One of the multiple battlefields of environmental determinists versus biological determinists relates to the causes of violence. The former see violence as a primarily culturally rooted phenomenon, whereas the latter see it as being biologically determined This controversy, however, may be due to a failure to distinguish between aggressiveness and violence.

Aggressiveness and Violence

Aggressiveness is an instinct and therefore is a product of bioevolution. However, nature has not selected for the trait of aggressiveness alone but together with a set of inhibiting factors that are activated in certain circumstances, for instance, when two individuals who belong to the same group fight with each other and the life of one of them is threatened. As Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1984) argues, a widely obeyed commandment in nature is "thou shalt not kill thy neighbor." Not even animals with as bad a reputation as wolves are an exception to this law...