[ExI] Evolutionary psychology

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Mon Mar 22 18:42:15 UTC 2010


On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 4:52 AM,  Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:

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> On 22 March 2010 08:13, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> From: Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com>
>>
>>> Evolutionary Psychology is seeming more and more bogus to me. Wall to
>>> wall just-so stories, grand conclusions drawn from very specific,
>>> restricted scope studies, mathematical model based "proofs" with
>>> ridiculously parsimonious assumptions.
>>
>> Normally parsimonious assumptions are considered better. ?Can you be
>> more specific?
>
> Parsimony is fabulous, as long as you don't leave things out that are
> necessary, then it just becomes a toy model (I would throw much
> libertarian theory into the too-parsimonious-to-be-correct basket
> too). Make things as simple as possible *but not simpler*, to
> paraphrase a clever chappy.

That's generalizing not being specific at all.  For example, where do
you think I have left out something important to include in the model
I worked out with numbers showing the genetic advantage of going to
war when the situation calls for war and not going to war otherwise?

>>> Plus its popularity seems tied
>>> to its ability to support the political assumptions of the theorist,
>>> whatever they may be (too often a very 19th century social-darwinistic
>>> kind of sensibility), and it has the added benefit that you don't need
>>> to know anything about the real work done in academic disciplines that
>>> have studied the field in question.
>>
>> The first half of this sentence is getting close to Godwin's law. ?The
>> second half looks to me like ad hominem.
>
> Godwins is very specific and I didn't go there.

You didn't.  But "social-darwinistic" isn't that far away.  "Social
Darwinism is a pejorative term used in criticism of ideologies or
ideas . . . " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_darwinism

> I do think there are
> benefits to the ev psych outlook (eg: balancing the blank slate
> assumptions of the 20th century), and probably academics in the area
> are more sophisticated than the run-of-the-mill armchair ev psych
> posturing you see around the place. But you must have seen examples of
> this?
>
> Random google turns this up:
> http://www.jasnh.com/a8.htm
>
> "Evolutionary psychologists have noted that men and women seek
> different traits when looking for a mate. Men value physical
> characteristics in women such as smooth skin, a small waist-to-hip
> ratio, and a youthful appearance (Buss, 1995). It has been argued that
> such traits are desirable because they signal fertility. Women value
> physical characteristics in men such as height, muscularity, and broad
> shoulders (Buss, 1994; Barber, 1995; Franzoi & Herzog 1987) and
> personality characteristics such as power, ascendance, and dominance
> (Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997). It has been argued that such
> traits are desirable because they signal the ability to provide
> resources. However, such traits could also signal the ability to
> provide protection from a variety of threats, including sexual
> predators."
>
> I'm surprised they haven't thrown in a bit of phrenology for good measure.

The paragraph you cite is a lead in to a student research paper.  Even
so, there is nothing in it I can see that is in conflict with the
current state of evolutionary psychology.  The authors are citing big
names in the field.

> I think if you consulted people from the social sciences, some people
> might object that there's a little thing called "culture" being
> neglected here...

David Buss and others in the field go to a great deal of trouble to
weed out cultural influences when discussing EP.  Have you read any of
his work?

> Plus, there are these wonderfully cartoonish assumptions about the
> "ancestral environment" that just don't draw on any evidence.

********

What is the EEA and why is it important? (general answer)

The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. This phrase, first coined
by John Bowlby of attachment theory fame, has been the source of much
confusion and controversy. First of all, the EEA is NOT a specific
time or place. Roughly, it is the environment to which a species is
adapted. Animals that lived in different environments or made their
livings in different ways faced different reproductive problems, and
that's why all animals aren't the same. Fish faced different problems
than did butterflies, and as a result they have different adaptations.
The EEA for any specific organism is the set of reproductive problems
faced by members of that species over evolutionary time. The EEA for a
particular species of fish is likely to be completely different than
the EEA for a particular species of butterfly, even if those species
both evolved in the same locations over the same periods of time. Each
of these species faced reproductive problems that the other didn't,
and thus their EEA's are different. The EEA concept is very similar to
the notion of 'niche' in evolutionary biology.

I have used the past tense when referring to the solving of
reproductive problems because adaptations evolved over a large number
of generations and are therefore "tuned" to reliable aspects of past
environments (see the next section). If the environment changes, then
the adaptation may be "out of tune" with the present environment and
fail to properly perform its reproductive function.

The EEA concept is extremely important for understanding the
functional properties of organisms, including the functional
organization of the human brain. As outlined in the previous section,
the functional properties of organisms arise by the process of
evolution by natural selection. This means that the functions that
organisms have are precisely those that solved long standing,
recurrent reproductive problems. Reproductive problems are all the
various things organisms had to do to survive and reproduce in a
particular environment over evolutionary time--find food, find mates,
avoid predators, combat pathogens, etc.

This observation is particularly important for understanding the
functional organization of the human brain. Because we cannot (yet)
directly study the wiring of the brain (except in a very few cases),
we need another 'window' or set of tools for perceiving brain
functions. Darwin's theory provides this window. If we can specify all
the reproductive problems faced by our ancestors (i.e., if we can
specify the human EEA), we can specify all the potential functions
that our bodies and brains could have, in principle. With respect to
the brain in particular, if we can specify all the reproductive
problems involving information processing, we can specify all the
possible psychological mechanisms that could have evolved. Whether
humans possess any particular psychological mechanism (i.e., an
ability to solve a particular reproductive problem involving
information processing), becomes an empirical question. Fortunately,
it is much easier to find something if you have some idea what you are
looking for. Studying the past is, at present, easier than studying
brain wiring. The EEA concept therefore provides a much needed tool
for determining, a priori, what kinds of functions, or mechanisms, the
human brain is likely to have: the human brain solves the reproductive
problems posed by past environments; it allows us to do all the things
we needed to do to survive and reproduce in ancestral
environments--find food, find mates, detect and avoid predators and
other dangerous animals, etc. We can understand the functional
organization of human bodies and brains precisely to the extent that
we can understand the human EEA.

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/eea.html

********

> The link
> Damien provided detailed a bit of this: eg: all this ape-based
> assumption of the alpha male dominating and getting all the women
> doesn't tie in with male human penis size, which is ridiculously large
> for primates, and appears to be the result of an evolutiionary arms
> race based in women having many mates (it's for getting past/flushing
> out competitor's sperm).
>
> As to ad hominem, do you see ev psych papers strongly referencing
> other fields that study the same area, eg psych, sociology,
> anthropology?

The closest related areas are cognitive psychology and sociobiology.
I strongly reference Azar Gat's work which in turn references a large
swath of anthropology.
http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/gatpres1.pdf

For the last century the root assumption of sociology was the "blank
state," also know as the SSSM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_social_science_model

Here is what Dr Christopher Badcock of the London School of Economics
and Political Science said.

Badcock: Something that is characteristic of evolutionary psychology
is that it has tended to set itself up in opposition to what is often
called the standard social sciences model, which is the belief that
human behaviour is explicable mainly in terms of social, political and
environmental causes. And I think that failed. It failed
catastrophically and disastrously, and there is no point going on with
it anymore.

http://www.fathom.com/feature/35533/index.html

> The one I linked seems to almost exclusively reference
> other ev psych papers, and even one about non-human primates, but
> where's the anthropology, for example? I'm suspicious that we've been
> studying humans, individuals and groups, successfully now for at least
> a hundred years, and a new discipline can basically ignore all that.

For over a hundred years stomach ulcers were thought to be caused by
stress.  That was just wrong, it is mostly caused by Helicobacter
pylori.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_peptic_ulcer_disease_and_Helicobacter_pylori

Many people (such as James Joyce) died as a result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_joyce#1920.E2.80.9341:_Paris_and_Z.C3.BCrich

Modern gastroenterology pays no attention to former theories of
stomach ulcers because they were displace by one more in keeping with
reality.

We know the blank state is just wrong.  The whole social science
edifice has no foundation.

>> Evolutionary psychology is currently placing a foundation under much
>> of social science. ?My estimate is that it has done this in virtually
>> all of the top rated schools, and may be more than half way through
>> with the rest. ?Google for Evolutionary Psychology graduate programs.
>> It's a way to look at behavior, and a fundamental outline of how to
>> construct models.
>>
>> Models lead to predictions. ?If the predictions fail, then the model
>> needs to be reconsidered. ?Even poor models are better than no models
>> because they lead to better models.
>>
>> For example, my initial model for what leads to wars failed with the
>> US Civil war. ?The current economic situation was not contributing
>> since there was no economic downturn at that time. ?But the
>> _anticipation_ of hard times due to ending slavery was a factor and
>> indeed the population of the South was correct in this assessment.
>>
>> Keith
>
> I've read your paper, and quite liked the ideas (basically, we are
> genetically programmed to go to war when we feel our resource outlook
> is or might become desperate). But, where is any consideration of
> culture? Some peoples seem far less likely to go to war than others.
> Actually you talk about "xenophobic memes", so are assuming states are
> more warlike if their population is more xenophobic, but how does that
> explain a country like the US which is more or less constantly
> involved in (and often starting) wars, while have a pretty low level
> of xenophobia and little or no resource stress or perceived resource
> stress? I bet at many times in the past few decades, pre 9/11, the
> general population was hardly even aware of the wars the country was
> fighting.
>
> Where is any acknowledgement of other pre-existing theories about war,
> and how this theory compares? For instance, the Marxian contention
> that war is basically economic, that the ruling classes start wars to
> benefit capitalists? Not that I'm saying that particular theory is
> true, but it makes some very different claims to what your theory
> makes, predicts different types of behaviour.
>
> I do like the way your theory takes into account the differences
> between the "ancestral environment" and modern states, but claims such
> as this one:
>
> "So the huge US "tribe" was attacked on 9/11 by OBL's tiny "Al Qaeda
> tribe" and went into war mode due to being attacked."
>
> Do you feel that this properly explains the war in Iraq?

Yes.

Without 9/11 do you think Bush would have had support to go to war with Iraq?

No.  In fact, hell no.  You might note that the leaders of a number of
other countries didn't even try with their populations.  And the
reason is obvious, they were not attacked.

As for leaders in wars going irrational, that's part of the model.
Stone age genes were "concerned" (anthropomorphizing) only with
getting copies into the next generation.  If the situation called for
most of the tribe to take a chance on dying or die, that's what
happened if the average outcome was better than doing nothing.

> To me this theory looks like an attempt at underpinning Political Realism:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_realism

There is no science base to political realism.  I don't know if the
field would be open to one.  But if you want to try, be my guest.

> but without any acknowledgement of that orientation, or indeed any
> sign of awareness that this is only one way of understanding world
> politics,

The EP papers I wrote came out of my up close efforts to understand
the odd behavior of people in cults.  That led in some strange
directions, including a model for how the human behavioral traits
leading to wars came about.  I made no intentional attempt to
understand world politics.

> and not without serious criticisms.

I came to where I did more by happenstance than any other reason.  You
can take what found from applying EP seriously or not.

Keith




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