"Within these boundaries of gender generalizations, the vast majority of post-pubescent, heterosexual men will invariably have a sexual desirability "reflex" upon seeing a female of reproductive age. Thus the immediate discrimination that a male will make when encountering a female is whether or not he'd like to have sex with her. While some women might acknowledge this sexual "reflex" too, it is likely that they can quickly get past it and focus on the non-sexual aspects of the male with whom they're relating.
The reasons for these phenomena are inextricably linked to our species' evolution. On the one hand, sperm is physiologically cheap, extremely plentiful, and constantly replenished. Therefore, the more often and diversely a male spreads his sperm the more evolutionally successful he'll be. Ova, on the other hand, are very precious, metabolically expensive, and can not be replenished (a woman is born with all the eggs she'll ever have).
What's more, women must assume the physical, emotional and metabolic demands of pregnancy. Hence, unlike most men who will gladly provide their sperm with little thought about it, evolution has shaped most women to be protective of their eggs and relatively discriminating of their sexual partners.
Thus women are more able to move beyond the immediate sexual attraction inherent in inter-gender relationships so they can more thoroughly determine the overall suitability of a potential mate. Men, it seems, often have no such long-term agenda so the "one track mind" of sexual interest persists much longer.
In general, then, one can say that men are very sexually "reflexive" while women are apt to be more sexually "reflective." "
I find that there are actually several sub-arguments within this excerpt which try to prove his overall point, listed in standard form here:
Sub Argument 1:
P1: Sperm is physiologically cheap, extremely plentiful, and constantly replenished.
P2: Spreading sperm diversely is important to our species' evolution. [Implied Premise]
C1: Therefore, the more often and diversely a male spreads his sperm the more evolutionarily successful he'll be.
Sub Argument 2:
P1: Ova are very precious, metabolically expensive, and can not be replenished.
P2: Women must assume the physical, emotional and metabolic demands of pregnancy.
C2: Evolution has shaped most women to be protective of their eggs and relatively discriminating of their sexual partners.
Once his arguments for these points are made, Dr. Lazarus then goes on to use the two conclusions as the premises for his next arguments, where he attempts to draw two separate new conclusions from the results of the last arguments:
Sub Arguments 3 and 4:
P1: The more often and diversely a male spreads his sperm the more evolutionarily successful he'll be.
P2: Evolution has shaped most women to be protective of their eggs and relatively discriminating of their sexual partners.
P3: The differences in genetics cause men and women to think of each other differently in respect to sexual desires. [Implied Premise]
C1: Thus women are more able to move beyond the immediate sexual attraction inherent in inter-gender relationships so they can more thoroughly determine the overall suitability of a potential mate.
C2: Men, it seems, often have no such long-term agenda so the "one track mind" of sexual interest persists much longer.
I personally find that at this point his argument is starting to assume quite a few generalizations, and is weakly inductive (He admits in his article that there are exceptions to the case and that he is generalizing).
Turning his conclusions once again into the premises for his next argument, Dr. Lazarus makes his main point:
Overall Argument:
P1: Women are more able to move beyond the immediate sexual attraction inherent in inter-gender relationships so they can more thoroughly determine the overall suitability of a potential mate.
P2: Men often have no such long-term agenda so the "one track mind" of sexual interest persists much longer.
C: In general, then, one can say that men are very sexually "reflexive" while women are apt to be more sexually "reflective."
I would have to say that this an inductive argument and that it is strong because the inference is more likely than 50-50 (presuming the strength of the genetic research that made such generalizations). However, I am taking the word of the author because of his status of a Ph.D. in Psychology as well as being the Clinical Director at the Lazarus Institute. I believe he is qualified to speak on the subject, and therefore what he says should be taken seriously. I would not necessarily say that it is cogent myself, because I do not know for sure that the assumptions he makes about the genetic research are true. However, his status implies that he is aware of such research, and therefore it is likely the premises are true, making this article a cogent inductive argument when coming from Dr. Lazarus himself.
What do you think of Dr. Lazarus's argument? Is he committing any fallacies? Is he overgeneralizing? Did I make a mistake in my presentation of his premises and conclusions? I'd like to hear what anyone has to say.
Full Article:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/think-well/201009/why-men-and-women-cant-be-just-friends
Article stating the credentials of Dr. Lazarus:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/clifford-n-lazarus-phd
Really interesting. I'm into psychology, so its cool to see something that seems to have a mix of biology in there as well. I think your right to say that this argument is inductive because there's a lot of room for subjectivity (Ex: what I consider to be "reflexive" may differ from what others consider to be "reflexive", and we could spend all day making every term subjective-proof but then it would be wordy and boring). Heres a fun fact for you-- women are more intuitive than men because they are evolutionarily designed to care for children, and since children arent able to say whats wrong with them women learn to sense it
ReplyDeleteI think you did a good job of analyzing the arguments. I would modify argument 2 C2 to: The more protective of their eggs and relatively discriminating of their sexual partners women are the more evolutionarily successful she will be. To more closely match C1.
ReplyDeleteThen I would modify P3 in arguments 3&4 to be: These different evolutionary pressures cause different genetic changes that impact the way men and women think of each other in respect to sexual desires. This does a better job of linking the two premises to the conclusions.
I agree that this is a reasonably strong argument from what he has given. However the truth of his premises not not clear and he leaves out many relevant details. First the premise that all men will 'invariably' have a sexual reflex on encountering every woman. While this is important to his argument it seems at least somewhat suspect. Our popular culture seems to back it but his claim is across the human species which is a lot harder to verify. Additionally he realizes women have a similar reflex but discounts it because they can "quickly get past it" but wouldn't women having the reflex at all be a strong counterargument against his conclusion? If women even occasionally don't discriminate with their partners it will strongly offset their strategy. And what of the role of culture in all of this? Discounting that our culture continually tells men to sexually objectify women and women to subsume their sexuality surely plays a role in this behavior.
To say that women cannot replenish their ova is rather misleading. A healthy woman of reproductive age will not run out of eggs, especially if she is regularly getting pregnant which one that wants to maximize its evolutionary success will be. Other physiological changes will cause infertility long before her eggs are used up.
The woman bearing most of the burden of pregnancy is valid, but is again misleading. For most of the history of humanity tribes were mutually supportive of their members, a pregnant woman that was pregnant would not be alone if her mate didn't stick around so the impact on her burden of pregnancy would be far smaller than the author assumes.
Additionally to say that women only benefit from a restrictive reproductive strategy is discards several well established tenants of human and animal behavior. First women can gain dramatically from having multiple partners, each man will not know for sure that the offspring are his but will not know they are not so they will have some evolutionary interest in the child's survival. Therefore the more partners she has the more men who will be looking after the child. Second while Genghis Khan may have had a tremendous number of partners most men do not, especially when you look at the pre-agricultural period of human history that had the most impact on our evolution. A small mating pool suggests that the reproductive strategy would not be as heavily biased towards male promiscuity as the author says.
Lastly there is solid behavioral and genetic evidence that for most of human history women were non-monogamous to the extent that it has significantly influenced humanities sexual behavior and characteristics so not only does this undermine the logic of his argument it negates the need for the argument at all: that men are significantly more promiscuous than women and the difference needs an explanation.
@Greg: I agree with your comment that "reflexive" can be subjective, and that it must be taken into account that such a generalization of the male gender would leave much room for the possibility of the author's assumptions being wrong.
ReplyDelete@David: It is definitely a strong argument from the way it is presented, however, it is not very convincing when one thinks of the possibilities of the author being wrong such as you have. He assumes and generalizes quite a bit, which is why I noted that after Sub Arguments 2 & 3 he seemed to be taking too much for granted. I will maintain, however, that in the objective of seeking an answer as to why men are more promiscuous than women, the information gained from this article couldn't hurt, but it is no where near enough to solve this age-old question (if the question can or needs to be solved).
Wow, I really enjoyed reading your post and I though you did a fine job picking apart the arguments!
ReplyDelete