This Myles Power guy fished up an evolutionary psychologist to write a defense of of EP, which is not at all impressive. I’m sure he could also find an acupuncturist to write many words about the wonders of sticking needles in people, but I wouldn’t be impressed with that, either.
I will just point out that this fellow also has decided that everyone who criticizes EP is ideologically motivated to hate it; it can’t possibly be that we detest it because it is bad science. And of course he pisses me off with his dishonest opening.
Now, before I begin, ask yourself this, if you are against EP, why? Which of the following do you disagree with:
- Evolution shapes both the morphology and behaviour of organisms
- Humans are as much a product of evolution as any other organism
- Humans behaviour should show evidence of being shaped by evolution
Because if the answer is, “well, none of them”, then there is really no need to go anything further. Because that’s all EP is in the end, looking at humans from the point of view of evolution. It’s taking 150 years of evolutionary theory and applying it to human behaviour. That’s it. We can discuss the impact any evolved pre-dispositions have on behaviour in the context of social, cognitive and biological perspectives without name-calling. So we’re good yes?
No. We’re not good. This is classic EP evasion tactics: immediately hiding behind general principles of evolutionary biology, as if disagreeing with EP is exactly equivalent to denying evolution. It’s annoying as hell to every time have a chorus of idiots accusing me of being a creationist because I find evolutionary psychology to be simple-minded to the point of utter uselessness in actually explaining anything about human evolution, and it’s people like this EP proponent who always try to feed that nonsense right from the get-go.
Evolution shapes both the morphology and behaviour of organisms. Humans are as much a product of evolution as any other organism. Humans behaviour should show evidence of being shaped by evolution. Yes to all of those. Accepting basic biological facts does not, however, in any way imply that I must therefore accept the specific claims of a fallacious hypothesis about human evolution. Evolutionary psychologists are not simply applying 150 years of evolutionary theory to human behavior, and it’s dishonest to claim that they are.
I skipped the rest. If the author can’t even be trusted to explain what makes EP a specific and useful approach, but just wants to pretend it’s plain old evolutionary biology, using the same methods and rigor, then I’ve got no use for more games of hide and seek.
You know who else uses this tactic? Racists. How can you possibly accept evolution and disagree that black people are inferior? You must be a cultural Marxist. It’s contemptible when racists do it, it’s just as revolting when EP nuts do it.
Yes we do. This is best seen with a big, very plastic brain, that requires learning from other humans over a long period of time to allow us to make full use of our environment. Which means cultural learning is likely to be more important than genes in the long run to humans, as cultural adaptations can take place much faster than evolution, and even take place after one is no longer reproducing. And do so in a fast changing environment.
You claim genes, please identify the genes responsible, and their effect. I’m still waiting for that evidence….
This mode of argument has the potential to be a lot of fun:
If you are against vaccine denial, why?
1. Autism causes suffering
2. Medical science should try to prevent or reduce suffering
3. Advocating the preventing of suffering is good public health policy
Which of those three are you against?
If you are against stealing underpants, why?
1. Stealing underpants is part of the Underpants Gnomes’ plan
2. The goal of the Underpants Gnomes’ plan is to make money
3. Making money is good
The uses are truly endless:
You say you don’t want to go out with me. Why not?
1. You are a woman.
2. Going out with women makes me happy.
3. Happiness is good.
The biggest problem with evolutionary psychology is not the evolution part.
Didn’t someone suggest that humans’ pervasive distaste for snakes is possibly a trait that evolved?
This guy really needs to read Lewontin’s Biology as Ideology.
The idiot lost right here. This is a fallacy of some sort, maybe an ad hominem.
If you can’t defend your science on the basis of science, then you make wild claims about your critics.
FWIW, a whole lot of biologists consider evo-psych to be just garbage pseudoscience. Just put a few words into Google and they come up.
And again, FWIW, there is nothing new about evo-psych. It’s been around in one form or another since the 1960’s. Remember Robert Aubrey and the Killer Apes? The territorial imperative?
A field that has been around that long and done so little has problems.
oh bugger
Robert Ardrey
That was a dark time in PaleoAnthropology.
.
I actually took a seminar co-taught by Lional Tiger and Robin Fox.
@chigau (違う) #8
The OP linked guy has been teaching EP for YEARS. Of couse that makes it valid science.
=8)-DX #9
Yes.
That is very sad.
Those poor first-year undergrads.
@chigau
With guest lecturers Corwin Bear and Kitty Wolfe?
Anton Mates #11
That seminar was real, with those actual named people.
I don’t think any of us made a joke at the time.
I was 20 years old.
Why did all those 40something dudes miss that?
Shouldn’t EP have predictive power? Or is that not required to be sciency?
Or is it all predictive power – “texas marksman” style?
Their entire argument is framed in terms of an appeal about the universality of psychological traits, rather than anything about evolution.
They don’t seem to appreciate that early in its history evolutionary biology had to grapple with disentangling heredity. The conflation of heritable and genetic still crops up regularly in popular writing about evolution. The claim that any psychological phenomenon which is cross-cultural is probably a product of adaptation is extremely problematic, particularly where experiments are poorly controllable for observer bias (because the measurements are indirect). That is doubly so if the hypothesis seems plausible but there is a general acceptance in the field that the detailed mechanisms are too complex to elucidate. The accusation that EP literature is often contaminated with cultural bias (including sexism) is not very well addressed by pointing towards work such as that showing that women are attracted to successful men and then claiming that success can defined differently across cultures, but therefore evolution. It is a truism at best. The argument is then made to ignore any of the constellation of reasons as to why those things are difficult to define or to measure, but to simply accept the observation and move on to postulate that the drive for success must be an adaptive behaviour. No real effort is spent trying to dissect the implications of all of those assumptions.
Again, that is something which biology has struggled with at points, where people have claimed that many problematic labels and categories are actually complex traits which – just you wait – will one day be unpicked to prove the genetic basis. Those arguments are superficially compelling to many people, and they become pervasive because they often justify uncomfortable prejudice. Some people still cling to those stereotypes even where genetic data have undermined them completely.
There isn’t much argument to be had that studying human psychology is difficult, and doing so ethically puts limits on what is easily tested. This defence seems to say something about that but very little about how to test the evolutionary component, other than to assume it. The entire thing does little to address the complaints about the lack of biological hypotheses to complement the psychology.
Skimmed through the post, found this line: “Let’s be clear here, no researcher has ever aimed to “justify” anything, nor made moral statements about rightness.”
Cool story bro.
From the linked blogpost (emphasis mine):
Also he moves on from admitting the thing he’s describing isn’t heritable, to the conclusion that a complex behaviour that might lead to it could be (but is it? how could we tell?) Gosh I wonder why in all these male-dominated societies, men don’t seem to value the status of women as much? It’s cross-cultural people! Like farming, religion, language!
And later:
He fails to see the problem with this. Behaviour A (“mate choice”) is variable within the population. It could be influenced by B, C, D and E. But somehow they can just theorise the existence of a genetic component F related to a speculative past U as if they’ve got all those other influences down pat. And he’s also completely ignoring the fact that many humans make consciously calculated decisions about all this.
Thanks for the blog entry and above link. I’m nearing the end of Cordelia Fine’s “Delusions of Gender,” and what an eye-opener it is. I had no idea at all that what I was taught in a university (Catholic) biology of sex class, and which seems to be taken as gospel by many (most?) people, was predicated on such utter bullshit. It never “felt” right to me; it didn’t hang together. Reading how the whole female brain/real brain research was done, as well as how few people were in the studies, was a shock. The majority of this work has as much validity as Andrew Wakefield’s MMR study.
I’m just so pleased to find others who think it’s bullshit. I’d appreciate any recommendations for books addressing the field of evolutionary psychology, since I’m really far away from my field of study. I’m off to google what’s available on line.
The analogy I like to use is that claiming a evolutionary basis for human behaviour in general implies that there are evolutionary explanations for specific behaviours in modern cultures is rather like claiming that the evolutionary basis of language implies evolutionary explanations for specific language constructs in modern languages.
I look forward to one day reading the EP explanation of why the singular “they” is incorrect. It’ll probably have something to do with the pressing need to know the number and gender of the members of a hunting party on the African savannah…
Of course someone suggested that. I’m very skeptical of this particular example myself, because… how pervasive is it really? I lack it, and I’m not the only one.
You could perhaps argue that people who keep snakes as pets have somehow sublimated this distaste. But I don’t have any snakes, and have no desire to; and again I’m not the only one.
Fear of the dark is probably a better example of an evolved trait.
Why does that sound like a thinly veiled excuse for fucking your female undergrads? Or alternatively an angry “why won’t these women fuck me, I’m a professor, I have status!!!!”
Most women are fertile until their late forties or early fifties. People used to have ten children or more. In some cultures people still do. How do they do that when the woman keeps growing older?
PSA
I talk about a few here. I’d also recommend Adam Cohen’s recent Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. Eugenics and Social Darwinism were the forerunners of Evo Psych, and the book tells of the consequences when such pseudoscience becomes accepted by powerful people and institutions and influences policy.
Humans are products of evolution. Evolution shapes our bodies, brains, and behaviors. Therefore, the cultural and social values of the United States in the 1950s are hard-wired biological imperatives universal to all humans past present and future.
What are their ostensible goals?
One could spend one’s day measuring blades of grass and call that science;
but what would one hope to accomplish?
Miscellaneously, but related: Charles Murray has written that men have
superior visuo-spatial IQ because they had to find their way home after
hunting in the Savannah. Anyone can play games with evolutionary
psychology.
But also, it is important to look at (a) who is using this research to
justify (b) what ideology; (c) what other research they are citing.
Evolutionary psychology happens to always be used by the race-IQ crowd, in
articles containing footnotes that lead to Rushton, who determined that
virtually all Africans are mentally retarded, by reducing all of
intelligence to performance on Raven’s Progressive Matrices.
Again, that tends towards ad hominem; but scientists are responsible for
the ethical implications of their research. One cannot justify any activity
in the name of science, as Hannah Arendt, for example, explained well in
The Human Condition.