lpetrich

I agree that that theory is much like the excrement of the male bovine.

A lot of the theorizing I've seen does not show much familiarity with different sorts of religion -- they often extrapolate from the forms most familiar to them, as judged from some attempts to find evolutionary explanations for theological exclusivism, the belief that all religions but one are false and evil. However, non-exclusivist religions have been around for much longer than exclusivist ones, and non-exclusivism has sometimes coexisted with official exclusivism in various ways (different people having different favorite saints, etc.).

Also, any such theory also ought to explain religion-related phenomena like anthropomorphism, sorcery, belief in ghosts, hero-worship, etc.

Anthropomorphism is such things as pet owners projecting a human mentality onto their pets.

When considering sorcery, one must consider both a willingness to practice it and a willingness to believe in its effectiveness -- fear of malicious sorcery has been very common.

By belief in ghosts I mean the belief that one's afterlife can be spent in disembodied form in this world, though with the ability to cause apparitions, mysterious noises, and the like.

Hero-worship is something that even scientists often suffer from -- consider how Charles Darwin is often viewed.

cricket

And, R Dawkins.

(yum!)

Why stop there? Insist that the theory also explain Tammy Faye Baker's eye makeup. And how 'bout those huge squirrel nuts on the Pope.

That's what "religion-related phenomena" means to me, more so than anthropomorphism and the other disparate phenomona you named.

I consider anthropomorphism & belief in ghosts "seeing something that isn't there" and sorcery "seeing a correlation that isn't there".

If there's any one thing (doubtful) that explains those three, perhaps it's a "better safe than sorry" approach... 'better to see things that arent there than to not see things that are there'.

Unlike you, I see no reason one theory "ought to" explain it all.

I think a theory about religion & tribal cohesiveness may have merit -- without such theory having one whit to do with anthropomorphism.

Vorkosigan

That article contains a perfect example of what I find grossly objectionable in evolutionary psychology.

Wilson is a sociobiologist, not an EP. His idea about religion is nonsense. Sociobiology and EP are mortal enemies.

"EP" makes me think of Herbert's Under Pressure.

I was reading this thread for book suggestions. Considering how often this topic comes up, I went over to the bookstore to see what we had. And we don't appear to have much. Maybe one of the mods could gather up these links, and tap Gurdur's shoulder for more ideas, and put it all in the bookstore.

Vorkosigan

lpetrich

How so? They look rather similar from the outside.

pz

They are. They have nearly or completely identical core ideas. The main difference seems to be political: sociobiology has been the focus of a lot of heat for the last 25 years, so proponents cobbled up a new name and focused on a few superficial differences of emphasis.

lpetrich

Thanx. Let's see what supporters of EP have to say about that. I asked that because SB and EP are about as easy to distinguish as Trotskyism and Maoism, or Objectivism and Libertarianism.

Also, one thing that the SB/EP guys do not seem careful enough about is how sociocultural evolution can mimic biological evolution; some sociocultural forms would be selected because they help their participants outperform or defeat participants in others.

In effect, sociocultural natural selection.

Here's a simple example: imagine a society of warniks and a society of peaceniks. The warniks are more skilled at battle than the peaceniks and more eager to fight. Thus, when they run into each other and fight, the warniks defeat the peaceniks, and all that remains is the warniks.

So that could well be an important reason why war has been a favorite sport over all of recorded history.

Vorkosigan

They have radically different core ideas, although they are often confused. Crudely put, Sociobiology is focuses on altruism as its "problem" and stresses "competition" between genes as the source of behavior. Ev Psych focuses on the cognitive adaptations humans evolved to cope with their world, and the behavioral and developmental fallout. Ev Psych DOES NOT assume that present-day behavior is aimed at increasing inclusive fitness, which appears to be one of the underlying assumptions of SB. To mistake one for the other is like mixing up Catholicism and Taoism.

The EP vs SB is also explained in The Adapted Mind, as I recall.

Hope this helps.

Vorkosigan

pz

No, it's more like mixing up Baptists and Lutherans (by the way, even your example is a poor choice on an atheist board -- catholicism and taoism are both religious superstitions, so I don't see any important differences between them). I disagree that they have radically different ideas -- it's more of an attempt to amplify hair-splitting differences to distinguish one from the other.

Both focus on adaptations and behavior. Both are at heart panadaptationist paradigms that are so devotedly selectionist that merely mentioning a plausible selective advantage is sufficient.

The main difference that I see is that EP is more concerned with human evolution; which to my mind means they are even further divorced from any believable data. It's a mistake to think that sociobiology is concerned mainly with altruism. Wilson's original book is very rich in other behaviors that he considered to have a genetic basis. Altruism is just one that was emphasized because Wilson's specialty, ants, have particularly good examples, and because it at least superficially is difficult to explain as a selective advantage.

The purported difference in timing, that EP is concerned with past adaptive events while sociobiology is concerned with ongoing ones, is inaccurate. Sociobiology was at least concerned with gathering evidence, which meant doing field work now, but it certainly didn't deny that history played a role. I hope EP isn't such a degenerate 'science' that it thinks human evolution is over, and only past events are relevant.
Well, yes, an EP text would try to argue that it is distinct from sociobiology.

AtlanticCitySlave

I would recommend Pinker's "The Blank Slate", only because it's quite new and he discusses a lot of the books already mentioned (especially those against evolutionary psychology). I don't know how one can say he engages in "hand waving", nor do I see how he could be at MIT and well respected in the entire linguistic community (especially by Chomsky) and in the entire field of psychology if he did so.

Evoulutionary theory is hardly "bad" science as well. As you'll see in Pinker's book(s), he goes to great lengths to explain the research, inferences, etc., of why the mind is the way it is, why men tend to be more jealous than women, why we stereotype so easily, etc. Also, several of the people who have been listed as "con" aren't against evolutionary theory, but rather they are against the idea that our genes play a larger part than other factors in determining (or bringing about) who we are. Pinker considers them the people from the "east" and the people from the "west".

I would suggest reading Pinker for yourself, and if you're not satisfied with him, reading the many references (both pro and con to his views) in the back. Of course, you might want to wait until "The Blank Slate" is in paperback so it's cheaper and go with "How the Mind Works" which is now in paperback.

callmejay

I'm in the middle of How the Mind Works by Pinker right now, and I'm going to support him. While he may make some unproven conjectures as to why certain behaviors were advantageous to Stone Age humans, he also brings forth a lot of actual evidence for various claims. For example, he tests (or discusses tests of, I can't remember) 3-month old babies in the hopes of figuring out whether people do something instinctively or because they were taught to.

Additionally, he doesn't actually claim that his unproven ideas ARE proven. He'll just say something like, "Maybe the reason people 'lose control' and get angry is so people who would make us angry know that we might lose our tempers even if it isn't in our best interest, so that they can't screw with us just because they know we don't want to get angry in that circumstance. He doesn't conclude, therefore EP is true. The book just sets about to explain how the mind works, and obviously, how it evolved is relevant.