--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> > It's exactly what sociobiology -- indeed just
> plain
> > biology -- would lead you expect. Wouldn't males
> > males whow ere attracted to women who were in fact
> > more fertile be more successful in propagating?
> > Wouldn't, therefore, they be more likely to select
> for
> > women who had apparant signs of fertility, thus
> making
> > women who had those signs more likely to
> propagate?
>
> Not quite that simple: reproductive success, as all
> serious evolutionary theorists contend, is more than
> just fertile women cranking out babies!
Yes, there are refinements, but that's the core of it.
I wasn't, however, going into all the refinements. The fine-tuned definition of reproductive success wasn't my topic. I was just pointed out that there is plausible SB explanation for male preference for fertile-appearing women.
For
> instance,
> a less fertile woman could have a higher level of
> reproductive success if she is a more effective
> caregiver
> and/or maintains strong social ties with others to
> create
> a support network that keeps the offspring alive.
> (Sarah Hrdy's work on this is good.)
Yes, and assuming (as seems likely) that sexual preference has a signifigent genetic component, homosexuals of both sexes who are far less likely to reproduce at all must not get selected out -- the standard SB theory is that they helped out with the family's kids, so groups with some proportion of gays were more successful in, well, cranking out babies and keeping them alive till they could crank out more
The crucial
> point here that sociobiology seems to mostly ignore
> is that reproductive success is about getting the
> offspring to reproductive age; it is not just about
> maximizing the number of pregnancies or even the
> number of live births.
>
> The thing that disappoints me is that there is
> ample, rigorous work on evolutionary theory being
> done by
> biologists. This work is largely ignored by
> people who call themselves "evolutionary
> psychologists"
> or "sociobiologists".
Yes, but if that is a criticism of my account, it's misplaced.
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Justin wrote:
>
> > pre-historically, when it mattered, sexual
> selection was done by
> > women among their suitors -- so you'd have men who
> were attracted
> > to fertile-looking women competing for the favors
> of desirable women.
>
> What was the prehistoric life expectancy? 20 years?
Hard to say. Figures I'ves een say about 35, but who the hell knows?
> Most women back
> then must have died long before they reached
> menopause, many of them
> probably during child births.
Yes.
There weren't too
> many old women (or
> old men for that matter). In that context, I doubt
> that age meant
> much of anything sexually,
Well, I was really focusing on appearing fertile, ofw hich age might be an index, I wasn't the one who brought that up. However, it's also true, that a preference for fertileappearing women might be linked to a preference for women in their teens rather than their 20s or 30s because these might have more children simply as a mater of time.
except that too young
> boys and girls
> couldn't procreate. So there must have been a lower
> limit, but an
> upper limit wouldn't have made sense for either sex.
I wasn't talking about "limits" but about preferences. With regard to preferences, a male preference foe younger women might make sense on the grounds suggested.
>
> > Even if the family, i.e., in patriarchical sociry,
> dad, chooses for
> > junior, he's likely to choose someone
> fertile-appearing and younger.
>
> Preference for paring young women with older men in
> the past was
> patriarchy's choice, not biology's.
That is a mere assertion. I have presented an explanatory sketch. You've just said, ain't so. Btw, I have never said, i have in fact flatly denied, that SB explanations tell us what "biology chooses" rather than society. That opposition makes no sense, biologically speaking.
Do I have to repeat my mantra again? OK, here goes. All biological phenomena operate in an environmental context -- necessarily. For humans that context is social. SB cannot say: geneticsa nd not society determine this outcome. It can only say, genetics creates certain propensitiers in given environmental (social) ranges.
No more straw men, please?
Also, mere
> production of
> offsprings wasn't good enough for patriarchal
> societies. Very
> fertile women who bore only daughters were looked
> down upon in such
> societies -- it was production of male offsprings
> that counted.
You're moving into the biologically irrelevant historical period. Nothing that has hapopened in the last 15,000 years has mattered much biologically speaking. We have no idea if prehistoric societies were patriarchal in that sense,a nd the hunter-gatheres probably didn't have much in theway of property pass on to their heirs anyway/
> That's all political-economic-cultural. If the
> point is to pass on
> genes rather than properties to male heirs, it
> doesn't matter if
> partners bore male or female offsprings, as long as
> they bore many.
Again, the erroneous nature/nuture dichotomy. It's really time to drop that opposition. You cannot critique an SB explanation by pointing out that there is a social environment in which any biologically based prefewrences manifest themselves.
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