![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 08:28 (UTC)From:What I mean by genetic determinism is the belief that behavior (specifically, in the cases I've been discussing, the behavior of social mammals) is largely determined by genetics rather than by any other means. I simply do not believe this is true. I would site examples of genetic determinism as being the belief that traits likes levels aggression or sexual preference are genetically determined. I believe genetics does play some (usually fairly minor) role in such behaviors, but my best guess is that it accounts for no more than (at most) 20% of any given behavior, with learning and environmental factors being by far the primary determinants of human and higher primate behavior and significant contributors to all mammalian behavior.