Off Human Nature

[sawyl]

Today's Egenis seminar was a enjoyable talk by Jonathan Marks entitled Off Human Nature, in which he took an anthropologist's view of evolutionary psychology and found it wanting.

He criticised EP on the grounds, arguing that it had largely become a rallying point used as a shibboleth by those in favour of evolution and opposed to creationism and that as a result, it was not sufficiently scientifically rigourous. He outlined four arguments, often used to defend EP, and questioned them in turn:

1. That the study of apes tells us something about human nature
   He argued that it is not clear whether, when we see behaviours we believe show similarities between humans and apes, we are actually in conflating homonyms with homologues.
   
   For example, infanticide in other apes is usually the result of male violence. When a male langur takes over a troupe of females, he will generally kill the offspring of any previous males. Chimps also indulge in infanticide, for when patroling males encounter lone females with offspring, they kill and eat the infants and may also kill (but not eat) the mother. This behaviour, it is claimed, is often taken as homologous with infanticide in humans but in the case of humans, infanticide typically occurs when the mother, or an agent acting on behalf of the mother, kills the child — something that seems so different from the behaviours of the apes that perhaps our use of the term infanticide isn't as homologous as it at first seems.
   Another point raised by Marks relates to the value of chimp studies. He notes that although both chimps and humans have feet which show similarities and common evolutionary traits, they are actually quite different. Thus, we might learn something interesting about human feet by studying ape feet, but we'd be far better studying human feet right from the start. So, by analogy, whatever we can learn from studying primates we can better learn from studying humans themselves.
   
   
2. That the study of primitive peoples tells us something about human nature
   There is a specious Rousseauian belief that somehow, primitive people are more human than the rest of us; that being a forager is somehow more authentic. But there are number of problems with this, not least the strong influences on climate and population pressures, which make it hard to draw analogies.
   
   Further, as globalisation has continued, it has become increasingly difficult to find groups of people who are sufficiently isolated as to be able provide data. As an example, when a study was carried out to determine the hip-to-waist ratios favoured by male American students, it was found to match those of Hollywood stars. When the same tests were carried out with other populations, similar results were found. However, when more isolated groups were tested, it was found that the men tended to prefer women with hip-to-waist ratios much closer to those of the women in their group, suggesting that the ubiquity of the American choice owed rather more to culture than genetics.
   
   
3. That the study of babies tells us something about human nature
   Apparently not. It actually tells us about the nature of babies which, it seems, is to turn into humans...
   
   
4. That broad generalisations about societies tell us something about human nature
   However, this leads to classic all/most problems. What does it mean to say that most people subscribe to a particular behaviour? Does it mean that those don't subscribe the behaviour are less human?
   Generalisations also suffer from equivocatory problems. Jared Diamond suggests, based on size differences between men and women, that human males are inherently polygynal. But what is a polygynous society? Is it a society where a man is free to marry a number of wives? Or when a man is allowed to have a number of wives, but it is so expensive and difficult that no-one does? Or is it a society where men are only able to marry one woman, but where a blind eye will be turned to a string of mistresses?

Marks' take home message was that culture and nature cannot be analytically separated. It isn't possible to peel off culture like the leaves of an artichoke, leaving the biological core — it's actually better to think of culture as the eggs in a cake.