All these theorists, as I mentioned above, assume that people and other animals are driven almost solely by the Darwinian imperative to spread their genes, even to the extent that they put their own lives in jeopardy. The costs and risks of rape and murder are so high that it calls into question the applicability of natural selection, i.e. that there is a contradiction between sexual selection (drive to reproduce) and natural selection (the drive to exist). to the point where the drive to reproduce threatens the drive to exist. Sexual selection then must trump natural selection in both strength and evolutionary importance. Again no evidence is given to support the case. The evidence points in the opposite direction since many individuals actually choose not to have offspring even though they have plenty opportunity and resources to do so (they may even suppose neo-Darwinism and evolutionary psychology to be true.)
On a higher level the arguments made in the quotations above and throughout these books is what philosopher Phillip Kitcher calls "Wilson's Ladder" named after the evolutionary theorist E.O. Wilson who originally made the argument from universals. Ghiglieri makes this argument in its most naked and crude form
"what appears to be a crime of hate or control is actually a male strategy to steal a copulation no matter what the cost to the woman. That rape is not unique to Homo Sapiens supports the argument that men rape women for sex and because they hate or wish to dominate women" p45.
There are two arguments here but I'll deal with Wilson's ladder first [the other argument is that rape is about copulation in a very narrow sense and not power in a very broad sense.]
. Here is Kitcher's reproduction (no pun) of the argument in slightly edited form:
Let G be males and B be rape and violence.
1) "...all members of a group G would maximize their fitness by exhibiting a form of behavior B in the typical environments encountered by members of G.
2) When we find B in virtually all members of G, we can conclude that B became prevalent and remains prevalent through natural selection, specifically thought eh contribution to fitness. identified in step 1.
3) Because selection can act only where there are genetic differences, we can conclude that there are genetic differences between members of G and their ancestors who failed to exhibit B.
4) Because there are these genetic differences and because the behavior is adaptive, we can show that it will be difficult to modify the behavior by altering the social environment, in the sense that states B is absent are likely to either precluded states or else states that are precluded given widely shared desiderata." Kitcher p126-7.
Steps 1 and 2 are made explicitly in these books while 3 and 4 remain implicit. Here is Ghiglieri stated version of the argument
" 1) The great apes and humans share a common ancestor and thus common genes affecting our social behavior. 2) The more closely related each species is to us, the more genes and behavior we have in common.
3) Behaviors shared by chimps, bonobos and humans are far more likely to be instinctive and to have been inherited by all three species from a common ancestor that to have evolved separately." p70
and "humans are a type of ape who carries a strong legacy of ape instincts."p70
The inference from step one to two in Wilson's ladder is unwarranted since it commits a genetic or post hoc ergo propter fallacy that confuses current function with historical origin. As S.J. Gould puts it " The mechanics seal of approval does not imply past construction for contemporary usage. Unfortunately, we call both the state of good design and the process of its origin by the same name--adaptation. The false equation of one with the other is in my view the Achilles heel of human sociobiology. Belief in a higher power is no doubt markedly functional, even adaptive in evolutionary terms,for many, people but we cannot conclude from this current belief that such a notion arose by natural selection directly for religious ardor, nor can we infer that such a belief is a genetically grounded entity at all (another requirement for Darwinian argument.) Gould p35 There are many things wrong and confused in the above argument. First, step three exhibits a Lamarkianism which states that acquired characteristics are inherited. We know this is not true for reasons I will not state here.
Ghiglieri's three step version of Wilson'sLadder quoted above is exceptionally crude, unsound, invalid. and circular. It says basically that because we share 96% of our genes with apes our behavior must be genetic. The main problem here is that this assumes that genetics determines phenotype., that microscopic variations in brain structure cause microscopic variations in phenotype. However, it is also true that small physiological changes in the brain may cause large psychological change. Further, nothing is known about physiological change determines variation of psychological traits and capacities. Our brains are close physiologically to apes but apes psychological capacity are grossly inferior to humans. If an apes brain came to resemble a human's brain would it act and be a human?
The arguments made by Ghiglieri et.al can be made about anything. Jerry Fodor gives the example " selection favors reproductive success, the design of the heart was shaped by selection pressures, so the function of the heart is to mediate reproductive success,"p 191. Replace "heart" with "rape" or "murder" and you have the argument of the evolutionary psychologists. Obviously false. The heart is "designed" to pump blood through the body. Rape and violence are not designed for anything but are probably epiphenomenon of certain social situations and psychological maladaptations to social and class situations..
As game theorist Herb Gintis has pointed out,The authors do not take into consideration male feeling with regards to these crimes. If violence is a male reproductive strategy, why are most men sickened by these crimes? Further, Gintis says, if sexual selection favors males who are better fighters then fighting and raping should be a trait selected for by females. If the better fighters are better fit, females should want to mate with them. Females thus paradoxically would want and desire to mate with rapists and other violent men..
The new sociobiology makes arguments from culture. Ghiglieri defines culture thus;
"To be human is to be a self-aware individual who relies on culture -- on ideas transmitted socially as a primary strategy to shape one's behavior to survive and use resources to mate and communicate with others. "p63 He defines intelligence: " The best definition of intelligence is the ability, as circumstances change, to alter one's behavior appropriately to serve one's best interests." p60.
Leaving aside the soundness of these definitions, Ghiglieri's theory of violence and his definitions of culture and intelligence are inconsistent and even contradictory. Within human societies there are strict social norms against violence and especially rape. In many situations, it is unlikely that someone with the reputation for violence and rape will have many reproductive opportunities in the future. If there are strong socio-cultural norms against violence and rape and if humans are self0aware and rely on culture to survive and communicate and if intelligence is the ability to adapt to culture in one's own best interest, rape and violence should not occur at all, let alone occur routinely as standard reproductive practice. Given that the benefits from such behavior are low and become lower in the future the more violence is practiced, with Ghiglieri's definitions, we can only conclude that practitioners of rape and violence are mentally deficient or have a serious disability that prevents them from recognizing and acting in accordance with basic social norms and lack the ability to empathize with other humans feelings. Why this is so I will not try and answer here, but in any case, brings us back to square one.
Ghiglieri discusses rape during war as a confirmation of his theory.
"War is typically men's ultimate reproductive gamble. Many researchers agree that the goal most worth the lethal risk of war is women or the resources that attract or support women and their offspring."p197
"war is a male reproductive strategy. All that is needed for this strategy to evolve is that aggressors fight and win more often then they lose." p165.
"rape in war seems driven by men's sex drive. It seeks not to "poison" the womb of the enemy but to plant the seed --while simultaneously demonstrating victory over the males no longer able to protect the victims. During war, rape often offers young men their very best opportunity for sex and the siring of offspring. And,after all, fertile women are the rarest of all reproductive resources for men. Indeed, rape during war may be an instinctive male reproduction strategy." p163.
War offers males the optimal opportunity for reproductive success, where usual socio-cultural norms have broken down and the males of a side cannot protect the females. However, many combat soldiers and officers are already married and have offspring, lessening the Darwinian imperative to spread one's genes and also showing that soldiers' best opportunities for reproduction are not rape during war. Moreover, since sexual selection occurs at the genetic and individual level, how could individuals on one side co-operate enough to carry out mass rape when the logic of sexual selection dictates that individuals should be fighting each other for reproductive opportunity no matter what side they are on. That is unless sexual selection operates on a group level but all these theorists reject group selection pressures tout court. Further B. Ehrerenreich in her book Blood Rites argues that war mostly consists in preparation for war, making it unlikely that preparation for war can offer much in the way of reproductive opportunity.
In these books basically what we have is a conspiracy theory of the genes and ‘psyche' to commit gross acts of violence in the name of their own reproduction. The drives of the genes and the ‘psyche' are largely unconscious, so the conspiracy can be denied by its perpetrators. And as the Dadaist manifesto put it "it is a conspiracy so large that everyone is in it."
A better perspective on these questions is provided by Richard Dawkins who argues "Many human societies are indeed monogamous. In our society, parental investment by both parents is large and not obviously unbalanced. Mothers certainly do more direct work for children than fathers do, but fathers often work hard in a more indirect sense to provide the material resources that are poured into children. On the other hand, some human societies are promiscuous and many are harem based. What this astonishing variety suggests is that man's way of life is largely determined by culture rather than by genes....Which of these two tendencies wins in particular societies depends on the details of cultural circumstances, just as different species it depends on ecological details" Dawkins p164.
Within human societies there are places where rape is standard and routine: inside prisons. The advocacy group Stop Prisoner Rape estimates that some 300,000 thousand males and females are raped in American jails per year and 83,000 males and females raped every day in American jails because many rape victims are raped on average once every two or three days for the entire length of their sentences. This is compared to the Bureau of Justice's estimate that there are 185,000 female victims of rape every year, outside of prison. Nearly all of prison rape, with the exception of the rape of female prisoners by male guards (a small fraction of prison rapes), serves no reproductive purpose since most of the rape is male-male or female-female. Prisoners and former prisoners who have spoken out about rape as well as researchers into rape agree that the rapes are not perpetrated by homosexuals and that most prison rapists strongly reject the label ‘homosexual'. The majority of rapists and their victims are heterosexual and continue being heterosexual after being released. Rape occurs in prisons for several reasons, the most important being the reproduction of patriarchy when there are no women around. As sociologist Christian Parenti argues:
"Rape in male prisons is not only about indirect rule and subcontracting trusty shooters, it is also the process by which the "normality" of a sexist world is reproduced in all-male purgatory. In the big house, layers of collective, institutional and individual violence act in concert to culturally manufacture prison's "second sex" and thus reproduce the binary gendered world of the outside. The ritual of gang rape, by which a prisoner is turned out; the jailhouse culture of fear and aggression which mandates that the strong shun and attack the weak; and the official tolerance and encouragement which facilitates this terrorism, all act together in a mutually reinforcing fashion to reproduce a sexist culture of "gender"in prison. Parenti p188
Among prisoners, the distinction between gender is not drawn at biological sex differences but between who penetrates and who gets penetrated. Penetration is a masculine, heterosexual act while receiving is not. As one researcher and survivor of prison rape explains:
"The prison subculture is characterized by a rigid class system based on sexual roles. The majority of prisoners are "men"...These prisoners are considered to be heterosexual and most of them exhibit heterosexual patterns before and after incarceration...The "men" rule the roost and establish the values and behavioral norms for the entire prison population...Sexually, the "men" are penetrators only; a single incident of being penetrated is sufficient for lifelong expulsion from this class. The sexual penetration by a "man" is sanctioned by the subculture and considered to validate the "man's" masculinity. "Manhood" however, is a tenuous condition as it is always subject to being "lost" to another more powerful or aggressive "man", hence a "man" is expected to "fight for his manhood". Donaldson p2.
Another survivor explains the consequences of this system:
"Violence can be a by-product of man who have been raped. They will come on extra-aggressive against other men to protect themselves from being perceived vulnerable or weak."
In other words, male victims of rape may rape themselves to regain their masculine sexual identity which was taken from them in prison.
The phenomena of prison rape while horrifying in itself, show the limitations of most academic studies of rape and especially sociobiological accounts of rape which fail to distinguish between types of rape. "Rape" among scorpion flies, orangutans, as well as the myriad of types of rape among humans are conflated (and reified) into a single concept. These different types of rape are not the same thing and operate inside very different social contexts. Prison rape is solid evidence that heterosexual rape is undertaken for reasons of power and domination though sexual pleasure and need of intimacy, companionship and love also play a role. Prison rapists just treat their victims the way they treat women on the outside.
And further,
"Some of the reasons for such involvement [rape] go beyond the necessity of relieving the sex/intimacy drive. One is that aggressive sexual activity, especially rape and possession of a known sexual receptive are considered to validate masculine status and hence to protect the "man" from attempts to deprive him of that status. There is considerable peer pressure in many institutions to engage in "masculine" sexual activity because it validates such activity on the part of "men" already engaged...
"The psychological roots of jail rape are complex, but it is clear that the primary motivation of the rapist lies more in the area of power deprivation than sexual deprivation, though the latter should not be underestimated. In the eyes of the perpetrator the victim is less a sexual object than a means of exhibiting male dominance and superiority of the rapist. That physical qualities are significant however, is shown by the fact that obese or older inmates are rarely selected as victims." Donaldson p 3,10.
I submit that Donaldson's explanation above, is closest to the reasons why heterosexual rape and violence occurs in the outside world. One of the intentions of the evolutionary psychologists is to debunk what they call the "standard social science explanation". A kind of strawman exemplified by theorists like Susan Brownmiller and B, Ehrenreich. The phenomena of prison rape and sexual violence and its explanation breathes new life into non-biological theories of violence.
Other Books of Related Interest.
[in no particular order]
Richard Dawkins.Selfish Gene. 1986 2nd edition.Oxford. Classic account of gene-centered viewof evolution. Interesting applications of game theory.
Steven Pinker. How the Mind Works.1997.Random House. Lengthy account of the mind as an adaption.
Jerry Fodor. In Critical Condition. MIT 2000. Polemical essays against ultra-darwinism
Donald Symons. Evolution of Human Sexuality. 1978. Cambridge. Classic sociobiological account of sexuality. False, but contains much insight.
Philip Kitcher. Vaulting Ambition. MIT 1985. Meticulous dissection of sociobiology by one of the best philosophers around.
Robert Trivers. The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology. 1973. Reprinted in many places. Founding document of sociobiology.
J.M. Smith. Theory of Evolution. 1989.2nd ed. Penguin. Classic exposition of Darwinism by then Marxist dean of English Darwinism.
J.M. Smith. Games, Sex, Evolution. Oxford 1991. Essays on a variety of subjects by the great evolutionary theorist.
Karl Sigmund. Games and Life. Oneof the best books on game theory as applied to biology.
George C.Williams. Adaptation and Natural Selection. 1966. Cambridge. Classic polemic against group selection.
Elliot Sober. Nature of Selection. MIT 1985. Founding treatise on analytical philosophy of biology.
Elliot Sober and D.S. Wilson. Unto Others. 1997. Harvard. convincing defense of group selection and altruism.
D.C. Dennett. Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Penguin.1995. Philosophical foundations of neo-Darwinism.
SJ Gould. Urchin in the Storm. W.W. Norton. Collections of Gould's book reviews. Classics of the genre. Includes two polemics against sociobiology–chap 1 and 6.
SJ Gould. Mismeasure of Man. W.W. Norton.2nd ed. 1996. Critique of biological determinism and reductionism.
Lewontin, Rose and Kamin. Not in Our Genes.Penguin.1986. Classic polemic against sociobiological politics.
Lewontin, R.C. Dream of the Human Genome. 2000. NYRB. Collected book reviews by master geneticist.
R.Levins and R.C. Lewontin. Dialectical Biologist. 1985. Harvard. Classic exposition of Marxist view of evolution.
S.Rose. Lifelines. 1997. Oxford. Critique of reductionist biology.
S.Rose and H.Rose. Molecules and Minds. 1979. More of the same.
S.Rose and H.Roseeds. Alas,Poor Darwin. 2001. Harmony. Essays against evolutionary psychology.
Helena Cronin. The Ant and the Peacock. 1981. Oxford. Neo-Darwinian discussion of altruism and sexual selection.
Charles Darwin. Origin of Species.1859 Charles Darwin. Descent of Man. 1871.
Anne Fausto Sterling. Myths of Gender.1985. W.W. Norton. Debunking of biological determinism vis a vis gender.
Frederick Engels. Dialectics of Nature.1898. International Publishers. Moscow. Includes the classic "Transition of ape to man". Introduction by J.B.S. Haldane.
Stop Prisoner Rape Website. The essays of the late Stephen Donaldson in particular contain much insight from some one who lived it.