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

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. — schopenhauer1

I'll just focus on this, because I don't have a handle on how you understand evolution by natural selection.

The word missing here in your critique is "reproduction". Survival, for natural selection, is enough survival to reproduce at least as much as everyone else. Adaptation is enough adaptation to survive enough to reproduce at least as much as everyone else.

Reproduction is the thing. No reproduction, no natural selection.

Hence my claim that if reproduction becomes too chancy in a population, those for whom it is still as close to a sure thing as natural selection can make it will be rewarded in subsequent generations. This is not a hard one for natural selection, and as many times as it has to fix a population's relative disinclination to reproduce, it will. That's all it does.

And as I said, we have to look at what's apparently left to chance in human sexuality in this light. There may be very, very good reasons humans reproduce the way they do, unpredictably (per occasion) and at any time, not seasonally. If not, if it's something that just happened -- came along for the ride when some other features or behaviors won out -- natural selection will work with what it's got to ensure reproduction.

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.

I think the problem with much of this, is that we look to evolutionary theory as a philosophy, which it isn't. Many 20th C philosophers regard evolutionary biology as a kind of procrustean bed, to which all other philosophical ideas must be conformed. But it is a biological theory intended to account for the evolution of species, not actually an epistemology or a metaphysics. But because it is assumed to be so, it smuggles in a good many naturalistic assumptions that have no grounding in what used to be understood as first philosophy.

There's that nice expression that evolution is driven by the four F's - feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproduction. None of that encompasses one of the very most basic attributes of h. sapiens: to ask why. Why are we doing all this? Why should we continue to reproduce? Plainly there's a small but significant coterie within the human population who consciously decides not to. Why on earth not? Makes no sense! :chin:

Mary Midgley (not one of Richard Dawkins' favourite philosophers) has a good book on this, Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears. It's part of the larger overall trend of treating science as religion, as being the source of normative judgement as to how we should live.

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: — schopenhauer1

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.

We have a batch of drives from the most basic -- hunger, thirst, sex -- on to more complex ones: comfort, security, mental stimulation, touch, expression, love, freedom of movement (nothing political meant here)... various people have drawn up lists, like Maslow. hunger and eating are biologically driven; what we eat, where, when, how, and with whom is culturally defined. 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.

And so on and so forth,

It's clear you didn't — schopenhauer1

but I did my best.

Have a nice day.

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.

various people have drawn up lists, like Maslow. — BC

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

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.

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.

I beg to differ as reproduction is not a "physiological need". — schopenhauer1

I think the pleasure associated with sex is rooted in evolutionary physiology. it is natural that the reproductive urge harness all the pleasure centres in seeking to express itself. Humans, uniquely, are then able to detach the associated pleasure from its biological origin and pursue it for its own sake (although there are accounts of eroticism in other species, famously bonobos.)

The ability to attribute a reproducible observation to culture vs genetics (innate) for armchair observers, such as ourselves (as nonprofessionals in the field) is perhaps asking more than we can reasonably provide. But no matter, if we can successfully use our understanding based on our experience, (since we only interact with others within our broader culture), it doesn't matter if the "universality" of our understanding is limited to everyone we know or applies to all humans who have every lived.

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

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.

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.

culture could have contingently been "good enough" to take the place of some naturally selected instinct. — schopenhauer1

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

For culture to take the place either of genes that more or less directly drive reproductive behavior, or of genes that at least drive sexual behavior because that's how we reproduce, 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.

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.

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'?

That's all assuming a culture that is at least as sex-positive as the procreative genes. If it's not, it's a non starter.

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.

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!

Added more

it SEEMS like there must be an evolutionarily biological reason for why we direct our pleasure towards someone else. — schopenhauer1

Seems, Sir? Nay, it's a necessity. Were this abstracted atomized pleasure all that was necessary, evolution would have never got off the ground and we'd all be single-celled prokaryotes instead of multi-celled eukaryotes.

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.

However, "seeking out a mate" is a trope. — schopenhauer1

Baloney.

I don't know exactly why, but some people seem to like EP and some people don't. Both can find justifications for their preference.

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.

This is called "moving the goal posts". — schopenhauer1

It's not.

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. — schopenhauer1

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.

you seem to make natural selection some kind of goal-oriented process — schopenhauer1

I've gone out of my way not to use the usual personifying and teleological language just to avoid this kind of crap. I allowed myself a colorful turn of phrase describing something that does not happen and you make an issue of it, the same way you accused me of strawmanning because I said "one day we do x, the next we don't," as if I were suggesting your claim was that it happened one night a million years ago.

It's childish.

I don't have to explain how we got rid of them. — schopenhauer1

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

But there's every reason to assume procreative behavior is wired into all living things, and that's going to include our ancestors. And I can't see any mechanism by which that changes just because we start telling stories and making pots.

So tying it back to sex, pleasure feels good. — schopenhauer1

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

And then it just happens that sex is pleasurable and therefore feels good, like a lot of things do. Purest happenstance.

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?

But you might say, "Aha! See marriage is thus evolutionarily evolved from genes". — schopenhauer1

I can't see any scenario in which I say that.

Seems, Sir? Nay, it's a necessity. Were this abstracted atomized pleasure all that was necessary, evolution would have never got off the ground and we'd all be single-celled prokaryotes instead of multi-celled eukaryotes. — BC

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.)

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.

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.

to show that I just have to show culture as a viable and more plausible theory — schopenhauer1

And what is it in your story-telling so far that you think has given any measure of relative plausibility?

We all seem to agree that our drive to have sex was innate prior to the development of language, you now ask us to consider two options for what happened next;

1. It remained that way
2. Culture took over the job replacing it almost like for like with an identical acculturated desire whilst at the same time the original innate desire disappeared.

Demonstrating that (2) is possible is not the same as demonstrating that (2) is even likely, let alone something we ought accept over and above (1).

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.

It's childish.
— Srap Tasmaner

Yet you are the one seeming to start it. — schopenhauer1

Perfect.

Again, the tropes are there before anyone’s individual experience. — schopenhauer1

What do you think you're saying here?

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. — schopenhauer1

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.

what happened next — 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.

This thread needs a shout out to those Australian beetles that keep trying to hump glossy brown beer bottles, the poor devils. For their sake, let's hope there's an allele for a slightly more sophisticated mate selection process.

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.

Let's imagine there was a world whereby sex was unknown. — schopenhauer1

I'm gonna stop you right there ...

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)". — schopenhauer1

Cross cultural studies have been done

[PDF]Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures