Dr Rick

Oviparous animals have a sex drive and instinctively mate in response to it without knowing that their actions may bring forth progeny. Many inherit an instinct to watch over their eggs, but there is no evidence that they have any clue as to why they are doing so.

In other words, they're not concerned about the reproduction part. They follow their instincts and couldn't know or care what the outcome will be.

Whether they are or not is of no concern to most animals' parents; their parents don't care, they don't think about it, it is not important to them.

Obvious signs of great care and concern on the part of these animals.

Nonsense, Simon; they don't understand the significance of what they are doing so they couldn't possibly care about it.

<strong> Are you seriously suggesting that humans inherit a parenting instinct?

Is this little tidbit of marine physiology supposed to somehow indicate that fish care about how many offspring they have?

Correct, Simon. It's sex that is "important" to an animal. It's a sex drive that we inherit, not a desire to have children.

You ignore the fact that many humans don't behave in any of the ways you describe. Human parenting has all of the hallmarks of learned behavior including a complete absence of any desire or skills to be a parent in those that don't learn them.

What the hell are you babbling about here, Simon? We're not debating philosophy, antibiotic resistance, or language learning. The topics are inherited sexual behaviors and inherited desires for children.

Yes, we inherit a sex drive.

You appear to be babbling, again, my friend.

This is one of the topics in question. It would sure be nice to see some evidence that we inherit such an instinct.

Rick

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Coragyps

I sure think I've seen something that has to be pretty close to one in more than a couple of new mothers. They can get every bit as protective and nurturing as a mama dog does - and you're not suggesting that that is learned behavior in a dog, are you?

Dr Rick

No, but it is in some of the great apes including humans and gorillas, and as a result they are capable of learning to be more nuturing and protective of their offspring than those animals driven solely by inherited parenteral behavior.

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

scigirl

Just got back from New Orleans, so I guess it's appropriate for my first post to be on the sex thread. . .

I think it's fair to say that humans have learned to separate their sexual behavior from their reproductive behavior. But I don't think this means we have lost our evolutionary advantagious instincts for reproduction. While it is true that having lots of children is no longer a priority of most Americans, it seems that having lots of sex still is. If we are no longer controlled by instinct, than why?? (besides the obvious "it feels good"). Lots of things feel good. But sex still holds a power over us that we can't seem to completely control. If Dr. Rick is right, and we are no longer evolutionarily controlled by the desire for children, than why do we still want sex?

The way i see it is this: the human brain retained the sex drives of the "lower" animals for obvious evolutionary reasons, but our cultural evolution made it possible for us to separate our sex drives from our reproductive drives. But the instincts are still there, controlled by a multitude of genes. Don't believe me - check out Bourbon street ANY night of the week, then come talk to me about how humans are "above" all that evolutionary instinct crap. Yeah right!

Scigirl

P.S. My favorite infidel men are "showing" their anatomy again, and I don't even have to throw them beads! Woo hoo!

Dr Rick

So, Scigirl: you went to Bourbon Street not to party, dance, eat, socialize, drink and/or flirt, but to reproduce.

Were you successful?

Rick

[ April 28, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Kachana

I don't see that human's sexual acticity is the result of an instinct for reproduction, I think it makes more sense to say that humans have a universal psychology that provides pleasure when they have sex, and that it is this psychological mechanism (along with various others) that leads to reproducive success.

Similary, when we eat sugary foods, we're not doing so to indirectly increase our chances of reproductive fitness, but because the taste of sugary foods is pleasant to us (which makes sense in evolutionary terms).

The evolutionary psychologist Donald Symons argues (IIRC) that human behaviour is infinitely felxible to serve finite experiential goals. There are hundereds of ways of seeking and obtaining sugar (the behaviours), but all of these behaviours serve one experiential goal, the sensation of sweetness.

The experiences that motivate behaviour are innate (we all experience sweetness), but the behaviours themselves aren't given their vast flexibility.

I think this is relevant to SciGirl's question:

We want sex to obtain the positive experience we get from sex, which itsef has arisen from natural selection, not (at least primarily) to satisfy the desire for children.

I think that you are confusing the general processes that produce psychological adaptations with the adaptations themselves. Lifes machinery was designed by natural selection yes, but it does not follow that this machinery ought to instantiate a generalised reproductive striving. Perhaps we have other evolved psychological mechanisms that cause us to want children, for instance seeing new borns as cute, I don't know, but I think this is a secondary the cause of sexual behaviour to the positive experience of sex itself.

Mr.Kitchen

All of my sexual strategies include verification that there is a gender difference.

cricket

Kachana, I don't think scigirl means we are consciously striving to reproduce! (Here I go again; saying what I think somebody thinks. I need to stop doing that. )

It's simply the case that what we want (sex) leads to what Mother Nature wants (reproduction) if our genes are to live on into the future. It isn't planned by anyone that way, but nonetheless it's called a natural selection "strategy". It doesn't mean that anyone actually strategizes; that's just the word for it. Whatever people happen to do that aids their reproductive success is considered a reproductive strategy. Why does this need to have any relation to peoples' conscious motives? I don't think it does at all.

cricket

Exactly! When you say sex itself has arisen from natural selection, that's because of its tendency to produce offspring. Those who felt no sexual pleasure and no sex drive tended not to reproduce. Those who enjoyed sex tended to
have sex, and tended to have children who presumably inherited the same sexual urges. (who tended to have children who also blah blah blah...)

Men who had LOTS of sex had lots of children... women could utilize this strategy successfully to a point, but selectivity regarding mates is what helped women raise many children to adulthood.

No man or beast, feathered or furred, need ever have had this as a conscious motive. If sex felt good, they had sex, and here we all are, feathered furred or otherwise.

As for the women, if if being selective about mates "felt right", and it led to a better outcome, this too could have become an innate tendency. Whether or NOT a female is consciously eyeballing mens' resources. If a few females *happen* to be selective in choosing mates, and are more successful reproductively because of this, this may become an innate tendency in their female descendents.

Kachana

Hi Cricket,

We seem to agree then. I was mainly saying in my post that we shouldn't confuse the processes that lead to our evolution (natural selection for higher inclusive fitness) with the psychological mechaniams that result from this process. Our motivation to have sex deosn't need to have anything to do with a desire for children in principle. I thiought this was what SciGirl may be thinking in her post when she asked 'If Dr. Rick is right, and we are no longer evolutionarily controlled by the desire for children, than why do we still want sex?' but perhaps I misinterpreted and she was speaking metaphorically?

I agree. Men and women faced different adaptive problems from an evolutionary standpoint mainly in the domain of sex, predominantly due to the fact that the woman carried the child. It's important to note that this does not make lots of untenable assumptions about what kind of culture our ancestors had in the Pleistocene era, it's uncontroversial that the female would have carried the child. Thus, we see very few differences between the sexes in domains other than that of sexual reproduction, as here is where the main differences in adaptive problems lay.

For women a large adaptive problem is finding a mate is both able and willing to provide for her during the tremendous burden of pregnancy. Conversely, a larger problem for the men is that of cuckoldry, men are often not certain if the child is theirs, women are. These different problems lead to different testable predictions about sexual interactions, and a fair amount of work has supported these predictions. Women are more exacting in their standards of a short term mate then men, and place greater value on financial prospects and resources, a trend confirmed in a study of 10,047 people located in 37 cultures around the world. Men are more distressed by sexual jealousy than by emotional jealousy, a trend that is reversed in women, and a trend that has been recorded in other cultures. There are other sex differences predicted from the evolutionalry model, and in many cases the hypotheses were generated a decade or more before the empirical tests of them were carried out.

However, I wouldn't say that these qualify as instincts if we are understanding instincts as a rigid set behavioural patterns. The behaviours a woman can perform to assess and mate with a male who will provide for her are infinite in number, they are not rigid behavioural patterns. Instead of behavioural instincts, we have innate psychological mechanisms, such as the enjoyable sensation of sweetness, or in this case a tendency to be more attracted to men with resources, that drives behaviour.

Yes I agree, women become more selective not due to some rigid behavioural script, but due to a psychological tendency that in turn influences behaviour (like the sensation of sweetness). Darwininan natural selection sheds light on human behaviour only insofar as it sheds light on the psychological adaptations that drive behaviour.

[ April 28, 2002: Message edited by: Kachana ]</p>