Evolution by natural selection has shaped us to mistrust paternity, say researchers, and their findings confirm a prediction by evolutionary scientists that we tend to be kinder – altruistic – to the children of our mother's sister than those of our father's brother.
Evolutionary biologists say that the more likely we are to have genes in common with our kin, the more likely we are to put ourselves out for them.
One would expect us, therefore, to be equally helpful to all our cousins, since they are equally genetically related to us. However, reality is less straightforward because a small but significant fraction of men throughout history have brought up another man's child, often not even realising their wife has been unfaithful.
Therefore, we are related to our father's brother's children with two uncertain links and to our mother's brother's children and to our father's sister's children with one uncertain link.
In contrast, there is no uncertainty whatsoever in our genetic relatedness to our mother's sister's children.
Today, in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, Joonghwan Jeon and Prof David Buss of the University of Texas at Austin publish the first evidence that we treat our cousins differently based on this evolutionary logic.
A favourite sport of many secularists is to pin believers to the wall and demand they fess up as to whether they believe this or that miracle from scripture actually happened. “Do you think Jonah was really swallowed by a whale? Well, do ‘ya?!” Any answer other than an unqualified yes leads to charges of cherry-picking or hypocrisy and a lecture in formal logic that “proves” every other belief is thereby undermined. It is an attack on “comfy” religion designed to demonize all believers as scriptural literalists and it completely misapprehends faith by analogising it to scientific inquiry.
But what of comfy Darwinism? It’s easy enough to march through life with a vague belief life evolved from simpler forms through unguided natural selection, but how could anyone other than a thoroughly indoctrinated fundamentalist believe nonsense like this? We are more likely to loan money to our maternal cousins because we (or our genes) are worried great-great-grandad might have been cuckolded? It is a derivation of William Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness, popularized by Richard Dawkins, which holds that our degree or altruism or kindness towards an individual increases with the proportion of the genes we share with them. As the late Australian philosopher David Stove (an atheist) showed, the proposition is madness on the face of it, completely unsupported by evidence and is refuted before our eyes daily just about every where we look.
Stove also showed that a pure belief in Darwinism, and especially in the modern synthesis popularized by Dawkins, et. al. requires belief in a whole series of derivative propositions that describe a world Lewis Carroll might have invented. But unlike religion, scientific materialism offers limited openings for distinguishing between myths and hard facts.
17 comments:
We havent had a good Darwin row in awhile. First off, not that Im (sorry, my apostrophe wont work) agreeing with the proposition about greater altruism toward maternal cousins, but why is it obviously wrong? You have to realize that if these kinds of effects occured, they were probably not highly discriminatory but mildly so, somewhat like the advantage the house has in a gambling casino.
Secondly, these effects would be more prominent in a state of nature than in modern human society. Our modern environment is so different than the environment in which we evolved that I don't think you can draw a lot of conclusions about our evolutionary legacy from the way we behave today.
Is your biggest objection to sociobiology the notion that our behaviour isn't totally the product of free will, that there are biological influences that aren't under absolute conscious control?
I thought it was that, in our patriarchal capitalist society, woman are chattel and the affections of the good looking women are bought by rich men. As a result, our matrilineal cousins are poorer yet more attractive than our patrilineal cousins. Obviously, evolution has designed us to more willingly lend money to the attractive poor than to the ugly rich.
When it comes to lending money to cousins, I'm a "nature red in tooth and claw" man, but when I'm short myself, I give all the cousins the family tree and copies of the chapter on altruism from The Selfish Gene.
It would be interesting to see if there is any difference in response from members of nuclear families and those from more traditional extended families.
In extended familes there were strong bonds between the female members, illustrated in the proverb 'a son is a son till he takes him a wife but a daughter's a daughter all of her life.' Daughters would visit their parents regularly, so maternal cousins would mix frequently. Aren't we more likely to help people we know?
The research seems to have been conducted on a very small sample - 84 women and 111 men - and the report says nothing of social or cultural background. It looks like another bit of pseudo-scientific babble to me.
Medawar put paid to all this nature/nurture parsing by showing that you cannot, in principle, experiment on it.
Besides the definition of "cousin" is highly variable, according to social custom.
Mr. Burnett;
You complain of how Darwinism has no evidence, yet in a situation like this where a prediction is made based on the theory and then tested, you mock the effort.
No, I am stating that their theory lead to conclude that such favoritism would exist, then they went out and checked to see if reality matched theory. It was hardly a "baseless conjecture". That doesn't mean their theory is correct, but that's science for you. You start with a theory, derive conjectures, then empircally test.
I don't quite grasp what your objection is, other than the specific content of the theory. How else should they proceed? Or are you arguing that proceeding at all is the problem?
I note that 'evidence of how we treat our cousins' is simply evidence about how we treat our cousins. Whether we favor maternal parallel cousins over other cousins or not is an empirical fact, not dependent on any theory.
The researchers claimed that people on average have this preference, based on their conjecture. They claim the evidence is that this preference exists. I am at a loss as to why you think they should therefore conclude that the conjecture is false.
One might also note that this conjecture predicts Monix's observation as well (because a daughter's children are guaranteed to be your grandchildren).
On the other hand, perhaps I am missing something because I have no idea who you mean by "Hamilton".
A proposition like this cousin one can only ever be a very broad generalisation about situations where all other things are equal - and these circumstances never really exist. For one thing, your maternal cousins might be horrible and your paternal cousins nice.
Nonetheless, I have to wonder at Peter's original post:
Stove also showed that a pure belief in Darwinism, and especially in the modern synthesis popularized by Dawkins
What exactly do you mean by:
1) a 'pure belief in Darwinism' (as opposed to an impure belief in Darwinism, or a pure belief in something else?)
and 2) 'the modern synthesis popularized by Dawkins'
and how are they different?
Mr. Burnett;
Ah, I think the problem is that you have the causal chain backwards. You write as if the researchers started with this as an observed fact and then worked on the theory.
It's actually the other way around. The researchers started with Hamilton's theory and worked it forward to generate the conjecture in question on this post. The idea that maternal links are more "reliable" than paternal ones has been part of the theory since E.O. Wilson first published "Sociobiology". One can see this causal chain because the actual result of the research is confirming the observation, which means that it hadn't been previously confirmed, which means it can't have been a reason for modifying the theory.
You are also using "conclusion" and "observation" interchangeably, and that's not a good thing. For instance, it makes this statement incoherent
— I am not objecting to their conclusion that we favour our maternal cousins […] I'm objecting to their proposition that we do so because […] —
These are the same thing. That the preference exists is the observation (and of course, one can dispute the reliability of that observation). That the preference exists because of the maternal links is the conjecture (or proposition, synonymously).
You mean the same media that thinks economic figures from Communist dictatorships are accurate?
But on your substantive point, this comes back to my original point. One significant issue that anti-Darwinists make is the lack of falsifiablity. That is precisely what this effort is attempting (however weakly) to correct, which is why it is not just "Bob's your uncle". Again, they started with a theory, formed a specific conjecture, then tested it against empirical observation. It's not the Millikan oil drop experiment but they're trying.
I'm not sure what you consider the superior alternative — Dunnoism, perhaps?
P.S. You wrote
— force the non-physical into the same rules —
But, if one is a materialist, there is no "non-physical".
I don't see where they amended the theory. As I noted, the idea of differentiating maternal and paternal kinship is a decades old concept in the field.
Moreover, what should one do if facts contradict theory? Not modify the theory?
As to falsifiability, did I not say it was a "significant issue"? My whole point here depends on viewing your rantings about airy theories and hand waving as well taken. If the evolutionary psychologists want to claim the mantle of science, then it is incumbent on them to positively demonstrate adherence to scientific principles. My point is that this is what these researchers are trying to do, i.e. trying to address that legitimate concern. My objection was that, having raised this quite valid concern, you then mock attempts to address it.
Your summary is not quite correct. Here is my version —
The theory says our altruistic behaviour varies in proportion to genetic affinity. Because humans are known to be unfaithful to mates (observation), on average one is closer genetically to one's maternal parallel cousins than other cousins. Therefore (testable prediction of theory) people should on average favor maternal parallel cousins over other cousins.
What I am ultimately defending here is not this evolutionary psychology theory, but the fact that the researchers are trying to treat it as a real scientific theory, with testable predictions which are then tested against empirical data. Perhaps it's a very weak attempt, but not deserving of mockery in my view.
Weren't you and Monix telling me that this observation was consistent with your experience, it could just be explained more simply via other mechanisms?
But to answer your question, I would dispute the reliability / validity of their observations. They say it's supported because they observe X, you claim it's disproven because you observe Y. That's arguing about evidence, not theory and the proper reaction to is get better observations.
Perhaps it's a very weak attempt, but not deserving of mockery in my view.
You want to think about being as hard on these guys as you would be on your kids. Make 'em earn their non-mockery.
SH:
I didn't say that the observation was consistent with my experience, I was suggesting a particular sociological factor that should be considered in a comparative study.
Research carried out with fewer than 200 students is not enough to convince me to change my understanding of what it is to be human, although I am always willing to listen to reasoned argument.
But the error you make, Peter, is to suggest that because socio-biological theories are called 'Darwinist', any blind alleys (of which this isn't necessarily an example, but might be) bring the concept of evolution by natural selection into doubt.
Saying something like "a pure belief in Darwinism leads to nonsense" is misleading. What you really mean is: "believing that every aspect of human social behaviour can be entirely explained by biological factors...leads to nonsense."
In which case I agree with you, but it doesn't affect my 'pure' belief that evolution is best explained by darwinism.
Monix;
Ah. I think it's quite legitimate to question the reliability of such a small sample, as I have noted previously. With regard to Mr. Burnett, I would note that bigger samples and more independent studies would provide better observations, in answer to one of Mr. Burnett's questions.
Mr. Burnett;
The researchers are not saying "we are sticking with the theory despite contrary observations". They are claiming the observations support the theory, a theory that hasn't been "tweaked" but has been unchanged for decades in this regard. I think our disagreement here is again over observations — you have observed them tweaking the theory, I have not. I have noted that this maternal vs. paternal issue was brought up in the founding document of the field, Sociobiology, published in 1975. In return, could you specify what the tweak you have observed is?
— Darwinists would be so much more persuasive if they just stuck with physical evolution. —
But they can't. Here you touch on the founding impulse of Sociobiology, the realization that for social species (not limited to humans), an understanding of social interaction is necessary for understanding the evolution of those species. But it sounds to me that you think they would have done better to adopt Dunnoism instead of trying to understand the "non-physical".
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