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Does the G-Spot Exist?
2100 words
Many people believe that a thing called “the G-spot”—Grafenberg spot—exists. The g-spot has been referred to as the female prostate (Puppo, 2014) and it also has been theorized that it is an extension of the clitoris (O’Connell et al, 2005). Recent debates in the urology literature are raging, with one side saying that the g-spot exists while the other side says it does not.
In the 1660s, anatomist and physiologist Regnier de Graaf studied male testicles. In 1668, he made a drawing of dissected male testicles, theorizing that the tubule of the epididymus was necessary for sperm to ejaculate into the vagina, since they knew at the time that the testes was necessary for what was later to be called spermatoza. Now we know that he was right (Turner, 2015). He also correctly theorized that the genesis of life is within the fertilized egg, so he “was the first researcher to solve the mystery of reproduction” (Thiery, 2009). It is possible that de Graaf had knowledge of the erogenous zone inside of the vagina that caused immense sexual pleasure when enough pressure was put on it, but it was the German gynecologist Ernst Grafenberg who identified what would today be known as “the g-spot” in the anterior wall of the vagina (Rabinerson et al, 2007; Edwards, 2022). But recently there have been many papers that attempt to show that it is either reality or a myth. Does it exist?
In 1981, Perry and Whipple taught kegel exercises to women to help their stress urinary incontinence. Women who had lost fluid through their urethra had strong pelvic floor muscles while women who had stress urinary incontinence had weak pelvic floor muscles. Women with strong pelvic floor muscles reported that they lost fluid from their urethra during sexual stimulation and some reported it even during orgasm. So they then found that women who had stronger pelvic floor muscles experience were more likely to experience female ejaculation compared to women with weak pelvic floor muscles. They reported feeling it in the anterior wall of the vagina, and they found that when their anterior wall of their vagina was stimulated with two fingers using a “come here motion”, swelled when stimulated. They then called it the “Grafenberg spot”, or g-spot (Whipple, 2015).
Whether or not the g-spot exists has implications for whether or not there is a distinction between clitoral and vaginal orgasms. If the spot is real, then vaginal orgasms are possible. But if the spot is not real, then vaginal orgasms are impossible and all orgasms are clitoral orgasms. Puppo et al (2015) claim that the so-called vaginal orgasms that women report are “always caused by the surrounding erectile organs (triggers of female orgasm).” What Puppo (2014) calls “the female penis; female erectile organs” “are believed to be responsible for female orgasm.” (also see Whipple, 2015). The g-spot is said to be located below the front of the vagina. Schubach (2002) claims there is identity between the female prostate, g-spot, and Skene’s gland, while also stating that the g-spot is not really a “spot” but more of an area. Using histology, Thabet et al (2009) showed that about 18 percent of their sample of Egyptian women didn’t have a g-spot.
The g-spot is basically said to be a vaginal erogenous zone that, when sufficiently stimulated, can produce a vaginal orgasm independent of clitoral stimulation. But Mollaioli et al (2021) reviewed the history of the vagina in reproductive anatomy, stating that it was once thought that the vagina was an inert organ only for delivering babies. They conclude:
that the G-spot surely exists and is present, developed, and active on a tremendously individual basis. However, it is not a spot, and to reduce the risks of misinterpretations and vacuous discussions, it cannot be called G anymore. It is indeed a functional, hormone-dependent area, which may trigger VAOs and in some cases also FEs, well defined as CUV.
There is also what is termed the “A-spot”, which is the anterior fornix erogenous zone, and is said to be 2 inches above the g-spot, the “U-spot”, which is above the urethral opening, and the “C-spot” (clitourethrovaginal complex) (Jannini et al, 2014; Vieira-Baptista, 2021). While it is generally accepted that the anterior vaginal wall is the most sensitive part of the vagina, there seems to be no clear-cut anatomic thing—despite claims to the contrary—that can be termed a “g-spot” in the vagina. Now, this doesn’t mean that vaginal orgasms aren’t a thing, as many women can attest to.
The g-spot is defined as a physiological response, but it has no apparent anatomic correlate and if there is a physiologic response, then there must be an anatomic correlate that allows the physiologic response according to Ostrzenski (2019). Using a cadaver, Ostrzenski (2012) observed that it does indeed have an anatomic structure, near the upper part of the urethral meanus. He observed that it “appeared as a well-delineated sac“, which has anatomic similarities to erectile tissue. But he has some financial conflicts of interest here, since he, as a gynecologist, runs a “g-spot fat augmentation and g-spot surgical augmentation”, offering a plastic surgery intervention (Herold et al, 2015; Ostrzenski, 2018; Triana, 2019).
Reviews of the “spot” agree that there is no single anatomic area in the vagina that we can call “the g-spot” (Jannini at al, 2014; Vieira-Baptista, 2021). But Maratos et al (2015) showed that there is evidence for an “in vivo morphological correlate” of the g-spot and that it’s visibility in MRI can be enhanced using certain techniques (also see Wylie, 2016). Hoag et al (2017) argue that there is no discrete anatomic entity that can be putatively termed as a “g-spot”, but Ostrzenski (2018) claims that the “spot” is observable in their Hoag et al’s figure 4A. In a study of 309 Turkish women, about half of the sample (n=151) stated that the g-spot does exist, and those that had a belief in it had better scores in genital perception and sexual functioning (Kaya and Caliskan, 2018). Buisson et al (2010) used an ultrasound on a volunteer couple to ascertain the existence of the g-spot. They observed the penis inflating the vagina, which then led to a stretched clitoral root that “has consequently a very close relationship with the anterior vaginal wall. This could explain the pleasurable sensitivity of this anterior vaginal area called the G-spot.” This shows the importance of what one thinks about the g-spot and their sexual satisfaction. However, Sivaslioglu et al (2021) studied live tissue (not tissue from a cadaver) and concluded that there is no g-spot on the anterior vaginal wall.
In an ultrasonographic study, Gravina et al (2008) observed a correlation of .863 between the thickness of the distal urethrovaginal segment and vaginal orgasm and a .884 correlation between vaginal wall thickness and the likelihood of experiencing a vaginal orgasm. They also found that women with a thinner vaginal wall were less likely to report having a vaginal orgasm. This could be explained by more nerve endings in women who have thicker vaginal walls.
It is claimed that women who prefer longer penises are more likely to achieve a vaginal orgasm (Costa, Miller, and Brody, 2012; evo-psycho Geoffrey Miller is also an author on this paper. There is a just-so story there saying that the female orgasm could be an adaptation or byproduct (see Puts, Dawood and Welling, 2012 and Wheatley and Puts, 2015). However, adaptationist hypotheses are nothing more than just-so stories, and this is another example of panglossian thinking. In any case, 95 percent of women report clitoral orgasm, 65 percent of women report vaginal orgasm and 35 percent of women report an orgasm due to stimulation of the cervix (Jannini at al, 2019).
Other researchers reject the claim that there is one spot that causes a vaginal orgasm, and that the vagina is not passive, but is dynamically active in causing pleasure to the woman. Due to the anatomic and dynamic relationships between the clitoris, urethra, and anterior vaginal walls (where the spot is hypothesized to be located), this “led to the concept of a clitourethrovaginal (CUV) complex, defining a variable, multifaceted morphofunctional area that, when properly stimulated during penetration, could induce orgasmic responses” (Jannini et al, 2014).
Conclusion
The debate on the existence of the g-spot and vaginal orgasms continues with no clear-cut answer in the literature. It is such a vexing question, and there are many people with many different views on its structure and physiology. I think that the CUV complex is a better candidate than an actual localized “spot” or “button” in the vagina, as it speaks to the dynamicness of the vagina. Pfaus et al (2016) conclude:
The distinction between different orgasms, then, is not between sensations of the external clitoris and internal vagina, but between levels of what a woman understands a ‘whole’ orgasm to consist of. This depends on the experience with direct stimulation of the external clitoris, internal clitoris, and/or cervix, but also with knowledge of the arousing and erotic cues that predict orgasm, knowledge of her own pattern of movements that lead to it, and experience with stimulation of multiple external and internal genital and extra-genital sites (e.g. lips, nipples, ears, neck, fingers, and toes) that can be associated with it. Orgasms do not have to come from one site, nor from all sites; and they do not have to be the same for every woman, nor for every sexual experience even in the same woman, to be whole and valid. And it is likely that such knowledge changes across the lifespan, as women experience different kinds of orgasms from different types of sensations in different contexts and/or with different partners. Thus, what constitutes a ‘whole’ orgasm depends on how a woman sums the parts and the individual manner in which she scales them along flexible dimensions of arousal, desire, and pleasure. The erotic body map a woman possesses is not etched in stone, but rather is an ongoing process of experience, discovery, and construction which depends on her brain’s ability to create optimality between the habits of what she expects and an openness to new experiences.
While for a negative view, Kilchevsky et al (2012) conclude:
The distal part of the anterior vaginal wall appears to be the most sensitive region of the vagina, yet the existence of an anatomical “G-spot” on the anterior wall remains to be demonstrated. Objective investigative measures, either not available or not applied when Hines first published his review article over a decade ago, still fail to provide irrefutable evidence for the G-spot’s existence. This may be, in part, because of the extreme variability of the female genitalia on an individual level or, more likely, that this mythical location does not exist.
I think there is something to the anterior vaginal wall that would lead to full-body orgasms, but Hoch (1986) states that “the entire anterior vaginal wall” was “found to be erotically sensitive in most of the women examined.” It is indeed accepted that the anterior vaginal wall is the most sensitive part of the vagina, but that doesn’t mean that the g-spot is a thing (Pan et al, 2015). Ling et al (2014) showed that the proximal and distal third of the anterior vaginal wall were had more innervations (nerve endings) and better vascularization, which implies that the vagina may have a sex-sensitive function just like the clitoris. Song et al, 2015 also showed that the distal part of the anterior vaginal wall had more innervations in “seven fresh Korean cadavers.” But such studies of vaginal innervation were noted in one review to be contradictory (Vieira-Baptista et al, 2021).
The experiences of women who claim to have had a vaginal orgasm should not be discarded, but it is possible that as a paper cited noted above, that it’s merely a clitoral orgasm too. Nevertheless, I don’t see this debate settled anytime soon, and both sides have good arguments. What I think would be best is to just accept the C-spot, clitourethrovaginal complex, and this is a larger erogenous zone—not a spot—comprised of the urethra, vaginal wall, paraurethral glands, and the root of the clitoris, since most of the clitoral components are under the skin (Pauls, 2015). Though Puppo (2015) claims that the entire clitoris “is an external organ.” However, there seem to be “clitoral bulbs” in between the cura and vaginal wall (O’Connell et al, 2005).
Evolutionary Psychology Does Not Explain Differences Between Rightists and Leftists
2000 words
Unless you’ve been living under a rock since the new year, you have heard of the “coup attempt” at the Capitol building on Wednesday, January 6th. Upset at the fact that the election was “stolen” from Trump, his supporters showed up at the building and rushed it, causing mass chaos. But, why did they do this? Why the violence when they did not get their way in a fair election? Well, Michael Ryan, author of The Genetics of Political Behavior: How Evolutionary Psychology Explains Ideology (2020) has the answer—what he terms “rightists” and “leftists” evolved at two different times in our evolutionary history which, then, explains the trait differences between the two political parties. This article will review part of the book—the evolutionary sections (chapters 1-3).
EP and ideology
Explaining why individuals who call themselves “rightists and leftists” behave and act differently than the other is Ryan’s goal. He argues, at length, that the two parties have two different personality profiles. This, he claims, is due to the fact that the ancestors of rightists and leftists evolved at two different times in human history. He calls this “Trump Island” and “Obama Island”—apt names, especially due to what occurred last week. Ryan claims that what makes Trump different from, say, Obama, is that his ancestors evolved at a different place in a different time compared to Obama’s ancestors. He further claims using the Stanford Prison Experiment that “we may not all be capable of becoming Nazis, after all. Just some, and conservatives especially so” (pg 12).
In the first chapter he begins with the usual adaptationism that Evolutionary Psychologists use. Reading between the lines in his implicit claims, he is arguing that “rightists and leftists” are natural kinds—that is, they are *two different kinds of people.* He explains some personality differences between rightists and leftists and then says that such trait differences are “rooted in biology and governed by genes” (pg 17). Ryan then makes a strong adaptationist claim—that traits are due to adaptation to the environment (pg 17). What makes you and I different from Trump, he claims, is that our ancestors and his ancestors evolved in different places at different times where different traits would be imperative to survival. So, over time, different traits got selected-for in these two populations leading to the trait differences we see today. So each environment led to the fixation of different adaptive traits which explains the differences we see today between the two parties, he claims.
Ryan then shifts from the evolution of personality differences to… The evolution of the beaks of Darwin’s finches and Tibetan adaptation to high-altitude living (pg 18), as if the evolution of physical traits is anything like the evolution of psychological traits. His folly is assuming that these physical traits can then be likened to personality/mental traits. The ancestors of rightists and leftists, like Darwin’s finches Ryan claims, evolved on different islands in different moments of evolutionary time. They evolved different brains and different adaptive behaviors on the basis of the evolution of those different brains. Trump’s ancestors were authoritarian, and this island occurred early in human history “which accounts for why Trump’s behavior seems so archaic at times” (pg 18).
The different traits that leftists show in comparison to rightists is due to the fact that their island came at a different point in evolutionary time—it was not recent in comparison to the so-called archaic dominance behavior portrayed by Trump and other rightists. Ryan says that Obama Island was more crowded than Trump Island where, instead of scowling, they smiled which “forges links with others and fosters reciprocity” (pg 19). So due to environmental adversity, they had a more densely populated “island”—in this novel situation, compared to the more “archaic” earlier time—the small bands needed to cooperate, rather than fight with each other, to survive. So this, according to Ryan, explains why studies show more smiling behavior in leftists compared to rightists.
Some of our ancestors evolved traits such as cooperativeness the aided the survival of all even though not everyone acquired the trait … Eventually a new genotype or subpopulation emerged. Leftist traits became a permanent feature of our genome—in some at least. (pg 19-20)
So the argument goes: Differences between rightists and leftists show us that the two did not evolve at the same points in time since they show different traits today. Different traits were adaptive at different points in time, some more archaic, some more modern. Since Trump Island came first in our evolutionary history, those whose ancestors evolved there show more archaic behavior. Since Obama Island came first, they show newer, more modern behaviors. Due to environmental uncertainty, those on Obama Island had to cooperate with each other. The trait differences between these two subpopulations were selected for in their environment that they evolved in, which is why they are different today. Now today, this led to the “arguing over the future direction of our species. This is the origin of human politics” (pg 20).
Models of evolution
Ryan then discusses four models of evolution: (1) the standard model, where “natural selection” is the main driver of evolutionary change; (2) epigenetic models like Jablonka’s and Lamb’s (2005) in Evolution in Four Dimensions; (3) where behavioral changes change genes; and (4) where organisms have phenotypic plasticity and is a way for the organism to respond to sudden environmental changes. “Leftists and rightists“, writes Ryan, “are distinguished by their own versions of phenotypic plasticity. They change behavior more readily than rightists in response to changing environmental signals” (pg 29-30).
In perhaps the most outlandish part of the book, Ryan articulates one of my now-favorite just-so stories. The passage is worth quoting in-full:
Our direct ancestor Homo erectus endured for two million years before going extinct 400,000 years ago when earth temperatures dropped far below the norm. Descendants of erectus survived till as recently as 14,000 years ago in Asia. The round head and shovel-shaped teeth of some Asians, including Vladimir Putin, are an erectile legacy. Archeologists believe erectus was a mix of Ted Bundy and Adolf Hitler. Surviving skulls point to a life of constant violence and routine killing. Erectile skulls are thick like a turtle’s, and the brow’s are ridged for protection from potentially fatal blows. Erectus’ life was precarious and violent. To survive, it had to evolve traits such as vigilant fearfulness, prejudice against outsiders, bonding with kin allies, callousness toward victims, and a penchant for inflexible habits of life that were known to guarantee safety. It had to be conservative. 34 Archeologists suggest that some of our most characteristic conservative emotions such as nationalism and xenophobia were forged at the time of Homo erectus. 35 (pg 33-34)
It is clear that Ryan is arguing that rightists have more erectus-like traits whereas leftists have more modern, Sapiens traits. “The contemporary coexistence of a population with more “modern” traits and a population with more “archaic” traits came into being” (pg 37). He is implicitly assuming that the two “populations” he discusses are natural kinds and with his “modern” “archaic” distinction (see Crisp and Cook 2005 who argue against a form of this distinction) he is also implying that there is a sort of “progress” to evolution.
Twin studies, it is claimed, show “one’s genetically informed psychological disposition” (Hatemi et al, 2014); they “suggest that leftists and rightists are born not made” while a so-called “consensus has emerged amongst scientists: political behavior is genetically controlled and heritable” (pg 43). But, Beckway and Morris (2008), Charney (2008), and Joseph (2009; 2013) argue that twin studies can do no such thing due to the violation of the equal environments assumption (Joseph, 2014; Joseph et al, 2015). Thus, Ryan’s claims of the “genetic origins” of political behavior rest on studies that cannot prove or disprove “genetic causation” (Shulitziner, 2017)—but since the EEA is false we must discount “genetic causation” for psychological traits, not least because it is impossible for genes to cause/influence psychological traits (see argument (iii)).
The arguments he provides are a form of inference to best explanation (IBE) (Smith, 2016). However, this is how just-so stories are created: the conclusion is already in mind, and then the story is crafted using “natural selection” to explain how a trait came to fixation and why it currently exists today. The whole book is full of such adaptive stories. Claiming that we have the current traits we do in the distributions they are in in the “populations” because they were, at a certain point in our evolutionary history, adaptive which then led to the individuals with those traits passing on more of their genes, eventually leading to trait fixation. (See Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, 2010).
Ryan makes such outlandish claims such as “Rightists are more likely than leftists to keep their desks neat. If in the distant past you knew exactly where the weapons were, you could find them quickly and react to danger more effectively. 26” (pg 45). He talks about how “time-consuming and effort-demanding accuracy of perception [were] more characteristic of leftist cognition … leftist cognition is more reflective” while “rightist cognition is intuitive rather than reflective” (pg 47). Rightists being more likely to endorse the status quo, he claims, is “an adaptive trait when scarce resources made energy management essential to getting by” (pg 48) Rightist language, he argues, uses more nouns since they are “more concrete, an anxious personalities prefer concrete to abstract language because it favors categorial rigidity and guarantees greater certainty” while leftists “use words that suggest anxiety, anger, threats, certainty, resistance to change, power, security, and conformity” (pg 49). There is “a connection between archaic physiology and rightist moral ideology” (pg 52). Certain traits that leftists have were “adaptive traits [that] were suited to later stage human evolution” (pg 53). Ryan just cites studies that show differences between rightists and leftists and then uses some great leaps and mental gymnastics to try to mold the findings as being due to evolution in the two different time periods he describes in chapter 1 (Trump and Obama Island).
Conclusion
I have not read one page in this book that does not have some kind of adaptive just-so story attempting to explain certain traits/behaviors between rightists and leftists in evolutionary terms. Ryan uses the same kind of “reasoning” that Evolutionary Psychologists use—have your conclusion in mind first and then craft an adaptive story to explain why the traits you see today are there. Ryan outright says that “[t]raits are the result of adaptation to the environment” (pg 17), which is a rare—strong adaptationist—claim to make.
His book ticks off all of the usual EP things: strong adaptationism, just-so storytelling, the claim that traits were selected-for due to their contribution in certain environments at different points in time. The strong adaptationist claims, for example, are where he says that erectus’ large brow “are rigid for protection from potentially fatal blows” (pg 34). Such strong adaptationist claims imply that Ryan believes that all traits are the result of adaptation and that they, as a result, are still here today because they all serve a function in our evolutionary past. His arguments are, for the most part, all evolutionary and follow the same kinds of patterns that the usual EP arguments do (see Smith, 2016 for an explication of just-so stories and what constitutes them). Due to the problems with evolutionary psychology, his adaptive claims should be ignored.
The arguments that Ryan provides are not scientific and, although they give off a veneer of being scientific by invoking “natural selection” and adaptationism, they are anything but. It is just a long-winded explanation for how and why rightists and leftists—liberals and conservatives—are different and why they cannot change, since these differences are “encoded” into our genome. The implicit claim of the book, then, that rightists and leftists are two different—natural—kinds, lies on the false bed of EP and, therefore, the arguments provided in the book fail to sway anyone that does not believe such fantastic storytelling masquerading as science. While he does discuss other evolutionary theories, such as epigenetic ones from Jablonka and Lamb (2005), the book is largely strongly adaptationist using “natural selection” to explain why we still have the traits we do in different “populations” today.
Rampant Adaptationism
1500 words
Adaptationism is the main school of evolutionary change, through “natural selection” (NS). That is the only way for adaptations to appear, says the adaptationist: traits that were conducive to reproductive success in past environments were selected-for their contribution to fitness and therefore became fixated in the organism in question. That’s adaptationism in a nutshell. It’s also vacuous and tells us nothing interesting. In any case, the school of thought called adaptationism has been the subject of much criticism, most importantly, Gould and Lewontin (1972), Fodor (2008) and Fodor and Piatteli-Palmarini (2010). So, I would say that adaptationism becomes “rampant” when clearly cultural changes are conflated as having an evolutionary history and are still around today due to being adaptations.
Take Bret Weinstein’s recent conversation with Richard Dawkins:
Weinstein: “Understood through the perspective of German genes, vile as these behaviors were, they were completely comprehensible at the level of fitness. It was abhorrent and unacceptable—but understandable—that Germany should have viewed its Jewish population as a source of resources if you viewed Jews as non-people. And the belief structures that cause people to step onto the battlefields and fight were clearly comprehensible as adaptations of the lineages in question.”
Dawkins: “I think nationalism may be an even greater evil than religion. And I’m not sure that it’s actually helpful to speak of it in Darwinian terms.”
I find it funny that Weinstein is more of a Dawkins-ist than Dawkins himself is (in regard to his “selfish gene theory”, see Noble, 2011). In any case, what a ridiculous claim. “Guys, the Nazis were bad because of their genes and their genes made them view Jews as non-people and resources. Their behaviors were completely understandable at the level of fitness. But, Nazis bad!”
What a ridiculous claim. I like how Dawkins quickly shot the bullshit down. This is just-so storytelling on steroids. I wonder what “belief structures that cause people to step onto battlefields” are “adaptations of the lineages in question”? Do German belief structure adaptations different from any other groups? Can one prove that there are “belief structures” that are “adaptations to the lineages in question”? Or is Weinstein just telling just-so stories—stories with little evidence and that “fit” and “make sense” with the data we have (despicable Nazi behavior towards Jews after WWI and before and during WWII).
There is a larger problem with adaptationism, though: adaptationist confuse adaptiveness with adaptation (a trait can be adaptive without being an adaptation), they overlook nonadaptationist explanations, and adaptationist hypotheses are hard to falsify since a new story can be erected to explain the feature in question if one story gets disproved. That’s the dodginess of adaptationism.
An adaptationist may look at an organism, look at its traits, then construct a story as to why they have the traits they do. They will attempt to think of its evolutionary history by thinking of the environment it is currently in and what the traits in question that it has are useful for now. But there is a danger here. We can create many stories for just one so-called adaptation. How do we distinguish between which stories explain the fixation of the trait and which do not? We can’t: there is no way for us to know which of the causal stories explains the fixation of the trait.
Gould and Lewontin (1972) fault:
the adaptationist programme for its failure to distinguish current utility from reasons for origin (male tyrannosaurs may have used their diminutive front legs to titillate female partners, but this will not explain why they got so small); for its unwillingness to consider alternatives to adaptive stories; for its reliance upon plausibility alone as a criterion for accepting speculative tales; and for its failure to consider adequately such competing themes as random fixation of alleles, production of nonadaptive structures by developmental correlation with selected features (allometry, pleiotropy, material compensation, mechanically forced correlation), the separability of adaptation and selection, multiple adaptive peaks, and current utility as an epiphenomenon of nonadaptive structures.
[…]
One must not confuse the fact that a structure is used in some way (consider again the spandrels, ceiling spaces, and Aztec bodies) with the primary evolutionary reason for its existence and conformation.
Of course, though, adaptationists (e.g., evolutionary psychologists) do confuse structure for function. This is fallacious reasoning. That a trait is useful in a current environment is in no way evidence that it is an adaptation nor is it evidence that that’s why the trait evolved (e.g., a trait being useful and adaptive in a current environment).
But there is a problem with looking to the ecology of the organism in question and attempting to construct historical narratives about the evolution of the so-called adaptation. As Fodor and Piatteli-Palmarini (2010) note, “if evolutionary problems are individuated post hoc, it’s hardly surprising that phenotypes are so good at solving them.” So of course if an organism fails to secure a niche then that means that the niche was not for that organism.
That organisms are so “fit” to their environment, like a puzzle piece to its surrounding pieces, is supposed to prove that “traits are selected-for their contribution to fitness in a given ecology”, and this is what the theory of natural selection attempts to explain. Organisms fit their ecologies because its their ecologies that “design” their traits. So it is no wonder that organisms and their environments have such a tight relationship.
Take it from Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini (2010: 137):
You don’t, after all, need an adaptationist account of evolution in order to explain the fact that phenotypes are so often appropriate to ecologies, since, first impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no such fact. It is just a tautology (if it isn’t dead) a creature’s phenotype is appropriate for its survival in the ecology that it inhabits.
So since the terms “ecology” and “phenotype” are interdefined, is it any wonder why an organism’s phenotype has such a “great fit” with its ecology? I don’t think it is. Fodor and Piatteli-Palmarini (2010) note how:
it is interesting and false that creatures are well adapted to their environments; on the other hand it’s true but not interesting that creatures are well adapted to their ecologies. What, them, is the interesting truth about the fitness of phenotypes that we require adaptationism in order to explain? We’ve tried and tried, but we haven’t been able to think of one.
So the argument here could be:
P1) Niches are individuated post hoc by reference to the phenotypes that live in said niche.
P2) If the organisms weren’t there, the niche would not be there either.
C) Therefore there is no fitness of phenotypes to lifestyles that explain said adaptation.
Fodor and Piatteli-Palmarini put it bluntly about how the organism “fits” to its ecology: “although it’s very often cited in defence of Darwinism, the ‘exquisite fit’ of phenotypes to their niches is either true but tautological or irrelevant to questions about how phenotypes evolve. In either case, it provides no evidence for adaptationism.”
The million-dollar question is this, though: what would be evidence that a trait is an adaptation? Knowing what we now know about the so-called fit to the ecology, how can we say that a trait is an adaptation for problem X when niches are individuated post hoc? That right there is the folly of adaptationism, along with the fact that it is unfalsifiable and leads to just-so storytelling (Smith, 2016).
Such stories are “plausible”, but that is only because they are selected to be so. When such adaptationism becomes entrenched in thought, many traits are looked at as adaptations and then stories are constructed as to how and why the trait became fixated in the organism. But, just like EP which uses the theory of natural selection as its basis, so too does adaptationism fail. Nevermind the problem of the fitting of species to ecologies to render evolutionary problems post hoc; nevermind the problem that there is no identifying criteria for identifying adaptations; do mind the fact that there is no possible way for natural selection to do what it does: distinguish between coextensive traits.
In sum, adaptationism is a failed paradigm and we need to dispense with it. The logical problems with it are more than enough to disregard it. Sure, the fitness of a phenotype, say, the claws of a mole do make sense in the ecology it is in. But we only claim that the claws of a mole are adaptations after the fact, obviously. One may say “It’s obvious that the claws of a mole are adaptations, look at how it lives!” But this betrays a notion that Gould and Lewontin (1972) made: do not confuse structure with an evolutionary reason for its existence, which, unfortunately, many people do (most glaringly, evolutionary psychologists). Weinstein’s ridiculous claims about Nazi actions during WWII are a great example of how rampant adaptationism has become: we can explain any and all traits as an adaptation, we just need to be creative with the stories we tell. But just because we can create a story that “makes sense” and explains the observation does not mean that the story is a likely explanation for the trait’s existence.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 