Great article.  There is a similar set of approaches in my own field (anthropology, that go by a variety of names, most commonly Human Behavioral Ecology.  All of the same problems beset it and their explanations always end up “plausible” just-so stories without any concrete evidence.  Most importantly, much or most of the behaviors they are trying to document simply do not fossilize and even the traces they leave are ambiguous and difficult to analyze.  For our purposes, gender simply does not fossilize, though gender systems do leave some traces.  The fact is that we know absolutely nothing about paleolithic gender systems or the division of labor.  There is reasonable evidence that a division of labor existed at least from the emergence of fully modern humans 1-200,000 years ago, but no direct evidence as to who was doing what.

All of these flaws with the sociobiological paradigm and its modern descendants were abundantly clear back when I was in graduate school in the late 70s (we laughed at them in the graduate theory seminar).  The only real difference between them and the modern versions is that they have backed off the more extreme claims of the earlier versions.  Their case was perhaps not helped by the fact that the seminal work on sociobiology in anthropology was the Imperial Animal edited by Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox (I am NOT kidding).

I recall being one of the people who has ridden your ass about this in the past, but I’m coming more and more around to your view. This SciAm article is really compelling, and its good to know that there is a legitimate effort to genuinely explain the evolution of human behavior without recourse to status-quo-affirming just-so stories with no evidentiary basis.

Humans evolved, and we can’t be the only creature on Earth for whom evolution did not influence behavior. Nonetheless, it’s dismaying to see how Pinker et al. can stretch the available evidence.

I’m glad to see evopsych getting some (deservedly critical) mainstream attention. I was rather disheartened to see it trumpeted as a refreshing blast of truth by one of the Rational Responders. Pull quote: sexual harassment isn’t sexist.

Humans evolved, and we can’t be the only creature on Earth for whom evolution did not influence behavior.

The available evidence indicates that it did evolve - toward greater behavioral plasticity and variability, as well as greater hormonal/instinctual emancipation.

So I know it’s been out for a long time, but I just recently read Natalie Angiers’ Woman: An Intimate Geography. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on evo psych. @ Chet ... If you haven’t read it, you might want to check it out. She doesn’t dispute the idea that evolution influences behavior, but she goes through a lot of monkey and primate behavior as well as what we can surmise about early human behavior from the hunter-gatherer societies that still exist and basically shows that the range of behaviors that evolutionary forces have to work with is way, way, way broader and more varied than most evo psych hacks would have you believe. She also demonstrates very convincingly (to me) that even among our close primate relatives, both males and females pursue a range of reproductive strategties, all of which lead to some success for some members. It’s not as simple as the male fucks as many females as he can cajole or force and the female looks for a good provider who can beat up the other males and then never looks elsewhere.

we can’t be the only creature on Earth for whom evolution did not influence behavior.

When I was a kid, I watched my aunt’s cat capture a mouse and bring it in to her kittens, then teach them how to hunt and trap it.  That’s a common cat behaviour:  obviously they have some sort of inborn urge to hunt but they also have to be shown how to do it or they won’t know.

If humans aren’t more advanced than housecats, what are?

The evo-psych fanboys remind me of Creationists in the way they stubbornly cling to their beliefs and refuse to acknowledge any arguments or data that contradict their claims.  Take a gander at the kneejerk hostility in some of the comments to Buller’s article.  It’s similar to fundies when someone finds a contradiction in the Bible.

If humans aren’t more advanced than housecats, what are?

OTOH, along with chimps and pandas, H. sapiens is one of the few creatures that must <u>learn</u> reproductive behavior, it doesn’t come naturally as it does for everything from arachnids to zebras.

we can’t be the only creature on Earth for whom evolution did not influence behavior.

The Earth was only created 4032 years ago, so there was no “evolution” to influence behavior.  Pick up the Bible and read it sometime, you might learn something.

she goes through a lot of monkey and primate behavior as well

From what I understand, in every mammal species where the male is much larger than the female, males physically battle each other for possession of females.  Well, an average man is about 3-4 times as strong as an average women, yet have you ever seen two men fight each other for the right to “own” a woman?

Evo psych sucks.

David J. Buller is a philosopher rather than a scientist.  Here is a good Amazon review of his book:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2LLKTK71UHT4O/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

n every mammal species where the male is much larger than the female, males physically battle each other for possession of females

A high degree in morphological sexual dimorphism (differences in body size) is generally associated with “harem keeping” behaviors by male mammals.  Human males are about 12% larger than females (and no where near 3-4 times as strong - the differences there are also rather small).  Male gorillas, a harem keeping species, are twice as large as females.  Among chimpanzees and bonobos, characterized by very high degrees of female promiscuity, there is virtually no difference in body size between the sexes.  Humans are much closer to chimps and bonobos in every regard (some biologists argue we all belong in the same genus).

“The Earth was only created 4032 years ago”

4037 years, you heretic bastard.

“Human males are about 12% larger than females”

Are you sure about that?  Also, don’t men have a higher percentage of weight as muscle than women?

Are you sure about that?  Also, don’t men have a higher percentage of weight as muscle than women?

Positive as it is part of my Introduction to Anthropology lectures for the last decade or so.  Men, on average, have more muscle mass than females which is a product of higher testosterone levels (testosterone is the original “performance enhancing” steroid.  The others are refinements of it).  The difference is, however, relatively small.  It is important to note that on almost any biological measure male and female humans differ primarily in the central tendency (average) and extremes, but have largely overlapping normal ranges.  The shortest normal woman will be shorter than the shortest normal man and the tallest normal man is taller than the tallest normal woman.  On the other hand the normal range for women easily encompasses the average for males (and the reverse is true).  Our women basketball players, who are within the normal range, tower over me and I am slightly over average height for men.  Muscle mass is also a function of exercise.

Dr. Dick- I’m curious what is your opinion of Marvin Harris and cultural materialism? I’m a big fan of his, but have only a couple of basic anthro courses under my belt.

Evolutionary psychology in toto?

Large parts of it are probably wrong.

The idea that humans and their behaviors aren’t influenced by their evolutionary and genetic past?

Equally idiotic.

When I was a kid, I watched my aunt’s cat capture a mouse and bring it in to her kittens, then teach them how to hunt and trap it.  That’s a common cat behaviour:  obviously they have some sort of inborn urge to hunt but they also have to be shown how to do it or they won’t know.

If your cat brings you half-dead prey as a gift, they’re essentially telling you, “You know, I’m not going to be around forever, and you’re gonna have to learn to feed yourself.  Practice on this.”

If they bring you nothing but all-dead prey, they may consider you so hopelessly stupid that your only hope is for them to keep providing for you.  Lord knows my cats do.  (Though they never see “prey” larger than a spider, what with being indoor cats and all.)

Evolutionary psychology does have its benefits…

In other animals.  In things like tool-using and approaches to adaptations to new environment by learning new tricks.

It’s just not appropriate for humans—in the sense that anthropology and sociology covers all the basics that can be covered—and we have no ability to examine past records other than stone aged tribes.  Again, anthropologists got this in hand.  Even with that, there is very little generalization that one can do with bushmen, who are a product of this millenium no matter how old their way of life is.

What if they bring you a stuffed mouse toy? At four in the morning. Yelling mournfully, as if to say, “Oh god….I’ve killed again…..”

But what’s fascinating about people who mischaracterize criticisms of evolutionary psychology as a form of creationism is that scratch the surface, and every time they’re trying to suggest that behaviors that have to be coerced or taught through society are instinctual, and that they can’t be changed.

I think criticism of EvPsych is highly warranted. I do not believe it is tantamount to creationism, though many criticizers fall into the “there is no genetic or evolutionary basis of human behavior ever” trap. You don’t seem to be doing this, however.

It’s more complicated than many people credit, though. There can be (and almost certainly are) distributions of tendencies inherent in humans. These are harder to suss out, though, and take much better and larger studies.

Even then, the results may not be wholly conclusive.

Evolutionary psychology is too often about reifying current discriminatory regimes, but that doesn’t make it totally invalid. It just makes most of its just-so stories pretty suspect, little more than thought experiments with no real truth value.

Letting people know that is important, I agree.

To me, the best policy is treating everyone as equally as possible and ignoring what anyone “should” be doing or even thinking about what they “really” wanted to do.

Radical equality is my goal. But it doesn’t mean I toss out avenues of thought, either.

Mike, I really hate to break it to you, but…

Humans lack the genetic diversity to make *any* claims for evolutionary psychology.  Inherently, we cannot make any real claims about *any* human neurological trait.

What was interesting, though, is that even among species where the males battle each other for access to the females, females still had other ways of picking mates. Males chimps will beat up females to ensure compliance and will beat up other males. But she cites a DNA study of chimp troops that found that up to 30 percent of the offspring had fathers OUTSIDE the gorup. The researchers had never observed the female chimps sneaking away or the outsider male chimps sneaking in. It was all going on behind the backs of the dominant chimps. But going on it was.

Angiers talks about another study that looked at a species of baboon (I think) in which the females consort with a variety of males but as she approaches the peak of her fertility, she will consort only with one male, usually the ones that beats up the other males and uses violence/intimidation to prevent her from going to them. They rigged some sort of thing where the males were kept separate but the female could come and go as she pleased. She continued to have sex with a variety of males throughout her fertile period. So yes, the males used violence as part of their reproductive strategy, but that didn’t mean that when the females had other options, they didn’t exercise them. They did. It calls into question what it means for behavior to be “natural” in a social animal.

The problem with evo psych as it exists seems to be not that violence and intimidation aren’t part of reproductive strategies for many animals. They are. It’s the notion that it is either the “only” way or the “natural” way. And both of those notions are used to argue against any efforts to improve things because you cannot fight your fundamental nature.

Humans lack the genetic diversity to make *any* claims for evolutionary psychology.  Inherently, we cannot make any real claims about *any* human neurological trait.

Shah8, do you really believe that genetics and evolution have and had no influence at all on human behavior and proclivities? 99.9%+ of scientists would disagree with you on this.

If that is really your believe, as absurd as it may be, then why don’t you spend all day rooting in the ground for grubs, like an armadillo? Why don’t you feel the ineluctable urge to migrate 5,000 miles every year, like a tern?

And anyway, I was not supporting any particular EvPsych claim. I think most of them are ridiculous, and I have no idea (if any) which are true.

I am merely saying that, yep, our evolutionary history has some influence on our behavioral characteristics. This seems pretty obvious.

Or, you know, you could read the article.  But it might interfere with your “radical equality” theory, which I would not be surprised has little to do with real equality.

I did read the article.

I agree with it.

I think it’s a pretty good critique of EvPsych. I hope it brings some much-needed rigor to the field, if there is any to be had—which there may not be. Most EvPsych seems to be used to reinforce the status quo and have no real science behind it.

Radical equality means, to me, that everyone should have an absolutely equal chance at anything they wish to achieve, without the influence of those who wish to yank away contraception (or re-label it as abortion), or those who discriminate against them on the basis of the color of their skin, their family history, their wealth, their gender(s), their country of origin or any other characteristic that I can think of. How to achieve that? Yeah, I have no idea, but this site is doing a pretty good job of it.

The strange thing is, I am agreeing with you, but I have a minor quibble, already elucidated.

Humans eat, shit, sleep, walk on two feet, have big brains, keep pets, give birth, enjoy eating and fucking, and prefer being warm to being cold.  This is all evidence of evolution.  But we’ve got no evidence to suggest that human women evolved this desire to be barefoot and pregnant in kitchens while quietly tolerating male infidelity.  Those things are much more likely, with the evidence of social coercion at hand, to be something that has to be imposed on women, and because of the amount of coercion and pressure, it’s unlikely that it’s “natural”, or there wouldn’t need to be coercion or pressure.

Agreed 100%. Never argued otherwise. I think you are correct as much as it is possible to be correct about anything in this universe.

I read the article, but I am not sure you’re reading my comments. The odd thing about this site is that if you don’t get on board with the party line 100%, then everyone becomes convinced, somehow, that you are completely disagreeing with them.

I know—I have that tendency myself, so I do understand some of it, I think.

I had one minor quibble about the invalidity of just tossing out EvPsych altogether. That’s all.

As long as we’re talking evopsych,

I think the brains of sexist bigots evolved in last few hundred years, as a defense mechanism, when they realized it was hard to justify their bigotry with religion, being that religion wasn’t taken seriously by intelectual circles any more.  Pop EP is the new mechanism that allows bigots to keep making generalizations and regarding non-whites and non-males as the inferior servant classes, and now with the nice ring of “science” to it, they can talk it up in the intelectual circles too!! 

Clever, clever evolution!

what is your opinion of Marvin Harris and cultural materialism?

Not very high, frankly.  Most of what Harris did was also plausible just-so stories.  His theory also largely lacks coherence, as it is an uneasy mash up of cultural ecology, cultural evolutionary theory, and historical materialism (marxist approaches).  It has relatively few adherents outside of his admittedly somewhat numerous students and their students.  I personally find the other materialist approaches in anthropology (modern ecological approaches, darwinian cultural evolutionary theory, and historical materialism) more coherent and powerful.  On the other hand, I am a historical materialist, so take it for what it is worth.

Just a note: If someone wants to have a debate with an evolutionary psychology supporter, I am not that guy. Repeat: I am NOT that guy.

Some folks appear to want me to be that guy, for some reason, but as I do not defend EvPsych, I am unable to fulfill that role.

I am sure some will stumble over from the troglodyte sites though, in due time. Then, have fun! I will even help you.

Mike, social darwinism has the same kind of scientific validity as evo-psyche.  Nobody studies social darwinism or phrenology and many other topics of that nature.

That is because, and you seem to be obtuse to this fact, all of legitimate evo-psyche research can be studied under other fields.  There is no need for an actual evo-psyche field, especially when there is no alternative human psyche, let alone good historical records that spans genetic epochs.

All evo-psyche is now, or has ever been, is for the opportunity to mindwank one’s collective neurosis and anxieties for grant cash and book revenue.  It’s a kind of wingnut welfare.

hmm, forgot the clarifying statement that “There is NO baby to throw out with the Bathwater!”

I was in my mid-twenties when I discovered that I was exactly the height, and approximately the weight of the “average American male”. I was also in excellent physical condition, so I was right about on that mark strength-wise as well.

What was fascinating was that until I saw the numbers, I had thought of myself as smaller than most guys. When I started paying attention to actual height/weight/strength of the guys around me, I realized that yeah, I actually was bigger and stronger than about half of them - including a number of men that I had only half-consciously thought of as bigger than me. Somehow I (and a lot of other people) were judging men as slightly bigger and women as slightly smaller than they were in actuality. One of my husband’s co-workers, for example, is a full two inches shorter than I am - yet unless we’re put side-by-side, people invariably think he and I are the same height.

So the anecdata would suggest that human social conditioning (at least in the US) inclines us to see more sexual dimorphism than actually exists.

Shah8, see my statement above about my non-status as an EV supporter.

As for the field needing to exist at all, I disagree, though it will always lack a surfeit of testable data. But so does string theory.

What if they bring you a stuffed mouse toy? At four in the morning. Yelling mournfully, as if to say, “Oh god….I’ve killed again…..”

I think you’re misinterpreting the yowling.  It may be the feline equivalent of “Mmmmoooooommm! I’m booooored!”  Which is one of the many reasons we don’t let the cats into the bedroom.

Having cats is like having a perpetual three-year-old.  My favorite is when I yell at Annie to stop digging in the garbage can without getting out of my chair and she looks at me like, “Make me, monkey girl.”  And goes right back to digging until I actually stand up.

The other night, G. was late giving them their wet food treat, so she went over to him and bit him on the shoulder.  He thought it was cute, but I think it was an implicit threat.  “Hand over the treat, or I start to eat you instead.  Your choice.”

This is especially funny because she’s a very small cat and barely weighs 6 pounds soaking wet.

she’s a very small cat and barely weighs 6 pounds soaking wet.

My equally small and very geriatric (21 years in June) cat Shadow consistently beats the shit out of my much larger (12 lbs) and much younger (3 years) cat Smoke.

Mike, I get what you are trying to say, but your original comment’s “The idea that humans and their behaviors aren’t influenced by their evolutionary and genetic past?  Equally idiotic.” really did sound like you were trying to pick a fight with a strawman.

Walt—thanks.

Sometimes, I am overly terse. And I don’t completely drink anyone’s Kool-Aid, no matter how good it tastes, which means I’m usually not too welcome in any camp.

But I’m ok with that.

Have a good evening.

I’m happy to see the article single out the “men have sexual affairs, women have emotional affairs” meme for specific critique, since it always struck me as transparently self-serving bullshit.  I’m sure many sexist men would love for male fidelity to be redefined as screwing around all you like, as long as you stay “emotionally” faithful to the old ball and chain (like a real man wants to get emotionally involved with other yicky girls anyway).  I’m sure these guys would also like to imagine that when their girlfriends or wives are out all night, they’re just having chaste “emotional affairs.”  Doesn’t make any of it true.

On a whim, I once looked up the original “men are more bothered by sexual infidelity than women” paper.  The effect (which was measured by doing surveys in several different countries) as tiny, and completely dwarfed by the variation between cultures.  The effect was closer to “men are 1% more bothered by sexual infidelity than women.”

Dr. Dick, if you’re still around, what do you mean by saying you are a “historical materialist”?  I’m familiar with the term, but I’m curious what it means to you in the context of anthropology.  (I would have guessed anthropology is the least hospitable field for that point of view.)

The idea that humans and their behaviors aren’t influenced by their evolutionary and genetic past?

Equally idiotic.

Your post? Even more idiotic. At best it’s a complete non-sequitor by someone who has trouble following straightforward conversations. And although your error has been pointed out to you repeatedly you still keep making it.

I am merely saying that, yep, our evolutionary history has some influence on our behavioral characteristics. This seems pretty obvious.

It’s obvious, noncontroversial and irrelevant. So why keep bringing it up?

I’m pretty sure that had I evolved with 4 hands instead of 2 I’d eat a sandwhich differently. Thanks professor for that staggering insight.

Walt -

Historical materialism is a broad category of marxist or strongly marxist influenced theoretical approaches.  Ranges from old school orthodox marxists to synthetic approaches which incorporate more insights from other approaches.  I tend toward the latter.  Historical materialism is one of the stronger materialist theoretical positions in modern anthropology, though this group are definitely a minority within the profession, which is dominated by interpretivist and post modernist approaches.

The fundamental distinctions here are that materialist hold that it is the material conditions of life (ecology, economics, politcs, etc.) which primarily shape what we do and think, at least over the long term and which drive culture change.  The interpretivists and post-modernists (sometimes referred to collectively as “idealists”) believe that it is what we believe and our culturally based perceptions which shape what we do.  The two types of approaches also approach research and analysis in different ways.  Materialists seek to explain why cultures do the things they do and how and why they change.  Idealists seek primarily to interpret cultural belief and behavior.  They hold that cultural behavior is infinitely variable and limited only by imgaination.

do you really believe that genetics and evolution have and had no influence at all on human behavior and proclivities?

Look at it this way:  we have humongous brains because of evolution.  The creative/learning parts are much larger than the other parts.  So it makes sense to say that evolution has affected our brains by giving us no ingrained behaviours.

So it makes sense to say that evolution has affected our brains by giving us no ingrained behaviours.

Which is essentially what I said in my post at 5:30 pm, though I won’t go quite so far as no ingrained behaviors.  Our behavior is clearly not for the most part strongly genetically conditioned.

“human social conditioning (at least in the US) inclines us to see more sexual dimorphism than actually exists”

Man, I guess.  I coulda swore that the average man is 5-foot-11 and 180 lbs, the average woman 5-foot-1 and 120 lbs.

But, I do believe that brain-wise, there is no real difference between men and women.

“though I won’t go quite so far as no ingrained behaviors”

What are some examples?

Man, I guess.  I coulda swore that the average man is 5-foot-11 and 180 lbs, the average woman 5-foot-1 and 120 lbs.

The average height for American men is 5’8” and 1580 lbs and for women it is 5’4” and 128 lbs.

And I agree that there is no innate difference in male and female brains (though they may differ somewhat among adults as a result of differential experiences in growing up).  That is a qualified professional opinion BTW (though other professionals may disagree).

What are some examples?

I didn’t say I knew of any for certain.  Somewhat depends on how you define your terms.  Humans have an innate inclination to acquire language, though not any specific language.  We also innately desire to eat, sleep, have sex, etc., though how and what we do to achieve these ends is almost infinitely variable.  Like you, I do not believe that any of the socially significant behaviors we are talking about here are innate.  Human beings evolved during a period of extreme climactic and environmental change and volatility.  this favored greater behavioral flexibility and resulted in a species which is primarily reliant on learned rather that innate behaviors.  We differ from the other primates in this only in degree, as it is a general primate trend.

So it makes sense to say that evolution has affected our brains by giving us no ingrained behaviours.

Actually we have a few:

Existence of the trait in physically handicapped children. Play faces are also seen in blind or deaf-blind children. How could they show this expression without ever seeing it unless the trait were innate? Examples of play faces can be seen in a blind infant and deaf-blind 7-year old.

also of interest, from a Salon interview:

But trying to find archaeological evidence for the sacred must be extremely difficult until you get into relatively modern history—those cave paintings or burial sites dating back tens of thousands of years ago. Can you actually go back hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years, to detect some evidence of religiosity?

We can definitely go back before the cave paintings. First of all, I should say we now know that our species, Homo sapiens, is 200,000 years old. So we have a much longer history than the famous Lascaux cave paintings in France. The first concrete artifact that I have found useful in the search for the sacred is something called the “Makapansgat cobble,” which was found in a South African cave and is dated to 3 million years ago. What we see here is a bit of jasper that very much resembles a human face. There are depressions where the eyes would be, and there’s a nose-like projection in this piece of stone. I should add, no archaeologist has suggested that the australopithecines, who apparently carried this around, modified the piece of jasper to look like a face.

How do anthropologists know that it was carried around and not just lying there?

There’s no such material like this in the cave, but several miles away from the cave, there is this kind of jasper. So through archaeological analysis, they determined that this artifact was carried into the cave. In other words, we think it meant something to these early human ancestors. And that raises very interesting questions. Some archaeologists have asked, Is there recognition of something like an afterlife? Is there recognition of a soul? I don’t quite see the connection between those questions and just seeing a human face. But I do think it gets at the idea of self-awareness, of a being that’s separate from other beings in the world. It’s possibly being able to see that here we have ancestors, millions of years ago, who are not just scraping out survival but are aware of something like a symbol.

Dr. Dick, I’m hoping that weight number is either 158 or 185 and not actually 1580, or the average American man is very, very round.

Part 2:

To return to our evolutionary history, what are some of the most interesting findings after that masklike object dating back 3 million years?

Starting around 2.5 million years ago, we get a fascinating record of technology—flakes and cobbles for hunting and gathering. But that is not particularly helpful with understanding the sacred realm. Then somewhere around 100,000 years ago—well before the art caves—we do begin to get this explosion of symbolic ritual that tells me very clearly we’re in a sacred realm. It begins to coalesce when we get to burials.

And not just in our species. You know, the Neanderthals were an extremely fascinating hominid. I don’t want to say human ancestor because it’s pretty clear that we don’t have an ancestral relationship with Neanderthals. Rather, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in the world. We find that Neanderthals very carefully buried their social companions, but more interestingly, did so in a way that just cries out for a spiritual interpretation. They placed bodies in graves and then brought in bear bones and arranged them around the body, brought in slabs of rock and put them on top of the body, covered the graves with ash and boulders, put elk antlers on top of a whole grave and then lit a fire there.

Doesn’t this behavior suggest that there was some belief in an afterlife?

I tend to think in that direction, but it’s very hard to intuit what meaning-making was actually going on. We know there are symbols. We know there’s ritual. What actually happened at that grave site is the question. And the hypotheses run the gamut. The archaeologist Steve Mithen has talked about how Neanderthals were singing and dancing and chanting in ways that go far beyond survival. I tend to envision a group of Neanderthals responding to death in a way that’s also artistic. We have Neanderthals who make objects, such as the French Neanderthal Mask dated to 33,000 years ago. There are pieces of flint pushed through holes in a way that makes the face look more humanlike.

So we have these creatures that are capable of making art. We have them burying their dead. And it’s fascinating because they lived for a very, very long time, and then they simply disappeared 27,000 years ago. So why? Why did they not continue to live, and why did we, Homo sapiens, go on?

Isn’t the reigning explanation that our own ancestors somehow out-competed the Neanderthals and wiped them out?

Yeah. We don’t think of some kind of interspecies war in which Homo sapiens literally clubbed them to death. But rather, there was some slight competitive edge that our species, Homo sapiens, had. And I really think this must have had to do with some edge in language production, an extra way to interact with the world through ritual and symbols and through the social solidarity that comes when all of those processes are deeply engaged.

What makes you think that?

The Neanderthals are pretty amazing. But then, starting maybe 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens really has a much deeper engagement with the symbolic world. They’re using jewelry and red ochre. They’re decorating their bodies. They’re beginning to surround themselves—not just in death, but in life—with symbols in art. When Homo sapiens die, it’s not just a couple of bare bones and a fire. In some cases, thousands of ivory beads decorate the bodies as they’re put into the ground. We think the group came together in these social ceremonies. And there’s a kind of spillover effect to begin to think about death and the mystery of what comes after—transcending things that happen in the natural world.

What do you make of those amazing pictures on the walls at Lascaux? These cave paintings weren’t just naturalistic renderings of existing animals. Some were strange beasts, certainly suggesting some kind of symbolism.

Yes, it’s an amazing experience to look at the paintings of Lascaux; many of the animals are so beautifully and realistically rendered. But then when you get to the less clearly readable images, something else happens to the mind of the observer. If you look at a picture that is part human and part bird, with a shaft or a pole next to him, one can’t help but think about shamans. The idea of a designated healer in a community who could get into an altered state and go between the worlds—between the natural world and the secular world. And one wonders, were there shamans 17,000 years ago?

Many of these paintings really are in deep, inaccessible parts of the cave. These were fantastic places for altered consciousness. It makes you wonder what it would be like to be in the dark, or lit up by a small lamp, and experience these images while singing or chanting or moving rhythmically. In that context, I’m most persuaded that we’re dealing with people who were thinking about the mysteries of life that still plague us and delight us.

Dr. Dick, I’m hoping that weight number is either 158 or 185 and not actually 1580, or the average American man is very, very round.

Yeah, that should be 158 lbs.  Just trying to make myself fell svelte like I was in my youth. 8-)

Yeah, Mike, I’d also add to Walt’s comment that because this site is unregistered, there are a great number of trolls, and so suspicions run high. Nothing personal, but you can get hurt running in that way.

Glad we all agree otherwise :D

Not very high, frankly.  Most of what Harris did was also plausible just-so stories.  His theory also largely lacks coherence, as it is an uneasy mash up of cultural ecology, cultural evolutionary theory, and historical materialism (marxist approaches).  It has relatively few adherents outside of his admittedly somewhat numerous students and their students.

And evo-psych is VERY popular so that must make it right.

Anybody who wants to understand what Marvin Harris’s theories are all about can read my web site on him:

http://www.cultural-materialism.org

Dr. Dick doesn’t know dick about Marvin Harris!!!!

Hello Nancy.  Still pimping for Marvie, I see.  Might try to actually read the posts firsts.

And Marvin Harris was one of the most vigorous critics of evolutionary psychology along with Stephen Jay Gould, back when it was still called sociobiology.

Marvin Harris was the greatest anthropologist of the 20th century. Just because the works of Levy-Strauss and Steven Pinker are revered now doesn’t make them of lasting value.

Still “pimping” for Harris?

Still full of yourself, aren’t you?

I did read the post. Now let’s get into why you are pushing this load of bullshit.

  On the other hand, I am a historical materialist, so take it for what it is worth.

Explain what an historical materialist is. Other than, apparently, someone who talks out of his ass about cultural materialism.

Bye, Nancy.  I really do not have time for obsessives who assume anyone who disagrees with them is some sort of malevolent slime and who apparently cannot either read or comprehend simple written statements.  We went through this once before over at Echidne’s place and it was tiresome and unproductive then.  Don’t think it will improve with repetition.

Man, I guess.  I coulda swore that the average man is 5-foot-11 and 180 lbs, the average woman 5-foot-1 and 120 lbs.

really? doesn’t this prove her point? lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
(5.9” for males, 5.4” for females in US.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_weight
(191lbs for males, 164lbs for females.)

so, this HUGE difference between the sexes we’re talking about? 1/2 an inch and 27lbs?!?!

i pretty much say this every time this BS comes up, but i’ll say it again:
There is always more difference among individuals than between the sexes (or races).

Refresh my memory - are you into the Hegelian dialectic?

We went through this once before over at Echidne’s place and it was tiresome and unproductive then.  Don’t think it will improve with repetition.

I see - so you can say any trash you want about Marvin Harris, and then when I defend him, say I am “still pimping” him, and then when I challenge you, run away, hurling insults at me as you go.

I guess you aren’t so full of yourself when challenged by someone who knows something about the subject.

Ohhh mannn, I should not have linked to Nancy’s cultural materialism link.  I already never had thought much of Pinker (and there was that paragraph where he was talking smack about my boy Piaget) and I don’t read his neurology books—but finding out that he’s pals with Steve Sailor?
oh
my
god…
I hate that fucker with the passion of a thousand nuns…

I hate Hegel too.  However, that’s just mostly opinion, since the only thing I’ve read of that is how it influenced Marxism.

Oh, yeah, and Pinker gave an interview to the ev-psych racist web site Gene Expression.

Although I have to give them credit - although Obama’s election is driving them NUTS (well, nuttier) they did provide a link to Obama’s AWESOME smackdown of Charles Murray’s “The Bell Curve” which I will post for everybody’s convenience right here:

==================
NPR
October 28, 1994
SHOW: All Things Considered (NPR 4:30 pm ET)

Charles Murray’s Political Expediency Denounced
BYLINE: BARACK OBAMA
SECTION: News; Domestic
LENGTH: 635 words

HIGHLIGHT: Commentator Barack Obama finds that Charles Murray, author of the controversial “The Bell Curve,” demonstrates not scientific expertise but spurious political motivation in his conclusions about race and IQ.

BARACK OBAMA, Commentator: Charles Murray is inviting American down a dangerous path.

NOAH ADAMS, Host: Civil rights lawyer, Barack Obama.

Mr. OBAMA: The idea that inferior genes account for the problems of the poor in general, and blacks in particular, isn’t new, of course. Racial supremacists have been using IQ tests to support their theories since the turn of the century. The arguments against such dubious science aren’t new either. Scientists have repeatedly told us that genes don’t vary much from one race to another, and psychologists have pointed out the role that language and other cultural barriers can play in depressing minority test scores, and no one disputes that children whose mothers smoke crack when they’re pregnant are going to have developmental problems.

Now, it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that with early intervention such problems can be prevented. But Mr. Murray isn’t interested in prevention. He’s interested in pushing a very particular policy agenda, specifically, the elimination of affirmative action and welfare programs aimed at the poor. With one finger out to the political wind, Mr. Murray has apparently decided that white America is ready for a return to good old-fashioned racism so long as it’s artfully packaged and can admit for exceptions like Colin Powell. It’s easy to see the basis for Mr. Murray’s calculations. After watching their income stagnate or decline over the past decade, the majority of Americans are in an ugly mood and deeply resent any advantages, realor perceived, that minorities may enjoy.

I happen to think Mr. Murray’s wrong, not just in his estimation of black people, but in his estimation of the broader American public. But I do think Mr. Murray’s right about the growing distance between the races. The violence and despair of the inner city are real. So’s the problem of street crime. The longer we allow these problems to fester, the easier it becomes for white America to see all blacks as menacing and for black America to see all whites as racist. To close that gap, we’re going to have to do more than denounce Mr. Murray’s book. We’re going to have to take concrete and deliberate action. For blacks, that means taking greater responsibility for the state of our own communities. Too many of us use white racism as an excuse for self-defeating behavior. Too many of our young people think education is a white thing and that the values of hard work and discipline andself-respect are somehow outdated.

That being said, it’s time for all of us, and now I’m talking about the larger American community, to acknowledge that we’ve never even come close to providing equal opportunity to the majority of black children. Real opportunity would mean quality prenatal care for all women and well-funded and innovative public schools for all children. Real opportunity would mean a job at a living wage for everyone who was willing to work, jobs that can return some structure and dignity to people’s lives and give inner-city children something more than a basketball rim to shoot for. In the short run, such ladders of opportunity are going to cost more, not less, than either welfare or affirmative action. But, in the long run, our investment should payoff handsomely. That we fail to make this investment is just plain stupid. It’s not the result of an intellectual deficit. It’s theresult of a moral deficit.

ADAMS: Barack Obama is a civil rights lawyer and writer. He lives in Chicago.
============

Well, DrDick, it doesn’t seem like I can get anything from DrMarvin that I didn’t get from Diamond’s two books.

Can you tell me of any good popsci books on cultural science?

Best. President. Ever.

Although, yeah, I am pretty sore about the whole Pastor Warren thing.

“I’m hoping that weight number is either 158 or 185 and not actually 1580”

LOL I’d love for the average man to be 1580 lbs.  Seconds of ice cream for me!

“so, this HUGE difference between the sexes we’re talking about? 1/2 an inch “

It says the difference is 5 inches, not .5 inches.  But point taken.

“but finding out that he’s pals with Steve Sailor?”

*gag*

Sorry this is completely out of topic, but I just followed some links about neanderthals.  The scientists developing the genome discovered that some of them likely had red hair.  The search for more info linked me to a website called stormfront that has some real assholes in it.  They were discussing if it was better to be descended from extint (and therefore weak) white neanderthals, or from presumably black, african cro-magnons .  I have to say, evo-psych certainly provides them with enough quotes and choice truthisms.  Their favorite one is the one about the long winters making the “european” race better capable of long term thought.  The other favorite quote source is the bible.

Why is it that these people (the racist and religious blogs) on average have much worse spelling and syntax than liberal blogs?  Can evo-psych explain this to me?  Do liberal thinkers tend to get better educated?  Or is proper writing a sign of respect of towards others rather than a sign of education?

Can you tell me of any good popsci books on cultural science?

Not really.  I am not a huge fan of popsci as it has a tendency to grossly oversimplify and thereby distort things.

I hate Hegel too.  However, that’s just mostly opinion, since the only thing I’ve read of that is how it influenced Marxism.

That’s why Harris hated Hegel too - he felt that Hegelian dialectic mumbo-jumbo ruined Maxism’s materialist analysis.

I first heard of Schopenhauer through Harris’s “Cultural Materialism” because Harris quoted him against Hegel - and nobody hated Hegel like Schopenhauer.

raspberryjamba -

Oh dear sweet chocolate covered Jeebus with peanut clusters and raspberry jam filling.  You did not actually click through to Stormfront did you?  It is the most infamous white supremacist site on the web.

On a more interesting note, it appears that the redheaded gene among Neanderthals is different from that in modern humans.  As to the complexion of Cro-Magnon, it is not entirely clear, though they were certainly more swarthy.  There is some evidence that they had spent a bit of time in central Asia (in the region of the current Central Asian Republics) prior to moving into Europe, which was one of the last places colonized by modern humans (too damned cold in the ice ages for tropical adapted people).  If that is the case, some degree of depigmentation may already occurred, though it is probable that they were significantly darker than any of the modern populations in Europe.  They left Africa about 50-100,000 years ago and only moved into Europe about 35,000-40,000 years ago.

Well, when I said pop-sci, I’m really talking about books for the educated and interested layman.  I’m not afraid of books with heavy duty math or statistics in them so long as it’s interesting.  Nor am I *that* afraid of philosophical books, though, like with the one I’m reading now—Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature by Godrey-Smith, it’s *really* rough going.  You can’t really tell me that there isn’t *some* gem of a book that has to do with cultural change and isn’t a textbook?  I only need one or two, and I can thrash Amazon for other stuff.

Shah8 - read Harris’s “Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches” or “Cannibals & Kings”

BOTH are gems and are not textbooks. And although Jared Diamond’s approach has much in common with that of Marvin Harris, they are not exactly the same.

And if memory serves, Dr. Dick is into the Hegelian dialectic - I seem to recall that I pressed him on it, and that’s when the discussion at Echidne’s place ended.

Or do I mis-remember? Dr. Dick remembers the discussion much better than I - the only reason I remember anything about it is because of his memorable handle.

shah8 -

Can’t really think of many off the top of my head.  Sort of depends on what you are interested in.  William Roseberry’s Anthropologies and Histories is a pretty good introduction to modern historical materialism.  Marvin Harris’s Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times<em> is pretty good.  Marshall Sahlin’s <em>Culture and Practical Reason<em> is a good counterpoint to both of those.  These are all pretty much theory books but should be reasonably accessable to a literate college graduate (as a bonus there is no heavy math involved).  From a physical anthropology side, John Relethforsd’ <em>Reflections Of Our Past is really good and easy to read.

Dr Dick,
Yes, actually.  I ran an image search for neanderthals and clicked on a pic and then started reading around the pic when I realized something was horribly wrong.  Then I saw the title bar.  Yikes! 
But it is astounding how much they can justify their hate using common evo-psych claims.

Shah8 - if you want a good look at the contrasting schools of anthropological thought, see Harris’s “Cultural Materialism” in which he explains cultural materialism and critiques the competing “research strategies” of the time - which was the late 70s so it’s a little bit dated, but his critique of sociobiology is very useful in that much of ev-psych is based on the principles of sociobiology- and in fact, is often indistinguishable from it.

But it is astounding how much they can justify their hate using common evo-psych claims.

Oh, yeah.  They seize on everything they can find that can be twisted around to their warped worldview.  Absolutely the worst trolls in the universe are the racists.  Was involved in the middle of an epic match over at LGM.  Convinced me never to even try to argue with them.  Employ all the tricks of rightard rhetoric to duck, dodge, and twist.  Absolutely impervious to reason.

James Burke’s “Connections” is a very entertaining pop culture look at culture - and in fact you can watch the entire TV series online here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbCNycm0nQ&feature=related

No discussion of theory, but at heart a very cultural materialist view of human culture.

thanks everyone…

/me trots off to Amazon

In return, I’m sure I’ve already suggested this, but give Marion Lamb and Eva Jablonka’s Evolution in Four Dimensions a try.  It’s pretty heavy on the biology and history of science, but there is a fairly big cultural evolution payoff at the end.  It’s kinda why I was interested in maybe trying a book on anthropology or some kind of cultural studies.

Psychology Today seems to be a repository for a lot of evo-psych piffle. Pity, because it used to be a good magazine.

(Although, once I started taking college psychology classes, I was startled to realize how many of its articles were slightly dumbed-down retreads of famous psychological experiments.)

James Burke’s “Connections” is a very entertaining pop culture look at culture - and in fact you can watch the entire TV series online here:

What? Nooooo! I wanted to get something done this evening, and now what I’m going to do is watch Connections, because that whole series freakin’ rocks.

“though I won’t go quite so far as no ingrained behaviors”

What are some examples?

Language.  Play.  Sex; regardless of society, humans will try to attract a mate (the how is obviously extremely variable, but we do have that inherent urge).  Forming of groups, and creating some sort of hierarchy in it (put some kids together and you will see leaders and followers emerge).  Related to that last one, politics.  Parental care.  Seeking of pleasure, avoidance of pain.

It’s not that hard to come up with a list.

Nothing is less seductive than a human being acting like an ape. Whoever accepts this image of humanity into their heads as ‘the true one’ deserves not to succeed within human society.

jennifer:

Nothing is less seductive than a human being acting like an ape.

Considering that humans are apes, all of our behaviour qualifies as “acting like an ape,” by definition.

All I know is that I feel happy after sex.

All I know is that I feel happy after sex with an ape.

When I studied what we were calling “psychobiology” at the time, which included evolutionary psychology among other things, it was considered very important to include anthropology and sociology as well as psychology and biology in the analysis of why human biology leads humans to do what we do.

Absolutely no claim about the “innateness” of a human gendered behavior would have held up in my classes if it couldn’t be found to have existed in *every* human culture. If you could find a human culture where women were considered to be taciturn and men talkative, it disproved the notion that human females are more “verbal” innately. If you could find a human culture where women sleep around and men don’t care, it disproved the notion that men are more sexually jealous innately. You were supposed to look at monkeys as well, but monkeys doing something isn’t proof that humans do it innately; in fact a lot of times it proves the researchers had a bias and didn’t notice monkeys doing something that *didn’t* support the theory.

This evo-psych stuff where you look at human beings in Western culture, specifically, and try from that to extrapolate what humans are “innately” like, makes *no* fucking sense. I do think we can figure out a lot of what’s innate to humans by studying cross-culturally, including *many* isolated hunter-gatherer cultures in our analysis, many historical cultures, and taking a good hard look at the great apes. But there is only one difference between males and females that holds up cross-culturally *and* in apes, and one other difference that holds up cross-culturally but there’s no way to tell if apes do it.

The primary difference between male and female primates, including humans, is that males are more violent. That’s *it*. Baby primate males play more rough than baby primate females, *all* human cultures have had more male warriors than female warriors, all human cultures have more male violence than female violence, all primate species show more violent behavior from males than females. This doesn’t mean females are non-violent; they are, just not as violent as males. In some societies, women can and have been trained to be warriors, so it doesn’t prove women can’t make war (and, to be fair, you don’t necessarily want a warrior who is *violent* so much as you want a warrior who can choose to engage in violent behavior when needed; if violence *were* more innate to males and females, and therefore is more a learned behavior in females, this might make females *better* warriors because they can turn it on and off more easily, solving the problem of the soldier being violent once he comes home.) Male violence is not equal in every society. Some societies have vastly less male violence than others. *All* human societies constrain male violence more than ape societies do, implying that the fundamental nature of human culture is that one of its purposes is to constrain “naturally” violent behavior. In all societies, intra-male violence between strange men is a well-known problem, but many societies have managed to either eliminate male-on-female stranger violence, or drastically decrease male-on-female intimate violence, or both. But the basic fact that when all other things are equal, men are more violent than women, appears in apes, it appears historically in every culture, it appears cross-culturally in every culture we’ve studied… and it’s not a good thing. Although some people have tried, it is very, very hard to argue that because men are “naturally” more violent than women, violence against women by men should be tolerated (it’s hard to argue this precisely because every society puts so much effort into constraining intra-male violence.) Arguments of this nature don’t mean that the data that tells us men are more violent than women is bad; they mean that patriarchs can get totally illogical when trying to defend their privilege. (In any other context, of course, arguing that someone is naturally violent is an argument for strictly constraining and restricting their behavior.)

The primary difference, besides this one, between male and female humans is that in every culture studied men think that whatever sex role has been assigned to men is superior. Men talk a lot? It’s better to be talkative. Men don’t talk much? It’s better to be quiet. Men are intellectual? It’s better to be smart. Men are barbaric? It’s better to be a lout who doesn’t think much. Whether women agree or not varies between cultures—in many cultures, women generally think that what women do is better than what men do, and in many other cultures, they agree with the male assessment that what men do is better—but men *always* think they’re better than women. Always.

(Continued)

This one strikes me as much more problematic a finding than the one about violence—if men always think they’re better than women, how can we create a society of equals? What this says to me is that you can never have a society of equals as long as you divide *any* behavior on the basis of sex; if there is *anything* women are “supposed” to do and men are “supposed” to do, men will start to believe that their role is better. The only way you can get men to treat women as equals is by removing all sex role difference and assigning roles on the basis of who’s good at them or who likes to do them, not who is male or female, and come up with a construction of masculinity that doesn’t have to compare itself to femininity to have an identity. You cannot have a “separate but equal” society where women do certain jobs but men respect their ability to do those jobs, because as soon as a job is defined as “for women” men lose all respect for it.

(BTW, this is talking about men in the aggregate. I realize most men on *this* site, and most men loved by people who visit this site, are likely to be able to overcome this and see women as equals; also most such men don’t think there are specific roles that are naturally “for” women or men anyway. So you don’t need to tell me that you, or your husband, don’t think this way, or point out that many individuals in groups with “third sex” assignments such as the Navajo were quite comfortable turning from men into “third sex” people who performed women’s roles; this is talking about the average attitude of men in a culture.)

So all this other stuff? Men are mathematical, women are verbal? Tell me, if women are so goddamn verbal, why don’t we dominate the writing and speaking professions the way men dominate math and science? Hmm, sex bias much? Women have no spatial perception, except when we’re rearranging furniture, apparently. Men aren’t detail oriented and can’t see dirt, that’s why men are molecular biologists and physicists who work on splitting the atom and also why men obsess with tiny detailed replicas of model trains. Also, male soldiers can’t keep their barracks clean, that’s why the standard is rumpled beds and dirty shoes instead of shining shoes and beds you can bounce a quarter on. Oh, wait, no, that’s wrong. See, *none* of that shit ever holds up. You can usually find a counter-example in your *own* culture (I liked what someone above pointed out about gay men—if gay men are less threatened by sexual infidelity than straight men, it sounds less like women are less threatened than men by sexual infidelity and more like everyone expects men to sleep around and isn’t too worried about it.) If you can’t find a counter in your own culture, you can often find one in history or a cross-cultural counter.

So I still enjoy and hope to see more of the attempt to identify what, biologically, makes us human. But almost none of what science has attempted to “prove” about sex differences has held up to further study, and what little does really seem to be universal says nothing good about men.

Great post, Alara.

agreed

Alara’s post was way better than my one-liner.

The only way you can get men to treat women as equals is by removing all sex role difference and assigning roles on the basis of who’s good at them or who likes to do them,

In our household that pretty much means traditional gender roles.

Evolutionary Psychology merely exists for self-validictory tummy rubbing.  Like Astrology, or Divining, or Parapsychology.

*Especially* the whole Astrology and Astronomy pseudoscience/real science conflict issues.

Medicine is alot more fun.  Homeopathy as a theory of medicine didn’t make for doctors who were worse than “professional” doctors in the 19th century.  Back then, homeopaths believed in one set of idiocy, while “real” doctors believed in many sets of idiocy and were completely impervious to actually using the scientific method.  They just couldn’t do as much damage as guys like the men who popularized lobotomy.  Or doctors who refused to wash hands.

We have physicists who are doing some very pretty mind-wankery with string theory.  However, mind wankery is all it ever is.

Sad thing is, science is just a kind of philosophy, and is no more impervious to self-serving bullshitting than any other kind of philosophy.  That’s why it’s important that people do as what Alara Rogers remembers doing, and actively guard themselves from falling for appealing theories. 

Some things just feel right.  Other things are right.

The primary difference between male and female primates, including humans, is that males are more violent. That’s *it*. Baby primate males play more rough than baby primate females, *all* human cultures have had more male warriors than female warriors, all human cultures have more male violence than female violence, all primate species show more violent behavior from males than females.

Well, if one uses an example of a non-primate mammal, it’s the testosterone.  Female hyenas are considered just as aggressive and violent as males and they’re soaking in testosterone, the highest levels among mammal females.  Amongst mammals with a defined breeding season and where males compete for breeding rights, testosterone levels in the males skyrocket.  Inuit where I live will not, for example, hunt a mature male caribou in the fall (September-October) if they can help it, even though that’s the time of year the herd is closest to my community and easiest to get at, because that’s when they’re mating and the male meat tastes gamey due to all the hormones being pumped around.

The primary difference between male and female primates, including humans, is that males are more violent. That’s *it*. Baby primate males play more rough than baby primate females, *all* human cultures have had more male warriors than female warriors, all human cultures have more male violence than female violence, all primate species show more violent behavior from males than females.

In the case of humans, given there’s no breeding season so males have to be running hot (so to speak) all the time, what’s amazing is that society has by and large kept male violence to a relatively low level.  I think someone said one time that if humans acted like the average baboon we would have nuked ourselves into oblivion two days after discovering fission.

Dan said: “Considering that humans are apes, all of our behaviour qualifies as “acting like an ape,” by definition.”

Fine, Dan.  Keep that image in you mind on your next date.  I’m sure it will scare away the werewolves.

Sad thing is, science is just a kind of philosophy, and is no more impervious to self-serving bullshitting than any other kind of philosophy.

If you take the view of falsifiability, then you can’t be bullshitted:

Falsifiability (or refutability) is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is “falsifiable” does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment. Falsifiability is an important concept in science and the philosophy of science. The term “Testability” is related but more specific; it means that an assertion can be falsified through experimentation alone.

Some philosophers and scientists, most notably Karl Popper, have asserted that a hypothesis, proposition, or theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable.

Not all statements that are falsifiable in principle are falsifiable in practice. For example, “it will be raining here in one million years” is theoretically falsifiable, but not practically.

Falsifiability works great against blatantly vacuous fields like string theory or pop evopsych.  However, this method isn’t typically useful.  It’s usually very hard to *know* if something is falsifiable or not without detailed oversight on materials and methods.  Many results come up through sieves of evidence analysis that could be many things, among them statistics, judges, etc, etc.  One has to make a judgement whether that use of statistics precluded falsifiability, like what happens in most evo-psych research, or whether some other sieve was use/misused.

So all this other stuff? Men are mathematical, women are verbal? Tell me, if women are so goddamn verbal, why don’t we dominate the writing and speaking professions the way men dominate math and science?

Don’t worry, the ev-psychs have that covered. If women don’t do as well as men career-wise it’s because we are not as driven to succeed.

Gail Collins, formerly the NYTimes op-ed editor, now its second female columnist once explained why so many more men than women were being paid to express opinions - it is because women just don’t have what it takes: “. “There are probably fewer women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight opinion stuff, and they’re less comfortable hearing something on the news and batting something out.”

Katha Pollitt had a good response:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0318-23.htm

But Gail Collins knows who pays her salary - the men who run the NYTimes and who believe evo-psych bullshit. The NYTimes even has its own evo-psych proponent, John Tierney, who pretty much has a full-time job promoting the ev-psych view of the world.

So yes, women are better with words than men, according to ev-psychs - but if we have less success in word-oriented fields, don’t blame MEN (and apologists for the patriarchy like Gail Collins) for giving all the jobs to other men. Women themselves are, as always, to blame.

Gail Collins considers herself a feminist, BTW.

...the only way you can get men to treat women as equals is by removing all sex role difference and assigning roles on the basis of who’s good at them or who likes to do them, not who is male or female, and come up with a construction of masculinity that doesn’t have to compare itself to femininity to have an identity. You cannot have a “separate but equal” society where women do certain jobs but men respect their ability to do those jobs, because as soon as a job is defined as “for women” men lose all respect for it.

Part of the problem, or maybe most of it is what I like to call the Male Success Complex. Just as tribal warriors were rewarded for success in battle by being given wives (or female prisoners of war), men today feel they will get more, or higher quality women, if they are successful at something. And so women competing with men at something has two drawbacks from that perspective - not only are women providing additional competition for men, but they are themselves supposed to be the passive, unaccomplished prizes for the winners of the competition. If women aren’t given out as prizes for accomplishment, and instead want men to admire them for THEIR accomplishments, what’s the point of the men accomplishing anything?

And so for men to be able to show off at something to impress women, they have to be better at it than women. And the more education, nutrition and opportunities women get, the fewer and fewer areas of endeavor there are where men are the indisputable champions.

Those most invested in this system are doing what they can to hold back the tide of female accomplishment. The trick is to do it without being revealed as a sexist. Which is why ev-psych is so very useful - because it says that it isn’t sexism that’s the problem - we’re all equal now, just ask Steven Pinker - it’s pure, impartial, disinterested Science telling us that it just isn’t in the female nature to want to succeed.

The resentment of so many straight men to the concept of the metrosexual is part of this complex. A metrosexual attempts to appeal to women on aesthetic grounds, the way women have been trained to appeal to men. The metrosexual is presenting himself as a prize, rather than the sweaty, slobby victor coming to claim the female prize.  The metrosexual represents male sexual charm for female sexual charm, rather than female sexual charm for male accomplishment and power. It attacks the privilege of male accomplishment head on.

And that’s why male homosexuality is so much more offensive to the general public than female homosexuality - because a man is acting as the sexual prize, which completely skews the “natural” custom of rewarding females to males for accomplishments.

Sad thing is, science is just a kind of philosophy, and is no more impervious to self-serving bullshitting than any other kind of philosophy.

This is exactly what Republicans want people to believe, because it allows them to say “smoking causes lung cancer? Why that’s just the opnion of some biased unreliable scientists!”

Science is not infallible but where science has gone horribly wrong it’s been because the proper methodology was not followed.

Additional commentary from a scientist.
http://www.stanford.edu/~jhj1/cgi-bin/blog/?p=211

Margalis, science *is* a branch of philosophy.  One that has grown and mutated into its own thing, but still part of the gang.

Republicans want people to believe that evidence do not outweight intuition.  That’s not quite the same thing as what I said.

Look, science is a method for a conversation between mind and nature.  It’s not some sort of determination of what is real.  That actually is still the province of the philosophers.

It is also not entirely a reductionist and materialist process.  Intuition and inductive thinking play a huge role in good science—but that’s all in determining what is the question, how can I get Nature to answer it, how will I percieve her answer?

Oddly enough, the only truly hard-headed and materialist part of science is when other people attempt to repeat what you’ve done.  A culture thing, not quite a scientist thing.  Works in capturing frauds like cold fusion.

Here’s the thing, if you’ve ever read a history of evolution, of the fight between Darwinists and Lamarkians, or of Newton and Liebniz, or of the beginnings of Quantum Mechanics—with the Copenhagen Interpretation vs all of the challenger interpretations, you’d have realized just how intense a role philosophy *does* have in science.  How self-serving bullshit thinking works its way into the favored school of thought.

My phrase has nothing to do with the Republican’s projection of sorcerer scientists.

Stumbled across Pandagon, very very impressed by posts and most of the comments. Especially enjoyed seeing Marvin Harris debated, and the excellent post by Alara.  My offering, such as it is, is from a pretty weak novel by a guy called Christopher Hart.

The “I” is the (male) narrator, and he’s talking to his disgruntled (female) housemate, who’s a research scientist. He’s just made some asinine sociobiology argument, starting from worm behaviour…

“Those worms,” I clarify, “in the paper. They had these worms they’d studied…”

“And don’t tell me, the little boy worms were all much happier when they had as many little girl worms to shag as possible, whereas the little girl worms were happiest when they had lots and lots of little baby worms, snuggled up all cuggly-wuggly in their nice bright cosy bedrooms with Mummy while Daddy was out on the town drinking worm lager with his pals and chasing more little girl worms. And don’t tell me, the scientist who conducted this experiment was a man. Forty-something, pot-bellied, worried about his impotence, blaming it on his wife, who’s really let herself go recently, not surprising he can’t get it up any more, contemplating making a pass at the new young assistant with the big hair, what’s her name, Cindy or Carmel or something, and then he discovers by an AMAZING COINCIDENCE that , in his situation, making a pass at Cindy or Carmel is exactly what the worms he’s studying would do! S’natural, innit? But of course, all scientific research is strictly objective.

I am open-mouthed. “Wow. You’re so cynical.”

page 61-2 of “Rescue Me” by Christopher Hart

I think that most evo psychology is about trying to justify coercion and injustice

Really? That’s what you think the whole enterprise is “about,” at root? I doubt very much that that is the motivation, conscious or unconscious, of people who actually try to think seriously about this kind of stuff.
But further, why is it that decrying pseudoscientific justification for odious social coercion and injustice seems to lead inevitably to a denial of any possibility of a biological influence on human social and sexual behavior? (And, in another direction, to anthropomorphizing of cat behavior?)

we’ve got no evidence to suggest that human women evolved this desire to be barefoot and pregnant in kitchens while quietly tolerating male infidelity

That’s for damn sure. There were no kitchens in the Pleistocene Environment of Ancestral Adaptation. There may not even have been shoes. (Pregnancy and something defined as infidelity, though, are pretty safe bets.)

But further, why is it that decrying pseudoscientific justification for odious social coercion and injustice seems to lead inevitably to a denial of any possibility of a biological influence on human social and sexual behavior?

It doesn’t seem to. Inevitably. Because I’ve read a hell of alot of such decrying.

Guess you haven’t.

What does seem inevitable to me is that whenever someone does point out the glaring flaws of ev-psych, some ev-psych defender will claim it means that the someone is denying any possibility of biological influence. That’s why Steven Pinker titled his book “The Blank Slate” - that was the strawman he constructed to stand in for all opposition to EP.

He also claims, in The Blank Slate that Camille Paglia is a feminist (well, one of the good feminists.) That right there tells you all you need to know about Steven Pinker’s political views.

“Ev-Psych Defender” is not a superhero identity I am interested in taking on; nor am I qualified to do so. I am a comparative physiologist with some background in nonhuman behavioral ecology, not an evolutionary psychologist, I am not widely read in evolutionary psychology (“Pop” or otherwise), I am not a “desperate sexist,” and I have never been impressed with Steve Pinker’s grasp of evolutionary biology. However, I don’t need to know anything about Pinker’s politics to evaluate his scientific claims. On the other hand, nearly all of the most vehement opposition to EP that I have encountered in my travels around the ‘tubes is clearly and usually explicitly based in political worldview rather than science. Right? Be honest. Most people first feel gut-level revulsion at suggestions that human biological history might not have corresponded to the fair, just, and equitable social world they would like to see [me too!], and then they go looking for scientific arguments (like those summarized in the Sci Am article linked in the OP) to justify their rejection of such suggestions. I can’t help but smell projection when politically motivated criticism of ostensible “science” starts attributing political motivation to the ostensible “scientists.” (That observation is independent of whether or not all or most pop or non-pop EP is science, “shitty” or otherwise.)

But let me try to understand the thinking here. Pinker’s blank slate is a silly strawman; nobody really thinks that human behavior is magically off-limits to natural and sexual selection. There may well be biological influences on human social and sexual behavior; it would be antiscientific to claim otherwise. But evolutionary psychology, or at least “Pop” evolutionary psychology [is there an academic version that is not liable to the same criticisms?] is so deeply flawed in its foundational assumptions that it cannot possibly shed any light on such biological influences. Further, human behavior is so plastic and flexible that any biological effects must be nearly completely swamped by social influences. (But that’s not the same as a blank slate, because, um, there are these acknowledged possible biological influences under there, being almost completely swamped.)

Absent that last morsel of snark, was that accurate? Because my real question is, if so, where can we go from here? If the entire field of EP (non-pop, if possible) is bankrupt and silly, then are scientific questions of human behavioral adaptations:
a.) unanswerable in principle and therefore not worth asking?
b.) only legitimate if hypothesized answers do not in any way imply ancestrally inequitable social situations?
c. ) pointless because of the extreme behavioral plasticity of the amazing human brain? (an argument that does seem to me a de facto blank-slate position)
d.) or what?

If behavioral ecologists can identify patterns of social and sexual behavior that are consistent among anthropoids, primates, mammals, tetrapods, vertebrates, or animals (draw your own line), is it scientifically justifiable to investigate, as a hypothesis, that pattern in humans? If not, why not?

On the other hand, nearly all of the most vehement opposition to EP that I have encountered in my travels around the ‘tubes is clearly and usually explicitly based in political worldview rather than science. Right? Be honest. Most people first feel gut-level revulsion at suggestions that human biological history might not have corresponded to the fair, just, and equitable social world they would like to see [me too!], and then they go looking for scientific arguments (like those summarized in the Sci Am article linked in the OP) to justify their rejection of such suggestions.

So how does this work now - those who object to EP do so simply because it goes against a fair world - so do those who defend EP cling to it because they don’t want a fair world - because they are racists and sexist?

Or is it only the left that is anti-science, and the motives, unconscious or not, of those who promote EP are pure, untainted by politics?

That’s certainly what Steven Pinker believes - claiming that Stephan Jay Gould’s SCIENTIFIC opinions of EP should be discounted because Gould had leftist political beliefs. I still have the email from him, and posted the relevant bits to my cultural-materialism.org site.

To listen to you, you’d think that no scientists objected to EP on scientific grounds, when, from Gould, to Buller to Harris to Eldredge to Spelke (and many others) there are many many science-based objections.

Just because you apparently are only aware of the other kind doesn’t make the scientific objections non-existent.

NOBODY I have heard of says that we have a blank slate in our brains. But you apparently have found them everywhere. HOW ABOUT SOME SOURCES.

NOBODY I have heard of says that we have a blank slate in our brains. But you apparently have found them everywhere.

I found them right here on this thread, in which we are both commenting:
“it makes sense to say that evolution has affected our brains by giving us no ingrained behaviours.”
“Like you, I do not believe that any of the socially significant behaviors we are talking about here are innate.”
*shrug* There’s always lip service paid to provide plausible deniability against the “blank slater” charge, but any specific hypotheses are just scoffed at because everybody knows that EP is a bunch of bullshit.

I’m well aware of the scientific objections—summarized pretty well in the Buller article at issue—and what’s more, I find many of them compelling. That’s what led me to the substantive questions listed above.

As for Gould, his opinions on the subject were, in fact, politically motivated, though you are correct that that does not make them wrong. The view that proponents of EP (at least the non-pop versions, if they exist) are equally politically motivated—tools of or apologists for patriarchy, or whatever—seems to me highly dubious: my original point.

The view that proponents of EP (at least the non-pop versions, if they exist) are equally politically motivated—tools of or apologists for patriarchy, or whatever—seems to me highly dubious: my original point.

So proponents of non-pop EP - “if they exist” - seem unlikely to be as politically motivated. WHY NOT? Since you don’t even know if they exist, you know nothing about them. Why would you automatically assume they are NOT as equally politically motivated as critics of EP? Because you assume that proponents of EP would automatically be more objective, less political? WHY???

And Stephen Jay Gould’s SCIENTIFIC opinions were politically motivated? HOW? Do you even KNOW what his scientific arguments ARE? Tell me how his spandrels argument is political. Is there something inherently leftist about opposing strict adaptationism?

Those of you who would rather read what Gould had to say, rather than take the word of yet another would-be smearer, check this out, and then see if you can figure out how this is politically motivated:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1151

But my favorite Gould piece in the NY Review of Books, unfortunately behind a pay wall, is his review of Helena Cronin’s The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=2745

Entitled “The Confusion over Evolution”

It’s great because not only is Cronin a ninny, she’s a HUGE proponent of taking every Men-are-from-Mars-Women-are-from-Venus claim of pop evolutionary psychology and enshrining them in government policy.  She wrote a policy paper called, if memory serves “The Evolved Family” - and later turned it into an article which you can read here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,239317,00.html

in which she argues that there should be a two-tier employment system in Britain - male and female. The enshrined mommy track would include time off for women to stay home with the kids. The daddy track would not.

Cronin is one of the worst, but she is by no means the only proponent of pop-EP who wants to make EP theories the law of the land.

“it makes sense to say that evolution has affected our brains by giving us no ingrained behaviours.”
“Like you, I do not believe that any of the socially significant behaviors we are talking about here are innate.”

And finally - only the top quote could be interpreted as possibly supporting a blank slate position. The second one “we are talking about here” could not.

Oh wait - now the mystery is solved. I finally got around to Googling you Sven.

Like Steven Pinker, Sven DiMilo is buds with the racists over at Gene Expression. Well no WONDER you are anti-Gould! He’s like the anti-Christ to freaks like Razib, who for those of you who might be interested, gets his money from the Unz Foundation where he is (I think the only) a Junior Fellow.

http://razib.com/

Unz is Ron K. Unz, according to Wikipedia ” a former businessman and political activist, best known for an unsuccessful race in 1994 for the governorship of California, and for sponsoring propositions promoting structured English immersion education. In March 2007, The American Conservative named him its new publisher.”

So now we know where Sven is coming from. A Gene Xer. How’s tangoman? I remember kicking his ev-psych ass a few times here at Pandagon.

Nancy, none of what you have asserted offers any evidence if any part of EvPsych is scientifically valid for study or not. (And if it’s not valid, why not?)

I care about evidence only, not what your political opinions are.

Fortunately, my evidence-only creed pisses everyone off, which means I am welcome nowhere.