Patterns in the data on human sexuality support the hypothesis that the bases of sexual emotions are products of natural selection. Most generally, the universal existence of laws, rules, and gossip about sex, the pervasive interest in other people's sex lives, the widespread seeking of privacy for sexual intercourse, and the secrecy that normally permeates sexual conduct imply a history of reproductive competition. More specifically, the typical differences between men and women in sexual feelings can be explained most parsimoniously as (...) resulting from the extraordinarily different reproductive opportunities and constraints males and females normally encountered during the course of evolutionary history. Men are more likely than women to desire multiple mates; to desire a variety of sexual partners; to experience sexual jealousy of a spouse irrespective of specific circumstances; to be sexually aroused by the sight of a member of the other sex; to experience an autonomous desire for sexual intercourse; and to evaluate sexual desirability primarily on the bases of physical appearance and youth.The evolutionary causes of human sexuality have been obscured by attempts to find harmony in natural creative processes and human social life and to view sex differences as complementary. The human female's capacity for orgasm and the loss of estrus, for example, have been persistently interpreted as marriage-maintaining adaptations. Available evidence is more consistent with the view that few sex differences in sexuality are complementary, that many aspects of sexuality undermine marriage, and that sexuality is less a unifying than a divisive force in human affairs. (shrink)

Classifying is a fundamental operation in the acquisition of knowledge. Taxonomic theory can help students of cognition, evolutionary psychology, ethology, anatomy, and sociobiology to avoid serious mistakes, both practical and theoretical. More positively, it helps in generating hypotheses useful to a wide range of disciplines. Composite wholes, such as species and societies, are “individuals” in the logical sense, and should not be treated as if they were classes. A group of analogous features is a natural kind, but a group of (...) homologous features is not. Imposing hypotheses justified only on the basis of nominalist, realist, phenomenalist, or conceptualist metaphysics upon the neurophysiology of organisms or upon the causes of behavior exemplifies the “psychologist's fallacy” of William James. Levels should be distinguished from their members and from classes of levels, and the ontological status of entities ranked at levels should be made clear. It is important not to confuse such categories as substance and process with one another. Several genetical terms, such as “gene” and chromosome,” are even more equivocal than has been realized. Discussions about units of selection, behavior, and thinking suffer from the ambiguity of a “unit of” an entity. An important source of misunderstanding about natural selection is the habit of treating it as an “agent”: in an important sense, natural selection does not “act” at all. (shrink)

Many think that evolutionary biology has relevance to ethics, but how far that relevance extends is a matter of debate. It is easy to show that pop sociobiological approaches to ethics all commit some type of naturalistic fallacy. More sophisticated attempts, like Donald Campbell's, or, more recently, Robert Richards', are not so easily refuted, but I will show that they too reason fallaciously from facts to values. What remains is the possibility of an evolutionary search for human nature. Unfortunately, evolutionary (...) theory itself seems to imply that the quest for human nature will not be very promising. As far as there is such a thing as human nature, we will have to know it before we can meaningfully talk about its evolution. Anthropological data suggest that we differ widely in our normative judgments. And even where we seem to agree, there is good reason to doubt that we really do so. (shrink)

The beginning of any rigorous interdisciplinary study, as Hegel and later Marx predicted, is going to be the occasion for opposition, contradiction, negation and mediation. Sociobiology is not a mature field (thesis). Kitcher's critical work entitledVaulting Ambition seeks to at once expose the failings of this field (serving as antithesis) while simultaneously defining the requirements for more mature, and thus epistemologically satisfying, sociobiological explanations (synthesis). The sociobiological research agenda is thus implicitly given a green light provided certain methodological precautions are (...) taken into consideration. Confucius believed that under these circumstances the only way to restore order would be so to arrange affairs that the Emperor would continue to be Emperor, the nobles to be nobles, the ministers to be ministers, and the common people common people. That is, the actual must in each case be made to correspond to the name. This theory Confucius called theRectification of Names (cheng ming), a doctrine which he recognized as being of the utmost importance. (Fung, 1952, p. 59). Tzu-lu said, “If the Lord of Wei left the adminstration (cheng) of his state to you, what would you put first?” The Master said, “If something has to be put first, it is, perhaps, the rectification (cheng) of names.” (The Analects (Lun yü) of Confucius, Book XIII: 3) (Besides being homophones, the two words in Chinese are cognate, thus showing that the concept of ‘governing’ was felt to be related to that of ‘correcting’.) . (shrink)

Through autobiography, I explain why I cannot accept conventional Christianity or any other form of religious belief. I sketch how, through modern evolutionary theory, I try to find an alternative world‐picture, one which is, however, essentially agnostic about ultimate meanings. I characterize my position as being that of “David Hume brought up‐to‐date by Charles Darwin.” I express sad skepticism about ever realizing the hopes on which Zygon was founded.

Hopes of applying the findings and speculations of evolutionary theorizing to the problems of ethics have yielded a program with a bad reputation. At the level of norms – substantival ethics – it has been a platform for some of the more grotesque socio-politico-economic suggestions of our times. At the level of justification – metaethics – it has opened the way to some of the more blatant fallacies in the undergraduate textbook. Recently, however, a number of people, philosophers and biologists, (...) have sensed that a more adequate evolutionary ethics might be possible. United in the conviction that it simply has to matter that we humans are modified monkeys rather than the creation of a Good God, in His image, on the Sixth Day, they argue that recent developments in evolutionary biology, especially those dealing with the genetic basis of social behavior, open the way to a satisfactory biological understanding of morality. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics, the idea that the evolutionary process contains the basis for a full and adequate understanding of human moral nature, is an old and disreputable notion. It was popularized in the 19th century by the English general man of science, Herbert Spencer, who began advocating an evolutionary approach to ethical understanding, even before Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Speciesin 1859 (Spencer 1857, 1892). Although it was never regarded with much enthusiasm by professional philosophers, thanks to Spencer’s advocacy the evolutionary (...) approach to ethics soon gained wide popularity, both in Britain and towards the end of the century, even more in the United States of America (Ruse 1986; Russett 1976). It became transformed into a whole sociopolitical doctrine, known somewhat inaccurately as ‘Social Darwinism.’ (Scholars have long debated as to whether Darwin himself was truly a Social Darwinian, and the answer seems to depend on which of his works you read. If you look at theOrigin of Species, he certainly is not. On the other hand, if you look at theDescent of Man, there are good reasons for thinking that he was not unsympathetic to the idea. (shrink)

Michael Ruse has proposed in his recent book Taking Darwin Seriously and elsewhere a new Darwinian ethics distinct from traditional evolutionary ethics, one that avoids the latter's inadequate accounts of the nature of morality and its failed attempts to provide a naturalistic justification of morality. Ruse argues for a sociobiologically based account of moral sentiments, and an evolutionary based casual explanation of their function, rejecting the possibility of ultimate ethical justification. We find that Ruse's proposal distorts, overextends and weakens both (...) Darwinism and naturalism. So we propose an alternative Darwinian metaethics that both remedies the problems in Ruse's proposal and shows how a Darwinian naturalistic account of the moral good in terms of human fitness avoids the naturalistic fallacy and can provide genuine, even if limited, justifications for substantive ethical claims. Thus, we propose to really take Darwin seriously. (shrink)

Though I have not found enough of the latter to test out this bromide, I am sensible of the value bestowed by colleagues who have taken such exacting care in analyzing my arguments. While their incisive observation and hard objections threaten to leave an extinct theory, I hope the reader will rather judge it one strengthened by adversity. Let me initially expose the heart of my argument so as to make obvious the shocks it must endure. I ask the reader (...) to grant that altruistic behavior can be empirically justified, that is, to allow that we have evolved under the aegis of kin and group selection (or comparably effective mechanisms) to heed the community welfare, to be moved to aid the distressed even at.. (shrink)

Many of the commentaries cohere around two major points of criticism. The first is that we have omitted discussion of the mechanisms that are assumed to operate at levels 2, 3, and 4.Campbell, Cloak, Dewsbury, Eckberg, Mundinger, Pulliam, Richerson & Boyd, Slobodkin, Simon, Williams, andWahlstenall make comments that bear on this point. The second point is that we have omitted discussion of the fact that "organisms change the environment by their activities" and thereby modify the selection pressures that act on (...) them. Apart from Lewontin, this point has been raised in different forms byBarkow, Chase, Hull, Perzigian, Ruyle, and less directly bySlobodkin. Stemming from these two basic omissions there is a third general criticism. Numerous commentators have pointed out that we have failed to discuss sufficiently either the extent or nature of the constraints that may or may not be operating on supraordinate evolutionary processes as a function of their nested relationships to subordinate evolutionary processes within our scheme. We start by acknowledging these three basic omissions. We agree that they exist and that they are serious. (shrink)

The fundamental tenet of contemporary sociobiology, namely the assumption of a single process of evolution involving the selection of genes, is critically examined. An alternative multiple-level, multiple-process model of evolution is presented which posits that the primary process that operates via selection upon the genes cannot account for certain kinds of biological phenomena, especially complex, learned, social behaviours. The primary process has evolved subsidiary evolutionary levels and processes that act to bridge the gap between genes and these complex behaviours. The (...) subsidiary levels are development, individual animal learning, and socioculture itself. It is argued that individual learning is pivotal to the derivation and biological analysis of culture. The differences between cultural and noncultural societies are stressed. It is concluded that such a multiple-level model of evolution can form the basis for reconciling opposing sides in the sociobiology debate. (shrink)

There is a rather striking video currently used in police training. A firearms officer is caught on video shooting an armed suspect. The officer then gives his account of what happened, and there is no suggestion that he is tying to fabricate evidence. He says that he shot the suspect once; his partner says that he fired two shots. On the video we see four shots being deliberately fired. Memory, it seems, is an unreliable witness in situations of stress.