Wednesday, August 08, 2007
I'm as much of a sucker for the flawed thought experiment as the next guy, so I'll pass on this one, via Robin Hanson:
Scott Aaronson asks a great question:Hanson's answer is far too simple a selective scenario. I'm even inclined to think that the evolution of sexual jealousy and the evolution of "justice" are less different than the question presupposes. It's easy to say "imagine a situation where stealing from an individual would lead to their starvation", but less easy to actually imagine it. How different were food and sexual access to our ancestors? The answer, I'm inclined to think, is: not so different. Among chimpanzees, food and sex are both commodities to be traded: Political coalitions were recognized early on as part of an elaborate 'marketplace of services' in which chimpanzees trade grooming, sex, food and support. The rules of reciprocity governing social exchange are only beginning to be understood, but evidence is accumulating that chimpanzees repay both positive acts (for example, sharing food preferentially with previous grooming partners) and negative acts (for example, squaring accounts with those who previously opposed them) [citation]While it's difficult to study these sorts of exchanges, a specific instance of male chimpanzees exchanging sexual access to females for political support was recently documented [citation], suggesting that perhaps this moral instinct Hanson is ready to justify evolutionarily isn't quite so universal. That's all in chimpanzees, of course, and it's true we live in a society where rape is certainly considered more reprehensible than stealing (of course, rape in wartime was considered par for the course until very recently). I'd be interested to see a study, however, comparing punishments for rape versus stealing across different societies, ranging from hunter/gatherer to our own. Is stricter condemnation of the forceful taking of sex as compared to the forceful taking of food a human universal? Labels: Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution |