “logical reason” for anything.

If we’re going to just throw up our hands and say “it’s a very complex system and we don’t totally understand it”, we could just as well say “it’s gods will and we don’t totally understand it.”

Your underlying point seems to tied to this idea of 'aberration' you mention, and in the general sense, I completely agree that there is 'aberration' involved... its just not entirely contrary to evolution. If you expect perfection and simplicity, there will be abundant apparent aberrations.

Speaking of aberration and unexpected results, I would say that culture plays a role in evolution, even amongst, say, caribou who select mates by butting heads. Humans have not had significant predator selection for a long time, but our culture(s), economics, (and other factors) continues to shape our allele frequencies - so I wouldn't be surprised if the genetic backdrop to our emotions is greatly different than the backdrop for other primates. At the same time, based on what i've heard about non-human primate behavior, I have yet to see much reason to think that we are very different. Do you think that when non-human primates experience sadness over a loss, that this too is aberrant?

SkyHook, you are correct that I was willing to accept the idea that grief has its origins in evolution without -specifically related- evidence or proposed mechanism: but its not because i want evolution to explain everything, its because this idea fits the patterns. The general existence of every other emotion in this thread (except shame) seems readily explainable via evolutionary terms, so I would expect grief to fit the pattern.

You make a good observation regarding certain emotions and our responses - but I do think you seek to oversimplify evolution/emotions when you interpret that observation.

When you say:



Your premise seems to be something along the lines of: anything which dimishes our reflexes or alertness or readiness to deal with immediate danger would be selected against. The idea seems to be that, for optimum survival, we should be ever vigilant Superficially, it seems like a good idea but if you look a little deeper you may see that it is not.

Two ideas came to me last night, and Bushido has touched on both of them: (1) we are social animals, and (2) energy management is an important part of survival.

Why presume its in our best interest to always be at maximum 'mental acuity'? Do you think that sleep is contrary to evolution? Is it not better to conserve our physical energy?

…And being social animals, emotions which encourage cooperation between us (at least within our group) would have a net gain for survival, even if those same emotions would be -against- survival for the lone individual.

…

And greif? It does bring our group together, and strengthens emotional bonds. Is it not unreasonable to think that -after one of our group has been killed- we might benefit from, say, strengthening our commitments to work together?

I see now that I simply repeated a good bit of what Bushido had to say, but I said it in a different way. Apologies if I was redundant.

I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a
monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the
works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough
time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose
that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just
the short sentence 'Methinks it is like a weasel', and we shall make it
relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard,
one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he
take to write this one little sentence?
The sentence has 28 characters in it, so let us assume that the
monkey has a series of discrete 'tries', each consisting of 28 bashes at the
keyboard. If he types the phrase correctly, that is the end of the
experiment. If not, we allow him another 'try' of 28 characters. I don't
know any monkeys, but fortunately my 11-month old daughter is an
experienced randomizing device, and she proved only too eager to step
into the role of monkey typist. Here is what she typed on the computer:
UMMK JK CDZZ F ZD DSDSKSM
S SS FMCV PU I DDRGLKDXRRDO
RDTE QDWFDVIOY UDSKZWDCCVYT
H CHVY NMGNBAYTDFCCVD D
RCDFYYYRM N DFSKD LD K WDWK
HKAUIZMZI UXDKIDISFUMDKUDXI
Accumulating small change 47
She has other important calls on her time, so I was obliged to program
the computer to simulate a randomly typing baby or monkey:
WDLDMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P
Y YVMQKZPGJXWVHGLAWFVCHQYOPY
MWR SWTNUXMLCDLEUBXTQHNZVIQF
FU OVAODVYKDGXDEKYVMOGGS VT
HZQZDSFZIHIVPHZPETPWVOVPMZGF
GEWRGZRPBCTPGQMCKHFDBGW ZCCF
And so on and on. It isn't difficult to calculate how long we should
reasonably'expect to wait for the random computer (or baby or monkey)
to type METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Think about the total
number of possible phrases of the right length that the monkey or baby
or random computer could type. It is the same kind of calculation as
we did for haemoglobin, and it produces a similarly large result. There
are 27 possible letters (counting 'space' as one letter) in the first
position. The chance of the monkey happening to get the first letter-M
-right is therefore 1 in 27. The chance of it getting the first two letters
— ME - right is the chance of it getting the second letter - E - right (1 in
27) given that it has also got the first letter - M - right, therefore 1/27
x 1/27, which equals 1/729. The chance of it getting the first word -
METHINKS - right is 1/27 for each of the 8 letters, therefore (1/27) X
(1/27) x (1/27) x (1/27). .., etc. 8 times, or (1/27) to the power 8. The
chance of it getting the entire phrase of 28 characters right is (1/27) to
the power 28, i.e. (1/27) multiplied by itself 28 times. These are very
small odds, about 1 in 10,000 million million million million million
million. To put it mildly, the phrase we seek would be a long time
coming, to say nothing of the complete works of Shakespeare.
So much for single-step selection of random variation. What about
cumulative selection; how much more effective should this be? Very
very much more effective, perhaps more so than we at first realize,
although it is almost obvious when we reflect further. We again use
our computer monkey, but with a crucial difference in its program. It
again begins by choosing a random sequence of 28 letters, just as
before:
WDLMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P
It now 'breeds from' this random phrase. It duplicates it repeatedly,
but with a certain chance of random error - 'mutation' - in the
copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the
'progeny' of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however
slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A
48 The Blind Watchmaker
WEASEL. In this instance the winning phrase of the next 'generation'
happened to be:
WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P
Not an obvious improvement! But the procedure is repeated, again
mutant 'progeny' are 'bred from' the phrase, and a new 'winner' is
chosen. This goes on, generation after generation. After 10 generations,
the phrase chosen for 'breeding' was:
MDLDMNLS ITpSWHRZREZ MECS P
After 20 generations it was:
MELDINLS IT ISWPRKE Z WECSEL
By now, the eye of faith fancies that it can see a resemblance to the
target phrase. By 30 generations there can be no doubt:
METHINGS IT ISWLIKE B WECSEL
Generation 40 takes us to within one letter of the target:
METHINKS IT IS LIKE I WEASEL
And the target was finally reached in generation 43. A second run of
the computer began with the phrase:
Y YVMQKZPFfXWVHGLAWFVCHQXYOPY,
passed through (again reporting only every tenth generation):
Y YVMQKSPFTXWSHLIKEFV HQYSPY
YETHINKSPITXISHLIKEFA WQYSEY
METHINKS IT ISSLIKE A WEFSEY
METHINKS IT ISBLIKE A WEASES
METHINKS IT ISJLIKE A WEASEO
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEP
and reached the target phrase in generation 64. m a third run the
computer started with:
GEWRGZRPBCTPGQMCKHFDBGW ZCCF
and reached METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL in 41 generations of
selective 'breeding'.

Correction: depression is one of the later stages of 'grief' (but they are using the word grief for the whole process, and I think we are using it for the depression stage).

I expressed myself poorly there. I meant to refer to the association of the dead body with death in general. But that was presumptuous because I was thinking only in terms of a funeral situation. You are correct. Grieving for a loved one does not always occur only when the dead body is present.

On the other hand, I think that being in a state of grieving would necessarily lower one’s ability to deal with any emergency (or even any mundane situation of any kind). So how could it ever be considered a pro-survival, evolutionary trait? That’s what I was trying to get at.

And really, the same logic could be applied to virtually any emotion that reduced the physical or mental acuity to any degree.

Those that paused to grieve... Soon grouped together. Making them a more formidable foe...