[Fwd: The Evil That Men Do Part 1]

Some stuff on socio-biology...

--
Mine Aysen Doyran
Ph.D Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222

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The Dark Side of Man.

Demonic Male. Apes and the Origins of Human Violence.  Richard Wrangham
and Dale Peterson. Houghton Mifflin. 1996.

The Dark Side of Man. Michael P. Ghiglieri. Perseus.1999.

A Natural History of Rape. Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer.
MIT.2000.

Survival of the Prettiest. The Science of Beauty.  Nancy Etcoff. 1998.

Why Sex Matters. A Darwinian Look at Human Nature. Bobbi S.Low.
Princeton University Press.2000.

   These  books attempt "naturalistic" or sociobiological explanations
of human social phenomena ranging from the ultimate in human ugliness;
rape and violence to supposed ‘scientific' investigations into the
nature of human beauty. Thornhill and Palmer focus exclusively on
heterosexual rape and sexual coercion, Ghiglieri, Wrangham and Peterson
have much wider scope focusing on the explanation of all kinds of human
violence from war and genocide to fistfighting.  The books deal almost
exclusively with male behavior and explain violence and evil as products
of male behavior. Etcoff attempts a refutation of Naomi Wolf's
influential The Beauty Myth   using the apparat of evolutionary
psychology. The best book of the bunch is Bobbi S. Low's Why Sex Matters
a scholarly review of the sociobiological arguments around sexuality. It
is extremely repetitive and breaks no new ground though it can be read
as a summary of work undertaken so far in game theory and behavior
ecology. These books are an updated form of sociobiology that tries to
take into consideration someof the often fierce criticisms of
sociobiology made by S.J. Gould, R. Lewontin, Anne Fausto-Sterling,
Hilary and Steven Rose as well as  female sociobiologists like Sarah
Hrdy and Jane Goodall. The authors try to move beyond genetic
determinism and reductionism invoking culture as an explanatory foci, a
positive feedback mechanism to natural and sexual selection. [see Fred
Engels "The Transition of Ape to Man" for the classic account of culture
as a positive feedback mechanism]

Although my formal training is as an analytical philosopher, I usually
end up reading hundreds of books every year on every imaginable subject
and these are some of the most atrocious books I've read in some time.
Etcoff and Ghiglieri are particularly bad, the latter  being one of the
nastiest political reactionaries I've encountered in print in some time.
Etcoff's book is descriptive rather than argumentative, very repetitive
and makes Harlequin romance seem chock full of social-psychological
insights. It is several hundred pages of this:

"Good-looking people are more likely to win arguments and persuade
others of their opinion. People divulge secrets to them and disclose
personal information...attractive people do tend to be more at ease
socially, more confident and less likely to fear negative opinions. They
are more likely to think that they are in control of their lives rather
than pawns of fate and circumstance, and they are apt to be more
sensitive..."p46-7 

No argument or evidence necessary when you are an evolutionary
psychologist with graduate degrees from Ivy League schools.

"Good looks are a women's most fungible asset, exchangeable for social
position, money, even love. But dependent on a body that ages, it is an
asset that a woman uses or loses...beauty is convertible into other
assets that people covet, for example, wealth, connections, surplus
suitors and so on."p66-7.

All well and good, but obviously, what about women who aren't so good
looking? A lonely life on welfare? Isn't there something wrong with a
situation where people are bestowed with assets solely by the way they
look?

Etcoff's evidence consists in an "experiment" she undertook at a Boston
hospital where she showed photographs of human faces to newborns. She
observed that newborns tend to look longer at the good looking faces
(the faces Etcoff thought were the best looking anyway.) This is
supposed to prove that the power of physical beauty is somehow
biological. Further, her book is full of statements like this:

"There is little evidence that women with greater intelligence have any
advantage on the marriage market. On the contrary, in one recent study
of more than ten thousand men and women in Wisconsin, women who had
never married turned out to be significantly more intelligent than the
women who had married."p66

Etcoff gives no citation for this study, insulating herself from basic
criticism of how the study was done, who was chosen to participate etc.
Nearly every other page, contains a "studies show..." or "one recent
study shows.." without any citation as to who did the study, who funded
it, where, and so on. So much for science.  


The main criticism of these types of books is the authors provide zero
empirical evidence for the sweeping generalizations and very strong
claims they make about human nature and thus human social behavior. They
can be taken as crude caricatures of Darwinian analysis, the type that
led S.J. Gould to label an earlier generation of sociobiological
analysis "cardboard" Darwinism in reference to the crude a priori
speculative ultra-adaptationism that these authors all take.

         Some readers may find the matter of fact  and emotionally
distant descriptions of violence  offensive and in Ghiglieri's case
gratuitous (for example his description of a rape by a male orang of a
female human which adds nothing to his argument.)  At times the authors
seems to be trying to convince the reader of just how horrible and evil
humans, particularly males are. An extended exercise in
self-loathing.Each book was written with the goal of eradicating
violence by trying to understand the nature and causes of it. Though
these researchers have insight into violence, its history and why it
occurs [especially in the much simpler and easier cases of non-human
primates), the argument(s) are all fatally flawed and for  the same
reasons that earlier attempts at sociobiology have been wrong.
Thornhill/Palmer and Wrangham/Peterson should be commended for the care
and sensitivity with which they have presented their research,  trying
strenuously to avoid being labeled apologists for fascism, capitalism
and other reactionary agendas. Ghiglieri,on the other hand, has a clear
political agenda as is amply shown by his reliance on James Q. Wilson,
Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein for his empirical evidence.
Ghiglieri even goes so far to say that "the most thoroughly researched
recent book on crime and criminals is James Q. Wilson and Richard
Herrnstein's Crime and Human Nature." p 124. Given the kind of
controversy it provoked and how discredited it is, the admiration shown
for Hernnstein's work in the above quotation is not something most
researchers would publicly admit. Ghiglieri is eager to show that it is
the poor and disenfranchised who commit rape and other forms of violence
and have the greatest potential and capacity for it. The other authors
draw no such conclusions though their politics are implicit; each author
could be accurately labeled an apologist for capitalism or the status
quo on grounds that our biologically grounded and naturally selected
human nature makes social order based on co-operation impossible or
least very difficult.


The argument in each book is the same with slight variation. Male
violence, war, genocide, rape and theft follow from the theory of sexual
selection as defined and originally adumbrated by Charles Darwin in his
seminal work The Descent Of Man:


" It is certain that with almost all other animals there is a struggle
between the males for the possession of the female. This fact is so
notorious that it would be superfluous to give examples. Hence the
females, supposing that their mental capacity sufficed for the exertion
of choice, could select one out of several males....This (sexual
selection) depends on the advantage which certain individuals have over
other individuals of the same sex and species in exclusive relation to
reproduction...the males have acquired their present structure, not from
being better fitted to survive in the struggle for existence (natural
selection) but from having gained advantage over other males...There are
many other structures and instincts which must have been developed
through sexual selection--such as the weapons of offence and the means
of defense possessed by the males for fighting with and driving away
their rivals--their courage and pugnacity--their ornaments of various
kinds --their organs for producing vocal or instrumental music--and
their glands for emitting odors; most of the latter structures serving
only to allure or excite the female. That these characters are the
result of sexual and not ordinary selection is clear, as unarmed,
unadorned or unattractive males would succeed equally well in the battle
for life and in leaving numerous progeny, if better endowed males were
present. We may infer that this would be the case, for the females,
which are unarmed and unornamented are able to survive and procreate
their kind....When we behold two males fighting for the possession of
the female, or several male birds displaying their gorgeous plumage, and
performing the strangest antics before and assembled body of females, we
cannot doubt that, though led by instinct they know what they are about
and consciously exert their mental and bodily powers." Darwin,1871.

  The argument put simply is that rape and violence are male
reproductive strategies that have evolved by sexual selection.    The
key question is whether violence is an adaptation or a by-product of
sexual selection.  The three books on violence set out to contend that
violence *might* be an adaptation, though Ghiglieri and
Wrangham/Peterson believe that violence and especially rape is an
adaptation.  Proving that something might be the case is easy because it
is logically impossible to prove a negative. Descartes established that
it might be the case that we are all being deceived by an evil demon
into believing certain propositions. Thornhill and Palmer vacillate
between the two positions and disagree amongst themselves. The lurking
premise here is that all individuals are driven by the Darwinian
imperative of individual reproductive success i.e the struggle to pass
on ones genes. Ghiglieri asserts that "sexual selection favors the genes
of males who sire more offspring no matter how it is done." p 11. 


Since sexual selection is the major explanatory locus in all
evolutionary psychology, it merits close attention. Sexual selection is
the differential ability to acquire mates. It is the selection for
traits that increase the quantity and quality of an individual's mates.
Quality here referring to the reproductive ability or fertility of the
person. There are two types of selection mechanisms in sexual selection;
female choice of males (‘the power to charm females'--mislabeled
intersexual selection) and male-male competition (‘the power to conquer
other males in battle'--called intrasexual selection). Ghiglieri with
typical crudity calls the former the pretty male strategy and the latter
the macho male strategy. Thornhill/Palmer argue that there are two
female adaptations associated with sexual selection. First, females
prefer males with social status and resources which evolved because
males possessing these provide material benefit to females and their
offspring. Secondly, a preference for males with physical markers
suggesting genetic benefits which evolved because they enhanced the
survival of offspring. 

Rape, violence and theft follow from the ‘macho male strategy'.
Wrangham/Peterson put it thus:

"sexual selection is the process that produces sex differences has a lot
to answer for...males who are better fighters can stop other males from
mating and they mate more successfully themselves. Better fighters tend
to have more babies. That's the simple stupid logic of sexual
selection."p173 

Ghiglieri: "sexual selection favors the genes of males who sire more
offspring no matter how they have done it."p11 and "the facts [facts?
What facts? He never gives us the facts.] on rape tell us that rape is
one more natural product of macho sexual selection an extra ‘tool' or
adaptation in many men to help them ‘win' natural selection's
reproductive contest" p106 and "homicide is an instinct coded by sexual
selection into the human male psyche in a design that prompts men to
kill 1) to expand their personal gains leading to reproductive advantage
and 2) to keep major gains they have already made"p154 and "murder is
encoded into the human psyche. People who murder do so deliberately
based on their own self-interest." p133


Rape and violence are used in situations when a male lacks the resources
to attract and sire offspring. The possibility of rape increases with
males who lack alternative reproductive options. A lack of reproductive
options correlates with a male's failure to acquire resources, thus
leaving him low in the hierarchy of males available for female choice.
Thornhill/Palmer argue that females desire the traits of social status
and ambition/industriousness. This theory is called the mate deprivation
hypothesis and is argued most forcefully by Ghiglieri "men who rape
women are typically the least successfully economically in their
society--even the least successful among criminals--but the age cohort
of women whom rapist choose as victims is the most desirable to the most
affluent men in societies world wide." p86.

Thornhill/Palmer in more careful research draw different conclusions
"rape is far from being an exclusive act among lowering males; there are
many instances of rape by high status males with high access to females
for consensual sex." p68.

The mate deprivation is false for many reasons. The highest fertility
rates are among the poorest and lowest peoples both within and across
world's societies. Poor and low status people most often marry and sire
offspring together. Cross class marriage is rare though it is hard to
tell with the cultural blurring of class boundaries in many first world
societies.. There is no lack of reproductive opportunity for poor and
low status males. It's just that their choices are usually narrower than
rich and high status males.As women  entered the labor force in
increasing numbers during the 19th and 20th centuries to the point where
male/female participation in the labor force is now nearly equal, women
have become more economially independent and less depended ton males as
providers both for themselves and their children. It is likely that
females are less and less choosing their sexual and marriage partners 
based on  males being providers. 

A second argument is to emphasize that because rape and violence are so
common and have long historical antecedents they must be genetic and
biologically based. Ghiglieri:

"rape is a standard male reproductive strategy and has likely been one
for millions of years. Male humans, chimpanzees and orangutans routinely
rape females." p 105. and Wrangham/Peterson:

"Accepting that man has a vastly long history of violence implies that
they have been temperamentally shaped to use violence effectively and
that they will therefore find it hard to stop" p240.

The author as usual offer no empirical evidence for these empirical
claims. Rape is not standard practice even if we assume that the
majority of rapes go unreported. As for a reproductive strategy, the
chances of impregnating a female _and_ her giving birth to the child and
raising the child to reproductive age runs asymptotically towards zero.
Humans have used birth control and abortion methods since the beginning
of recorded history and probably before then. It would  not be
surprising to see an adaptation away from rape as a reproductive
strategy.  Indeed, given the costs and risks of rape to its perpetrators
and given the benefits, the incidence should be low.

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