Extended Passage Analysis - Essay Example

?Word count –1736 Extended Passage Analysis Step Portray argument structure (4 points). Evolutionary psychology is considered an approach to psychology that helps understand the design of the human mind. It believes that the mind is a set of “information-processing machines” designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems since the hunter-gatherer period (Cosmides and Tooby, 1997, P 1). In this paper, the argument will focus on the soundness of Randy Thornhill’s and Craig Palmer’s A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (2001). Based on evolutionary psychology, Thornhill and Palmer suggested that rape is an adaptation from the genes of men who had reproductive and evolutionary advantage over their fellow males who did not or lacked the genes. In the words of Begley, “they sired children not only with willing mates, but also with unwilling ones, allowing them to leave more offspring (also carrying rape genes) who were similarly more likely to survive and reproduce, unto the nth generation,” (2009, P 1). This paper will argue that Thornhill and Palmer’s proposal lacked scientific as well as factual merits to hold ground using extended passage analysis. Step 2 Assess for soundness (4 points). 1[Evolutionary psychology came after sociobiology in the 1980s]. 2[The theory asserts that fitness advantage during the evolution process resulted to aggressive behaviors such as the act of raping for men who carry the genes]. 3[Its genetic nature makes the behavior heritable and is passed from one generation to the next]. 4[They proposed that proximate causes may cause a man to rape and these proximate causes include sexual arousal, feelings of inadequacy, hatred for a family member (either father or mother), drunk too much, too much testosterone in his body, and even “a rare violence inducing gene” (4) among others]. 5[They suggested that further investigation of the cause of the proximate cause leads to the ultimate cause, the complementary explanation for the aggressive raping behavior]. 6[The authors added that “the claim that learning affects men’s rape behavior does not contradict the view that the behavior has evolved,” (Thornhill and Palmer, 2001, 4)]. 7[Knowledge of the proximate and ultimate causation can make people understand all aspects of life (Thornhill and Palmer, 2001)]. 8[To contradict its own, the authors quoted Ridley (1987) On the Origin of Species of which “Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variations, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good, silently and insensibly working…” (p 87, quoted by Thornhill and Palmer, 2001, 5)]. 9[Reproductive success as a good one for the authors meant production of offspring that survive to produce offspring as they referred to earlier work of Palmer and Steadman, 1997)]. 10[This is undesirable in terms of morality but good in terms of biological discussion (Thornhill and Palmer, 2001)]. 11[The American Psychiatric Association (1994) suggested that experience of rape is usually associated with the development of persistent psychological distress or posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD]. 12[This is characterized by “unwanted thoughts, images and dreams, avoidance of reminders of the trauma,” among others (Littleton and Henderson, 2009, p 149)]. 13[Described in a very negative manner, the experience of rape assumes a bad or negative experience, thereby, something that many women will not choose to happen to themselves again]. 14[Rape constitutes two beings – the rapist and the victim]. 15[Reproduction, too, consists of two beings and of two opposite sex – the male and the female]. 16[If it is natural to humans to evolve based on natural selection, the raped, pregnant woman who considered rape as bad or negative, therefore, insensibly rejected the bad (Ridley, 1987)]. 17[In a study by Gurven and Hill et (2008) applying evolutionary psychology, it calculated how rape would affect the evolutionary prospects of a 25-year old Ache, foraging nomads in Paraguay who are believed to be living in a society and culture based on how humans today lived 100,000 years ago (Begley, 2009)]. 18[The study assumed that rapists target only women of reproductive age in consideration of Thornhill and Palmers’ (2001) suggestion]. 19[Rape’s fitness costs and benefits were found to lose points where a rapist is killed by the victim’s husband or relatives, and lose another when the mother refuses to raise the child of rape]. 20[Rapists too, were abhorred and not helped in the small hunter-gatherer tribe]. 21[It is raised 15% when the victim is fertile, and another 7% if the victim will conceive, then another 90% is the victim will not miscarry]. 22[It was found that the cost exceeds by 10% the benefits of a rapist]. 23[Hill was quoted to claim that, “the likelihood that rape is an evolved adaptation extremely low,” (Begley, 2009, 2)]. 24[With regards to the claim that the human brain is arranged with hundreds of specialized and preprogrammed modules that evolutionary psychologists claim (Buller, 2005), Pigliucci and Kaplan (2006), who believed that evolution shaped human brain, countered that evolutionary stories about human behaviors are just logical guesses but not scientific]. 25[In a dynamic environment that encompass the social, the mind that are evolutionary fit is the flexible and responsive kind (Pigliucci and Kaplan, 2006) and it meant being able to “figure out a way to make trade-offs, survive, thrive and reproduce in whatever social and physical environment it finds itself in,” (Begley, 2009, 2)]. 26[Another contention on the fitness and preference for mates was suggested by a study of Fhionna Moore (2006) who suggested in an issue of the Evolution and Human Behaviour journal that women who are financially well-off prefer partners that are physically attractive supporting the “it depends” behavioral school against preprogrammed mental modules of rapists (Begley, 2009)]. 27 [The study of genes, too, provided insights to the youngness of human genes evolution as human DNA were identified as young as 10,000 years old or younger (Begley, 2009)]. The argument paraphrase of the passage: 2+3+4+5+6 8 10+12 ? ? ? 9 13+14+16 ? ? 18+19 ? ? ? The rapist gene is evolved and is inherited from rapist ancestors. There were two lines of argument. First is the evolutional psychology proposal as a logical guess. Second is the basis for survival and assessment of what is good and bad. Assessing cogency: Guessed assumptions: 2 [fitness advantage during the evolution process resulted to aggressive behaviors such as the act of raping for men who carry the genes] 3 [Its genetic nature makes the behavior heritable and is passed from one generation to the next] 4 [proximate causes may cause a man to rape and these proximate causes include sexual arousal, etc.] 5 [further investigation of the cause of the proximate cause leads to the ultimate cause, the complementary explanation for the aggressive raping behavior] Therefore, the rapist gene is evolved and is inherited from rapist ancestors. This argument commits the fallacy of hasty generalization. It assumes that the theory of natural selection is already an absolute truth and that based on natural selection, the most fit men from the barbaric stage of humanoids were the most fit, thus, spreading their genes through raping and domination of women. This argument is supported by 18 and 19 that referred to the aggressive behavior of most fit men as well as their choice of fit women to carry their offspring. It would soon be learned that the chance of the genes of the rapist surviving was very lean and that there is low probability that the genes will continue evolving at all to another generation. Argument for survival and assessment of what is good and bad: 8 [Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variations, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good] 9 [Reproductive success as a good one for the authors meant production of offspring that survive to produce offspring] The premises were supported by 13 [the experience of rape assumes a bad or negative experience, thereby, something that many women will not choose to happen to themselves again] and to be fully understood that the evolution process of humans consisted of 14 [Rape constitutes two beings – the rapist and the victim]. Therefore, natural selection assumes rape as something good. This claim has readily assumed that the experience of rape is good. While rape may be “good” for the rapist male, it failed to consider the other survivals in the process of – the victim and the community which consider the act as negative or bad. Step 3 Give an overall Analysis (2 points). An overall assessment about the passage of rape as a result of evolutionary psychology is unfounded. The discussion sums up that physical and behavioral sciences do not support the proposition that the aggressive rapist behavior was evolutionary in nature due to the survivalist association. While the proposition of rapist behavior is biological, or physical in determination of it as “good” to be naturally selected, its costs in order to survive to the current civilization and age outweighs the benefits. Aside from this, other evolutionary psychology about survival of the fittest citing physical fitness as basis all proved doubtful. As Begley (2009) concluded, human nature varies, is flexible, and that the environment influences or molds behavior depending on the physical and social demands. Step 4 Critique Analysis Thornhill and Palmer may have positive intentions to provide an “evolutionary psychologist” perspective for the aggressive rapist behavior to provide an understanding of the immediate and ultimate understanding of rape occurrences, but it failed in its biological defense of using the natural selection and survival theories, and much more the preprogrammed brain genes. Rape is an aggressive behavior that is considered in modern society as a crime, therefore, follows other aggressive and criminal acts as difficult to predict, explain its causes, and remains multi-factorial, if not dependent on situation and circumstances. It is not a mere excuse for “inheriting” the rapist genes but a criminal act that needs to be paid for what it has damaged. One of the more persistent arguments about natural selection is the use of “fittest” man such as warriors, men who prefer hourglass women perceived as fertile and most likely to provide healthy children, and stepfathers that kill their stepchildren, as producing offspring that produce fit offspring has been consistently disproved (Begley, 2009). This has been pointed out to the fact that humans did not evolve in a single environment, therefore, cannot produce single human nature. Rape then, should remain to be treated as anti-social, aggressive and criminal behavior and remain treated as such. Providing pseudo-scientific excuse for negative behaviors cannot re-classify a behavior but claiming logical guesses as factual or scientific is as dangerous. Reference: American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Begley, Sharon. 2009.Why do we rape, kill and sleep around? Newsweek, June 20. Accessed from http://www.newsweek.com/2009/06/19/why-do-we-rape-kill-and-sleep-around.html Buller, David. 2005. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. MIT Press. Cosmides, Leda and John Tooby. 1997. Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer. Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Accessed from http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html Gurven, M. and K. Hill. 2008. Hunting as subsistence and mating effort? A re-evaluation of “Man the Hunter”, the sexual division of labor and the evolution of the nuclear family. Current Anthropology. Littleton, Heather and Craig Henderson. 2009. If she is not a victim, does that man she was not traumatized?: Evaluation of predictors of PSTD Symptomatology Among College Rape Victims. Violence Against Women 15: 148. Pigliucci, Massimo and Jonathan Kaplan. 2006. Making Sense of Evolution. University of Chicago Press. Thornhill, R. and Palmer, C. 2001. A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. 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