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49 comments from readers

r_thombre
15 April 2008 at 14:11

Uh...one small question...have u heard of this little known but important statistical concept called the Average? I lost count of how many times you pointed out that some attribute wasn't a 'monopoly' of this sex or the other. So? As far as I can see she and others like her are talking about average tendencies. If we had a definitive caveman/sex object separation, this discussion would be pointless wouldn't it? Another thing, Americans are not the exception to the rule that most people have to work their butts off to earn a living, Europeans are..and we'll see how long that lasts.

JA Gill
15 April 2008 at 14:23

When you say there are (without providing evidence of your own) "so many exceptions to these rules" in regards to the plenitude of "erudite studies," Pinker provides in her book, it means either you don't understand what a significant statistical average means, or based on your own experience these averages are meaningless (again, no evidence). In the latter case, you're a hypocrite for countering Pinker's anecdotes with your own after you've derided her for using them, and in the former you're guilty of not seeing the forest for the trees. Either way, congratulations for writing yourself into a fine pickle.

Parser
15 April 2008 at 14:53

Ms Groskop (I'm guessing you're a Ms),

You obviously have no idea about the science, or the basic math, for that matter. You sound like you did Gender Studies 101 in about 1981.

I'm also guessing that you have never raised boys and girls from infancy, or attended to them in nursery or preschool. If you had, you'd know better.

Chengora
15 April 2008 at 14:57

The previous two commenters are making a classic mistake of sociobiologists and many others who believe that there are innate differences between the genders. Their discussion of averages is a red herring. Let's assume that the average man is more aggressive than the average woman. What does this tell us about innate, biological differences? Very little. Groskop rightly points to a myriad of cultural and developmental factors, and we simply have not disaggregated the effect of each of these on human personalities and behavior. Simply because there are differences between averages does not mean those differences are "innate".

Average tendencies are also largely useless as an explanatory and actionable factor. Do you create policies based on what the average person wants? If the average male is a philanderer, does that mean you allow them to do so? No, the goal in any free society is to expand people's ability to do what they want. In pursuing this idea of averages, you've lost sight of the actual implications of your points.

Now, I haven't read Pinker's book, but from Groskop's comments, I think it's clear that she draws heavily on sociobiological texts (Dawkins, Ridley, etc.). If not, apologies for misleading. If so, however, one point I would like to make is that their understanding of evolution is entirely inaccurate. They argue that human behavior is founded in genes, and that these genes adapted to conditions on the African savanna and pretty much stayed that way. It is a curious brand of evolution that posits that things don't change, especially since the entire point of the theory is to explain change.

Let me put it another way: I am East Asian. My nearsighted eyes are traditionally thought of as an adaptation to cold environments. My light skin would be completely inappropriate for sun-drenched envrionments. Clearly, my ancestors evolved to pressures outside the savanna. Yet, somehow sociobiologists maintain that men and women developed their gender roles to specific ecological conditions without accounting for this variation. Trying to hammer modern statistics and information into their models ignores literally thousands of years of human evolution.

These are serious weaknesses in Pinker's argument, and Groskop is right to call her on them.

vepxistqaosani
15 April 2008 at 15:33

If the observed differences between men and women are cultural rather than biological, one would not expect them to be replicated throughout both time and space -- that is, African men in 2,000 BC should be noticeably different from East Asian men in 2,000 AD.

The problem with the cultural argument is that there is no evidence of any significant changes in the differences between men and women across different cultures. In every culture known to me, there are gender differences -- and these differences are substantially the same: Men are always more aggressive; women, more nurturing.

Has anyone a counterexample?

JA Gill
15 April 2008 at 16:18

Of course there are innate differences between the genders. Try tallying the genes unique to the X or Y chromosomes. Dawkins, though he dislikes the appellation, is a sociobiologist. However, neither Dawkins nor the other famous sociobiologist, E.O. Wilson, subscribe to genetic determination--an oft-repeated slander applied to sociobiology by non-scientists or "soft-scientists." To quote Dawkins, "The myth of the 'inevitability' of genetic effects has nothing whatever to do with sociobiology..." I would gather, Chengora as well as Groskop have no clear idea what biological determinism means or sociobiology entails. And with blithe, unfounded assertions like this, "They argue that human behavior is founded in genes, and that these genes adapted to conditions on the African savanna and pretty much stayed that way." I think it's safe to assume Chengora, at least, is clueless about natural selection.

The light-skinned phenotype is an obvious ephemera, a morphological variation, representing variety in gene expression driven by other genes (transcription factors). That's how evolutionary biologists account for it.

Chengora seems to be assuming that the peer-reviewed, published research Pinker draws her analysis from doesn't account for socio-cultural influences when calculating statistical significance. I'm sorry Chengora, but are you honestly saying that such an obvious variable as "culture" went unnoticed and was left unconsidered by all the authors of all those primary papers, and that you, commenting in the comments section on a commentary, are the very first person to consider it?

I can sympathize with Chegora's and Groskop's positions despite their muddled thinking. For instance, I'll argue that g, the supposed general factor of intelligence, is a statistical myth, because, unlike skin-color, intelligence as a measurement is to variable to be sequestered among a population. But this argument was made 30 years ago by statistical geneticists, so really nothing new here.

PB66
15 April 2008 at 16:46

Groskop seems very clear to me in explaining the problems in Groskop's analysis. As for JA Gill's question, about whether crucial factors, like culture, have been properly considered, I assume this is what Groskp meant by saying that the research which Pinker cites is too "nuanced". I assume Groskop has read the book, considered the argument, looked at the evidence cited in other research, and concluded that the evidence is too weak to fully support the conclusions. That's what a reviewer is meant to evaluate.

I find this very likely. From what I've read of these type of studies in popular science magazines, it is not uncommon that a careful experiment will be conducted, and a certain result measured, and then an explanation is given of how this might fit into a larger theory. I'm not disputing the quality of the research when I say that the connection to the larger theory is frequently quite weak.

Presumably, human genetics has not changed much in the last 100 hundred years. I imagine that if one looked at the number of doctors, lawyers, and students everywhere in the world from the start of civilisation until 1900, everywhere in the world, the evidence would clearly show that the overwhelming majority of these studious and logical thinkers were men. With an extra 100 years of data, we can easily see that this result is purely cultural. It would be a major task for someone to correctly gather the data upto 1900. Despite spanning thousands of years and cultures around the world, such research would still not be able to separate out cultural and innate-gender differences. That's exactly the problem Groskop is pointing to.

Chengora
15 April 2008 at 17:33

@ vepxistqaosani - Yes, there are many counterexamples. Tibetans have a polygamous society, with more polyandry than polygyny (something that the sociobiological explanations can't really get at). The Khasi tribe is India dominated by aggressive women. (I've met them before. Believe me, they're impressive.)

But I dislike having to paint cultures in broad brush strokes. When you get down to the nuance of how gender relations work and have changed, sociobiology offers very little by way of explanation. For example, both American and Arab cultures can be largely thought of as valuing male aggression (maybe). But there's a huge amount of variety both between and among them. And the changes that have taken place within the cultures in the past 100 years, as PB66 points out, suggest that something other than natural selection are at work.

@ JA Gill - You know, name calling and put downs don't pass for nuanced analysis. And you completely missed the point of my comment. It's not that sociobiologists ignore culture. It's that they completely write it out of their models. They take a myopic view of genetics (self-gene theory) as a foundation, then conceptualize the environment as a competition between genes. That's Dawkins in a nutshell, despite his protestations.

The issue is that this conception of the environment - which Dawkins, Ridley, and others (notice I didn't mention Wilson - he's a bit more nuanced) have used to argue they do include environmental factors - are incredibly reductionist. The salient environment is simply genes versus genes. Then we jump several levels of analysis to use modern statistics of general, largely American or British populations to draw some kind of connection.

And that's exactly the problem with your point about skin color (I notice you did not discuss eyes, since that's much harder for your theory to get around). Changes do happen, but the job of the evolutionary biologist is to separate out what is developmental, what are differences in expression, and what are actual adaptations in response to external stimuli. However, this reductionist view culls out many of these elements, such that evolution is confined to genetic competition, and one that has ossified - in the theorists' minds - several millenia ago.

But if we can constantly see new changes (and several recent reports have said that change is continuing, even accelerating), then why should we assume that genetically-influenced behaviors respond to either one level of selection or a particular environment?

These are important methodological and factual questions, even gaps, in sociobiology, and it's not a sign of "muddled thinking" to point them out. Other luminaries in biology - Lewontin, Gould - have expressed these concerns much more eloquently than I can. JA Gill, you need to respect the arguments of the other side more. You're clearly outraged by my comments, but calling me and Groskop "clueless" ignores the arguments that have been presented. Your anger is misplaced, and it does nothing but poison rational debate about these issues.

ramesh1
15 April 2008 at 18:16

Women should stay home and raise the babies is middle class whim. Iam staying in India.From ancient time very poor section of man and woman work together, woman take two three days leave for delivery, After that she belt her child back side of body and start to work. Her fact is not so great that she can rest one or two month after delivery.She work with her husband other wise they will strave.

JA Gill
15 April 2008 at 19:04

Lewontin and Gould are/were radicals in their field, and Gould's punctuated equilibrium has been largely ignored for lack of evidence.

Calling you ignorant is an observation; how would you prefer I worded it?

Besides, I take it back. I think a better descriptor of what you've written would be disingenuous.

Reductionism is only the perfectly plausible argument that "a complex whole is best explained in terms of its parts. What you've done in accusing sociobiologists of dismissing culture or the environment is twist this around to say Reductionism: the features (genes) of a complex whole are simply the sum of those same features in the parts. The "genes vs genes" definition you're espousing is nowhere found in the writings of real biologists. Familiarize yourself with concepts like epigenesis, genetic drift, kin selection. And if these don't satisfy you in explaining the basis for the variety of human behaviors, perhaps you'd like to put forward a positive school of theory, say deconstructionist biology, or wholistic genomics.

This little gem dribbles off the page into incoherence.

Chengora: "But if we can constantly see new changes (and several recent reports have said that change is continuing, even accelerating), then why should we assume that genetically-influenced behaviors respond to either one level of selection or a particular environment?"

That's a perfect example of muddled thinking on your part. What are you getting at? Behaviors change or evolve all the time, therefore we shouldn't assume that genetics are behind it because genes according to sociobiologists don't change?

As a final note, have you heard of evo-devo? It's a burgeoning field in biology with it's own international conferences, peer-reviewed journals and specialists teaching at universities near you. Look into Cis regulatory genes for a starter.

Chengora
15 April 2008 at 19:50

No, calling me ignorant ignores what I've said and the evidence I've presented. It does nothing to advance your argument. It's just a personal attack. I could call you a variety of choice names that are all accurate (in my mind) descriptors of what you're saying. However, that's not germane to the content of this discussion, and it's frankly rude. Besides, if a person can't make a point without attacking his opponent (I'm not your enemy, remember), it says something about that person's character and the strength of his/her arguments.

Now for your point:

"Reductionism is only the perfectly plausible argument that 'a complex whole is best explained in terms of its parts.'"

I agree with this to an extent. We need to break things down and try to explain them through smaller parts. But the mistake that Dawkins, for example, makes is in thinking that the whole can be explained PURELY through its parts. He makes this argument throughout his books, so clearly there are some biologists out there who argue this point. I think you're misrepresenting the state of the art with your idea that no true biologists say this. Do you want me to provide you with a reading list? In fact, it's a pretty popular strain of thought right now, with many biologists dipping into the popular science tone to argue this point.

And anyway, this reductionist point is precisely the one that Lewontin and Gould have made. Punctuated equilibrium is too often put up as a red herring: I wasn't actually talking about that. I was referring instead to things like the methodological ladder that Gould presented to point out the problems with sociobiology. In that, he talks specifically about how Dawkins, Ridley and others have jumped the gun in drawing connections where there aren't any. And that strain of thought is coming back much more to the fore. The academy is already starting to see the limitations of selfish gene theory, and more and more thinkers have shifted to things like evolutionary development, epigenesis, and genetic drift. These are factors which move away from a purely reductionist look at genetic competition and onto other factors that present a much more realistic view of environmental pressures and population-wide impact.

For your other point:

"Behaviors change or evolve all the time, therefore we shouldn't assume that genetics are behind it because genes according to sociobiologists don't change?"

Yes, that's exactly right. I'm surprised at your incredulity, because that is exactly what evolutionary biologists do. What is an adaptation, what is a "spandrel," WHY did this change happen? These are the questions that good evolutionary biologists assess, and they are aware of the fact that not every change comes down to changes in the genetic code due to natural selection. It's the job of the evolutionary biologist to figure out what actually happened, what pressures organisms responded to, and to cull away all the random crap that happens when organisms change to determine whether the changes are genetic, developmental, or even taught.

And that's the problem with sociobiologists, Pinker among them (it seems. As I've said, I haven't read her book, so I don't know). When you take what looks to be a difference, jump several levels of analysis and selection, and use modern behaviors to back up genetic theories, you've lost your methodology and the HISTORICAL element of evolution. You're assuming that the reason why a change occurred is the same as the reason why a difference persists. That's just logically inaccurate.

And notice that it doesn't rely upon a fossil record. The critical link is made through a logical, almost narrative argument: there is this difference, it can be explained through this theory given these conditions, and we're going to prove it using information from an entirely different environment.

Haven't you ever wondered why points about gender roles in human have to be explained with recourse to the behavior of birds? (This is Matthew Ridley's argument in The Red Queen, for example.)

The problem with this argument is, you look at things like epigenesis and genetic drift as purely explained through selfish genes. I look at the same phenomena, and I see a much more complex interaction of selfish genes and ALSO evolutionary pressures from other levels of analysis. Clearly, you want to bring everything back to a root cause, and I respect that. But you have to be able to justify why that's the case. I've brought up a bunch of weaknesses and counterclaims, but you really haven't addressed those yet. Okay, try this: sociobiologists often talk about an "environment of evolutionary adaptedness". It forms a foundation for the genetic competition they discuss. I've already pointed out the problems in using an environment from savanna Africa to explain modern behavior. So, tell me, why are my points wrong? Why is it okay to use that environment, despite the fact that there have been physcial and genetic changes to humans since then?

And by the way, you're not using "disingenuous" correctly. From the evidence I've just presented, I think it should be clear that I believe what I say. I'm not playing devil's advocate here, and indeed, I have no reason to do so with you. But at least you've taken back the point that I'm ignorant. :-)

JA Gill
15 April 2008 at 20:58

First off, nobody says sociobiology anymore. Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, sometimes accused of being a panadaptationist.

And it just occurred to me that I've been debating someone who has their evolutionary psychology confused with their evolutionary biology. The reason you're characterization of "sociobiology" is off is because you're describing the dogma of evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker, not Dawkins. There's a lot with Pinker I don't agree with, especially his "just-so" stories about life on the savanna. Be that as it may, Pinker isn't a biologist, and has no credentials in genetics or molecular biology. And if you get all or most of your information about evolution from popular science books and the media, and not the primary research published in journals, then I simply don't know what to say, except you're not trying very hard to understand. You're comments certainly suggest this. It's as if you delight in setting fire to the sociobiology strawman just to watch him burn.

1. Scientists studying the genetics behind human behavior (including your so-called gender roles) do not exclusively use birds. When scientists can get their hands on them, (Francis DeWaal and his study of altruism) they enjoy studying non-human primates. Others use rats, while my preferred critter for behavioral studies is the zebrafish.

2. Evolutionary biologists don't look at epigenesis and genetic drift "purely...through selfish genes." There's your strawman. Your entire argument seems to rest on this point, but it's not an issue because no evolutionary biologist worth his title is going to say such a thing. She'd be laughed out of her lab.

Here's what's done. Take an easy measurement made of responses to specific stimuli, get one genetically defined line (population) that do one thing, and another genetically defined line that do something measurably different, and as closely as possible, make the environment they're raised in identical. Pretty straightforward, but now everything gets more complicated. The next step is to 1) replicate the observations in multiple populations and generations. 2) look at the behaviors in hybrids of the two strains, and 3) modify the environment of the developing line to see how that influences their behavior. Depending on your research subject, methods my slightly vary, but that's your basic experimental design.

Chengora
15 April 2008 at 22:47

Ah, good, now I think we're finally getting somewhere. First, terminology. At least initially, I took pains to distinguish between sociobiologists and biologists. The two are very different groups in my mind, although they are by no means mutually exclusive. I'm not sure where we started slipping into a conflation of the two, but it seems to me that at least initially, you've been arguing against the wrong person. You'll notice I very specifically mention sociobiologists in that first post:

"I think it's clear that she draws heavily on sociobiological texts (Dawkins, Ridley, etc.)."

You’ll also notice that I mentioned several times that I don’t know if Pinker (not Steven) makes this argument in her book. I suspect it’s as such, but again, I’ve been cautious about misleading people.

Now, if the question is about Dawkins, there's really very little doubt about his panadaptationist M.O. Yes, he's a biologist, and a good one at that. But he, in particular, goes too far in trying to reduce everything down to the genetic level. And to do that, he freezes the environment, which is often methodologically inappropriate. Just look at The Extended Phenotype, for example.

As for the name thing, ev psych, sociobiology, biological anthro - I've been around long enough to read most them. They all share the same goal, they share similar methods. New name, same package, from the 60s to now. Show me a hard methodological difference (and an effective response to the criticisms of sociobiology that later schools have addressed), and I'll start calling them by their taken name.

So, your two points. First, I've talked with people like Frans de Waal (he's a very nice guy). But, the issue I was pointing out is not simply that birds are used. It's that organisms are used at all to draw conclusions about other organisms. Naturally, I'm not going to go too far in this. Reference animals are incredibly important for medical research, for example. But, if we start building genetic or evolutionary theories based on one animal and put them onto another without exploring differences, that's an issue. It's a homological fallacy, actually.

I may not need to address your second point, hopefully since we've cleared up what we're talking about. But, the question then becomes, what were you arguing for? If you and I both agree that sociobiology is too reductionist, then why did you make your argument? You even defend their positions in your second post, but you don’t really understand how the concept of biological determinism has changed over the years, especially since you’ve not responded to one comment I’ve made about the reductionist view of the environment, or the usage of the EEA, or the homology challenge.

As is evident from just scrolling up, you think there's some role for biology in affecting human behavior, so perhaps that's where the argument is? I have no quarrel with that. What I disagree with is the usage of methodologically faulty just-so stories based on an inaccurate conception of evolution, or the use of shoddy modern data to support the idea of innate behavioral differences founded in genetics while ignoring reams of cultural data to the contrary. It’s not enough to simply say biology affects behavior. How does it affect behavior, and how do we disaggregate it from other factors?

That relates to your last point:

"Take an easy measurement made of responses to specific stimuli, get one genetically defined line (population) that do one thing, and another genetically defined line that do something measurably different, and as closely as possible, make the environment they're raised in identical."

That's actually the hardest thing to do in good social science. You can hold the environment constant in many natural science experiments, and from that you get straight lines of causality that, say, X gene has Y effect.

But, trying to do that in the social sciences is much, much more difficult. The environment adds many more variables to control for, including the fact that subjects are affected by both the act of observation and the results. There is also the element of learning and development to consider. And to connect behavior to biology without assessing alternative social factors (or determining exactly what their impact is) is extraordinarily difficult. Consequently, the need to refer to "simpler" organisms as references, or other methodologies. But again, you can't necessarily extrapolate from chimps to humans, especially when causality is muddled by exogenous factors that you can’t control.

And you get back to my original point. Even if, let’s say, something as vast as gender roles is 50% biologically driven, what exactly does that even mean? How do we know when someone is acting from their biological drive or their cultural drive? How do you plan policy around that? How do make a moral code based on that? The great thing about hard biological determinism is its simplicity. You always know what’s driving you. But in a mixed – one might say muddled :-) - view, what does that even mean?

Jon Elster, among many others, talks about this at length. Humans simply aren’t the billiard balls of physics, and it’s a mistake to enter into social scientific analysis with that assumption. But more generally, I wonder: Pinker (not Steven) is arguing for something. In fact, most theories of biologically driven human behavior are arguments for. I think that misses the fundamental point of science, espoused by Karl Popper, that science is often about culling out what is not. And the inability of sociobiologists, ev psych, and biological anthropology to address the criticisms leveled at it will always leave it open to the charges that Groskop and I make.

Anyway, I've enjoyed this discussion, but you need to learn more about the challenges of solid methodology in social scientific research. By arguing that the test set-up is comparatively easy part, you've missed the fact that crossing from natural to social science is a difference not just of degree but also kind. And that's why your personal attacks were uncalled for. I'm not "clueless" about these issues, and I doubt Groskop is either. I simply have a different way of looking at things and different expertise. This is not to say my thoughts are superior to yours. That's the actual content's job. But you must tread much more carefully in asserting the value of your thoughts and especially, denigrating the thoughts of others.

margaret
16 April 2008 at 00:10

I can't argue the academic way as many of the previous writers have ... ramesh's comment is brief and powerful. But I believe in the pampered western world that social conditioning from our own families, advertising, and government policy is a powerful tool for maintaining status quo ideals of male and female roles. I haven't read Pinker's book but I am interested in the topic/problem having raised daughters and a son. My eldest daughter had more 'alpha' traits than my son, so really, people are people and gender differences are often reinforced by allowing stereotypical 'ideals' of male/female to begin from the moment a child is born. I really enjoyed Seventies parenting as the encouragement for raising youngsters was to dress them for play ... not in 'princess/fairy' type clothes if they were girls. Independent thought was and should be the aim of raising the young, not meeting the aims of a world which is bent on sending young men who have not been taught to think ... to war.

Podritske
16 April 2008 at 02:53

"Biological, schmiological!" A modern couple--until recently that meant a male and female of the human race--has the modern advantage of sexual pleasure in their union without--in most instances--the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. When and if offspring are in their future they can make the rational, practical choice to have one of them stay close at home with the child during the critical formative years while the other deals with the practical matter of earning sufficient resources to support the venture. Who gives a damn which partner does which job, as long as the nursing can be worked in without too many scheduling difficulties.

JA Gill
16 April 2008 at 18:01

Like I said, I'm no fan of evo psych, so I'm not going to defend it. It extracted all the bad and objectionable parts of sociobiology and amplified them: excesses of panadaptationism and the unwarranted oversimplification of modularity.

The fact that biologists, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, and evo-devo specifically, have been moving into what has traditionally been social science territory, I commonly hear the culture card thrown about by those who have no or little appreciation of genetics. This, I believe, is where we part ways. I don't think biology has some role to play in understanding human behavior and culture, it will have the foremost role to play. Life cannot be imagined or examined outside the realm of biology, and the founding principle on which biology rests is descent through modification from a common ancestor.

But wait! I too am uncomfortable with the assumption that all details of human behavior are adaptations. Take religion for instance. I'd argue that it's not an adaptive trait, but a byproduct of a brain biased toward pattern recognition. I am equally uncomfortable, however, with the idea that the size and complexity of our brains has brought about complete transcendence of the previous 500 million years of animal evolution.

I'm not a sociologist, but can social science be that hyper-byzantine in it's regard toward human behavior, or is it that nobody can look at an "image of behavior" without resorting to a graphic or chart? Sociology is based on "observation" (often anecdotal) with no images in sight - its all statistical and systems, yet the maths applied to it have not come anywhere near coping with it. With the vast hodgepodge of "independent minds" running around "regulating the expression" of societies, I suppose its no wonder the social sciences haven't yet even produced a single unifying theme or set of foundations, as physics and biology have. What the social sciences may have is legitimacy envy.

Sure, there are some things biologists can glean from the social sciences (neuroethics) but they've been so sullied by PoMo over the last 40 years, I'd say the burden of proof lies on them to prove their theories represent reality. The social sciences will continue to become irrelevant if they don't purge themselves of their ideology and paranoia towards hard science.

I wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but in the humanities as well as the social sciences, if the Sokal flap was any indicator, I would advocate a more objective and science-based approach.

The statement you made about scientists resorting to simpler organisms is faulty on two accounts. There's little, behaviorally speaking, more complex about humans than chimps or bonobos. The divergence in behavioral differences will likely be tracked down to cis regulatory elements that control expression of your common protein-making genes. What physical and behavioral difference we observe can be accounted for not so much in a quantifiable genetic way but in levels of expression from selective endogenous and exogenous pressures.

Also, biologists don't study "simpler" organisms because they're "simpler" to study. We do it for ethical reasons. We also do it because we share many of the same (homologous) genes as our metazoan ancestors. By studying genes, their expression levels, what proteins they make or what other genes they regulate in these more accessible organisms, we have a pretty good idea what those same genes might do in humans as well. For instance, once a population has speciated into, say, a gazelle, "speed is good" is no longer an opinion, it's a fact of life. Even if the environment then changes (say, the gazelles escape to a predator-free area), the original survival strategy will have woven its way into things like intragroup dominance and mating conflicts, (not to mention general physiology) to become self-maintaining. Future conditions could overlay that with other changes (say, for living on mountainsides), but "speed" being useful for a variety of situations, it's not likely to be eliminated entirely.

Does the environment play a role? I'd say biologists probably have a more intimate understanding of gene/environment interactions than your average social scientist. Behavior, as biologists see it, is an emergent property of the interactions of many genes throughout the genome and the environment, rather than your caricature of a facile mapping of a complex phenotype to a short stretch of nucleotides.

For example, if monogamy is attributable to some array of different genes, those genes aren't going to be on just the Y chromosome: they're going to be scattered throughout the genome, including on chromosomes that we share with females. Genes like SRY on the Y chromosome may trigger epigenetic changes that modify the expression of genes located anywhere in the genome. It might blow your mind to learn that the gene for the androgen receptor, a protein absolutely essential to the development of masculinity, is located on the X chromosome—you know, that female thing.

You say:

"And you get back to my original point. Even if, let’s say, something as vast as gender roles is 50% biologically driven, what exactly does that even mean?"

That's not a scientific statement as such, so it's hard to get at what you mean. If by biologically driven you mean genetic or heritable, (everything is biologically driven because life is biology) then I'd say lets settle on a specific behavior, empathy, for instance. First, find the empathetic region(s) of the brain, via increased blood flow under an fMRI, locate the genes associated with that region of the brain, see if those genes have been conserved in "simpler" organisms, generate a forward transgenic model (remove the candidate gene(s) from the organisms) and study their behavior. Also, stick a human diagnosed with sociopathology under an fMRI. Obviously, I'm oversimplifying to a large degree, but with this standard method, we can get within a reasonable range of behavior associated with what we commonly refer to as empathy.

Again, despite your bourgeois conspiracy theories, evolutionary and developmental biologist (and please don't trot out the racist, irrelevant old fossil Francis Crick) don't practice or promote biological determinism. You're, and apparently Jon Elster's, thoughts on reductionism sound something like upon believing Mozart to be a good musician, any good reductionist must conclude that Mozart's brain was made of musical atoms.

As to your morality question:

Of course, biology is not a moral imperative: Morality is more of an emergent property of social systems. The fact that we evolved doesn't dictate our social behavior, nor does it assign a ranking value on certain classes of behavior. We do that. Personally, I prefer the company of philanthropists to that of cannibals. I also don't operate under a moral code that says the crimes of cannibals are forgiven if they believe in Jesus or have been properly circumcised. Remember, biology is not morality: I freely evaluate the worth of an individual's behavior irrespective of their status as conspecifics. There are utilitarian reasons to be good. Heck, there are bucketloads of philosophers writing about the mechanisms of morality all the time, but as a mere biologist with no formal training in philosophy or ethics, I'm not really competent to go on about them.

I mean you no ill will. However, pointing out that you are ignorant of that which you criticize is a falsifiable observation, and I would hope you're capable of separating emotions from observations.

As always, I enjoy engaging with the soft sciences.

Babar
16 April 2008 at 18:35

While it a fact that males mature late, are cometative and die early, females revolve around reproduction: ie child rearing, home rearing, home setting, security, protection, .........thats how life cycle continues

Babar

ischomachos
16 April 2008 at 18:47

How many female construction workers or truck drivers are there? Not many. Why? Because they are discriminated against and barred from those professions? No. It’s because, not all, but most women can’t do those types of jobs.

The average man, with moderate exercise, can bench press 200 pounds. Most women, irrespective of how much they work-out, will never be able to bench press 200 pounds. Anyone who has played competitive sports, worked a demanding physical labor job, or just been to a gym lately, knows there are innate physical differences between men and women that no amount of training can overcome. It stands to reason that if there are innate physical differences there are probably emotional and mental differences as well.

Nonetheless, the question of whether there are innate differences is largely beside the point. The fact is that divorce has increased, marriage rates have dropped, and children have been neglected. This has not benefited anyone: men, women, or children. A significant reason, although not the only reason, is the idea of gender neutrality and the rejection of traditional gender roles that began in the 60s. Consequently, many people now days find it more difficult than it has ever been to get married and have children, which makes them increasingly unhappy. Whatever problems may have been caused by traditional gender roles—and I’m not saying there weren’t any—they were at least conducive to happy, or at least stable, family life for most people. Now days, because we have rejected gender roles, families are increasingly fragmented and domestic tranquility beyond the reach of most people.

One final point. Most Americans work to provide for their families, not for personal satisfaction, e.g. truck drivers and construction workers: a job is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Beginning in the 60s women were taught to postpone marriage and family to pursue careers only to find those careers were not as satisfying as they were led to believe. When jobs and careers are made into the main goal in life, primary means of personal fulfillment, and divorced from the end of supporting a family they quickly become unsatisfying and people are not happy. For most Americans, in the past at least, having and raising a family was the main focus and purpose of their lives. When that is taken away, as it increasingly has been, life becomes unsatisfying and meaningless, irrespective of how successful they are, or how much money they make, for both men and women. When life no longer has much meaning or purpose people tend to become irresponsible, unproductive, and men especially, violent and destructive to both themselves and society.

Chengora
16 April 2008 at 19:01

The differences between natural and social science are not one of paranoia or ideology. They are difficulties in question and experimental design. You cannot control for variables in social science in the way you can in the natural sciences. For example, physical principles do not change, whether in the lab or in reality. A ball will react to external stimuli in a definite, calculable manner. This is not to say that physics is simple: quite far from that. But you do not have this level of certainty in test of social theories. It's really difficult to cull out variables in general society, if indeed it's even possible. Beyond that, people do not react in a linear fashion to external stimuli. Even an "average" reaction won't tell you anything about a specific reaction. (And here we have the problem of judging instances from the sum of their parts.) For example, if men are on average more aggressive than women, does that mean I should expect a non-aggressive response from a particular woman if I hit her? Clearly not. However, if I strike a ball with another ball, I am guaranteed that the reaction will always proceed according to clear, unchanging principles.

And that's the issue I was pointing out with the 50% thing. You pointed out that you can find a "range of behaviors". But your experiment is limited because you cannot necessarily find general applicability from your sample to the rest of the population. Surveys of voting patterns are a clear case in point. Even when ranges of statistical error are present and reliable, the actual vote returns can be wildly different than the prediction.

As for "simpler" organisms, I used those quotes purposefully. I don't consider chimps any less physically complex than humans. It's just a linguistic short-hand. Perhaps better to say genetically related organisms and leave it at that.

But here, you display a blind spot. You're trying to argue that because we have similar genes, humans and chimps probably evolved to similar pressures. That's fine, although a stretch. While I can agree with you that “the original survival strategy will have woven its way into things like intragroup dominance and mating conflicts”, that is much harder to prove scientifically than you recognize. Humans have difficulty interpreting the customs of other humans. Assuming that we automatically know the reasons behind the behavior of another species is simple arrogance. In addition, as I’ve said before, people are constantly evolving, so there is no guarantee that humans eventually changed their behaviors due to additional environmental pressures.

However, the crux of your argument is more problematic. You're saying that those genes have a significant, even predominant, effect on behavior. That's unproven. Again, you don't have a direct line of causality between behavior and evolutionary pressures. I don't doubt that there is some biological impact. Hormones and development certainly have an effect. But that’s different than saying that similar evolutionary pressures compel the public to adopt policies which adhere to the conditions and stipulations of those pressures. Just because men are aggressive, for example, doesn’t mean we should give more leeway to men who commit sexual assault (and conversely, less leeway to women who do so?).

And I agree with you about the nature of morality. But you make a cardinal mistake in thinking that the policy implications of your arguments don’t also have moral implications. I’m not saying that morality emerges solely from our understanding of reality, and I don’t think you would either. But clearly our conception of reality has some impact. And you simply do not know enough about social science methodology and the reasons for it to understand the uncertainty that arises as a result. It’s far too early to say we have a comprehensive, biological understanding of personality, and to assert that is disingenuous. In fact, you seem blithely ignorant of the uncertainty within disciplines such as paleontology and genetics. For example, scientists estimate that they have recovered maybe 4% of the entire fossil record. We have made many advances based on what has been found – no doubt. But what hasn’t been found, and what can’t be preserved, is vast. The latter particularly is what I find difficult to accept. When you start talking about evolutionary pressures based on modern behavior, you have to wonder: where’s your evidence the pressure actually existed? How can you conclusively prove that this pressure is what the change is in response to? If you don’t have those connections, it’s just conjecture on your part. That’s the danger of the sociobiological just-so stories, and the one that you yourself are in danger of falling into.

Okay, I don’t want to go down to your level of rudeness, but you’re making it extremely hard. “Ignorant” doesn’t just mean that you don’t have a particular piece of information or knowledge. It suggests a general destitution of knowledge. To say “I don’t know something” is very different from saying “I’m ignorant of something.” For example, you clearly don’t know very much about the challenges presented by social science. But calling you ignorant (or clueless, or muddled) of these issues doesn’t actually do anything to advance your point and address the challenges. It’s a knee-jerk, emotional response on your part, and you’re just backtracking now.

And that’s your primary fault: you just dismiss anyone who doesn’t agree with you. Rather than understanding and dealing with the legitimate methodological questions that social science presents, you just dismiss the entire field. Rather than recognizing that you screwed up and read my statements about “sociobiology” as an attack on “biology” (which they weren’t), you try to blame me for that instead. I was very clear about that from the start. I was not criticizing evolutionary biology – I am criticizing sociobiology, ev psych, and all the other variations. You just don’t seem to be cognizant of that, even though I’ve said it multiple times and took pains to make that clear.

You just screwed up: you weren’t careful in what you read. If you want to expand the discussion beyond sociobiology – that’s fine. Be clear about that, recognize that I have made the right points with relation to sociobiology (which you have), and we can move on. But don’t call me ignorant, clueless, or muddled when you are too sloppy to read something with the appropriate level of nuance, and too arrogant and proud to admit you made a legitimate mistake.

JA Gill
16 April 2008 at 20:42

Aping my insults may feel pleasantly patronizing for you but it doesn't earn you any points on originality.

Right, a range of behaviors that falls within predefined parameters on average. And from that you can predict future outcomes, assuming a stable environment. And that's also why behavioral studies never involve just one sample. We have cohorts of many independent samples, run through the experiments time and again. Other researchers follow the methodologies and get similar results. It happens often. Consult the primary data.

And I've never implied that men, because they are more aggressive, get legal leeway. In fact, I don't remember mentioning anything about nature dictating policy-making. Instead, I mentioned before that society should be constructed in as much of an anti-Darwinian fashion as possible. That means universal healthcare, welfare, child labor laws and laws against murder and rape. You're confusing an ought with an is.

Of course, I'm not saying we have a 100% clear picture of human nature provided by either biology or the social sciences. But we've come a lot farther using genetics and molecular biology in the past 20 years than we have in the previous 100 years of sociology. I'd put my money on evolutionary biology to maintain the disparity into the foreseeable future.

I've tried to explain that no one says sociobiology anymore. It's morphed into other disciplines. Dawkins called himself a sociobiologist in the mid '80s, but did so expediently so as to be on the side of evolutionary biology while it was falling under attack from those in the humanities. So, unless you were arguing against outdated ideas--evolutionary thought has moved on since the days of sociobiology--all you've done is erect a strawman.

And never once did I say I was for evo-psych. I believe it was my third post where I came down hard against it. But this doesn't really matter, I'm forced to defend all of evo-devo and so much of what geneticists do (when I'd much rather be debating the nuances within) against someone who makes patently false remarks, such as this caricature of a Dawkins: It is a curious brand of evolution that posits that things don't change, especially since the entire point of the theory is to explain change."

And this: "evolution is confined to genetic competition, and one that has ossified - in the theorists' minds - several millenia ago."

I'm curious, how do you account Fragile X syndrome (heritable mental retardation) or any of the many other genetic mental disorders? They all effect behavior and some define one's behavior. Are these diseases too complex to measure or predict because there's this thing called an Environment within which they exist?

Chengora
16 April 2008 at 21:51

"Aping my insults may feel pleasantly patronizing for you but it doesn't earn you any points on originality."

Originality is not the issue. Your making hasty judgments and sloppy interpretations is, because they lead you to incomplete arguments (that whole digression on post-modernism, bourgeois theories, etc. – I’ve never once mentioned those ideas and indeed, I definitely don’t subscribe to them). I'm glad that you finally admit those were insults, instead of the asinine position that you're just making an observation (which is subjective and impossible to prove). Look, go back to my previous posts and realize that I am talking about sociobiology, not evolutionary biology. You made a mistake, but you need to recognize it and curb your outrage. Hopefully we can move on from this.

As for evo-psych and sociobiology, I'm glad you came down hard against it, and that's what let to my confusion about why precisely you're arguing with me. I'm not asking you to defend those disciplines, and indeed, it's easier if you don't. But of course, in your second post you defend Dawkins, which is where you got into trouble.

But those quotes you took from my posts. That's all in reference to sociobiology/ev psych, and I was very clear about that. I certainly do not think that genuine evolutionary biologists think that way, but you clearly didn’t pick up on that. The academy - as you demonstrate - has moved on from such thinking. And in my own writings on sociobiology, I have drawn greatly from the efforts of clear-minded evolutionary biologists who do not subscribe to the social ideas of Dawkins, Ridley, et al. But there are certainly a strong group of individuals - with relations to the evolutionary biological discipline - that have not moved on, sadly.

(And by the way, while sociobiology has morphed into ev psych, etc., it's still founded on the same set of texts and ideologies with regard to selfish genes and panadaptationism. The theories really haven't changed much at all. If you're tired of calling it sociobiology, just call it ev. psych. The criticisms I level against it still hold. If you're complaint is about terminology, that's fine, but really not important. If the term sociobiology is outdated, why do you even care, unless you think it somehow affects the discipline of evolutionary biology?)

"Right, a range of behaviors that falls within predefined parameters on average. And from that you can predict future outcomes, assuming a stable environment."

Of course, the problem is that human societies are not stable environments, and that's precisely the problem with psychological studies, and indeed, theories of sociology, political science, and other social sciences. The lab is not necessarily reflective of the wider environment. So, you can continually go back to the source data and repeat the experiments in a lab setting – it doesn’t necessarily matter. The best you can get is a suggestion of how people react given a tight set of conditions. The difficulties in MRI scanning and predicting behavior are definitely tied to this. While we can certainly see what happens in the brain when people think of certain subjects, we are less clear about the causality between brain signal and behavior (William Saletan gave a good overview of this issue and the scientific research in Slate a while back). In addition, the conditions of the experiment are so tight as to be meaningless for predicting behavior when not laying on a gurney.

And you recognize that as well, as you state:

“Of course, I'm not saying we have a 100% clear picture of human nature provided by either biology or the social sciences. I'd put my money on evolutionary biology to maintain the disparity into the foreseeable future.”

I completely agree. But if you start to make bets about which discipline will better explain behavior, we’re completely off the scientific track. We should be talking about the evidence of now, not of what could be.

All right , in the interests of space, I'm splitting this into multiple posts.

Chengora
16 April 2008 at 22:08

Okay, here is the meat of my argument: On that prior note, you need to stop setting up a caricature of my arguments. Not once have I said that biology has no impact on human behavior. I fully agree that it does. I disagree, however, that:

1. Biology necessarily trumps cultural factors as an explanation.

2. Biology captures all the factors that influence human behavior.

3. We can clearly say that biology provides a clear explanation of human behavior.

This is a definite weakness in your argument, and one that you share to an extent with ev. psych. Biology has shown us a lot, no doubt, and I think we should continue with experiments like brain scans, etc. to explore how the mind works. But we have to be extremely cognizant of the limitations of those methods. I’ve already mentioned some of the methodological challenges. You simply do not have the conditions for experimentation in the social sciences that you do in the natural sciences. And far from making it a “soft” science, I flippantly prefer to think of these conditions as making experimentation infinitely “harder.” You have many more variables, and you can’t control for them. Or, better put, you can, but the results you get are largely meaningless. Psychological experiments, for example, typically tackle reaction; they don’t assess behavior, which must encompass conditions like thought, education, and life experience.

Of take it from another angle. In international relations, the predominant theories discuss the effects of systems (and to a more limited extent, bureaucratic structure) to explain decisions and policies. Issues of geostrategic position, fluctuating market prices, and especially perception feedback into the system of study, such that it is impossible to disaggregate and identify causality. This is why IR – and social science more generally – sticks with assessing correlative factors. These factors have an impact, but they depend very much upon the particular situation.

And as a result of that, you can’t necessarily compare the natural and social explanations. Biology may explain causality some elements of human behavior in limited situations (particularly limited when it comes to IR). But does that mean that it has pushed out social explanations? Definitely not. All you’ve done is made an argument that there is a relationship between Y and Z. There can, however, also be a relationship X and Z.

The challenge of course is combining the two disciplines. How does the biological interact with the social to explain specific human behavior? But there we cross a methodological boundary between the social and natural sciences. It’s not insurmountable, but you’re so dismissive of these challenges (as evidenced by your second to last post), that you don’t even recognize them and the impact they have.

And this is all to show that your bet on evolutionary biology explaining human behavior is premature at best. You’re being lured by the temptation of a hard, causal link to say that biology trumps society. But there are solid reasons why that causal link cannot be found in social science, and ones which confound your confidence in having explained all the variables. Your idea that “biology encompasses life” and all the decisions made in it is mistaken. We simply do not know all the factors that go into social behavior, and you exaggerate greatly to suggest that you do.

In fact, you pretty much say that. The fact that you have to couch this in terms of a “bet” on which discipline will come out on top pretty clearly demonstrates that the jury is still out. There’s just not enough evidence, and our methodologies are not good enough. But you – and from a different angle Pinker – go way too far in saying that biology is suddenly the answer. You just can’t support that.

So, if you want to discuss the nuances of this, let’s do it. I’d be happy to discuss the shortfalls of kin selection, particularly when it comes to trying to analyze, say, personal identification in the presence of multiple choices (nation, clan, family, religion, etc.). But let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. I am not asking you to defend ev psych. You took that upon yourself by misreading my comments. But similarly, don’t misinterpret my thoughts as saying that biology has no place in explaining human behavior. It does, just nowhere near as much as you contend.

Chengora
16 April 2008 at 22:20

All right, final one for me in this batch. You argued that:

“And I've never implied that men, because they are more aggressive, get legal leeway. In fact, I don't remember mentioning anything about nature dictating policy-making. Instead, I mentioned before that society should be constructed in as much of an anti-Darwinian fashion as possible. That means universal healthcare, welfare, child labor laws and laws against murder and rape. You're confusing an ought with an is.”

No, I’m not confusing an ought with an is. I am well enough versed in normative theory to avoid making that mistake. And I fully recognize that you didn’t make this argument – although clearly other people on this thread have. And that’s the problem. This all leads off my last argument. In making too strong of a claim to biology over society, you make the argument of leeway for aggressive men (as an example) more plausible and possible.

All moral codes are in some way casuistic: they must be grounded in the behaviors and limitations of real people. When you advance that argument, you’ve got to be prepared that certain groups are going to hijack it and argue that, because of biological imperatives or limitations, society should treat people in a certain way.

That would be a plausible argument if in fact your points were as solid as you make them out to be. But my previous post already discussed the challenges of crafting solid social science explanations, and how that undercuts the stridency with which you proclaim biology as finding “the answer” to human behavior. It’s that humility – of the limitations of your own arguments, and the evidence for them – that’s entirely missing.

And because you don’t acknowledge them, from a policy standpoint, you’re being irresponsible. What you present as a “bet” in your last post, you argued as:

“I don't think biology has some role to play in understanding human behavior and culture, it will have the foremost role to play. Life cannot be imagined or examined outside the realm of biology, and the founding principle on which biology rests is descent through modification from a common ancestor.”

When you ignore that you’re still missing reams of data, that – from an evolutionary perspective – genuine certainty about the adaptive pressures and whether they have a continuing effect is impossible, then you’re just giving fodder for the people who are completely against the moral and social policies you advocate (which I completely agree with, by the way). In short, nuance your points.

And that’s the difficulty with this whole argument we’re having. You’re spending so much time proving that there is a biological basis that you didn’t recognize the nuances in my argument. We actually agree on a whole host of points. But it was only by clearing away your misunderstanding about my target (sociobiology, not biology) and the name calling that we’ve finally come to a point where we can legitimately discuss the limitations and advantages of examining human behavior through the natural science lens versus the social science lens, and ways to combine them.

JA Gill
16 April 2008 at 23:15

In the immortal words of Jack Nicholson, simply stated, "You can't handle the truth."

And now you've finally admitted the motivation behind your nebulous attack against behavioral genetics. You're fearful of the role genes play in human behavior, and rather than look at the evidence, which is legion, you've retreated behind some undefined social constructs and lobbed caricatures of modern genetics at me for the past two days. All because the phantasmal confounding of genes to eugenics, and reductionism to fascism gives you nightmares. I can assure you, the Aryan ideal was a gross misrepresentation of biology and Lysenko was as ignorant of inheritance than most sociologists, but unlike most sociologists he was taken seriously. Biology is amoral.

If I send you a list of genes that have real-world, major effects on complex human behavior regardless of culture, will you do yourself the favor of searching the open-access NIH online library for journal articles discussing those genes and prove me wrong?

You are correct about one thing, I've spent so much time explaining the empirical link between genes and behavior that I forgot what it was I was originally arguing about: Groskop's indefensible book review attacking multiple fields of biology in one substance-free swoop.

Sorry if I offended your sensibilities, but when someone is wrong on the internet, I must respond. heh.

Chengora
17 April 2008 at 04:16

Honestly, it's like talking to a wall. First, you don't understand that I'm attacking sociobiology, then you take it upon yourself to defend some of its foundational tenets. And you don't even agree with them. Yet for some reason you offended by my criticisms, when they’ve been solely directed at sociobiology. And finally resort to name calling.

I think we’ve gotten about as far as we can with this argument. I’m going to say three more things, and leave it at that. First, you’ve never dealt with the methodological critique I’ve laid out. How many times must I say that I think genes DO affect human behavior? But that effect is limited in various ways because, as you move towards higher levels of analysis, the range of impact genes have are diluted as uncertainty and variables increase. I’ve already provided the examples of Tibetans, Khasi, and differences between American and Arab views on gender to demonstrate that the power of evolution in explaining variation is quite limited. I’ve yet to hear anything from you.

Second, and flowing from that, failing to acknowledge the limitations of natural science methods in social science is a mistake. You exaggerate how strong the evidence is, and you’re kidding yourself if you think your hyperbole won't be seized upon by the unthinking to advance particular policies. For example, look at Pinker’s book. It's irresponsible to advocate for a controlling biological imperative over human behavior without acknowledging its limitations and weaknesses. The fact that you need to make a “bet” on it is all the evidence one needs that your evidence isn’t as solid as you make it out to be.

Finally, there is a certain level of decorum that we should strive for in rational, academic debate. You’ve made loads of mistakes in this discussion, starting with the first and simple one of not reading very carefully. But that doesn’t give me the right to start calling you ignorant, or muddled, or clueless. Solid academic debate results from analyzing your opponent’s ideas, not attributing positions to them. All this fluff you throw up about eugenics, post-modernism, and bourgeois theories – I’ve not argued a single one of these points, and I would never intend to. You’ve been throwing up strawmen and knocking them down, and all because you don’t read things carefully enough.

It’s a testament to your character that you can’t keep your tone civil and stick to the substance of the argument. It’s a comment on your intellectual aptitude that you can’t distinguish the nuances of an argument, and instead resort to belittling your opponents without cause and, indeed, without any awareness of your own blindspots.

PriceEqn
17 April 2008 at 06:53

Societies in our times want to be "gender free", but that's an ideal, not a fact to be proven. Just because a few data points in every billion violates Newton's equations describing objects in the presence of gravitational fields, does not mean Newton's laws are suddenly worthless. Likewise, the lack of understanding of what statistical analyses can and cannot show, usually on the part of social scientists who don't understand that some behaviors would exist regardless of culture, is fairly laughable. A common logical fallacy is to assume that because you have firsthand evidence that some precept or other is violated in fact, when all that means is that, like all scientific analysis, is that no scientific principle describes ALL the data in any given experiment, if it does someone's been doing some doctoring.

There was the same uproar when it was pointed out by biologists that rape occurs in dozens of species of creatures as diverse as scummy fratboys, scorpion flies, dolphins, and mallard ducks. The majority of cases of rape across species are fertile but unwilling females...Just because some 80 year old women or children get raped does NOT prove that the idea the rapists tend to choose fertile ovulating females is wrong. It just means that there are some counter points. I'm a mathematical biologist in training, and one of the funniest things I hear quite often, usually from social "scientists" is: "Why on Earth would any human behavior have genetic influences that could be stronger than cultural influences?".... Could be that Natural selection acts ONLY on gene frequencies?...

PriceEqn
17 April 2008 at 07:03

But Chengora, I think you make some apt comment and JA Gill does as well. My problem with social scientists, I have an aunt who was a fairly famous anthropologist, is that they tend to ignore biological and ecological factors in the scant modeling they do. Though to be fair, I think mathematical biologists do as well. Though in our case, we tend not to assume fluctuationg environments or social structures, which i turns out lead to some of the most interesting predictions. Perhaps you've heard of "niche-selection" theory? That is the best recent attempt, to my mind, to model how culture should affect gene frequency changes through natural selection. In this theory, culture's role is to make sure organisms choose the most stable social structures... because of course they don't want to die and death means your genes are gone with you. Def. recommend the book on the subject if you haven't read it or heard of it. Sadly. the models are too mathematical to be taken up by many evolutionists, who prefer the simple "by genes alone" type-models.

PriceEqn
17 April 2008 at 07:14

To All: I've really enjoyed reading everything everyone wrote on here so far. It was an interesting, albeit poorly done, book review that Groskop gave.

There really isn't much serious debate in medical and biological circles about whether sex differences exist (at least in regards to brain functioning), the real debate is on how important they are, what the precise differences in fact are, and what we should do about them. I, personally, am pretty convinced by the evidence that there are some differences, on the average, and that they mean something (but nonetheless probably aren't that important except in a sexist society). I've often wondered if social scientists aren't just plain disappointed that humans aren't that special from a behavioral standpoint. And why can't we still feel like we're special?... Afterall, birds and humans alike may have leks, but birds certainly don't play Schubert piano sonatas as well as Radu Lupu...

However, that's the difference between humans and virtually all other species: we can actually make some sense of things such as differences in brain functioning and decide for ourselves whether they should or should be important. Who really cares if women and men tend to value, on average, very different things? I certainly don't. I know what I value and it's irrelevant to me what the "mass of ordinary men" (and women!) value.

JA Gill
17 April 2008 at 14:17

You never laid out a methodological critique. You said one exists, and then gave some abstraction that I find barely cogent.

If you want your ideas taken seriously why don't you respond to a specific paper or research finding and then critique. There are tons of them in the field of behavioral genetics that address your vague worries.

You've shown little knowledge and less willingness to familiarize yourself with the field of genetics. I've given you examples and you ignore them.

The wall is yours.

margaret
17 April 2008 at 23:50

I think there are gender differences. I also think they are exaggerated and reinforced by societal expectations and aeons old patterns of behaviour including the passing down of fairytales and myths which served a purpose when they were written but which have been Disneyfied to brainwashing proportions. Humans have evolved for goodness sake and despite genetic/biological hardwiring they have brains and more importantly, minds. What about that experiment where baby girls were dressed in blue and boys in pink. The people who interracted with them were observed. The 'boy' babies were handled in a playful roughousing way and the 'girls' were treated more gently. What creates that perception that babies are innately different? Don't babies require EXACTLY the same sort of care?

JA Gill
18 April 2008 at 06:53

Your mind is what your brain does.

Never heard of the study. If I were arguing from the hard-wired, genetic determinist position in this case (and I'm not), then I'd say the results are unsurprising.

The perception exists because males and females are biologically different enough to warrant it. And so, why shouldn't the babies be handled differently if socially reinforced signals (blue, pink) are attached to them.

JL
19 April 2008 at 13:27

As a transgender person I can just sit back and laugh at these interminable, pointless debates about nature/nurture and differences between the sexes. The fact is that, as feminists realised over thirty years ago, biology is not destiny. The whole point of freedom and democracy is the right to make your own choices about how you wish to live. Isn't it time that we buried these stupid Mars/Venus type analogies and just get on with living as rational human beings?

margaret
19 April 2008 at 13:41

Smith&Lloyd (1978) conducted the research on preconceptions of gender from birth. Yes it is time that we get on with living as rational and sometimes irrational human beings but the debates are necessary to assist the process.

margaret
19 April 2008 at 14:10

One more thing, since the mind is what the brain DOES, if intelligent people understand that a baby is a human being which is as yet untouched by gendered preconceptions enforced by society/family, then why behave towards the child in ways which further reinforce the physical outward difference of their genitalia which at the point of birth is the only APPARENT difference?

AA
19 April 2008 at 15:34

Since there is no such thing as a human being that will grow from infancy to adulthood without a cultural or social context, it's absurd to consider whether factors differentiating gender are biological or social in origin. You might as well ask how a fish's fins would be different if it swam in air. It doesn't, and it can't.

We try to appeal to biology provide us with closure, and to sociology and culture to lend variability, in our efforts to move towards a more fulfilling society. These motives are strong but not particularly helpful in getting us toward our goal, which should be, how can we define and create cultures which are supportive of each and all of their individual members, given our biology?

JA Gill
20 April 2008 at 19:50

It's unclear JL what you believe to be pointless. The manner of the debate, or the pursuit of the evidence that purportedly drives the debate?

It if were determined our range of options was somehow restricted--say under severe control of genes or god, or fate, or what have you--would that uncomfortable truth change your outlook on ethics and the concept of free will?

JA Gill
20 April 2008 at 20:15

Margaret, I'm not sure what you're driving at. Yes, the mind is what the brain does, but the mind isn't always rational.

There are three independent layers or strata in our brain, each denoting a progression in human speciation. The uppermost strata—evolutionarily the newest layer, anatomically the largest layer—houses rational thought. The middle layer, containing the amygdala and insula, is considered our emotional seat, the feeling brain. Electrical stimulation, lesions, mental disorders and other disturbances to this region can elicit unexpected feelings of rage, fear, arousal or sentimentality. Buried below the first two resides an ancient stratum, the Reptilian Complex. Territoriality, social hierarchy, ritual, and other atavistic behavior bubbles up from this region. The top layer is most dominant, while the middle and bottom layers function mainly on an unconscious level. Tension among the three independent brain strata exists for control over our thoughts and actions. Freud’s well-known id, ego, and superego metaphor, though inexact, highlights this tripartite tug-o-war.

The reactionary posing to the answers science has, is, and will continue to furnish in regards to human nature as worthless, meaningless, besides the point, reminds me of the arguments I get into with creationists. Our monkey curiosity is one of our greatest assets.

JL
21 April 2008 at 20:04

JA Gill -

My point is that there is too much popular-level nonsense talked about this question, as if one could arrive at a definitive answer about the aetiology of apparent sex/gender differences. Very few people (and I am definitely not one of them) possess the intellectual equipment to discuss these issues at the level of biological, endocrinological and neuro-biological complexity that they require. Susan Pinker, with her experience as a writer and psychologist at McGill University probably falls into the category of people who are properly qualified to discuss the subject in an intelligent fashion.

However, the vast majority of the population are fed unsophisticated, nonsensical views on this subject, as in so many other things, by an unthinking, and even reactionary, press, television, unreconstructed

educational system etc. Hence, the persistent popular stereotyping of men, women, homosexuals, bisexuals and everything else in between, frequently

used (whether consciously or unconsciously) as a

means of social control.

Even within the academic sphere there has been, in my opinion, insufficient recogition of the ultimate implications of transgender and/or intersex behaviour. Surely transgender behaviour of any kind indicates a different way forward, a 'post-gender' approach that concentrates on non-gender-related social interaction, liberating us from the constant need to fulfil predetermined social rôles or function according to established mores which are frequently irrational. The goal should not to be create new 'categories' of behaviour but to dispense with the categories altogether.

I would welcome more serious academic studies on this issue, particularly in the challenging field of neurology, instead of the usual John Gray 'Women are from x, men are from y' reductionist blah. It angers me that the potentially revolutionary research that has been undertaken in relation to the aetiology of transsexuality has yet to be assimilated into the general consciousness of the medical community.

Transgender behaviour, whether it occurs in people typically defined as transgender, transvestite, transexual etc. or not, is surely the key to a new and more productive way of addressing these issues.

However, there seems to be some innate resistance in most people to acknowledging even the existence of a phenomenon that has been documented over thousands of years. This suggests a fundamental irrationality in the way that the vast majority of people conceptualise the issue. As you can see, I am not suggesting that we give up serious scientifc into gender/sex differences, merely that we stopped acting

as if they mattered so much.

http://www.gires.org.uk/

http://www.gires.org.uk/Text_Assets/maletofemale.pdf

http://www.alicedreger.com/home.html

margaret
22 April 2008 at 13:59

holy mackerel ms/mr gill! I suggest you read some literature ... for instance may I recommend Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. Your arguments I feel sure are scientifically very sound but does a heart beat inside your body? I don't KNOW what I am driving at ... but I do agree with JL that re gender we need to stop reinforcing the differences because they are minimal in the scheme of us being human.

JA Gill
22 April 2008 at 15:08

Ha. I'm sorry Margaret if my naturalistic/materialistic views are shocking for you.

To answer your question, I have a perfectly intact heart thick with good strong sheets of muscle, but of course, that would be proving your point, that I've willingly replaced spirituality with actin and myosin, and mysticism with Hodgkin and Huxley's sliding filament theory.

I've only read "The English Patient," and if "Anil's Ghost" is anything like that, it has less to do with gender issues than human compassion, so I don't see how it's relevant.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, sound scientific evidence showed that genes account for 100% of sexually dimorphic human behavior. Our society could decide what value to place on that extreme determinism, but it shouldn't ignore it outright. Evidence should inform policy. Scientific investigation is meant to push the boundaries of human knowledge and sometimes that means going way beyond what joe-six-pack or the humanities dept. finds comfortable.

Fortunately, from what we know about our own and from what we can induce from other animal behavior, it appears that most gender differences are perceived rather than actual. That is, the forthcoming evidence will knock-down rather than reinforce most but not all trenchant stereotypes.

However, I can't image a situation in which ignoring the evidence, is ever advisable, especially if it's something that rankles our philosophy.

margaret
23 April 2008 at 00:55

I think I agree :) ... I'm glad you do read/have read good novels. Anil is a 33 year old woman and a forensic anthropologist. It's not relevant to the discussion, just interesting that a novelist like Ondaatje writes non-stereotypical characters. It seems to further the case for getting beyond gender.

emmagold
26 April 2008 at 02:22

As a feminist I believe that so-called "differences" in gender - i.e. any difference apart from obvious biological ones - ARE nurture rather than nature. Something no one seems to have mentioned is Turner's Syndrome: biologically neuter people who are born with what look like female genitals so that, until they reach what should be, but isn't, puberty (when presumably their parents investigate the reasons for no breast growth, menstruation, etc), they are brought up in a more-or-less sexist way as the girls they are thought to be.

In any case even if one DOES accept sexist views of "masculine" and "feminine" differences that doesn't explain why, for instance, women's average pay is STILL about 17% less than men's; OVER 35 YEARS since the Equal Pay Act and over 30 years since the Sex Discrimination Act. Neither does it explain why women in popular T.V. programmes are portrayed in so much worse ways than men (e.g. Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances versus the 3 old men in Last of the Summer Wine or Victor in One Foot in the Grave: everyone seems to hate Hyacinth and to want the most terrible things to happen to her whereas the men in Last/Summer Wine, and even Victor, are treated much more tolerantly. You may say they're only T.V. programmes, not real life, but I'm sure you don't need me to point out the power of this medium to influence attitudes). And it's not that long ago (a few years) that I read the following "joke" in my paper: "Wanted: mothers-in-law. Crocodiles hungry"(!); how can ANYONE consider that FUNNY? Would anyone make a similar "joke" about FATHERS-in law? (not that it would justify this one if they did but I'm sure they wouldn't). And another paper had a "joke" about a man seeing two coffins and being told one contained the wife of the chief mourner and the other his mother-in-law (again!) who had, as far as I remember, been killed by being bitten by the mourner's dog; the man told this asks to borrow the dog(!) and, even worse, is told to wait his turn for this! And of course the vast majority of victims of rape and domestic violence are women.

There are far more instances of discrimination towards women, violence against us, etc., NONE of which can be explained by biological differences. People might argue that it is men's superior physical strength that leads to the overwhelming majority of rape and domestic violence victims being women; this is only so, if at all, because it's more difficult for a woman to fight a man off but rape isn't just about sex - it's at least as much about power and women-hating -and I imagine the same goes for domestic violence. In any case no one has any control over which sex ONE CHROMOSOME OUT OF 46 happens to have made them at conception (even transgendered people, as far as I understand, don't CHOOSE to be so) so why should anyone be disadvantaged as a result simply of the fact that his/her father contributed either an X or a Y chromosome when they were conceived?

JL
27 April 2008 at 19:25

Emmagold -

You make a good argument. There is no reason for refusing someone equal, reasonable treatment just because they have a different chromosomal arrangement. According to the research, there is a high probability that transgendered people behave in the way they do because they are biologically conditioned to do so. However, one can sometimes make choices about how one plays the set of cards one has been dealt.

The fact that the vast majority of rapes and murders are carried out by men is surely related a) to the fact that it is much easier anatomically for a man to violate a woman and b) the extra aggression that testosterone seems to produce. Sex and violence are surely two sides of the same coin - both are related to the desire of the male to enlarge the sphere of their personal domination; hurting others seems to be an unfortunate byproduct of this megalomaniac schema.

Also, it may also be the result of the fact that men have lower average intelligence than women (the distribution of intelligence amongst men shows more men at the highest and lowest levels of intelligence whereas women tend to be clustered in the middle (cf recent U of Leeds study). I think I've lost track of the amount of repressed, emotionally unsophisticated men I've met...

JA Gill
30 April 2008 at 05:11

Here's a slightly different take on Pinker's book from the Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid...

A relevant passage:

" 'Instead of women being enslaved by patriarchal views of their proper domestic roles, they are now constricted by expectations of what kind of paid work is considered valuable,' says Pinker.

In other words, women are discriminated against only in so far as society rewards most highly that work which most fits with men's preferences, and stigmatised only in so far as definitions of success remain tied to the male-oriented goals of status and money."

On another note, I'm surprised this thread hasn't discussed twin studies. The research involved with (genetically) identical twins raised in the same family (which factors out most environmental differences) and comparing those with both fraternal twins raised in the same family and identical twins separated at birth. This is still the best way we have of parsing nature v nurture with respect to behavior.

emmagold
05 May 2008 at 00:32

JA Gill's comment takes it for granted that domestic roles are "proper" to women; why on earth SHOULD they be? Members of both genders create dirt, wear clothes which need washing, eat meals (which have been cooked) on plates (which have to be cleaned or washed), etc., so why should all the work of this be automatically considered the responsibility of only ONE gender? And I would add that the fact that it IS so considered is one very trenchant REASON for women's discrimination and disadvantage in respect of paid work: how can anyone do an interesting - and, above all, responsible - job if he/she has to think about when to perform all these domestic duties? Who has time to do both? (without becoming totally exhausted). In my very strong opinion NO tasks are "men's" or "women's"; ALL jobs needing to be done should be done by whoever has the most aptitude for them and, above all, has chosen to do them.

JA Gill also mentions twin studies. He/she doesn't say what conclusions such studies came to but, in nay case, I would make the very strong point that everyone is a unique individual and this supersedes any generalised studies. While posting this comment I would like to take this opportunity of explaining (as I forgot to do with my original comment) about Turner's Syndrome individuals: because they are brought up as the girls their parents think they are they develop "feminine" interests but they are NOT female, they are neuter, which in my opinion PROVES the supremacy of nurture over nature.

JA Gill
07 May 2008 at 15:41

Emma, there's nothing in your first spasm of a paragraph that can be attribute to me, so we can thankfully ignore it.

The conclusions of twin studies tentatively estimate as to what ratio the behavior under investigation is due to environmental or genetic influences (e.g., 60-40 or 70-30 split) The next step is to verify observation by finding the gene(s) in question. This is where the work of behavioral genetics comes in.

Your point/opinion that every individual is unique is one of perspective. Genetically, we are more similar than different, while variation largely depends on what genes are being expressed, when in development this happens and in what tissue. And if by generalized studies you mean studies involving large populations of test subjects then you don't understand how and why science works.

Those with Turner Syndrome are infertile. Calling them neuter is a rather specious comparison to eunuchs. They are females with underdeveloped female sexual characteristics and one less x chromosome. The point is, they still look female and genetically mostly are female. Talk about defining people by their genes!

emmagold
13 May 2008 at 00:48

To JA Gill: I'm sorry that I seem to have misunderstood your quotation about "patriarchal views of [women's] proper domestic role" but I still think the points I made about this were valid even if they shouldn't have been directed at you. I admit that I don't understand much about science (even at school, in the 50s and 60s, it was one of my worst subjects) so maybe you're right about the twin studies.

What I meant, however, about everyone being a unique individual was that their unique individual characteristics, personality, experiences, etc are more important than the gender (or race, sexuality, etc) they happen to be. For instance I'm a female, heterosexual, Ashkenazi Jew but how many other people can say the same? In contrast I'M the only person with MY UNIQUE personality, history, life etc and that should supersede my gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. If you (or anyone) say that ALL women, heterosexuals, Ashkenazi Jews come into a specific category (i.e. generalising about them) that (apart from being sexist, heterosexist, and racist) puts us all into one homogenised group which, in my very strong opinion, is wrong; my OWN, PERSONAL, life, experiences, etc are more important than my gender etc. It's also obvious that lumping all female heterosexual Askenazi Jews (or, of course, members of any other group) together like that potentially leads to discrimination (I'm sure I don't need to give specific examples).

You say "Those with Turner Syndrome...are females...with one less x chromosome.". But everyone has 2 sex/gender chromosomes (men, as I'm sure you know, have one X and one Y) so anyone having only ONE X chromosomes must have,as their other chromosome, either a Y chromosome (i.e. is male) or an O: XO = neuter. I wasn't "defining people by their genes"; on the contrary I was trying to say that Turner Syndrome people are defined by what are THOUGHT TO BE their genes, by being brought up as the girls their parents think they are, and the effect/result of this is that they end up with more-or-less "feminine" interests IN SPITE OF the fact that their genes define them as neuter.

JA Gill
13 May 2008 at 15:05

emmagold.

Not everyone has 2 sex chromosomes. People with Turner Syndrome have only one sex chromosome and in rare cases two but the second is abnormal. Normal females 46,XX. Those with Turner 45,X.

I'm not calling into question your uniqueness. I think people often forget how related we are to one another and to all life (Biota) on earth. That's one of the philosophical implications of Darwinism that as humans we are still grappling with to this day. But how do you expect to transcend your selfish genes if you don't or refuse to recognize what role they play in human behavior? This is where the insights of Evolutionary Development and Genetic Behaviorism have real world implications.

Simply ignoring the fact that we are products of an interplay between genes and environment won't make it any less so. You are a woman, an Ashkenazi, heterosexual, and a Eukaryotic, Chordate, hairless Mammal Primate. Do you know what role your genes play in each of those categories? I believe it a worthwhile thing to study.

harp
09 July 2008 at 16:32

Natural Sciences trump the Social Sciences any day of the week. I trust biology over that social crap...