> I have a dear place in my heart for Emma, but she has to be wrong
> about this. Certainly sex and sexual desire are "inherent" to
> human beings, an integral element of natural selection. However,
> even evolutionary psychologists note that our sense of morality
> is not simply "grafted" on: caring for others, self-sacrifice,
> cooperation are all traits that help humans thrive and get
> their genes into the next generation of humans.
You're going too fast. Emma may or may not have had mistaken beliefs about the origins of morality. Nonetheless, the moral urges psychologically present themselves to us as grafted on. I don't know of anyone who is serious about evolutionary psychology who wouldn't allow that there's something to Freud's theory of the id and the superego.
> I realize this veers into the "just so" speculation Justin
> rightly makes fun of, but here's a tentative claim: natural
> selection has produced humans capable of both sex and
> morality,
A "tenative" claim? More like ironclad. There are, of course, many evolutionary psych hypotheses that are both plausible and problematic. The two you mention are not among them--they are no more mere "just so" speculations than the theory of evolution itself.
> and both of these "inherent" characteristics are expressed in radically
different ways, depending on
> cultural and historical context.
The behaviors show a large degree of plasticity, though I find it funny that just about the only way to stop people from having sex is to tell them (and make them believe) that it's wicked.
-- Luke