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Told to take this discussion somewhere else, I'm dumping my expanded thoughts here.
"We're not animals." There's the biologist response, of "oh, yes we are." There's the logician response, of "if we're not animals, then what was the point of bringing up homosexual behavior in the wild? And then animal rape should be irrelevant to us." And there's the philosopher response of muttering about the naturalistic fallacy. Whether rape or gayness are natural, or happen in other species, is irrelevant to their wrongness or rightness for us. Rape's wrong because it hurts people. Gay behavior is okay because it doesn't. Evolutionary background is irrelevant. We can use condemnation and prison to discourage behavior we don't like regardless of the reasons behind it. Murder's natural, under some circumstances; infanticide is natural. But we don't make excuses for those.
"Naturalness" would be relevant only if a behavior was *so* natural that it wasn't controllable, that the threat of punishment wouldn't deter men from raping. But being imprisoned would still prevent the rapist from committing further rapes (at least, outside of prison); "I can't help myself" isn't exactly a good argument for being allowed out on the street. And if men were that much of an uncontrollable ravaging horde then female separatism -- or isolation of males -- would make a lot of sense. Fortunately, morality, empathy, and fear are (imperfectly) effective in restraining aggression.
Evolution isn't an excuse for bad behavior; bad excuses aren't a reason for denying facts of natural history.
Thoughts? Can this be said better? Am I wrong?
"We're not animals." There's the biologist response, of "oh, yes we are." There's the logician response, of "if we're not animals, then what was the point of bringing up homosexual behavior in the wild? And then animal rape should be irrelevant to us." And there's the philosopher response of muttering about the naturalistic fallacy. Whether rape or gayness are natural, or happen in other species, is irrelevant to their wrongness or rightness for us. Rape's wrong because it hurts people. Gay behavior is okay because it doesn't. Evolutionary background is irrelevant. We can use condemnation and prison to discourage behavior we don't like regardless of the reasons behind it. Murder's natural, under some circumstances; infanticide is natural. But we don't make excuses for those.
"Naturalness" would be relevant only if a behavior was *so* natural that it wasn't controllable, that the threat of punishment wouldn't deter men from raping. But being imprisoned would still prevent the rapist from committing further rapes (at least, outside of prison); "I can't help myself" isn't exactly a good argument for being allowed out on the street. And if men were that much of an uncontrollable ravaging horde then female separatism -- or isolation of males -- would make a lot of sense. Fortunately, morality, empathy, and fear are (imperfectly) effective in restraining aggression.
Evolution isn't an excuse for bad behavior; bad excuses aren't a reason for denying facts of natural history.
Thoughts? Can this be said better? Am I wrong?
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 08:08 (UTC)From:From my PoV at least, it looks much like both the level of genetic determination of behavior is fairly low even for behaviors one would expect to be highly determined, and also that if there are any instinct or learned behavior surrounding nurturing seem to support Gould's ideas of species-level selection, which is an idea that has always made sense to me.
However, my primary point regarding at least social mammals (I know vastly less about birds, and would be very surprised if anything I discuss below held true for any of the less intelligent Classes) is that one of the crucial things evo psych neglects is behavior that learned and then transmitted from one individual to another. I don't just mean among humans, but also among all primates, and to an extent among all social mammals and perhaps all mammals. There is also significant evidence of long-term learned behavior among birds (including everything from species-wide tool use, to species-specific song details). In short, mammals and birds rely upon both genetics and "culture" to transmit information from one generation to the next, and as the animal's brains and social structures grow more complex, cultural transmission becomes an increasingly important method of transmission.
I have literally never seen any writing in evo psych that even acknowledged, much less discussed this perspective, which I believe is largely due to ideological bias among evo psych professionals. I firmly admit that as a trained anthropologist and a social progressive, the importance I place upon "culture" due to a mixture of the evidence I have seen and my own ideological bias.