It is critical to classify a creature as friend or foe based on what class it belongs to, rather than granting the instance benefit of doubt.
How previously observed members of a group have behaved in the past constitutes rational evidence for estimating the future behavior of a newly observed member of that group.
An individual observing some members of a group with different physical characteristic with a certain behavior, an individual infers all members of that group behave that way.
Then with an individual being exposed to a sampling of that groups behavior due to say the news or social media algorithms the individual makes an inference but is unable to account for the bias these sources might have.
E.g. "all sharks bite legs off"
This leads to survival: not having your legs bitten off.
And you're missing the point that the stratification of phenomena into "higher reasoning" <-> "base instinct" is a false hierarchy. Even when you're working within ethics, you eventually have to ground yourself in moral intuitions, which is fundamentally irrational (the underlying mechanism of moral intuition can't be examined through reason).
I think maybe what the author is ultimately saying is that it's not wrong to think about these uniquely human qualities as being just as natural and basic as anything else.
Either way I feel it would have been more productive to rebut the GP on the merits of his arguments. For the record, I agree with him, though I am also not a "trained professional", just an amateur who has spent a lot of time thinking about this subject.
No they haven't. An argument is a persuasive set of evidence and reasoning presented to make a case for a conclusion -- OP merely made a bunch of handwavey, highly debatable statements as if they were fact
Of course it's fair, in a discussion.
> the OP broke down his arguments for why the author was wrong,
No he didn't. There are no "arguments" presented. There's a vague premise (It can all be compared to how most social mammals operate. <--- not an argument in any sense) then some 1 line ramblings that seem thinly related.
Warriors and Worriers - Joyce Bennenson
Sex at Dawn - Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá
Granted, I've only had a cursory look at Bennenson, Ryan, and Jetha, but they're a couple of psychologists and a medical doctor, none of whom seem to have a deep background in cultural anthropology. Unsurprisingly, their works appear to fall back on the usual just-so stories taken from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
TL;DR: I respectfully disagree with the implication that these sources are strong counterarguments to the article's thesis.
There has been tremendous politicization of science in media in recent years. Basically, if it contradicts a narrative the media is trying to push, actual science is shouted down and castigated. Both the left and the right do this. The right does it with climate science. The left does this with psychology and social sciences.
Basically, this article is nicely full of facts. However, it's presenting them in the classic leftist mode of obscurantism, all to push a politically driven agenda:
These contexts include the history and current reality of specific inequalities that stem from economic, racist, and sexist processes in our society.
As humans are social animals, there is some psychological insight to be gained from studying other social animals, just as there's some physiological insight to be gained by studying the biology of rats and monkeys. Right now, any biological and evolutionary components of human behavior contradict the Marxian, postmodern social constructionist, and far left foundational notion of the human being as blank slate. If any such components are acknowledged, many of their simplistic moralistic calls for reform would have to be questioned. The realistic scientific consensus is a moderate and nuanced one: both nature and nurture matter.
No. It can all be compared to how most social mammals operate.
Racism & nationalism have their roots in tribalism, a very useful tool to keep a tribe cohesive and thus competitive against other tribes.
Climate change: Have a look at any invasive species for examples.
Gender diversity & MeToo: Genders in mammals will take on certain specialized roles in order to survive in their environment.
Are they right and ethical? Of course not. Times have changed, and our psyches haven't kept up. But ignoring our evolutionary heritage only results in treating the symptoms rather than the cause. That's not how you correct problems.
> It’s only by delving into humanity’s distinctive evolutionary history, since our split with the other ape lineages, that we are better able to develop a fuller understanding of the human niche, of what makes us specifically human.
Uh, no. It's also important to find out what's baked into our psyche, no matter how ugly or inconvenient, and take steps to compensate for them or maybe even correct them. That's what higher reasoning is for.