On Fri, 15 Jul 2005, Luke Weiger wrote about the genetic link for homosexuality:
> (I'm already overlimit. If you wish to reply onlist, go for it.)
(I'm replying onlist. Hey--I think we discovered how to circumvent the daily post limit!)
> A better analogy would've been depression. Some folks who are even bigger
> fans of the phenotypic gambit (i.e. assuming that a given trait is an
> adaptation) than I also strain to come up with adaptive explanations for
> that psychological/behavioral state.
>
Believe it or not, some psychologists have gone there with depression, anxiety, etc.: "they're all the result of natural selection!" This reminds me exactly of ardent Freudians who see unconscious motives in any behavior ("you lit the wrong end of your cigarette? You're clearly harboring latent homosexual tendencies!") Just as some behavior is not a manifestation of unconscious impulses, some traits that exist in humans are not adaptive and not directly the result of adaptive pressures.
The fact that so many sociobiologists feel compelled to come up with adaptionist stories for every aspect of human behavior from depression to sexual preference demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of evolutionary theory, from Darwin on up to Gould.
Miles