An Evolutionary Argument Against Evolutionary Psychology

[Bono]

Evolutionary psychology has philosophical implications that go way beyond those of garden variety causal determinism.

In a compatibilist understanding of free will, your decisions are free if the causal chain that lead to them include your own conscious decision process made free of any external compulsions. Thus, a person being tied to a chair is not free to decide whether he wants to stay seated or get up, but a person who gets up from a chair unimpeded was free in his decision even if it was caused by him wanting to go to the bathroom, which in turned was caused by the canned beans he had last night.

However, for evolutionary psychologists, our reasons are nothing but clever ruses invented by our brain to satisfy our consciousness (how consciousness arose in the first place they of course don't dedicate a line to), and are completely different from the "real" cause of our actions. Thus, I hang around with my best friend not because I enjoy his company, but because I want to insure that he remains friendly to me and doesn't steal any females with whom I could reproduce from me. This was supposedly an adaptive behavior for our caveman ancestors. This poses problems for the compatibilist understanding of free will because for them our consciousness is nothing but a powerless actor watching an external drama unfold.

I'll try to show that this renders evolutionary psychology self-stultifying by borrowing a page from Alvin Plantinga's book and slightly modify one argument of his for application to EP.

Evolutionary psychology carries with it the extraordinary conclusion that most of our beliefs regarding our courses of action are false. But this casts doubt not only on our beliefs as narrowly applied to volition, but to all of our beliefs. If it is accepted that forming beliefs that do not correspond with reality confers an evolutionary advantage in this case, the possibility cannot be excluded that it would confer advantages in general. This is not to say that evolutionary psychology implies that all our knowledge, including for instance the existence of the external world, is demonstrably false. But it does imply that the probability of it being true is either low or inscrutable, because it would give a reason to doubt the reliability of our belief-forming process, and as such, of all our beliefs. But this would include the evolutionary psychologist's belief that evolutionary psychology is true. If EP provides a defeater for all our beliefs, the belief that EP itself is true cannot possibly be excluded from the wider set of our beliefs.

Thus, simpliciter, EP is self-defeating and cannot rationally be accepted.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I greatly recommend this post.

Needless to say, a simliar arguement can be applied to Eliminative Materialism aswell.

[anvi]

I'm with you on your critique of EP.  Indeed, it's rather strange of the EP advocate to claim that our false beliefs confer evolutionary advantages on us, for if our beliefs about the external world were false or even mostly false, our survival and success in it would be entirely random, and this itself would falsify the principle of natural selection.

I'm not sure eliminative materialism is in exactly the same boat.  I don't believe eliminative materialism is true.  But the claim of eliminative materialism seems merely to be that all of our cognitions can be reductively explained by recourse to the physiology of the brain.  That doesn't necessarily imply, in the same way that EP does, that all our "beliefs" (brain states) are false, but merely that they have physiological explanations,  Don't get me wrong, I think, as you seem to, that eliminative materialism is false, but for different reasons than EP, as it's being described here, is false.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I'm with you on your critique of EP.  Indeed, it's rather strange of the EP advocate to claim that our false beliefs confer evolutionary advantages on us, for if our beliefs about the external world were false or even mostly false, our survival and success in it would be entirely random, and this itself would falsify the principle of natural selection.

BUT THEN WE KANT ATTACK RELIGION!!1111

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Rather my intrepretation is that it claims that all our conceptual understandings - our vocabulary about are ourselves is wrong as it isn't rooted in the processes of brain (ie. We don't "believe" - rather we feel certain processes and stimulants in the brain). Of course it falls into the "you can only refute metaphysics via metaphysics" problem
(ie. The sentence: "I believe in Eliminative materialism"...). Also we believe that our actions are caused by our beliefs... how do we believe that? How does our conciousness "believing" work?

Ergo it fits into this statement Bono made:

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Thus self-refuting in the way Bono discribes - thus the reasoning of our conciousness is not something most EMs like to touch.

[Matt Damon™]

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

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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 and make dodgy-sounding social theories look like "science". And ergo "must be true".

[Matt Damon™]

So it is twaddle. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

[anvi]

I'm with you on your critique of EP.  Indeed, it's rather strange of the EP advocate to claim that our false beliefs confer evolutionary advantages on us, for if our beliefs about the external world were false or even mostly false, our survival and success in it would be entirely random, and this itself would falsify the principle of natural selection.

BUT THEN WE KANT ATTACK RELIGION!!1111

Sure we can!  I'd hate to take all the fun out of the discussion.    Just kidding.  I'm not saying all human beliefs about the world are true and advantageous in an evolutionary sense.  However, the story could be conplex here too.  If a set of false beliefs helps bind a particular community together, the effect of those beliefs in binding that community could override the falsity of their content in helping that community survive.  I think the story about religion is a fairly complex one, and I don't think that all religious beliefs are false, but certainly a lot of them are (just like not all secular beliefs are false, but certainly a lot of them are).

Quote]

Rather my intrepretation is that it claims that all our conceptual understandings - our vocabulary about are ourselves is wrong as it isn't rooted in the processes of brain (ie. We don't "believe" - rather we feel certain processes and stimulants in the brain). Of course it falls into the "you can only refute metaphysics via metaphysics" problem
(ie. The sentence: "I believe in Eliminative materialism"...)

I see what you are saying now.  Perhaps.  But still, an Eliminative Materialist could claim that the word "believe" or other terms that describe the "propositional attitudes" is not literally true or it does not describe what "folk psychology" takes it to be describing, but what has been called "belief" can be redescribed using appropriately physicalist terminology.  So, it's not that belief describes nothing at all, it's just that better terms can be used for that particular state of "mind."  Anyway, I don't know why I am defending these guys, because I think they are wrong, so sorry for the over-indulgence.  

Back to the topic; I am certainly on board with the critique of EP.  Go get 'em.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I edited a bit on in my critique, mainly because I didn't explain enough.

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Okay while that's certainly true in certain cases, religion - even supposedly the same religion - can cause as much strife as it can unity. Think of the Reformation. This is true of other "metanarratives" aswell, nationalism being the most obvious. Also this obscures differences in religious believe - from say an 'undeveloped' (ak, again language) animism of a hunter-gatherer group in Papua New Guinea to modern day Christianity (speaking of which, it might be a good question to why Paganism and Polytheism always seemed to die, except in India, from Monotheistic onslaught). And that internally religions can be very different (and again divisive): Is the faith of Thomas Aquinas the same as a medieval north European shephard-peasant? In name it is. In short, I don't think we can look at religion as some sort of platonic form which stretches throughout all human kind - except in regards to a belief - not usually strongly held by most people, how much nominally religious people are genuinely spirtual after all - about their being an explanation for the "world out there". For it's many flaws and relationship with controversial political philosophy, I find the Structuralist paradigm much better in understanding how things 'out there' actually work.

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See my critique: I know that I believe that eliminative materialism is incorrect. I have introspection after all, I have a very vigorous mental life (I think so, which is good, when constrating it to my non-existant social life. But that's another thing), I think often without function.. gazing into space, often actually I feel I think too much and that my thoughts bore me. I would like to do other things, but feel depressed. I believe all this to be true, from my experience.

All this shows is that Wittgenstein was right: most philosophical problems are language problems. (Even the word "I" is problematic, as we tend to use it in reference to our selves or essences rather than our bodies: "When I die, I will cease to be of this world but my body will rot in the ground")

[Bono]

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See my critique: I know that I believe that eliminative materialism is incorrect. I have introspection after all, I have a very vigorous mental life (I think so, which is good, when constrating it to my non-existant social life. But that's another thing), I think often without function.. gazing into space, often actually I feel I think too much and that my thoughts bore me. I would like to do other things, but feel depressed. I believe all this to be true, from my experience.

All this shows is that Wittgenstein was right: most philosophical problems are language problems. (Even the word "I" is problematic, as we tend to use it in reference to our selves or essences rather than our bodies: "When I die, I will cease to be of this world but my body will rot in the ground")

EM is just an elaborate effort to deny our own mental life. What I'm going to say touches on what you said here, which is why I quoted it, but it's not strictly about EM.

Evolutionary psychologists claim that our "real" reasons are different from our conscious reasons. But how can a brain by itself have reasons--the old intentionality problem. Our mental states are about something, but a brain isn't about anything, it doesn't have purposes or aspirations. Most functionalists just say that our mental states are wholly identical to functional properties of brain states. I'm not a functionalist, but this is not self stultifying as EP is because they are not postulating a complete divorce of our mental reality from our brain reality the way EP is.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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1) The Bit in Bold - usually via some supposed mechanism, like genes or the subconcious (now that I consider it, EP isn't as different from Psychoanalysis as it likes to pretend.), this o/c I find ridiculously confining. Though I tend to take a social constructivist approach.

2) In general - perhaps so, but our knowledge of neuroscience has greatly improve before we can really make such claims. For example, the causes of Schizophrenia (now, THAT's a topic we need a thread on for so many reasons..) are completely and utterly unknown. The Brain of the Schizophrenic in contemporary neuroscience functions the same way as a neurotypical person. Ditto with other *ahem* conditions, like ADHD or Asperger Syndrome.

[Bono]

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1) The Bit in Bold - usually via some supposed mechanism, like genes or the subconcious (now that I consider it, EP isn't as different from Psychoanalysis as it likes to pretend.), this o/c I find ridiculously confining. Though I tend to take a social constructivist approach.

Well yes but I think you may be missing my point (or maybe I' the one misunderstanding you). Having reasons--or thoughts, beliefs whatever--isn't a physical property, it's a mental property. It doesn't make sense to speak of a brain's reasons anymore than it does to speak of a sofa's reasons for letting people sit on it. Functionalists can get away with it because for them there is a identity relation between mental and physical properties, but EP has no such a way out since they basically deny that our mental life has any relevance to our actions.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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1) The Bit in Bold - usually via some supposed mechanism, like genes or the subconcious (now that I consider it, EP isn't as different from Psychoanalysis as it likes to pretend.), this o/c I find ridiculously confining. Though I tend to take a social constructivist approach.

Well yes but I think you may be missing my point (or maybe I' the one misunderstanding you). Having reasons--or thoughts, beliefs whatever--isn't a physical property, it's a mental property. It doesn't make sense to speak of a brain's reasons anymore than it does to speak of a sofa's reasons for letting people sit on it. Functionalists can get away with it because for them there is a identity relation between mental and physical properties, but EP has no such a way out since they basically deny that our mental life has any relevance to our actions.

I think all that in bold is true. I was just adding on an answer, not one I agree with... I just thought it needed further exposition.

[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

[Verily]

Oh, dear. I really don’t want to get involved in a full-fledged support of evolutionary psychology. There is a lot of nasty and generally obviously false stuff going on in there that isn’t worth defending. But, of course, this particular attack on evolutionary psychology is also remarkably simplistic and obviously invalid. Of course, evolutionary psychology either should know better or at the least has serious problems with semantics which cause confusion.

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.

Of course, it still raises an interesting point. If we are possessed of false beliefs about some things some of the time, then it is certainly possible that we are possessed of false beliefs about everything all of the time or about any given thing at some particular time. This does not seem like a problematic point, however, nor one which would invalidate anything. Science, after all, does not purport to be the absolute truth (although some scientists might present it as such). It purports to be the most likely answer based on given data. In some cases, this data is overwhelming, so reason dictates that what science says must be true. If this requires a modicum of suspension of disbelief in the reality of the world, it requires that. We are only equipped to operate in the world, and while speculation about nonexistence or radically different existence of objects other than ourselves is interesting, it is wholly without evidence and therefore cannot be rationally discussed (and Occam’s Razor reminds us to assume it is false until there is evidence otherwise).

[ilikeverin]

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

[Bono]

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.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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

I was joking. Though one has to admit that is often what EP is actually used for (Dawkins, Pinker, Dennett...). No, no, I respect scientists in this field and think it could come to interesting conclusions, but so far it reaches for politics and then hides behind science when claiming it wasn't trying to be political.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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No-one denies this: pretty every single school of thought in 20th Century Philosophy (From EP to Psychoanalysis to Structuralism) makes this obvious truth central.

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What Bono referring to (I think), is the concept that our whole apparent (or most of it) thought is made up of externally imposed memes. As memes are constructions (though how they are constructed is something I find very vaguely put across...) then our whole conception of knowledge is useless.

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Fair enough then (I don't disagree with this).

[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...

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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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.

It's also as that examples put out, superficiality per excellance. Take Steve Pinker's book The Blank Slate - now as a humanities student I could point out all the misquotations, misunderstandings, etc inherent in the book [for one thing, he clearly doesn't know what 'modernism' or 'postmodernism' is (admittely those are difficult words to define as anything other then 'moods') - and believes they associated with Tabula Rasa theories (!). Also is extraordinarily ignorant of history] but I essentially point out that again, most of these theories aren't new but bad sociology rehashed and that the evidence doesn't necessarily stand up - I write this as it seems Black swam has been found in relation to universal grammar theory; one of the essential basis of alot of cognitive science. Perhaps unsurprisingly given that half the worlds languages are still somewhat unknown - iirc he claims one point there is no object-orientated language, this is incorrect. Now he may be a good scientist, but he isn't a good historian, sociologist or Anthropologist. And that is what I find with alot of EP.

Also I don't believe that human beings are amenable to either mathematical models (see my anti-macroeconomics threads) or some laws, other than ones so vague or obvious as to be inane to state (we all need food... okay, yes, but that says nothing about the mince meat and rice I had for dinner. Where they came from, why do I eat them, why do I structure certain parts of my day around the ritual of eating, and why at 6-7pm exactly do I choose to complete this ritual). Simply put, it's reductionism (and anti-historicism) on crack.

* - Also see: The sociology of Science and Paul Feyerabend.

[Bono]

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.

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...

How can they observe directly other people's conscious processes?

[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?
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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?)

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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I'm not disagreeing with them, I'm not doubting that there are genetic similarities between people who are related: what I'm doubting is that one can extrapolate information about whether violence and thus that abstraction "war" are innate to human nature from that (to take an example). What it seems to do is remove human diversity into 'laws'. Beyond the obvious neccesities of existence how can one say mankind has a nature, rather than that of individual men and women? If war is natural, does that make the pacifist less natural?

Also there's alot of rubbish like "wall street traders are expressing their evolutionary instincts for acculumation...". As if Status was not a historico-cultural construction, who after all had status in pre-monetary societies? That's just defending the status quo as the most natural thing it is, the same thing conservatives have done throughout time... and they've almost been wrong.

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... And constructs a giant straw man out of them. (Yes I know it's not particularly relevant, but it annoyed me none the same and I wanted to go on a giant Anti-Pinker rant.)

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Oh, I don't doubt it. Actually I really dislike his book (Which I still haven't finished).. he turned from a christian missionary to a neo-Rousseauian without any of the zeal. However the possibility that it's a black swan he has founded should not be discounted. Because what would then mean for UG.

(speaking of UG: It often seems to imply given the diversity of actual languages in the world that "our language is structured by the nature of our cognition": nearly a tautology in my book. Speaking of which, why can't both UG and The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - which has always made perfect sense to me - be true?)

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Yes, I meant a language which starts its grammatical sentences with an object, rather than a subject or verb. Actually now that I think of it, I read it not in the book but in relation to Everett's work (on the interwebs - I'll try and find it). Yes I guess this a bit irrelevant now.

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Actually my problem is more with scientism and more precisely, psychology as a whole (including cognitive psychology). Though I guess I would lean towards epistemology rather than empiricism - which is funny given how much Bono and I disagree on a certain academic disclipine.

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What evils of sociology is this? (There are plenty of things wrong with sociology, but somehow I think we'll disagree on what they are.)

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No-one has ever argued that there is nothing innate about human beings, our biological functions are too obvious. It's when you make claims on religion, politics, economics, etc do alarm bells go off.