Dr Rick

Interesting conjecture, Cricket, but what evidence is there to support it?

Rick

Dr Rick

Here's what Stephen Gould had to say about Wright's work and the science of evolutionary psychology:

"The task of evolutionary psychology then turns into a speculative search for reasons why a behavior that may harm us now must once have originated for adaptive purposes. To take an illustration proposed seriously by Robert Wright in The Moral Animal, a sweet tooth leads to unhealthy obesity today but must have arisen as an adaptation. Wright therefore states:

'The classic example of an adaptation that has outlived its logic is the sweet tooth. Our fondness for sweetness was designed for an environment in which fruit existed but candy didn't'.

This ranks as pure guesswork in the cocktail party mode; Wright presents no neurological evidence of a brain module for sweetness, and no paleontological data about ancestral feeding. This "just-so story" therefore cannot stand as a "classic example of an adaptation" in any sense deserving the name of science.

Much of evolutionary psychology therefore devolves into a search for the so-called EEA, or "environment of evolutionary adaptation" that allegedly prevailed in prehistoric times. Evolutionary psychologists have gained some sophistication in recognizing that they need not postulate current utility to advance a Darwinian argument; but they have made their enterprise even more fatuous by placing their central postulate outside the primary definition of science--for claims about an EEA usually cannot be tested in principle but only subjected to speculation. At least an argument about modern utility can be tested by studying the current impact of a given feature upon reproductive success. Indeed, the disproof of many key sociobiological speculations about current utility pushed evolutionary psychology to the revised tactic of searching for an EEA instead.

But how can we possibly know in detail what small bands of hunter-gatherers did in Africa two million years ago? These ancestors left some tools and bones, and paleoanthropologists can make some ingenious inferences from such evidence. But how can we possibly obtain the key information that would be required to show the validity of adaptive tales about an EEA: relations of kinship, social structures and sizes of groups, different activities of males and females, the roles of religion, symbolizing, storytelling, and a hundred other central aspects of human life that cannot be traced in fossils? We do not even know the original environment of our ancestors--did ancestral humans stay in one region or move about? How did environments vary through years and centuries?

In short, evolutionary psychology is as ultra-Darwinian as any previous behavioral theory in insisting upon adaptive reasons for origin as the key desideratum of the enterprise. But the chief strategy proposed by evolutionary psychologists for identifying adaptation is untestable, and therefore unscientific."

Rick

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Amen-Moses

And everything that follows can equally apply to all "soft" sciences.

I think the main point to remember is that "wants" and "behaviour" are not the same thing, I'm pretty sure that the Mick the Mantis doesn't "want" to have his head ripped off whilst getting a shag and he probably doesn't give a fuck whether the female produces a million little Micks and Millies from his sperm, but regardless of what he wants the outcome of his behaviour will probably be exactly that.

Amen-Moses

tronvillain

Are you seriously proposing that we have not evolved to have a strong preference for sugar?

Oolon Colluphid

... or to find old people less attractive than young, 'in their prime', ones? Or to <a href="http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n13/mente/laughter/page2.html" target="_blank">laugh</a>?

Of course not. Rick'll just not call them instincts. We learned to like sugar cos we trusted our parents to give us nice stuff as infants; old people can be attractive too, that's all cultural stereotyping; and laughing is a reflex.

Oolon the irrepressible teaser

tronvillain

I don't think much of that Gould quote, but then I was never much of a fan of Gould to begin with.

Has anyone read The Triumph of Sociobiolgy? It would probably make a pretty good introdcution to the subject.

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

Dr Rick

I think Gould is questioning what he calls the "just so story" way of explaining how it evolved: It appears that Wright, as is the case with some other evolutionary psychologists, employs speculation instead of evidence to back-up his ideas.

Rick

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Dr Rick

Oh,no: I'm not going to get into this definition thing again, Simon . Call every drive an instinct or "genetic behavior" if you want; hell, we can define instinct to mean "anything that humans do," but that still won't be enough to defend Cricket's and Rufus's premises without some type of appropriate evidence.

Rick

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

tronvillain

Rick, you'll have to specify exactly which premises those are because I haven't seen anyone claim that humans "instinctively want to have a lot of children." At least not under a normal reading of that quote anyway.

Dr Rick

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>