Please read the discussions this far before ranting at me.

But the behavior itself goes on whether culture tries to put it to use or not. — Srap Tasmaner

Let’s be concrete here. “What” is this behavior. You cannot isolate sex from its cultural surroundings. I know you are sort of saying that but you are saying some part of this process must be genes. Which part? Because the case you make for genes can be explained by culture. All we can say with certainty is pleasure seems good which is as you pointed out about as self evident as it gets. We can debate the individual cross cultural studies but I can always cast doubt on the assumptions and conclusions. You can argue science and I can argue not quite there like a molecular biology or hell even biological anthropology which at least works in artifacts.

But before we get to that level of detail, why do you assume genes must code for reproduction in humans other than the circular reasoning that it “has no reason not to”. Well in this case, it does have a reason not to. If a new generation exists, reproduction has taken place. Nothing about that requires a genetically determined reason.

Presumably you can be celibate right now, full stop and you would continue to live. Not so with food, or refraining from going to the bathroom. Presumably you can take a city bus if that is an option and not drive a car. It’s simply preferences we make habits of internalizing. The predisposition is simply the pleasure of comfort. Pleasure and comfort may be something higher organisms pursue, but each species has different ways of how it manifests. Humans are remarkably plastic. In order for pleasure to be more than just that, it is taught as to how it is directed in various confined stages.

but I've presented a case that it cannot be.

A coherent alternative description is not an argument. I could offer a dozen more without half trying. (If you doubt that, google creationism.) — Srap Tasmaner

You didn't present that case. You tried to say that because genetics explains other animals, it must explain why humans mate the way we do.

You claimed:

There is no conceivable selection pressure that would reward the absence of procreative genes. There is no conceivable cultural selection pressure for making sure that what biology already guarantees continues to happen.

There may be reason to lie about it. If you can convince people that the sun rises each day because you tell it to, that makes you pretty damn important -- just don't get high on your own supply. You don't make the sun rise and people don't have to be tricked into having sex.

You simply fall into making a false analogy. Other animals don't have the kind of language and cultural transmission that we do. Do you deny that point? I am guessing you don't deny it, even if you try to make it a "degree vs kind" goal-post move. But there is a difference that is a distinction. All you need is that this distinction causes many shifts in what becomes the impetus behind human actions.

Behaviors can be parallel but convergent. That is to say. Humans can do things other animals do but not for the same reasons they do. My general point is that conceptual thinking shapes our motivations.

I could have gotten food because I was truly hungry, I was bored, I just liked the taste of the food and wanted another hit, I am addicted in some way, etc.

Sex is the similar but also different. I think people confuse pleasure with where to direct that pleasure. Having an oxcitocin hit or something doesn't mean that that behavior is selected for. The effect of the behavior is rewarded, sure. But it can be rewarded without it having anything to do with another person. Rather, the part about, "This is how romance, and marriage, and such work" is culturally diffused.

What is this mechanism that allows a story to be ingrained for 400,000 years? Racial memory (Jung's idea)? Some sort of encoding that is transmitted genetically? Some epiphenomenal process that the body passes from generation to generation? — BC

I recounted it here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/824085

Evolution of mammals is gonna have some sex in there, just the way it is.

And once you've got sex, natural selection will make sure you keep it, that's my argument.

Your whole post could not have been more beside the point or less responsive to the issues that have been raised. — Srap Tasmaner

It was giving a counter example- one based on culture. Very much the point (contra EP biological selection).

I just don't see how you can pull off attacking evolutionary psychology for its just-so stories and then, with a straight face, begin an argument — Srap Tasmaner

I prefaced it that that is what I was doing in lieu of no ability to experiment in real time. Keep up.

Come, come -- back to the real world. The 'trope' in culture is to put the brakes on the youngun's sexual drives, and discourage premature mating. Premature = before they are materially ready to independently provide for their own, their mate's, and their children's basic needs. — BC

I’m being serious. Where did they get the idea of mating? It’s not an innate concept. Perhaps every generation reinvents the wheel and just “figures it out”. But no, it’s from cultural transmission. It’s something we’ve been doing for a few hundred thousand years. So the story is indeed pretty ingrained.

Hey great example of the EP that I am talking about. 4.2 Implications at the end says it all. It's very much a just so story based on the data. They had a hypothesis and lo and behold, they got "evidence" that there are preferences that skew a certain way, and then say that this implies biological selection due to mating strategies, rather than it simply being a cultural thing or alternatives.

Yeah that applies to you too. Cowardly when you don't let the other person just speak for themselves. I remember that you do that a lot. Oddly write in tandem with another poster. Weird.

I'm gonna stop you right there ... — Srap Tasmaner

One of my biggest pet peeves on this forum is giving a thoughtful response and then the other person not really responding to it in a thoughtful way. Sigh.

What I think we're all waiting for is your reasons for believing (2) is more likely than (1), not just your reasons for thinking (2) is possible. — Isaac

Which is natural selection's whole thing, hence my insistence we must be able to at least imagine a mechanism for getting from point A to point B. — Srap Tasmaner

So I will say it is actually extremely hard to test for because of what I said here:

The problem is there’s very little experimental evidence you can gather unless you forced people into isolated societies that did not have any cultural ideas about sexuality or relationships. — schopenhauer1

In other words, the culture perpetuates the narrative of attraction and what to do with that attraction.

Let's imagine there was a world whereby sex was unknown. All people knew was self-pleasuring which they discovered pretty early on. It's like an undirected pleasuring in this case. It's pleasure because of mechanical processes at that point. You may even have some people who never discovered this, but if they did, someone else would probably tell them. The telling part is the cultural part. It is shared diffusion of information that otherwise would be unknown.

Ok, but let's say this is natural enough that anyone would eventually discover this pleasure on their own.

The next move is to then make the leap that this pleasuring sensation can be performed by another person. I contend that this move is not automatic, but initiated by cultural cues. It is not just the idea that someone can physically perform the sexual act, because it is never presented in such stark terms. Rather it is the whole artifice of "attraction to someone, romancing/courting/initiating with someone, and having sex with someone". That is a long complex conceptual web of ideas that don't just come innately.

First you have the idea of attraction itself. Yong people often imitate what people slightly older are doing, or what is broadcast in society, what are the rituals, and stories, and narratives people perpetuate. This gets internalized. When people get to a certain age, these are the habits we should expect. Discussions around puberty have become an industry unto itself. But here is where there is a great exemplar of how EP is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Raging, uncontrollable hormone-monsters becomes the narrative. That is a relatively modern trope though. True enough hormone levels definitely contribute to people's moods and physiological responses, but it doesn't actually form conceptual understandings. The narrative around "teen love" or dating culture, or courting, or getting laid, or what not, is all trope-y cultural markers. It's setting a framework. Teenagers aren't isolated people, they internalize the previous generations' broadcast about this and it becomes their norms. People can embrace, shy away from it, ignore it, whatever, but the cultural marker is there and the next generation internalizes the tropes and plays them out.

Even the idea that "He/she is hot" can be a trope. As a young person, there might be predispositions to seeing symmetry, and lack of blemishes versus blemishes, differences, things of this nature. But the idea of symmetrical/clean and this then becoming "attractive" could itself just be subtle markers.

But even if we allow for the idea of "attractiveness" (in a target of sexual desire way not in simply noticing very basic symmetry, etc.), It's the idea that attractive means you then get aroused from this attractiveness and then you court that person in some way, and then you have sex with them is extremely culturally driven. These are all socially complex moves that are not innate. They are picked up and played out over and over again.

So in other words, human sexual behavior is so conceptually driven, it is actually odd that, if you just thought about it for a moment, you wouldn't see the cultural foundations for the artifice.

Genes don't really "select" for stories. Rather, they may select for storymaking. That is to say, it is evident our brains were wired for language and cultural transmission, but the kind of cultural content that comes from this can be varying.

So yeah, while preferring pleasure seems pretty natural, the whole artifice of how it plays out is cultural, and if you have something pleasurable, and you have something for which the target of that pleasure also creates a new generation, and in close communal societies, this is seen as favorable, you get what you get. Then it expands from there in all sorts of culturally varying ways.

And yeah that's right sex needs to be promoted to some extent whilst at the same time curbed to a large extent. There can be all sorts of cultural narratives broadcast in order to maintain society a certain way.

Which is blindingly obvious, right?

I suppose it's no use noting how much cultural capital has been spent trying to get people not to have sex, or to only have pre-approved socially useful sex. (For all we know, it's just trying to undo hundreds of thousands of years of culture making people have sex. Sure it is.) — Srap Tasmaner

The problem is there’s very little experimental evidence you can gather unless you forced people into isolated societies that did not have any cultural ideas about sexuality or relationships.

I'm talking about how it came about because we're talking about what results and what does not result from natural selection. Your position is that our procreative behavior did not come about because of natural selection, remember? So it's what you're talking about too. — Srap Tasmaner

No what I have to prove is our mechanism isn’t via natural selection but cultural propagation, not the exact story for this change. It’s enough to know it’s not natural selection that propagates our reproduction mechanism.

And I can't see any mechanism by which that changes just because we start telling stories and making pots. — Srap Tasmaner

We are quite different animals, though animals nonetheless. An aardvark isn’t a chimp and a chimp isn’t a dolphin isn’t a bat.

Yes, you've mentioned this pleonasm before. Was there an option we narrowly avoided where pleasure would turn out to feel bad? — Srap Tasmaner

That’s my point. It’s as close to self-evident that this is true. But of course heroin also feels good. It would certainly be a different society if this is encouraged. Addiction is chemical but it is cultural that there is this drug you take which makes you feel good.. and even then only certain people would be willing to indulge it etc…

It's your thread, do as you like. Would you rather be blogging? — Srap Tasmaner

It’s just not needed to show that it is what we do.it’s an interesting question that would take many studies im sure. But my point is to not but to show that I just have to show culture as a viable and more plausible theory, not explain every genetic detail to how culture took over.

It's childish. — Srap Tasmaner

Yet you are the one seeming to start it.

And then because the tribe wants more members -- for its cultural purposes, no biology involved -- it in essence manipulates (encourages, cajoles, tricks) people into having sex by teaching them that it's the kind of pleasure that feels good and thus getting them to reproduce.

Thank god culture showed up when it did, or our ancestors might never have had sex, and then where would we be? — Srap Tasmaner

Again, the tropes are there before anyone’s individual experience. It does cajole and encourages, creates the strategies that become the cliches that become the obvious stories and on.

Boredom appears in animals with enough brain matter to get bored. Chickens don't get bored; bright parrots do. Animals that are caged (or live in our houses) who become bored can be very problematic. BTW, dogs don't hump our legs because they want to mate with us; they are engaged in a dominance display. — BC

But what about boredom? Boredom can lead to any number of outcomes. Tribal people can sing and dance and play when they are bored, talk to friends, or make up stories, or do acts of courage and sport, or hone a skill, tattoos, art, etc. Modern people have gadgets and books, and also stories and talking to friends, sports, honing, a skill, etc. People also might have sex... because they are bored and it is a pleasurable way to pass the time. But the pleasure and the "doing it because of boredom" are two separate things. One is a natural biological response, the other is an epiphenomenon from the state of boredom.

Presumably, you can be an onanist or be celibate if you wanted... and perhaps as you get older you may already be :p. But either way, humans literally, don't have to do anything they don't want. They can refuse to work, commit suicide, take a shit on the street. Granted much of these are outliers. We tend to like what's comfortable and not what is too against the cultural norm. Dating, relationships, and even sex can become culturally insignificant. Look at the Shakers. Certainly the culture around relationships looks different in India or the Middle East than it does in the Western countries. You wouldn't misattribute that to evolution. You would say that is cultural. Perhaps all of this artifice around sex is cultural too. That is to say, it is a culturally maintained thing. No one is denying that sex feels good, but how it manifests is just cultural tropes perpetuating it. Think about it...

"I find this person attractive" and "I want to stick my genitalia in them because I am attracted to them" seems innate, but there is a lot of conceptualizing that make one have to do with the other. Everything from "finding attractive" to "what one does with your genitalia because you find something attractive" is cultural. If this concept never existed, it might look a lot different. Perhaps people would just be generally onanistic without a real need for a target for their pleasure. It just gets wired that way in the cultural trope. It's the chicken or egg. You can strongly disagree with some anecdote but then that cultural trope is there long before your experience.

Perhaps Adam and Lilith didn't get along because Adam simply didn't really know what to do. God had to encourage Adam and Eve... Perhaps it was that damn snake keeping the source of suffering going :D.

Added more

But do you understand what the measure of "good enough" is? — Srap Tasmaner

That reproduction takes place without natural selection. So in a way it isn't even "good enough". Rather, it is another way for something to happen whereby reproduction has taken place that is not natural selection. Saying "good enough" just meant, that the species didn't need it.

it would have to be at least as reliable at producing rates of reproduction at least as high as the genetic solution; if not, natural selection will fix that, so long as the old genes are still somewhere in the population. — Srap Tasmaner

Ok I guess...

For the old genes to just drop out, this culturally sustained level of reproduction will have to go on long enough not only to have the old genes miscopied into oblivion, but to catch up to and surpass any beneficial traits or behaviors that might happen to be riding in individuals with the old procreative genes, else natural selection will keep rewarding them. — Srap Tasmaner

Ok...

In essence, the genes for procreative behavior are competing against nothing at all, so it's very hard to see how natural selection could ever definitively weed them out. Procreative genes could even just continue to proliferate as a redundant free rider; even if the cultural mandate to reproduce were more intense than the genetic, those individuals would reproduce their unnecessary genes at that higher rate.For natural selection to take any interest, the individuals carrying the procreative genes would have to be less fit, less adapted, less suitable as sex partners, and less fertile. Why would they be, especially with the 'procreators' continuing to 'interbreed' with the 'culturalists'? — Srap Tasmaner

This is called "moving the goal posts". You are asking for a mechanism for how it came about when I am arguing simply what is the case, not how it came about. For example, an arborist might tell you a whole lot about how the tree functions without knowing every part of its genetic and evolutionary path to get where it is. To discount what the arborist is saying because he can't recount the whole species' evolution would be a category error.

However, even if I indulge your switch in argument from what is happening to how it got this way, you seem to make natural selection some kind of goal-oriented process. It's not. It's not lot looking for ways to maintain itself.

Now, how on earth would such a culture arise? You want to chalk all this up to human self-awareness and positive feedback: that thing we all do, because we are biologically disposed to, we all agree so hard and so long that we should do that, and preferably do it even more than we are naturally disposed to, that eventually the biological disposition just withers away. It's easy to see what would sustain the genetic solution here; it's just how natural selection works. But what would sustain such an intense and long-lasting cultural mandate? Especially given that biology is happy to take care of this without taking up cultural resources: there's no gap being filled by culture, no problem being solved, the mandated behavior was already taking place. Culture, then, does this for no reason at all, just because, it seems to you, it can.

In summary, no conceivable selection pressure against procreative genes, no conceivable cultural selection pressure for culturally mandated high rates of reproduction.

Now, if your answer is that there is no reason to think there ever were any procreative genes to start with, keep in mind that we had to come from somewhere. We have ancestors without language, without culture, and their procreative genes would certainly have been selected for, all else being equal. You have to explain how we got rid of them, and I don't see how you can. — Srap Tasmaner

No, that's the thing, I don't have to explain how we got rid of them. Again, the arborist analogy. I can give you a possible narrative for the sake of argument..

I mean, bonobos already have an odd mating strategy. They essentially have sex at the drop a hat. Presumably, it's a way of maintaining alliances and lowering tensions. The common chimp has an estrus cycle where there's a time of the season where the female is more likely to be receptive to a mate and the male picks up on these cues and/or hormones, or whatnot. Presumably a hierarchy has something to do with what chimp can have sex with whom. There's outliers and ones that try to get in under the radar, contenders, etc. Common chimps indeed pay close attention to hierarchy and alliances (at least how we interpret it).

However, whatever it is that humans had going on between australopithecines and hominins, eventually a conceptual framework became possible whereby narratives and reasons were the main factors for how to live life. That is to say, language, and a sense of self and other, created concepts that could be rearranged. The world became virtual in that there was a remove whereby it was the case that someone knows they are having an experience rather than purely experiential, or associative. Having these virtual frameworks (concepts and their arrangements) allowed for a different kind of way-of-life to take place. That is novelty, and cultural storage and dissemination of knowledge. Now how it relates to reproduction.. look at ceremonies. Many tribes have a ceremony for "becoming a man/women". Marriage itself seems pretty universal in that it allows the conceptual demarcation of who can have sex with whom. But you might say, "Aha! See marriage is thus evolutionarily evolved from genes". No, rather it might come out of something like jealousy which may or may not itself be hardwired. Let's say that jealousy is hardwired. Jealousy is a general emotion. A child can be jealous of a sibling because the other sibling received more attention, or was given food or they got to play with a toy and they did not. So rules might be made...sharing etc. Or the toy goes to whoever found it first, or whathaveyou. But you see these are all cultural strategies, perhaps selected for but not in a genetic, biological way, simply because our brains are very plastic and certain cultural practices allow for survival better than others.

So tying it back to sex, pleasure feels good. Presumably, people "knew" that one way that sex felt good was by putting it in certain orifices. Putting a penis in a certain orifice creates a baby. Presumably our ancestors put that together. This idea is passed on in culture through various ways. Children generally learn about this, rather than from scratch. That is to say, they might not know how the physical act works until they try it, but they are aware this is what happens. That is because it is in the culture. It is encouraged. It becomes narratives like "romance", and "tradition", and "duty", and it gets wrapped up in concepts of being a man or a women, of being a full member of the tribe/community, of continuing the seed, etc. These are all coneptual. But it is encouraged because presumably the tribal members wanted more people in the tribe and this was a strategy that works. And as long as the trend continues of a majority wanting to pursue this kind of pleasure, and connect it with reproduction, then you have what we have. You create cultural markers around where to direct the pleasure to create more people, so you encourage other markers like, "this is what you should be aiming for", and it becomes so ingrained it becomes as if it was innate. The problem is, we are too self-aware. You can have perfectly celibate people, you can people that just practice onanism, or people that have sexless marriages, asexuals, people who just don't have sex for whatever reason, people who don't try, people who don't care, etc. But there are also people who don't work, or do a lot of things that might be necessary to maintain a community. Humans are plastic like that. You just need enough people to buy into the narrative to maintain the facade. Don't get me wrong, it does help that what is being encouraged feels good!

For some reason, Freud springs to mind here, but I have to go and engage in other cultural pursuits (i.e. gym) so I'll come back to it later. — Wayfarer

Yes I mentioned him a few posts back to BC.

I think the pleasure associated with sex is rooted in evolutionary physiology. — Wayfarer

This I agree with.

it is natural that the reproductive urge harness all the pleasure centres in seeking to express itself. — Wayfarer

This is too vague, so harder to comment on.

Humans, uniquely, are then able to detach the associated pleasure from its biological origin and pursue it for its own sake. — Wayfarer

Fair enough, that's not in dispute. Rather, the origin of this pursuance of pleasure (that we "find a mate") is not innate but cultural. We see at a certain age at a certain time we "find mates" for which to find pleasure with. So I'll quote this again:

To be a bit graphic for an analogy:
1) To have a bowel movement is natural.
2) To have a bowel movement feel vaguely "relieving" or "good" is natural
3) To have a bowel movement in a toilet bowl is cultural. — schopenhauer1

but I did my best.

Have a nice day. — Srap Tasmaner

And I gave detailed answers to all your paragraphs and then provided a summarized one so yeah you can't say I just handwaved you off or anything, although you seem to be doing that to me. Make your case or don't.

Evolutionary biology accounts mainly for the ground floor. Evolutionary psychology maybe 2 & 3, but its relevance wanes as you go further up. — Wayfarer

I beg to differ as reproduction is not a "physiological need". Pleasure is good, and we generally seek it out in culturally appropriate ways but where it is directed is cultural. And we can certainly agree it isn't needed for individual survival.

We are singing from the same hymnal at least; not sure if we are on the same page. I agree that pleasure-seeking is biologically driven, but we are also driven to achieve it with somebody else. Who that somebody else ought or ought not to be is a cultural matter. We are not naturally onanistic. We're a social animal. — BC

But aren't you sort of reiterating what I am saying by emphasizing the "social animal"? If I get bored and play a video game or pick up a book almost every time I am bored, is that evolution selecting it? I am sure you would say that is a misattribution and silly. You may try to go a step further and say "flow states from things that keep our attention" is something selected for, but even that is pretty tenuous.

And THIS is where I think the muddled thinking actually comes in (understandably). BECAUSE reproduction is so vital to evolutionary biology, it SEEMS like there must be an evolutionarily biological reason for why we direct our pleasure towards someone else. 100% we can live and not fuck until we die. We can live and not play video games and not die. We can get pleasure from both and abstain from both. The parallel with evolutionary reasons makes sense on a surface level, but the genetic fallacy becomes a strong possibility in this case. It's like saying "bats evolved from birds because they both fly". Obviously there are different evolutionary paths/reasons for their differences.

Sex and pleasure with somebody else or alone is a basic biological drive. My guess is that the basic "how" is pretty much baked in. The rest of the animal kingdom manages to mate without a guide and I think we can too, even if the Kama Sutra isn't hard wired. We require touch as infants and are driven to seek out touch, but where, when, with whom, and where not, when not, and with whom not are culturally defined. — BC

I think you are almost right except if you took out (with somebody else). Pleasure being "good" seems fairly innate. However, "seeking out a mate" is a trope. Other animals which you are trying to compare to have mating seasons. Many animals LITERALLY hump if they smell something a certain way.

We have little really tendentious tales of "pheromones'" and such that are like cute little pat stories you see on something like a science channel or popular magazines or something on Valentine's Day. Rather, while there might be receptors for pheromones', this isn't the "reason we seek a mate" in the first place. So I do beg to differ.

It's clear you didn't really read my previous post in much detail as I believe my responses from my last post still stands so I will refer you to that. If you want to quote from that we can go from there.

At the end of the day it is a question of "Is it selected for" or "Is it cultural stories/tropes that work". One has to do with genetics and their phenotypes and behaviors and the other with cultural stories / tropes / traits that are not correlated to a hard-coded selection but a trait that is learned and shared with the community and integrated by an individual. There was once a term called "memes" that paralleled natural selection but I don't even want to venture into that. All that is necessary is that it is the general ability to integrate concepts, and not some defined behavior that is selected for, for the difference to be a (major) distinction.

99.99% of the population consistently avoid sleeping in the streets. — BC

Granted. And perhaps "comfort is a preference" is something innate. A dog rather sleep in dry place than the rain. I have no problem with that idea.

Don't you want somebody to love?
Don't you need somebody to love?
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love!

Music has been flogging the importance of love for decades. All you need is love sung in 10,000 different songs. Quite often "love" is another term for sex. — BC

Great case in point! I'm not saying this song has thus promoted people "must find someone to love" but the idea that it is somehow "in the culture" does act like that.

On the one hand, hormones are the primary motive for us to go find somebody to fuck. — BC

But again, this is assuming the consequent. You are just re-stating the assumption I am questioning. Perhaps we want pleasure, and culture has taught us "you better find somebody to love" then.

Fucking is fundamental — BC

The pleasure of climaxing is fundamental. The preference for it to be done this or that way and directed to someone else in the first place, seems pretty culturally driven. It is there in the culture before you can even reflect on it much to say otherwise. It seems instinctual from a non-reflective vantage point, perhaps.

There are culturally defined standards for prospective sex/love objects. Just any old slob won't do; a very exciting partner might be too unpredictable. We are expected to find a beautiful or handsome mate, curvaceous or muscular, blond or brunet, nicely dressed, etc. People are judged on the quality of their partners--someone you could confidently take home to meet your folks. — BC

Yes, very much cultural there. So I think we are almost on the same page, but it is where the delineation should be made that we are disagreeing.

You seem to be saying that various appearances of the person and qualities are probably culturally derived, but the very drive "to fuck (someone)" is not.

I am saying on the other hand, that it is simply "pleasure" that is innate, and directing it "to someone" is STILL cultural. I gave the analogy to my previous post:

To be a bit graphic for an analogy:
1) To have a bowel movement is natural.
2) To have a bowel movement feel vaguely "relieving" or "good" is natural
3) To have a bowel movement in a toilet bowl is cultural. — schopenhauer1

Suppose we start with some ancient single-cell organisms, alike in every way except their proclivity to reproduce. Natural selection is just the process by which the descendants of those with the higher proclivity to reproduce will swamp the descendants of the others in short order. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep, pretty much agree there. Variation leading to selection through population niche in the environment.

Presumably then the instinct (let's just call it that) to reproduce is about as old as anything could be and shared across almost all living things. But even if this is a problem natural selection had to solve multiple times, for whatever reason -- population separation, for instance -- it would, every time, exactly the same way. If anything is in natural selection's wheel-house, this is. — Srap Tasmaner

Well now you are putting the cart before the horse and assuming the very thing I am arguing (for humans that is). That is to say, you can have reproduction be more to do with culture than with instincts. And if you want to say well THIS is natural selection then, fine, I'll agree to that but then you are really widening the scope of the use of that term. That means anything cultural is now "natural selection" which is a category error.

You would want to argue that somewhere along the way, in the evolution of hominids. culture became self-reinforcing enough that natural selection no longer needed the instinct to reproduce and could kind of slough it off, just not bother selecting for it because culture had that covered, and that in essence this could have happened without people ever noticing. One day our ancestors had an instinct to reproduce, the next they didn't but culture had already taken the baton. And this would only have happened with us because we're the only species with rich enough cultural lives to have pulled this off. — Srap Tasmaner

You are strawmanning a bit here. I am not saying it was "one day" necessarily. Certainly by the time full-blown language and conceptual frameworks could be implemented. I could not provide you the details from one to the other or even how long that took. Then I would be giving a "just so" story of course.

Okay that's a just-so story. Might even be true. Is there any evidence of the sloughing off mechanism? Is that even a thing that can happen? Maybe some of our ancestors ended up with junk instead of the reproducing-gene and it didn't make any difference because culture. Maybe we're a mixed lot now, some with it, some without, and it's hard to tell one from another because culture. I have no idea. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep.

Also possible that there is no instinct to reproduce per se, but in our case an instinct for sex, because that leads to reproduction, which is what natural selection is actually aiming at. Kinda tricks us into it. Possible. Maybe even likely, since "I will now reproduce" is not really a sensible intention, one you can reliably put into action. But "I will now have sex" sure is. Should really be having sex whenever you're not doing something else you absolutely have to. — Srap Tasmaner

Well that's just it though. "I will now have sex" is indeed a cultural thing more than anything. Pleasure feels good, but everything from initiating with a person, to when and where to do it, is cultural. Even more rudimentary, it is simply satisfying a preference for something that "feels good". However, the fact that it has to be "that person" giving you the pleasure and in "such and such" proscribed way is very much something conceptual driven. It isn't innate. There are many cultural cues that this is what is to be done. In other words, there is "something" one must direct one's preference for pleasure "to" or "for".

But the whole point here is that natural selection is simply unable to leave this to chance, without changing its name to "natural something or other". Reproduction is the only thing natural selection really cares about, and everything else is a means to that end. — Srap Tasmaner

This is using "natural selection" in two different ways. The "natural selection" for which we mean genetics leading to variations that lead to survival is one thing. But "natural selection" as simply a "strategy" (like certain stories that work) that work towards survival is different, and I think we should use a term like "cultural strategy" or something like that.

Look at it this way. Copulation doesn't always lead to reproduction, which is why it makes sense to say we can't have a reproducing instinct but only a sex instinct. — Srap Tasmaner

Again, I even question this. Pleasure feels good is about all we can say here. "Pleasure feels good so now I am going to X" can be culturally derived.

But natural selection is also responsible for the fact that sex is not, among us, guaranteed to result in reproduction. Why did it allow that? With a lot of other species, we see clear seasonality of reproducing, clear indicators of readiness (like, right now readiness) to reproduce, and so on. If we don't see that with Homo sapiens, that's what needs to be understood first. All natural selection can do is change the prevalence of alleles among offspring, it's all based on reproduction, and evidently at some point this version of hominid sexuality and thus reproduction won out. How did that happen and why? — Srap Tasmaner

I think you may not be counting for simple contingency. The cultural preference to direct ones pleasure "towards someone else" and the tropes that surround that just so happened to work in place of natural selection (as used in the biological sense).

I have no idea if there's evidence for any of this.

Still seems risky to me. Surely the chances of genetic drift are by definition higher where sexual behavior isn't selected for. Culture's good, but it's not as good as your genome. It seems like natural selection will just keep stepping back in to reward those with the instinct to knock boots, so long as there are any left. — Srap Tasmaner

Again, culture could have contingently been "good enough" to take the place of some naturally selected instinct.

To be a bit graphic for an analogy:
1) To have a bowel movement is natural.
2) To have a bowel movement feel vaguely "relieving" or "good" is natural
3) To have a bowel movement in a toilet bowl is cultural.

Never mind babies. In experiments with chimps (not to make unflattering comparisons) when a subject was either not rewarded or was rewarded with an inferior snack (a cucumber slice instead of an apple slice they stopped cooperating with the experimenter. Dogs were a little more forgiving. They cheated dog would stop cooperating if one dog was rewarded and they were not. If they each got a reward (even if one got meat and the other a cracker) they were satisfied.

The animal evidence suggests that some sort of "fairness standard" operates in some social mammals, at least.

It isn't just "turtles all the way down". It's a meatloaf of biology, evolution, and culture all the way down. This meatloaf is the mostly unobservable brain -- by unobservable, I mean I don't know what most of my brain is doing, never mind my knowing what your brain is doing. We just know that small conscious bit. I can scan your brain with a fMRI which tells me just about nothing about culture and evolution. — BC

I think I can agree with all or most of this and still retain it is mostly stories all the way down (in the case of humans). Babies also have an innate reflex to suckle and the "palmer reflex". However, these go away. And presumably emotions such as "fear" and something like fascination is innate. But yeah how that plays out when culture is such a huge factor, really is very hard to tell and can become something like a genetic fallacy for many ideas.

An otherwise culturally isolated homosexual community probably won't develop a black leather and chains fetish sub-group--unless there were some male motorcycle clubs around wearing hot looking black leather and chains. Probably won't cook up rainbow flags, either, or call one another 'miss thing'. — BC

:rofl:

Heterosexuality is not constructed either, but it is certainly culturally constructed. There is nothing essential and biological about the oft-cited Leave It To Beaver lifestyle of suburban living, (I never watched the show; we didn't have television at the time.). Suburban living was LITERALLY constructed. — BC

Definitely. But I asked an even more radical question in a post above. I'll just quote the whole post here though because you may have some comments:

Do you honestly think the proclivity to reproduce might not have been selected for? That it might be merely cultural?
— Srap Tasmaner

Reproduction is another complex scenario of biology interplaying with sociology and culture. There isn't a clean cut answer. How do you know the origins when there are so many variants of many reinforcing mechanisms feeding into each other?

Here is an example:

Someone grows up with culture reinforcing X, Y, Z traits as attractive markers. These are the things that should get your attention, in other words. This then becomes so reinforced that by the time of puberty, indeed the connections are already made that this is the kind of things that are generally attractive. Of course, right off the bat there is so much variability in people's personal preferences (beauty is in the eye of the beholder trope), but EVEN discounting that strong evidence, let's say there is a more-or-less common set of traits that attraction coalesces around. Again, how do we know that the attraction, or even ATTRACTION simplar (just being attracted to "something" not even a specific trait) is not simply playing off cultural markers that have been there in the culture since the person was born and raised? There is the trope in culture, "When I reach X age, I am supposed to be attracted to someone and pursue them or be pursued (or mutually pursue or whatever)".

Even a biological response (like be sexually aroused), may be culturally driven. Sexual arousal can come from a number of factors including simply hormone responses to stories. People get aroused by stories.. But stories are imaginative mental projections that one is doing. That is to say, all of this can be in some sense self-learned. People pick up cultural cues and then reimagine them in their heads such that attraction, sexual response, is all tied together in a narrative of how it is "supposed to play out". It is culture reinforcing itself, then the individuals taking it as just "natural".

So the bolded part is the "radical" part. So I guess your experiences (or memories of said experiences) might provide a counterexample. That is to say, when you were younger, you thought nothing of any of it but by puberty, you were attracted to men, and this wasn't the popular cultural trope, so it must be a natural instinct. But this is where we must be careful not to misconstrue my argument. I am not saying that preferences aren't somehow "innate" or at the least, "individual to the person", but rather attributing those preferences or even BEING ATTRACTED ITSELF as somehow selected for rather than a cultural thing. That is to say, the culture reinforces being attracted AT ALL to SOMETHING.

I'll get even MORE controversial. It is possible to get aroused and climax without any external stimuli. But by the time of puberty (not all but many) people pick up the habit of projecting (like a story!) onto a fantasy of SOMEONE or a proto-type of SOMEONE such that sexual arousal GETS ATTACHED to the constructed story of a particular type being the OBJECT for arousal. In other words (and this is now paralleling not deriving from Freud), a general sexuality becomes DIRECTED (by social and cultural cues) towards an SUBJECT (a person presumably) such that people then tie the two together AS IF they are ("innate"/"natural instinct") when in fact it was riffing off cultural cues all along.

Some of that may explain why we don't just lay down on on a busy sidewalk and go to sleep and similar things we don't do. — BC

Yet homeless learn to do it, and the ones that like the lifestyle prefer um, "urban camping" (and not saying all or most homeless people do of course).

I am pretty sure that questions like "who's in charge" was an issue. In other social animals, who is top chicken, top cow, top dog, top chimp is contested. That a social characteristic we seem to have inherited in spades. "Who does what" was, I suspect, also a recurring issue. I'm thinking less of gender roles here and more social status roles. Who gets the biggest hunk of meat, for instance. Who decides whether this or that rock outcropping makes a good place to stay for the night? — BC

But how can that really be parsed out beyond regular sociology? Look at the !Kung. They developed a system whereby they downplay the person who made the kill during the hunt so that they don't get any ideas of superiority. It is more of a signal that "we are all the same whether you directly contributed or not to the obtaining of meat". So perhaps feelings of justice and fairness are more innate. I'll give you that. But culture plays so much that even inborn ideas of justice (babies being pissed when you don't give them their deserved reward or something) can be quickly curbed such that maybe its more of a trait that is not even that significant. Again, all speculation, but it's all speculation, and that's my point. Because culture overlays so much on top of "innateness" it is almost impossible to extricate it. But beyond that point, perhaps there is nothing to extricate, as the content of our actions are self-projected stories all the way down ("turtles all the way down"). It's a self-aware, linguistic mechanism constantly reinforcing learned traits. So only much more general things like "language" and "social learning" can be gauged for selection and not "hierarchies of alphas" or "mating strategies", and complex behaviors such as these.

I don't think the paragraph above is a story. Though, why wouldn't Harari's story telling theory be an example of evolutionarily produced behavior? — BC

I guess let me clarify, the "ability to make up complex conceptual frameworks" might be evolutionarily evolved, but the specific "stories" within those frameworks, perhaps, were not, is what I am suggesting.

It seems reasonable to me that people would like landscapes more than, say, abstract expressionism, for the same reason that people tend to find parks with trees, grass, flowers, etc. more pleasant than the the most splendidly designed concrete plazas. — BC

Reminds me of E.O Wilson's theory of Biophilia.

Do you honestly think the proclivity to reproduce might not have been selected for? That it might be merely cultural? — Srap Tasmaner

Reproduction is another complex scenario of biology interplaying with sociology and culture. There isn't a clean cut answer. How do you know the origins when there are so many variants of many reinforcing mechanisms feeding into each other?

Here is an example:

Someone grows up with culture reinforcing X, Y, Z traits as attractive markers. These are the things that should get your attention, in other words. This then becomes so reinforced that by the time of puberty, indeed the connections are already made that this is the kind of things that are generally attractive. Of course, right off the bat there is so much variability in people's personal preferences (beauty is in the eye of the beholder trope), but EVEN discounting that strong evidence, let's say there is a more-or-less common set of traits that attraction coalesces around. Again, how do we know that the attraction, or even ATTRACTION simplar (just being attracted to "something" not even a specific trait) is not simply playing off cultural markers that have been there in the culture since the person was born and raised? There is the trope in culture, "When I reach X age, I am supposed to be attracted to someone and pursue them or be pursued (or mutually pursue or whatever)".

Even a biological response (like be sexually aroused), may be culturally driven. Sexual arousal can come from a number of factors including simply hormone responses to stories. People get aroused by stories.. But stories are imaginative mental projections that one is doing. That is to say, all of this can be in some sense self-learned. People pick up cultural cues and then reimagine them in their heads such that attraction, sexual response, is all tied together in a narrative of how it is "supposed to play out". It is culture reinforcing itself, then the individuals taking it as just "natural".

So the questionable part is not if human brains were directed by evolutionary forces. Rather, it is whether certain contents of our thoughts and supposed "motivations" for behaviors are somehow mostly shaped by evolutionary (biological) pressures. That is the EP (not lowercase "ep"). That is to say, everything from how we interact with friends, supposed mating strategies, how we are influenced or influence others, are all somehow based on some brain module/mechanism that is inbuilt from the pressures our ancestors faced. It is that stronger stance that I am questioning.

If you want a "foil" for some kind of alternative theory, it is clearly something akin to simply cultural development and how social dynamics (perhaps "social psychology" or even "sociology") plays out. I am thinking something akin to Yuval Noah Harari's theory of how "stories" often are how humans become motivated and give reasons for their actions. We create a narrative and buy into it, more-or-less. But this is all from a brain that has the ability to form language, has strong self-awareness, and clearly needs cultural and social inputs to get by. All of this itself, one can say was predisposed from brain substrates and mechanisms that were in place from evolutionary forces, but that is not necessarily the Evolutionary Psychology explanations I am discussing. No one is denying that psychology is shaped by a mind/brain that had certain selected factors. It is when complex behaviors are reduced to selected behaviors where the "just-so" stories come into play.

This does have broader significance. Because of our (human) self-awareness, we can create feedback loops that self-reinforce something we think we know. So if X trait is supposed to be some sort of selection factor, people act that way because that is what was supposedly selected for. Thus the behavior is not necessarily instinctual or natural, but reinforcing around the narrative they heard.

Changed title

I don't know much about the whole war over modularity, but I don't understand how lesion studies make any sense if the brain just gives us one big general intelligence. Some degree of modularity seems really obviously right. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure but isn't that basic cognitive psychology? Evolutionary psychology tries to go beyond that to how. With EP, it is basically trying to figure out what the earliest human environment looked like, and what could have taken place to shape our cognition and psychology based on these assumptions. It is reconstructing some kind of environmental conditions that our ancestors faced and conjecturing about that reconstruction, how it is that humans adapted to it or selected for it (assuming it was adaptation and not some other mechanism).

Just so we are on the same page. IEP breaks this down well:

In this broad sense, evolutionary psychology is a general field of inquiry that includes such diverse approaches as human behavioral ecology, memetics, dual-inheritance theory, and Evolutionary Psychology in the narrow sense. — IEP

So we are on the same page, I am using this as my definition of Evolutionary Psychology (in the narrow sense):

Evolutionary Psychology thus rests on a couple of key arguments and ideas: (1) The claim that the cognitive mechanisms that are underlying our behavior are adaptations. (2) The idea that they cannot be studied directly, for example, through observation of the brain or our overt behavior, but have to be discovered by means of a method known as “functional analysis,” where one starts with hypotheses about the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors, and then tries to infer the cognitive adaptations that must have evolved to solve them. (3) The claim that these cognitive mechanisms are adaptations not for solving problems prevalent in our modern environment, but for solving recurrent adaptive problems in the evolutionary environment of our ancestors. (4) The idea that our mind is a complex set of such cognitive mechanisms, or domain-specific modules. (5) The claim that these modules define who we are, in the sense that they define our universal human nature and ultimately trump any individual, cultural or societal differences. — IEP

It's funny how often this is levied. You opened a thread dismissing an entire field of enquiry on the basis of some stuff you reckon about it. In what way do you think that is 'respectful' to the decades of work those researchers have put in to their study. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to produce a paper for publication? And it takes that much work because we spend a considerable amount of time checking sources, checking methodological commitments and ensuring the results are meaningful. Of course we fail at that a lot of the time, but doing so shows a damn sight more 'respect' for our reader's intelligence than the sorts of posts we so frequently see here thinking they've dismantled the whole thing from their armchair... because philosophy. — Isaac

Yawn. I don’t care about righteous indignation. The question is the question. Deal or go away.

In the case of human behavior, what if we don't assume it's all cultural, but consider that maybe a great many facets of our lives make perfect sense if you remember to think of as animals first and foremost and expect that to be more than sort of the bare substrate upon which we grow our rich and marvelous cultural lives. — Srap Tasmaner

We can do that. I am not saying we shouldn't, but it is a competing idea amongst many, so this is more a critique as to how efficacious it is in this endeavor. So I think it is helpful to delineate two kinds of "evolutionary psychology". There is Evolutionary Psychology and evolutionary psychology. The capitalized "EP" is to highlight that it is a more thoroughly modular approach. All sorts of behaviors are thus studied to see if they somehow have a correlate to some evolutionary trait. Lowercase "ep", recognizes that of course the brain is an organ shaped by evolutionary forces, but that it is more general. And these general processing components then have a much less defined way of shaping behaviors and thought-patterns. Rather, the farther up the limbic system to the neocortex, it is more about plasticity, learning, individual variation and preferences, and cultural markers, etc.

Perhaps the mirror neuron system was coopted to imitate tool use, and this then got exapted for use in language acquisition, and then the need for long distance communication selected for the FoxP2 gene to be used in vocal communication.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440963/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00698/full
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15301747/

No it isn't. A newspaper article isn't a source in an attempt to undermine an entire academic field of enquiry - not even close. — Isaac

Yes it is plus infinity! As I said, it's a suitable "jumping off point", then provided more.

I’m discussing it on a casual philosophy forum. Know your forum bruh.

Rather than reprimanding someone for questioning evolutionary psychology, it is more productive to engage in respectful and constructive discussion. Fir

I apolgise, I must have missed it. Which of the sources have you tackled? I've scanned back through the posts but can't see a reference. — Isaac

The New Yorker article is a good jumping off point from which I quoted heavily. Thanks Wayfarer. The Wikipedia article itself had some good ones.

You can trash the sources, but then you are simply circling the topic and not engaging it. Posturing, trolling, whathaveyou. Your elitism isn't a defense. The field has always had these criticisms. No, this isn't on the level of genetics, molecular biology, atomic physics, etc. It's a particularly sticky topic because it assumes a framework that may not be the case (biologically adapted rather than sociocultural, or even where the delineation or combination would start or end etc.).

You can either engage with the topic or don't.
Sorry for calling you a nitwit. Rather, you are just condescending :razz:. You clearly know how to do this well, so that would not be a nitwit.

Hence the four quotes I selected from your OP. All are theories about human nature. Presumably you're not claiming you were born with that knowledge (that would automatically undermine your position about cultural acquisition), nor, I assume, are you claiming you acquired it by divine revelation?

So how did you come by it? Observation, and testing.

So you've answered your own question. — Isaac

Observation and testing doesn't prove it is right. This is notoriously fallacious thinking in the social science fields. The assumptions prior to testing, the test subjects, the conclusions can all be up for interpretation. Going through the motions of testing does not confer divine truth to the project. Departments can also simultaneously reinforce arbitrary assumptions and/or have diverging assumptions, making the initial assumptions questionable.

Besides which, as I bolded in the quote laid out nicely by the New Yorker:

Joseph Henrich and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia concluded recently that U.S. college kids are “one of the worst subpopulations one could study” when it comes to generalizing about human psychology. Their main appeal to evolutionary psychologists is that they’re readily available. Man’s closest relatives are all long extinct; breeding experiments on humans aren’t allowed (they would take far too long, anyway); and the mental life of our ancestors left few fossils. — Gottlieb

That is to say, most of the empirical markers are not amenable to observation or experimentation.

Now, finally, you conflate two things from my OP. I am NOT saying "so LeTs CaNceL EvoPsycholgy".. Rather, I am just questioning its usefulness in determining human nature. You seem to think I am making that point. I am not.

Just from this article alone, we get these criticisms (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-psychology/#MasModHyp):

Arguments against evolutionary psychology

Over-attribution of adaptations based on apparent design:

Critics argue that evolutionary psychologists often rely on apparent design to explain adaptations, leading to the creation of "just-so stories."
Gould and Lewontin (1979) expressed concerns about explaining apparent design solely through adaptation, and Williams (1966) cautioned against excessive attribution of adaptation as an explanation for biological traits.

Ignoring alternative evolutionary processes:

Elizabeth Lloyd (1999) derives a criticism from Gould and Lewontin's views on sociobiology, highlighting how adaptationism in evolutionary psychology overlooks alternative evolutionary processes.

Buller (2005) argues that evolutionary psychologists excessively emphasize design and assume that evolution is finished for the traits they study, instead of recognizing ongoing evolutionary changes.

Misconception of adaptations and variation:

Evolutionary psychologists assume that adaptations are universal, unvarying traits, while genetic variants are considered evolutionary noise with little adaptive significance.
This constrained notion of adaptation fails to acknowledge that adaptations can still exhibit variation and be subject to ongoing selection.

Different types of adaptationism:

Philosophers of biology have proposed various types of adaptationism, including Godfrey-Smith's "explanatory adaptationism."

Explanatory adaptationism aims to address questions about apparent design in nature and distinguishes evolutionary psychology from creationism or intelligent design but doesn't provide clear constraints on evolutionary explanations.

Flawed method of testing:

Evolutionary psychologists often rely on cross-cultural psychological tests to support their view that universally distributed traits are adaptations.

Critics argue that this method is flawed since the presence of a trait across cultures doesn't necessarily prove it is an adaptation but neglects the wider scope of evolution as defended by philosophers of biology.

Insufficient consideration of alternate hypotheses:

Critics argue that evolutionary psychologists give insufficient weight to alternate hypotheses that can explain the data as well or better than their preferred hypotheses.

Buller (2005) highlights the importance of introducing alternate hypotheses, such as assortative mating by status, which may better account for certain mate selection data than high-status preference hypotheses.

Evolutionary psychology conceptually is perfectly fine. The general idea that we have psychological features that were developed in response to environmental pressures, like any other features we have, makes perfect intuitive sense.

But beyond the general idea of it, it seems very speculative, and it seems inherently so - I don't see a path out of the speculation for most hypotheses in the evo-psych realm.

I think that pretty much sums up what I think of evo psych - the basic tenet of it is pretty much obviously true, but any specific hypothesis is probably untestable, unverifiable, unsatisfiable. — flannel jesus

Yes, these are my thoughts on it too. Pretty much summarized it. :up:

I don't even like evolutionary psychology that much, but I like less lazy hack jobs that purport to take down an entire field of investigation because you've had a bit of think about it and reached your own conclusions (in that exact field no less) without having done a shred of research beyond a misunderstanding of a Wikipedia article.

It seems your beef with evolutionary psychology amounts to little more than that it reaches conclusions that "don't seem right" to you. Well put your big boy boots on, read the material and engage with the criticism. — Isaac

I am you trolling nitwit. Read my other posts. If you want to make an argument instead of troll me then do so. Otherwise, you’re a hack of a hack. An internet troll who knows how to be condescending. Congrats, you passed “Internet 101”.

But is it [ human behavior? ] amenable to science is the question.
— schopenhauer1

But that is exactly the endless debate about consciousness here. — Srap Tasmaner

The exact nature of the evolved traits (what its origins are), and its attributions. See my post above:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/823047

Probably evolved capacities. — BC

Sure, possibly exaptations that were then coopted as adaptations. But this is so general that it really doesn't touch the realm of evopsych.

Neurobiological research does not support the assumption by evolutionary psychologists that higher-level systems in the neocortex responsible for complex functions are massively modular.[23][24] Peters (2013) cites neurological research showing that higher-order neocortical areas can become functionally specialized by way of synaptic plasticity and the experience-dependent changes that take place at the synapse during learning and memory. As a result of experience and learning processes the developed brain can look modular although it is not necessarily innately modular.[23] However, Klasios (2014) responds to Peters' critique.[25] — Criticism of Evolutionary Psychology Wiki

Noam Chomsky argued:

"You find that people cooperate, you say, 'Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.' You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that's obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."[43][44] — Chomsky

Steve Stewart-Williams argues, in response to claims that evolutionary psychology hypotheses are unfalsifiable, that such claims are logically incoherent. Stewart-Williams argues that if evolutionary psychology hypotheses can't be falsified, then neither could competing explanations, because if alternative explanations (e.g. sociocultural hypotheses) were proven true, this would automatically falsify the competing evolutionary psychology hypothesis, so for competing explanations to be true, then evolutionary psychology hypothesis must be false and thus falsifiable.[48] — Wiki