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Evolution and the loss of hierarchies: Dubreuil’s “Human evolution and the origin of hierarchies: the state of nature”

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Notes

  1. This is a case of Dubreuil’s puzzling insistence that he is not going to discuss the selection processes involved in human evolution, merely what changes occurred (p. 5)–he does seem to have some unusual ideas about how and whether natural selection explanations can be arrived at for behavioral and morphological traits (p. 93–96). Unfortunately, (a) selection processes are part of natural history, and (b) what changes occurred in natural history are often obscure. To determine what did happen, Dubreuil repeatedly makes functional claims about what would have worked for humans and what would not. These are implicitly claims about the action of one of more selection processes and the selection pressures that made them possible.

  2. Another problem for Dubreuil is that the sexual norms of modern foraging groups vary in content and in the reasons given for them by the members of those groups. For example, conflict reduction seems to be the recognized reason for a form of marriage amongst the San foragers (Marshall 1976). Other groups, such as the Ache, because of their beliefs about how children develop in the womb, have greater sexual freedom and strong norms for a lack of jealousy amongst the men (Hill and Hurtado 1996).

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  1. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Catherine Driscoll

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  1. Catherine Driscoll
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Driscoll, C. Evolution and the loss of hierarchies: Dubreuil’s “Human evolution and the origin of hierarchies: the state of nature”. Biol Philos 27, 125–135 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-011-9266-2

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