>> <...> Animals "rape"? Silly anthropomorphism dies hard. <...>
>
>cheers,
>t
Well, I think Yoshie is correct (and much to my chagrin Kelley as well--see below): the use of antropomorphic language serves only to conceal logical lacunae in this pseudo Darwinian theory. As Philip Kitcher puts it in his criticism of Barash's early version of this nonsense: "Even if we were to accept Barash's causal story about the ways in which mallard males maximize their fitness--a story about as well grounded as [well not well grounded, rb]--it would obviously be premature to say 'And the same goes for humans'. Let us give Barash two controversial assumptions. Suppose that male mallards would maximize their fitness by 'raping' females when opportunity presented. Suppose that we are entitled to conclude that there is a gene, or combination of genes, that gives a predisposition to human males--or more pertintently, male hominids--would maximize *their* fitness, in the environment in which our tendencies to behavior evolved, by behaving in similar ways."
Kitcher goes on to make the same point that such a theory cannot without special pleading explain rape on juveniles, on women past the age of menopause, and on members of the same sex. Indeed such acts may radically detract from fitness as these evo biologists have defined it.
Moreover, if raped women are having abortions and rapists are being incarcerated, it becomes difficult to see how a hypothetical gene for rape could spread or maintain itself in terms of long term reproductive success.
And this leads to widespread doubt that rape is a piece of *sexual* behavior.
Don't know if Thornhill and Palmer respond to Kitcher's criticisms.
But my apologies to Kelley.
See Vaulting Ambition, p185f.
yours, rakesh