Critique of the Seville Statement and Biological Determinism in Violence

These claims led to the rather dreamy-eyed utopian conclusion that “Just as ‘wars begin in the minds of men’, peace also begins in our minds. The same species who invented war is capable of inventing peace. The responsibility lies with each of us.” In essence, understanding our biology will not contribute to understanding violence and war because we invented war as well as peace, woven out of nurture’s cloth and her infinite tapestry of cultural potential. These kinds of claims about the role of biology in human behavior are at best incoherent, and at worst plain wrong. They are also dangerous because they imply a view of human nature that is infinitely plastic, unconstrained by both universal features of our biology, as well as individual differences that predispose some to extreme violence and others to extreme altruism. What makes the Seville Statement, and other claims like it incoherent is a set of false attributions to biologists about the role of biology. Statements 2-5 are accurate in that it is incorrect to say that war or violence are genetically programmed, subject to stronger selection than other kinds of behaviour, built into the brain as a violent brain, and based on instinct with a single, inevitable output. But I don’t know any biologists who believe statements like these. The biologist Peter Marler famously spoke of singing in birds as an instinct to learn, while the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker described the Chomskyan insight into language as the /anguage instinct. A bird’s instinct to learn does not mean that there is a one- to-one, inflexible mapping between genes or brain circuits and a specific type of song. All songbirds have the potential to acquire their species’ song, and in some birds, such as mockingbirds and parrots, this capacity extends to acquiring the sounds of other animals and even inanimate sounds. But if there is no input at all, or if the bird is deafened, the output is deficient in structure, unrecognizable as a species- specific song. The same holds for the language instinct. Instincts are biological biases that constrain the range of potential variation. Biology differentiates songbirds from birds that don’t learn their songs. This same biology allows some birds to learn one song and use it for life, and allows other birds to acquire a variety of different sounds for use in singing. The biology doesn’t determine the specific content ofa song. The content is determined by what the bird hears, constrained by what its bird brain and syrinx will process and reproduce. To a large extent, language is no different. Our biology allows us, but not any other species, to acquire language. This same biology sets up constraints, due in part to what our brains can keep in memory, what our ears can hear, and what our larynx can produce. Like songbirds, the specific content of what we say, whether with a French or Vietnamese accent, is determined by where we live and who we listen to. If there is any intelligible sense of genetically programmed or instinct, whether for violence, language, sex, or mathematics, it is that our biology provides us with the capacity to acquire these domains of knowledge and expression. This doesn’t mean that violence, language, sex or mathematics are inevitable or fixed in their expression. There are thousands of languages, ways of having sex, and forms Hauser Chapter 1. Nature’s secrets 41 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012787