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.

thoughtful
adjective
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/ˈθɔːt.fəl/ us
/ˈθɑːt.fəl/
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B2
carefully considering things:
He has a thoughtful approach to his work.

long
adjective
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/lɒŋ/ us
/lɑːŋ/
long adjective (TIME)
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A1
continuing for a large amount of time:
a long film/meeting
I've been waiting a long time.
It's a long time since I worked there.
Apparently the sessions are an hour long.


To alleviate any confusion.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

It was giving a counter example- one based on culture. — schopenhauer1

That's not a counter-example, it's an alternative description.

And you continue to ignore the argument I've presented, in detail, that the description you give, whatever its merits may be, cannot at any point be apt. You just keep saying that it could be culture, or you think it is culture, 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.)

Where did they get the idea of mating? It’s not an innate concept. — schopenhauer1

We disagree on this. You think it's cultural; I think it's innate behavior -- a product NOT of our development as Homo sapiens, but the product of vertebrate evolution. To borrow a phrase from Dylan Thomas, it's "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower", applied to animals.

"Doing what comes naturally" doesn't mean doing it well, gracefully, or appropriately. There is a learning curve on the way to doing it well. What constitutes "doing it well" is a cultural matter. A stiff dick doesn't concern itself with "goodness" "grace", "propriety" or much else. Again, it's society's role to keep stiff dicks under control.

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?

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

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.

You simply fall into making a false analogy. Other animals don't have the kind of language and cultural transmission that we do. — schopenhauer1

What I specifically argued was that the transition from genetically driven reproductive behavior to culturally driven reproductive behavior is unlikely, unmotivated, and inexplicable.

It's the transition.

Unless you intend to deny that the reproductive behavior of our distant ancestors was genetically driven.

But if it was, I don't see how the transition to culturally driven reproduction behavior is even possible. That's not to say that culture isn't layered on top of biology, of course it is, in all sorts of ways that both encourage and discourage mating.

But if there's no actual selection pressure against the procreative genes, they're not going anywhere. And if biology is already guaranteeing reproductive behavior, there is no purpose served by a cultural construction driving it.

What we do see is cultural constructions trying to control it, direct it, prevent it, encourage it, assign it various social roles, assign it meaning, on and on and on. But the behavior itself goes on whether culture tries to put it to use or not.

It's the transition I argued makes no sense.

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.

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. — schopenhauer1

If you seek to deny that sex in humans has a biological, instinctive basis shared with animals then you are promoting an absurdity. Sexual desire is unquestionably hormone driven as is evidenced by observing teenagers. It is also basically oriented towards others which is evidenced by the fact that even masturbation is usually accompanied by fantasy or porn. Your viewpoint is one-dimensional, sex is a mutli-layered phenomenon in humans.

Please read the discussions this far before ranting at me.

I have read the discussion thus far. It wasn't a rant, it was pointing out things which are obvious and not in the least controversial.

Your viewpoint is one-dimensional if you deny that there is a basic instinctive, biological other-oriented aspect of human sexuality. Do you deny that?

I don't deny there are cultural overlays; it's not a matter of "either/or".

Let's imagine there was a world whereby sex was unknown. All people knew was self-pleasuring..... The telling part is the cultural part. It is shared diffusion of information that otherwise would be unknown. — schopenhauer1

Certainly there is diffusion of information in society. The need to eat isn't "knowledge" but WHAT can safely be eaten certainly is. Trial and error, repeated naively over and over, leads to dozens of dead diners.

We can agree on that much. Sex? Maybe not.

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. — schopenhauer1

Yes, this is all socially constructed. Showing up at the cave of one's love object with a haunch of deer, as an inducement to adjourn to a pleasant thicket in the woods, is the distant antecedent of showing up in at his steady's house in his father's new Chevy with a box of candy and plans to see Beach Blanket Bingo--and who knows what afterwards.

More social construction.

But what is likely to happen in the back seat of the Chevy doesn't need to be taught.

We disagree on this. That's fine. Disagreeing with EP doesn't make you a second class citizen, and you won't be arrested for thought crimes. Jesus loves the social constructionist about as much as he loves the evolutionary psychologist--which is not that much. Both of them will deny his grandmother's immaculate conception of his mother and Mary's perpetual virginity. Actually, Jesus doesn't care that much either way, but Saints Elizabeth and Mary are very dogmatic about it.

And, you might ask, WHY WHY WHY did immaculate conceptions and virgin births happen anyway? Well, it happened because these two people (Liz and Mary) were from that society where people just pleasure themselves, and hadn't heard the Gospel of S*E*X. They had apparently not been enlightened by any of the smart serpents one always finds slithering around, about the good work of a stiff dick. When the angel Gabriel explained to Liz and Mary how sex worked, they were horrified. So it was that Gabriel had to settle for the hocus hocus miracle method of reproduction rather than the usual down and dirty method that God invented for us and that Gabriel was looking forward to. The two hysterics stopped yammering and were duly impregnated in the most unlikely of ways.

Sometime later Jesus was born and we have no record of his pleasuring himself or anyone else. I suppose he, as a diety, could just imagine having sex with the entire human race at one time. Actual sex for the gods is sort of beside the point.

But I digress.

Your viewpoint is one-dimensional if you deny that there is a basic instinctive, biological other-oriented aspect of human sexuality. Do you deny that?

I don't deny there are cultural overlays; it's not a matter of "either/or". — Janus

My first part of the response stands, that it is almost impossible to tell without an experiment such as one where an isolated group of humans grows up without any prior knowledge of sexuality. So, you'd have to see how that turns out.

However, it would not seem implausible, indeed, possibly very likely, that other-oriented sexuality is largely (maybe almost fully) from encouragement from learned experience. Pleasure is not in question. That is clearly something that is physiological. How it is directed is cultural. There may be a case of "independent learning" over and over. But generally, our brains are wired to pick up information quickly from our environment and then integrate it as if it was habit.

It would have to be a serious emergency to go to the bathroom anywhere other than a toilet in "civilized" society (not camping or living remote location). That is to say, you were trained that bodily fluids and waste goes into a certain kind of receptacle. It seems pretty natural at this point. It's so natural that it is basically a habit or "habit of thought" that is a habit in behavior.

And a lot of what we tend to do when analogizing with other animals seems just misguided. Other animals have more if/then routes to reproduction. There has to be a time of year, things like this. You might even try to analogize to what birds do when they see a mating dance or the other bird display colors and objects or whatnot. Although there seems like an element of "discernment' going on. The discernment is more like a computer program where the right inputs were put in place and again, more if/then.

The habit is cultivated to become as if it is if/then, but that's not what's going on. When your shoe lace is untied, eventually you tie it. But that's not because you have a mechanism to tie your shoe inbuilt into you. You have a learning experience early on built into you and it is now habitual.

There is no inbuilt mechanism in humans whereby an erection means that that erection goes into a specific location. It's funny to think about, but it's true. There is no time of the season, no if/then module, no nothing like that. Just very early understanding of the cultural artifice that also gets hard-wired early on.

And every proof you give will probably be ones whereby cultural preferences and exposure was still there (yes very early on!) for that behavior to manifest that way. We are not "reinventing the wheel" over and over by ideas of attraction, romance, courting, love, etc. It is also conceptual because we cannot but help but parse the world conceptually. And that is indeed socio-cultural.

However, it would not seem implausible, indeed, possibly very likely, that other-oriented sexuality is largely (maybe almost fully) from encouragement from learned experience. — schopenhauer1

Plausibility is the whole issue since we cannot know for certain, obviously. But everything we know about animal sexuality and the endocrinal and social nature of human sexuality makes it overwhelmingly plausible, in my view, that human sexuality has always been basically instinctive, with obvious socio-cultural overlays.

Of course, plausibility is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, so I don't expect you to agree with me. I will say, though, that we all have tendencies to indulge in confirmation bias in areas that have emotional significance to us, so it pays to examine and critique yourself and try to see whether you have other motives for wanting to believe whatever it is you believe.

I cannot find any motive in myself that would cause me to want to believe in the instinctive nature of sexuality; it wouldn't matter to me if it turned out that human sexuality is entirely socially constructed, I just don't believe it is.

There is no inbuilt mechanism in humans whereby an erection means that that erection goes into a specific location. — schopenhauer1

This is a silly argument. People with erections want them to go to specific locations; the erection itself is not a disembodied object that could have some kind of imperative motive force like the needle of a compass. Sexuality is not just the erection or vagina or anus or whatever but involves the whole body, the whole person.

Physical attraction is inexplicable: why do I desire one person who may be far less attractive by conventional standards than another person I have no physical attraction to? There is evidence that it can have something to do with pheromones, with how people smell: how could that be socio-culturally conditioned?

Seems like there's a presupposition at work here. Some seem to have presupposed that humans have transitioned from reproduction as an innate biological drive to something that is not... something called "cultural" or some such.

Well, seems perfectly clear to me that human reproduction has evolved over time, and that in doing so has been influenced by social, familial, and cultural mores. It's still innate and biological. It's not like there's a problem of mutual exclusivity here... is there?

What am I missing?

Plausibility is the whole issue since we cannot know for certain, obviously. But everything we know about animal sexuality and the endocrinal and social nature of human sexuality makes it overwhelmingly plausible, in my view, that human sexuality has always been basically instinctive, with obvious socio-cultural overlays. — Janus

It's still innate and biological. It's not like there's a problem of mutual exclusivity here... is there?

What am I missing? — creativesoul

No one disputes that the physical pleasure aspect is biological. I guess let's step back. What are we going to define as biological versus cultural? Any physical act has a physiological aspect to it. But that's not what we mean here. We are looking at the artifice whereby one directs their sexual energy towards another person.

Well, anything can become fetishized. A naked body alone, doesn't make something attractive to someone. Obviously, in tribal societies, this proves itself so. It's just seen as perfectly normal daily life to be naked in those societies, and that is not sexual. So what I'm saying is it's an idea before anything else. There are individual preferences, but that doesn't speak to it being "inbuilt" any more than someone's proclivity for vanilla versus chocolate is. And even if it is, that would be pretty hard to prove what genetic artifice is making it so. Meaning, It would be hard to prove in some sort of "prediction" for what someone will like better. In fact, children who might like vanilla whilst young might go for the edgier chocolate when older. Etc. Palates change with experience and context.

So attraction, and being turned on by something does indeed happen, but it's hard to extricate it from cultural markers. Is it that sexiness is a definite thing, or is sexiness generated and then made as if it is an innate thing? Notice, that functionally speaking you get similar results.

Sometimes the narrative becomes the reality. In fact, in humans it is largely how we get by.

We are looking at the artifice whereby one directs their sexual energy towards another person. — schopenhauer1

It's not "artifice" it's desire.

There are individual preferences, but that doesn't speak to it being "inbuilt" any more than someone's proclivity for vanilla versus chocolate is. — schopenhauer1

Bad analogy...we don't try a whole lot of types of sexual partners and then decide that we like some types and dislike others, as we do with food.

There are no "cultural markers" for my taste in women, no "type pattern" as to which women turn me on and which don't.

It's not "artifice" it's desire. — Janus

Cars aren't in our genes either, but people often desire them, and for various reasons. People desire all sorts of weird and wacky things. Just keep listing things off that are more absurd and arbitrary, that are harder and harder to tie to some "real" desire that the car represents and is somehow genetic (which I am saying it isn't).

Bad analogy...we don't try a whole lot of types of sexual partners and then decide that we like some types and dislike others, as we do with food. — Janus

The analogy isn't that all these types are tried out in both, but that "personal preference" for why something tastes good / is desirable can't really be used to support some genetic theory or at least, is a wash, and doesn't tell us much either way.

There are no "cultural markers" for my taste in women, no "type pattern" as to which women turn me on and which don't. — Janus

By cultural markers, simply desiring at all is in the culture before you were born. Even celibate societies are defined a lot of the time, by what they are not, so it is in the culture as the taboo contra of what is going on in that society. It is not completely "unknown".

The analogy isn't that all these types are tried out in both, but that "personal preference" for why something tastes good / is desirable can't really be used to support some genetic theory or at least, is a wash, and doesn't tell us much either way. — schopenhauer1

It's not "some genetic theory" it's simply genetic diversity; even my dogs have different preferences for various foods.

In any case, I think the evidence points to the idea that human sexuality is inherently other-directed, as we are in general; we desire the company of others, and we enjoy being able to be physically intimate with those others who awaken that desire within us. We are not so different from other social animals.

Also we produce gametes and have specific organs for delivering and receiving those, and those organs respond to arousal in particular ways to facilitate that transfer, ... There are a thousand ways in which we are designed to reproduce and the idea is that all of this is maintained down through the generations but that so far as natural selection is concerned it just gives you the wherewithal to reproduce but leaves the rest entirely up to you and your culture, the actual behavior part, actually putting your elaborate sexual toolkit to some use, responding to those hormones flooding your system, making some babies -- nope, natural selection has had no effect. It builds your reproducing body just on the off chance that you might choose to.

It seems you are saying that the reproduction part (given safe and effective contraceptive and/ or abortive methods) is optional, not necessarily the driver, and if so, I agree. I have never actively wanted or sought to have children, but both of my ex-wives became pregnant when on the pill. In both cases, at first, I thought they had forgotten to take it "accidentally on purpose" but it turned out that neither wanted to give birth and they chose to terminate, even though I was in favour of proceeding once it had become a "fait accompli". I felt the decision was up to them, since they would have had to carry and give birth to the child. Nowadays, looking back, I'm glad how it went down.

It seems you are saying that the reproduction part (given safe and effective contraceptive and/ or abortive methods) is optional — Janus

No, the opposite.

Natural selection is clearly able to select for behavior as well as physical traits, at least by tweaking the endocrine system, and it's generally accepted that among all other animals there is something amounting to an instinct to engage in sex at the time and in the way required for sex to lead to reproduction, and I find it absurd to think we are any different. (And if our ancestors were like other animals, natural selection would keep us that way.)

Of course we're not compelled to reproduce, but our sexual characteristics and sexual behaviours were selected for because they lead to reproduction. That's how natural selection works. If there's one thing natural selection is not going to fuck up, it's this.

I think we are addressing different questions. I agree that sexual activity in animals is, and has been, driven by reproduction on account of natural selection. My point was that with the advent of more effective contraception the reproduction and the desire for sex are separable. It seems likely that some have an instinctive desire for children and others not.