An Evolutionary Argument Against Evolutionary Psychology

[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.