The major problem with the evo-psych arguments is that they present human sexual selection and human evolution as if our current living arrangements have always been thus. For that vast majority of humanity’s existence, who you were fucking did not determine what you or your kids ate. If you were fucking the guy that killed the mammoth, you ate mammoth, if you were fucking the guy with one leg that made the cave paintings, you still ate mammoth.
A good illustration is the kinship terms of native Hawaiians. Everybody in your family that is in your grandparent’s generation is Grandma and Grandpa, everyone in your parent’s generation is Mom and Dad, everyone in your generation is Sister and Brother.
Further, the only reason that you know that sex leads to babies, and that babies inherit genetic traits from their two parents is because someone told you. These facts are very recently discovered. Prior to the neolithic revolution, no one knew anything about where babies come from, or how they were made.
Any theory that states that women determine their sex partners by consciously, or even subconsciously, looking for the best provider for their offspring is ludicrously unscientific.
I think it would be a perfectly fine philosophy as long as there were no actual people involved. You know, women people. That is sort of the problem isn’t it? That women are people, not objects?
Self-servingly reductionist evolutionary ideas would be laughable if men didn’t have most of the power in virtually every sphere, whether they care to believe it or not.
One could make a far more rational argument that humans are primarily a social species which relies on mutual aid to raise children, not machismo posturing.
But that’s part of evolutionary psychology too. It’s postulated as the reason human women live so long after menopause, and why evolution doesn’t weed out homosexuality.
You guys (like the incels, for that matter) have a cartoonish, strawman notion of the field.
Both of those claims (about menopause and homosexuality) are largely incorrect. For instance, homosexual behavior is also found in many nonhuman species who don’t rely on mutual aid to raise children. So we can’t assume that that kind of social behavior is “the reason” why “evolution doesn’t weed out homosexuality”.
And the possible causes of post-reproductive longevity in humans are also far more complex than the notion that “the reason” for it is mutual aid in childrearing. For example, postmenopausal longevity in women may be due (or partly due) instead to the long duration of human childhood, and the fact that the death of a mother disproportionately decreases the chances of survival for her young children. Given that physical senescence increases a mother’s chances of death in or shortly after childbirth and consequently the likelihood that the child won’t survive to reproduce, it may have been advantageous for women to lose the ability to bear more children while they were still young enough to have a good chance of surviving the long dependency of birth and childhood in their previous children.
I remember hearing, probably on this board, from some evo-psych supporter that homosexuality (in men, they don’t really care about women) is a heritable genetic trait, and that the reason that we still have gay men despite the fact that they probably had fewer children than non-gay men is that the sisters of gay men that carry the gay-male gene have more children than other women, and that their gay brothers then help them to raise those children.
They provided no evidence, a kinship term for gay-uncles, let’s say, and shockingly no mechanism for how the women were so fecund (the term they always used, along with female lest you think that they consider women to be people). Do these sisters of gays have litters of children? Do they have early onset menses or particularly late menopause? Do they have short pregnancies? Nope, just more babies by magic, that their gay brothers help rear. And the gay uncles don’t help rear any other children, not the children of their non carrier siblings, and definitely not the neighbors’ kids, even if they all live together in a yano, or long house, or pueblo.
Natural selection is not the only force that explains why we have the traits we do. It is just the only one that laypeople have heard of. Genetic drift and linkage disequilibrium just aren’t as sexy, I guess.
One the most important things I learned from my evolution and ecology coursework is the concept of the parsimonious hypothesis. It is a principle of all the sciences, but it is especially important in the context of evolution.
Sure, homosexuality may be a thing because it confers advantages. Or it could be a thing for the same reason the groove under our nose is a thing. The groove doesn’t confer an advantage for humans as far as we can tell, but it hasn’t been selected out probably because 1) it isn’t disadvantageous enough to individual fitness and/or 2) the allele(s) that would result in it’s absence are likely linked to severe disadvantages. Like having no face at all.
Why do we have homosexuality? The most parsimonious explanation is that for most of animal history, it has not conferred enough of a disadvantage to be completely selected out. The second most parsimonious explanation is that completely selecting out homosexuality would result in the loss of advantageous traits that are genetically linked with homosexuality.
Neither of these explanations require us to speculate about cavemen’s views towards homosexuality.
Homosexuality may also be more of a cultural thing and not directly linked to genetics. The cause, if we can say there is one, could easily be due to the prenatal environment. The assumption of genetic cause for all the complexities of human behavior is another weakness in the evo-psych hypotheses.
Interesting. I remember people were talking about George W. Bush having a flattened philtrum (that groove beneath the nose) – that gave him a chimp-like appearance – and that it was linked to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. So, maybe the philtrum is linked to brain development somehow???
Rather, genes that are linked to brain development also affect the rest of the skull and face. Depending on the genes and how they’re expressed you can have effects that widen the face (leading to a gap between the two front incisors) or the space between the eyes, or narrow the space between those features. More significant malfunctions can result in a single, centered incisor instead of two, or one nostril instead of two… which also affects the philtrum, which is what that little groove is called. (Really severe malfunction can result in a cyclops birth defect… and a terribly malformed and malfunctioning brain). It has to do with chemical gradients that help the developing embryo distinguish head/tail and left/right, which can be affected by other chemicals ingested by the mother.
Those points are not exactly diametrically opposed to what I said.
Who said anything about cavemen‘s views?
You guys are really reinforcing my point. We can have interesting discussions and debates and speculation about these things, and it’s all part of evolutionary psychology. Like any scientific discipline, there can be dramatically different hypotheses and new findings that call into question older ones.The strawman version of ev-psych is that it justifies oppressive gender norms and that sort of thing. Which is not a fair or accurate depiction of the field as a whole. Even if a scientist gets into controversial areas like the ways in which rape might convey an evolutionary advantage for rapists*, that is far from the same thing as justifying rape—and that is what so many people fail to understand.
*ETA: Or more accurately, an advantage over the long evolutionary history of human beings before the development of modern forensic techniques and DNA fingerprinting. My take on evolutionary psychology is actually nearly 180° from the idea that it justifies antisocial behavior. In fact, it is often about how our modern environment does not match our ancestral environment, which is in most ways a good thing. But the fact that evolution does not work as quickly as social and civilizational change can lead to social problems.
All I can say is the same question I always have when evolutionary psychology (which always seems to involve discussion of cavemen) comes up: how can we possibly know how cavemen lived? How can anything definitive be said about their society, if indeed it was even the same kind of society everywhere in the world? They didn’t write anything down. They made some primitive drawings but none of them as far as I know are remotely detailed enough to offer insight into how their society was organized. What kind of culture and social behavior did they have? I don’t think it’s possible to know it!
Well, paleontology does tell us quite a bit about some aspects of their life: what they ate, where they lived, etc. And there are some very general conclusions that can be inferred from comparisons with other primates.
But yeah, it’s a big stretch to get from definite facts about early humans to explanations of modern human behavior based on evolutionary influences on early humans. Not that the idea can’t or shouldn’t be studied, but in practice it very often quickly degenerates into “just-so stories” and “well it stands to reason” arguments.
Some of those drawings are incredibly detailed and very skilfully done. They’re not all “primitive” sketches.
But they don’t tell us how the societies they were made in ran; other than to tell us that making such paintings was valued, and that people were doing well enough to be able to put the energy into making them; and what information can be gotten from handprints and footprints. Whatever their intentions were in making the paintings, it wasn’t to try to explain their society – or if it was (those teenage footprints in some caves might imply a teaching tool), it was under the assumption that the explanation would be to people who understood, or were directly being taught, their particular symbolism. And what their symbols meant is information long lost, and not likely to be regained.
Some things we can find out a lot about, such as what people were eating in various places and at various times. Others we can’t.
