Oslo's Museum of Natural History currently features an exposition devoted to animal homosexuality. Manifest homosexual behavior has been observed among members of 450 species. The Museum exposes explicit photographs of sexual behavior among members of 30 of them. The project's director Geir Soli's says the aim of the exposition is "To refute the too well-known argument according to which homosexual behavior is a crime against nature."
(Via Truthout and BBC News)
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
It's Not "Unnatural"
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6 comments:
Typically those who appeal to nature in trying to make the case against homosexuality are natural law types. Showing that every other animal on the plant engaged in same-sex sex wouldn't undermine the natural law argument because they are only appealing to human nature. I imagine the natural law folks would respond by saying something like, "Well some animals eat poop, their young, or their mates, would you have us infer that those are ok too?" I suspect that the average person who makes the "it's against nature" claim shares something of the natural law philosopher's intuition.
Hi Matthew,
Yeah, more than a few counter-instances are needed. But suppose a LOT of animals (including most humans) ate poop, their young or their mates (just the way we eat cows, pigs, and chicken). Wouldn't it then be tempting to question the alleged natural law against it?
If most humans where engaged in the activity it would be tempting to question the alleged natural law against it. I think in this case the NL folks will say that this group in question is statistically small enough to be anomolous.
For the record I'm typically not in the business of carrying water for natural law ethicists. I just wanted to point out that while the exposition is novel the NL folks would be unmoved since it says nothing in regards to their argument. This is yet another reminder of why I'm not an ethicist.
Thanks for this Colleen! And the links. I think that sounds right. If animal homosexuality is common, which it is, then evolution must have "kept it around" for a reason.
What Colleen says sounds right, though I think we have to be careful in talk of whole populations. Typically we think of evolution operating largely at the individual level and not at the level of populations. I think you'd want to appeal to something like inclusive fitness whereby an organism can increase its own fitness by keeping its collateral relatives viable. BTW, I do think there are some NL folks who take EP seriously as a way grounding talk about human nature. Maybe one will actually stumble across this thread and let us know.
Brit-
I don't know that we'd want to say that "evolution must have "kept it around" for a reason." That is I suppose it could turn out that homosexuality is a byproduct of some benefit with no present cost, or a past benefit with no cost today. We have traits, and maybe an organ or two, that serve no present evolutionary benefit, but we don’t typically think that evolution must have kept them around for a reason. There just isn’t any cost to cause them to be deselected.
Yes, there is even talk of evolution operating at the species level but that is controversial. But the idea that evolution can operate at the level of population is not. Relatedly, the concept of interbreeding ability sometimes used by defenders of the biological concept of species is best defined at the level of population (otherwise, we'd get the unfortunate consequence that sterile individuals do not belong to a species)
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