Don’t you just love it when people like @FerranSuay wrap themselves in the Prestigious Robes of Science and Evolution, and then make a series of statements that show they understand neither, and fail at logic to boot? A professor of psychobiology has written an essay in which he equates a refusal to make natural selection omnipotent with creationism. It’s a familiar and wrong tirade. I should have been keeping track of how often I get accused of being a creationist because I find evolutionary psychology poorly founded and full of sloppy research, because if I had, I’d have a really big number.
In academic environments it is very difficult to find someone who will openly and explicitly deny the principles of evolutionary theory. Professors and researchers from any scientific discipline will endorse, more or less accurately, the principles of natural selection, and everyone has a rough idea about what genes, chromosomes, and DNA are. Certainly, nobody will deny that we walk on two legs or have a hand with an opposable thumb because evolutionary pressures have shaped our anatomy in this way. And very few academics refuse to acknowledge that human brains underwent a unique frontal development, which clearly distinguishes them from those of other primates, and even those of our closest relatives, the great apes. This is accepted as an obvious consequence of the evolutionary process that has shaped life on Earth today.
But the situation is very different when we apply the same principles to the study of human behaviour. In this area, there are scientists prepared to deny any genetic influence whatsoever. Some will say instead that behaviour is wholly the product of social and environmental variables. Others will try to consistently minimize the explanatory power of genetics. But how can a species rid itself of the laws that govern the rest of life on the planet?
See the highlighted sentence? Name them. Go ahead. You should be specific in your claims if you’re in those science robes, you know. I don’t know anyone who fits that description, unless he’s thinking of some fringe New Age wackaloon like David Avocado Wolfe.
Only a few minutes of thought reveals all this to be extraordinarily unscientific.
Yes, I agree, that essay is extraordinarily unscientific. It’s not going to get better.
Are we to believe that evolutionary pressures, which have configured the anatomy of the body and the brain, cannot also be used to explain and understand the whys and wherefores of human behaviour? Everyone agrees that we have opposable thumbs because those of our ancestors born with this mutation possessed certain reproductive advantages and left more living descendants on Earth. As this trait continued to provide benefits to subsequent generations, it became so dominant it is now the norm for the vast majority of humans. The same can be applied to the standing position, and to the size and the particular anatomical configuration of the human brain. This is all uncontroversial.
We can credit all kinds of things to evolution, but this fellow has three major problems: 1) he thinks all of evolution is explained by natural selection, 2) he assumes that every single feature of the human form is adaptive, and 3) he has this overly simplistic notion that opposable thumbs are a product of a “mutation”. Every one of those points is false.
Do we need to go on after he reveals that all of his premises are wrong? Of course we do, for the spectacle of someone digging themselves a very deep hole.
Why should the same logic not apply to human behaviour? Let’s take physical aggression, for example—the tendency to impose on others through coercion. Didn’t aggressive individuals enjoy (some) reproductive advantages? Didn’t the most aggressive males climb the hierarchy of social groups thereby enhancing their ability to attract resources and mates? Didn’t that privilege the transmission of aggressive genes to the next generation? The statistics on violent crime reveal a very clear over-representation of the male sex. Without needing to study the numbers, anyone with eyes in their head can conclude that human males are generally considerably more physically aggressive than females.
That explains nothing. It’s a lazy, sloppy attempt to justify a patriarchal status quo without looking for any evidence.
The logic is wrong. If physical aggression is an advantage for men, why not also for women? Wouldn’t aggressive women enjoy some reproductive advantages? Don’t women experience hierarchical social groups? Why is this being framed as a male thing with arguments that should apply to all sexes?
And if you want to argue that submissive behavior is advantageous for women (somehow I suspect he would), wouldn’t it also be the case that submissive behavior would be advantageous for men? He has trapped himself in an argument that can work in any direction you want.
Let’s look at reality, too. Does this professor expect to climb the rungs of the hierarchy at the University of València with physical aggression? That would be truly remarkable. Universities are not purely intellectual meritocracies, but still — using violent crime to work your way up the ranks probably wouldn’t work. Social skills are far more important. Attempting to coerce one’s colleagues with a good punch-up or skillful use of a club will not get you far.
It’s nice of him to announce that you don’t need numbers, since he doesn’t have any.
However, unlike the shape of our hands, the standing position, or the anatomy of the brain, this trait is not a universally accepted product of evolution. Instead, it is a response to social conditioning, such as patriarchal education, the nefarious influence of the media, or the excessive availability of violent video games. In this scenario, miraculously, evolutionary pressures have no part to play, and the socio-environmental, psychosocial, or psycho-socio-environmental variables (we can keep on juxtaposing terms until we find a sufficiently abstruse formulation) are the sole determinants of behaviour.
There he goes again.
Look. This shouldn’t be so difficult to understand. You did not evolve to be well-adapted to your academic niche. Evolution gave us a plastic brain capable of learning and adapting — in an immediate, developmental sense, not an evolutionary sense — to diverse and complex circumstances. You are capable of both bashing in a competitor’s skull with a rock, or publishing papers to demonstrate your cognitive superiority (this guy ain’t doin’ so well on that front). We can simultaneously see that human minds have a genetic predisposition to process, understand, and use symbols, and a learned ability to speak Spanish, English, or Russian.
These are not hard concepts to reconcile. A genetic/biological substrate that has many predispositions and capabilities, plus a general ability to learn and modify behavior on the basis of experience is the obvious, universal, scientific understanding of the human mind. It is simply perverse to throw away the last part of that description and believe in strict genetic determinism of behavior.
But when psychologists deal with one of the most complex phenomena we know about, human behaviour, they must discard the methods that have proved useful, and the knowledge derived from them, and embrace a new faith; one that says that the cause of behaviour are to be found only in social and environmental variables. This is unscientific and intellectually dishonest—it is creationism by another name. Only it is “hidden,” because its advocates will not openly resile from evolutionist positions and, instead, drape their irrational beliefs in the prestigious robes of science.
Since genetics is relatively inflexible, it is only reasonable to assume that the cause of variation in behavior may be a product of learned experience. That there may also be some genetic biases between individuals is not off the table, but dang, guy, you’ve got to do a heck of a lot of work to show that.
Because science expects you to drop the pretentious Robes of Science and buckle down to work.
I’m also wondering how much training in evolutionary theory psychologists get, because their publications suggest that the average psychologist gets none at all, and sometimes a negative quantity.
I’ll just go ahead and say it…
Nice rape apologia…
What is particularly humorous is that animals evolve both morphology and behavior through evolution: they have specialized body parts and instincts for their survival. Humans, however, have the peculiarity of having non-specialized generic body parts and pretty much lack instinctual behaviors. Our increased forebrain allowed us to develop learned behavior to survive in many different ecological niches with our generic body. Thus humans are essentially globally uniform in their behavior and body parts: we don’t have subspecies, or “breeds”, of humans precisely because we have evolved generic body parts and learned behavior. This guy’s argument runs counter to reality, but implies that humans have evolved different breeds and races due to natural selection. What is further interesting is that there is an excellent argument that because of our generic brain structure we do evolve ideas, memes, that act a lot as if the ideas conformed to natural selection, but we don’t have instincts.
At my place of last employment, which styles itself a Small Private Research University, one member of the Psychology Department (where I became a hanger-on in the last decade or so of my career) had a joint appointment in the Biology Department; his background, and his earliest research, were in not-exclusively-human ethology (Ph.D. from Berkeley, advised by Ford or Beach, I forget which); evolutionary theory informed a lot of his later work (in, among other things, child development), and for decades he taught an undergraduate seminar on The Paradox of Animal Sociality (I think it was called) with much emphasis on (fairly half-assed…) mathematical models for the evolution of altruism in humans. He also had very little tolerance for “evolutionary psychology” of the Tooby-Cosmides-Buss kind.
But he was an outlier (and perhaps, just perhaps, a bit of a crank…), and in any case the graduate program there was a rounding error (about 12 new students a year, half in clinical and maybe two or three in the “Social-Evolutionary-Cultural Psychology” program to which I was vaguely attached).
#NotAllPsychologists.
I agree. Some psychologists actually learn the stuff — I’ve known psychologists are far more knowledgable about biophysics than I am, for instance. But most don’t get even the introductory training in evolution that we give to all biology majors, and misconceptions abound.
Also, lots of bio majors avoid evo after that first year and are full of misconceptions, too.
I’m not a biologist, but I would speculate that this has something to do with the dynamic that exists in species which compete for mates.
Typically, most females in a competitive species will breed, but only a select number of males will breed. Female competition still exists, but because the probability of breeding is high, this should favor low-risk competition. That is, the odds of passing on your genes are too high to overcome the added benefit of securing a higher quality mate at the risk of death or injury.
On the other hand, because not every male gets to breed, this should favor high-risk competition, as low-risk competition is unlikely to lead to any success at all.
Disclaimer: I don’t think a dynamic like this exists among humans today, but it probably did earlier in our evolution.
I think the solution here is clear: neuter all males. Works great in dogs. Everybody gets ten tubes to wank into in their teens, in case they later want kids, after that it’s a nice trip to the doc.
After all, if it’s men’s nature to be aggressive violent bastards, we cannot hold them morally responsible. But it also means that it is legitimate for society to remove the threat for the same reason you don’t let grizzlies stroll down streets.
Now of course, if men are moral agents who choose to be violent or not, it’s another story…
Nathan #2
Yep, it is.
If physical aggression is an advantage for men, why not also for women?
If it was an advantage, women would have evolved to be aggressive. Checkmate, evopsych.
I’m also wondering how much training in evolutionary theory psychologists get
I don’t know if it has changed since 1982-5, when I was getting my B.A. in psych from a prestigious school with lots of ivy in Baltimore, but they didn’t mention evolution. Other than occasionally waving by something like, “you know, our nervous systems evolved.” We spent entirely too much time on pop psychology, like Freud and Maslow and Jung, and 2 semesters of statistics, and 2 semesters on testing and testing methodologies. When I think back, I’m pretty appalled – and at the time I had chosen psychology because it was an easy degree.
Gilliel@#7:
After all, if it’s men’s nature to be aggressive violent bastards, we cannot hold them morally responsible.
You might want to read Sherri Tepper’s “The Gate To Women’s Country” Because that’s the premise.
PS – I think the idea of a mate who gnaws my head off after we copulate… Is kinda hot. Am I allowed to say that?
I believe this has never been observed in the wild. It has only been seen in captive praying mantises, so it may be an artifact – but go ahead anyway.
“using violent crime to work your way up the ranks probably wouldn’t work.”
It did at Unseen University…..at least till Ridcully became Archchancellor.
PZ in the OP
Don’t give him ideas.
How tiresome another academic trots out the old “Blank Slate” straw man.
nathan @2:
you are precisely right. evo psych is entirely about finding justifications for male privilege and misogyny.
Just for the fun of it I am going to point out again that in humans (and some other old-world primates) the courting and copulating are both very probably learned behaviors, since multiple studies found out that primates without exposure to “how its done” fail to succesfully copulate later in life with significantly higher rate than those with sufficient social upbringnig. Even other vertebrates have “cultural” components in their mating behavior.
I think nobody will dispute that succesful mating is absolutely essential for the survival of the species for the whole time of its existence (with rare exceptions of parthenogenesis, of which our species is not capable). However the behavior itself is no longer coded in genes (at least not in full) since our plastic brains are capable of learning it. The only innate thing that remained is the impulse, but not the behavior itself.
So even if – and it is a big IF – there is some innate propensity for violence in men that is a vestige of the hypothesised evolutionary past, how does one go about designing an experiment that separates the cultural chaff from the evolutionary grain?
Counter-argument to the quoted hypothesis that “no cultural behaviour can be learned, it’s all in the genes” (at least that’s how evopsych presents itself to me.)
Now, I’m basing myself on my memories of a 20+ old ethology course so correct me if I’m wrong …
Hasn’t it been shown that the young hatching out of eggs that were incubated by adults of a different species (especially common with ducks IIRC) will imprint on their “parent” species and look for potential partners amongst their adoptive species (usually without luck); or song birds will learn their adoptive song and therefore not recognize their owner species?
I would say that’s iron-clad proof that several behaviours essential for the propagation of the species are learned and not genetic. And yet if you following the EviPsych mantra, humans are soooo primitieve that everything they do has to be dictated by genes that have been immutable for the last 1000 generations or so.
Ah shit, I wish the preview function worked for me: the links(hopefully repaired
…very probably…
…in their mating behavior…
Charly, looks like the articles you cite reders to roughly the same studies I remembered.
Thanks for the references.