A Reply to this thread: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30549

Looking at our cousins the chimpanzees and the gorillas we could judge how polygamous humans should be. Chimps are very polygamous in which a female going into estrous produce massive amounts of pheromones and gets fucked by as many guys as possible, the males go around screwing like a screw driver. As such we can first notice that male chimps have very large testacies (balls, guhotas). Gorillas on the other hand are very monogamous and the males fight dearly to maintain a small harem of 1-4 females faithful to him, the females do not produce large amounts of pheromones (though the females do become horny) during estrus, the male gorilla’s testacies are tiny!
Now in Humans our testicle size is in between the Chimps and Gorillas, suggesting we are not as polygamous as chimps and we are not as monogamous as Gorillas.
We should also notice that human females lack an estrus like the great apes, female humans do not produce large amounts of pheromones nor the female humans get hornier (conclusively).
This allows human females to run in stealth mod in which the male never knows when she is “ready”. Females only care about finding the best male, it does not matter if the male she is bonded with is the right one or not, even better she could find a nice reliable father and get bumped up by the good looking healthy guy. So females want a close mate that helps raise the children, but also have and eye out for other guys that will provide the best genes. This is also why men get so jealous because they MUST guard, protect, and prevent the females from ending up with him taking care of a child that is not his without knowing. Men on the other hand like to have a close mate so he can make sure of the survival of his offspring, yet will screw around with other girls so he can spread his genes better. So we humans pretend to be monogamous but we will cheat readily.

Nonsense issue.

Humans form breeding pairs in most cultures. Even in those cultures that are polygynous, harems exist mostly among those rich enough to support that many non-productive women.

Both members of the breeding pair will cheat, and in some cultures the pair bond is extremely unstable and serial monogamy is the norm. But this does not make humans polygamous, it simply reveals that cheating is a sensible reproductive strategy.

My explanation agrees with your opinion Xev… So I’m guessing your saying nonsense to human’s being polygamous and not what I said?

No offense, but the issue is nonsense. I agree with your opinion, but the attempt to argue what human behaviour "should be" based on how other animals "do act" is the eventual result.

These revalations are only important for a while. One can look at a group of businessmen, snigger and realize that you're looking at a dominence hierarchy, but it soon becomes a non-issue.

So then what is not a non-sense issue?

What then if sexual access and the child-rearing bond are independent?

The reason why we refer to having sex with other than a single bonded partner as "cheating" is because of the promise that we make to them in marriage, not because there's some vast moral force judging our sexual interactions.

If I understand the two-male concept, where a woman seeks one male to impregnate her and another one to protect her children, then the protector would be selected for by kin selection, right? So why apply a moral standard when both types of male are being selected for?

(BTW, I think that this two-male concept is kinda silly)

Big Blue Head:
What then if sexual access and the child-rearing bond are independent?

Wow...what if.

The reason why we refer to having sex with other than a single bonded partner as "cheating" is because of the promise that we make to them in marriage, not because there's some vast moral force judging our sexual interactions.

But there is some vast moral force judging our promises?

If I understand the two-male concept, where a woman seeks one male to impregnate her and another one to protect her children, then the protector would be selected for by kin selection, right?

Wrong.
First, the observation is that once a fairly faithful mate has been selected, she'll screw around in order to not limit her offspring genetically.
Second, kin selection only applies when one is talking about those related to each other. Unless the other is related to her mate, her mate is screwed. He ends up raising children not carrying any of his genes.

(This is why they call it "kin selection". Astonishing, that)

So why apply a moral standard when both types of male are being selected for?

Who said anything about applying a moral standard?
Are you some sort of Christian?

(BTW, I think that this two-male concept is kinda silly)

Misunderstand a concept, then call it "silly". Good one.

Well, I'm not the one who started with the word "cheat". That's why I asked if sexual access could be independent of the child-bearing bond... see? Like actually independent so that having sex with other people wouldn't BE cheating?

Second, kin selection only applies when one is talking about those related to each other. Unless the other is related to her mate, her mate is screwed. He ends up raising children not carrying any of his genes.

If we're talking about a relatively small community, every individual is probably at least indirectly related to every other one...

Who said anything about applying a moral standard?
Are you some sort of Christian?

Um, no. I was referring to Neuro's terminology, which is the common terminology... girls "cheat" a boy by going into "stealth mode" and tricking him into thinking he's getting them pregnant when he is not. Then they use his resources, while simultaneously having children with another boy who has more desirable genes. I'm not the one introducing moral terms.

This point of view includes some concepts which I think are loaded with modern value judgements, such as that girls cannot have enough resources to support themselves but boys can.
It also presupposes that, in your little town of fifty people, it is common practice for your wife (and every other boy's wife, so the story goes) to cheat on you. And no boy ever notices, or if they do they never tell you. (Which puts them in the uncomfortable position of trying to convince themselves that their wife is the only one who doesn't cheat - yeah, I bet.)

So the boys are either too dumb as rocks to care (which doesn't make sense in the face of the selective pressure being discussed), or the girls are unbelievably good at hiding the fact that they're cheating from everyone, which probably is not the case.

By the way, don't disrespect the kin selection concept too much, because otherwise there's no reasonable way to explain how the "protector" archetype doesn't get bred out of the population. And don't try that crap about "boys have sex when they're younger and then become protectors when they're older", because that still doesn't explain how the propensity is selected for.

Misunderstand a concept, then call it "silly". Good one.

I actually studied this concept quite a bit in school... it is my educated opinion that it is being used as an excuse to justify social inequality, and has little or nothing to do with science except insofar as isolated scientific examples are used to support it.

Big Blue Head:
Well, I'm not the one who started with the word "cheat".

The sun won't rise tomorrow, the Earth will rotate in such a way that our hemisphere will be exposed to sunlight.
Semantics.

That's why I asked if sexual access could be independent of the child-bearing bond... see? Like actually independent so that having sex with other people wouldn't BE cheating?

You strike me as the sort of child who was truely suprised when he realized that babies are not dug up from under mulberry bushes.

If we're talking about a relatively small community, every individual is probably at least indirectly related to every other one...

No. Kin selection only is used when referring to those who are fairly close family.

This point of view includes some concepts which I think are loaded with modern value judgements, such as that girls cannot have enough resources to support themselves but boys can.

No, you're interpolating things that aren't there.

It also presupposes that, in your little town of fifty people, it is common practice for your wife (and every other boy's wife, so the story goes) to cheat on you. And no boy ever notices, or if they do they never tell you. (Which puts them in the uncomfortable position of trying to convince themselves that their wife is the only one who doesn't cheat - yeah, I bet.)

Now you're just plain making things up.

By the way, don't disrespect the kin selection concept too much, because otherwise there's no reasonable way to explain how the "protector" archetype doesn't get bred out of the population.

It doesn't get bred out of the population because males who help support their offspring have offspring more likely to survive.
Benefits outweigh risks.

I actually studied this concept quite a bit in school...

Oh really? What's your background in biology, evolutionary psych and primatology?

it is my educated opinion that it is being used as an excuse to justify social inequality, and has little or nothing to do with science except insofar as isolated scientific examples are used to support it.

You're the one who brough "social inequality" up.
Women fuck around. This has nothing to do with inequality.
Men fuck around. This has nothing to do with inequality.

I'll bet you consider yourself a feminist.
Do women think that you're sensitive? Do you figure you can get more ass by feigning liberal ideals with respect to women, or are you just afraid of competing with men?

Xev if this bothers you, you'll REALLY hate my polygamy thread:cool: thats just down a few spots in this forum ;)

Why would I hate it? Your observations are pretty much spot on.

I apologies for the use of lax and humorous wording like "cheat". :(

If you look at most human societies and how homo sapiens have live for the last 200,000 years (are probably in past hominids) it has usually been a male as the father/protector and a female mate as the mother, so women needed a man in the classic protector style, even so it was genetically advantageous if the women could beget children with other men as well. Usually the “protector” man still gets children (that why it not breed out) but the man is also genetically polygamous and will fuck any viable female that is willing if repercussion can be avoided. So man and women will assume a couple relationships for the benefit of rearing children together, but both will if possible geminate with others for genetic advantage or propagation.

Xev said:
No. Kin selection only is used when referring to those who are fairly close family.

No it's not. The degree of kin selection depends on the degree of genetic relation. That's why we have species.

It doesn't get bred out of the population because males who help support their offspring have offspring more likely to survive.
Benefits outweigh risks.


The theory here is that their offspring aren't theirs, or at least more often than not they aren't, or "cheating" wouldn't be a useful strategy.

Do women think that you're sensitive? Do you figure you can get more ass by feigning liberal ideals with respect to women, or are you just afraid of competing with men?

You know what? You go ahead and believe the anthropologists, whose only purpose in life is to gather evidence to support the view that everything has always been the way it is now. You believe the evolutionary psychologists, who say that if they observe a preponderance of a social behaviour then it must be genetically determined.

After all, all over the world, people who use spears always throw them with the pointy end forward, right? Must be genetic.

Don't accuse me of kowtowing when you're the one mouthing the party line here...

If it not genetic then it is a meme: a social habit that reproduce from generation to generation, in this case coupling but still polygamous. Has been with us since the dawn of homo sapiens, and this meme has even change are anatomy for it, so humans are physically design for this mating pattern, even if it’s a non-genetic behavior. I still believe though that the behavior is also genetic, look at the rate of "cheating" despite that commonality of marriage, many people could not help them selves and did it despite the risks despite already having family and mate. It’s a very obvious sign that we are still animals driven by impulse rather then truly sentient thought.

so do you guys just sit here all day and argue about this stuff

only when I have the free time or not stoned or drunk. :D

o thats really good ...you sound like me only ...smarter

Welcome Killashandra... ya,

We fight
We fight
We fight we fight we fight
Fight fight fight
Fight fight fight

et cetera et cetera

For some real good fighting, check into the Pseudoscience forum and post a thread titled "I don't believe in UFO's".

There are also many threads where people don't fight; these are nice too. Sometimes we have poetry duels.

Sorry about that Killashandra

Welcome to SciFroums...
WE LOVE YOU!!! (standard “hook you” cult phrase)

Neuro said:
If it not genetic then it is a meme:

C'mon, man! Meme theory was supposed to show that things that weren't alive could still be selected upon and therefore evolve, like one song that becomes popular while another one is forgotten, and how this leads to a genre of imitators that people generally like and tend to remember.

It's not supposed to be a metaphor for the mechanistic nature of human behaviour! The memes sure as hell aren't supposed to be the driving force - they're the population that's being acted upon by the artificial meme selection. Some memes may be unconsciously imitated, but you can't just assert that "anything that isn't genetic is a meme so we don't make any conscious choices".

If you want to argue that human behaviour is deterministic, use neurochemical reduction, not meme theory.

WE LOVE YOU!!! (standard “hook you” cult phrase)

Yes, here on Sciforums there is only love. :)

BigBlueHead:
No it's not. The degree of kin selection depends on the degree of genetic relation. That's why we have species.

No.
If a man is not fairly closely related to the children he raises, he's being suckered.
Read up on crow families, it's a textbook case.

The theory here is that their offspring aren't theirs, or at least more often than not they aren't, or "cheating" wouldn't be a useful strategy.

No it's not, try to follow.

You know what? You go ahead and believe the anthropologists,

I don't "believe" anything. I look at ideas and see what I can do with them. Sometimes I agree with them.

whose only purpose in life is to gather evidence to support the view that everything has always been the way it is now.

Oh no, it's the secret cabal of anthropologists who rule the world. It must be - the patriarchy at work. Heavens, we must find our tin-foil beanies.

You believe the evolutionary psychologists, who say that if they observe a preponderance of a social behaviour then it must be genetically determined.

This is a gross straw man.

Don't accuse me of kowtowing when you're the one mouthing the party line here...

Which is?
I point to facts. You point to ideologies. I make observations, you make party statements.
Which of us has an agenda?

NIce,... well in that case I love you all too ....SORTOF... ;) ;) :D

My point is that having sex with other people than your partner is the result of a personal decision, not a genetically determined behaviour.

I don't care what kind of rationalizations are made, from science or whatever, the problem with cheating on your spouse in our present society is not anything about the genetics of your children, since a paternity test is easy enough... it is that, if you marry someone and then cheat on them, then you lied to them and they can't trust you.

Social problem

Not genetic

and if you don't like the agreement then it's easy enough not to get married - this avoids all sorts of contractual obligations that you may not want.

There's no problem with polygamous relationships except for the medical ones, and that's no worse than the monogamous ones as long as you're consistent about who you hang around with.

A polygamous relationship is not "cheating" by nature, as long as everyone knows what is going on and they don't think that they're in something else.

lets look at this behaviorally. Why do people "cheat"?.. Because they have sexual impulse and they want to have sex with someone, even though they already have a sexual partner. Now if people were design monogamous once you have a sexual partner you would lose all sexual interest in anyone else, this is rarely if ever the case and people even commonly become bored with there partners and seek others.

So? Japan has a high suicide rate. Was suicide selected for in Japan? Maybe it represents a reproductive advantage.

Big Blue Head:
My point is that having sex with other people than your partner is the result of a personal decision, not a genetically determined behaviour.

Nobody is arguing the contrary.

I don't care what kind of rationalizations are made, from science or whatever, the problem with cheating on your spouse in our present society is not anything about the genetics of your children, since a paternity test is easy enough... it is that, if you marry someone and then cheat on them, then you lied to them and they can't trust you.

For some, yes.
For most, "Hi honey, I was out fucking my intern all day, what'd you do?"
Would be grounds for divorce.
Why?
It has not a damned thing to do with trust.

There's no problem with polygamous relationships except for the medical ones, and that's no worse than the monogamous ones as long as you're consistent about who you hang around with.

Nobody claimed there was. Men are probably polygynous by nature (see Dr. Lou's thread) and women inclined to sneak off and get a little something on the side.

This is observation, not morality.
You are the one who started yammering about liberalism, the status quo, feminism and your closet-Christian gibberish.
The observation, made, does not necessarily mean that one acts on it. Murder (as the Marquis de Sade observed) is simply nature's way of keeping the herd from over-reproducing, rape is simply another reproductive tactic.
Does this mean that murder and rape should be condoned? No.
But asking why we have such behaviours should not be the subject of hysterical moralizing.
I don't believe you have any scientific training whatsoever. You obviously never learned the first principle we are taught - that one should sacrifice prejudice for accuracy.

The rest of your arguments are too stupid for me to deign to rebut. Do you have any fortitude whatsoever?

If you look waaaay back to the beginning of this thread, I never postulated that there was an external moral judgement on anything, only that people tend to use the word "cheat", which represents a moral bias, when they talk about creatures not having monogamous relations with one another.

For most, "Hi honey, I was out fucking my intern all day, what'd you do?"
Would be grounds for divorce.
Why?
It has not a damned thing to do with trust.

Again, when you marry someone you tell them you won't do this... it has everything to do with trust. Marriage is a LEGAL CONTRACT. Breaking it has LEGAL REPERCUSSIONS like divorce. These are also social issues and not genetic ones.

This is why I claim that you are helping the EP agenda; who the hell ever said that marriage had a basis in biological principles? It's a legal bond, and breaking it is like breaking any other contract. The amount of damage that it does depends on the amount of value invested in the contract.

Outside of legal contracts, when you have sex with many people that's not cheating. There is no moral attachment to that, and I never said there was. Nor did I argue that any kind of God proxy was watching us all - I'm not sure where you got that part.

The observation, made, does not necessarily mean that one acts on it. Murder (as the Marquis de Sade observed) is simply nature's way of keeping the herd from over-reproducing, rape is simply another reproductive tactic.

Rape is not a reproductive tactic. Way back in the day, if I was raped, when the baby was born I'd probably snap the little bastard's neck. People used to kill their babies for being ugly too.

But asking why we have such behaviours should not be the subject of hysterical moralizing.
I don't believe you have any scientific training whatsoever. You obviously never learned the first principle we are taught - that one should sacrifice prejudice for accuracy.

I was not moralizing, I was saying that the idea of cheating is bound up in a social convention and shouldn't be used in a biological context.

As for sacrificing prejudice for accuracy, I believe you accused me of being a hysterically moralizing closet Christian for claiming that treating a social agreement as a biological necessity might be a flawed approach... in any case you seem to generally mistake invective for evidence, so I guess we're even. In any case, your reactions are no less knee-jerk than mine in this issue, so don't act so damn superior.

Originally posted by BigBlueHead
So? Japan has a high suicide rate. Was suicide selected for in Japan? Maybe it represents a reproductive advantage.

I don't see how that is related to my example. Explain.

Natural selection should theoretically select people who were designed to survive, yet they kill themselves... at varying rates in different places, but it is a recognized phenomenon in most modern societies.

People are not suicidal "by nature", but rather arrive at suicidal tendencies through depression, trauma and malaise. It is more of a personal decision; all the same, it happens a lot.

Too much of your behaviour relates to your environment to state that people are not "designed" for monogamy if they don't engage in it. If a society rewards monogamous relations enough, people will engage in them even if it damages them biologically/reproductively. (Imagine, for instance, a society that regards one-leggedness as desirable, and gives a rich lifelong pension to all one-legged people. If you had two legs, would you cut one of them off? Would you cut off one of your kid's legs?)

Free sexual relations, and to a lesser extent polygamous ones, have some medical risks, but many of the disadvantages to this sort of relationship are only present because they are codified in family law - paternity suits, "mental cruelty" and so on. We take part in monogamous relationships because we are given a "deal we can't refuse".

Natural selection also made it difficult and painful for people to kill them self’s or else we would have all died off a long time ago! Yes people can override their impulses if they try but that does not mean the impulse is not there. People are design for monogamy plus occasional cheating. People can be faithfully monogamous their whole lives or be total polygamous: social enforcement can override a set genetic impulse just like will power can override a genetic impulse. The problem is that social enforcement can not do so without exception and that’s why people give in to there desires and cheat so much and why most people don’t kill them selves no matter how bad their lives are.

But how do you seperate the environment from the "desire"? People may be "designed" to have totally free sexual access to anyone that is not hideously diseased, including their own parents/siblings/children. All of our moral attitudes toward sexual access may have been developed purely for economic reasons, which eventually became moral attitudes from long tradition.

Jewish people don't eat pork... it's not genetic, and it wasn't really intended as a moral position... pork just made them sick once too often so they outlawed it. Now an orthodox Jewish person won't eat the stuff because they think it's wrong to do so, when the original reason was an economic one - your bunch of people doesn't succeed if they're all laid up with parasites.

Similarly, people may have stopped having incestuous sex because they figured out the problems with inbreeding depression (although if humans were going to have a genetically determined sexual inhibition this would probably be a big one).

People may have stopped having free sexual access to one another because it spread diseases too quickly, and killed too many people (or made them sterile, which is almost as bad).

There are many possible reasons why we behave the way we do, and extracting which things you believe because they are genetic, and which things you believe because that's what everyone always says, is very difficult.

BigBlueHead,

It seems very obvious what impulse is and what is not, perhaps a understand of Id, Ego and Superego is required.

An impulse is "I'm hunger I want to eat" this is a demand of your Id that make demands on your ego, your SuperEgo might say "It would be wrong to eat now during class" which may put a counter demand on your ego, your ego must decide between the two.
The Id is genetic its pre-implanted one can not make a impulse or emotion for something, your SuperEgo though is obviously environmental: what you know is right and wrong. Now lets make a example related to this topic: Id say “that girl turns us one, lets fuck her” this being impulse, Superego says “We can’t do that we are married, that would be wrong!” this being social and environmental demand, People egos must sort. Now if humans were meant to be monogamous we would not have the impulse to be attracted to other but are designated mate, then again if humans were totally polygamous it would be very hard to override our Id and not fuck everyone one at whim.

Freudian psychology? I always thought the Id/Ego/Superego description sounded a little too much like the Tripartite Soul from Plato's Republic... anyway, it's a cute metaphor but I think it's an inaccurate picture of the process of decision-making even insofar as we understand it.

For instance, Nietzsche postulated that society was a collection of contracts which traded in a currency of pain. This only requires an id and an ego, since there are only ever two things to be judged, what you want to do, and the amount of pain you must endure to get what you want.

Your impulses to do things aren't necessarily genetic or pre-implanted... what about your desire to learn how to play chess? In Freud's psychology the Id is an uncontrollable primordial mass which spawns impulses randomly.

So, Id may say "I wanna beat Kasparov at chess."
Superego has no problems. Everyone's happy when you beat Kasparov at chess! (Except Kasparov, maybe.)
Ego says "You don't know how..."

Then what? Id doesn't say "Well then I wanna learn how to play," it just says "I'm hungry" or something. Unless we additionally assume that the Id's impulse process is then directed by the Ego, or that the Ego does all the work for any creative process of longer than one step, Freud's metaphor crashes pretty quickly.

More generally, when you decide to learn how to play chess, is that genetic or social? How about skydiving? You might have a genetically determined desire to try new things, you might have a genetically determined tendency to continue with things once you've started them, but in most specific cases the rules and goals of a pursuit (including reproduction) are developed by social pressure and not directly or demonstrably by genetic tendencies.

Quite right the id only say what is like and what it does not like, you finding joy in play chess is a environmental influence, you find joy in things general is genetic. So in your example the impulse "I wanna beat Kasparov at chess." is not a Id impulse the id impulse is only "I like..." the like of chess is environmental or perhaps more likely a combination of both such that tactical/strategic thinking you find stimulating in such case the Id goes “this is pleasing” may be genetic, chess playing s environmental, in another society you might outlet such as plying GO or as a commander in a military. Sex drive is pure Id it is not a abstract combination of many impulses and environmental influences (many animals to not learn to have sex it quite well proven as instinct), it is simply a impulse to have sex nothing more, sexually preference is also genetic or due to hormonal exposure during critical time in fetal development, so homosexuality, Bi, and hetero and chance of probability of tendencies in-between is also nature based, but as the behavior gets more complicated it becomes less genetic and more of a combination of may factors, BDSM for example is most likely do to environmental such as spanking during childhood, as well as genetic tendency for adrenaline over-exposure and mild pain to pleasure conversion. Back to the central issue though again the basic desire is only to have sex, the difference is that the desire remains even after marriage to have sex with others or to be attracted to others, thus a conflict of impulse and social influences that must be chosen from, so in this case the Id, ego and superego model works well. I don’t’ see how the basic impulse to have sex is environmental in anyway.

Because with enough aversion therapy your desire for sex can be subsumed by the memories of horrible pain associated with it... I think I saw this in a Stanley Kubrick film.

Assuming that certain controls are in place, sufficient social pressures are enough to override almost any impulse. That is why the desire for sex has an environmental component.

Because with enough aversion therapy your desire for sex can be subsumed by the memories of horrible pain associated with it... I think I saw this in a Stanley Kubrick film.

You have proof of that? Your saying one can totally wipe out the impulse for sex metally??? I once saw a movie were they took this gay kid and did electro-shock to his balls untill he stoped having gay impulses... sadly it did not work.


Assuming that certain controls are in place, sufficient social pressures are enough to override almost any impulse. That is why the desire for sex has an environmental component.

Like I have been say YES social influence can override impusle, but the impulse remains. You can make a decision that goes against the impulse but you still have to feel that impulse. That why social influences are not 100% effective and why people cheat.

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Gorillas on the other hand are very monogamous and the males fight dearly to maintain a small harem of 1-4 females faithful to him,

Since I didn't see anyone else point it out I'd like to. If male gorillas are maintaining a harem of any sort they are considered polygynous. Humans are considered by anthropologists to be serial monogamists. The only reason that monogamy is considered the "norm" in so many culters is because monogamy is a socially enforced ideal. If we were a truly monogamous species we would be incapable of "cheating", we would mate for life.

then perhaps I should rephrase it as polygamous amongst females.

How do you know are social ideal on monogamy is not enforce by instinct?

If we're not able to seperate instinct from social ideal, then we can't appeal to instinct as an explanation for behaviour.

We can appeal to social ideals as an explanation for behaviour because the differences caused by upbringing are apparent enough.

Originally posted by BigBlueHead
If we're not able to seperate instinct from social ideal, then we can't appeal to instinct as an explanation for behaviour.

We can appeal to social ideals as an explanation for behaviour because the differences caused by upbringing are apparent enough.

I don't understand mind explaining?

If we assume, as we are apparently doing, that instincts are universal, then our only means of interpreting instinct is to determine the form and extent of socialized behaviour, and then disregard that behaviour; what remains is instinct.

Although we are okay at comparing different social groups and determining the differences between their average behaviours, we are not so good at determining which behaviours are not socialized ones. For example, Xev claimed in one post in this thread that marriage, or at least sexual pair-bonding, was instinctual, whereas I believe that it's a legal union. We can both call authorities to our sides to support our arguments, and so this serves to illustrate that the experts are in disagreement with one another; as such, it's unwise to base any further research on the claims of one side or the other, because all of your findings will be out the window if your side turns out to be wrong.

Still, we can come to conclusions based on differences between social behaviours, because those are fairly obvious and well agreed upon.

I still don't understand what your gettign at.

Ooook let look at it like this: do humans “pair bond” out of instinct or social trend? Virtually every society in the world has a practice of marriage.
Since all these societies have so much else in difference but has this in common we can assume that marriage or the monogamous mating with a person is instinct.

Can we? Or is marriage based in a sense of property inheritance? If that were so, we could claim that a need for property inheritance was instinctual, and monogamous relationships were created to protect it.

Look, people have been saying for too long that these things are simple. They're not.

For example, people think that marriage is a religious sacrament. It's not... the Catholic Church spent centuries trying to convince you that it's religious, but marriage has existed for longer than Christianity.

Marriage could be about sex or genetic inheritance or property inheritance, it could even be about self-defence... assuming that pair-bonding is subordinated to sexual behaviour is not immediately supportable. Our ideas of these things are so bound up in social expectations that the instinct part is difficult to get at. That's my point.

Originally posted by BigBlueHead
Can we? Or is marriage based in a sense of property inheritance? If that were so, we could claim that a need for property inheritance was instinctual, and monogamous relationships were created to protect it.

But many societies don't have a sense of property, that do not think of land as being theirs or as a object being their they share things freely. So Property is social.

For example, people think that marriage is a religious sacrament. It's not... the Catholic Church spent centuries trying to convince you that it's religious, but marriage has existed for longer than Christianity.

Marriage could be about sex or genetic inheritance or property inheritance, it could even be about self-defence... assuming that pair-bonding is subordinated to sexual behaviour is not immediately supportable. Our ideas of these things are so bound up in social expectations that the instinct part is difficult to get at. That's my point.

I seems simple enough: bird make nest together even if they we raised in captivity, Gorillas form harems even if they were raised in captivity, Human find mates and stick (or at lest intend to) with that mate long enough to have children and raise the young, no matter what the society.

But many societies don't have a sense of property, that do not think of land as being theirs or as a object being their they share things freely. So Property is social.

I dismiss this as anthropological claptrap. You go kick one of those guys out of their house... they will probably complain. When claims like this are made it's usually an attempt to evoke interest, and they are an exaggerated or misinterpreted form of the original observations.

Furthermore I doubt that in all the history of humankind there has never been a society that did anything other but marry in monogamous pairs. The fact that ours does and we can find other examples of those that do does not mean that this is the only way that human beings ever act.

no those people share their houses kicking them out of shelter would piss them off but they don't see that house as "their house"

I did not say there were no examples of societies without monogamous mating, I only side that almost all societies have a arrangement of such behavior.

By your property argument it must be ALL.

That is not the argument of this thread.

Don't pull that spurious logic - you used the same argument a few posts ago. If property inheritance is social because it is not universal, then any other trait that is not universal must therefore be social.

Since monogamy is not universal monogamy is a social construction.

That not what I said I specified "Virtually" and "Most" I never said all, there is always exceptions. There for the statement that if there is exception the rule most be wrong is not valid.

Then your exceptions to the human sense of property do not form an argument against my assertion that monogamous relationships developed as a means to protect property.

Even monkeys and dogs have a sense of property, so don't go making claims that it's a social convention. I still deny that the magic "humans with no sense of property" exist in the manner that you describe.

Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Looking at our cousins the chimpanzees and the gorillas we could judge how polygamous humans should be. So we humans pretend to be monogamous but we will cheat readily.

I think the principle you've illustrated above is that standards vary between individuals, castes and cultures.