PZ Myers. 2004 Sep 06. In which I take umbrage at an invalid biological argument applied to a complex social situation. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/in_which_i_take_umbrage_at_an_invalid_biological_argument_applied_to_a_comp/>. Accessed 2008 Oct 11.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Monday, September 06, 2004
In which I take umbrage at an invalid biological argument applied to a complex social situation
Here's an interesting individual observation: the author of the Bitch, PhD weblog is in an open marriage. Personally, I couldn't do that—I at least need the illusion that I'm someone special—but if someone other than my wife finds a different kind of relationship that works well for them, more power to 'em, and I'm certainly not going to impose my personal preferences on them. Strangely, though, some people find other people's relationship choices offensive.
I normally wouldn't care…there are always narrow-minded moralizers who will whine about what other people do with their own genitals, but in this case, the complainer tries to argue that there is a biological justification for castigating women who don't do as he thinks they should. The naturalistic fallacy is called a fallacy for good reason, but even without that, he makes a series of claims that are just plain bad logic, in addition to being poor biology.
1. Open relationships are likely to cause sexual jealousy, as even supporters acknowledge.
Closed relationships are also fraught, in many cases, with sexual jealousy. So what? The quote he cites doesn't even make the claim he says it does: it says, "Open relationships challenge us to confront our jealousy and possessiveness", which does not mean that they cause jealousy, but that we are often jealous, and people have to work against that feeling in an open relationship. You also have to work against it in an exclusively monogamous relationship.
2. Sexual jealousy is universally acknowledged as a powerful force in our relationships, even by those who deny that human biology affects human behavior.
First of all, I can't stand people who claim that others deny that biology affects behavior—it's as annoying as if I were to claim that this guy denies that culture has anything to do with behavior. It's patently false, so let's stop erecting strawmen.
The rest of this point consists of a quote showing that a lot of violent behavior is motivated by jealousy. Yeah, OK, I can see how jealousy would drive some vicious behavior. But the point is...? If you're arguing that sexual jealousy is a bad, bad thing, I could see going into examples of ugly jealous behavior, but this author wants to argue that it is an inevitable force and we must surrender to it. It's rather like reading about all the wars and hatred and violence fomented by dueling religions, and finding that the author's conclusion is that we must now all pick a god of our own and defend it to the death.
3. The consensus view among evolutionary biologists is that sexual jealousy is hardwired because it increased reproductive fitness, in both other animals and humans, including MIT's Stephen Pinker:
Aargh, another great annoyance: there is no such consensus view. What he cites is a view held by evolutionary psychologists, which is by no means the consensus among biologists. I certainly don't accept it. There is absolutely no evidence that such a specific behavior is in any way 'hardwired' in humans. It is much simpler to propose that we have a hardwired but general reward system that couples certain phenomena to pleasure; sex, among many other things, triggers that reward system; and we tend to struggle via a great many strategies to maximize rewards. Different strategies will work to maximize access to sex under different conditions; you don't get to argue from the existence of a general desire to the idea that only one particular strategy is a universal and inviolable optimum.
The article he cites to back up this claim is a book review by Mark Ridley of one of Pinker's books:
He discusses how natural selection will theoretically favor sexual jealousy, and how the facts (Margaret Mead and disciples notwithstanding) match the theory. Sexual jealousy, I agree, is a Darwinian adaptation that enabled some ancestral humans to outreproduce their more relaxed contemporaries, who did not end up among our ancestors.
Note: no evidence for a hardwired 'sexual jealousy' component is given, a common problem when dealing with evolutionary psychologists. The existence of an argument is apparently sufficient evidence for the existence of a phenomenon.
I will now mention a word that makes many evolutionary psychologists cringe in disgust: spandrel. Sexual jealousy is nothing but a side effect of that general reward system I mentioned above. It's a more parsimonious explanation than inventing fixed neural circuitry for which there is no evidence, and is more accommodating of the observations of the diversity of human relationships.
4. A large % of divorces are caused by adultery. Here's one of the first hits I found for the UK. 29% of divorces in the UK were caused by adultery in 1989. I can find more sources if anyone seriously disputes this.
So, in other words, closed, exclusive relationships, such as are typically found in most Western marriages, have a significant frequency of failure. This is an argument against open marriage...how?
5. Divorce causes a huge drop in the standard of living of the wife: drop in standard of living of females after divorce as of 2000: 45%
6. single mothers tend to be net tax recipients and live in poverty:
Are all these divorcees and single mothers proponents of open marriage? I suspect not. It seems to me that these facts clearly show a huge economic disincentive in our culture for people who want to follow different relationship strategies, or want to break off bad relationships altogether. How is the fact that women are often treated as chattel, lashed with the whip of poverty, evidence that they are driven by internal biological imperatives to behave in a certain way? I would be more impressed with the evidence if women and men were on an entirely equal footing, with no social and economic pressures compelling them to act a certain way, and they then spontaneously formed stable monogamous relationships.
I think what this fellow has done is demonstrated that there is no reason to suspect biology is directly involved in the cultural institutions around marriage, and that we ought to think more about social factors.
But the hard facts are above: sexual jealousy predictably does lead to the breakup of marriages, and single mother households do predictably lead to dependence on the state. So the facts are aligned against Mrs. B....and it's all downhill from here.
Against Mrs B? what facts? What's the argument? Is he seriously trying to support this assertion?
In all likelihood this woman's personal "reinvention" of marriage is sending her on a collision course towards a train wreck.
An awful lot of marriages are train wrecks when they follow the conventional rules. Relationships have to work themselves out in their own individual ways, and maybe one problem is that busybodies think they all must follow One True Formula, and seek to put constraints on the way other people live. Mr and Mrs B are trying to follow their own strategy for coexistence, presumably worked out in negotiations between themselves, the two people most intimately familiar with their own needs. It is not helpful for others who are unaware of their specific situation to dictate how they must live together.
I also find it peculiar that this person claims to be a libertarian. I'm no fan of the libertarian religion, but I had thought that at least one point in its favor was that it encouraged individualism and private liberty…is that not true?
There is another argument that he's trying to make:
Many of the simple rules that humans have lived by for generations have an evolved context to them. That is, they are culturally inherited traits that have probably increased the reproductive fitness of their carriers. Over time, there has been a gene-culture feedback loop to chemically hard-code some of these feelings (like sexual jealousy) into our behavior.
I'm a biologist. I say, show me the data. These are all blanket assumptions from the evolutionary psychology crowd, and are unsupported by anything other than their happy belief that Darwinian selection explains all, and that everything in human behavior is the result of adaptive selection.
Clearly that is not a particularly 1950's view of sex or sex roles, but Mrs. Phd's out of context quote makes it into a caricature. In fact, I'm wondering if she herself is a caricature of a self-destructively leftist humanities professor - can she really believe that stale, discredited Betty Friedan stuff in 2004? As one of my colleagues in biochemistry likes to say: can anyone really believe that feminist studies has anything relevant to tell us about "the social construction" of male-female interaction when degree recipients aren't even required to know the difference between the chemical structure of estrogen vs. that of testosterone, let alone anything about the comparative genomics of the X and Y chromosomes?
Oh, jebus.
I know quite a bit about estrogen and testosterone, their developmental and physiological effects, site of synthesis, etc., etc., etc. I know about the structure of X and Y chromosomes. I teach classes in which we discuss this stuff in some detail.
What kind of geek would think that knowing that estrogen's C19 is unmethylated while its A ring is aromatic gives him any insight at all into the different behaviors of the sexes? That is truly one of the saddest and most pathetic quotes I've run across in quite some time.
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Thanks. My dusty memory of undergraduate biology wasn't good enough to let me say what you've said here (not to mention my annoyance, which clouded my ability to do anything but sputter in outrage), though I knew it needed to be done . I'm so glad a real live biologist weighed in.
Oh, and I can't help adding that presumably you are special for reasons other than that you are the only person your wife sleeps with--as are we all.
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I'm sorry PZ, but I think someone who makes this kind of a statement, -sowing wild oats is ok for both men & women (though women will be considered "promiscuous" if they have too many partners - unavoidable ev psych reaction), has pretty much given up on any behaviors being dominantly culturally determined, straw-man or not.
And it's actually good to see a libertarian who admits taht pure freedom isn't capable of creating the utopia that much of libertarian 'theory' implies. It also creates wedge opportunities for those of us who disagree with the utopian vision that they produce. -
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"And it’s actually good to see a libertarian who admits taht pure freedom isn’t capable of creating the utopia that much of libertarian ‘theory’ implies. It also creates wedge opportunities for those of us who disagree with the utopian vision that they produce."
How many libertarians do you know who also argue against "low IQ" immigration, as the one in question most certainly does? Just because someone claims to be a libertarian doesn't mean he's anything of the sort, so I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere for those "wedge" issues you seek, instead of knocking down men stuffed with straw. Maybe you ought to, oh I dunno, try engaging actual libertarian arguments sometime?
In any case, your quip about "pure freedom" suggests you're no great friend of personal liberty either. It seems you'd be more than happy with an authoritarian moralist state just as long as it divvied up the goodies more equally.
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----#: Posted by Abiola Lapite on 09/06 at 04:09 PM - Well, you already know I don't care much for libertarian philosophy...but while reading this guy's stuff, I didn't get the impression that he was a very good libertarian. Using bizarro economics as an excuse to dictate that private morality must follow a single common standard? Ecch. I think most libertarians and I would be in agreement that that is an awful idea.
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Matt, many people have given up the myth that women who have multiple sexual partners are morally bad. They've been talked out of their prejudice without changing their biology. So, we know it's not an "unavoidable ev psych reaction."
#: Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein on 09/06 at 04:24 PM
- Although, maybe what godless is saying is that evolutionary psychologists are unable to avoid thinking that women with multiple partners are bad. What we need now is an example of an evolutionary psychologist getting talked out of that nonsense without changing their biology.
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In all likelihood this woman’s personal “reinvention” of marriage
I wouldn't call it that. But then, perhaps I know too many polyamorous people (and perhaps, being a polyamorous atheist myself, I would never agree to any contract, such as this guy's view of marriage, that would prohibit me from sleeping with anyone else in any circumstance).#: Posted by on 09/06 at 07:49 PM -
I'd like to think I've converted a few evolutionary psychologists while making only minor alterations to their biology.
#: Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein on 09/06 at 08:24 PM
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" So, we know it’s not an “unavoidable ev psych reaction.”"
No, you don't. The brain is a rather complex affair, and a "deep" impulse being triggered can very well be negated by "higher" faculties. That does not mean that the "deep" impulse was never triggered.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 06:38 AM -
[Testing, because my last post doesn't seem to have appeared.]
#: Posted by on 09/07 at 07:34 AM
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[Well, the test worked, so I guess my previous post must have been lost in cyberspace. Here it again.]
I'd like to take up the issue of sexual jealousy and whether it's "hardwired". First of all, I think the term "hardwired" is rather unfortunate, because it brings to mind an analogy with electronic hardware and software. But, from what little I know about the subject, the workings of the brain cannot easily be understood in this simplistic way. Anyway, I don't think we're really concerned here with the physiology of the brain. Surely the real issues here are:
1. Is our tendency toward sexual jealousy at least partly innate (caused by genes)? Or is it all nurture (caused by environment).
2. If it is at least partly innate, then is that innate tendency a direct adaptation or is it an incidental by-product of other adaptations (a spandrel)?
It seems very likely to me that a tendency toward sexual jealousy is at least partly innate, given how common it is in (almost?) all human cultures and in many non-human species, and how deeply ingrained it seems to be. Even if it's plausible that sexual jealousy is a purely learnt trait in humans, it's much less plausible that it could be so in all animal species which exhibit it. And, if animals can have innate sexual jealousy, why not humans? So I'll proceed on the assumption we agree that sexual jealousy is at least partly innate. For brevity, I'll drop the "at least partly", with it being understood that I am talking only about the innate part.
Is the innate tendency toward sexual jealousy a direct adaptation or is it an incidental by-product of other adaptations (a spandrel)? I would argue that, if it confers a selective advantage, then it must be considered a direct adaptation. Even if it started as a spandrel, any selective advantage which it gave would have meant that it would thereafter be selected for in its own right. Does sexual jealousy confer a selective advantage? I don't know, but it seems plausible. So I do not accept that sexual jealousy is a spandrel.
The whole subject of spandrels is fraught with problems. For example, suppose that adaptations A and B give rise to spandrel C. If C gives a selective advantage, then it too will thereafter be selected for. But is it really C that's being selected for, or is just the combination of A and B? Does the question even make any sense? The problem we have here is that an organism cannot be neatly divided into a number of distinct traits, because each trait depends on other traits. This makes the whole notion of a spandrel rather fuzzy.
Finally, PZ writes that the spandrel explanation "...is more accommodating of the observations of the diversity of human relationships." Sorry, but this is a red herring. The hypothesis that a tendency towards sexual jealousy is a direct adaptation rather than a spandrel says nothing about the strength of that tendency. Nor, for that matter, does the hypothesis that the tendency is at least partly innate.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 07:37 AM -
Forgive me in advance for having no link for the following, just my 50ish jumbled recollection, but:
Would not the recent results showing that Y-Chromosome Adam is significantly more recent then mitochondrial Eve be relevant here? This suggests that for a major chunk of modern human biological history, the dominant mating pattern has been one-male many-females. Sexual jealously promoting monogamy doesn't really fit in with that, does it? Rather, it's alpha male more or less successfully guarding his (very much _his_) harem. Not a popular model these days, outside of southern Utah, and certainly not a moral guidepost we would wish to set up for the youth of the world, but it does seem to be what is, ummm, Natural.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 08:32 AM -
Richard -- as I suggested, jealousy is real, and it is a product of 'hardwired' but generic reward systems in the brain. We scrabble over mates for the same reason that two year olds will fight over cookies, but we don't postulate specific cookie circuitry in their brains, or argue that it means we should give up on teaching kids to share.
I don't find spandrels at all fuzzy, and they make an awful lot of sense from a developmental perspective. I'll continue to regard sexual jealousy as a spandrel or at best as an exaptation, because there is no need to develop special brain mechanisms to convince us to try to appropriate stuff, like sex, that feels good. -
"This suggests that for a major chunk of modern human biological history, the dominant mating pattern has been one-male many-females. Sexual jealously promoting monogamy doesn’t really fit in with that, does it?"
In societies where women had little to say in the matter, and the alpha-male was capable of guarding his harem against interlopers, jealousy would probably lead to attempted harem raids, attempts to seize the alpha-position, etc. Of course, a lot of these problems could be lessened by monogamy (A rather revolutionary equality-inducing reform) - but that hardly guarantees that monomgamy automatically prevails.
"Rather, it’s alpha male more or less successfully guarding his (very much _his_) harem. Not a popular model these days, outside of southern Utah, and certainly not a moral guidepost we would wish to set up for the youth of the world, but it does seem to be what is, ummm, Natural."
It is natural, but it does cause a lot a strife ( due to jealousy). Strife that can be lessened by jealousy-decreasing arrangements such as monogamy.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 09:08 AM -
"Richard — as I suggested, jealousy is real, and it is a product of ‘hardwired’ but generic reward systems in the brain. We scrabble over mates for the same reason that two year olds will fight over cookies, but we don’t postulate specific cookie circuitry in their brains, or argue that it means we should give up on teaching kids to share."
Is it really that important to this argument whether sexual jealousy 'runs on' general-purpose jealousy circuitry, or is 'important' enough in evolutionary terms to warrant some more specialized adaption / 'add on' to the general purpose system?
In any case, it does appear that sex triggers jealousy far more strongly and frequently than does cookies. (Well, perhaps exepting some really good cookies... ;) )#: Posted by on 09/07 at 09:13 AM -
Just one more observation:
Isn't it premature to call sexual jealousy a "spandrel", even if it is merely the triggering of a general-purpose jealousy process? After all, it is hardly far-fetched to assume that fitness benefits from general jealousy were to a significant degree derived from direct sexual advantage given by, well, jealousy.
(Whole lot of jealousy in that post... ;) )#: Posted by on 09/07 at 10:36 AM -
Abiola, I really don't want to get into the defining what a "true" or "real" libertarian is. It's like defining what a "true" or "real" Christian is; entirely too subjective and mostly non-productive. I will give you that he doesn't hold most of the archtypal ideals that most libertarians do, but even those who don't that still self-identify as libertarian are likely to be more open to certain arguments and closed to others.
As for arguing with libertarians, I think I've had my fair share. Perhaps not the "true" libertarians, but close enough. Enough to know that much of libertarian theoretical ideas are implicitly predicated on restructuring society without having developed methods for doing so. Enough to know that many libertarians don't realize the transformations that their ideals require would alter much of the very foundations that they are dependent on.
Oh, and perhaps you should find out what I mean by "pure freedom" before you assume that I'm the enemy of personal liberty, no?
Lindsay, accepting the hazard that I'm taking a joke the wrong way, the point I was trying to make is that the very idea that promiscuity is a biologically-based label and not a cultural one shows just how their paradigm blinds them. -
"Lindsay, accepting the hazard that I’m taking a joke the wrong way, the point I was trying to make is that the very idea that promiscuity is a biologically-based label and not a cultural one shows just how their paradigm blinds them."
Actually, it's not the label that may very well be biologically induced - as with most language, that's pretty flexible. Rather it's the impulse that is rahter likely to be hard-wired.
Finally: Isn't your a priori rejection of any biology-based explanation evidence of you being "blinded by your paradigm"?#: Posted by on 09/07 at 03:02 PM -
Finally: Isn’t your a priori rejection of any biology-based explanation evidence of you being “blinded by your paradigm”?
Putting words in my mouth? Wonderful start to things. Really.
it’s not the label that may very well be biologically induced - as with most language, that’s pretty flexible. Rather it’s the impulse that is rahter likely to be hard-wired.
You understand of course that that is not my issue with your view. I understand only too well that we are not just looking at the lingusitics of things, but that we are attempting to suss out the underlying reason for labeling women who have multiple sex partners as enaging in immoral behavior. One problem I have is that the implication is that it has it's origins in pre-H. sapiens evolution, yet it doesn't express itself consistently across cultures. Obviously, even if it is something that is genetic in it's origin, culture controls it's societal expression. In fact, I'm willing to bet much of the appearance of jealousy is an artifact of the lack of matrilineal cultures available for examination. -
PZ: "I’ll continue to regard sexual jealousy as a spandrel or at best as an exaptation..."
I have no problem with the idea that it's an exaptation. Pretty much everything must be an exaptation, because new functions don't just appear out of nowhere.
PZ: "...because there is no need to develop special brain mechanisms to convince us to try to appropriate stuff, like sex, that feels good."
Maybe it's just a figure of speech, but your language suggests you think that each behavioural/emotional trait has its own separate "mechanism" or "circuitry". I admit to not knowing much about neuroscience, but I thought the brain was more like a neural net (hence the name "neural net") than a bunch of circuits. In a neural net, new behaviours can appear simply through changing the weight of connections between nodes. Nothing new need be added. But whether this is how the biology actually works is another matter. What is the mechanism by which genes determine innate behavioural traits? Is this known?#: Posted by on 09/08 at 02:00 AM -
My language was trying to suggest the opposite, that there aren't any such discrete bits of circuitry, which is another reason I don't believe much in such things as the selection for sexual jealousy. Like you say, everything is tangled together, and you can't pull one piece one way without dragging a whole bunch of other pieces in unexpected directions.
Neurogenetics is one of those disciplines in its infancy, and the answers are awfully thin so far. Analyses of mutations that cause changes in behavior usually lead back to genes that leave everyone scratching their heads in puzzlement: cell adhesion molecules or units in a signal transduction cascade (we shouldn't be surprised, though, that's the kind of thing genes do). Looking for a gene or small complex of genes with a clear causal relationship to a behavior is like searching through a hologram to find the one piece that encodes Aunt Tillie's face in the resulting picture—it ain't there. -
I am also in an open relationship. It's been five years so far, and I have not yet experienced any form of sexual jealousy. I'm not saying that jealousy isn't real; I know that most people experience it. I suppose it's even possible that I'll experience it one day, but at this point I'm no longer holding my breath, and I feel comfortable claiming that I don't get sexually jealous at all.
(If anyone wants details to back up this assertion, please email me privately; I don't think Dr. Meyers would like me to post details of my sex life on his blog.)
Does this change anyone's argument here? If jealousy is in some way "hardwired," why doesn't that circuit seem to work in me? Have we simply chosen a poor metaphor for the relative innateness of this behavior, or does my existence lend credence to the social construction of jealousy?#: Posted by on 09/08 at 01:32 PM - Just a bit of clarification. I don't think of jealousy as "hardwired". In fact, PZ's comment above is the perfect reason why.