Steven Pinker / Evolutionary Psychology

[dash_two]

Yet a lot of the impetus behind books like E O Wilson's 'Sociobiology: The New Synthesis' came from attempts to explain altruistic and co-operative behaviours in animals.

I think you are attacking something you don't know much about.

 

[gorski]

Sorry, this is addressed to whom?

 

[dash_two]

You!

 

[gorski]

Bold! And based on what exactly?

 

[phildwyer]

This again. I've read it. It's evil, pernicious rubbish. Sorry but I can't be bothered to drudge through all the arguments again, so you'll just have to accept my verdict.

 

[gorski]

 

[kyser_soze]

Having read the links...really enjoyed the Kropotkin one I have to say...altho I would also say that there's nothing in any of those that is actually new to me, or isn't already in my thinking on evolution - if anything, the Gould article pretty much covers every base for me. I haven't seen evolution as anything more than an adaptive process for a couple of years now - as Gould (and the point you're labouriously attempting to make) says, seeing it as mainly comp or mainly coop is both a cultural and environmental artefact, and the twin examples of Darwin in the tropics - where the environment is hugely supportive of life, and therefore lots of it can happen in a small space, leading to what he saw as competition (altho subsequent research shows that cooperation and symbiosis thrive in these environments too - in fact, I'd recommend a great Attenborough doc on a single tree (which I will come back to with name), and all the lifeforms that exist in symbiosis and parasitism with it's resources, and both compete and cooperate with each other to alternatively destroy/preserve the tree and each other.) And with Kropotkin in the frozen tundra of Siberia, and the contrast that having to exist in such a savage, unforgiving environment has on the behavious of animals, where mutual support and cooperation are a necessity for survival (which of course doesn't stop it being red in tooth and claw - I doubt very much that a siberian tiger chasing it's prey is thinking about mutual aid and cooperation, either with it's fellows or any other species...altho there's probably some small critter that cleans it's teeth)...but these are all things I'm aware of, and have spent TIME on these boards arguing about the impact of the physical environment on life and evolution...

So clearly you're barking up the wrong tree - you've misinterpreted my thoughts about evolution, and so far have shown me little that I haven't already seen and read in some way (the Instinct article was interesting too...altho as you might have noted, it's a word I try and use as little as possible, since it is such vague term, and as you discuss on The Thread, it can often get mixed up with drives such as eating, breeding etc)...

So really, after all your comments about crude materialism and mechanistic explanations, you haven't shown me anything new - new articles for sure, but nothing new conceptually, and as I've said, the Gould essay rather effectively supports my views on what evolution is - an adaptive process that features context-dependent reactions of cooperation and competition in all the organisms involved.

What makes the human environment so much more complex is that we exist in 3 environments, all of which interact with each other in a bewildering complexity - the human-human environment where we eat, sleep and breed, the human to world environment which we alter and attempt varying levels of control in order to further our goals in the human-human environment, and the intellectual environment, where the most accelerated evolutionary change, along with the greatest examples of both competition and cooperation (most C20th science for example) on unprecendented levels, and which is completely dependent on the first two for it's vitality and survival (all three are deeply interdependent, altho the intellectual environment, requiring as it does the aquisition of survival security to really be allowed to grow, benefits more from the first two being very stable)

It's those interactions, and their results, which most interest me...but never get away from the point that we are all biological entity; all your throughts, impressions, feelings are a result of chemistry and electricity; of frozen patterns in neurons that become liquid again when exposed to new input and may be changed, or may remain unchanged; that atrophy and wear away as you get older...or simply become inaccesible for some reason.

Altho I'm quite happy to have every single one of those ideas overturned...if the evidence supports it, which in the case of contemporary neuroscience it seems at present to be moving in that direction.

 

[gorski]

If anyone is barking up the wrong tree - it's you.

We are not animals because we are living beings.

Animal Kingdom has nothing in common with the Empire of Freedom.

Our mutuality has to do with consciousness and conscience, too - not just drives and most certainly not some "instincts" we allegedly have etc.

Ethics, Axiology, Aesthetics, Science, Art etc. can not be explained from the Darwinistic model. We go way above sheer/mere survival, at least in the "scientifically and technologically developed world".

And what about determinism and indeterminism, i.e. freedom, chance?

What can you explain without any residues of doubt, how far can you go from [btw, something no one is seriously questioning, i.e. our corporeal nature] the bio-chemical impulses etc. - into Human Relationships?!? That's the really awkward one and the interpretations of those are at issue.

If one "merely observes" but forgets we are not "merely observing", as in EVER, but that we are always interpreting, depending on many circumstances and ourselves, the nature of our perception etc. - then we have a serious problem, inasmuch as it's Science that wants to lead and 'normativise' Human Relationships, i.e. proclaim "universality" and even legislate in accordance with those.

As we have seen many times in History, going from Theory to Praxis/Politics in an almost direct, unmediated manner is seriously dangerous [Hobbes, Malthus, Churchill and co., Nazis, Bolsheviks etc. etc.]! Hence the need to understand where our notions come from, what kind of methodology we're using and where it comes from, as well as where it might lead, if not scrutinised etc. etc. Hence the need to try to contextualise Darwin/Wallace's thinking and the subsequent debate then gets a proper boost.

When one sees, for instance, Attenborough's telly programs [since you mention him] where he uses moral categories to "explain" the animals and their behaviour and then such "mere observations" to go back to imply the "naturalness" of such behaviour in Humans - I cringe!! Today's "developmental this-or-that's" all too frequently go wild with their imagination and do not think very much at all - such is the prevailing dogma's grip on "common consciousness", the popular media and hence many are influenced by it.

I think we need to be much more careful with all that. Science is not unquestionable! Quite the opposite is the case!

 

[Knotted]

I thought the Blank State was awful, although I gave up on it half way through so maybe it gets better towards the end.

But I don't think that's a comment on sociobiology. I've got no problem with the idea that human behaviour is partially determined by genetics. In fact I've got no problem with the idea that human behaviour is mostly shaped by genetics. Its just that I think that "human nature" is a very broad remit and that there's a hell of a lot that can happen within the parameters of biologically determined human nature and that furthemore human behaviourial traits are only one aspect of "human nature". Appreciation of art, for example, is not behavioural. Now that's not to say that there is no ultimate biological explanation for it - its just that I see no reason to believe that the explanation is just a straightforward application of natural selection - I would have thought it would be a lot more complex than that. We have a good deal of evolutionally expensive grey matter which we use to do weird and surprising things - we're not just input ouput black box devices.

The biggest revelation for me in reading this book was that anybody could seriously disagreed with these points. The biggest disappointment was that Pinker couldn't even distinguish between human behaviour and cultural superstructure nevermind address any interesting questions. As far as I could tell it was just a string of rather tedious straw man arguments.

I've got to say that I don't know much about sociobiology but Richard Dawkins floats my boat - at least when he's talking about evolutionary biology. Right or wrong he explains good science extremely well with great clarity.

 

[Calva dosser]

No- Knotted, The Charles Simonyi Prof of Public Understanding of Science, is a senile old buffoon.

He wouldn't know an epistemiological hegemenous hermeneutic dialectic from his Rhabdornis elegans


Many people have a problem that we are animals. I don't.

Art, in all forms, and philosophy are by products of our biology.

Do you think Chimps wouldn't have a 'cultural superstructure' if a few million years ago they hadn't opted to stay up the trees?

We got brains, and it was our goodluck, or ultimate misfortune.

As humans we have the ability to revolt against biological determinism.

Of course, that won't stop biological determinism happening, anymore than that 'trees in forests not making a noise' anthropomorphic claptrap will stop trees making noises.

We do, however, have the oportunity to understand stuff.

We have a method. It yields predictions, and produces results. It is a form of natural selection. Called science.

A few people hang onto the childlike idea that we are out of the loop of natural selection, because we can paint pictures and conceive of moral purpose.

Some try to blind themselves and say it is all down to a God.

Most just go with the flow, and don't question much.

Rev. Cd . Over and out.

 

[Jonti]

...

We are not animals because we are living beings.

Animal Kingdom has nothing in common with the Empire of Freedom.

...

Anyone for Descartes?

 

[Knotted]

Many people have a problem that we are animals. I don't.

Art, in all forms, and philosophy are by products of our biology.

Do you think Chimps wouldn't have a 'cultural superstructure' if a few million years ago they hadn't opted to stay up the trees?

I'm not sure I understand most of your post. But don't worry. I'm a hardline crude materialist. I just don't have any time for Pinker.

We are animals.

Art and philosophy and everything else are products of physical reality. I just don't expect to find it easy or useful to try and trace how it all reduces.

I suspect chimps do have a cultural superstructure whether or not they hang around in trees.

 

[Calva dosser]

Anyone for Descartes?

Des cartes du vin et des Armagnacs peut-etre.

I'll need a spine stiffener not to respond to that.

 

[Jonti]

...

I suspect chimps do have a cultural superstructure whether or not they hang around in trees.

And you would be right ... not only chimps either. Ethologists talk about the culture of many animals, including elephants, orca (killer whales) and chimpanzees. Some song birds too.

If a behaviour is transmitted by imitation rather than by instinct it is cultural (in contrast to natural, one might say).

 

[ICB]

Blank Slate is largely a pile of crap with a few interesting but unoriginal observations, Blackburn pretty thoroughly deconstructs it here

 

[Knotted]

And you would be right ... not only chimps either. Ethologists talk about the culture of many animals, including elephants, orca (killer whales) and chimpanzees. Some song birds too.

If a behaviour is transmitted by imitation rather than by instinct it is cultural (in contrast to natural, one might say).

That's what I thought as well. However you could say that the instinct to imitate is genetic or 'natural' (surely everything is natural) and that the behaviours that are being imitated can be explained in evolutionary terms.

My point is that there are presumably many different types of behaviour that are used differently in different cultural contexts. The genetics do not decide the cultural context - at best they rule out certain cultural contexts but then these contexts would presumably never occur anyway. The cultural context is determined historically - perhaps even as an historical accident.

I don't know how faithfully Pinker paints evolutionary psychology. When I read the book I assumed he didn't know what he was talking about. It certainly looked that way with his polemic against Locke's 'blank slate'.

 

[kyser_soze]

If anyone is barking up the wrong tree - it's you.

We are not animals because we are living beings.

Animal Kingdom has nothing in common with the Empire of Freedom.

Ah, well we're always going to depart at this point, because as with CD, Knotted etc, I do think we're animals, and in many important aspects of our 'culture' we are little developed from them.

It certainly looked that way with his polemic against Locke's 'blank slate'.

That was less against Locke and more against the hordes of academicians, esp in the US, who have turned it into a absolute; a lot of the book is clearly aimed at settling some scores within the US academic community.

Ethics, Axiology, Aesthetics, Science, Art etc. can not be explained from the Darwinistic model.

You're describing a social toolkit here - science is a collections of tools we use to examine, observe and understand the physical world; ethics are the tools we use to mediate our behaviours; art/aesthetics...pleasure in the merging of the intellect and more visceral pleasures...certainly ethics, if nothing else, would necessarily be something that developed and changed over time - look at the change in attitudes toward slavery, something that was tolerated at the very least by most of the world 200 years ago, and before that for most of 'civilised' humanities development from the Sumerians onwards. All these things emerged because of changes to the physical, H-H and intellectual environments humans could find themselves in.

But now I know you are in the 'humans aren't animals' school of thought it's easy enough to understand why you reject 'crude materialism' - you're a throwback to the romantics, and 150 years ago you'd probably have been making the 'it's against God and offensive to say we descended from monkeys' crowd...

 

[nosos]

But now I know you are in the 'humans aren't animals' school of thought it's easy enough to understand why you reject 'crude materialism' - you're a throwback to the romantics, and 150 years ago you'd probably have been making the 'it's against God and offensive to say we descended from monkeys' crowd...

You're so blinded by materialist dogma you can't even see what he's saying, let alone evaluate it.

Of course we're animals. Fish have different properties to cats. Humans have different properties to apes. Hypothesising the causal conditions within which culture develops does not exhaust everything useful and interesting there is to say about culture. In fact if you take that hypothesis as, in principle, getting to the fact of the matter about what culture is then you prevent yourself from saying any of the plethora of other useful and interesting things that can be said about it.

 

[nosos]

We are not animals because we are living beings.

Humans are not objects to be studied (though their biology is something to be studied objectively) but are rather persons to be understood.

We go way above sheer/mere survival

Our concious lives are underdetermined by instinct and biology. You can't causally explain the concious contents of our minds without making the (irrevocably metaphysical) reduction of conciousness as a category to biological causation.

As we have seen many times in History, going from Theory to Praxis/Politics in an almost direct, unmediated manner is seriously dangerous [Hobbes, Malthus, Churchill and co., Nazis, Bolsheviks etc. etc.]! Hence the need to understand where our notions come from, what kind of methodology we're using and where it comes from, as well as where it might lead, if not scrutinised etc. etc.

Absolutely.

 

[kyser_soze]

But consciousness IS a biological phenomenon - it's material, it has a material existance in this world. It reacts to external stimuli - indeed, from a lot of what contemporary neuroscience says, much of what we think, how we react etc, is done at a remove from what we think of as consiousness anyway - call it sub, or unconcious fwoabw - that the conscious part of us acts sometimes as a buffer or control system, sometimes it actually slows us up (as in the case of sports, martial arts etc, where much training concentrates on actually removing conscious thought process because the stimulus-assement-response process is too slow...and that's before you come onto the way the senses themselves are edited to suit the brains capacity to process the sensory data it does get (the gorilla on a basketball court being the most obvious example of how easy it is to fool or blindside our primary sense).

We go way above sheer/mere survival

Only because we're smart enough to successfully meet and exceed our surivival needs - the cave paintins at places like Altamira and the paintings, frecos etc in the Cistine Chapel all came about because survival security allowed them to.

Hypothesising the causal conditions within which culture does not exhaust everything useful and interesting there is to say about culture.

You're missing a word after 'not' that would make this make sense...

 

[Jonti]

You're so blinded by materialist dogma you can't even see what he's saying, let alone evaluate it.

So you say. *Shrugs*

But why, I wonder, would you expect anyone to take your unsupported (and, to me, seemingly rather juvenile) ad hominem seriously?

Unless of course you can give an example of where KS has been, as you put it, "so blinded by materialist dogma ..."?

 

[Calva dosser]

Humans are not objects to be studied (though their biology is something to be studied objectively) but are rather persons to be understood.


Our concious lives are underdetermined by instinct and biology. You can't causally explain the concious contents of our minds without making the (irrevocably metaphysical) reduction of conciousness as a category to biological causation.


Does 'underdetermined' mean underpinned? underwritten?

What does 'causally explain' mean- are there 'non causal' ways of explaining things? come to think of it what is 'causal'?

Why is (does?) the "reduction" of consciousness (as a category?) to biological 'causation' require one to make an "irrevocably metaphysical" thingumy?

If you are saying I am conscious because of my biology, I agree.

If you are saying I am conscious because this old sack of protoplasm has made some 'metaphysical' leap of faith- then I don't.

Your consciousness may stem from metaphysics, I wish you the joy of it.

Mine stems from neurotransmiter activity.

I know you mean well Nosos, but your language don't 'arf give me a pain in the synaptic end-plates

 

[nosos]

But consciousness IS a biological phenomenon

Likewise biology is a physical phenomenon. Yet you'd think I was insane if I told you that particle physics exhausted everything there was to say about human life. I'm not denying any part of the physical sciences. Nor, unless I'm misintrepreting them, is Gorksi. Rather I'm denying a reductive metholodogy which a unnecessary but unfortunately prevalent feature within then.

Only because we're smart enough to successfully meet and exceed our surivival needs - the cave paintins at places like Altamira and the paintings, frecos etc in the Cistine Chapel all came about because survival security allowed them to.

I agree entirely. What does that 'smartness' consist in?

You're missing a word after 'not' that would make this make sense...

Yeah it's 'develops'. I edited it back in but you responded too quickly.

 

[Jonti]

But consciousness IS a biological phenomenon?

Likewise biology is a physical phenomenon. ..

That's nice and succinct. It's as clear and unambiguous an assertion of materialist reductionism as one could hope for. Which means the next bit is *very* confusing

... I'm denying a reductive metholodogy ...

Well, which is it -- is consciousness reducible to physics (materialism) or not?

 

[nosos]

Does 'underdetermined' mean underpinned? underwritten?

It means not fully determined by: it’s the claim that conscious states don’t have direct causal correlates in the brain. There’s an autonomy to our conscious live. It’s an emergent level which as a whole (as, say, a framework) is physically determined but the individual elements within that framework aren’t themselves physically determined.

are there 'non causal' ways of explaining things?

Imagine I ask you “why do you think the Nazis are evil?”. Would you tell me some story about the different causes in your life which brought out the effect that you came to the judgements the Nazis were evil? Or would you give me the explanation in moral terms? The former is a causal explanation whereas the latter is non-causal.

Why is (does?) the "reduction" of consciousness (as a category?) to biological 'causation' require one to make an "irrevocably metaphysical" thingumy?

Saying that every mind state has a correlative brain state is, as I understand neuroscience, a methodological assumption that facilitates its practice rather than a outcome (scientific knowledge?) of its inquiry. Analogous in the human sciences to the assumptions economists make so they know how to go about investigating economics. Some economists regards these assumptions as useful fictions whereas others regard them as antecedently existing realities.

If you are saying I am conscious because of my biology, I agree.

I am but I’m also saying there is a lot more to you being conscious than your biology.

 

[Calva dosser]

Likewise biology is a physical phenomenon. Yet you'd think I was insane if I told you that particle physics exhausted everything there was to say about human life. I'm not denying any part of the physical sciences. Nor, unless I'm misintrepreting them, is Gorksi. Rather I'm denying a reductive metholodogy which a unnecessary but unfortunately prevalent feature within then.


I agree entirely. What does that 'smartness' consist in?


I know you weren't talking to me, but I would never say you were insane, if you said "particle physics could exhaust everything we have to say about human life.

As we are made up of particles, energy, and a great deal of empty space, that is precisely what particle physics could do.

If we ever got clever enough to work out the mathematics, instead of navel gazing and allowing our 'Physics Envy' to write it of as a 'reductionist methodology'.

What is wrong with a reductionist methodology?

We came from a naked singularity, and lots of people are busy reverse-engineering in order to work out what the f*** happened.

I may be jumping to conclusions, but a desire to understand stuff is not always a sign of a desire to become some form of mechanistic scientific uber-fascist.

 

[kyser_soze]

I agree entirely. What does that 'smartness' consist in?

Posibly the wrong choice of words in the use of 'smart'...a better, if slightly more unwieldy term would be 'has the facility to create abstractions and simulated models of reality in order to create questions to investigate the physical world' - i.e. how does that seed grow; what can I do with the plant of that seed; where can I have lunch...

I also don't think I've really had a go at culture - I just think that without a grounding in the material processes of consciousness, an physical understanding of what it is, how and why it came about etc, while discussions about culture etc will always be interesting, they will also ultimately be flawed because without understanding the physical basis for it, how can we ever get to some kind of true answer about this 'meaning' business - beyond 'the same as every other biological organism, which is to survive long enough to breed', which while I agree with that view, for me personally it's not the most satisfying worldview to base my life on.

 

[nosos]

I may be jumping to conclusions, but a desire to understand stuff is not always a sign of a desire to become some form of mechanistic scientific uber-fascist.

Desiring to understand stuff involves appreciating its stratified complexity rather than simply looking for the most basic level of explanation and using it to clear away all else. From past experience we could argue the methodogical point re: science (I think the theory of everything is a fucking stupid idea - though the aspiration towards it is a fascinating topic for sociological inquiry ) endlessly. It never really gets anywhere because, I suspect, both viewpoints are underwritten by what are (depending on how you look at it) deep-seated and often largely unarticulated ethical or aesthetic commitments. Also I don't think anyone would accuse you of being a "mechanistic scientific uber-fascist" ( love the term ) but I would certainly accuse the view you're proposing - as I'm pretty certain would Gorski - of being responsible for some pretty horrific things when taken to its logical social conclusion.

 

[nosos]

a better, if slightly more unwieldy term would be 'has the facility to create abstractions and simulated models of reality in order to create questions to investigate the physical world' - i.e. how does that seed grow; what can I do with the plant of that seed; where can I have lunch...

An ability to adopt a stance of neutral disengagement with the world? Whereas animals (including us 99% of our time) are bound up in a world of engagments and concerns, humans have developed the capacity to step back and objectify the world: we're able to work to describe it in ways that abstact from our engagements and concerns and this ability has proved incredibly fruitful in learning to manipulate the world.

Does that sound fair? If so we're in complete 100% agreement.

 

[nosos]

To be honesty I only jumped into the argument because I got initially pissed off with your reading of Gorski's posts. I appreciate he's not exactly the clearest writer (though, aesthetically speaking, I love how he expresses himself) but much like Dwyer he seems to get incredibly short shrift on these boards because he's coming at a lot of these issues from a very different angle to most others here.