Is he talking about a final cause in the Aristotelian sense?
“The purpose of a gamete is to create other gametes.” Everything else is details.
Saying that there is an ‘ultimate’ cause for a behavior would imply that nature/evolution has some kind of purpose/direction/goal/intention, etc, which it does not- wouldn’t it? Why assume that just because the sexual act sometimes results in reproduction that this is the ‘ultimate’ cause of it?
Yes, this is exactly what I am trying to argue. The are no “goals” in evolution. In fact evolution is nothing more than a description of what has happened or is happening. Evolution does not dictate reproduction- reproduction dictates evolution.
Certainly nature/evolution is not conscious and does not have a “goal”. But it does favor creatures that reproduce enough to continue the species.
If sex was painful and no one got horny the species has a good chance of dying out. Males would not seek females and females would do their level best to avoid males if sex was awful.
So it is no surprise that species we see today are the ones who go to great lengths to have sex. We see it across the animal world…Mother Nature has programmed the urge to reproduce into all species. The ones who did not have it are in the dustbin of history.
See the Wikipedia article I linked to above, especially the section on teleology in biology.
What’s the point of the semantic nitpicking and failure to understand metaphors? It’s like if someone said a certain atom in a chemical equation wants to give up electrons and someone else says actually atoms don’t want anything.
There’s a lot of baseless just so stories in evo psych and some people who read about it online take it way off road, but it’s not completely worthless. The argument doesn’t have much to do with its validity, though.
To borrow a line from Dennet, I think it was, babies aren’t cute because they have big eyes and heads. They’re cute because they’re babies. Candy is tasty because it’s full of sugar. If humans were covered in hair from head to toe we’d find that sexy as hell. Internal subjective labels are used by evolution as tools to compel (or avoid) behaviors.
Have you ever been really thirsty? It felt so good to get a drink of water, didn’t it? Almost euphoric. Mission accomplished.
Probably bonobos. It’s a myth though.
Most mammals, at least, have sex strictly for fun. They have no concept of reproduction. They don’t get sex ed. They’re not doing it for the sake of the species. At some point in the past humans made the connection (what an awful day that must’ve been). Many animals are limited to certain hormonally driven seasonal breeding windows and aren’t receptive outside of that. But once it’s time they screw like bunnies.
Female animals in heat can be ridiculous. I’ve heard stories of mares in heat humping fences so hard they damage them. A cat in heat makes the latest Hollywood trashy starlet look like a nun.
It may or may not be a homologous leftover of the penis (similar but not as quite as useless as nipples in men), but the preservation of an extensively innervated clitoris is pretty firm evidence against the idea.
I think it’s still a controversy whether, say, reptiles are closer to having such subjective internal experiences, if they’re more like robots, or some hazy zone inbetween.
Very basic animals don’t think about anything. They just follow the programming.
It’s like how it feels so good to scratch the itch of chicken pox, but doing so spreads the virus.
Not true.
One of the reasons male lions who take over a pride of lionesses (is that a word?..female lions) is to start their fertility cycle again which is on pause while they are raising a cub. The new male lion wants to make his own offspring and not see over the previous male’s cubs.
Of course the male lion has no clue about any of this (probably). He just does what nature programmed him to do.
However, if all he wanted to do was get his freak on he would not need to do all that. He could hump the female lions at will. But he doesn’t.
So he is not doing it for fun (even though he probably does enjoy it).
Have you ever tried to hump a lioness that is not in heat?
It is no fun, I can assure you.
I’ll take your word for it but that does highlight that the lions are doing it for reproduction and not fun regardless if they actually enjoy the act when they do have sex.
The female only wants fun at certain moments, when she is fertile.
The male lion can do it any time a female is available. Remember that he has several females in his pride.
So, yeah there is a difference between males and females.
All animals do it for fun, I think. In their mind, it’s just an itch that needs (NEEDS!!!) scratching. And the ‘itch’ may only be present in certain circumstances – in the presence of the scent of a female in heat, for example (or for the female, when she is in heat). I seriously doubt there is any connection between mating and babies in the minds of most or even all animals.
If male lions kill the babies in a new pride, I don’t think it’s because they calculate that killing the babies will put the females in heat – it’s probably something like heightened aggression against small furry things spurred by hormones that are kicked in upon getting into a new group.
Do you eat strictly for fun? Or do you eat because you are hungry? Animals don’t have sex for fun, they have sex when they are programmed to. Otherwise they would have sex when they are not in heat. We had to take our dog up to Guide Dogs when she went into season, and we were good at observing the physiological changes associated with it. I don’t think fun has anything to do with it.
Since humans are active all the time, we probably need more pleasure from sex to ensure it happens at the right time. I don’t know when humans made the association between sex and pregnancy, but I suspect it was not made for most of the history of our species.
There may be no goals, but there are rewards. Reproductive success leads to survival, and survival leads to propagation of the trait that led to reproductive success.
It’s okay to use loose language like “goal” and “purpose.” We aren’t writing technical papers here, but trying to clarify a point. Stephen Jay Gould has a number of essays wherein he defends the use of phrases like “Giraffes evolved longer necks in order to obtain food from high branches.” It’s technically incorrect, but it makes the point clear.
(Just as you used the word “dictate.”)
Hmm. I don’t know if you’re right about female dogs, but don’t male dogs famously hump your guest’s leg wih gusto no matter what time of the month it is?
I have seen female dogs hump people’s legs (though I think the dogs were spayed).
The reproductive urge is just one way of looking at it, in looking at it that way it is not that efficient at reproduction as most acts of copulation do not result in offspring. It is more a bonding urge, a urge to be close and inside. It sets the stage for a healthy environment for offspring, which have a small chance of happening each time it happens. Other facets of human physiology and societal structure also tend to make a healthy environment for offspring in that bonding a woman to a man creating a stable parental structure.
You have to include sea lions, for which you can easily find videos of them raping penguins. And sea otters, as I understand it, like to rape baby seals. And who knows what sharks do for the 99% of the time they spend in the dark depths, where we cannot observe them?
It’s deep rooted into almost every aspect of our being. From the most subtle of subconscious behaviors to the conscious act itself. I believe we exist purely to keep the dna chain going.