An Evolutionary Argument Against Evolutionary Psychology

[ilikeverin]

I have a question: Can someone tell me what evo psych is good for? All I've heard of it is it just being used to justify horrid things like sexism

To bash religion and liberals.

Oh, absolutely, which is why I'm an atheist and an archconservative

[ilikeverin]

Whew, good, someone with some sort of philosophical defense...

[ilikeverin]

The key point here is “false” motivations. We perceive one motivation but are in fact motivated by something else. That this can happen should be a surprise to no one, and it is rather insulting to our intelligence to suggest otherwise. You might, for example, be attracted to someone and not realize it—in the mean time, you make mental excuses to go to the store or the library or walk down the street in order to see that person. At some point, of course, you realize your attraction, and from then on are conscious of that as a part of your motivation.

So clearly some of our motivations are hidden from us. They may not remain hidden for very long, but that’s neither here nor there. If the reductio ad absurdum of the original argument is to function, it must be able to explain why this particular, very clear-cut, case, does not make the case that we don’t know anything. Unfortunately, the basis of the argument is a logical fallacy. What Bono quoted says, in reduced form, “We don’t know everything; therefore, we don’t know anything.” That this argument is invalid should be trivial.

The problem is not that we don't know everything, or even that all of our beliefs aren't true. The problem is that evolutionary psychology casts such a doubt on the reliability of our belief-forming processes that the probability of any individual belief being true is either low or inscrutable. Reliability doesn't imply that we come to form true beliefs 100% of the time, but it does require that our cognitive faculties furnish us with mostly true beliefs. For instance, suppose Tom comes to believe that he ingested a dangerous toxin that in nine out of ten cases induces permanent loss of cognitive reliability. Obviously through this belief, wether  true or not, Tom has reason to doubt all of his beliefs in account of it undermining the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable. The situation for someone who believes in EP is no different than Tom's.

The problem is that the things that are doubted aren't randomly distributed.  To be more precise, belief in evolutionary psychology is predicated upon a belief in science and empiricism.  Though we know that our senses can be fooled (see optical illusions), scientific thought entails that our senses can still in a general sense be trusted.  For example, when seeing the below image:



Our minds make the jump to assume that the blue shape is a rectangle just like the red one.  Of course, this isn't necessarily true; for all we know, it's a polygon cut just to match the red rectangle, or is completely irregular.  But it is true that cognitive psych says that we complete the figure the way that is "most likely", and evolutionary psych says that that is because it is evolutionary advantageous to assume so.  Yet, despite the fact that the possibility of misidentifying the blue shape exists and is a result of preexisting cognitive biases, we have no reason whatsoever to believe that the red shape is anything other than a red rectangle with the information given.  This isn't a result of cognitive biases; it's because we are directly perceiving it with our senses, and it isn't some clever human-produced puzzler specifically designed to ensnare them.

Evolutionary psychologists do not base their predictions and expectations upon themselves, unlike your hypothetical Tom.  Introspection has no merit under scientific methods.  The beliefs that evolutionary psychologists hold are based on direct observation of others.  As, again, evolutionary psychologists come from a scientific background, and they have no reason to doubt most of their sensory information, they are freely able to use their observations without fear of contradicting those observations.

Whether or not science is a legitimate way to study something is a different question (supposedly ), and so is whether evolutionary psychology is scientific, but...

[ilikeverin]

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But here in lies the nub (and in reality my problem with it in general), how do scientists tell whether something is 'natural' or 'learned', especially within adults? It often seems to try and make humans fit into 'laws' about our 'nature' (whatever that is), laws which are ridiculously farcical and can be rebutted by anyone with any knowledge of sociology or sociocultural Anthropology. For example one work in EP claims that Religion was an evolutionary device meant for social bonding, now 1) how the hell can anyone prove that other than with a desire for speculation that would make a psychoanalysist blush and 2) That almost the exact same idea that Emile Durkheim came up with in one of the founding texts of sociology, The Elementary forms of religious life and has a century of debate about it within sociology. Yet, and despite all the talk of bridging the two cultures gap* and conscillience, most EPers seem to ignore and have ridiculously superficial knowledge of these disclipines which have supposedly been studying the same thing they are supposedly starting to study now for over a hundred years.

You seem to be confronting two disparate points here.  First, you appear to be disagreeing with the findings of twin/adoption et al. studies and saying that we have no way whatsoever of determining what's nature and nurture.  I would be curious to see your rationale for disagreeing with those studies.  Second, you say that much of the considered reasons given to justify what has been found of human nature are not justified; this is a more legitimate criticism, IMO.  Like in more traditional evolutionary study, the actual sequence of evolution and the reasons for certain changes happening are things that can (and should) be challenged frequently; it's the underlying stuff that stays the same.

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...I'm not sure what this has to do with much.  Of course he didn't consider many of the new theories of sociology; his book was concerned with trying to throttle old school sociology, the kind that every common person "knows as fact", to death.  That's because his audience was "the common person" (well, a reasonably intelligent person, anyway ).

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Oy vey.  Let's let evidence accumulate.  And, if not, we will adjust.  Let's start with the fact that almost every single freaking study on that Wiki page was cited from the research of the Sapir-Whorf worshiping psuedoscientist Daniel Everett, continue with the fact that the pool of speakers is confined to less than 400...

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My copy of the Blank Slate is a few feet away but I am too lazy to retrieve it and find any such discussion

I'm not sure what you mean by "object-oriented language"... do you mean having typical OVS word order?  If so, I'm pretty sure that Stephen Pinker never claimed what you said he did, because I've seen them discussed before (and if I know something in linguistics, I'm entirely sure Stephen Pinker does).  I don't know how this would counteract universal grammar, in any case.  Most of Pinker's argument concerning language is that humans have a language instinct, and that our innate faculties allow us to get up to some zany hijinks with language, not that such-and-such peccadillo is universal.

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Again, like bono, then, your problem seems to be with empiricism.

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Well, it's good to see that you oppose economics, but unfortunately I've already promised bono to ally with the economists when I begin my holy crusade to rid the world of the evils of sociology.  Then I'll take econ out.  However, I'm amenable to bribes.

Anyway, like I've said to bono: and so?  If you accept that at least part of human functioning is innate, why is it wrong to want to know as much as humanly possible about that part?  And I have yet to be disturbed by the "disturbing implications of reductionism".  Yeah, you eat the foods you do partly (in fact, mostly: weight is approximately 70% heritable) because of the genes you inherited from your biological parents... does that make eating things less pleasurable?

[ilikeverin]

The key point here is “false” motivations. We perceive one motivation but are in fact motivated by something else. That this can happen should be a surprise to no one, and it is rather insulting to our intelligence to suggest otherwise. You might, for example, be attracted to someone and not realize it—in the mean time, you make mental excuses to go to the store or the library or walk down the street in order to see that person. At some point, of course, you realize your attraction, and from then on are conscious of that as a part of your motivation.

So clearly some of our motivations are hidden from us. They may not remain hidden for very long, but that’s neither here nor there. If the reductio ad absurdum of the original argument is to function, it must be able to explain why this particular, very clear-cut, case, does not make the case that we don’t know anything. Unfortunately, the basis of the argument is a logical fallacy. What Bono quoted says, in reduced form, “We don’t know everything; therefore, we don’t know anything.” That this argument is invalid should be trivial.

The problem is not that we don't know everything, or even that all of our beliefs aren't true. The problem is that evolutionary psychology casts such a doubt on the reliability of our belief-forming processes that the probability of any individual belief being true is either low or inscrutable. Reliability doesn't imply that we come to form true beliefs 100% of the time, but it does require that our cognitive faculties furnish us with mostly true beliefs. For instance, suppose Tom comes to believe that he ingested a dangerous toxin that in nine out of ten cases induces permanent loss of cognitive reliability. Obviously through this belief, wether  true or not, Tom has reason to doubt all of his beliefs in account of it undermining the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable. The situation for someone who believes in EP is no different than Tom's.

The problem is that the things that are doubted aren't randomly distributed.  To be more precise, belief in evolutionary psychology is predicated upon a belief in science and empiricism.  Though we know that our senses can be fooled (see optical illusions), scientific thought entails that our senses can still in a general sense be trusted.  For example, when seeing the below image:



Our minds make the jump to assume that the blue shape is a rectangle just like the red one.  Of course, this isn't necessarily true; for all we know, it's a polygon cut just to match the red rectangle, or is completely irregular.  But it is true that cognitive psych says that we complete the figure the way that is "most likely", and evolutionary psych says that that is because it is evolutionary advantageous to assume so.  Yet, despite the fact that the possibility of misidentifying the blue shape exists and is a result of preexisting cognitive biases, we have no reason whatsoever to believe that the red shape is anything other than a red rectangle with the information given.  This isn't a result of cognitive biases; it's because we are directly perceiving it with our senses, and it isn't some clever human-produced puzzler specifically designed to ensnare them.

This isn't about the senses--in fact, I specifically disclaimed that in my original post.
In epistemology, reliabilism is the view that we are justified in knowing something if we have arrived at that belief through reliable processes. This doesn't require 100% accuracy, otherwise we could never know anything. But it does require that they are mostly true. While of course we can't pinpoint an exact point where they become reliable, this isn't a problem due to fuzzy logic. The reliability criterion doesn't apply only to the senses, but also to the cognitive processes in the mind/brain. You say that belief in EP is predicated upon belief in empiricism, but empiricism is only viable if your cognitive processes are reliable, which obviously EP implies are not.

You deliberately choose an example you know isn't likely to be very controversial. But Gully raises a very good counterpoint--people are religious for many reasons, but I bet the vast majority of religious people aren't religious because they want to bond socially otherwise they'll perish in the long winters without hunter-gathering. And yet this is exactly what EP implies--more to the point, it implies that most of our reasons for doing things are nothing but lies our brain imposes on our consciousness. If you don't see how this destroys any hope of reliability, then I don't think I can help you.

Whatever.  Your beliefs are grounded in epistemology, whatever that is, mine in empiricism.  Seems completely different to me.

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How can they observe directly other people's conscious processes?
[/quote]

We can't, which is half the fun, because we have to think of ways to distract people enough to try to reveal their real natures.  I really hope you don't need help looking for psychology experiments.  Some of my favorites are with infants, which is why I'm thinking I might focus on developmental stuff, cuz kids are fun to play with (incidentally, kid-liking is something that likely was evolutionarily favored, yet I still find kids fun to play with.  Should I be gouging out my eyes instead, because I know something more about why people tend to find small children far more pleasant than they really should?)

[ilikeverin]

The key point here is “false” motivations. We perceive one motivation but are in fact motivated by something else. That this can happen should be a surprise to no one, and it is rather insulting to our intelligence to suggest otherwise. You might, for example, be attracted to someone and not realize it—in the mean time, you make mental excuses to go to the store or the library or walk down the street in order to see that person. At some point, of course, you realize your attraction, and from then on are conscious of that as a part of your motivation.

So clearly some of our motivations are hidden from us. They may not remain hidden for very long, but that’s neither here nor there. If the reductio ad absurdum of the original argument is to function, it must be able to explain why this particular, very clear-cut, case, does not make the case that we don’t know anything. Unfortunately, the basis of the argument is a logical fallacy. What Bono quoted says, in reduced form, “We don’t know everything; therefore, we don’t know anything.” That this argument is invalid should be trivial.

The problem is not that we don't know everything, or even that all of our beliefs aren't true. The problem is that evolutionary psychology casts such a doubt on the reliability of our belief-forming processes that the probability of any individual belief being true is either low or inscrutable. Reliability doesn't imply that we come to form true beliefs 100% of the time, but it does require that our cognitive faculties furnish us with mostly true beliefs. For instance, suppose Tom comes to believe that he ingested a dangerous toxin that in nine out of ten cases induces permanent loss of cognitive reliability. Obviously through this belief, wether  true or not, Tom has reason to doubt all of his beliefs in account of it undermining the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable. The situation for someone who believes in EP is no different than Tom's.

The problem is that the things that are doubted aren't randomly distributed.  To be more precise, belief in evolutionary psychology is predicated upon a belief in science and empiricism.  Though we know that our senses can be fooled (see optical illusions), scientific thought entails that our senses can still in a general sense be trusted.  For example, when seeing the below image:



Our minds make the jump to assume that the blue shape is a rectangle just like the red one.  Of course, this isn't necessarily true; for all we know, it's a polygon cut just to match the red rectangle, or is completely irregular.  But it is true that cognitive psych says that we complete the figure the way that is "most likely", and evolutionary psych says that that is because it is evolutionary advantageous to assume so.  Yet, despite the fact that the possibility of misidentifying the blue shape exists and is a result of preexisting cognitive biases, we have no reason whatsoever to believe that the red shape is anything other than a red rectangle with the information given.  This isn't a result of cognitive biases; it's because we are directly perceiving it with our senses, and it isn't some clever human-produced puzzler specifically designed to ensnare them.

This isn't about the senses--in fact, I specifically disclaimed that in my original post.
In epistemology, reliabilism is the view that we are justified in knowing something if we have arrived at that belief through reliable processes. This doesn't require 100% accuracy, otherwise we could never know anything. But it does require that they are mostly true. While of course we can't pinpoint an exact point where they become reliable, this isn't a problem due to fuzzy logic. The reliability criterion doesn't apply only to the senses, but also to the cognitive processes in the mind/brain. You say that belief in EP is predicated upon belief in empiricism, but empiricism is only viable if your cognitive processes are reliable, which obviously EP implies are not.

You deliberately choose an example you know isn't likely to be very controversial. But Gully raises a very good counterpoint--people are religious for many reasons, but I bet the vast majority of religious people aren't religious because they want to bond socially otherwise they'll perish in the long winters without hunter-gathering. And yet this is exactly what EP implies--more to the point, it implies that most of our reasons for doing things are nothing but lies our brain imposes on our consciousness. If you don't see how this destroys any hope of reliability, then I don't think I can help you.

Whatever.  Your beliefs are grounded in epistemology, whatever that is, mine in empiricism.  Seems completely different to me.

Allow me to make another half-hearted bullet point before I turn in for the night... the scientific method is designed to make it so we don't have to use cognitive processes to describe something.  A well-designed experiment will make it possible for any researcher to come to an unambiguous answer to a question without need for analysis or what-have-you, based on sensory input alone.  The ideal isn't entirely practical in the real world, o/c, but the fact remains that experimentation is still grounded in sensory information.