Individuality (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, May 24, 2015, 17:51 (3257 days ago) @ David Turell

George (under “Evolution: a different view”): This article reports research which suggests that variation within populations may itself be written in the genes, not just reactions against environmental changes.-https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150512-fruit-flies-individuality/?utm_source=Quanta+Ma...-dhw: The only thing that surprises me in this article is the fact that scientists themselves seem surprised that individual organisms behave differently. Yet again it is the arrogance of humans to assume that the less an organism looks like us, the more we can regard it as an automaton. 
The authors try to trace differences to genetic factors. The article has nothing to do with innovation in evolution, and everything to do with behaviour - and exactly the same arguments could be applied to humans. To what extent is our behaviour regulated by our genes? THAT is the burning question, and so I'm putting it on a different thread.-DAVID: Identical twin studies when separated and raised apart strongly support the proposal that they inherit very similar attitudes in the way they conduct their lives.-Thank you. This suggests that those attitudes are regulated by the genes. But the article is very confusing on this issue:-QUOTE: "The animals' behavior varied much more than he expected, even when the flies were more or less genetically identical and raised under the same conditions. “If you hold genetics constant and the environment mostly constant, you still see a lot of variation,” de Bivort said.-QUOTE: By comparing soldier and dancer strains, de Bivort thinks he's identified both a gene and a neural circuit that may underlie some of these differences."
-“Some of these differences” leaves plenty of leeway, and so does “more or less genetically identical”, but the second quote implies that individuality IS caused by the genes, and the first that it is not.-The whole subject is very rich. I have repeated my first comment, as it is a clear rebuttal of your own beliefs, David, that the so-called lower forms of life (bacteria, insects) are automatons. The rest raises the old and never resolved question of free will. If flies make different choices when confronted with the same options, one is tempted to say they have free will. But if their individual decisions are governed by their individual genes, they are individually preprogrammed to act the way they do. Why should not the same argument apply to humans?