A Defense of Evolutionary Psychology (Mostly by Steve Pinker)

1282016 A defense of evolutionary psychology (mostly by Steve Pinker) « Why Evolution Is True
Why Evolution Is Tr ue
« Muncie paper reports on Ball State’s hiring of ID advocate
Guillermo Gonzalez About Jerry Coyne
« Home
Sunday bird: common nighthawk nomming a bug » Author Website
A defense of
Search Research Interests
evolutionary psychology (mostly by
Find »
Steve Pinker) Books by Jerry Coyne
Email Subscription I’ve been known for a while as a critic of evolutionary psychology,
particularly when it first began as “sociobiology” in the Seventies. At that
Enter your email address to
time there was a lot of unsupported speculation being bruited about as
subscribe to this blog and
“science” (i.e., human males evolved to have “rape modules”, a view that
receive notifications of new I criticized strongly). But over the decades, evolutionary psychology has
posts by email. matured, and I now see it as a valuable way of studying the origins of
human behavior. Not that it’s all perfect—the “pop” versions, such as
Join 41,928 other followers
those produced by Satoshi Kanazawa, seem pretty dire to me, debasing a
Enter your email address field that’s striving for scientific rigor. But even Kanazawa has been
rejected by serious evolutionary psychologists.
Sign me up!
Sadly, some selfprofessed skeptics have decided to debunk the entire
RSS Feeds field of evopsych, and for reasons that I see not as scientific, but as
All Posts ideological and political. That is, like the opponents of sociobiology thirty
All Comments years ago, these skeptics object to the discipline because they see it as
both motivated by and justifying conservative political views like the
marginalization of women. Well, that may be the motivation of some
people, but not, I think, of most wellknown workers in evo psych, who
are merely trying to study the evolutionary roots of human behavior. It
pains me that skeptics are so dogmatic, so ideological, in viewing (and
Twitter Updates rejecting wholesale) a legitimate scientific field.
RT @PREAUX_FISH : 1 in Because of this ideologicallymotivated critique, last December I

5 children will experiment published a defense of the field, “Is evolutionary psychology worthless?“,
with paleontology....know pointing out a dozen areas of evopsych research—most of them not Buy Faith vs. Fact
the signs @shaenasaurus involving gender differences—that I saw as valuable, interesting, and Amazon
@NeilShubin productive. Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
http://t.co/xRVkqsZnmp Nevertheless, the dissing of evopsych by skeptics continues. The latest Barnes & Noble
3 hours ago critique occurred at the Convergence 2013 conference on a panel BooksAMillion
Follow @evolutionistrue described in a post by P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula: IndieBound
iTunes
____________ First panel: Evolutionary Psychology, with Stephanie Zvan Powell's
The Archive moderating, and Greg Laden (a biological anthropologist),
me (neuroscience by training, evo devo by occupation), and Buy WEIT
____________ Indre Viskontas (neuroscience) (and who I met for the first
Amazon
Da Roolz! time, and who was on a panel at an SF con for the first Amazon.ca
time…she’s good). My main point: Developmental plasticity Amazon.co.uk
____________ is all. The fundamental premises of evo psych are false. Barnes & Noble
Cat Confessions Contest: all BooksAMillion
This paragraph disturbed me for two reasons. First, the notion that “the IndieBound
entries
fundamental premises of evo psych are false” seems deeply misguided. iTunes
After all, those premises boil down to this statement: some behaviors of Powell's
____________
modern humans reflect their evolutionary history. That is palpably
Halloween Black Cat Parade
uncontroversial, since many of our behaviors are clearly a product of
evolution, including eating, avoiding dangers, and the pursuit of sex. And
since our bodies reflect their evolutionary history, often in nonadaptive
ways (e.g., wisdom teeth, bad backs, the coat of hair we produce as a
transitory feature in fetuses), why not our brains, which are, after all,
just bits of morphology whose structure affects our behaviors?
Second, “developmental plasticity” does not stand as a dichotomous
alternative to “evolved features.” Our developmental plasticity is to a
large extent the product of evolution: our ability to learn language, our
tendency to defer to authorities when we’re children, our learned
socialization—those are all features almost certainly instilled into our
brains by natural selection as a way to promote behavioral flexibility in
that most flexible of mammals.
I haven’t listened to the entire Convergence panel because the audio is
apparently quite bad, but I was distressed by the comments P.Z. made in
the ensuing discussion, in which he expands his reasons for rejecting
evolutionary psychology. I sent P.Z.’s post and comments to my friend
Steve Pinker, whose books have engaged quite deeply with evolutionary
psychology, to get his reaction. Steve sent me an email with his
responses, and then gave me permission to publish them. (I add the
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/adefenseofevolutionarypsychologymostlybystevepinker/ 1/78
caveat, at Steve’s request, that this was an informal email, and he’s not
to be held responsible for slips of grammar or punctuation!)
I post P. Z.’s comments (with links) below in italics (and an “M”), and
Steve’s responses in bold type (with a “P”)
Follow
A comment P. Z. made in the ensuing discussion:
Follow “Why
M: Fundamental assumptions of evo psych: That you can
infer an adaptive history from the distribution of current
Evolution Is True”
traits — that they are adaptations at all is an assumption
Get every new post delivered to
usually not founded in evidence (this is not to deny that that
your Inbox.
there are features that are clearly the product of selection,
but that you can’t pick an arbitrary attribute and draw Join 41,928 other followers
elaborate scenarios for its origins). . .
Enter your email address
P: Of course “arbitrary” and “elaborate” are the straw
man giveaways here. What about carefully selected
Sign me up
attributes, and minimal assumptions about phylogeny
with a focus on function, as we do for other organs?
You can ask what the spleen is for – and it would be Build a website with WordPress.com
perverse to do physiology without asking such a
question – without “drawing elaborate scenarios for its
origins.”
M:. . . That behavioral features that have been selected for
in our history are represented by modular components in
the brain – again with rare exceptions, you can’t simply
assign a behavioral role to a specific spot in the brain, just
as you can’t assign a behavior to a gene.
P: No one in Ev Psych points to specific spots in the
brain – that’s cognitive neuroscience, not evolutionary
psychology. The only assumption is that there are
functional circuits, in the same way that a program can
be fragmented across your hard drive.
M: . . . That the human brain is adapted to a particular
environment, specifically the African savannah, and that we
can ignore as negligible any evolutionary events in the last
10,000 years, that we can ignore the complexity of an
environment most of the evo psych people have never
seriously studied, and that that environment can dictate one
narrow range of outcomes rather than permit millions of
different possibilities.
P: The savannah is a red herring – that’s just a
convenient dichotomization of the relevant continuum,
which is evolutionary history. A minimal commitment to
“premodern” gives you the same conclusions. By
saying that the brain could not have been biologically
adapted to stable government, police, literacy,
medicine, science, reliable statistics, prevalence of
highcalorie food, etc., you don’t need to go back to the
savannah; you just need to say that these were all
relevantly recent in most people’s evolutionary history.
The savannah is just a synechdoche.
M: I’d also add that most evo psych studies assume a one
toone mapping of hypothetical genes to behaviors. . .
P: Completely untrue – this was Gould’s claim in the
1970s, which confused a “gene for x” (indispensable in
any evolutionary thinking, given segregation) in the
sense of “increases the probability of X, averaging over
environments and other genes” with “a gene for X” in
the sense of “necessary and sufficient for X.” Every
honest biologist invokes “gene for X” in the former
sense; evolution would be impossible if there were no
additive effects of genes. No one believes the latter –
it’s pure straw.
M [continuation of previous sentence]:. . . and never
actually look at genes and for that matter, ignore most
human diversity to focus on a naive typological simplicity
that allows them to use undergraduate psych majors at
Western universities as proxies for all of humanity”
P: It’s psychologists, not evolutionary psychologists,
who focus on Western undergrads –field research and
citations of anthropology are vastly more common in ev
psych than in nonevpsych. PZ is engaging in
prosecution here, not analysis – he’s clearly ignorant of
the sociology of the fields.
As for diversity – is he arguing for genetic differences
among human groups, a la Herrnstein & Murray?
P.Z. then made a second comment:
M: Developmental plasticity vitiates most of the claims of Follow
evo psych. Without denying that some behaviors certainly
have a strong biological basis, the differences in human Follow “Why
behaviors are more likely to be a product of plasticity than Evolution Is True”
of genetic differences. . .
P: Plasticity is just learning at the neural level, and
your Inbox.
learning is not an alternative to innate motives and
learning mechanisms. Plasticity became an allpurpose Join 41,928 other followers
fudge factor in the 1990s (just like “epigenetics” is
today). But the idea that the brain is a piece of plastic Enter your email address
molded by the environment is bad neuroscience. I
reviewed neural plasticity in the chapter “The Slate’s Sign me up
Last Stand” in The Blank Slate, with the help of many
colleagues in neuroscience, and noted that the
Build a website with WordPress.com
plasticity that allows feedback during development and
learning during ontogeny is superimposed on an innate
matrix of neural organization. For example if you
silence *all* synaptic activity in the brain of a
developing mouse with knockouts, the brain is pretty
much normal.
M: . . . I think good evo psych would focus on human
universals (much more likely to be driven by genetic
properties!) than all this stuff seeking justifications for
cultural differences between the sexes or the races or
arbitrary subgroups.
Steve didn’t respond to this last bit, but I did ask him to tell me what he
thought were the greatest accomplishments of evolutionary psychology.
This was in response to one remark (made, I think, by a panel member)
that the discipline had produced no substantive accomplishments. Steve’s
response:
P: On accomplishments – there are vast numbers of
topics in psychology that were barely studied before EP
came along, and in which you just can’t formulate
sensible hypotheses without giving some thought to
function – they’d include sexuality, violence, religion,
beauty, play, emotions, and parenting. Even other
areas, like perception and memory, have always been
evolutionary in the sense that researchers had a vague
idea about “function” – the difference being that
commonsense is enough when it comes to seeing in
3D, whereas you need to give some more thought to
function in the case of, say, beauty.
For me there shouldn’t even be a field called
“evolutionary psychology” for the same reason there
shouldn’t be a field called “cognitive neuroscience” –
you can’t understand any biological system without
considering each of Tinbergen’s four levels of
mechanism, development, adaptation, and phylogeny.
“Ev psych” is simply the attempt to take
adaptation/function seriously, just as “cog neuro” is
the attempt to sharpen mechanism.
One gets two impressions when listening to the skeptics’ criticism of
evolutionary psychology. First, they haven’t read widely in the discipline,
and are criticizing either popculture versions of the field or a caricature
(born of ignorance, possibly willful) of EP. Even I know that EP advocates
don’t often publish studies that rely solely on undergraduates.
Second, it’s pretty clear that the opposition to evolutionary psychology
from these quarters is ideologically rather than scientifically motivated.
One gets the feeling that research on gender differences shouldn’t be
done at all because it’s either designed to repress women, motivated by
the desire to do that, or has the likely outcome of promoting
discrimination. Well, sexist scientists may try to do that, but I haven’t
seen much of that since the Seventies. And gender differences are
fascinating. There’s a reason, for instance, why human males are larger
and hairier than females, and have more testosterone. Are we supposed
to say “You can’t work on that—could have bad repercussions!” Sure,
scientific results can always be misused, but I don’t see that as a reason
to put up roadblocks against scientific research. After all, what field is
more misused and misquoted than evolutionary biology? I am a frequent
recipient of emails from Jews trying to convince me to reject evolution
because Darwin ultimately caused the Holocaust.
And the differences in sexual behavior between males and females do
parallel those seen in many animals. Is that just cultural construction, or
are there genes and selection pressures involved? One can surely study
such things scientifically, just as one studies differences between the
sexes of other mammals, without being committed to sexism. There are, Follow
after all, testable predictions involved.
No, the fundamental premise of evolutionary psychology is absolutely
Follow “Why
sound: our brains, like the rest of our bodies, are the product of evolution Evolution Is True”
and natural selection over the past six million years, and some of our
current behaviors reflect that evolution. To deny that is ideologically Get every new post delivered to
motivated nonsense. To parse out the evolutionary component of such your Inbox.
behaviors is the goal of evolutionary psychology. Join 41,928 other followers

Share this:
Sign me up
Tweet Share 12 submit 8
 Like
16 bloggers like this.
Related
Is evolutionary Another lame attack Bonkers evolutionary

psychology on evolutionary psychologist explains
worthless? psychology why he's not an
In "evolution" In "evolutionary atheist
psychology" In "atheism"
This entry was written by whyevolutionistrue and posted on July 7, 2013 at 7:54 am
and filed under evolution, evolutionary psychology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow
any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks
are currently closed.
258 Comments
1.
Ben Goren
Posted July 7, 2013 at 8:26 am | Permalink
It’s precisely the area of sexual dimorphism that we most need a
solid evolutionary understanding of what’s going on if we are to
have any hope of shaping our society in an intelligent manner.
And only the naturalistic fallacy could convince somebody
otherwise.
Let’s pick the hyperbolic fantastic boogeyman and say that it could
be proven that all males have a propensity to rape, and suchand
such a genetic makeup is directly responsible. Wouldn’t you want to
know that so that we could figure out the most effective means of
suppressing that disposition and how best to tailor the approach
based upon the individual’s genetic makeup? You could easily
imagine it being a standard genetic test, with special counseling
being offered to men with the rape gene.
(Just in case it’s not clear: that’s all purely hypothetical, and the
evidence as understood today does not support what I presented as
hypothetical facts.)
Really, it’s no different than testing for BRCA mutations. Would you
rather know so you can intelligently design treatment modalities
(possibly including prevention as well as cure) and better focus
monitoring efforts; or would you say, “Well, soandso has that
mutation, so she’s just a goner. Nothing we can do for her. Too bad,
so sad, have a nice death.”
Cheers,
b&
Jeanine
There were a lot of Big Words I didn’t quite get in Jerry’s
post…but I got the gist of it enough, and I agree with the both
of you that suppressing the inquiry into gender differences
does no one a favor. It’s rather like those misguided souls
who declare “I don’t see color.” Homogenizing humans, be it
through gender or race squashes social progress and
undermines any challenges still facing the demographic. This Follow
is where feminism reaches the point of kicking herself in the
arse, imho. Follow “Why
Diana MacPherson Get every new post delivered to
Posted July 7, 2013 at 10:13 am | Permalink your Inbox.
Ha ha. I have a friend of East Indian heritage. We often
would describe one another to strangers as, “a white
gjrl” or “a brown girl”. White people were noticeably
uncomfortable with that. I even remember meeting her
for dinner at a restaurant and holding off describing her Sign me up
as a brown girl so as not to freak out the hostess who
let me look for her in the restaurant. I think the Build a website with WordPress.com
comedian, Russell Peters does a whole schtjck on this
phenomenon.
Jeanine
I will look him up! Amy Schuler has a funny bit on
that, although she’s pretty hit and miss for me…
she easily descends to a very unfunny level of
crude.
Ben Goren
You could try, “the one with a builtin tan” as
opposed to “the one who burns easily,” but that’s
a bit of a mouthful.
But any computer scientist will tell you that it’s
best to start your sorting by broadbrush easily
identifiable characteristics. Male / female
instantly cuts the search space in half, which is
ideal from an information theory perspective.
Skin color is almost as good, and eye color is
probably even better. Eye color, height, weight,
and age are all really good, too; in a restaurant,
it’s possibly all you need to identify somebody —
and certainly to narrow it down to a small
number. At that point, there’s not much more you
need to complete the unique identification.
Sure, we all think of ourselves most importantly
and significantly as our personalities, what goes
on inside our heads…but not only is it impossible
to identify those characteristics just by looking,
it’s a really bad sorting criteria even if you could.
You’d again want to start with oversimplified
broad categories and narrow it down from there.
Cheers,
b&
cherrybombsim
Posted July 7, 2013 at 4:37 pm | Permalink
Anybody trying to identify me by eye color
would be s/o/o/l. Depending on how dilated
my pupils are, they can be brown, hazel or
grass green.
Linda Grilli Calhoun
You do realize that some cultures would consider the “rape
gene” as a positive? L
Follow
Ben Goren
Follow “Why
Yes. And I’m really glad I’m not living in one of them.
But, even still, you’d want to understand as much about
it as you could.
your Inbox.
And those of us who don’t live in such a society Join 41,928 other followers
especially should want to understand it so we can best
counter it. Enter your email address
b&
Sign me up

Kevin Alexander
You don’t need a gene ‘for’ rape any more than a
gene for bank robbery. It’s enough that you want
something coupled with a disregard for social
taboos.
darrelle
“And only the naturalistic fallacy could convince
somebody otherwise.”
This was precisely my first thought after reading the first of
Myers’ comments. It is extremely obvious, and it is hard to
comprehend how he could not be aware of it. Depressing, but
not surprising.
Keith Douglas
When I was an undergradute student of Bunge’s in the late
1990s, we argued over three principle topics of disagreement:
the merits of human sociobiology/evolutionary psychology,
the computational “theory” of mind and the prospects of AI.
It seems that PZ is doing what Bunge did about the former:
seeing some sloppy scholarship (and there is some!) and
wondering about motives (for that’s one way one gets sloppy
scholarship). I made exactly Ben’s point in a paper, that
Bunge’s own views on the ethical neutrality of science show
that even the “most dire” findings of evo. psych., if true, have
at least two possible policy or ethical outcomes. The comment
on that part of the paper was (IIRC) – make sure that the
finding IS supported, first.
One thing I would like to hear more about is the status of the
“combinatorial” argument – neuroscientists and Bunge have
pointed out *another* form of plasticity that is not addressed
by Pinker here. Namely that there doesn’t seem to be enough
genetic “information” (or whatever) to code for all the
subbrain organs, and moreover, that tissues in the brain do
seem quite plastic in the sense that very often they can be
repurosed – as in the case of the hapless person born with a
single hemisphere! I suspect the answer will lie in gene
regulation. But then I (informally: I can’t do better at present)
wonder about “data compression” – one way to do more with
less is simply to be redundant, but that doesn’t help here.
Dino Rosati
I think Pinker did implicitly address your question. I
think (could very well be wrong here) that the genome
contains enough information to set up many (read
millions) of simple heuristic mechanisms for learning
and interconnecting them stochastically and pruning
away connections that are not useful, i.e. low level
plasticity. This is done in such a way as to achieve
higher level adaptive purposes (the ones Pinker listed Follow
above).
Follow “Why
kagehi your Inbox.
Ugh.. See, this is the exact problem a lot of people have with
the so called “science”. There is a book out called “Sex at Enter your email address
Dawn” (partial title), which makes a very good case for how
our most basic assumptions of what is considered the Sign me up
“standard” model of human sexuality is, if not in fact wrong,
at least badly biased. It goes back and looks at, in a few
cases, some of the “key” data collected by people who are
considered the “standard” for this knowledge, and questions
both their methods, and conclusions. It also points out that, in
pretty much every such case, even the definition of “hunter
gatherer” used wasn’t accurate, and that looking at those
harder to find tribes, which don’t have clear concepts of
property, and inheritance, often radically changes the picture.
Rape, in some cultures appears to be completely unheard of,
for example. There is even an example provided on TV, in
one of those programs on sex, which found a culture who
placed young women at the center of deciding such things, to
the point of building their young daughters special huts, to
literally entertain guests. When asked how often things like
rape happened, they couldn’t even comprehend the question,
since the power dynamic was, “You get to come in if **I**
say so, not if you say so, and you can’t force me to let you
in.”
It only gets worse when you have clowns ignoring say,
bonobo behavior (one of the recent ones which, ironically,
proved that, if the females have any say in the matter,
introducing a concept of ‘money’, in the form of tokens, to
buy food, led to the females inventing prostitution. i.e.,
trading favors, to get more of the money.), purely because
we have, at some point, managed to become hyper
territorial, and that has led to behaviors that look more like
those of chimpanzees. Only problem is.. even that becomes a
problem, because much of their behavior, as we understand
it, comes from studies where *we* introduced a free, but
limited, resource (food in boxes), to get them nearer, so they
could be observed, and that led to more, otherwise unrelated,
groups coming together in semineutral territory, and then
fighting over the resource.
The problem with EvoPsych isn’t that it can’t find answers, it
is that it “assumes” that the existing behavior is evolved, and
normal, then tries to, well… do what religions have bad habit
of doing, which is, having drawn its conclusions, it then goes
hunting for evidence, much of which ends up consisting of
made up stories, about how it got that way. Which isn’t to say
that its stories are not more logical, or reasoned, or even
plausible, but.. they are also a prime example of “garbage in
= garbage out”.
If you don’t know your assumptions are correct, then you
don’t know what evidence to look for. If you don’t know what
constitutes valid evidence, or, worse, there isn’t any way to
collect, or verify, it, then you can just as easily follow a
perfectly logical series of assumptions, and explanations, to a
completely wrong bloody answer, as you can, even purely by
accident, run into the correct one. And, it seems to me, that
how ever “mature” the science thinks itself, its still making
the same sort of stories, and assumptions, as the fools who,
based on their biases, and assumptions, all of them 100%
supported by their own societies “normal” behaviors, that all
birds mate for life, a concept that was, along with the stories
about how that worked, accepted, whole hog, for decades,
before someone bothered to ask, “Is this actually true?”
Well.. Where the frak are the people in EvoPsych asking,
“Are all the assumptions about what is ‘normal’ for humans
actually true?” Because.. you know what I see – a lot of
people making up stories about women looking for berries,
and excuses for why rape is caused, in spite of evidence that
it is in fact rarer, or even nonexistent, in other cultures/sub
cultures, by “biology”, not “sociology”.
In other words, a lot of bloody assumptions about how the
Follow
mess we see is “how we are”, instead of a social construct,
and a mess of stories about how that happened, which
ironically, excludes the most plausible explanation – It was all
Follow “Why
made up, by steps, and over time, by people who had not one Evolution Is True”
bit of their “natural biology” in mind when they invented it,
just like the stories evopsych, too often, make up to explain Get every new post delivered to
how this “trait” can be tied back to some poor hunter, a your Inbox.
million years ago, who, if some of the alternate evidence is Join 41,928 other followers
correct, would probably be thinking, “Are you kidding me?”
Sign me up
2.
NewEnglandBob
This is a fascinating post, on several levels. We laymen can learn a
lot but also can be confused.
3.
Lianne Byram
I used to think the study of sex differences was more trouble than it
as worth – back in the seventies when I was young and foolish. I
realize now that was a mistake. Ideology should never stand in the
way of the pursuit of knowledge.
I agree with Ben that if we understand the less desirable aspects of
our evolutionary heritage we can take steps to manage them and
mitigate harm.
I find evolutionary psychology fascinating. I don’t think it is
reasonable to think that we can have any really fundamental
understanding of human behaviour without acknowledging and
investigating the evolutionary history of the human brain.
Jeanine
Watching my 3 yo son develop is astounding. I delight that he
can make motor/engine sounds way better than I ever could.
His first sentence was “IT HAS WHEELS!!!” (Which, I think
holds true for a good portion of men throughout their lives
lol.) His play is aggressive, he is loud, things have to crash
and blow up. We do offer him dolls to play with, and they
usually end up in tragic fiery helicopter incidents. This is so
highly fascinating to me, there is a reason boys and girls
have generally vastly different play styles. I marvel at the
girls his age – how gentle and detailed they are in
comparison. I believe good EP can enrich our understanding
of these very real differences and in turn provide us with
better tools in which to better establish humanitarian values.
Dave Barry has a hilarious essay about little boys and
little girls.
In it, he describes little girls as “miniature human
beings”, and little boys as “pod people from the planet
Destructo”.
And, he, too, observes that little boys are born knowing
how to make motor noises. L
Ben Goren
Not just human boys. Baihu does that, too, when
he runs around….
b&
Follow
Maybe you should by him some Tonka Follow “Why

trucks to play with. L
your Inbox.
4. Join 41,928 other followers
Diana MacPherson
Posted July 7, 2013 at 9:06 am | Permalink Enter your email address
I’m glad you mentioned the tacit aversion to studying anything to do
with male and female differences. I remember frowning often at Sign me up
some of the assertions in cultural anthropology that just seemed
based mostly on conjecture and that legacy seems to have left its Build a website with WordPress.com
mark. With the maturation of evolutionary psychology and I’m
hoping the departure of sexist attitudes this aversion will be abated.
Indeed, one of the most interesting chapters in Steven Pinker’s
book, The Better Angels of Our Nature is Chapter 7: The Rights
Revolutions. In particular, his discussion about male and female
attitudes about sex. In my copy, I half jokingly highlighted the
following simple sentence and wrote the comment, Where was
Steven Pinker to explain this to me when I was in my 20s? “Men
fantasize about copulating with bodies; women fantasize about
making love to people”. The whole chapter is fabulous and details
violence against women, how it has changed and explains how the
two genders deal with this.
NewEnglandBob
I recently finished reading “Better Angels…” And I thought it
to be a wonderful book.
Diana MacPherson
I really like it too. It takes me forever to read anything
because I read at night then fall asleep so I progress at
about 1% per day. I’m about 62% through now.
Think first...
Audio books ftw!
Ay more than 40 hours it’s a whopper… but better
to fall asleep to because I always drool on my
books.
Diana MacPherson
Yes, I sometimes do listen to audio books
as well but I like to put notes in books so
usually I’ll read it then listen to the audio
book to remember things better (I tend to
remember things I hear over things I read)
hence while in school, I went to all the
lectures and only read the text books when
studying unless it was a course where we
read fiction or a language course where you
were tested (often a surprise) as you went.
karmakin
What about those of us in the middle? I’m a man, who
generally is about the latter. (Making love to people).
I actually think that’s the divide here, how prescriptive these
roles are. To its credit, I’ve seen a lot of EP move away from
Follow
the notion that these roles are prescriptive, however they can
be used in that fashion.
Follow “Why
Not that I’m saying that by and large these criticisms are Evolution Is True”
much better, as it’s made by people who act like
social/cultural pressures are prescriptive. Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.
darrelle
There are certainly people, perhaps even some
scientists in the field, who think of the general
Sign me up
characteristics of gender roles as prescriptive. But
decent scientists, and even decent amateurs these Build a website with WordPress.com
days, understand that that is a fallacy. That things like
this are always a spectrum. This is where a better
understanding of statistics comes in. Because you can
determine with some accuracy the general
characteristics of a large sample does not mean that
you will be able to accurately predict the characteristics
of individuals.
In addition to basic critical thinking skills, I think a basic
understanding of statistics is one of the most important
things that should be incorporated into primary school
curricula.
karmakin
Like I said, I’ve seen a lot of EP researchers take
an active stance on the issue and state that their
research isn’t prescriptive, and I applaud them for
it.
Diane G.
“Men fantasize about copulating with bodies;
women fantasize about making love to people”.
That’s been around for a long time.
And IMO, not necessarily always true.
ksolway
“women fantasize about making love to people”
From what I’ve read, “rape” fantasies, and fantasies of
rough sex, are very common in women. I’m not sure if
that is what you call “making love”.
Diana MacPherson
I’m sure there are exceptions to every rule.
Steven Pinker was assessing, along with other
inputs, what men and women on average prefer
in fantasy materials for women it is usually the
plethora of romantic materials like romance
novels etc. they consume vs. men – pornography.
You really should read the book and that chapter
to understand that context.
My larger point was that it was refreshing to see
that Steven Pinker didn’t shy away from these
topics and he addresses them with solid evidence
(vs. the weak arguments many of us were
exposed to in the past wrt evolutionary
psychology and the tacit fear of studying the
difference between men and women).
Also, I don’t buy your assessment that rape
Follow
fantasies are “very common” in women.
Follow “Why
threeflangedjavis
Posted July 8, 2013 at 7:17 am | Permalink Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.
Ask a male stripper about the sexual
aggressiveness of women.In my humble lay Join 41,928 other followers
opinion, the sexual behaviour of women can
be situational. There is reproductive sex and Enter your email address
there is ’emotional’ sex and I don’t think you
can make much sense of it all without Sign me up
taking evolutionary factors into account.
Diana MacPherson
Posted July 8, 2013 at 7:20 am |
Permalink
Again, Pinker was talking about
fantasy. The word “fantasizes” is in
the quote.
Diane G.
Solid evidence?
One has to remember that there are
problems with data collected by survey and
interview. There have been quite a few
discussions about the reliability of what
different people are likely to divulge when
questioned.
There is such a huge element of social
conditioning in human sexual behavior that
I’m not sure it’s easy to say what may be
the evolutionarily derived parts.
And in fact, if we turn to animal models for
comparison–one word: bonobos!
Diane G.
I wasn’t talking about “rape fantasies.” (And BTW,
to the extent those may exist, they might very
likely have to do with cultural conditioning that
teaches women that they shouldn’t be
promiscuous, so that sex with a different partner
seems only excusable if it’s nonvoluntary.)
I just meant that women as well as men can
desire sex for sex’s sake…and appreciate one
nightstands and the like–sex without a lot of
baggage.
Diana MacPherson
No Diane, I know you didn’t say rape
fantasies but someone did (I’m too lazy too
look – migraines all week make Diana
lazy). But these are about fantasies not
actual behaviours and the evidence is the
plethora of romance novels for women
(which I find amusing myself because those
are so ridiculous but I’m not a normal
woman either).
Follow
Diane G.
Posted July 11, 2013 at 11:09 pm |
Permalink Follow “Why
And if I’m keeping the indents
straight, here, my reply above was to Get every new post delivered to
ksolway. (Though of course I’ve your Inbox.
another reply to you right above that
one.)
And hey–you’re not normal, I’m not Enter your email address

normal…hmmmm, are we sure? Even
if we’re not in the majority, we’re Sign me up
probably firmly on the frequency
distribution somewhere.
I don’t think the romance novel
(bleah) connection proves anything
regarding EP; again, if many women
are brought up with the traditional
double standard, the only sort of
sexual encounter they can
comfortably fantasize about is one
that’s seemingly against their will.
(Not that they have one… )
Diana MacPherson
Posted July 12, 2013 at 5:37 am
| Permalink
Yes – the 20th C version of lie
back and think of England?
Diane G.
Posted July 12, 2013 at 12:45
pm | Permalink
Ha, ha! I was thinking of free
will, given its frequent attention
here; but your interpretation
works as well.
5.
gbjames
Sub
jimroberts
sub
Michael Fisher
Groovy avatar Jim
A monochrome embossed or carved version that looks
like a bit like THIS perhaps?
jimroberts
Thank you.
6.
Jeremy Nel
Follow
Jerry, thank you SO MUCH for organising some top level critiques
of the this antiEP stuff.
Follow “Why
To my mind, Myers’ worst paragraph was the last one quoted:
I think good evo psych would focus on human universals (much
more likely to be driven by genetic properties!) than all this stuff Get every new post delivered to
seeking justifications for cultural differences between the sexes or your Inbox.
the races or arbitrary subgroups.
I think this rather gives the ideological game away. After claiming
that the underlying assumptions of evolutionary psychology are Enter your email address
wrong, he then goes on to suggest that it’s actually all OK so long
as the focus is restricted to evolutionary universals! But why Sign me up
exactly are they “more likely to be driven by genetic properties”?
They aren’t of course, but at least this way around you don’t get Build a website with WordPress.com
that “frisson of ideological disquiet” you might otherwise be forced
to endure.
Jeremy Nel
Oh, meant to add: the wonderful “frisson” phrase I quoted is
by Richard Dawkins, of course.
windy
It’s not necessarily an ideological argument – there has been
less time available for adaptations to evolve among human
subgroups (essentially the same point that Pinker made about
‘premodern’ times!) But, as you point out, it’s rather
inconsistent to say that the fundamental premises of a
discipline are wrong, and at the same time argue that it only
needs to change focus.
And PZ is missing a good reason why EP would put a bit more
emphasis on differences between humans rather than human
universals: there’s a better chance of being able to test
hypotheses about the former.
7.
moseszd
(I should be clear here that now that you’ve written this, the horde
of SJWs at Myer’s blog will likely descend and start putting words in
the mouths of others and the insults will start flying fastand
furious over your challenge of ‘Dear Leader’s’ horsecrap.)
Well, once you jump on one of the ‘isms’ SJW sharks, you’re going
to throw science out the window when ever it casts a negative light
on your unfalsifiable beliefs. What you’re seeing out of that group is
the natural and logical consequences of worshiping at the alter of
radical feminism and the replacement of thought, science and
skepticism for a quasireligious MarxistGenderFeminist dogma.
Anyway, gender feminists are not all of feminism. I believe I once
read that, as practicing feminists, the bulk of feminists in the West
are known as ‘equity feminists’. However, most of the feminist
movement is lead by the genderfeminists.
Equity Feminism is:
Sommers describes equity feminism as an ideology rooted in
classical liberalism, and that aims for full civil and legal equality for
women. Experimental psychologist Steven Pinker expands on
Sommers to write, “Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about
equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open
empirical issues in psychology or biology.”
Pinker is, like myself and much of my family & relatives, an equity
feminist.
He will likely be slimed, too.
Oh, nice topic. Glad you took it up. Good luck with the potential fall
out but I’m tired of the FtB trolls stinking up the Internet and have
better things to do than argue with oolOn, et. al..
Follow
Follow “Why
moseszd
one of the ‘isms’ SJW sharks
your Inbox.
That should have said: Join 41,928 other followers
one of the ‘isms’ beloveded by the SJW sharks
(I really suck at editing. I’m always messing things up…)
Sign me up
Larry Gay Build a website with WordPress.com
There are many things that impress me about Steven
Pinker. One of the most impressive is that he speaks in
virtually perfect paragraphs that need no editing
whatsoever. So what a surprise to see Jerry’s warning
today that Steve’s comments are offthecuff and not to
be held the usual standards of grammar and
punctuation. I have only one complaint with his
exposition: he forced me to go look up “synechdoche”
(spellchecker doesn’t like it) once again.
Diana MacPherson
Ha ha! I thought that as well. Steven Pinker’s
grammar is always perfect, even in casual
conversations and my sad posts are full of errors
even after I proof read them! I too looked up
synechdoche as well but happily on my Mac, I just
highlight the word and right click to look it up in
the dictionary.
Marta
Jeepers.
Speaking of “nice topic”, might I beg that the language used
when criticizing other websites be parked? It’s unnecessarily
divisive and derailing.
Will we never get to the place where we can talk about
controversial subjects without setting each other on fire when
we do it?
whyevolutionistrue
Marta is right here; I don’t approve of using this post to go
after other people or websites. While I was going after the
views of a group of people, as expressed by P.Z., I’d like to
keep the discussion on the topic of evolutionary psychology
itself. Stuff like “Dear Leader” is an ad hom that shouldn’t be
here.
Keep it classy, please, folks.
Jason
After reading your post, I’m fairly certain every Marxist
feminist in the world simultaneously facepalmed but aren’t
quite sure why. This is what happens when people in one field
comment outside their field. I have Gould, Dawkins, Pinker,
and Coyne on my shelf. Somehow I doubt any of you have Follow
Marx, Kollontai, Goldman, Spivak and Butler on yours. Pinker
sure as hell doesn’t, which became perfectly clear after his Follow “Why
embarrassing foray into feminism in The Blank Slate.
If Pinker gets slimed, it’s not for being an “equity” feminist,
it’s for deliberately choosing a simplistic, straw man Get every new post delivered to
dichotomy that utterly fails to account for the wide diversity your Inbox.
of feminist critiques. The originator of that system dumbs it Join 41,928 other followers
down to “liberal feminisms gooooooood, all other feminisms
baaaaaaaaaad” while blatantly misrepresenting radical Enter your email address
feminisms as being a cult of misandry and completely
ignoring all the (majority) literature to the contrary. If Pinker
gets slimed, it’s for being a privileged twit who feels entitled
Sign me up
to comment on matters far outside his field of expertise then
deliberately cherry picking junky sources that support his Build a website with WordPress.com
presupposed conclusions. Academic integrity, right there.
Meanwhile, on Jerry Coyne’s blog, these statements will move
absolutely no one to actually read feminist thinkers and
discover for themselves why Pinker’s dichotomy is bullshit,
yet will still accuse those of us who reject it of being
“dogmatic.” If there is a God, Irony is its name.
whyevolutionistrue
I will not have my friends insulted on this site. You
either apologize in your next post for calling Pinker a
privileged twit or you’ll need to find somewhere else to
comment.
And your level of invective and arrogance is, by the
way, a bit high for this site.
Jason
Also: I’ll concede on “twit.” That was going too
far. I was angry when I wrote it. While I respect
Pinker’s work, I had some serious issues with
some of his statements in The Blank Slate.
Jeff Johnson
Well, I’ve got Spivak: “Calculus on Manifolds” and the
first two volumes of “Differential Geometry”. You
probably don’t have those.
Jason
*snort*
I see what you did there.
andreschuiteman
That’s the good Spivak.
andreschuiteman
Somehow I doubt any of you have Marx,
Kollontai, Goldman, Spivak and Butler on
yours.
No, I must admit that I have very few, if any, books by
Follow
antidemocrats, bolsheviks and their apologists on my
shelves.
Follow “Why
This is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on Aleksandra Evolution Is True”
Kollotai:
Aleksandra Kollontai’s life has the quality
your Inbox.
of an exemplum for the feminist theorist
of practice. What is it to articulate the Join 41,928 other followers
revolutionary politics of class struggle
with a feminist vision? How does one plan Enter your email address
ideological transformation in the interest
of lasting social change? How should the Sign me up
socialist feminist understand her own
place in the sexual text? (…) These
instances give the merest hint of the
extreme moments of bourgeois feminism
in the English speaking First World.
“revolutionary politics”, “class struggle”, “bourgeois”.
This drivel was not written in the Soviet Union in 1926,
nor in China in 1950, nor even in Cambodia in
1976, but was published in the Minnesota Review in
1983. Some people never learn.
Jason
Not really the place for a discussion on this, but
would you care to point out what’s wrong with
what she wrote?
Kevin Alexander
Translate it into English and we can say
what’s wrong with it.
andreschuiteman
Do you mean apart from not criticising
Kollontai for joining the bolshevik thugs (on
the contrary calling her life an exemplum,
which I suppose is intended in a
complimentary fashion) and apart from
using without irony the Marxist cliches that
have been used as excuses to destroy
millions of lives? (From ‘bourgeois’ to ‘kulak’
to ‘enemy of the people’ are but small
steps, as we have seen.)
Well, apart from that, this piece is just
atrociously written, as Kevin Alexander
already indicated. It resembles a Google
translation of what may have been an only
slightly less atrociously written
Indian(?)original. I was actually being mild
when I called it drivel. ‘Garbage’ may have
been more accurate.
Jason
Permalink
1) Yikes, god forbid people read
things before speaking their minds on
it. For example, taking the time to
read Kollantai would reveal that she
was highly critical of the Bolsheviks
while they paid lip service to women’s
issues. How critical? Enough to have
herself booted from her position and
sent off as an ambassador.
Follow
2) This is conflating Marxism with
Stalinism. Unless you’d like to point
out which book or pamphlet within
Follow “Why
which Marx, Engels, Gramsci or Evolution Is True”
Lukács (that’s four of the most period
relevant thinkers. There are plenty to Get every new post delivered to
choose from) called for gulags, your Inbox.
extreme dogmatism, unscientific, Join 41,928 other followers
dogmabased farming methods which
led to mass starvation, et al. then Enter your email address
please, point me in their direction
because I would find their categorical
Sign me up
rejection of everything else these men
wrote fascinating. Otherwise, consider
toning down the ahistorical Build a website with WordPress.com
Marxism=mass death trope or the
absurd slippery slope that saying
certain words magically leads to
Stalinesque atrocities.
3) Spivak is also criticizing language
as she writes, and has addressed the
charge that her writing is inaccessible
multiple times. To me it is apparent
that she wrote in precisely the
manner she wanted to express herself
and, just like any other complex text
in the world, it falls on us to
understand it. Saying you don’t like
how it is written isn’t a substantive
critique, but a superficial complaint.
Imagine if someone came here and
argued that evolution is untrue
because they don’t understand it.
What would the response be? Why do
you think an exception should be
made when you use the same
argument?
I’ll grant you that Spivak is
notoriously difficult to read (if you
think the above paragraph is bad, try
“Three Women’s Texts and a Critique
of Imperialism.” That one made my
head spin). She writes in English (she
translated Jacques Derrida’s “Of
Grammatology” from French to
English) and she’s well aware of her
style. It’s difficult, not impossible. Her
writing is complex, but so are the
issues she discusses. If there’s a
problem with what she writes, let’s
hear it. But dismissing her because
she doesn’t write in the manner you’re
accustomed to? Sorry, not good
enough.
andreschuiteman
Permalink
This is all seriously offtopic, so
I’ll keep it as short as possible
(with apologies to Jerry).
(1) An ambassador representing
the Bolsheviks is still a
Bolshevik.
(2) Marx’s ‘Dictatorship of the
Proletariat’ has atrocities built
straight into the concept. After
all, what should be done with
the nonproletarians of the
world? The best they can hope
for is some kind of forced re
education. We all know how that
works out in practice. This is not
a slippery slope argument;
every single attempt to
establish a dictatorship of the Follow
proletariat has resulted in mass
atrocities and the establishment Follow “Why
of a new upper class of
privileged rulers. This looks Evolution Is True”
very much like an inevitable
outcome. There is not even a
your Inbox.
slippery slope. It is more like
jumping off the north face of the Join 41,928 other followers
Eiger without parachute and
expecting to survive. Enter your email address
I have to take issue with this
characterisation of yours:
Sign me up
“unscientific, dogmabased
farming methods which led to Build a website with WordPress.com
mass starvation.” You are
playing the apologist here. The
mass starvations under Stalin in
the 1920s and under Mao around
1960 were not the result of
incompetence and unscientific
farming methods. They were
caused mainly by the state
confiscating so much food from
the peasants (much of it for
export) that what was left was
insufficient to feed them.
Peasants were not considered
proletarians, so presumably this
was all part of the class struggle
against the bourgeoisie.
(3) As Wittgenstein stated,
“What can be said at all can be
said clearly; and whereof one
cannot speak thereof one must
be silent.” When someone
makes an effort to write as
cryptically as possible, as
Spivak apparently does, this is
most likely not evidence of deep
and significant thoughts but
rather an attempt to hide the
absence of such. It betrays at
the very least an inability to
communicate.
(Sorry, this is both too short
and too long at the same time.)
8.
Pliny the in Between
A problem with all of this is separating prejudice from fact which
includes the progressive aversion to even considering that there
may be biological factors at work. Skeptics can’t oppose the notion
of the absence free will from one side of their mouth while resisting
the idea that there may be very real programmed (some gender
specific) behaviors underlying some of our social ills.
If we ignore the evidence, no matter how uncomfortable it may be,
we open ourselves to the same criticisms leveled against the
religious.
Studying the root causes of these problems doesn’t condone the
actions. Reaching beyond our programming is the very basis of why
we have laws. With the right understanding, the laws of humankind
can overcome the laws of our nature.
9.
John C. Welch
After all, what field is more misused and misquoted
than evolutionary biology? I am a frequent recipient
of emails from Jews trying to convince me to reject
evolution because Darwin ultimately caused the
Holocaust. Follow
Well, Chemistry and physics come to mind
Follow “Why
But even my own field, computers and IT, is misused. Malware, Evolution Is True”
phishing and other such misuses of programming and security
techniques is a global multibillion dollar industry devoted to using Get every new post delivered to
a lack of skepticism so as to bilk people out of their savings and your Inbox.
identity. Devices that let you slurp up ATM mag stripe data and
PINs are now kits that require no mechanical or electrical expertise
at all, and will even email you the data so you don’t have to run the
risk of grabbing the devices off the ATMs you’ve attached them to.
Should we reject computers and computer programming because Sign me up
they are used for ill? I doubt that would even be taken seriously as
an idea, it’d be too inconvenient. The same thing with rejecting
physics, chemistry, or biology because they have been misused.
Ev psych is easy to reject, it’s still new, and you can’t point, to my
knowledge, at any work it’s yet done that would cause real
inconvenience if it were forgotten and deleted. So, it’s an easy
target for stuff like that panel.
I wish someone in the audience, some form of “skeptic” perhaps
would have asked the members of the panel about any peer
reviewed research they’d read in the 90 days prior to the panel, so
they were solidly familiar with the current state of ev psych.
I would imagine the answers would have been most illuminating.
10.
notsont
I think a lot of the…aversion, to much of EP is that it is quite often
used by people to justify actions, “See this study says men are
predisposed to do this (insert horrific act) therefore we shouldn’t
blame men when they do (insert horrific act)”
Jeanine
Rather like the free will argument, people should still be held
responsible for their actions. Having more information as to
why certain behaviors exist only expands our toolbox for
proper prevention and treatment. I don’t think anyone really
believes that it’s “ok” for males to rape females due to
evolutionary influences. I really, really hope that is the case
anyhow.
Boris Tchevchenko
That’s pretty much exactly what the naturalistic fallacy
is. Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s
right or appropriate. War is natural. Tribalism is
natural. Rape is natural. Natural =/= good.
Medicine isn’t natural. Technology isn’t natural. Any sort
of social order more complex than an extended family
group isn’t natural. Unatural =/= bad.
Jeanine
Ahh….I’m kind of embarrassed then. I didn’t think
that people…hrm…I can’t even put it into words…I
didn’t realize there was a title for that level of
gullibility.
Ben Goren
I don’t think people fall for it so much as
people think (hope / fear) that other people
will fall for it.
In PZ’s case, he’s afraid that evolutionary
Follow
psychology will reveal effective tricks for
men to use to get women into bed with
them, and that will lead to a culture of rape.
Follow “Why
The misogynist crowd will be looking for Evolution Is True”
excuses for their behavior with the hope
that it’ll let them get away with more shit. Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.
In all cases, everybody’s convinced that
they’re too smart to fall for that sort of
thing, themselves, yet they’re convinced
that nobody else is smart enough to figure it
out.
Sign me up
It’s actually a perfect parallel for the
accommodationist reasoning that we
shouldn’t disabuse the little people of their
religious fantasies because it might upset
them and then how will we control them?
Cheers,
b&
musical beef
Permalink
Well, quite a number of people do fall
for it, quite often, but in its very
slightly modified form, the Appeal to
Nature.
Take a stroll down the homeopathy
aisle (a major selling point is “all
natural!”), visit the RawForBeauty
Facebook page, and, oh my god! Did
you just eat a GMO?!
Ben Goren
Permalink
True, too true.
And, let’s not forget: hemlock is
natural, and Luther Burbank was
a genetic engineer….
But it is, as you note, a different
angle on the subject.
b&
andreschuiteman
Permalink
Those who argue against EP tend to
employ the Appeal to Consequences
fallacy, in particular by making the
strawman argument that those who
accept EP tend to fall for the
Naturalistic fallacy. It’s fallacies all
the way down.
Jeff Johnson
Yes, because another obvious conclusion in the context
of evolutionary psychology, heavily backed up by
anthropology and by our observations of present day
society, is that over time humanity has developed
civilization, culture, and various societal institutions that
counterbalance some of our more antisocial traits.
Follow
The argument is not about the existence of such
changes, but over the extent to which biological and
cultural evolution play a determining role. This is
Follow “Why
mostly a question with no clear answers though, kind of Evolution Is True”
like the nature vs nurture debate.
your Inbox.
Ben Goren
Indeed, there have been enough generations of
humans with some form of civilization for Sign me up
evolution to have worked its magic. It’s quite
likely that the allele frequency has shifted in the
past ten thousand years in such a way that
today’s humans are more fit for living in civil
society than our forebears.
Though, of course, such changes may well be
subtle given the relatively short timespan in
question.
Cheers,
b&
Inshockafteralltheseyears
I would like to think so.
Jeff Johnson
I’m speculating like a popular evolutionary
psychologist here, but a few million years of
tool making and social cooperation in
huntergatherer bands must have been
laying important biological foundations that
enabled civilization to take hold (no
teleology intended here) while cultural
evolution fed off the expansion of brain
capacity. A dynamic process of feedback
between biological and cultural evolution
must have occurred over this time period,
with the rate and role of cultural evolution
accelerating as more complex societies
developed.
It seems a maddening but also fascinating
task to try to untangle the roles of biology
and cultural evolution, for example, in the
development of language. Cultural evolution
has the property of being transmissible
horizontally as well as from generation to
generation. It’s an interesting question to
ask whether language was solely enabled by
expansion of brain capacity, or whether the
success of primitive language formation
among early hominins triggered the
expansion of brain capacity. I don’t know if
anyone has a convincing theory about this.
Something I need to read more about (when
I find the time).
Taylor M. Brown
Look up “Naturalistic Fallacy.”
Gary W
Follow
I think a lot of the…aversion, to much of EP is that it is quite
often used by people to justify actions, “See this study says
men are predisposed to do this (insert horrific act) therefore Follow “Why
we shouldn’t blame men when they do (insert horrific act)” Evolution Is True”
I think your “quite often” is a gross exaggeration, and I defy Get every new post delivered to
you to find even a single example of a reputable EP your Inbox.
researcher who has done what you claim above. I think it’s
rare even in pop reporting of EP. In any case, rejecting
science because some people use it to make specious social
or political arguments (see also Social Darwinism) is
completely irrational. The problem with people like PZ is that
they are unwilling or unable to distinguish the science from Sign me up
ideology.
Ben Goren
notsont wrote that people often use the findings to
justify actions, and even gave the example of, “See this
study says….”
Your defiant challenge that no reputable researcher has
done that is a shameless strawman.
Knowing you, you’ll now shift the goalposts and insist
that I or notsont provide peerreviewed references
describing people who distort the peerreviewed
literature like that, but I’m personally not interested in
playing your games today.
Cheers,
b&
Gary W
notsont wrote that people often use the findings to
justify actions
What “people?” Where did they say this? Since
you seem to agree with notsont that this happens
“quite often,” you shouldn’t have any problem
coming up with a long list of names and quotes.
Jeff Johnson
Even prior to the popularization of
evolutionary psychology, there have been
prevalent cases of evolutionary, biological,
genetic justifications for male sexual
behavior such as rape or promiscuity.
Who hasn’t encountered the “she asked for
it” justification? Then the Senate candidate
from Missouri for the R’s who claimed that a
woman’s body “shuts all that down” during
rape, a biological justification for lessening
the concern about ensuring access to
abortion in the case of rape induced
unwanted pregnancy.
Who has never heard a man make excuses
for his infidelities in terms of the biological
imperative for a male to spread his seed?
So while I can’t cite specific examples of
popular media citing an EP based
justification for some bad behavior, who can
look at the history of male bastards,
especially conservative male bastards,
excusing sexist behavior by appealing to
nature and biology, and sincerely doubt that
this more “sophisticated” form of the same
thing would not be taken advantage of by
likeminded opportunists?
It would shock me to learn that Rush
Follow
Limbaugh had never appealed to some
popularized notion of evolutionary
psychology in either justifying conservatives
Follow “Why
or denouncing liberals. Evolution Is True”
This is not a reference to actual EP Get every new post delivered to
scholarship, but it is an example of your Inbox.
corrupted evolutionary psychology infecting
pop culture:
http://jezebel.com/5941433/youcantell
evolutionarypsychologyisnttruebecause
itsnottrue
Sign me up

Gary W
Permalink
Who hasn’t encountered the “she
asked for it” justification? Then the
Senate candidate from Missouri for
the R’s who claimed that a woman’s
body “shuts all that down” during
rape, a biological justification for
lessening the concern about ensuring
access to abortion in the case of rape
induced unwanted pregnancy.
Neither falsely asserting that a
woman consented to sex nor falsely
asserting that a woman cannot
become pregnant through rape has
anything to do with evolutionary
psychology.
Who has never heard a man make
excuses for his infidelities in terms of
the biological imperative for a male to
spread his seed?
I’ve never heard this. Please
document it. And again, this has
nothing to do with evolutionary
psychology. A man could try to excuse
his infidelities on the grounds of a
strong desire to have sex with other
women regardless of whether that
desire was the result of biology or
culture.
This is not a reference to actual EP
scholarship
Yes, not only is it not a reference to
actual EP scholarship, it’s completely
worthless. An opinion piece attacking
EP by a writer on a feminist blog who
clearly has no understanding of the
field and who doesn’t even pretend to
offer a serious critique. The title alone
(“You Can Tell Evolutionary
Psychology Isn’t True Because It’s Not
True”) should have clued you in to the
vapidity of the piece.
Diana MacPherson
Permalink
Yes, I think the “boys will be
boys” excuse predates EP. So
does girls are made of sugar
and spice and everything nice
while boys are made from slugs
and snails and puppydogs’ tails.
I always thought boys were
made from way better stuff. I
was indignant of this nursery
rhyme as a little girl but my
point is, these are cultural
attitudes independent of EP. Follow
Follow “Why
gbjames Get every new post delivered to
Posted July 10, 2013 at 5:52 am | your Inbox.
Permalink
It isn’t just Rush Limbaugh. Using
“Democrat” where “Democratic” is Enter your email address
correct is standard Republican
language use. They use it as a sign of Sign me up
disrespect.
Jeff Johnson
| Permalink
Indeed they do. It practically
qualifies as a shibboleth for clan
membership.
You probably meant to reply to
this post:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/a
defenseofevolutionary
psychologymostlybysteve
pinker/#comment465883
gbjames
| Permalink
Yes, Jeff. Sometimes WordPress
just doesn’t cooperate with me.
Diane G.
Posted July 10, 2013 at 1:07 pm
| Permalink
I thought they used it so as not
to give Dems the benefit of
sounding democratic, an
otherwise positive word and one
that connotes our national ideals
better than the perhaps more
apt ‘republican.’
But of course, that has the
result you mention.
We could try calling them the
Republic party and see how it
goes. Or maybe have a war of
syllable attrition…
gbjames
| Permalink
You sometimes hear the tea
party types run on about the US
being a republic not a
democracy. It’s how they spend
their time.
Diane G.
| Permalink Follow
Well, good, if it keeps them
occupied and out of everyone Follow “Why
else’s hair. Evolution Is True”
Though I might suggest Get every new post delivered to
crocheting. your Inbox.
Ben Goren
Sign me up
Gary, ample examples have already been Build a website with WordPress.com

posted in this example.
But here’s a good starting point for your
further research:
http://bit.ly/vtrdvR
Cheers,
b&
Gary W
Permalink
Gary, ample examples have already
been posted in this example.
What examples?
But here’s a good starting point for
your further research
It’s not my job to look for evidence for
your assertions. That’s your job. Show
us your evidence.
Ben Goren
Permalink
Since you’re too lazy to even
bother to click on a link that I
provided for you — or too blind
to notice that I provided one —
then I really don’t see any point
in providing you with any replies
past one for you to use as an
excuse for further bloviation.
Cheers,
b&
NewEnglandBob
Permalink
He just did.
On that note, I unsubscribe.
Gary W
Permalink
Your link is to a google search
box. I asked for evidence that
“people often use the findings
[of evolutionary psychology] to
justify actions.” Still waiting for Follow
it.
Follow “Why
Leo your Inbox.
Permalink
Pharos University of Alexandria? But Enter your email address

seriously.
Sign me up
Pickup artists use evolutionary
psychology even less than my
grandmother uses astronomy when Build a website with WordPress.com
she cooks. So pointing at
http://www.pickupartistforum.com/
as proof of anything is a bit pointless.
Also, as fun as they sometimes are to
read, it’s a good idea to take any
atricle published on a Gawker site
with several very large grains of salt.
As for the ‘mate preferences with
presumed evolutionary roots’,
Chrostopher Boehm in his ‘Moral
Origin’ (p. 299) paints a somewhat
different picture of what the cavemen
from whose shadow we’re supposed to
be stepping out of wanted.
Ben Goren
Permalink
The question isn’t whether the
PUAs and the MRAs and the rest
are legitimately applying the
information learned from
science, any more than than the
Social Darwinists are actually
preaching anything related to
anything Darwin himself wrote.
Nobody here is suggesting that
they are.
The point we’re making is that
they craft their gobbledygook
to rhyme with the findings of
evolutionary psychologists so
that they themselves take on a
patina of something they hope
will resemble legitimacy.
And that itself is only a
sideshow, because the real act
is that PZ would seem to think
that the fact that the misogyny
corps is wont to do that is
sufficient reason to deepsix the
whole field of evolutionary
psychology.
b&
11.
Boris Tchevchenko
EvoPsych isn’t misused often by “people”, it’s misused by a small
group of rabid idiots who call themselves PUA, or “pick up artists”,
basically a bunch of conmen selling selfjustified rage to insecure
hormonal teenagers.
It’s also misused and misrepresented by what I would call the flip
side of that “gender war”, the dogmatic and unskeptical radical
feminists. One of the other speakers on that pannel was supposed
to be Rebecca Watson, of “men are testosterone damaged women”
fame, which is completely an evolutionary psychological arguement
to make. The only difference is that it criticized the “enemy”, and Follow
thus was a perfectly valid arguement. There is no consistent
philosophy there beyond “women good, men bad”. Follow “Why
Which completely ignores that evo psych doesn’t set out to take any
sides on the “gender war”, but it’s conclusions can be rabidly Evolution Is True”
misused by misogynists and misandrists respectively.
your Inbox.
wildhog
“EvoPsych isn’t misused often by “people”, it’s misused by a
small group of rabid idiots who call themselves PUA, or “pick Sign me up
up artists”, basically a bunch of conmen selling selfjustified
rage to insecure hormonal teenagers.” Build a website with WordPress.com
Would love it if you could provide some examples of such
misuse of evophych.
Jason
Google “pick up artist.”
TA DAH.
wildhog
I googled “pick up artist”, but didnt find any such
examples. I did find interesting articles like this
one:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the
attractiondoctor/201301/dopickartist
techniquesreallywork
The author does make reference to evopsych,
saying, “When [pick up artist techniques] work,
they do so by tapping into some very basic,
evolutionary and psychological mechanisms.”
However, the author has a phd in social and
personality psychology, as well as a Master in
social work (not what I could call a rabid idiot),
and I wouldnt describe the readers of “Psychology
Today” as “insecure hormonal teenagers.”
Perhaps you’re viewing this topic through the lens
of some sort of issue of your own?
Leo
There’s a(n) (in)famous book called “The
Game” by a gentleman who calls himself
Neil Strauss. I haven’t studied it in detail,
but from what I’ve read, it has nothing to do
with nor is it based on science of any kind
(evolutionary psychology included).
Pirate
For a specific example, google “Chateau Heartiste”, but
only if you have a strong stomach. The proprietor of
that fine website often uses pop evopsych to bolster
his reprehensible views on gender relations.
mordacious1
“… Rebecca Watson, of “men are testosterone damaged
women” fame…”
Follow
I might be wrong, but I thought it was Laden who said that
men’s brains are just testosterone damaged women’s brains. Follow “Why
12. your Inbox.
Stephen Barnard Join 41,928 other followers
I read PZ’s blog and generally like his point of view, but I think he’s
sometimes too motivated by ideology. Evo psych is vulnerable to
justso stories in pop science journalism, but that doesn’t mean the Sign me up
whole enterprise is wothless.
dongiovanni
Sounds about right… then again, everyone has some
objectionable qualities.
13.
Sam
Pinker is one of my favorites — especially since he offers sound
arguments on topics of great interest to me, language and the
mind, and lately a topic I didn’t know I was interested in: the
decline of violence.
“the fundamental premise of evolutionary psychology is absolutely
sound: our brains, like the rest of our bodies, are the product of
evolution and natural selection over the past six million years, and
some of our current behaviors reflect that evolution.”
I think that’s about as succinct as it can be put.
D. Taylor
Pinker’s capacity to be both succinct and profound at the
same time is, indeed, extraordinary. My favorite example is
from a 2007 occasion when Pinker was a guest on The Colbert
Report. Colbert asked:
“How does the brain work – in five words or less?”
Without hesitation, Pinker shot back:
“Let’s see. Brain cells fire in patterns.”
So absolutely spot on! He is remarkable. And as someone
who has followed evolutionary psychology closely for years
myself, I am quite convinced that Pinker understands it very
well.
Jeff Johnson
Colbert is often able to befuddle his guests with his
quickness and spontaneous offthewall psuedohyper
conservative opinions.
I can easily imagine Pinker being able to run circles
around Colbert. He seems way smarter than even the
smartest people I’ve ever met.
Of course, if I had to guess Colbert’s response, it would
be “I’m sorry, but you lose, that’s seven words”
(counting “Let’s see.”)
14.
krzysztof1
I continue to be impressed with Pinker’s clarity of thought.
Follow
15. Follow “Why

Cliff Melick
Thanks for this post, Jerry. Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.
I can’t help feeling a bit sad, however, that in all probability, most
of the people at the conference who were subjected to Myer’s
criticism of evolutionary psychology will not see the responses from Enter your email address
Steve Pinker that you posted.
Sign me up
16. Build a website with WordPress.com
musical beef
It seems to this nonbiologist, nonpsychologist that PZ’s use of
“justification” in the bit to which Pinker didn’t respond is an obvious
mischaracterization of evpsych’s goal.
Explanation is not the same as justification.
When evpsych claims to explain my desire for lots of highcalorie
foods, it is not giving me the ok to binge on brownies and
doughnuts every day.
musical beef
Are there research/evidentiary problems with EP? Maybe. As I
wrote, I am a layperson. I’m neither defending nor indicting
the field. But that word “justification” seems obviously
problematic.
Grania Spingies
“When evpsych claims to explain my desire for lots of high
calorie foods, it is not giving me the ok to binge on brownies
and doughnuts every day.”
Exactly.
Being able to explain something is not the same as excusing
it at all.
17.
andreschuiteman
How many evolutionary psychologists were on that panel? None, of
course. A panellist with actual credentials in the field might have
burst their ideological bubble. Ignorance is bliss.
I find it disappointing and disturbing to see PZ Myers, who has done
good work fighting creationism, descending to creationistlevel
science denialism himself. Science and ideology mix as poorly as
science and religion.
Ben Goren
It also suggests a profound lack of confidence on his part in
his own position.
If the territory he’s staked our is sound, he has nothing to
worry about. If he’s intellectually honest and new findings
suggest his position isn’t sound, he still has nothing t worry
about; just revise the position based on the new discovery
and go from there.
But not even looking — and especially discouraging others
from looking and being dismissive of their findings — because
Follow
the findings might not comport with your current position?
That’s the defining characteristic of an ideologue.
Follow “Why
And PZ damned well should know better. Really, he has no Evolution Is True”
excuse.
Cheers,
your Inbox.
b& Join 41,928 other followers
andreschuiteman
Posted July 7, 2013 at 12:04 pm | Permalink Sign me up
It’s even worse than not looking. It’s deliberately
misrepresenting a field of enquiry because its findings
are not convenient for your ideologydriven position.
gillt
Ben
First, they haven’t read widely in the
discipline, and are criticizing either pop
culture versions of the field
But that’s not the case Ben. PZ has read and reviewed
some Evo Psych papers before
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/category/bad_science/evolutionary
psychology/
Now it’s obvious to me that PZ is selectively applying
hyperskepticism to a field he doesn’t like as opposed to
other similar and wellestablished fields such as
quantitative genetics.
T.
From PZ article you quote:
“A recent analysis of the top journals in six sub‐
disciplines of Psychology from 2003‐2007 revealed
that 68% of subjects came from the US, and a full
96% of subjects were from Western industrialized
countries, specifically North America, Europe,
Australia, and Israel (Arnett 2008). 67% of the
American samples (and 80% of the samples from
other countries) were composed solely of
undergraduates in psychology courses”
How is this hyperskepticism? If I would see a,
say, obgyn paper in which 67% white college
women I would consider it spurious and useless
(it is a wellknow fact africanamerican women
have more problem in childbirth and that lower
income people are less likely to be healthy in
general).
___
Also, I find amusing the idea that women couldn’t
have a rapegene, if such a gene exists (but
please, before show me the armgene and the
eargene*). Isn’t it better for me if I can, say,
rape Benedict Cumberbatch? He is intelligent,
handsome and has proved to have good genetic,
and having an offspring with him would be surely
better than having it with just everybody. He
doesn’t want to breed with me? Too bad. Lets
rape him and get his baby.
The fact that women often find ways to get a good
genetic for their offspring is so forgotten… (1 over
7 child on average is not child of his father. Ops.
Another interesting tidbits of information:
overhelming, the biofather will be of HIGHER
SOCIAL STANDING than the socialfather. The
number is a avarage, the more monogamous
women? Amish women, 1 in 20 children not child Follow
of the socialfather).
*I am fully aware that there is no such thing as a
Follow “Why
eargene or a armgene. Our bodies are made Evolution Is True”
from the complex interaction of many genes.
Genes like the BRCA mutation that code for a Get every new post delivered to
particular disease are relatively rare, and getting your Inbox.
cancer is a lot easier to code than rape is. Join 41,928 other followers
Similarly, our brains are coded by several genes
working in veery complex ways. As such, I find Enter your email address
the idea of “finding the rapegene” amusing. Find
me the autismgene, since we are at it… *lesigh*
Possibly, there are many genes that codes for
Sign me up
autism, too. And there may be substitution in
which some genes may be substitute for others… Build a website with WordPress.com
gillt
If true, then it is a suspiciously odd oversight to dedicate part
of a panel to criticizing a scientific discipline and not invite
any researchers/experts from that discipline. I suppose one
could argue that since this isn’t a science (but science fiction)
conference therefore we shouldn’t expect discussions about
actual science to be very serious or objective…though the
organizers did go out of their way to invite a lot of biologists,
biologists who aren’t evolutionary psychologists by training or
occupation.
18.
Jeff Johnson
When E.O. Wilson published Sociobiology I think much, but not all,
resistence to it was effectively political correctness.
It was an article of liberal faith that the human could be remade
into something, if not perfect, at least something without racism,
sexism, violence, and other pernicious traits that always seem to
throw a wrench into any dreams of utopia. One way this faith is
characterized is in modeling the human character as a “Blank
Slate”. I certainly adopted this faith for much of my life.
To challenge this faith with the notion that there are negative
aspects of human nature that are instinctual and biological, rather
than conditioned by or learned by negative reinforcement from the
environment, wired in rather than being theoretically unlearnable or
correctable, was an unpardonable affront to a lot of political
ideology.
When I first read P.Z. Myers quote that “developmental plasticity” is
everything, it immediately set off the “Blank Slate” alarm in my
brain. It raises the suspicion that his thinking is clouded to some
degree by a committment to political correctness. And sure enough
Pinker in this email suggests that relying on plasticity is a kind of
substitute for the Blank Slate, which essentially is the belief that
the human can learn or unlearn any traits, and thus be molded by
society into the ideal citizen of liberal utopia. The truth is messier
than that of course.
Just over a decade ago I read Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate”,
after devouring an earlier book of his “The Language Instinct”. Prior
to that most of my education and self education had been limited to
physics, math, and computer technology. I had never studied
biology, just a tiny bit of psychology, little politics, history,
economics, anthropology, or philosophy. All that stuff just seemed
to be messy symptomatic specific cases or conditional contingent
embodiments of the more noble and fundamental truths of math
and physics, and thus for me less interesting.
Of course that was a silly selflimiting viewpoint in many respects,
a kind of nerdly refuge in familiar territory, and The Blank Slate
really opened my eyes, changed my thinking on many subjects, and
made me fascinated for the first time with something I had always
kind of taken for granted, the human brain and consciousness. It
awakened my interest in biology, evolution, and all things human.
Anyone who hasn’t read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, I can’t
Follow
recommend it enough. I think it is the best of all of his books.
He starts by challenging three common notions that affect people’s Follow “Why

thinking about humans, three notions that are opposed to the idea Evolution Is True”
that certain aspects of human nature are inherent and biological: 1.
The Blank Slate 2. The Noble Savage, and 3. The Ghost in the Get every new post delivered to
Machine. your Inbox.
Each these notions have long been used to argue against the notion Join 41,928 other followers

of a genetically based biological human nature. In the first part of
the book Pinker entirely demolishes each of these notions. Enter your email address
He then goes about examining the implications for a variety
Sign me up
concerns of society, social science, and humanities, including
politics, art, economics, feminism, racism, conservatism,
liberalism, etc. Build a website with WordPress.com
The liberal reaction to Wilson’s Sociobiology turns out to have
included many misconceptions, as Pinker successfully argues.
Pinker shows that the idea of a biological nature actually reinforces
some liberal ideals while contradicting others, and the same goes
for conservative ideals. But he shows how this better understanding
of the human being can improve how we think about and order
human society.
When I read this book it challenged several cherished notions and
articles of faith, and the result was that rare thing, a book that
actually changed my mind about many things.
Perhaps I need to reread the book. It may be the case that much of
the thinking and argumentation of this book has been broadly
absorbed into academic culture and thinking in many fields. So
many of his arguments may seem less provocative or exciting
today than they did when I first read it. But I still consider this to
be one of the best and important books I’ve read in my lifetime.
gbjames
I completely agree with the value of The Blank Slate.
musical beef
“…can learn or unlearn…”
I think an even better way of describing the fallacy of the
Blank Slate is to say that we are born without instincts, that
nothing about our behavior or nature is hardwired, and that
everything is therefore necessarily learned.
Any parent who was paying attention during their child’s first
couple of years will recognize that as baloney.
And I must concur. The Blank Slate is a great book, and
remarkably broad. So many issues areas of human endeavor
are discussed.
19.
wildhog
I really enjoyed this post. I was raised by a feminist mother who
was probably a “blank slater”. It was evopsych that rescued me
from cluelessness about the sexes and human nature in general.
“Second, it’s pretty clear that the opposition to evolutionary
psychology from these quarters is ideologically rather than
scientifically motivated.”
I have an ex who fits that description perfectly. Ironically, when we
first met, the thing we connected over was a book by SJ Gould and
an interest in evobiology. Fastfoward a few years and she became
a masters student in American History. The deep immersion in that
program seemed to do her mind more harm than good. I showed
her an article by Pinker at one point and she was enraged by it. She
made the assertion that evopsych was about justifying racism and
sexism. (Of course, she didnt believe race exists.) Follow
Follow “Why
Jason Evolution Is True”
Wow. Sounds like you could learn a thing or two from her. your Inbox.
1) Evopsych, like Social Darwinism before it, does justify Join 41,928 other followers

these things. If true, we can’t be mad at humans for being
racists any more than we can be mad at cats for scratching Enter your email address
things. It’s part of their nature. It’s essentialism, an old idea
that’s been done before. Sign me up
2) On no planet is there an inconsistency between considering
race as a social construction and thinking people are racists. Build a website with WordPress.com
Even though Jesus probably never existed, people are still
Christians. Even though race doesn’t exist, people are still
racists.
Gary W
Evopsych, like Social Darwinism before it, does justify
these things.
Nonsense. EP is an effort to describe and understand
why people think and behave as they do, not to justify
any behavior.
Jeff Johnson
I totally agree: nonsense.
There is a big difference between understanding
and explaining something, and justifying it.
There have always been men who would try to
justify rape. They will use any tool they can find,
including EP. Just because ignorant people use EP
to justify something doesn’t mean one can blame
EP for that.
Oh, and I forgot to sub…
wildhog
“Evopsych, like Social Darwinism before it, does justify
these things. If true, we can’t be mad at humans for
being racists”
Sure we can. Just because we have a tendency doesnt
mean we have to act on it.
Ben Goren
As has already been pointed out repeatedly, just this is
the naturalistic fallacy.
For example, we are evolutionarily predisposed to like
foods that are sweet, but that doesn’t justify eating
nothing but ice cream. It is, however, essential to
understanding why you might feel an urge to eat
nothing but ice cream, and make it possible to come up
with ways to eat better food.
You’d be an idiot for blaming personal obesity on
evolutionary factors that cause somebody to eat only
ice cream…and you’ve be even more of an idiot to insist
that we shouldn’t study the evolutionary origins of our
food preferences because somebody might then get fat
after reading the study and then only eating ice cream.
Follow
Cheers,
b& Follow “Why

Diana MacPherson
your Inbox.
….puts down big spoon and skulks away from
huge bowl of ice cream. Joking of course but Enter your email address
completely agree here. I really like knowing the
answers to things like this but I’m not going to
use it to justify my behaviour (except in jokes).
Sign me up
Ben Goren
Well, there are behaviors that you can have
some evolutionary justification in engaging
in — such as snacking on nuts and berries
and eating plenty of fresh and minimally
processed food, much of which still remains
the tastiest options.
But ya gotta use some criteria in addition to
evolution / history to justify such things.
b&
Jeff Johnson
Who needs evolutionary psychology as a scape
goat? The Devil made me do it.
Ben Goren
Did I twist your arm? Did I hold a gun to
your head? Did I threaten your family?
Well, did I?
Sheesh. Why the hell am I the one who
always gets the blame? Sure be nice for
people to take some personal responsibility
for the actions for a change….
Cheers,
b&
threeflangedjavis
Actually, you might be able to blame obesity on
genes.Their levels of hormones indicating fullness
differ from the norm. The desire for fatty and
sugary foods is also affected by these hormone
levels. It would take an astonishing level of
willpower to overcome a constant craving for
fatty foods.
Ben Goren
There’s very likely a genetic component to
obesity — but that most emphatically
doesn’t mean that all people who are obese
are obese because of their genetic makeup,
or that those whose obesity comes at least
in part from their genetic makeup are
doomed to obesity. Follow
As for the willpower question…there are
ways to help mitigate the problem. For
Follow “Why
example, if you were to stuff yourself silly Evolution Is True”
with fresh vegetables, that would help
reduce your cravings. Further, if you only Get every new post delivered to
permit yourself to indulge in your cravings your Inbox.
after you’ve eaten an entire bunch of celery Join 41,928 other followers
and an entire head of cabbage, you’re
probably not going to want to eat as much Enter your email address
of whatever you’re craving — and, when
you do, the deleterious effects won’t be so
Sign me up
bad. And there aren’t any deleterious health
effects from stuffing yourself silly with fresh
vegetables. Build a website with WordPress.com
I’d suggest that almost all dietary problems
could be greatly diminished by telling
people to start every meal by stuffing
themselves silly with fresh vegetables.
Cheers,
b&
Jeff Johnson
Re: race, the fact that humans are able to generate and
use social constructions at all probably has an EP
explanation, which throws some irony into the simplistic
view that EP justifies racism.
Sure, the biological basis for race is thin to non
existent, but human psychology certainly seems to
include a fear of the other, of anything foreign, strange,
unusual, or different. But EP can also explain why
humans can lose that fear when the strange is rendered
familiar through extended contact.
It’s not as if EP denies plasticity. It helps define some
limits to plasticity.
Gary W
Sure, the biological basis for race is thin to non
existent
Not true. See this, for example.
gbjames
What particular definition of “race” are you using?
musical beef
Regarding no 1:
You’ve just made the same argument William Lane
Craig makes when he insists that if god were non
existent, we’d be no more accountable than lions that
“murder” or sharks that “rape”; that without god there
can be no “murder” or “rape” because animals do it and
we don’t call it “murder” or “rape” and we would simply
be another kind of animal instead of god’s special pets.
Shelly Kagan quickly dispatched this argument by noting
that the cognitive differences between organisms
matter. A 1yearold who destroys a piece of your
property hasn’t committed a crime but if an adult does
so, s/he is a vandal because of the disparity in cognitive Follow
capabilities between the two. When it comes to humans
and animals, our bigger brains mean we have to Follow “Why
measure ourselves against higher standards.
Like Spidey says: with great power comes great
responsibility. Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.

articulett
Posted July 7, 2013 at 6:42 pm | Permalink Sign me up
Although evopsych might make us more likely to
understand racism/tribalism and the like, it doesn’t Build a website with WordPress.com
make us more likely to justify these things, silly! Evo
psych might also help explain why men are more likely
to be violent than women or why women are more
likely to be risk averse than men– or why babies suffer
separation anxiety at a certain age– But that is hardly
the same as endorsing such traits. To the extent that
genes influence these traits, they can be selected for or
against in the environment. Human clearly evolved “to
be” very sexual and produce lots of offspring very
easily without trying to hard… that doesn’t mean most
humans think that big families are good or that most of
us don’t attempt to limit our reproduction while still
enjoying sex.
Think of the traits that allow men to control harems–
surely the genes involved in those traits are
preferentially passed on as are the traits of women who
have the most children (submissive/religious?). The X
chromosome spends 2/3 of it’s time in woman and so
we’d expect the genes on there to favor health and
reproductive success of woman– whereas, genes on the
Y chromosome will be selected in accordance with how
well their owner does in the reproduction lottery.
20.
Jason
Spare me your moaning about politically/ideologicallymotivated
responses. Science has always been subsumed in ideology and
politics, and anyone who denies this either hasn’t adequately
studied its history, ignores it, or hasn’t been keeping up. From the
racist biology of the early twentieth century to the weaponization of
physics for political ends to the profitdriven funding of scientific
research, science is and always has been TOP TO BOTTOM a
politically and ideologically saturated endeavor. I’m sure Mr. Coyne
feels it whenever he’s searching for grant money. Objective inquiry
is the ideal, not the reality, nor can it be when conducted by
subjective beings with interests and biases. (Before someone
constructs another straw man, no, I am not claiming that all science
is based on ideological whim nor that we should reject science
because of its external influences.)
Now we’re confronted with a branch of “science” (apparently
resurrected essentialism based almost entirely on speculation
without the kind of evidence trail the rest of evolutionary studies
have at their disposal passes for science these days) that is nearly
indistinguishable from Social Darwinism. If the response has been
too political for your taste, it’s because the science is too political
for ours.
Marta
An otherwise excellent argument ruined by the manner in
which you make it.
Eesh. It’s like I’m the diary police or something.
Jeff Johnson
Follow
Yes, overcoming the opening “Spare me your moaning”
made me expend some useless energy overcoming the
impulse to want to disagree with everything the author Follow “Why
wrote, simply because of that tone. Evolution Is True”
There are many good points about the commonly Get every new post delivered to
understood notion that science is a double edged sword, your Inbox.
and society can be prone to misusing the findings of
science.
But I think it veers way off course by comparing Enter your email address

evolutionary psychology to such societal misuses of
science, and especially by comparing it to Social Sign me up
Darwinism. Such a comparison can only be made based
on a popularized oversimplification of EP. To refute this
idea, one need only reread what Pinker wrote in his
email above.
Jason
Fair enough. I was pretty cranky when I wrote it.
andreschuiteman
You are confusing the (ab)use of science with science itself. If
you want to discard theories of evolutionary psychology you
should do that by pointing out why a specific, published and
peerreviewed paper is flawed, not by throwing around vague
insinuations about essentialism or by comparing EP to a
discredited social movement (not a science) like social
Darwinism. I guess you are not a scientist.
wildhog
“Now we’re confronted with a branch of “science” (apparently
resurrected essentialism based almost entirely on speculation
without the kind of evidence trail the rest of evolutionary
studies have at their disposal passes for science these days)
that is nearly indistinguishable from Social Darwinism.”
Nearly indistinguishable? No. Social Darwinism seeks to
justify incompassionate behavior. Evolutionary biology only
seeks to understand the evolutionary origins of our
psychological mechanisms. If you cant distinguish between
justifying an action and understanding motivation, that says
something about you, not the science.
gillt
I am not claiming that all science is based on
ideological whim nor that we should reject
science because of its external influences.)
Then you just undercut your entire point for you devote the
entire paragraph to the claim that the entire scientific
enterprise, from securing funding to interpreting data to its
history, is political. Maybe it’s just the kind of science you
don’t undersand that gets tarred with subobjectivism.
Jason
Baseless speculation is baseless. The point was not to
make a categorical statement. Gravity is pretty non
political but where there are social implications, history
Follow
has taught us to proceed with caution.
Follow “Why
gillt
Posted July 7, 2013 at 5:06 pm | Permalink Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.
Instead of telling, show us the pairwise
comparison of EP and “the rest of evolutionary Join 41,928 other followers
studies” that you undertook which supports your
claim that EP is Social Darwinism and Enter your email address
“resurrected essentialism.”
Sign me up
Gary W
You haven’t shown that evolutionary psychology is
“baseless speculation.” You haven’t offered any
serious scientific critique of the field at all. You
just keep uttering your magic words
(“essentialism!” “speculation!”) as if that
somehow constitutes a serious argument.
threeflangedjavis
It’s very frustrating when you just know you
are right but just can’t find that smoking gun
to kill off the opposition. Have some
compassion for the guy.
dongiovanni
Alan Sokal might want a word with you.
21.
gillt
JAC:
First, they haven’t read widely in the discipline, and
are criticizing either popculture versions of the field…
Which is what Pinker does here with a field whose “sociology” he is
obviously unfamiliar.
P:
Plasticity became an allpurpose fudge factor in the
1990s (just like “epigenetics” is today).
whyevolutionistrue
Sorry, but I happen to know that Steve knows a great deal
about epigenetics, and so do I. In fact, we both know at least
enough to see that the “fudge factor” comment is pretty
accurate, for epigenetics is often invoked as the “missing
element” in the Darwinian synthesis on specious grounds. I’ve
posted on this quite often.
gillt
Yes, and I’ve commented on some of those posts and,
while generally okay, pointed out where they
oversimplify or are are otherwise lacking.
Granted it maybe be true that just like in popculture
Follow
epigenetics may be used as a fudge factor among
evolutionary biologists but questions in evolutionary
biology are not where most epigenetic research is
Follow “Why
conducted. Look to cancer and biomedical research. For Evolution Is True”
those in the field who want to stay abreast, you could
do worse than subscribe to Epigenie’s newsletter* (a Get every new post delivered to
topical post from that website germaine: your Inbox.
http://epigenie.com/messedupepigenetic Join 41,928 other followers
modificationsattherootofcancer/
and Nature’s “Next Generation Sequencing” newsletter
http://www.nature.com/subject/nextgenseq
Peruse the “Recent Articles from NPG” Sign me up
*I recently reviewed a book chapter for that site on
epigenetics and the evolution of the mammalian
genome.
22.
bill
Pinker says: “The savannah is a red herring – that’s just a
convenient dichotomization of the relevant continuum, which is
evolutionary history. A minimal commitment to “premodern” gives
you the same conclusions. By saying that the brain could not have
been biologically adapted to stable government, police, literacy,
medicine, science, reliable statistics, prevalence of highcalorie
food, etc., you don’t need to go back to the savannah; you just need
to say that these were all relevantly recent in most people’s
evolutionary history.”
This article in the New York Times suggests that humans have
evolved within the last 10,000 years. Wouldn’t that undermine this
assumption?
Jeff Johnson
I don’t think so. What Pinker is saying, as I read it, is that it
is incorrect to say that EP assumes human biology is tuned to
the Savannah. The Savannah, as a synecdoch, is just a term
to represent premodern human evolutionary history because
the bulk of it was on the Savannah. It’s a linguistic short cut,
a form of metonymy, not to be taken literally as the source of
all human evolution.
Pinker is countering the claim by PZ that EP says the
Savannah can account for everything. He does not say no
evolution has occurred in the last 10,000 years, just that most
of it occurred before the last 10,000 years.
As I see it, he is saying that it is unrealistic that 10,000 years
of civilization has had a large biological impact on the brain
because it so recent. More likely that the rational, linguistic,
and other capacities of the brain that make civilization
possible, evolved for other reasons prior to civilization, so
that civilization is effectively an accidental consequence of
biological evolution that happened for other reasons.
gbjames
No. Humans have evolved in the last 24 hours. People die.
People are born. The frequency of various genes in the gene
pool changes. And evolution has happened.
articulett
Evolution is just change in allele frequency over time– so it’s
constantly happening to populations– certain genes are being
passed on preferentially and, to the extent that these genes
Follow
influence behaviors or mental characteristics, we can ask
ourselves why they might have been selected for. Why do we
think cats are cute, for example? Chances are they are
Follow “Why
tweaking some buttons involved in thinking that babies are Evolution Is True”
cute or worthy of nuturing and such.
Think of people who have lots of children– their genes are your Inbox.
passed on preferentially whether it’s genes involving height or
musical ability or social skills or sex drive or religiosity or
fondness for small fuzzy creatures.
Even if these things can be used to justify prejudices, that
doesn’t make them any less true. Sign me up
Although men and women have the same average number of
children, women are much more likely to fall in the middle of Build a website with WordPress.com
the bell curve (congregate toward the mean) and men are
more likely to be the outliers (think of polygamous clans and
all the men who don’t get to mate in such clans). I hear that
this is true for other traits as well, and I think EP can give us
clues as to why.
23.
Torbjörn Larsson, OM
After all, those premises boil down to this statement:
some behaviors of modern humans reflect their
evolutionary history. That is palpably uncontroversial,
I can feel your pain. Astrobiology is similarly under attack from
microbiologists (Redfield and others) for reasons of imperfectness
(NASA “pop versions”), ideology (“unnecessary” cross discipline)
and likely politics (shares science financing).
But astrobiology boils down to: the same process that happens here
happens elsewhere. That is uncontroversial, since chemical
evolution is ubiquitous.
After all, how could one else describe the homology (as Lane &
Martin describes it) between early chemoautotroph metabolism and
alkaline hydrothermal vents? Or the homology (in the L&M sense)
between CHNOPS element fractionation in cells and environment?
The Drake equation is a correct and early (1961) predictor of the
frequency of habitable worlds. And with Curiosity’s find of early
habitable conditions on Mars, I think the field has matured.
“Ev psych” is simply the attempt to take
adaptation/function seriously,
As astrobiology is simply the attempt to take the homogeneity of
our inflationary standard cosmology seriously.
Inshockafteralltheseyears
I like your analogy.
24.
marksolock
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
25.
Abdiel
Interesting article and now I’m temped to discuss this with my
sister who majored in Evolutionary Psychology. I also had problems
with my fellow MOT on Darwin causing the holocaust until I gave
each a copy of Martin Luther’s Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen.
Follow
26.
JB Follow “Why
Posted July 7, 2013 at 4:34 pm | Permalink Evolution Is True”
Solid article. I’m sure PZ Myers is a decent guy but his comments
on EP are so cartoonishly inane and ignorant that you’re not even
your Inbox.
sure where to begin. It’s been done for me nicely, so I’ll say no
more on that. Join 41,928 other followers
The snarky Jason character in this thread is better, but not by Enter your email address

much. For what it’s worth, my own academic background is is
literary theory, cultural theory and so on–Butler, Foucault, Derrida,
Sign me up
de Beauvoir, et al–and I can say that once I got over my initial
churlish whining about some of more subtle points that Pinker
ostensibly missed, he is remarkably onpoint in his discussion of Build a website with WordPress.com
these ideas (which are very often selfrighteous, biased and
intolerant).
I think the clarity of Pinker’s exposition–which sacrifices a little
subtlety for the sake of clarity– is a jolt to the system of the crowd
mired in Cultural Marxism/Feminism, and so they lash out to ease
the cognitive dissonance. To say EP across the board attempts to
“justify” racism or sexism is just nonsense–it’s a red flag that the
person has no idea what they’re talking about
27.
JJH
First a disclaimer; I’m not a psychologist or a biologist (one of the
reasons WEIT is on my top bookmarks is that I want to get smarter
in biology).
That said, I do have a background in physics and history (history
major, physics minor, don’t ask) and so I do understand
methodologies. And I have noted a similarity between the antino
freewill group and the antievo/psych group: They both appear to
try to redefine terms or control the argument so that they can hold
on to a concept for other than scientific purposes. I’ll elaborate and
explain why I think it’s wrong (in these two particular cases only).
Dan Dennett wants to hold on to the idea of free will (maybe not for
him, but you know the little people). Now, I don’t know what his
particular motive is for doing that (read Freedom Evolves, it’s a
great book where he basically makes the argument that free will is
just an illusion, but it’s a good illusion given our circumstances).
Fair enough, but then – in the four horsemen video – he explicitly
advocates that there may be ideas that are so dangerous that when
we find them, we should just shut up about them (I can agree with
him up to a point; if I figured out to produce an H bomb in my
garage, I’d destroy the entire trail). But I have to wonder if, “there
is no free will” is one of those ideas? In fairness to DR. Dennett, I
haven’t directly asked that question to him (studies show there is
an effect on morality, but it is only short term).
Along a similar line, PZ is on a panel about evopsych, without a
single expert in that field on the panel (good thing someone
consulted an expert in that field) and then passes judgement on that
field. I wonder what his reaction would be if there was an evodevo
panel discussion that dismissed that entire field without an evo
devo expert on the panel. Just like Dennett, I admire the work PZ
has done, but I have to wonder if he isn’t dismissing an idea out of
the possible consequences. And in this case, it makes even less
sense than in the free will debate: the brain is an evolved organ; to
say evolution has no effect on it’s function makes no sense.
Additionally, PZ makes a plasticity argument, which means that
given the correct stimulus many of the brains evolved traits can be
altered; so what is the reason to deny that there are certain
proclivities that we should know about so that they can be
countered with socialization? As analogy, there is good evidence
that the appendix performed an important function during human
evolution; that doesn’t mean that if it’s about rupture I don’t get it
cut out because it’s “natural.” It just means that I understand why
it’s OK to make that change.
Gary W
Follow
I don’t think your attempt to draw some kind of equivalence
between Dennett and Myers make much sense. Dennett isn’t
attacking science. He’s not arguing for contracausal free will. Follow “Why
He’s arguing for a conception of free will that is compatible Evolution Is True”
with physical determinism — a position shared by many other
prominent cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind, Get every new post delivered to
including Steven Pinker. Myers, on the other hand, is your Inbox.
(ignorantly and stupidly) attacking evolutionary psychology as Join 41,928 other followers
science.
Jeff Johnson Sign me up
The point wasn’t an equivalence in what Dennet and
Myers are arguing.
The point was that both are making an argument that
seems motivated by an ideological commitment more
than by scientific accuracy.
For what it’s worth, which may not be a lot, that point
seems to have some truth in it.
Dennet does admit in his latest book, Intuition Pumps,
that when we choose, it is based on competence, and
just as with a chess playing computer, each choice we
make is determined and could not be otherwise. He
challenges indeterminists to explain why we should
even want to have the ability to choose otherwise, i.e.
why libertarian free will should be considered more
desirable than the deterministic intelligence we actually
possess.
While he acknowledges that our will is thus constrained
by determinism, he also tells a story about a “Truly
Nefarious Neurosurgeon” who turns a patient into a
Phineas Gage simply by deceiving him into believing his
free will has been disabled. The moral of the story turns
out to be that Dennet worries that scientists who
declare to the public that we don’t have free will are
running the risk of mass producing this harm.
This seems to be a worry that places ideology over
truth, and it seems a very misguided one, especially
from one who is committed to the idea that humans
possess a kind of autonomy and control worth having.
Certainly if we have the kind of valuable autonomy
worth having (and we do), then there is no need to
worry that people are so easily suggestible that their
entire personality would degrade simply because
scientists tell them they don’t have free will.
Diane G.
But I could also call your position an ideological
commitment; one to the proposition that all
people are actually capable of critical thinking.
Not only do we not know this, the evidence
around us indicates it may not be so.
Evolution could have resulted in a proportion of
the population being natural followers; tell them
what they like, and they’ll like it. Tell them what
to think, value, admire, and they will do so.
Try to convince them that there’s no absolute
moral authority, and they may not have wits to
fall back on. And remember that there are also
psychopaths who are more than willing to fill any
leadership vacuum.
Jeff Johnson
That’s a good point. I’d say the fact that I
think people ought to know we don’t have
free will, and that I think that they could
handle it are ideological in nature.
Follow
But my conclusion that we don’t have free
will, because of our brain’s determinism and
our inability to will something other than
Follow “Why
what we are determined to will, is a Evolution Is True”
conclusion without ideology, one that is
based on the bet scientific knowledge Get every new post delivered to
available. your Inbox.
Dennet actually agrees that we are
deterministic, and that when we make a
choice it is determined, not something we
could have changed. But his ideological
concern is that this knowledge is dangerous Sign me up
and harmful, which in his own words is an
important reason not to tell people that we Build a website with WordPress.com
don’t have free will.
The irony is, people know what their
behavior is like. They have long mistakenly
thought of it as deriving from free will, but
learning that it isnt relky based on free will
doesnt change how humans behave, abd
they know this. Dennet goes to great
lengths to explain what even a child can
see, which is that people can still behave
the same way they always have, even if it
doesn’t stem from any underlying
phenomenon that is free will.
It’s very much like if people were presented
with evidence that they had no soul, Dennet
would worry that would make people
immoral, so he goes to great lengths to
reinvent the concept of soul so that he can
tell people that they still have a soul. This is
placing ideology above scientific accuracy.
Diana MacPherson
Permalink
I agree with you and JJH. I find the
arguments concerning free will & EP
from Dennett and Myers to be
condescending with regard to
witholding the truth.
I’ve heard Dan Dennett make the
argument that if we told people they
did not have free will, they would lose
all control and society would break
down into violence and chaos. That
seems to disregard human empathy
and all the other controls we have in
place that stop us from becoming
crazed murderers and it is frankly
insulting.
I don’t know if what others have
posted about PZ’s position is true,
namely that his motivation for
rejecting EP is that women would be
taken advantage of by slick talking
men – that to me seems very
paternalistic to women and insulting
to men and I hope it isn’t PZ’s
position, though I do agree there is
ideology at play.
Gary W
Permalink
I’ve heard Dan Dennett make
the argument that if we told
people they did not have free
will, they would lose all control
and society would break down
into violence and chaos.
Follow
Where does Dennett say this?
Citation, please.
Follow “Why
your Inbox.
Jeff Johnson
Posted July 8, 2013 at 9:31 am | Join 41,928 other followers
Permalink
Gary,
I’ve already given a citation. It’s
Sign me up
in his latest book, “Intuition
Pumps”, in the section titled
“The Truly Nefarious Build a website with WordPress.com
Neurosurgeon”.
Gary W
Permalink
Direct quote please, not your
tendentious spin (“The moral of
the story turns out to be that
Dennet …”).
By the way, Jerry has himself
written that he thinks society
would break down if we do not
find a way of reconciling free
will with determinism:
[Defining free will
in a way that
comports with
determinism]
seems to be a
philosophical shell
game, conducted
so that we can
conclude that
we’re morally
responsible
agents. If we
didn’t, of course,
society would
break down, so we
really need to find
a philosophical
justification for
moral
responsibility.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/did
freedomevolve/
Diana MacPherson
| Permalink
Wow – that was precision quote
mining in your quote of Jerry’s
position of free will!
If you look at it in context, Jerry
is being facetious and discussing
what incompatiblists are doing
in clinging to the notion of free
will.
BTW here is my citation where
you can hear that Dan Dennett
does talk of society breaking
down:
http://youtu.be/7Ob4c_iLuTw
Follow
Follow “Why
Diana MacPherson Evolution Is True”
| Permalink Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.
oops clumsy thumbsy – I meant
compatibilist not incompatiblist. Join 41,928 other followers
Sign me up
Gary W
Posted July 8, 2013 at 10:31 am Build a website with WordPress.com
| Permalink
If you look at it in context, Jerry
is being facetious
I don’t see anything facetious
about it. The post is entirely
serious.
BTW here is my citation where
you can hear that Dan Dennett
does talk of society breaking
down:
http://youtu.be/7Ob4c_iLuTw
I don’t intend to sit thru a 90
minute video waiting for
something that may not even be
there. Please give me the
timestamp where you claim
Dennett says that if we told
into violence and chaos.
Diana MacPherson
| Permalink
That’s fair, I’ll provide you the
time stamp and a small
quotation though you will see
more available in the section I’ll
mention. Go to ~15:4617:29. It
starts with Dan saying this, if
you go around saying free will
doesn’t exist; free will is an
illusion, you’re actually
undercutting the very glue of
civilization and that’s the reason
people should be upset about it
And you did quote mine Jerry –
maybe it wasn’t facetiousness
but the context was that he was
explaining the compatibilist
perspective, not his own!
Jeff Johnson
| Permalink
If you don’t have access to the
text, I have to type it in from
the book.
To summarize the story, in “A
Truly Nefarious Neurosurgeon”,
Dennet tells the tale of a
neurosurgeon who tells a patient
(falsely) that a device has been Follow
implanted that disables his
conscious will. He then has a Follow “Why
behavioral transformation like
that of Phineas Gage, even Evolution Is True”
though nothing has really
changed in his brain.
your Inbox.
In the wrap up Dennet writes Join 41,928 other followers
that the:
false debriefing of
her patient
actually Sign me up
accomplished non
surgically much of Build a website with WordPress.com
what she claimed
to accomplish
surgically: she
disabled him. But
if she [the
neurosurgeon] is
responsible for
this dire
consequence, the
neuroscientists
currently filling
the media with
talk about how
their science
shows that free
will is an illusion
are risking mass
production of the
same harm to all
the people who
take them at their
word [here he
cites the
questionable Vohs
and Schooler
(2008)
experiment].
Neuroscientists,
psychologists and
philosophers need
to take seriously
their moral
obligation to think
through the
presuppositions
and implications of
their public
pronouncements
on these issues
with the same
care that is
demanded of
people who hold
forth on global
warming or
asteroid strikes.
That is directly quoted from his
latest book.
The premise of the story is
absurd, and completely goes
against Dennet’s (correct) claim
that humans have the kind of
autonomy and control worth
having. This subject is a
mindless suggestible puppet.
Any normal person would be
doubting whether the phony
“device” was working properly
before even leaving the office,
because of the way they could
control their arms and legs at
will, and go where they want.
Then Dennet uses this story for
exactly the kind of paternalistic
Follow
worrywort concern I claimed.
Apparently he thinks that if
scientists reveal the truth about
Follow “Why
determinism to the public, it Evolution Is True”
could cause a panic on the scale
of a projected asteroid strike! Get every new post delivered to
He is directly saying, as I read your Inbox.
this, that scientists need to edit Join 41,928 other followers
themselves, and not suggest
that we don’t have free will, Enter your email address
because it risks “mass
production” of the same harm.
Sign me up
This pretty much confirms
everything I’ve ever suspected Build a website with WordPress.com
about the motives for the
incredible logical contortions
compatibilism goes through in
order to be able to claim two
words: “free will”, a claim that
is really pretty shallow when
you look at the history of the
term.
Sure we have automony,
control, competence, we make
intelligent decisions in our own
interest. There is just no
scientific reason to say these
behaviors are predicated on
“free will”. There is only a
reason based on tradition and
social convention, and that is
also questionable. You may as
well pretend also that we still
have a soul in order to comfort
and placate people.
But Dennet’s motive is clear. He
is afraid, based on his personal
ideological beliefs, to directly
release scientific findings about
determinism without first toning
it down with feelgood
compatibilist reassurances.
Ben Goren
| Permalink
Guys, Gary is a troll. He doesn’t
give a flying fuck about
evidence; he just gets his jollies
by making people jump through
hoops.
First he constructs a strawman.
Then, when you blow his
strawman over with a belabored
sigh, he demands evidence.
When you present evidence,
he’s at first likely to pretend
that you didn’t and keep
demanding that you present
evidence. Eventually, he’ll
acknowledge that you tried to
present evidence, but that it
wasn’t good enough. After
enough iterations of that
nonsense, he might eventually
quote something back to you out
of context and then paraphrase
it to mean the exact opposite of
the plain language. And, if you
stick with it past that point, he’ll
soon press the reset button and
start with fresh demands for
evidence.
Follow
Best to just ignore him.
Cheers, Follow “Why

b&
your Inbox.
Diana MacPherson Enter your email address

| Permalink
Sign me up
Yeah, you’re probably right Ben.
I put my evidence here for
posterity if anything else.
Jeff Johnson
| Permalink
@Gary,
I went to the link you posted
where Jerry says: “If we didn’t,
of course, society would break
down”.
You are citing this dishonestly,
because if you read the whole
context it is clear that Jerry is
paraphrasing what many
philosophers say about free will
and morality. That was not Jerry
stating his own opinion.
He goes on to say that such
beliefs are based on
philosophers reasoning thusly:
“we decide what conclusion we
want to reach a priori, and then
twist the facts, and our
arguments, so they lead to that
result.”
Jerry has repeatedly said he
thinks because of lack of free
will we aren’t morally
responsible, but that there are
rational grounds for holding
people responsible derived from
the need to deter future
violations and the need to
protect the public from danger.
You are way off base here.
I guess Ben is right, as usual.
Diana MacPherson
| Permalink
Yes – I pointed this out to Gary
W twice re: quote mining Jerry
about his position on free will.
gbjames
| Permalink
Ben is correct about the troll
matter. As a consequence of
previous interactions I
discovered that I am subject to
a nointeraction policy for Follow
people on my very own list of
disingenuous commenters. This Follow “Why
list is short, having only ever
had but one name on it. Evolution Is True”
your Inbox.
Gary W
| Permalink
Sign me up
Jeff Johnson,
So, as I suspected, nowhere in Build a website with WordPress.com
your actual quote does Dennett
say anything like “if we told
into violence and chaos.” That is
just your absurdly exaggerated
spin on Dennett’s reasonable
point, which he supports with a
citation to the scientific
literature, that if someone
becomes convinced that he has
no control over his actions it
may have adverse effects on his
behavior. The “society would
break down into violence and
chaos” nonsense is entirely your
own invention.
Diana,
You’re also absurdly caricaturing
what Dennett actually says.
“Undercutting the glue of
civilization” does not mean
“society would break down into
violence and chaos.” And
Dennett goes on to illustrate his
point by describing an
experiment in which subjects
who were taught that free will is
an illusion were more likely to
cheat on a moneymaking
puzzle.
Diana MacPherson
| Permalink
Gary W: I think undercutting the
glue of society is pretty much
chaos. I didn’t quote Dennett
when I said that and it is pretty
rich for you to accuse me of
doing so after you quote mind
Jerry and twisted his words to
fit your argument.
Gary W
| Permalink
You are citing this dishonestly,
because if you read the whole
context it is clear that Jerry is
paraphrasing what many
philosophers say about free will
and morality.
Nonsense. It’s stated as Jerry’s
own view: “But to me those
Follow
other ways seem contrived, and
avoid the ultimate question:
could we really have done
Follow “Why
otherwise? It seems to be a Evolution Is True”
philosophical shell game,
conducted so that we can Get every new post delivered to
conclude that we’re morally your Inbox.
responsible agents. If we didn’t, Join 41,928 other followers
of course, society would break
down …” Enter your email address
Sign me up

Gary W
Permalink
I think undercutting the glue of
society is pretty much chaos. I
didn’t quote Dennett when I said
that and it is pretty rich for you
to accuse me of doing so after
you quote mind Jerry and
twisted his words to fit your
argument.
Yes, you couldn’t quote him
saying “society would break
down into violence and chaos”
because he didn’t say that or
anything like it.
Attempting to discredit people
through absurdly exaggerated
paraphrasing of what they
actually say, to try and make
their position sound extreme
and unreasonable, is a classic
debating trick.
In How The Mind Works Steven
Pinker makes the same point
that Dennett is making about
the importance of the concept of
free will for understanding
human beings as moral agents:
“Either we dispense with all
morality as an unscientific
superstition, or we find a way to
reconcile causation (genetic or
otherwise) with responsibility
and free will. […] Like many
philosophers, I believe that
science and ethics are two self
contained systems played out
among the same entities in the
world, just as poker and bridge
are different games played with
the same fiftytwocard deck.
The science game treats people
as material objects, and its
rules are the physical processes
that cause behavior through
natural selection and
neurophysiology. The ethics
game treats people as
equivalent, sentient, rational,
freewilled agents, and its rules
are the calculus that assigns
moral value to behavior through
the behavior’s inherent nature
or its consequences.”
Diana MacPherson
Permalink Follow
I’m not grossly exaggerating in
an effort to discredit someone. I Follow “Why
will not be engaging you further Evolution Is True”
on this as I’m going to take
Ben’s wise advice. Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.

Jeff Johnson
Posted July 8, 2013 at 1:14 pm | Sign me up
Permalink
Yes, Build a website with WordPress.com

Ben is clearly correct.
Either Gary has a reading
comprehension problem, or his
eyes firmly closed to anything
he has decided in advance he
doesn’t want to learn or know,
or he is a bot following a simple
and annoying algorithm.
Gary W
Permalink
I’m not grossly exaggerating in
an effort to discredit someone.
No, of course you’re not.
“Undercutting the glue of
society” clearly has exactly the
same meaning as “society would
break down into violence and
chaos.”
And neither you nor Jeff Johnson
has offered any rebuttal to
Dennett’s actual point, which he
supports with a citation to
experimental evidence, that
promoting the idea that free will
is an illusion may have adverse
effects on people’s behavior.
Gary W
Nothing in Dennett’s position contradicts science.
He’s not “placing ideology over truth.” He
explicitly acknowledges that all actions are
physically determined. His argument is about the
meaning of the concept of free will. Myers’
rejection of the science of evolutionary
psychology has nothing to do with Dennett’s
position that free will and determinism are
compatible (a position shared, as I said, by Pinker
and numerous others.)
Jeff Johnson
Nobody said that Myers position on EP had
anything to do with Dennet’s position on
free will.
It was only stated that these two different
positions both appear to be motivated by
ideology more than scientific truth. I think if
Dennet didn’t feel ideologically that people
need to believe they have free will, he could Follow
simply admit that we don’t have it, rather
than inventing a modified form of free will. Follow “Why
He spells this opinion out pretty clearly in
his “Truly Nefarious Neurologist” chapter in Evolution Is True”
his latest book.
your Inbox.
Gary W
Posted July 8, 2013 at 9:06 am | Enter your email address
Permalink
Nobody said that Myers position on EP Sign me up
had anything to do with Dennet’s
position on free will. Build a website with WordPress.com
Huh? JJH explicitly drew an
equivalence between them in his
original comment.
It was only stated that these two
different positions both appear to be
motivated by ideology more than
scientific truth.
A claim that with respect to Dennett is
simply nonsense. Nowhere does he
deny or attempt to hide “scientific
truth.”
28.
rose
You were in San Francisco what a day before the plane crash? I live
in the s.f. area what a horrible sight luckily only two people
died.Could of been so much worse.
29.
tkmlac
Reblogged this on West Coast Atheist and commented:
Why a scifi convention would have a panel on evolutionary
psychology and not have anyone on the panel knowledgable in the
field is beyond me. Here is Jerry Coyne and Steve Pinker’s
response to PZ Myers’ Pharyngula post about the panel he sat on
with Stephanie Zvan, Greg Laden and Indre Viskontas. (A panel with
Greg Laden, no matter what the topic, ought to be up for scrutiny).
30.
robinducret
Jerry Coyne suggests we look at the following (via a Jaime C.
Confer et al link).
(One example of a falsified theory is the old “kin selection”
argument for the prevalence of homosexuality: the idea that
homosexuals, though not reproducing themselves, stayed home and
perpetuated their genes by taking care of their relatives.)
The explanation of why this should be false is argued thus.
“The kin altruism hypothesis of male homosexuality, for example,
contends that homosexuality is an adaptation that involves a shift
among those whose heterosexual mating prospects are not
promising from direct mating effort to investing in kin, such as the
children of one’s brothers and sisters (E. O. Wilson, 1978). In a
direct test of this hypothesis, Bobrow and Bailey (2001) used
samples of hetero sexual and homosexual men matched for age,
education, and ethnicity. They assayed generosity toward family
members; financial and emotional investment; avuncular
tendencies, such as willingness to give gifts or cash to support
nieces or nephews; and general feelings of closeness toward
genetic relatives. The results proved conclusive—they found no
evidence for any of the key predictions made by the kin altruism Follow
hypothesis of male merous domainspecific adaptations.”
One argument not considered above is that the gay man, if left to
Follow “Why
guard the women and children, could be relied upon not to Evolution Is True”
impregnate the women under his charge. There is thus a benefit in
having gay men in any tribe and in that his kin would be the better Get every new post delivered to
protected, perhaps the reasoning does not stir up the muddy waters your Inbox.
of kin selection. Join 41,928 other followers
A further argument explaining male homosexuality was given by
John Maynard Smith under the somewhat saucy title “Sneaky
fuckers” (just Google it) and is also to be found on YouTube with
Richard Dawkins. Sign me up
robinducret
Sorry, I should have said “stirred up the muddy waters of
group theory”.
31.
Lyndon
For a better rebuttal of Pinker I recommend Jesse Prinz’s book
Beyond Human Nature.
My short take on why the slate is blank, why the brain/mind is
blank, and also how this relates more generally to EP and to Pinker
pointedly. Possible behavior and possible conceptualization is
infinite, those things that any individual brain/mind will think and
do. If what we mean, and perhaps what John Locke meant, by the
Blank Slate was something like any human with enough training or
environmental molding could have any mental capacity or mental
functioning, then that is of course not true. And with the rise of
calculators, for instance, it became clear that we could not train our
brains to have any kind of mental property, addition seems like a
mental function that we are limited to certain speeds and quantities
in. In other words, that idea of Blank Slate is an unimaginable
straw person argument.
If our possible thoughts and possible behaviors are infinitely
malleable (and in wide ranging ways), then I am inclined to say
that we are a blank slate, that our brain/mind and behaviors are
blank slates. On infinity, e.g., think of the difference between the
infinity of whole numbers versus the infinity of real numbers. What
EP and Pinker fail to account for is massive alteration to the social
world and environment that any one set of genes can encounter.
Thus the descriptions are not explaining in precise terms why any
being is the way that they are or what exactly our genes are
structuring. We also have to accept that *we* can change and
create massively different environments for any one individual that
will thus lead to an infinite and wide ranging array of thoughts,
behavior, conceptions, desires, and even attitudes within that
individual.
One of my examples on this. Imagine a closed island society
artificially created so it includes only one sex, let’s say the male,
including any animals, and whose language and concepts have been
stripped of any knowledge of the female sex (we can imagine some
way of bringing babies, etc.). Imagine a being that is raised within
this society. What does it do to their thoughts about sexuality and
gender expression? I have the idea that they would still be complex
viable beings who have strong sexual urges and complex desires.
But these males, even if they have genetic structures that would
encourage them towards heterosexuality, if such exists, which the
point of this thought experiment is that the genes do not literally
point to the desiring of “female,” as we conceptualize such a
category; the thoughts and desires of these “heterosexual” males
have been massively changed, the beings created out of these
genes are almost incomparable to the social beings that would have
been created as 21st centuryWesternmales, the kinds of being
that EP is using to try to make claims on genetic structuring.
Lyndon
Follow
One more thought on moving out of description and into
prescription, I offer these two lines.
Follow “Why
If you teach a child under 15 a second language, they will
know a second language.
If you teach a child under 5 a first language, they will know a Get every new post delivered to
first language. your Inbox.
The reason any 15 year old is not fluent in a second language Join 41,928 other followers

is because of the environment that their society/parents sets
up around them. There is not good reason to believe that the Enter your email address
genes of this individual prevents them from knowing a second
language (usually the mark of a “good education,” say) by the Sign me up
age of 15, as many individuals achieve. In other words, 15
year old selves are undoubtedly capable of a high degree of
knowledge and skills and the reason they will not achieve
such is because of the environment. Pinker comes close to
arguing for this in the Blank Slate, but he, like many EP,
seems reluctant to ask significant questions about the
environmental structures we set up around any individual.
Almost all popEP, including Pinker, are at least partially
trading in these kinds of prescriptivist thoughts about what is
socially possible . . . which is my beef with all of this. I think
one of the reasons it becomes difficult for EP to make the
above claim is because they slide the type of society (thus
the environment we allow to be set up around any individual)
into something that was evolutionarily structured for,
something they are unwilling to reflect upon and think about
how we can change. I would say they are trying to stay
descriptive about the kind of societies we set up around our
selves and why we do such, but those explanations, again,
are too complex to give any kind of adequate grounding for.
The claims about whether a 15 year old is genetically capable
of knowing a second language seem far more approachable
than the claims (say from some evolutionary point of view)
about the kind of society we have, with the kind of disparity
in education that we somehow adhere to. I know that strays
away from EP to an extent, but it is also closely tied to it and
was my response to Pinker’s claim in the Blank Slate about
how the differences we see in school success was not in the
genes of students, which I thought then turned nowhere or
back into a nonreflective stance after making the claim.
Anyways, claims about evolutionary and genetic structures of
behavior are important, but evolutionary psychology far too
often does not satisfy or stand at all.
gbjames
Possible behavior and possible conceptualization
is infinite
Really? Maybe I’ll be able to hang by a prehensile tail
someday! Can I maybe build a nest in the tree across the
street and capture small birds like a Coopers Hawk?
Such infinite flexibility!
Diana MacPherson
OMG I hope so! I’ve always wanted a prehensile tail!
Lyndon
See the point above about whole numbers (1,2,3,4,5)
and real numbers (1,2, 3.1, 3.11111 . . . , 4.253293,
3.12 etc.).
The idea that there are rules and structures does not
seem to preclude infinite possibility.
Think of both language and games. The rules of a game
or the naming of objects seem to be infinite, and thus
Follow
such would press upon behavior and the thoughts an
individual has. If you are born to a culture with a word
for “I am hungry” that takes 1 second to say versus a
Follow “Why
culture where the same thought can only be expressed Evolution Is True”
in 4 seconds, it would change “your” behaviors and
thoughts. Also, the rules of a game dictate our Get every new post delivered to
behavior, our strategy, our pleasure while playing. It your Inbox.
seems we could go inventing different games to the end Join 41,928 other followers
of time. Again, there are limitations, your naked brain
cannot calculate quickly huge dividends and so maybe Enter your email address
you cannot play games that would require such, but still
the possibility of games seems infinitely endless. And
Sign me up
the culture/family you are born into is going to dictate
to you which games you possibly even think about
playing or even creating. Build a website with WordPress.com
Jeff Johnson
Perhaps you should take note of the finite size of
the brain.
Also, if you’ve ever seen a baby learn language,
you can’t possibly believe in a blank slate.
Yes, we have a great deal of plasticity and
flexibility, and great learning abilities (courtesy of
the fact that we don’t have a blank slate), but that
is an extension to a whole set of genetically
determined tools, and it is clearly finite.
Lyndon
Jeff, I am fine with saying that the blank
slate is a bad metaphor or at least should
be set aside, but if we get technical we can
start putting structures on a “blank slate,”
say you can only write in yellow chalk or
that the chalk cannot lift up from the
chalkboard, and yet even though there are
now structures it still seems like we would
call it blank given the openness of what we
can put on it.
What I claim is infinite is the possibility to
represent the world (outside the brain) and
then the resulting possible behaviors are
infinite. We can behave according to an
infinite possibility of different games and
languages or any other cultural or
environmental artifacts. I am not sure the
finite capacity of the brain is that relevant
here given that we are talking about a
responsive representational system.
A baby learning language points us in the
direction of infinite behavior and thoughts,
given that we can imagine an infinite
complexity of representations of objects and
endless language systems. For instance, we
can “see” an iPhone (as opposed to an
infinite possibility of cultural artifacts) and
then name that object in various ways,
“iPhone” or “the electronic phone from
Apple,” and thus the infinite possible
behaviors that result from speaking of such.
Do we have genetic structures that control
many of the processes of learning
language? Sure. But this does not prevent
us from having infinite (really large)
possibility of different representations,
behaviors, and so on. Language makes that
readily apparent. I cannot predict the #1 hit
song 20 years from now, but it will be
unique and the words and message it
conveys will be different from anything you
can imagine (at least slightly).
Follow
gbjames
Posted July 8, 2013 at 3:37 pm | Follow “Why
Permalink Evolution Is True”
I think your particular form of “infinite Get every new post delivered to
behavior” is sort of a deepity. It is your Inbox.
trivially true. I can swing my arm
from left to right and in a sense
(because this is a continuous motion)
one can say it covers an infinite
number of positions. But what weighty
understanding does this provide us? Sign me up
Very little. It is a statement about our
measuring systems and tells us Build a website with WordPress.com
nothing about the uses of arms, of the
evolutionary development of limbs, or
really anything very interesting.
Lyndon
Permalink
I do not understand your
example, but to stay practical,
what matters is that we can
imagine the genes of “gbjames”
being raised in the
culture/environment of 10th
century Arabia versus 20th
century America versus 398th
century Saturnia, and thus the
behaviors and thoughts and self
of “gbjames” would probably not
be recognized as anything close
to the same thing.
We can imagine some
environmental structure where
“gbjames” becomes a celibate,
solitary, radically religious
monk, and so on. When we
radically alter the environment
around selves we get radical
alterations to those selves. And,
as I claim, that approaches
infinite possibilities of the
behaviors of that self as we
continue to radicalize the
environment.
gbjames
Permalink
Your point seems to be that
environment matters.
News flash….
Nobody thinks otherwise. If that
is your point, then you are
crashing through an open door.
On the other hand… If your point
is that biology doesn’t really
matter much because imaginary
identical twin brother raised a
few centuries back would not be
me, well… again… trivially true.
But that guy would share some
characteristics with me that
would influence his life in ways
that would perhaps echo mine.
We might both, for example,
have a tendency to appreciate
music but not be all that good at
producing it. Follow
So perhaps I’m just confused by
your assertions. If they are
Follow “Why
intended to offer some serious Evolution Is True”
argument against Pinker’s Blank
Slate I’m not finding them Get every new post delivered to
convincing. your Inbox.
Permalink
I think I’m getting a better sense of
what you are talking about.
You are trying to say that each human
brain can be thought of as a selection
from an infinite space of possibilities,
so in principle the brain has infinite
possible behaviors, which you are
calling a “Blank Slate” in the sense
that there is infinite possibility.
But I think you are not taking into
account the biochemical limitations on
brain plasticity, and also the major
limiting factor in any computation
problem, which is time.
You are marveling at the
extraordinary productivity of
combinatorial power, which is
theoretically real and generates
extraordinary productivity. Using
recursion we can create an infinite
number of grammatical sentences in
English. But the number of meaningful
and usable sentences is finite.
There are also an infinite number of
ways evolution could combine cells to
construct organisms, but reality
impinges in the form of natural
selection and finite resources so there
are far fewer than infinite organisms
on earth.
So in a sense you are only looking at
one part of the matter, which is
theoretical mathematical limits. Actual
limits are more stringent.
The empiricist idea of tabula rasa that
Pinker uses in his book is focusing on
how specifics of knowledge and
character are formed, and the idea of
Tabula Rasa is that everything is
empirically derived from sense
experience, and nothing is innate. It
doesn’t really deal with the question
of theoretical combinatorial limits, as
you are.
The important point Pinker makes is
that much is innate, and that a brain
with nothing innate would be useless.
Your concerns are only peripherally
connected to this issue, which is to
establish that the brain potentially has
a very broad playing field to work in.
But there are enormous constraints of
reality you seem to be ignoring.
Lyndon
Follow
By the way, Stanislas Dehaene has a good
book called Reading in the Brain that lays
out reading and language very well, though Follow “Why
I think he falls into some of Pinker’s Evolution Is True”
problem when talking about the blank slate
and even directly talks about infinite Get every new post delivered to
behaviors, which he is wrong on. your Inbox.
gbjames Sign me up
This: Build a website with WordPress.com
Again, there are limitations
and this:
Possible behavior and possible
conceptualization is infinite
don’t really work together, do they?
You know, the fact that numbers are infinite really
doesn’t bear much on the blank slate debate.
Lyndon
The numbers example is about getting to an
understanding of “infinite,” specifically that
whole numbers go on infinitely yet have a
strict structure and *limitation* to them, at
least seemingly. If I asked you to pick a
whole number, would you say that choice is
blank? You can say no, which I think is fine,
but I think you do have to maintain that you
get to pick from an infinite possibility of
numbers.
Behaviors, similarly, can be structured by
our genes (which they surely are) and yet
any set of genes can have an infinite
possibility of different behaviors given an
infinite possibility of different environments
or cultures. I do not see the argument
against such. Lastly, whether you want to
call that infinite possibility of behaviors
“blank” matters less, but I think it is at least
plausible to do so.
jimroberts
The examples of “real numbers” that you give are
in fact all rational numbers. There are no more
rational numbers than there are natural numbers,
so what is the point of introducing them?
You say: “If you teach a child under 15 a second
language, they will know a second language.
If you teach a child under 5 a first language, they
will know a first language.”
If you teach a child of 15 a second language, it
will have imperfect knowledge of a second
language. If you expose a child under 5 to a
second language, it will have two first languages.
This is surely a strong argument against the blank
slate, since the slate of the older child, as far as
language learning is concerned, is blanker than
that of the younger child.
Lyndon
Follow
Jim, I was using the language example to
tease out the belief that all nonbrain
damaged “sets of genes” have the genetic Follow “Why
capacity to learn a second language by the Evolution Is True”
age of 15 given a certain
socialization/education/environment. Thus Get every new post delivered to
when a 15 year old cannot speak a second your Inbox.
language it comes from the environment Join 41,928 other followers
that we as society place around that
individual, period, and not from genetic Enter your email address
limitations and not from the “will” of that
individual.
Sign me up
I defer to you on the numbers concept, I
only use that to tease out the intuition that Build a website with WordPress.com
we are finding brain and genetic limitations
yet still can claim our behaviors and
conceptual systems as infinitely open. I
admit I do not understand or agree with the
way set theorists, e.g., claim to get around
the paradox of infinite sets, it still makes
intuitive enough sense to me.
windy
But these males, even if they have genetic
structures that would encourage them towards
heterosexuality, if such exists, which the point
of this thought experiment is that the genes do
not literally point to the desiring of “female,”
And? This is not news to biologists nor something that is
limited to humans. Rock pigeons evolved to nest on natural
cliffs but that is not literally specified in their genome a
humanmade building will do just as well.
darrelle
Your all male island society example is not convincing. I am
not sure how it could be used as a convincing example of
anything because trying to guess what the typical sexual
behavior of people in such a society would be, would be just
that, a guess. It only stands to reason that if you put a
creature that evolved within a certain range of environments
into a radically different environment that there are going to
be changes in its behavior compared to others of its kind. I
don’t see how this category of supposition supports your
position.
It also seems as if you are unsure if you object to Pinker’s
ideas regarding “The Blank Slate,” or object to his conception
of what the term “The Blank Slate” means.
Do you think that other animal’s mind’s are also blank slates?
Some, or all? If not why do you suppose that we, and or
some other animals, are different?
Lyndon
The claim is that a given set of genes if raised instead
of in our society with our concepts of gender and
sexuality and constant interactions between the sexes,
but instead they are raised on this created island with
no conception of dual sexes (etc.), the resulting
behaviors, thoughts and desires of this setofgenes
probably could still be one of a robust language user
and of a complex social actor. I also think it is intuitive
to claim that they would still have strong sexual urges,
though more than likely “homosexual” ones, but we
could also probably think of different socially
encouraged practices. The thing that the thought
experiment is rejecting is some kind of matching Follow
between evolutionary/genetic structures with the
complex conceptions and desires that arise in society Follow “Why
and in selves as they are given, the ones that
evolutionary psychology are making some claims on. Evolution Is True”
We conceptualize and represent things in very complex
ways and this flows into and gets rechanneled by our
your Inbox.
emotional systems and into structures of desire, into
family and social relationships, etc. I also see much of Join 41,928 other followers
EP as a very powerful tool that is telling us about that
dance between nature/nurture, even if I think in the end Enter your email address
the focus is poor or leads to bad conclusions, or to non
reflection of the social world we happen to find and Sign me up
reproduce.
Lyndon
I am fine with getting rid of the blank slate conception,
but I do think behavior is infinite (or very great, say)
and that does probably include animals. There is
necessarily baseline limitations . . . our genes require
first all that we take in so much food . . . if we are fed
by tube but live in otherwise in a completely denuded
environment we are probably worthless blobs (as is the
case with most animals).
Through the power of language and concepts humans
gain a capacity for robust behavior that makes our
capacity for different behaviors and representations go
to a greatly different scale than animals. But, as
animals show they can adapt to our technological and
social creations (say migratory gulls who instead
occupy landfills, or whatever) and that this would
probably be an infinite adaptation to the environment
they happen to find, especially the ones we create. In
some sense they too represent or respond to
information from the environment they find, it wires
their brain to cull that information and to respond
appropriately (or unappropriately), and as their
behavior and representational reservoirs are seemingly
open, I think we can claim it blank.
32.
stevenjohnson
M: Fundamental assumptions of evo psych: That you can infer an
adaptive history from the distribution of current traits — that they
are adaptations at all is an assumption usually not founded in
evidence…
This was the key part of Myers’ opening. As it plainly says, the
charge is that the assumption is unsupported. Pinker didn’t address
the issue, instead first seizing on a couple of adjectives in the
parenthetical remark. (Incidentally, the aside is meant to explicitly
avow the socalled fundamental principle announced in the last
paragraph of the post.)
P: What about carefully selected attributes, and minimal
assumptions about phylogeny with a focus on function, as we do for
other organs?
A rhetorical question is not a valid rebuttal, particularly when
Pinker tries to load the question with a false parallel to the spleen.
The true answer of course is that the “focus on function” means the
unsupported assumption that the trait is adaptive, which was the
criticism Pinker didn’t answer. All efforts to claim that nonadaptive
traits in the present originated in evolutionary history demand
extensive speculation on phylogeny. Since EP professes that the
explanation of such currently nonadaptive traits is a cardinal
discovery of the field, the pretense that EP isn’t reliant on
speculative adaptive history is empty rhetoric.
Also, whatever careful criteria exist is unknown to the lay
population. Perhaps these criteria are hidden in professional
Follow
journals?
Since this is a popular forum, a little popularization would be called
for I think.
Follow “Why
M:….again with rare exceptions, you can’t simply assign a
behavioral role to a specific spot in the brain, just as you can’t Get every new post delivered to
assign a behavior to a gene…. your Inbox.
P:…The only assumption is that there are functional circuits, in the Join 41,928 other followers

same way that a program can be fragmented across your hard
drive…. Enter your email address
A neural circuit doesn’t have a small, sharply localized “spot” but it
Sign me up
does have a somewhat larger, more diffuse area than a simple
spot. This is a quibble over the meaning of “spot,” not a serious
rebuttal. Build a website with WordPress.com
M: . . . That the human brain is adapted to a particular
environment, specifically the African savannah, and that we can
ignore as negligible any evolutionary events in the last 10,000
years, that we can ignore the complexity of an environment most of
the evo psych people have never seriously studied, and that that
environment can dictate one narrow range of outcomes rather than
permit millions of different possibilities.
P: The savannah is a red herring – that’s just a convenient
dichotomization of the relevant continuum, which is evolutionary
history. A minimal commitment to “premodern” gives you the
same conclusions. By saying that the brain could not have been
biologically adapted to stable government, police, literacy,
medicine, science, reliable statistics, prevalence of highcalorie
food, etc., you don’t need to go back to the savannah; you just need
to say that these were all relevantly recent in most people’s
evolutionary history. The savannah is just a synechdoche.
I suppose Pinker means to say that the savannah is a misleading
metaphor, and only misuses red herring to imply malice on Myers’
part. However, if it is a misleading metaphor, it is not convenient.
It could only be convenient if it wasn’t too false to the facts. How
can a person say something so selfcontradictory?
It would have been much clearer to describe the alleged continuum,
but I don’t think that EP actually investigates the EEEA. The
confession that “premodern” gives the same conclusion is
unnerving, because the term is so vacuous.
The assumption that the brain needs to be biologically adapted to
reliable statistics is just weird on the face of it. The other
assumption, that there hasn’t been any evolution for the last ten
thousand years, seems to blatantly contradict genetics.
M: I’d also add that most evo psych studies assume a onetoone
mapping of hypothetical genes to behaviors and never actually look
at genes and for that matter, ignore most human diversity to focus
on a naive typological simplicity that allows them to use
undergraduate psych majors at Western universities as proxies for
all of humanity”
Pinker splits this up for rhetorical purposes. His rebuttal amounts to
a blanket denial that Myers’ is factually correct. So, who are you
going to believe? The guy who thinks the difference between a spot
and a neural circuit is conclusive?
Steven Jay Gould somehow makes an appearance here, which
seems to me to be redbaiting.
M: Developmental plasticity vitiates most of the claims of evo
psych. Without denying that some behaviors certainly have a strong
biological basis, the differences in human behaviors are more likely
to be a product of plasticity than of genetic differences. . .
P: Plasticity is just learning at the neural level, and learning is not
an alternative to innate motives and learning mechanisms….
This means innate motives and learning mechanisms are the
hypothetical causes of learning and therefore plasticity is not an
alternative. Well, yes, that’s literally true, but that doesn’t answer
the criticism. Myers doesn’t think EP has provided evidence that its
purported field, the evolutionary origin of different human
behaviors as adaptations.
M: . . . I think good evo psych would focus on human universals
(much more likely to be driven by genetic properties!) than all this
stuff seeking justifications for cultural differences between the
sexes or the races or arbitrary subgroups.
Follow
Pinker did not respond, which is curious.
A very poor performance by Pinker. Isn’t that because he hasn’t any Follow “Why

real evidence to support him? Evolution Is True”
your Inbox.
Gary W
Posted July 8, 2013 at 2:32 pm | Permalink Join 41,928 other followers
This was the key part of Myers’ opening. As it plainly says, Enter your email address

the charge is that the assumption is unsupported. Pinker
didn’t address the issue
Sign me up
Pinker doesn’t need to address it because Myers offers no
evidence that adaptationist theories in EP are “an assumption Build a website with WordPress.com
usually not founded in evidence.” Myers is simply making
things up out of thin air.
The true answer of course is that the “focus on function”
means the unsupported assumption that the trait is adaptive
No, the focus on function means, as Pinker clearly states, that
certain “carefully selected attributes” of psychology and
behavior may be functional, just as many physical traits are.
A neural circuit doesn’t have a small, sharply localized “spot”
but it does have a somewhat larger, more diffuse area than a
simple spot. This is a quibble over the meaning of “spot,” not
a serious rebuttal.
It’s a serious rebuttal to Myers’ false implication that EP
“assigns behavioral roles to specific spots in the brain.” This
is yet another illustration of Myers’ cartoonish
misunderstanding of the field.
I suppose Pinker means to say that the savannah is a
misleading metaphor, and only misuses red herring to imply
malice on Myers’ part. However, if it is a misleading
metaphor, it is not convenient.
The “savannah” is a synecdoche for the human ancestral
environment more broadly, as Pinker clearly states.
Pinker splits this up for rhetorical purposes. His rebuttal
amounts to a blanket denial that Myers’ is factually correct.
So, who are you going to believe?
As with his claim about adaptations, Myers offers no evidence
that “most evo psych studies assume a onetoone mapping
of hypothetical genes to behaviors.” If you’re seriously trying
to defend this claim, please present your evidence.
This means innate motives and learning mechanisms are the
hypothetical causes of learning and therefore plasticity is not
an alternative. Well, yes, that’s literally true, but that doesn’t
answer the criticism.
Yet again, Myers offers absolutely no evidence to support his
claim that “the differences in human behaviors are more
likely to be a product of plasticity than of genetic
differences.” In the comment Jerry quotes, Myers goes even
further off the plasticity deep end, declaring that
“developmental plasticity is all” and that “the fundamental
premises of evo psych are false.” Again, no evidence
whatsoever is presented to support these astonishing claims.
Gary W
Pinker did not respond, which is curious.
Perhaps because Myers is presenting a false dichotomy.
Donald Brown’s list of human universals includes the following
differences between the sexes. As Myers himself concedes,
universals are “much more likely to be driven by genetic
properties.”
– Females do more direct childcare
– Male and female and adult and child seen as having
different natures
– Males dominate public/political realm
– Males engage in more coalitional violence Follow
– Males more aggressive
– Males more prone to lethal violence Follow “Why
– Males more prone to theft
– Males, on average, travel greater distances over lifetime Evolution Is True”
– Husband older than wife on average
– Division of labor by sex
your Inbox.
– Sex differences in spatial cognition and behavior
– Sex (gender) terminology is fundamentally binary Join 41,928 other followers
Sign me up
gillt
Posted July 8, 2013 at 6:16 pm | Permalink Build a website with WordPress.com
This was the key part of Myers’ opening. As it
plainly says, the charge is that the assumption
is unsupported. Pinker didn’t address the issue,
instead first seizing on a couple of adjectives in
the parenthetical remark. (Incidentally, the
aside is meant to explicitly avow the socalled
fundamental principle announced in the last
paragraph of the post.)
In a way Pinker addressed this by comparing EP to a well
established field, physiology, which is also “focused on
function” and so isn’t Myers’s criticism equally relevant to
much of evolutionary biology’s (over)emphasis on
adaptationism?
33.
Jeff Johnson
LOL. A perfect example of a self refuting quote from Gary W.
I wrote:
You are citing this dishonestly, because if you read
the whole context it is clear that Jerry is paraphrasing
what many philosophers say about free will and
morality.
Gary wrote:
Nonsense. It’s stated as Jerry’s own view: “But to me
those other ways seem contrived, and avoid the
ultimate question: could we really have done
otherwise? It seems to be a philosophical shell game,
conducted so that we can conclude that we’re morally
responsible agents. If we didn’t, of course, society
would break down …”
I think it’s quite possible Gary W is a bot that looks for literal
agreement only, or else it invents a bogus dispute. Plainly this bot
doesn’t understand the meaning of this sentence:
It seems to be a philosophical shell game, conducted
so that we can conclude that we’re morally
responsible agents.
The obvious intent is to indicate the motives of the players of the
philosophical shell game, which Jerry doesn’t include himself in. The
next sentence is clearly indirect discourse of what these
philosophers would say: “If we didn’t, of course, society would
break down…”.
This is why one shouldn’t debate with a bot. They don’t understand
English, and they can’t pass the Turing test. It does an excellent job
at simulating deliberate obtuseness though.
Diana MacPherson
Yes Jeff, I think you’re right. I’ve disengaged the bot myself.
Gary W
Follow
The obvious intent is to … The next sentence is clearly
indirect discourse …
Follow “Why
Spin and twist, spin and twist.
your Inbox.
34. Join 41,928 other followers
T.
I read Pinker’s “The Better Angel of Our Nature”. I was in the best
possible situation to accept his reasoning, biaswise. He was saying Sign me up
things I, too, believed.
The whole point however fell down when he started to claim things
I knew were false and speaking of them as they weren’t.
I am an International Economists and an International Political
Scientist. To read his blithely dimiss of the whole WWII as simply
deriving from Hitler’s belief floored me (ot the whole Comunist
Revolution in China as only derived from Mao’s believes).
His thoughts on the whole male/female “thing” was so semplificated
to be ridicolous when seen in modern lenses, and very Eurocentric
by someone who when it was good for him he was very likely to go
around the World. Yet he spoke nothing about cultures that includes
3 or 4 genders in their vocabulary.
Ops.
As far as I can see, he is quite unscientific in his behavior and
superficial in his analysis.
Which is a pity.
gillt
T.,
For those of us who haven’t read the book, could you use
specific quotes to what you’re criticizing? Just a few passages
about his treatment of gender issues and WWII history, for
instance. Does he quote Kanazawa favorably?
T.
Will do as soon as soon as I have them with me, I have
to search all the book, which is very massive, but I’ll
try in a couple of day.
Just to be clear: I agree that our evolution shaped our
brain as well as everything else in us, from our hands
to our ears. What I DON’T agree is Pinker’s “brand” of
evolutionary psychology, which claims that we should
aproximate to a peculiar species of apes in central
Africa, the one that accidentally is more in agreement
with his theories. The idea that people who follow the
cultural norms of a peculiar culture breeds more and as
such those norms end up being more evolutrionary
coded is completely beyond Pinker’s radar.
To explain: there is an interesting hypothesis that in the
ancient time we have selectively breed for obbedience
to authority and the ability to whistand pain in light of a
future rewerd via comeofage rites. The young males
who accepted the painful rites, thus obeying their elders
and showing they were able to whistand pain in order to
gain something in the future were accepted into the
society breeders. Those who fled, either for defiance of
fear of pain, didn’t breed (give me some days, I can
come up with the references for this, too).
There are pages and pages about obedience to
authority. And this doesn’t come out once.
Another possibility that should interest Pinker given his
background is the hypothesis that Jews are better at
“speaking” due to their peculiar comeofage rite. Now
you can’t fail a BarMitzvah, but once you could, and if
you DID fail it, you weren’t likely to marry well and Follow
have many offsprings. Several generations of this, and
you have that people of Jew backgrounds are better Follow “Why
speakers on avarage than nonjew.
In Europe and Europedescendant, gender identity
*seems* to be coded at birth (see “As Nature Made Get every new post delivered to
Him”, a very interesting book). In other populations your Inbox.
though males are grow up as females if there are not Join 41,928 other followers
enough bornfemale to fill the approved social roles,
and those people considers themselves women. Enter your email address
So? Is gendersex coded or not? Or is it coded in
European and not elsewhere?
Sign me up
Perhaps the Yanoami (the fierce people he so love
quoting) are so fierce even because fierceness is Build a website with WordPress.com
culturally praised? It is a spiral, of course. Or a
chickenegg situation.
Evolution can act quite fast if there is necessity (and
very slow if there is none or little).
But all of this is completely out of Pinker’s mind.
Everything that interested him happened between 2
million and 15000 years ago (and the approssimation of
15000 years ago he thinks some tribes are). He seems
one of those “paleopeople” that tries to eat like our
mythical ancestors.
Jeff Johnson
I don’t know if you realize this, but using the noun
“Jew” as an adjective or a verb is pretty common
among antiSemites.
So “Jewish background” sounds much better than
the somewhat offensive “Jew background”.
Beside that, to say that Pinker can’t even conceive
of the idea that cultural evolution can create
selection mechanisms that feed back into
biological evolution is absurd. This isn’t such a
hard concept to grasp.
But biological evolution is obviously much slower
than cultural evolution, and it is not so easy to
untangle the influence of culture from biology.
Your Bar Mitzvah speculation, for example, has
some tempting logic to it, but it seems terribly
wrong because the tradition of calling up to read
the Torah was not practiced at all until around 600
years ago, and it has not always been practiced
consistently in all Jewish communities since that
time. The tradition of scholarship and intellectual
acheivement by the Jewish people probably has
deeper and more complex origins, and the Bar
Mitzvah ceremony is probably just a cultural
artifact of that history.
Here is a review of the book “The Chosen Few”,
which offers a more plausible historical account of
why the world’s Jewish population shows such an
admirably high rate of outstanding academic and
professional accomplishment.
Stephen Barnard
I agree that “Jew background” is a jarring
phrase (although certainly an innocent error
by the commenter). But I also think it’s
unfortunate that the connotation of the word
“Jew” has been partially hijacked by
antisemites. “Christian background” or
“Muslim background” don’t have the same
effect. The term “Jewish” seems odd — we
don’t say “Christianish.” I wonder if it’s a
neologism intended to avoid the antisemitic
connotation.
Follow
Jeff Johnson
Posted July 10, 2013 at 5:21 am | Follow “Why
Permalink Evolution Is True”
Well, “Christian” and “Muslim” just Get every new post delivered to
happen to function as both noun and your Inbox.
adjective. There is no other adjective
for “Christian” or “Muslim”. “Jew” is
only a noun. To me it just really
jumps out as suspect when “Jew” is
used as an adjective. I don’t really
know why, other than that the usage Sign me up
seems common when disrespect or
slander is intended. Build a website with WordPress.com
I wonder if somehow it is connected
to the way Rush Limbaugh uses
“Democrat” as an adjective rather
than the correct “Democratic”. Maybe
there is just a deeply rooted sense of
disrespect in our language processing
when a noun is used as an adjective.
Stephen Barnard
| Permalink
I think there’s more to it than
the noun/adjective distinction.
For example, if I were ask
someone about their ethnicity,
I’d say “Are you Jewish?” and
not “Are you a Jew?” The latter
sounds impolite at best and
antisemitic at worst. I see no
good reason for this other than
avoiding a negative connotation
imposed by antisemites.
It’s interesting that some Jews
use “Jew” in a defiant way,
much like some African
Americans use the nword and
some gays use “queer”. I’m a
fan of the Mark Maron WTF
podcast. He does this a lot.
Diana MacPherson
| Permalink
Maybe you just have a strong
aversion to bad grammar.
Stephen Barnard
| Permalink
I have an aversion to
antisemites hijacking the
connotation of “Jew”.
Diana MacPherson
| Permalink
It’s actually interesting. I was
playing scrabble over the
interwebs with a friend of mine
and I told her there was a swear
word I just couldn’t play (forget Follow
what it was but it must’ve been
bad for even ME not to play it) Follow “Why
and she told me she felt bad
putting the word, “Jew”. What is Evolution Is True”
funny is she is JEWISH! I said
we need to explore this further.
your Inbox.
| Permalink
@Diana,
Sometimes it seems there is a
correlation between bigotry and
bad grammer, but it’s a fallacy
upon reflection.
I guess I’m just a grammar
snob, which is it’s own form of
bigotry.
35.
Dan L.
Human beings have the capacity to echolocate. This is obviously a
mental capacity.
The question is whether or not this capacity is an adaptation. If this
capacity did not evolve as a result of selection pressure then it is
almost certainly a result of neuroplasticity. And considering the
obvious (though currently circumstantial) arguments against having
evolved the capacity for echolocation, I think this demonstrates that
the potential variability in human behavior resulting from
neuroplasticity is profound.
I think that the human capacity for echolocation forces us to ask
what human behaviors can’t be accounted for by neuroplasticity and
cultural conditioning rather than genetics and also suggests that the
list should be rather short.
As far as the “boys are little devils/girls are little angels” stuff from
further up in the thread, essentially all that stuff begs the question.
Even a child’s earliest behaviors don’t emerge in a perceptual
vacuum.
Finally, people who want evo psych to be taken seriously as a
science should welcome adversarial critiques. Honest and rigorous
attempts at falsification are what make science scientific, right? (PZ
did have a thread asking evo psych advocates for their most
rigorous and defensible results. I’m sure he’d welcome more
suggestions along those lines if anyone would want to convince him
his skepticism is unwarranted. Although, to repeat, skepticism is
actually good for science.)
Diane G.
“. . . And considering the obvious (though currently
circumstantial) arguments against having evolved the
capacity for echolocation,”
Which are?
Dan L.
1. Only blind human beings have a compelling reason to
develop the capacity for echolocation.
2. There are no large populations of congenitally blind
human beings.
Therefore:
There is no reason to believe there has ever been any Follow
significant selection pressure for human echolocation.
Follow “Why
Dan L.
your Inbox.
My second premise should include the caveat Join 41,928 other followers
“outside of H. G. Wells short stories.”
Sign me up
Diane G.
Counter:
1.In darkness, any ability to avoid running into
objects (or predators) would be more
advantageous than not being able to do so.
2. Humans find themselves in darkness
approximately half the day.
Therefore: echolocation is adaptive.
And would seem not that difficult to achieve given
the acoustics already evolved in ears.
Dan L.
Can you echolocate? Why not if it is so
adaptive?
Our hearing is not nearly so good as a lot of
animals which likewise don’t echolocate.
The sound one need make to echolocate
doesn’t necessarily come naturally to the
shape of the human mouth.
I think the much more plausible explanation
for the capacity to echolocate is that it is a
learned rather than an evolved behavior. As
evidence I offer the fact that it must be
learned.
I could point out similarly that literacy could
not possibly be an adaptation but is a skill
that can be learned. Furthermore, there are
parts of the brain apparently devoted to
literacy which suggests to me that literacy
is the result of neuroplasticity rather than
congenital ability brought about through
adaptation.
Ben Goren
Eh, humans have racked up thousands of trillions
of manhours in caves — though, granted, most of
those hours have been spent sleeping.
And this is emphatically a situation where “half an
ear” is far superior to none at all. In an
environment without antibiotics, being well
enough aware of your surroundings in the middle
of the night to not stub your toe as you get up to
relieve yourself is definitely going to have an
evolutionary advantage.
It doesn’t take making pinging sounds to do it,
either; just the shuffling of your feet and other
ambient noises are enough to give you a clue
about your surroundings.
I’d pick some other example, were I you.
Cheers, Follow
b& Follow “Why

Dan L. Get every new post delivered to
Posted July 11, 2013 at 6:58 am | Permalink your Inbox.
And this is emphatically a situation where
“half an ear” is far superior to none at all.
In an environment without antibiotics, being
well enough aware of your surroundings in
the middle of the night to not stub your toe Sign me up
as you get up to relieve yourself is
definitely going to have an evolutionary Build a website with WordPress.com
advantage.
I’m guessing you personally cannot
echolocate. Learning to do so requires a
great deal of time and energy — time and
energy that might be more fruitfully spent
by a sighted person in seeking out food or
mates. Furthermore, it does not seem to
occur to sighted human beings to even try
to learn, although some congenitally blind
children spontaneously do start making the
clicking noises that create better echoes.
Further, there is apparently no part of the
brain devoted to echolocation before one
goes through the effort of learning it (but I
would conjecture that part of the visual lobe
is devoted to echolocation after one has
learned.
It doesn’t take making pinging sounds to do
it, either; just the shuffling of your feet and
other ambient noises are enough to give
you a clue about your surroundings.
Sure, but if you read the link it’s about a
blind guy who could avoid obstacles by
mountain biking. That’s a little more
extreme than a “clue”. Might I also point out
that animals with much better hearing than
human beings don’t seem to echolocate
despite the fact they seem to have
“evolved” superior capacity for it. Certainly
any dog or wolf with ears that can be
positioned independently would be better
than us. Should we assume that they
evolved this capacity or is it perhaps more
plausible that echolocation in this sense is a
spandrel following on the already
demonstrably adaptive capacity to simply
hear?
I’d pick some other example, were I you.
That’s pretty condescending. I don’t see any
need for that.
Ben Goren
Permalink
I’m guessing you
personally cannot
echolocate.
That depends on what you mean by
the term.
Can I navigate an obstacle course
blindfolded from atop a unicycle? Of
course not.
But can I get a notbad idea of my
surroundings with my eyes closed? As
in the size of the room, indoors /
outdoors, rough proximity of large
walls?
Of course. Almost any human can,
Follow
and does.
That some have developed that Follow “Why

universal ability with great precision Evolution Is True”
is impressive, sure, but no more
remarkable than that some humans Get every new post delivered to
can throw a ball with precision at over your Inbox.
a hundred miles an hour?
You’re holding up MLB pitchers and
Randy Johnson in particular as “proof” Enter your email address
that throwing balls is a learned
phenomenon, and ignoring that Sign me up
toddlers naturally and spontaneously
throw things, just not with much force
or precision.
Cheers,
b&
Dan L.
| Permalink
But can I get a notbad idea of
my surroundings with my eyes
closed? As in the size of the
room, indoors / outdoors, rough
proximity of large walls?
I am actually skeptical of how
well you can do this.
That some have developed that
universal ability with great
precision is impressive, sure,
but no more remarkable than
that some humans can throw a
ball with precision at over a
hundred miles an hour?
Somewhat more remarkable, I
think. While infants can and do
throw things most of them do
not avoid obstacles at 20 mph
by making clicking sounds at
them.
But this sniping back and forth
is missing the point of the
argument. Let me be more
explicit.
“Tying one’s shoelaces” is
obviously not an adaptation
although clearly we have the
capacity to do it. The shape and
motility of the human thumb is
almost certainly an adaptation
but the specific ability to tie
one’s shoes is a learned skill.
No one is born with the ability
to tie shoelaces and no one
automatically tries to tie
shoelaces unprompted (as
opposed to the way in which
infants seem to try to learn to
speak unprompted).
So when one is faced with
particular behaviors like “tying
one’s shoelaces”, “making
clicking sounds to navigate by
echo,” or “responding to loss of
social status with aggressive
behavior” one may quite fairly
ask whether these behaviors are
congenital adaptations or
instead learned behaviors
predicated on the flexibility of
the underlying physiology and
mental capacity of the Follow
organism. I think it is only fair
to point out that any assertion Follow “Why
that a particular behavior is an
adaptation can be answered Evolution Is True”
with skepticism: perhaps it is
learned rather than evolved.
your Inbox.
If a particular bit of evo psych Join 41,928 other followers
research can’t stand up to this
absolutely justified criticism Enter your email address
then what good is that research?
Seems to me studies should be
Sign me up
designed so as to investigate
alternative hypotheses.
Ben Goren
| Permalink
I am actually
skeptical of how
well you can do
this.
Imagine you’re blindfolded and
led on a journey. It starts with
you being led out of your house
and into a car. After a bit of
driving, you get out on a busy
street. You’re led through doors
into a lobby, down a wide
corridor, and into a large lecture
hall, into a small hallway, and
finally told to turn around and
sit in the chair behind you. The
door closes and you’re left alone
in a small closet.
Don’t you rather suspect that
you’d have a pretty good idea of
what type of space you were in
at all times? Not that you’d be
able to navigate any of it by
yourself, but you should at least
be able to describe the journey
in about the same level of detail
as I just did.
And I think it’s quite safe to say
that a child’s frustrationfueled
temper tantrum is not at all a
learned behavior. Many similar
adult behaviors are also pretty
selfevidently not learned —
though, of course, some have
learned to act in such ways to
manipulate others in desired
ways.
The question isn’t whether or
not we have hardwired
behavioral responses. The
question is which is which and
their evolutionary origins and
how they’ve interacted with
each other over the
generations..
Cheers,
b&
Dan L.
am | Permalink
Don’t you rather suspect that
Follow
you’d have a pretty good idea of
what type of space you were in
at all times?
Follow “Why
Not necessarily. I haven’t gone
through the specific experiment Get every new post delivered to
you suggest but I’ve tried to your Inbox.
move around in the dark enough
that I know my toes and nose
are much more precise
indicators of the proximity of
obstacles than is my hearing.
But again, irrelevant to the Sign me up
actual argument.
And I think it’s quite safe to say
that a child’s frustrationfueled
temper tantrum is not at all a
learned behavior.
I’m not so sure. People — even
infants! — respond to stressors
in many different ways and it’s
not clear to me that these
differences are the result of
genetic variation rather than
variation in the conditions under
which they’ve been exposed to
stressors in the past. In other
words, I see plenty of reason to
believe that responses to
environmental stress are at
least partially learned behaviors
rather than innate ones.
Many similar adult behaviors
are also pretty selfevidently
not learned — though, of
course, some have learned to
act in such ways to manipulate
others in desired ways.
One can quite reasonably argue
that all such behaviors are
learned for the purpose of
manipulating others in desires
ways. What’s the point of a
child’s temper tantrum if not to
try to manipulate others into
helping the child deal with
whatever source of stress
prompted the tantrum? Of
course, it’s also quite
reasonable to argue that there
are stereotyped means of
attracting attention (say, crying)
that are in some way innate.
Which is why I agree completely
with this:
The question isn’t whether or
not we have hardwired
behavioral responses. The
question is which is which and
their evolutionary origins and
how they’ve interacted with
each other over the
generations..
I’m not arguing that evo psych
is completely bollocks and the
premise that the mind is
evolved should be abandoned.
I’m saying arguments predicated
on particular models of human
nature that can’t help but be
informed by cultural biases
should be studied with
skepticism — as should any
scientific hypothesis. That’s
what makes science scientific
after all.
Follow
Coyne’s argument is that
skepticism of evo psych
arguments is largely politically
Follow “Why
motivated. I’m arguing that Evolution Is True”
criticism of evo psych
arguments is often principled, Get every new post delivered to
justified, and in fact necessary your Inbox.
for progress of the field in the Join 41,928 other followers
first place.
Sign me up
Jeff Johnson
Right of the top of my head, I’d say this is
probably just an epiphenomenal consequence of
the fact that we have two ears, and that the brain
knows how to use the spatial separation to hear
directionally, which is an obvious big win for
human survival.
Knowing which direction your enemy or a
predator is coming from is pretty important.
Certainly neuroplasticity plays a role in improving
and enhancing such an ability once somebody
needs to rely on it, and frequently exercises it,
just as it plays a big role in learning to play the
piano or learning calculus.
But I suspect that when, in the case of say heavy
damage to the region of the brain where auditory
processing is done, and another region is enlisted
to replace it, that the plasticity is only able to
rewire the new region because a substantial
portion of the auditory apparatus is intact and still
firing. So it’s a matter of nerve endings finding
each other again and bridging gaps between
frequently firing neurons. It’s more like the ends
of a broken clavicle growing together than it is
the entire regeneration of a new bone.
Dan L.
Yes, I agree. And taken as a whole this
argument does undermine the assumption
that all mental abilities are necessarily
adaptations — an assumption on which
many evo psych arguments depend.
Jeff Johnson
Permalink
Well certainly plasticisty itself, and
learning, are adaptations.
I don’t think evo psych argues that all
mental abilities are adaptations. For
example religious faith is explained in
terms of other more primitive
adaptations (such as hyperactive
agency detection, among others) that
have religion as an accidental
consequence of adaptations that exist
for entirely different reasons.
Echolocation for humans that are blind
falls into the category of religion for
humans, something enabled by our
stereophonic directional hearing plus
extraordinary brain plasticity and
learning, both of which are
adaptations. Echolocation won’t be
passed on genetically, obviously, so it
is a cultural phenomenon. But the
abilities required to learn echolocation
will be passed on genetically. Follow
It doesn’t undermine the point that
echolocation as a highly practiced skill
Follow “Why
acquired as a cultural phenomenon is Evolution Is True”
founded upon adaptations, and the
point the evo psych says every mental Get every new post delivered to
ability is an adaptation is just wrong. your Inbox.

Jeff Johnson
| Permalink Sign me up
By the way, if lots of humans
found that learning echolocation
was a worthwhile investment of
time and energy, and it became
ubiquitous throughout human
culture, it could feed back into
biological evolution eventually:
humans that are better at
echolocation would be selected
for whatever gene combinations
accelerate and ease the process
of learning it. Given enough
time and enough generations, it
could become to some degree
innate, so that babys might pick
it up the way they do language
now.
This may be an outline for how
human language evolved in
tandem with biologically
inherited foundational linguistic
abilities. Language clearly has
way more value to humans than
echolocation.
I think this is one of the
important tasks in evo psych:
untangling how cultural
evolution and biological
evolution interact.
Dan L.
| Permalink
the point the evo psych says
every mental ability is an
adaptation is just wrong.
Is it? I find just about every evo
psych hypothesis I hear about is
subject to this criticism.
The rest of your post is obvious
enough that I don’t feel much
need to comment on it. Yes,
brains are evolved. Some
behaviors are evolved. The
question is which ones.
Jeff Johnson
| Permalink
Right, which ones, and I think
this is obvious enough that the
field of evo psych couldn’t
possibly be populated with
people stupid enough to fail to
understand this.
Does evo psych have a
Follow
consensus that religion is an
adaptation? No, I think not. In
fact I think the consensus is that
Follow “Why
religion is not an adaptation. So Evolution Is True”
that pretty much means you are
over simplifying and not being Get every new post delivered to
fair to evo psych when you your Inbox.
make the claim that the field Join 41,928 other followers
insists all mental abilities or
traits are adaptations. Enter your email address
Sign me up

Dan L.
| Permalink
No, I think not. In fact I think
the consensus is that religion is
not an adaptation. So that pretty
much means you are over
simplifying and not being fair to
evo psych when you make the
claim that the field insists all
mental abilities or traits are
adaptations.
Of course, I never said that in
the first place. I specifically said
“many”. So perhaps you are the
one “over simplifying” and “not
being fair”?
Jeff Johnson
am | Permalink
Right. I misread that, or
misremembered. My bad.
You wrote:
And taken as a
whole this
argument does
undermine the
assumption that
all mental abilities
are necessarily
adaptations — an
assumption on
which many evo
psych arguments
depend.
So we are totally in agreement
that not all human mental
abilities are adaptations. This
seems really obvious.
Yet you say that many
arguments of EP depend on
assuming that ALL mental
abilities are adaptations. Is this
really true? It’s hard to believe
so many working in EP can’t get
something as basic as this.
Dan L.
pm | Permalink
Yet you say that many
arguments of EP depend on
Follow
assuming that ALL mental
abilities are adaptations.
Follow “Why
Perhaps I worded something Evolution Is True”
badly. EP hypotheses usually
pertain to particular aspects or Get every new post delivered to
facets of mental or social life your Inbox.
and many such arguments are
subject to the criticism I’m
trying to articulate.
For particular examples:
arguments for why depression Sign me up
might be adaptive in particular
circumstances without first
demonstrating that depression is
an adaptation in the first place
studies about gender
preferences that seem
predicated on cultural mores
particular to western industrial
society (note that I don’t oppose
studying gender differences in
human beings, I just think we
need to be careful hypotheses
about this since our views on
this are almost certainly heavily
colored by cultural biases)
one that through me for a loop
in particular: a study using only
WEIRD participants engaging in
the ultimatum game suggested
that people are innately
predisposed to punishing people
for behavior perceived as less
than fair. Subsequent retesting
in populations with giftbased
economies (as opposed to
market or bartering economies)
failed to reproduce these results
suggesting that the retaliatory
behaviors may very well be
culturally derived rather than
innate
For the last example I had taken
the results of the experiment
rather seriously and it was eye
opening to me to read about the
followup cross cultural study.
This is a big reason I advocate
serious skepticism with respect
to EP hypotheses.
36.
Stephen Barnard
I think it’s likely that the evolutionary paradigm extends to neural
phenomena. Biological evolution is the one process we know of that
produces complex, highly organized, adaptive structures. (Cultural
evolution is another, it could be argued.) It’s not unreasonable
(following Edelman’s Neural Darwinism conjectures) to suppose that
an analogous process works to organize the brain.
If you accept that, and if neural plasticity is a biological adaptation,
as has been reasonably suggested here, it’s actually a meta
adaptation: an adaptation that favors adaptation at a more abstract
level, the neural level.
There is a recursiveness to evolution: biological, neurological,
cultural.
37.
peltonrandy
Follow
sub
Follow “Why
your Inbox.

11 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
1. By PageoReasonable Criticism of the #FTBullies » Oolon's Blog on Sign me up
July 10, 2013 at 3:55 am

[…] It seems Pinker and Coyne have taken over on this criticism
and as the “big hitters”, unlike poor Dave below, they get the
attention. Actually […]
2. By Colin's Folly on July 10, 2013 at 12:46 pm
[…] A defense of evolutionary psychology (mostly by Steve Pinker)
« Why Evolution Is True. […]
3. By Linkage | Uncouth Reflections on July 10, 2013 at 8:52 pm
[…] A defense of evolutionary psychology. […]
4. By This One Goes to Eleven, PZ Myers, and Other Punch Lines |
Evolutionary Psychology on July 11, 2013 at 1:01 am
[…] much more recently, just a few days ago, Coyne penned a blog
post entitled “A defense of evolutionary psychology (mostly by
Steve Pinker)” in which he defends […]
5. By The rise of the evolutionary psychology douchebag |
feimineach.com on July 13, 2013 at 12:26 am
[…] A defense of evolutionary psychology (mostly by Steve Pinker)
(whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com) […]
6. By A Response to PZ Myers | Symposium Magazine on July 30, 2013
at 8:35 am
[…] thing – has criticized it again. After a recent defense of the field
against PZ’s comments by Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, PZ has
now responded to Pinker’s comments. He incorrectly asserts what
evolutionary […]
7. By What Does PZ Myers Despise? | Evolutionary Psychology on July
30, 2013 at 5:04 pm
[…] specific to evolutionary psychology. (This difference in views
might help to explain the expanding Coyne/Myers debate.) Denying
that one can infer a trait’s function from its form puts one out of
step with the […]
8. By The Politics and the Science of Disputing Evolutionary
Psychology | The American Conservative on July 31, 2013 at 3:30
am
[…] a brawl going down on the internet over the validity of
evolutionary psychology. On defense for evolutionary psychology:
biologist Jerry Coyne and Stephen Pinker, possibly the most
eminent […]
Psychology | The Blog of Tony JohnsonThe Blog of Tony Johnson on
July 31, 2013 at 7:44 am
[…] a brawl going down on the internet over the validity of
evolutionary psychology. On defense for evolutionary psychology:
biologist Jerry Coyne and Stephen Pinker, possibly the most
Follow
eminent […]
Follow “Why
Psychology | United Americans on July 31, 2013 at 6:37 pm
[…] a brawl going down on the internet over the validity of your Inbox.
evolutionary psychology. On defense for evolutionary psychology: Join 41,928 other followers
biologist Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, possibly the most eminent
[…] Enter your email address
Sign me up
11. By The Savannah Is Just a Synecdoche | peoplesfaces on November
2, 2013 at 11:59 am
[…] from a Pinker comment on a WEIT post (I’ve bolded the key […]
Blog at WordPress.com. |

A Defense of Evolutionary Psychology (Mostly by Steve Pinker)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Defense of Evolutionary Psychology (Mostly by Steve Pinker)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

12­8­2016 A defense of evolutionary psychology (mostly by Steve Pinker) « Why Evolution Is True

Why Evolution Is Tr ue

RT @PREAUX_FISH : 1 in Because of this ideologically­motivated critique, last December I

Is evolutionary Another lame attack Bonkers evolutionary

Build a website with WordPress.com

Maybe you should by him some Tonka Follow “Why

Build a website with WordPress.com

And hey–you’re not normal, I’m not Enter your email address

They aren’t of course, but at least this way around you don’t get Build a website with WordPress.com

Larry Gay Build a website with WordPress.com

Build a website with WordPress.com

Build a website with WordPress.com

Enter your email address

Gary, ample examples have already been Build a website with WordPress.com

Pharos University of Alexandria? But Enter your email address

15. Follow “Why

16. Build a website with WordPress.com

Enter your email address

He starts by challenging three common notions that affect people’s Follow “Why

Each these notions have long been used to argue against the notion Join 41,928 other followers

1) Evo­psych, like Social Darwinism before it, does justify Join 41,928 other followers

b& Follow “Why

Build a website with WordPress.com

Enter your email address

But I think it veers way off course by comparing Enter your email address

Build a website with WordPress.com

The snarky Jason character in this thread is better, but not by Enter your email address

Enter your email address

Cheers, Follow “Why

Diana MacPherson Enter your email address

So, as I suspected, nowhere in Build a website with WordPress.com

Build a website with WordPress.com

Enter your email address

Yes, Build a website with WordPress.com

Build a website with WordPress.com

The reason any 15 year old is not fluent in a second language Join 41,928 other followers

Enter your email address

Enter your email address

This: Build a website with WordPress.com

Build a website with WordPress.com

P:…The only assumption is that there are functional circuits, in the Join 41,928 other followers

A very poor performance by Pinker. Isn’t that because he hasn’t any Follow “Why

This was the key part of Myers’ opening. As it plainly says, Enter your email address

Enter your email address

Enter your email address

b& Follow “Why

That some have developed that Follow “Why

Enter your email address

Build a website with WordPress.com

Enter your email address

Build a website with WordPress.com

You might also like

1282016 A defense of evolutionary psychology (mostly by Steve Pinker) « Why Evolution Is True

RT @PREAUX_FISH : 1 in Because of this ideologicallymotivated critique, last December I

1) Evopsych, like Social Darwinism before it, does justify Join 41,928 other followers