Doubting Didymus

I should point out that I have no problem with evolutionary psychology ar pinker in general. I am evaluating theories and hypotheses on a case by case basis. I have been arguing only against this particular theory. I mostly agree with you, but I have been finding recently that evolutionary psychology seems to be breeding some bad theories.

RufusAtticus

Languge Innateness has been discussed before in this forum.

The idea of universal grammar has gone through many different stages over the years. It is now seen "simply" as cognative biases for developing structural communication.

Oolon Colluphid

As I said, this view comes direct from Barrett, Dunbar and Lycett’s Human Evolutionary Psychology. Perhaps a direct quote will elucidate.

On page 3 (UK edition), after stating the premises Darwin used to deduce natural selection, they say that:

Hope that makes it clearer. Their next paragraph might be of interest to others here too:

Personally, I don’t see anything there to disagree with (minor quibbles or ‘understoods’ aside). At least, disagreements that aren't just semantics...?

Cheers, DT

copernicus

Thanks, Darwin's Terrier, for the references to Barrett, Dunbar, and Lycett. I must plead ignorance of their work, and that is probably why I don't quite understand the relevance of your points to Orr's critique of Pinker, which I still find a bit superficial and peavish. I think that evolutionary biologists and psychologists are largely ignorant of the typological lacunae in natural language systems. Linguists have mapped out quite a few universal constraints on human languages and that has led some to jump to the conclusion that language is biologically "programmed". Pinker is by no means the only, or first, proponent of the so-called innateness hypothesis. One of the earliest proponents of this viewpoint was biologist Eric Lenneberg in his 1967 classic The Biological Foundations of Language (see http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/Entry/bloom for other references).

Anyway, it is quite possible that we are talking at cross purposes here. I am very sympathetic to the view that not all evolutionary pressures are genetic in nature. In the case of language universals, some linguists (I seem to recall that Columbia's late Uriel Weinreich was the first) have pointed out that Chomsky's approach to innateness was fatally flawed in at least one respect. If everyone on Earth were to perish except speakers of, say, Amharic, then all of the features of Amharic would instantly become language universals. The biological question cannot be answered merely by pointing to linguistic universals. One has to be able to tell the difference between accidental and essential universal properties of language. Chomsky's approach to innateness seems not to allow for that distinction, and, to the extent that Pinker follows Chomskyan principles, he is vulnerable to the same criticism.

What really bothered me about Orr's critique was his tendency to go for the cheap shot. Calling someone a "popularizer" is not a criticism of their science. It is just a cheap shot. Orr had quite a few other criticisms of Pinker, but he really started off on the wrong foot, as far as I was concerned.

Oolon Colluphid

Copernicus, many thanks for your very interesting thoughts on this. But no, we’re not talking at cross purposes, or at least not disagreeing! Insofar as I know anything about it, I pretty much agree with you.

That’ll be because I wasn’t making any particular point ref Orr of Pinker, or, particularly, language! I simply picked up your comment about language being ‘inherited’ -- or not -- and noting that ‘inherited’ should be taken as wider than genes, as explained and for the reasons above.

Their idea seems both sensible and useful, since so much of this area gets bogged down in nature/nurture, when it doesn’t actually matter. Unravelling the relative proportions of nature/nurture for a behaviour may be fascinating in its own right... and may be impossible. But that doesn’t (or shouldn’t) preclude studying its evolution.

Cheers, DT

RufusAtticus

Chomsky's approach to Universal Grammar has changed alot over the years. The trick is to not rely on chomsky anymore, but rather look at the literature coming out of the cognative linguistics and evolution of language studies. Now universal grammar is seen "simply" as cognative biases that restrict the range of rules that a child can form in language acquisition from the set of all possible rules.

copernicus

Rufus, I've seen that defense of Chomsky a lot, especially from his defenders. My problem is that no one seems to be able to state clearly and unequivocably HOW his views on UG have changed. To the extent that they have changed, they seem to have become even vaguer and less empirically interesting. He has no theory at all of language behavior--how the mind actually constructs or deconstructs sentences. His only interest is, and has always been, in the abstract mathematical properties of natural language. His former student, Jerry Katz, once publicly characterized Chomsky as a "platonist", and that got Noam so mad that he wouldn't talk to Jerry for the rest of the evening. Frankly, I think that Katz was exactly right. (I'm just not as sympathetic to platonists as Katz was. ) However, I understood Chomsky's point. He has always considered himself a proponent of a psychological model of language, not an "idealist" model of language.

Universal Grammar never was a set of language universals, but a set of constraints on the types of grammars that human children could posit. In other words, Chomsky took the infant to be something of a "little linguist", who was always trying to construct the best grammar for the target language--exactly what linguists do! Behavioral evidence was always taken as somewhat suspect, since it didn't reveal directly what kind of hypothetical working grammar the child was working on at any given point in time. But that has always been Chomsky's view--that the child comes to language with a set of linguistic "lincoln logs" and instructions for building grammars. I don't think that Chomsky has ever recanted this view, and I don't think that he has ever adequately addressed the criticisms of it.

zwi

Thank you Celsus

I will order the book

Zwi

jayh

You might start by not basing your position on excerpts from Pinker, but on a more complete reading.

You suggest that animals present a different view, but in actual fact animal research really backs this up. The prediction is indeed that different behaviors will reflect the relative costs for reproduction in different species. This is, in the animal world, long established in evolutionary research. Low expense species indeed tend to have more promsicuous mating.

One of his points is the extreme trauma that rape imposes on human females, a trauma that seems unmatched in the animal kingdom. One of his points is that if we were really blank slates, with our sexual values determined by our upbringing, then it would seem possible to condition women to rape. In truth, women put an enormous chunk of their physical and emotional resources into their offspring, and anything that encroaches on their genetic choice carries an enormous price tag that is simply unacceptable.

The important points he presents are not specific to humans, but relates the behaviors of humans to other species, looking at ways humans and animals are the same and the ways they are different.

Cross cultural behavior studies provide a lot of potential insight into the underlying human animal, and certain norms, or groups of norms, appear to be universal. Jealousy is more exaggerated in patriarchal than matriarchal societies (actually there are no fully matriarchal societies, but some are matrilinear)

Interestingly also are the 'code of honor' cultures which emphasize rule of vengeance and honor, with strong levels of exaggerated rituals of respect or disrespect. These appear almost spontaneously in areas where wealth is easily lost or stolen (for example property is more easily stolen in herder cultures than in farmer cultures), so the rules of control emerge. We see these same styles of culture reappear in gang culture (where wealth is cash and drugs highly fungible) in the midst of less honor -bound, more 'rule of law' based cultures. Pinker suggests (does not insist) that these are several types of human behavior that can appear depending on the circumstances the person finds himself in.

The Blank Slate addresses certain things that are quite strongly supported by science (degrees that certain psychological behaviors are connected to heredity) and speculates as to how these might reflect on the larger area of human behavior.

The most rabid critiques of him seem to be, not based on science but on social ideologies. The concept that substantial parts of our behavior is genetic rather than cultural or environmental is very threatening to some worldviews. If you look at what he says, he does differentiate science based, and hypothetical concepts.

jay

Doubting Didymus

First, your quote is from me, not rufus. This has happened before actually, I wonder if there is some kind of bug?

Secondly, I am basing my opinion on pinkers article 'the blank slate'. It is not simply an excerpt, but a complete piece in all of its intended context.

Quite. However, the hypothesis should not be stretched too far. Read my posts responding to theyeti for a better idea of my position.