Value of Evolutionary Approaches
14/07/11 20:57 Filed in: Human Nature
My recent posts on the evolution or responsibility (one, two, and three) might make it seem that I think evolutionary approaches to human nature lack any justification or philosophical insight. Quite the opposite, in fact I think Darwin's own insights about human nature and human morality are on target, and I've praised Mary Midgley's work in the philosophy of human nature (for example, here). Even if we limit ourselves to a discussion of the value of evolutionary psychology I am not sure I am willing simply to dismiss everything concerning EP. For one, how one understands EP remains an open question.
One of the more lucid critics of EP, David Buller, makes this point well. Buller notes that one of the more frustrating aspects of the debates concerning EP consists in the fact that supporters and critics often talk past one another because they fail to reach an agreement on exactly what they are talking about. Sometimes, for instance, the term "evolutionary psychology" is "used simply as a shorthand for 'the evolutionary study of mind and behavior' or as a shorthand for theories 'adapting an evolutionary perspective on human behavior and psychology'" (8). If we limit the term EP to mean one of these two things, then I find it irrational not to be an evolutionary psychologist in the modern period if one is seriously writing about human nature. In fact, one of the motivations I have for writing a book on human nature lies in the fact that people writing in science take no notice of what has been written by Aristotelians and Thomists about human nature, and, conversely, Aristotelians and Thomists take no notice of what is written from an evolutionary perspective. Something must be done to correct this lack of dialogue and bring the two paradigms into conversation with each other. Moreover, from my perspective, the Aristotelians and Thomists here prove more at fault, for it is essential to an Aristotelian approach (and Thomas was an Aristotelian, which is why his writings were condemned for some time after his death) to incorporate the findings of science because Aristotle was (a) an empiricist and (b) a scientist. We cannot, then, understand human nature -- what human beings are - without understanding that they are primarily animals -- animals of a specific nature - a rational nature - but still animals. Thomas states that human beings exist at the top of the ladder of animals and at the bottom of the ladder of spiritual beings because they are embodied spirits. The second reason for writing a book on human nature consists in the fact that modern Cartesian dualism has led us to a severe misunderstanding of the human being and, thus, to the modern reductionist materialism that characterizes much of the science today.
Which brings me to the second understanding of "evolutionary psychology." This more limited sense is that shared by Richard Dawkins, Leda Cosmides, John Toody, Steven Pinker, David Buss, Janet Radcliffe Richards, and Richard Wright. It includes research "conducted within a specific set of theoretical and methodological commitments" (8). Briefly, these theoretical commitments include the idea that psychological mechanisms (e.g., motivational mechanisms in the brain) formed through natural selection during the Pleistocene era (1.2 mya - 10 kya) when our ancestors (other hominids and cro-magnons) evovled on and spread out from the savannas of Africa. Further, these psychological mechanisms are ill-suited for modern living because the conditions of the African savannas differ considerably and present different adaptive problems than our current agricultural-cum-urban living environment. The methodological commitment concerns the reverse engineering that EP theorists engage in to determine the function of these psychological mechanisms. If they discover a psychological mechanism that appears culturally universal, they have reason to believe that such a psychological mechanism is part of human nature and, thus, arose during the Pleistocene period. In order to determine the function of that mechanism, EP theorists engage in conjectures about what adapted problems early hominids faced that would explain the adaptive value of the psychological mechanism in question. So, if one wanted ot understand why human males philander, one wonders what sort of conditions would make human male philandering a successful strategy for the spread of one's genes (for, essentially, human beings, like all other living organisms, are mere survival machines for the spread of genes).
Concerning this more limited understanding of EP, I have many qualms, some that Buller articulates quite well and others Paul R. Ehrlich articulates. Primarily though, reading a book like Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, I find it difficult to stomach the sort of conjecturing to explain how such and such a psychological mechanism could have arisen, because in fact (1) we do not know the specific conditions within which those mechanisms developed, (b) nor do we know the "rival" mechanisms against which the ones that succeeded competed and proved more successful, (c) nor do we have a clear understanding of how the relationships between genes that give rise to the phenotypes that underly these psychological mechanisms make some mechanisms more successful, not because they are singularly more successful, but because, through an accident of nature, it just tends to be tied to some other structure that is overwhelmingly more successful. (If, for example, I have the two highest trump cards in Euchre, regardless of the rest of my hand, I am more likely to win than not ceteris paribus.)
Further, given our extended life-time relative to our ancestors, we may have many psychological mechanisms that evolved that did not increase reproductive success. Depression and manic-depression (bi-polar disorder), for instance, are disorders that arise sometime after menstruation and even in the early 20's that would have had little to no impact on reproductive success. If we can think of negative psychological mechanisms like these, we ought to be able to uncover positive ones that maybe had no impact on human reproductive success. Finally, EP theorists resist the claim that some of our psychological mechanisms could have evolved since the development of agriculture. They wish to explain everything in terms of differential reproductive success during the Pleistocene era. I think this too limited an approach.
Still, I do not want simply to dismiss this more limited understanding of EP. Certainly some of our psychological mechanisms can be understood well in this manner, though not all. The problem is that people like Dawkins and Pinker believe that all psychology can be reduced, one day, to this more limited approach. That comprises one form of reductivism that must be resisted in the more limited understanding of EP.
Still, the value of an evolutionary approach to human nature should not be undervalued. An understanding of our psychological/motivational structures can help us to understand the particular needs that define the lives of homo sapiens. It is specifically those needs that a critical philosophical anthropology seeks to uncover to make a better life for everyone. Thus, I share with Robert Wright the goal of making life better through an understanding of human nature. I reject, however, the idea that this understanding can come completely from evolution.
One of the more lucid critics of EP, David Buller, makes this point well. Buller notes that one of the more frustrating aspects of the debates concerning EP consists in the fact that supporters and critics often talk past one another because they fail to reach an agreement on exactly what they are talking about. Sometimes, for instance, the term "evolutionary psychology" is "used simply as a shorthand for 'the evolutionary study of mind and behavior' or as a shorthand for theories 'adapting an evolutionary perspective on human behavior and psychology'" (8). If we limit the term EP to mean one of these two things, then I find it irrational not to be an evolutionary psychologist in the modern period if one is seriously writing about human nature. In fact, one of the motivations I have for writing a book on human nature lies in the fact that people writing in science take no notice of what has been written by Aristotelians and Thomists about human nature, and, conversely, Aristotelians and Thomists take no notice of what is written from an evolutionary perspective. Something must be done to correct this lack of dialogue and bring the two paradigms into conversation with each other. Moreover, from my perspective, the Aristotelians and Thomists here prove more at fault, for it is essential to an Aristotelian approach (and Thomas was an Aristotelian, which is why his writings were condemned for some time after his death) to incorporate the findings of science because Aristotle was (a) an empiricist and (b) a scientist. We cannot, then, understand human nature -- what human beings are - without understanding that they are primarily animals -- animals of a specific nature - a rational nature - but still animals. Thomas states that human beings exist at the top of the ladder of animals and at the bottom of the ladder of spiritual beings because they are embodied spirits. The second reason for writing a book on human nature consists in the fact that modern Cartesian dualism has led us to a severe misunderstanding of the human being and, thus, to the modern reductionist materialism that characterizes much of the science today.
Which brings me to the second understanding of "evolutionary psychology." This more limited sense is that shared by Richard Dawkins, Leda Cosmides, John Toody, Steven Pinker, David Buss, Janet Radcliffe Richards, and Richard Wright. It includes research "conducted within a specific set of theoretical and methodological commitments" (8). Briefly, these theoretical commitments include the idea that psychological mechanisms (e.g., motivational mechanisms in the brain) formed through natural selection during the Pleistocene era (1.2 mya - 10 kya) when our ancestors (other hominids and cro-magnons) evovled on and spread out from the savannas of Africa. Further, these psychological mechanisms are ill-suited for modern living because the conditions of the African savannas differ considerably and present different adaptive problems than our current agricultural-cum-urban living environment. The methodological commitment concerns the reverse engineering that EP theorists engage in to determine the function of these psychological mechanisms. If they discover a psychological mechanism that appears culturally universal, they have reason to believe that such a psychological mechanism is part of human nature and, thus, arose during the Pleistocene period. In order to determine the function of that mechanism, EP theorists engage in conjectures about what adapted problems early hominids faced that would explain the adaptive value of the psychological mechanism in question. So, if one wanted ot understand why human males philander, one wonders what sort of conditions would make human male philandering a successful strategy for the spread of one's genes (for, essentially, human beings, like all other living organisms, are mere survival machines for the spread of genes).
Concerning this more limited understanding of EP, I have many qualms, some that Buller articulates quite well and others Paul R. Ehrlich articulates. Primarily though, reading a book like Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, I find it difficult to stomach the sort of conjecturing to explain how such and such a psychological mechanism could have arisen, because in fact (1) we do not know the specific conditions within which those mechanisms developed, (b) nor do we know the "rival" mechanisms against which the ones that succeeded competed and proved more successful, (c) nor do we have a clear understanding of how the relationships between genes that give rise to the phenotypes that underly these psychological mechanisms make some mechanisms more successful, not because they are singularly more successful, but because, through an accident of nature, it just tends to be tied to some other structure that is overwhelmingly more successful. (If, for example, I have the two highest trump cards in Euchre, regardless of the rest of my hand, I am more likely to win than not ceteris paribus.)
Further, given our extended life-time relative to our ancestors, we may have many psychological mechanisms that evolved that did not increase reproductive success. Depression and manic-depression (bi-polar disorder), for instance, are disorders that arise sometime after menstruation and even in the early 20's that would have had little to no impact on reproductive success. If we can think of negative psychological mechanisms like these, we ought to be able to uncover positive ones that maybe had no impact on human reproductive success. Finally, EP theorists resist the claim that some of our psychological mechanisms could have evolved since the development of agriculture. They wish to explain everything in terms of differential reproductive success during the Pleistocene era. I think this too limited an approach.
Still, I do not want simply to dismiss this more limited understanding of EP. Certainly some of our psychological mechanisms can be understood well in this manner, though not all. The problem is that people like Dawkins and Pinker believe that all psychology can be reduced, one day, to this more limited approach. That comprises one form of reductivism that must be resisted in the more limited understanding of EP.
Still, the value of an evolutionary approach to human nature should not be undervalued. An understanding of our psychological/motivational structures can help us to understand the particular needs that define the lives of homo sapiens. It is specifically those needs that a critical philosophical anthropology seeks to uncover to make a better life for everyone. Thus, I share with Robert Wright the goal of making life better through an understanding of human nature. I reject, however, the idea that this understanding can come completely from evolution.
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Evolution of Responsibility part 3
13/07/11 00:05 Filed in: Human Nature
This is the third of three posts addressing the debate about free will and determinism from the perspective of evolutionary psychology (EP) in the works of Richard Dawkins, Robert Wright, Martin Daly and Margo Wilson (M&M), and others. In the first post, I laid out what I took to be the overall confusion within the EP literature about exactly what was up for debate. In the second post, I examined what Wright called one of the clearest accounts of determinism and responsibility in chapter 11 of M&M's Homicide. In this post, I want to address one simple question: How is it that animals developed something like free will?
The primary philosophical task of any enterprise consists in being clear on what exactly one is seeking -- what are the terms of debate, what are the issues addressed, what are the answers proposed. I have shown in the first post that, primarily, EP theorists do not have a clear account of the terms of the debate. In the second post, I showed that, even if (as I believe) free will arose through evolution, EP theorists do not address the right issues. Here, I begin by explaining that one issue that should be addressed is exactly the nature of free will.
I would rather say that, instead of discussing free will -- a nebulous term used in many different ways by philosophers -- we ought to speak of free choice (or free choice of the will, if you insist). The reason I think that free choice comprises better terminology for the debate is three-fold: first, my understanding of free choice arises out of a tradition based in Aristotle who did not even have a conception of will though he did have a conception of voluntary action. Second, the term "will" or "free will" is too loaded for any practical clarity at this time. This point is exemplified in the various EP discussions concerning determinism. Finally, and most importantly, the notion of "choice" over "will" provides a better understanding of exactly how animal evolved to make free, undetermined (but caused) choices.
Animals are presented with choices all the time, particularly those animals that move. Yet, some of these animals experience the choice as determined. A favorite example in the EP lit is that of the dance of the honey bee. The honey bee flies out of its hive and seeks flowers in which to find nectar. It has a choice: fly straight, fly left, fly right. Yet, the choice here cannot be seen as undetermined. A bee's direction is given by the path that other bees in the hive have taken to find nectar or by the smell of nearby flowers. Even the dance that the bee flies when it returns to report the discovery of nectar is determined minutely and has been recorded and studied by scientists.
The choice of the bee differs significantly from the choice of wolf in a hunt. When a pack of wolves hunt, how they form up for the hunt is determined by hierarchy (which, itself, can be challenged at times). When a wolf spots prey, it howls and the chase is on. Yet, when the prey charges one way, why does the wolf charge another? Here, the choice cannot be determined ahead of time: there are simply too many variables for wolf brains to have evolved enough instructions in them to map out the exact hunting pattern of the wolf. Thus, sometimes wolves fail to catch their prey (but only in reality, not in the movies). Wolves learn through experience how to pursue and what works and does not work in the hunt, how to respond to particular moves by particular individuals of differing species (which individuals exhibit their own choices). Now, when I describe the wolf's choices as directed by learning, I live open the possibility that such learning could be more rather than less determinative. The wolf makes quick decisions in the chase as directed by how past chases have gone. Still, there are enough variations of chase that the wolf's learning could not determine in every situation when prey turns left than wolf turn slightly more left. The wolf decides between different options.
Just as you and I decide between differing options in a variety of situation. For example, when we run, we have to decide how to place our feet on the path. Every path is different though similarities exist. I know that running on a path with a lot of twists and turns to be more flexible or to place my foot more gently. These are not decisions I necessarily think about, but they are decisions brought about through learning and from which I learn.
What distinguishes the human choice from the choice of the wolf is that homo sapiens have evolved an ability to reflect on their choices. I can after a run reflect on how the run went, how well I ran, how I should have turned my foot this way rather than that way. The wolf cannot reflect on her hunt. She hunts. She learns, but she does not evaluate. Why? Because she lacks a language by which to make such evaluations. Human beings are the only animals which we know that have the capacity for symbolic representation. That capacity allows us to represent to ourselves our experiences in a way that the wolf lacks. And because we can make such representations, we can also evaluate those representations.
In my last post about M&M's account of responsibility, I ended by asking how a notion of responsibility could arise without language. Here we see that language becomes central to free choice in a way that makes our choices significantly undetermined and yet still caused. They are undetermined because, no matter how much learning I have had, no matter how much experience I've undergone, I can always over-ride the directives of those experiences -- because I can represent them symbolically to myself in different ways and present even other options for future action. Yet, my choices are caused. They are caused by my own reflections on the quality of choices I have made and the quality of choices in front of me. These reflections can suffer impairment or, in the words of EP, diminishment. To some extent, I may not be able to see any but one choice because my genes dictate that choice (e.g., drinking the alcohol). But human life, much like that of the wolf's, is too complex and too complicated to have all our choices determined -- even probabilistically -- by our genes or our genes and culture working together.
As such, free choice depends on our ability to symbolically represent experience and past and future choices and our ability to imagine alternatives. These abilities depend essentially on our culture and education. Primarily, we receive the virtues which allow us to make more, rather than less, free choices through our education in practices, which we learn from our culture.
In one sense, then, I am accepting much of what EP says: yes, our genes and environment in which those genes are expressed determine -- by limiting -- our behavior. Yet, I am denying that such limits set any significant boundaries on our ability to choose freely. Rather, they provide the conditions by which we are able to make free choices. Free choice rests on an ability to evaluate the choices before us in a way that may sometimes be determined but in many cases are not determined. Rather than seeing ourselves as either completely free or completely determined, I propose that we see ourselves existing at any one time on a continuum of more or less free choices.
To end, I could have named this post "Why doesn't anyone read Mary Midgley? Mary Midgley is a very accessible writer who has been engaged in these types of issues for forty years. Her best book is Beast and Man, and from it, I took the example of the bee's dance and the wolf's hunt. Unfortunately, Midgley is rarely cited in the EP literature, perhaps because her argument against Wilson's sociobiology proves so devastating. Significantly, as well, I see Midgley as a modern-day Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle who first formulated the ethology that informs her and my own work. I recommend her work highgly.
The primary philosophical task of any enterprise consists in being clear on what exactly one is seeking -- what are the terms of debate, what are the issues addressed, what are the answers proposed. I have shown in the first post that, primarily, EP theorists do not have a clear account of the terms of the debate. In the second post, I showed that, even if (as I believe) free will arose through evolution, EP theorists do not address the right issues. Here, I begin by explaining that one issue that should be addressed is exactly the nature of free will.
I would rather say that, instead of discussing free will -- a nebulous term used in many different ways by philosophers -- we ought to speak of free choice (or free choice of the will, if you insist). The reason I think that free choice comprises better terminology for the debate is three-fold: first, my understanding of free choice arises out of a tradition based in Aristotle who did not even have a conception of will though he did have a conception of voluntary action. Second, the term "will" or "free will" is too loaded for any practical clarity at this time. This point is exemplified in the various EP discussions concerning determinism. Finally, and most importantly, the notion of "choice" over "will" provides a better understanding of exactly how animal evolved to make free, undetermined (but caused) choices.
Animals are presented with choices all the time, particularly those animals that move. Yet, some of these animals experience the choice as determined. A favorite example in the EP lit is that of the dance of the honey bee. The honey bee flies out of its hive and seeks flowers in which to find nectar. It has a choice: fly straight, fly left, fly right. Yet, the choice here cannot be seen as undetermined. A bee's direction is given by the path that other bees in the hive have taken to find nectar or by the smell of nearby flowers. Even the dance that the bee flies when it returns to report the discovery of nectar is determined minutely and has been recorded and studied by scientists.
The choice of the bee differs significantly from the choice of wolf in a hunt. When a pack of wolves hunt, how they form up for the hunt is determined by hierarchy (which, itself, can be challenged at times). When a wolf spots prey, it howls and the chase is on. Yet, when the prey charges one way, why does the wolf charge another? Here, the choice cannot be determined ahead of time: there are simply too many variables for wolf brains to have evolved enough instructions in them to map out the exact hunting pattern of the wolf. Thus, sometimes wolves fail to catch their prey (but only in reality, not in the movies). Wolves learn through experience how to pursue and what works and does not work in the hunt, how to respond to particular moves by particular individuals of differing species (which individuals exhibit their own choices). Now, when I describe the wolf's choices as directed by learning, I live open the possibility that such learning could be more rather than less determinative. The wolf makes quick decisions in the chase as directed by how past chases have gone. Still, there are enough variations of chase that the wolf's learning could not determine in every situation when prey turns left than wolf turn slightly more left. The wolf decides between different options.
Just as you and I decide between differing options in a variety of situation. For example, when we run, we have to decide how to place our feet on the path. Every path is different though similarities exist. I know that running on a path with a lot of twists and turns to be more flexible or to place my foot more gently. These are not decisions I necessarily think about, but they are decisions brought about through learning and from which I learn.
What distinguishes the human choice from the choice of the wolf is that homo sapiens have evolved an ability to reflect on their choices. I can after a run reflect on how the run went, how well I ran, how I should have turned my foot this way rather than that way. The wolf cannot reflect on her hunt. She hunts. She learns, but she does not evaluate. Why? Because she lacks a language by which to make such evaluations. Human beings are the only animals which we know that have the capacity for symbolic representation. That capacity allows us to represent to ourselves our experiences in a way that the wolf lacks. And because we can make such representations, we can also evaluate those representations.
In my last post about M&M's account of responsibility, I ended by asking how a notion of responsibility could arise without language. Here we see that language becomes central to free choice in a way that makes our choices significantly undetermined and yet still caused. They are undetermined because, no matter how much learning I have had, no matter how much experience I've undergone, I can always over-ride the directives of those experiences -- because I can represent them symbolically to myself in different ways and present even other options for future action. Yet, my choices are caused. They are caused by my own reflections on the quality of choices I have made and the quality of choices in front of me. These reflections can suffer impairment or, in the words of EP, diminishment. To some extent, I may not be able to see any but one choice because my genes dictate that choice (e.g., drinking the alcohol). But human life, much like that of the wolf's, is too complex and too complicated to have all our choices determined -- even probabilistically -- by our genes or our genes and culture working together.
As such, free choice depends on our ability to symbolically represent experience and past and future choices and our ability to imagine alternatives. These abilities depend essentially on our culture and education. Primarily, we receive the virtues which allow us to make more, rather than less, free choices through our education in practices, which we learn from our culture.
In one sense, then, I am accepting much of what EP says: yes, our genes and environment in which those genes are expressed determine -- by limiting -- our behavior. Yet, I am denying that such limits set any significant boundaries on our ability to choose freely. Rather, they provide the conditions by which we are able to make free choices. Free choice rests on an ability to evaluate the choices before us in a way that may sometimes be determined but in many cases are not determined. Rather than seeing ourselves as either completely free or completely determined, I propose that we see ourselves existing at any one time on a continuum of more or less free choices.
To end, I could have named this post "Why doesn't anyone read Mary Midgley? Mary Midgley is a very accessible writer who has been engaged in these types of issues for forty years. Her best book is Beast and Man, and from it, I took the example of the bee's dance and the wolf's hunt. Unfortunately, Midgley is rarely cited in the EP literature, perhaps because her argument against Wilson's sociobiology proves so devastating. Significantly, as well, I see Midgley as a modern-day Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle who first formulated the ethology that informs her and my own work. I recommend her work highgly.
Evolution of Responsibility part 2
11/07/11 23:35 Filed in: Human Nature
This post is the second of three on the evolution of responsibility and free will. In the first post, I discussed the difficulty in trying to find a conception or even agreement about determinism and free will among Evolutionary Psychologists. In short, however, it appears that EP embraces a determinism of genes-culture mix. In other words, materialists are determinists. Yet, despite being determinists, both Dawkins and Richards imply that, in some sense, human beings are “in control” of their actions. What this control entails or means remains mysterious.
In this post, I want to look more specifically at the issue of “culpability” as a product of evolution. I will examine M&M’s (Martin Daly and Margo Wilson) account of culpability as presented in chapter 11 of their oft-cited Homicide. The questions that arise include, How does culpability arise as a cultural practice without language? Has culpability been around long enough to become an ESS?
In their Homicide, M&M provide what Robert Wright calls one of the clearest discussions of determinism and free will. Every human culture and human being has a concept of right- and wrong-doing, which testifies that “moral sensibility is a cross-culturally universal aspect of human nature” (254). That is, moral sensibility is in our genes, not just our culture. We must, then, understand how moral sensibility comprises a “means to the end of fitness in the social environments in which we evolved.”
Now, if moral sensibility makes homo sapiens more fit over their evolutionary history, then moral sensibility must provide some benefit to the actors who express it. That is, generally speaking we should expect that what survives as a genetic trait does not cause the particular individual an early death and does, in some minor way, increase the reproductive success of individuals of a particular species. For M&M, this benefit “depends upon shared interests, as a result either of kinship or of cooperative reciprocity” (255). In short, denying one’s self at the present moment might prove beneficial to one’s future success, as, say, being honest now can “make one an attractive exchange partner.” Thus, feelings of “justice” or “wronged” result from evolved mechanisms that provide some advantage to individuals of the species for reproductive success.
M&M take this basic understanding of the EP approach to moral sensibility and turn it to a discussion of “paying a debt” by the wrongdoer. Someone who commits a crime must compensate for that crime. Culpability, then, “reflects the offender’s debt to the victim” (257). Culpability, however, links to issues of provocation. Groups of people must inquire into the extent to which the victim antagonized the victimizer or to what extent the victimizing act proves unintended. Provocation evolved as both a moral and psychological theory. “It proposed both that provocation justifies retaliatory action and that it causes such action” (257). Following this line of thought, we understand the most culpable persons to have acted willfully or with malicious choice in a free act (261). After a discussion of the insanity defense and other cultural issues, M&M write, “To both ordinary people and to jurists, ‘responsibility’ entails the choice of one’s actions and the capacity to have done otherwise” (264). Of course, according to M&M, everyone understands, despite the black and white pictures drawn by theorists and the courts, that blameworthiness or culpability occurs on a continuum with free will, and everyone faces “diminished responsibility” in most acts. Generally, however, they insist that people conflate causal and moral judgments. Regardless of whether people are scientifically understood to be determined, moral culpability may play some role in the direction of society or the modification of individual’s behavior (e.g. through the threat of punishment or the promise of rewards). Thus, M&M refuse to take a side in the free will debate. They end their discussion returning to the fact of the benefit of the notion of “culpability” to human reproductive success. They note, for instance, studies that show close relatives often receive lighter punishment for harm to family members because they’ve already suffered enough. In short, it is unfortunate and irrational for someone to harm another with whom s/he shares a significant amount of genes. Further, capital punishment, as opposed to reparations, can be seen as a feature of modern nation states that have replaced the more kinship account of justice with a rational, emotionless system of punishment.
In general, M&M provide an interesting account of “culpability” and moral sensibility from the perspective of evolution and EP. As animals, human beings evolved with certain needs and imperatives, just like other animals. The possibility for moral sensibility cannot be seen as something imposed from above by some “spiritual nature” whether our own or another’s (God, for instance). To make such a claim denies the role of emotions and motivations in human actions. Their resistance to taking a position on “free will,” however, proves baffling and limited, and a characteristic (as seen in the last post) of those associated with EP. One wonders if EP theorists are fearful of writing about the denial of free will, like Darwin before them who refused to write about human evolution in the Origin of Species due to what he knew would be a fierce backlash.
Given that, however, I think we can still ask intelligent questions about M&M’s account. Most importantly, how does the notion of “culpability” arise? Is it possible to have a notion of “culpability” without language? And what of this moral sensibility? We are, it is often said, the only animals with morality. Of course, we know relatively little about our nearest relatives, all of whom are extinct – homo neanderthalis, homo ergastor, homo habilis. What we do know suggests that even beings as advanced as Neanderthal lacked language ability. If Neanderthal did, in fact, bury their dead, it suggests they may have experienced some proto-moral sensibility.
Still, we do know that our living closest relatives – chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas – engage in social behavior just as we do. Does the behavior of two alpha males contending for dominance of a gorilla harem constitute a proto-moral sensibility? Could the sexual actions of female bonobos to reconcile or diffuse male malevolence constitute a form of moral action? Even if it did, it’s not clear how such minimalist moralities could have given rise to the notion of culpability.
If the notion of “culpability” is essential to the moral sensibility that M&M suggest increases human reproductive success, then we return once more to the issue of language. Could the notion play any role without language? If so, how? Where are our naturalistic models of this behavior/notion/sensibility? If not, then the EP is left with a more trying question. EP theorists are characterized by their thesis that human behavior evolved during our evolution in the Pleistocene era on the savannas of Africa. In particular, many of our behaviors are well suited for smaller hunter-gatherer communities of early hominid life than they are for city living or even for agricultural life. They insist, then, that homo sapiens have not been around long enough to evolve psychological mechanisms that would be better adapted to agricultural, close-community, larger population living. Yet, language appeared on the scene during this time period. It is too late, according to EP’s own arguments, for language to have led to the development of a notion of culpability that would prove evolutionarily significant or promote human reproductive success, particularly for all human beings (what they refer to as an ESS – evolutionary stable strategy).
So far, I’ve found no one who addresses these questions, much less attempts to answer them. I am convinced that we cannot explain our moral sensibility from primarily a purely theological or dualistic perspective. We are material beings who obey the laws of (non-reductive) physics. That means, we had to have bodies suited to the particular life-form we express, including our moral sensibilities. There is, then, something peculiarly odd about the EP approach to moral sensibility, culpability, and free will. Part of this lies in what I will address in my next post: a misunderstanding of what, exactly, free will is.
In this post, I want to look more specifically at the issue of “culpability” as a product of evolution. I will examine M&M’s (Martin Daly and Margo Wilson) account of culpability as presented in chapter 11 of their oft-cited Homicide. The questions that arise include, How does culpability arise as a cultural practice without language? Has culpability been around long enough to become an ESS?
In their Homicide, M&M provide what Robert Wright calls one of the clearest discussions of determinism and free will. Every human culture and human being has a concept of right- and wrong-doing, which testifies that “moral sensibility is a cross-culturally universal aspect of human nature” (254). That is, moral sensibility is in our genes, not just our culture. We must, then, understand how moral sensibility comprises a “means to the end of fitness in the social environments in which we evolved.”
Now, if moral sensibility makes homo sapiens more fit over their evolutionary history, then moral sensibility must provide some benefit to the actors who express it. That is, generally speaking we should expect that what survives as a genetic trait does not cause the particular individual an early death and does, in some minor way, increase the reproductive success of individuals of a particular species. For M&M, this benefit “depends upon shared interests, as a result either of kinship or of cooperative reciprocity” (255). In short, denying one’s self at the present moment might prove beneficial to one’s future success, as, say, being honest now can “make one an attractive exchange partner.” Thus, feelings of “justice” or “wronged” result from evolved mechanisms that provide some advantage to individuals of the species for reproductive success.
M&M take this basic understanding of the EP approach to moral sensibility and turn it to a discussion of “paying a debt” by the wrongdoer. Someone who commits a crime must compensate for that crime. Culpability, then, “reflects the offender’s debt to the victim” (257). Culpability, however, links to issues of provocation. Groups of people must inquire into the extent to which the victim antagonized the victimizer or to what extent the victimizing act proves unintended. Provocation evolved as both a moral and psychological theory. “It proposed both that provocation justifies retaliatory action and that it causes such action” (257). Following this line of thought, we understand the most culpable persons to have acted willfully or with malicious choice in a free act (261). After a discussion of the insanity defense and other cultural issues, M&M write, “To both ordinary people and to jurists, ‘responsibility’ entails the choice of one’s actions and the capacity to have done otherwise” (264). Of course, according to M&M, everyone understands, despite the black and white pictures drawn by theorists and the courts, that blameworthiness or culpability occurs on a continuum with free will, and everyone faces “diminished responsibility” in most acts. Generally, however, they insist that people conflate causal and moral judgments. Regardless of whether people are scientifically understood to be determined, moral culpability may play some role in the direction of society or the modification of individual’s behavior (e.g. through the threat of punishment or the promise of rewards). Thus, M&M refuse to take a side in the free will debate. They end their discussion returning to the fact of the benefit of the notion of “culpability” to human reproductive success. They note, for instance, studies that show close relatives often receive lighter punishment for harm to family members because they’ve already suffered enough. In short, it is unfortunate and irrational for someone to harm another with whom s/he shares a significant amount of genes. Further, capital punishment, as opposed to reparations, can be seen as a feature of modern nation states that have replaced the more kinship account of justice with a rational, emotionless system of punishment.
In general, M&M provide an interesting account of “culpability” and moral sensibility from the perspective of evolution and EP. As animals, human beings evolved with certain needs and imperatives, just like other animals. The possibility for moral sensibility cannot be seen as something imposed from above by some “spiritual nature” whether our own or another’s (God, for instance). To make such a claim denies the role of emotions and motivations in human actions. Their resistance to taking a position on “free will,” however, proves baffling and limited, and a characteristic (as seen in the last post) of those associated with EP. One wonders if EP theorists are fearful of writing about the denial of free will, like Darwin before them who refused to write about human evolution in the Origin of Species due to what he knew would be a fierce backlash.
Given that, however, I think we can still ask intelligent questions about M&M’s account. Most importantly, how does the notion of “culpability” arise? Is it possible to have a notion of “culpability” without language? And what of this moral sensibility? We are, it is often said, the only animals with morality. Of course, we know relatively little about our nearest relatives, all of whom are extinct – homo neanderthalis, homo ergastor, homo habilis. What we do know suggests that even beings as advanced as Neanderthal lacked language ability. If Neanderthal did, in fact, bury their dead, it suggests they may have experienced some proto-moral sensibility.
Still, we do know that our living closest relatives – chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas – engage in social behavior just as we do. Does the behavior of two alpha males contending for dominance of a gorilla harem constitute a proto-moral sensibility? Could the sexual actions of female bonobos to reconcile or diffuse male malevolence constitute a form of moral action? Even if it did, it’s not clear how such minimalist moralities could have given rise to the notion of culpability.
If the notion of “culpability” is essential to the moral sensibility that M&M suggest increases human reproductive success, then we return once more to the issue of language. Could the notion play any role without language? If so, how? Where are our naturalistic models of this behavior/notion/sensibility? If not, then the EP is left with a more trying question. EP theorists are characterized by their thesis that human behavior evolved during our evolution in the Pleistocene era on the savannas of Africa. In particular, many of our behaviors are well suited for smaller hunter-gatherer communities of early hominid life than they are for city living or even for agricultural life. They insist, then, that homo sapiens have not been around long enough to evolve psychological mechanisms that would be better adapted to agricultural, close-community, larger population living. Yet, language appeared on the scene during this time period. It is too late, according to EP’s own arguments, for language to have led to the development of a notion of culpability that would prove evolutionarily significant or promote human reproductive success, particularly for all human beings (what they refer to as an ESS – evolutionary stable strategy).
So far, I’ve found no one who addresses these questions, much less attempts to answer them. I am convinced that we cannot explain our moral sensibility from primarily a purely theological or dualistic perspective. We are material beings who obey the laws of (non-reductive) physics. That means, we had to have bodies suited to the particular life-form we express, including our moral sensibilities. There is, then, something peculiarly odd about the EP approach to moral sensibility, culpability, and free will. Part of this lies in what I will address in my next post: a misunderstanding of what, exactly, free will is.
Evolution of Responsibility part 1
09/07/11 22:22 Filed in: Human Nature
I want to think a little bit about discussions among evolutionary psychologists about evolution, free will, and responsibility. I am presenting, first, my understanding of what the EP theorists say. Then I am going to ask some questions about this approach. I think, given my questions, EP cannot, on its own account, explain responsibility which means -- and this is the important point -- they cannot explain our feeling of free will. The question remains, then, How can animals experience free will?
Let's begin, then, with what I understand to be the approach of EP. I take this approach from reading Steven Pinker, Paul Ehrlich, Janet Radcliffe Richards, and Richard Wright, as well as some articles by Cosmides and Toody as well as Buss. However, my reading of EP theorists began with Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. In the selfish gene, Dawkins does not explicitly discuss human behavior. Rather, he discusses how certain traits or tendencies, such as altruistic behavior or female coyness and male philandeering among non-human animals, could have evolved. The implication, of course, is to take his discussions further and apply them to human behavior, but we shall leave that point aside. Rather, the thing that concerned me in Dawkins' book consisted in his constant denial of strict determinism. Rather, after discussing some genetic tendency of the large, rambling robots that we are, Dawkins would assert that "We effortlessly defy [our genes] every time we use contraception" (271), or "we have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination" (200). Yet, he never explains exactly how "we" are able to "defy" our genes when he's made such an elaborate argument about how our genes determine us to be survival machines.
So, I went in search of understanding how we do this. Wright has an interesting discussion of free will and determinism in chapter 17 of The Moral Animal. Here, however, Wright seems less muddled than Dawkins. He writes
"all influences on human behavior, environmental as well as hereditary, are mediated biologically. Whatever combination of things has given your brain the exact physical organization it has at this moment (including your genes, your early environment, and your assimilation of the first half of this sentence), that physical organization is what determines how you will respond to the second half of this sentence. So even though the term genetic determinism is confused, the term biological determinism isn't..." (349, emphasis his).
Now, to confuse issues even more, Radcliffe provides a thorough discussion of the issue of free will versus determinism in her Human Nature After Darwin. She cites several paragraphs from Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype. In short, Dawkins claims materialists are determinists, whether they are biologists or sociologists. He claims, however, that "human nervous systems are so complex that in practice we can forget about determinism and behave as if we have free will" (103) He asserts, though, that, because genes work the way they do because they exist in the environments they are in, we can "reverse" their influence (104).
I think it would be wise to ask, however, whether our attempt to reverse them would itself be determined. The only answer possible, given the EP framework, is "yes."
Despite that, Richards continues her discussion of free will and determinism in which several times she asserts that we are "in control." "If what is at issue is what might be called the capacity for ordinary responsibility -- the capacity to control our impulses, think through what to do, and judge between competing desires - the answer is that most of us have it and some of us do not" (134). Yet, what can she possibly mean by saying that we have a capacity to control our impulses? Is that capacity a result of genes or environment? Either way, we are determined in its use according to the EP approach.
So far, the discussion has been rather abstract. However, two other people associated with EP provide some more concrete considerations. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson are psychologists who wrote Homicide, a text cited by almost everyone writing on EP. Wright, for instance, contends that "one clear discussion of determinism and responsibility" is provided in chapter 11 of Homicide. In this chapter, M&M, as I shall refer to them, claim that the idea of responsibility comprises an evolutionary fiction that serves human survival. All cultures have some understanding of the difference between "responsible/culpable" and "not responsible/inculpable." One clear sign that something has a genetic origin, of course, is that all cultures share it. Thus, M&M contend that the notion of culpability has served as a means for homo sapiens to satisfy the needs of individuals who lost access to necessities due to harm to some individual. Thus, if a father is killed, then the person responsible must make some reparation to the remaining family which serves to help those family members survive and procreate into the next generation. (Thus, M&M might a big deal out of the fact that the death penalty is a rather new invention because it does not serve the genetic interests of people related within a clan to go killing members of the clan.)
We have, then an emerging picture. Free will is a myth of great proportions, but a useful myth because it allows us to assign responsibility to others for harm done to close relatives so that genes which we most likely share are not lost. Still, we are "in control" of our emotions and drives because we can "control our impulses and think through what to do."
Given this account, however, I think we can rightly ask, "Whence the origin of the concept of responsibility?" A better way of formulating my concern is this: "Does the assignation of 'responsibility' or 'culpability' require language and, if so, how could that notion evolve as a useful survival strategy (ESS in EP speak) after the arrival of language which has only been on the scene for 100,000 years?"
I will consider these questions in my next post.
Let's begin, then, with what I understand to be the approach of EP. I take this approach from reading Steven Pinker, Paul Ehrlich, Janet Radcliffe Richards, and Richard Wright, as well as some articles by Cosmides and Toody as well as Buss. However, my reading of EP theorists began with Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. In the selfish gene, Dawkins does not explicitly discuss human behavior. Rather, he discusses how certain traits or tendencies, such as altruistic behavior or female coyness and male philandeering among non-human animals, could have evolved. The implication, of course, is to take his discussions further and apply them to human behavior, but we shall leave that point aside. Rather, the thing that concerned me in Dawkins' book consisted in his constant denial of strict determinism. Rather, after discussing some genetic tendency of the large, rambling robots that we are, Dawkins would assert that "We effortlessly defy [our genes] every time we use contraception" (271), or "we have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination" (200). Yet, he never explains exactly how "we" are able to "defy" our genes when he's made such an elaborate argument about how our genes determine us to be survival machines.
So, I went in search of understanding how we do this. Wright has an interesting discussion of free will and determinism in chapter 17 of The Moral Animal. Here, however, Wright seems less muddled than Dawkins. He writes
"all influences on human behavior, environmental as well as hereditary, are mediated biologically. Whatever combination of things has given your brain the exact physical organization it has at this moment (including your genes, your early environment, and your assimilation of the first half of this sentence), that physical organization is what determines how you will respond to the second half of this sentence. So even though the term genetic determinism is confused, the term biological determinism isn't..." (349, emphasis his).
Now, to confuse issues even more, Radcliffe provides a thorough discussion of the issue of free will versus determinism in her Human Nature After Darwin. She cites several paragraphs from Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype. In short, Dawkins claims materialists are determinists, whether they are biologists or sociologists. He claims, however, that "human nervous systems are so complex that in practice we can forget about determinism and behave as if we have free will" (103) He asserts, though, that, because genes work the way they do because they exist in the environments they are in, we can "reverse" their influence (104).
I think it would be wise to ask, however, whether our attempt to reverse them would itself be determined. The only answer possible, given the EP framework, is "yes."
Despite that, Richards continues her discussion of free will and determinism in which several times she asserts that we are "in control." "If what is at issue is what might be called the capacity for ordinary responsibility -- the capacity to control our impulses, think through what to do, and judge between competing desires - the answer is that most of us have it and some of us do not" (134). Yet, what can she possibly mean by saying that we have a capacity to control our impulses? Is that capacity a result of genes or environment? Either way, we are determined in its use according to the EP approach.
So far, the discussion has been rather abstract. However, two other people associated with EP provide some more concrete considerations. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson are psychologists who wrote Homicide, a text cited by almost everyone writing on EP. Wright, for instance, contends that "one clear discussion of determinism and responsibility" is provided in chapter 11 of Homicide. In this chapter, M&M, as I shall refer to them, claim that the idea of responsibility comprises an evolutionary fiction that serves human survival. All cultures have some understanding of the difference between "responsible/culpable" and "not responsible/inculpable." One clear sign that something has a genetic origin, of course, is that all cultures share it. Thus, M&M contend that the notion of culpability has served as a means for homo sapiens to satisfy the needs of individuals who lost access to necessities due to harm to some individual. Thus, if a father is killed, then the person responsible must make some reparation to the remaining family which serves to help those family members survive and procreate into the next generation. (Thus, M&M might a big deal out of the fact that the death penalty is a rather new invention because it does not serve the genetic interests of people related within a clan to go killing members of the clan.)
We have, then an emerging picture. Free will is a myth of great proportions, but a useful myth because it allows us to assign responsibility to others for harm done to close relatives so that genes which we most likely share are not lost. Still, we are "in control" of our emotions and drives because we can "control our impulses and think through what to do."
Given this account, however, I think we can rightly ask, "Whence the origin of the concept of responsibility?" A better way of formulating my concern is this: "Does the assignation of 'responsibility' or 'culpability' require language and, if so, how could that notion evolve as a useful survival strategy (ESS in EP speak) after the arrival of language which has only been on the scene for 100,000 years?"
I will consider these questions in my next post.
Faith and Darwin
18/05/11 20:23 Filed in: Human Nature
Many people, especially of the religious persuasion, believe Darwin was an atheist. In fact, Darwin denied this. He wrote in a letter
In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God.
In fact, Darwin gave some credence to the design argument for God's existence:
Another source of conviction in the existence of Do ... follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe ... as the result of blind chance.
We should be more careful, then, in what we attribute to Darwin as a belief. While he was not an atheist, Darwin was not a believer either. He called himself an agnostic, which, according to Thomas Huxley who coined the term, means that one asserts the "human inability to solve, by strictly rational argumentation, theistic or theological matters."
Of course, people of faith will say that faith begins just where rational argumentation ends. That is, the whole point of having faith is to believe in something we cannot determine by a rational means.
This attitude diverges from that of St. Thomas Aquinas, among others. For Thomas, we have inductive proof of God's existence through several means, one of which is Darwin's design argument. For Thomas, however, these arguments can only tell us that God exists; they cannot tell us who God is -- we need faith and revelation to do that. Moreover, because the arguments for God's existence are inductive, they do not lead to absolute certainty. There is, then, room for agnosticism within the Thomistic framework. Of course, Thomas would look at this askance and would go on to say that, even without reason, one should believe in God through faith.
Darwin was unwilling to make that leap. Yet, his unwillingness was not anti-religious or fanatical the way that many think. Indeed, his study of evolution opens up new possibilities of faith as well as new ways of understanding God's creativity.
It is faith and reason which helps us to understand how we fit into that evolved world as evolved creatures subject to God's design and grace.
In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God.
In fact, Darwin gave some credence to the design argument for God's existence:
Another source of conviction in the existence of Do ... follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe ... as the result of blind chance.
We should be more careful, then, in what we attribute to Darwin as a belief. While he was not an atheist, Darwin was not a believer either. He called himself an agnostic, which, according to Thomas Huxley who coined the term, means that one asserts the "human inability to solve, by strictly rational argumentation, theistic or theological matters."
Of course, people of faith will say that faith begins just where rational argumentation ends. That is, the whole point of having faith is to believe in something we cannot determine by a rational means.
This attitude diverges from that of St. Thomas Aquinas, among others. For Thomas, we have inductive proof of God's existence through several means, one of which is Darwin's design argument. For Thomas, however, these arguments can only tell us that God exists; they cannot tell us who God is -- we need faith and revelation to do that. Moreover, because the arguments for God's existence are inductive, they do not lead to absolute certainty. There is, then, room for agnosticism within the Thomistic framework. Of course, Thomas would look at this askance and would go on to say that, even without reason, one should believe in God through faith.
Darwin was unwilling to make that leap. Yet, his unwillingness was not anti-religious or fanatical the way that many think. Indeed, his study of evolution opens up new possibilities of faith as well as new ways of understanding God's creativity.
It is faith and reason which helps us to understand how we fit into that evolved world as evolved creatures subject to God's design and grace.
Evolution Controversy -- What?
31/03/11 21:29 Filed in: Human Nature
I’m afraid, I don’t get the evolution controversy. God created the earth and the whole universe, from the simplest superstring to the greatest nebula to the hottest galaxy. He may have even created an unlimited number of universes, as scientists seem to think today that multiple universes exist. In all of this creating, God made the human person -- homo sapiens sapiens. He gave homo sapiens some things they share with other creatures and some things they do particularly better or only by themselves: speech, advanced reasoning, art, philosophy and science. We are closer to God than any other created material being (except, perhaps, elves, as Peter Kreeft argues). The fact that we evolved from the same evolutionary line as the great apes cannot and does not lessen who we are.
I am not sure, then, why people are still fighting the evolution wars, as this post reports about schools in Tennessee. A bill was proposed that would allow an instructor to teach whatever her beliefs were about science or evolution despite the fact that it has no scientific backing -- as in the case of creationism or intelligent design. Why would we allow our children to be taught something that is not true or to be taught that what is true is not true?
It must be because we believe science threatens our dignity. What nonsense!
Imagine you are an artist and you paint, and you’ve created an oeuvre of hundreds of paintings. Do you love all of them equally? Did you invest more energy in some than you did in others? Do you not have one or two that, when a guest comes over, you say -- this is my favorite. They all came from the same pallet. They all came from the same colors. In fact, some painting evolved from other ones -- you modified lines, concentrated on particular themes, highlighted various elements. Does this make the painting any the less valuable?
Just the contrary.
But, as I said, I really don’t understand the hot air.
I am not sure, then, why people are still fighting the evolution wars, as this post reports about schools in Tennessee. A bill was proposed that would allow an instructor to teach whatever her beliefs were about science or evolution despite the fact that it has no scientific backing -- as in the case of creationism or intelligent design. Why would we allow our children to be taught something that is not true or to be taught that what is true is not true?
It must be because we believe science threatens our dignity. What nonsense!
Imagine you are an artist and you paint, and you’ve created an oeuvre of hundreds of paintings. Do you love all of them equally? Did you invest more energy in some than you did in others? Do you not have one or two that, when a guest comes over, you say -- this is my favorite. They all came from the same pallet. They all came from the same colors. In fact, some painting evolved from other ones -- you modified lines, concentrated on particular themes, highlighted various elements. Does this make the painting any the less valuable?
Just the contrary.
But, as I said, I really don’t understand the hot air.
Women, Evolution, and Rape: Rejoinder Part 2
25/01/11 21:43 Filed in: Human Nature
This is a continuation of an earlier post.
4. Claim 2: “"When the costs of being sexually victimized are highest," reason these investigators, "women should shift their perceptions to decrease false negative errors at the expense of making more false positive errors. Thus, we predicted that women perceive men as more sexually coercive at fertile points of their cycle than at non-fertile points.”” Here, aside from the question about the definition of rape raised in point 1 above, we must also ask, Is this fact a result of evolving to avoid rape or is it, rather, a result of cultural interpretations of rape in our own society? Women might be told that men are likely to rape them because they are sexually attractive or because they are more fertile, but that does not mean that rapists are more likely to attack during those times. In other words, despite the historico-evolutionary aspects of rape, we must also consider how culture influences a person’s interpretation of the pictures of men shown. Here we have a question of data and interpretation.
5. Claim 3: “At least two studies have demonstrated that women at the peak of their fertility are less likely than their peers to have engaged in high-risk activities such as walking alone in a park or forest, letting a stranger into the house, or stopping their cars in a remote place over the preceding 24 hours. Importantly, as German investigators Arndt Bröder and Natalia Hohmann established, ovulating women are not less active in general—they're still busy shopping, going to church, visiting friends, and so on—but they avoid doing those things that make them sexually vulnerable.””
First, a question on the data. Do we also include in this “high-risk activities” being alone with a spouse? Presumably, if women are raped when they are fertile for penetration, then husbands would be the ones more likely to rape them. So being around a husband would also count as a risky behavior.
Second, here we have a question of how we define “high risk activities.” How are these high risk activities coordinated with being alone? Perhaps ovulating women are more social than non-ovulating women, and so the issue isn’t high risk activities, but solitude versus social engagement.
Third, the reader of my blog was right to suggest that “it doesn't seem too tough to imagine straying far from the center of a small social group (say a hunter-gatherer camp) would manifest as not walking through a park at night in a modern context.” Issues of interpretation of the date remain.
6. “Ovulating women are more racists.” In this case, the experimenters note that what has been selected against is engagement with out-group males, and race may be interpreted as a sign of an out-group male. Here, the theory asserts that women avoid those who may not have the same social values and controls as those of their in-group.
Given the question over the biological basis of rape, this conclusion becomes all the more difficult to defend. Biologists and social theorists have shown that skin color varies more within a “race” than between “races.” This means that skin coloration would be used to identify in-group members rather than out-group members.
The authors of this particular study, however, note that cultural associations may be as informative of behavior as evolutionary elements. If we accept this point, however, then we must also bring into play the element of cultural understandings of rape. Once we do that, though, it becomes unclear how rape and ovulation are tied together at the biologico-evolutionary level rather than at the cultural-sociological level. In other words, the interpretation of the data is too in question to make the claim that women have evolved to protect themselves from sexual assault.
4. Claim 2: “"When the costs of being sexually victimized are highest," reason these investigators, "women should shift their perceptions to decrease false negative errors at the expense of making more false positive errors. Thus, we predicted that women perceive men as more sexually coercive at fertile points of their cycle than at non-fertile points.”” Here, aside from the question about the definition of rape raised in point 1 above, we must also ask, Is this fact a result of evolving to avoid rape or is it, rather, a result of cultural interpretations of rape in our own society? Women might be told that men are likely to rape them because they are sexually attractive or because they are more fertile, but that does not mean that rapists are more likely to attack during those times. In other words, despite the historico-evolutionary aspects of rape, we must also consider how culture influences a person’s interpretation of the pictures of men shown. Here we have a question of data and interpretation.
5. Claim 3: “At least two studies have demonstrated that women at the peak of their fertility are less likely than their peers to have engaged in high-risk activities such as walking alone in a park or forest, letting a stranger into the house, or stopping their cars in a remote place over the preceding 24 hours. Importantly, as German investigators Arndt Bröder and Natalia Hohmann established, ovulating women are not less active in general—they're still busy shopping, going to church, visiting friends, and so on—but they avoid doing those things that make them sexually vulnerable.””
First, a question on the data. Do we also include in this “high-risk activities” being alone with a spouse? Presumably, if women are raped when they are fertile for penetration, then husbands would be the ones more likely to rape them. So being around a husband would also count as a risky behavior.
Second, here we have a question of how we define “high risk activities.” How are these high risk activities coordinated with being alone? Perhaps ovulating women are more social than non-ovulating women, and so the issue isn’t high risk activities, but solitude versus social engagement.
Third, the reader of my blog was right to suggest that “it doesn't seem too tough to imagine straying far from the center of a small social group (say a hunter-gatherer camp) would manifest as not walking through a park at night in a modern context.” Issues of interpretation of the date remain.
6. “Ovulating women are more racists.” In this case, the experimenters note that what has been selected against is engagement with out-group males, and race may be interpreted as a sign of an out-group male. Here, the theory asserts that women avoid those who may not have the same social values and controls as those of their in-group.
Given the question over the biological basis of rape, this conclusion becomes all the more difficult to defend. Biologists and social theorists have shown that skin color varies more within a “race” than between “races.” This means that skin coloration would be used to identify in-group members rather than out-group members.
The authors of this particular study, however, note that cultural associations may be as informative of behavior as evolutionary elements. If we accept this point, however, then we must also bring into play the element of cultural understandings of rape. Once we do that, though, it becomes unclear how rape and ovulation are tied together at the biologico-evolutionary level rather than at the cultural-sociological level. In other words, the interpretation of the data is too in question to make the claim that women have evolved to protect themselves from sexual assault.
Women, Evolution, and Rape: Rejoinder Part 1
24/01/11 20:58 Filed in: Human Nature
A reader asked concerning an earlier post on rape what exactly I was objecting to in this article. I appreciate his (and your) reading my post and asking a question. He was right to challenge me to provide a more thorough analysis of the claims made in the original article. In my earlier post, I challenged mainly the definition of rape in the article: “rape will be defined throughout this article as the use of force, or threat of force, to achieve penile-vaginal penetration of a woman without her consent.” Clearly, if one does not accept this definition, and I see no good reason to do so, then one will question the more general facts collected and the interpretation of those facts. I will use this post to respond to the particular claims raised. To wit...
1. Consider, first off, the data collected. All of the date centers around the ovulation of the woman. Thus, claim one is that women are stronger during ovulation, because they are more likely to be raped at that time. But, if we do not accept the definition of rape, then why should we link female strength of ovulation with a evolved response to rape. The same question can be asked about estimating a man’s possibility as a rapist, avoiding safe place during ovulation, and “racism” during ovulation. So, to begin, I question the link of these facts -- assuming, of course, that these are indeed facts -- to an evolved response to rape.
2. Part of the explanation behind evolution and rape is that men who raped were more likely to impregnate women than men who did not rape. Therefore, we have more rapists in our male population now than in the past, because rapists have outproduced men. If this were true, then we would see a corollary in the female population. It would be women who were susceptible to rape who tended to reproduce -- thus producing more women who were similar susceptible to rape. So, it should be the case, following the logic about rapists in the male population, that women-susceptible to rape -- that is, women who are weaker not stronger, women who are not careful about classifying men as rapists, women who are more prone to visit “unsafe” places, and women who are less racists -- would be more prevalent in the general female population today. The way the article is written, however, is that either most or all women are just the opposite. The facts as presented in the article, then, contradict the idea that women have evolved to defend themselves against rape when rape is defined in any way.
3. Claim 1: Ovulating women show greater strength then non-ovulating women. The author writes: “Only the ovulating women who read the sexual assault scenario exhibited an increase in handgrip strength. Ovulating women who read the control passage and nonovulatory women who read the sexual assault material grasped with the same intensity as before.” Increased strength coordinated, then, when two events presented themselves: ovulation and exposure to a sexual assault scenario. I have no reason to question the data itself, but I would question the interpretation. Why should researchers link increased strength with fear of or defense against rape? Consider, for instance, that some studies show that men become more aroused when exposed to sexual assault material. Could not women who are ovulating show increased strength, not because they are afraid, but because they too would like to be in control? (NB: I am not claiming here, and never would claim, that women are turned on by the idea of being rape. Rather, I am suggesting that women might be turned on by the idea of being in control of the sexual encounter.) Would it not make more evolutionary sense to suggest that women have increased strength when they are ovulating so that they can beat other women at mating with the “prime” male of the species?
Further, it is not enough to show that ovulating women exposed to sexual assault scenarios are stronger than ovulating women shown neutral scenarios. Shouldn’t we also compare their strength to ovulating women who are exposed to violent scenarios without rape or sexual assault involved? And, what was the nature of the sexual assault material: male on female, male on male, female on male, or female on female? These questions must be answered and investigated before making the claim that women have evolved greater strength as a response to the threat of rape, especially given the questions raised in point 1 & 2 above.
I will continue this discussion in a separate post tomorrow looking at the other three claims the study makes....
1. Consider, first off, the data collected. All of the date centers around the ovulation of the woman. Thus, claim one is that women are stronger during ovulation, because they are more likely to be raped at that time. But, if we do not accept the definition of rape, then why should we link female strength of ovulation with a evolved response to rape. The same question can be asked about estimating a man’s possibility as a rapist, avoiding safe place during ovulation, and “racism” during ovulation. So, to begin, I question the link of these facts -- assuming, of course, that these are indeed facts -- to an evolved response to rape.
2. Part of the explanation behind evolution and rape is that men who raped were more likely to impregnate women than men who did not rape. Therefore, we have more rapists in our male population now than in the past, because rapists have outproduced men. If this were true, then we would see a corollary in the female population. It would be women who were susceptible to rape who tended to reproduce -- thus producing more women who were similar susceptible to rape. So, it should be the case, following the logic about rapists in the male population, that women-susceptible to rape -- that is, women who are weaker not stronger, women who are not careful about classifying men as rapists, women who are more prone to visit “unsafe” places, and women who are less racists -- would be more prevalent in the general female population today. The way the article is written, however, is that either most or all women are just the opposite. The facts as presented in the article, then, contradict the idea that women have evolved to defend themselves against rape when rape is defined in any way.
3. Claim 1: Ovulating women show greater strength then non-ovulating women. The author writes: “Only the ovulating women who read the sexual assault scenario exhibited an increase in handgrip strength. Ovulating women who read the control passage and nonovulatory women who read the sexual assault material grasped with the same intensity as before.” Increased strength coordinated, then, when two events presented themselves: ovulation and exposure to a sexual assault scenario. I have no reason to question the data itself, but I would question the interpretation. Why should researchers link increased strength with fear of or defense against rape? Consider, for instance, that some studies show that men become more aroused when exposed to sexual assault material. Could not women who are ovulating show increased strength, not because they are afraid, but because they too would like to be in control? (NB: I am not claiming here, and never would claim, that women are turned on by the idea of being rape. Rather, I am suggesting that women might be turned on by the idea of being in control of the sexual encounter.) Would it not make more evolutionary sense to suggest that women have increased strength when they are ovulating so that they can beat other women at mating with the “prime” male of the species?
Further, it is not enough to show that ovulating women exposed to sexual assault scenarios are stronger than ovulating women shown neutral scenarios. Shouldn’t we also compare their strength to ovulating women who are exposed to violent scenarios without rape or sexual assault involved? And, what was the nature of the sexual assault material: male on female, male on male, female on male, or female on female? These questions must be answered and investigated before making the claim that women have evolved greater strength as a response to the threat of rape, especially given the questions raised in point 1 & 2 above.
I will continue this discussion in a separate post tomorrow looking at the other three claims the study makes....
Evolution and Rape: Women's Defense
14/01/11 18:27 Filed in: Human Nature
I’m not sure what to think about this article by Jesse Bering. Bering is an evolutionary psychologist at Queen’s University Belfast.
I suppose the first thing that struck me is the use of the word rape. The article deals with “scientifically verified” evidence that women have evolved to protect themselves against rape. Bering quickly dismisses the idea that science leads to moral justification of rape, because that conclusion relies on the naturalistic fallacy. Women, it seems, are stronger during ovulation, are more cautious in where they go, are more distrusting of men, oh, and on top of it all, are more racist.
Underlying this notion, however, is the idea that rape involves reproduction. This belief has been discounted over and over again: rape is about power, not reproduction. Men rape women to show they have power over them. This is why men rape older women who can no longer reproduce, or rape women who they then kill.
Further, the idea that women evolved to be more cautious about going out or letting men back into their apartments does not seem to me to be able to hold water. Evolution does not work over short periods, and women have only been able to do many of the “unsafe” things in the last few hundred years.
Moreover, the idea that women classify some things as safe or unsafe must have cultural context. Who defines what is safe or unsafe for women? This “scientific” research seems loaded with cultural and personal values that are purely sexist.
I’m sure we will hear much more about this in the future. What we should pay attention to is the underlying politically and culturally conservative agenda that much evolutionary biology supports. While Bering quickly dismisses the idea that showing men have evolved to rape and women have evolved to defend themselves against rape, his dismissal seem hollow. If claims like this were made in a court as “scientific” we know exactly what the result would be: the rapist would get off because he obeyed an evolutionary instinct and the woman failed to obey hers.
Bering also insists on his innocence because the evidence comes from a gay man who “wouldn't know what to do with an ovulating woman if she came with instructions.” This form of argument is the reverse of the ad hominem. Just because one is gay does not mean that one cannot be misogynist. Or simply mistaken about biology, politics, and ethics.
Or, as most evolutionary biologists are, wrong about human nature.
I suppose the first thing that struck me is the use of the word rape. The article deals with “scientifically verified” evidence that women have evolved to protect themselves against rape. Bering quickly dismisses the idea that science leads to moral justification of rape, because that conclusion relies on the naturalistic fallacy. Women, it seems, are stronger during ovulation, are more cautious in where they go, are more distrusting of men, oh, and on top of it all, are more racist.
Underlying this notion, however, is the idea that rape involves reproduction. This belief has been discounted over and over again: rape is about power, not reproduction. Men rape women to show they have power over them. This is why men rape older women who can no longer reproduce, or rape women who they then kill.
Further, the idea that women evolved to be more cautious about going out or letting men back into their apartments does not seem to me to be able to hold water. Evolution does not work over short periods, and women have only been able to do many of the “unsafe” things in the last few hundred years.
Moreover, the idea that women classify some things as safe or unsafe must have cultural context. Who defines what is safe or unsafe for women? This “scientific” research seems loaded with cultural and personal values that are purely sexist.
I’m sure we will hear much more about this in the future. What we should pay attention to is the underlying politically and culturally conservative agenda that much evolutionary biology supports. While Bering quickly dismisses the idea that showing men have evolved to rape and women have evolved to defend themselves against rape, his dismissal seem hollow. If claims like this were made in a court as “scientific” we know exactly what the result would be: the rapist would get off because he obeyed an evolutionary instinct and the woman failed to obey hers.
Bering also insists on his innocence because the evidence comes from a gay man who “wouldn't know what to do with an ovulating woman if she came with instructions.” This form of argument is the reverse of the ad hominem. Just because one is gay does not mean that one cannot be misogynist. Or simply mistaken about biology, politics, and ethics.
Or, as most evolutionary biologists are, wrong about human nature.
Anti-Dawkins by Dover
17/12/10 22:18 Filed in: Human Nature
I just read an article by Gabrielle Dover called “Anti-Dawkins” which both points out the fallacies of Dawkins’ selfish-gene theory and proposes an alternative to the selfish-gene theory. The argument and the new proposal rest on something biologists have known for some time: genes interact with each other. The fact that they interact with each other tells against the idea that a gene acts selfishly only to reproduce itself. It cannot do this when interacting with other genes, and genes never act in isolation. Second, we can see, so Dover argues, that through modularity, the ways genes interact gene within individual genotypes -- within individual organisms. These changes can be neutral with respect to reproductivity. Yet, if passed on through a population they might later on become important in responding to new environmental stimuli. So a once-neutral trait might be become an exaptation in a new environment. Ian Tattersall suggests that language is such an exaptation.
Part of our problem as a culture, as Dover nicely points out, and as has been pointed out before by the likes of Mary Midgley and Stephen Jay Gould, among others, is that we believe that each gene selects for one particular trait. We would do well to rid ourselves of this false belief which acts, in the case of Dawkins’ selfish gene, on which evolutionary psychology rests, as an ideology.
Part of our problem as a culture, as Dover nicely points out, and as has been pointed out before by the likes of Mary Midgley and Stephen Jay Gould, among others, is that we believe that each gene selects for one particular trait. We would do well to rid ourselves of this false belief which acts, in the case of Dawkins’ selfish gene, on which evolutionary psychology rests, as an ideology.