The third rampage of evolutionism: evolutionary pscyhology

Randomness removes choice as much as anything.Well I think this discussion is just about at its end, you have made your predictions for how you think evo psych will go. We will see how they turn out.I make a different set of predictions. The field is going to merge with cognitive psychology, and neuroscience which has been developing descriptions of how thought takes place at a more down-up processing. It will serve as a unifying theoretical frame for cog psych and a more fully developed concept of the mind will emerge. The application of the theory will be a wealth of understanding about our motivations on a day to day basis and a wealth of information about how to over come are drives.

No worries I am done. When I first joined and brought up my evo psych background I was warned off syamsu because of his vitriol for my discipline.But I had to try it once just to see how, morbid curiosity.

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my prediction of doom reasonable, for as far as predictions of doom can be reasonable.

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um...exactly!

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Obviously Parsimonious Razor, as a practicing evolutionary psychologist, is glaringly irresponsible for not dealing with the prejudice against things going one way or another, when dealing with subjects which are mainly about going one way or another, people and their choices.

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how is this not gibberish?

When I say programmable knowledge I am talking, in this case, specifically the ability to formalize it into simple programming logic. A series of if/then statements and calls to stored knowledge.The main point I was trying to make is that you can not make such a program that is applicable to everyone, because the stored knowledge and if/then functions are likely to be different.Models that try to produce results for across the board humanity often run into some major problems.In my research on time discounting most of the current economic models have people integrating every decision across time with every other decision. And while this can make a nice simplistic model it’s completely wrong. Trying to figure out just what people are integrating and how they are responding to these integrations is ultimately impossible for a universal model. The more specific you get to a single sample the less external validity you have.But I think evo psych can help by showing what most people, most of the time integrate. So you are given up some specific accuracy but gain some universal predictability.But it’s tough, and fits poorly in programming logic.That was my main point, to try and show that proximate factors, including "choice" have to be integrated at some level and that it is recognized.

The criticism of evolutionary psychology rarely rest on science and is inundated with massive ideological barriers. The most vocal critics are all loudly support neo-Marxism and argue off of those grounds. Your criticism of "things going one way or another" is just in your mind, not in the field. There is not some vast army of supporters for your concept. Don't get too carried away.Is it possible for you to show me how your ideas would change a concept in evolutionary psychology? Let’s take a real simple example: people develop negative conditioning MUCH quicker to threats that were present in our EEA rather than novel threats. So snakes quicker than guns. This is a simple predication. Now how would your ideas alter this picture? I am failing to see how anything you have said, even if we say okay fine, alters the field in anyway.

Enough platitudes.How would your "ideas" change a single theory of evolutionary psychology? I gave you an easy specific example. Can you give ANY specifics at all? ANYTHING at all other than pedantic speeches?

Right, like this is going to happen.Good luck though.

Sure, maybe it would be better to start a new thread on the topic? Let me know.

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1 - some influential theologians writing an open letter supporting "decision" both as a principle in intelligent design, and as an essential part of emotions, and criticizing evolutionary science on these 2 issues for their denial and neglect.

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You have failed to demonstrate how your ideas, even if true, would change evolutionary theory or evolutionary psychology imparticular.

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2 - some notable Jewish organization that urges restraint of evolutionary science in light of the history of the holocaust and evolutionism

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Restraint from what? Declaring some groups of people as superior to other groups of people? From advocating the death and destruction of inferiors? Yea evolutionary psychology has a serious problem with this.

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3 - some populist conservatives bringing this issue in the rhetoric of democracy and freedom

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4 - some actual horror cases of eugenics law in China

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Yay! Science by feat and scare tactics! That’s the way to do it!

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5 - some wider general movement where the "subjects of study" in evolutionary psychology talks back to the evolutionary psychology researcher studying them

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Right 99% of the subjects I work with are after either the money they get for participation or the class credit. They do not CARE that much about the experiment let alone your analysis of evolutionary psychology. Those that do take in interest after the debrifement often wind up in evo psych classes because they find it so fascinating. Good luck.

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Since historian Klaus Fischer in his study of the nazi's lifted out the predeterminist characteristic of nazism as the most lethal component, I think it is credible that such a Jewish organization would couple the request for restraint, with an encouragement for research about indeterminacy of human behaviour. But that logic would need a little more explicit backing from a mainstream historian. Historians are moving towards exploring the role of science in the holocaust more deeply, but it is still very doubtful that they would make the link between predeterminist ideology and science.

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Do you even know the DIFFERENCE between Social Darwinism and Sociobiology? Just cause they kinda sound a like doesn’t make them the same thing!

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5. A subject of study has some right to speak out if it can speak out I would guess. Notably scientists already have a terrible reputation how they treat their subjects of study, by the history of lab-experiments on animals. So my guess is yes, people generally would demand that scientists respect their ability to choose in studying them, and do more then just pay lipservice to the idea that they can overcome their selfish genes, or the environment. It would be a popular demand.

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First of all, as has been pointed out to you for years apparently, you have no idea what your talking about as far as selfish gene or environment. And second science’s goal is not to make people feel warm and fuzzy inside.

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So you see, it is credible that the evolutionist side actually loses the creation vs evolution controversy, intelligent design being brought in on the back of looking at the appearance of things in terms of historic decisions where the likelyhood of the appearance was set.

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That’s a heck of a logical leap. I think sociobiology doesn’t respect choice there for creation beats evolution. By popular demand!

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The point on which it all hinges is holocaust research I think, what historians say about the relationship between science and ideology, and how secure they will be in their findings. There needs to be an ethical kick in the but, for science to reconsider it's prejudice in favor of describing in terms of mechanisms only, and not have one single decision of some magnitude in the entire billion year history of evolution. I think argument alone about the scientific merit of describing in terms of decisions, would not suffice to make scientists shift from their comfortable way of thinking much exclusively in terms of mechanisms.

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The holocaust has NOTHING to do with evolutionary psychology. Unless you have even the slightest bit of evidence to support this? Just a little bit more than rhetoric?

I am going to attempt to pull out what I think are some of the major themes you brought up and the major examples. If I fail to address a point that you think is really important I have no doubt you will let me know .Buss’ opinion on the current state of psychology is Buss’ opinion. I agree on some points and not on others. But the true current state of psychology doesn’t really affect whether evolutionary psychology is discovering new phenomenon or not. I think that if it can be shown that the methods of hypothesis development and research that are used by evo-psych are producing new and fruitful areas of research then it is a valid field of study, regardless of where psychology as a whole stands, right? I am going to try and focus on your claims that relate specifically to methodological and epistemological failures in the field rather than the hopes, dreams and aspirations of Buss.The goal of evolutionary psychology is in practice not a mechanism to create an over arching theory for brain/mind. In the more philosophical moments of the field individuals talk about unifying cognitive psychology under an evolutionary frame work, ect. But when you get down to it what happens is the field is interested in looking at what is going on in the mind just like all of psychology. It’s not an alternative to say cognitive models, but another way of looking for interesting behaviors and traits in humans. There are those things that people do that have nothing to do with evolution of our species in the past those can be studied in different ways and are just as interesting. What evo-psych says though that there are a lot of fascinating aspects of human psychology that originate from our evolutionary past.You say that evolution can only affect the physical and that the mind is greater than the physical. I am not entirely certain what you are trying to say. If you want to say there is a mind that is completely separate from our physical system, such as a soul, and that the soul is not subjected to evolution, then I am not really sure how to respond to that. But if you are saying that the mind comes from the physical at some level of interaction, then evolution can affect it. The mind emerges out of the nerves system, and the brain in particular. The nervous system is regulated and controlled just as any other system in the body. What exactly are aspects of the human mind and or behavior that are not accessible by selection? Are you saying mental ideas and behaviors have not coefficient of heritability?Or is your point more about neuronal plasticity? How the brain is more of a blank slate that is written upon from birth?You mention that you think there are very few things that are hardwired into humans. Buss address some, you have issues, I will shortly try and address your issues with these ideas. But there seems to be quiet a bit of behaviors that are hardwired. Language acquisition, mate assessment, cheater detection, ect. If your issues with evolutionary psychology comes down to whether there is any hardwired nature then this discussion can veer off to more specific examples of what I think are good research and we can see whether they fit the profile or not.
The nature and nurture issues is called a false dichotomy because both features are important in the development of an organism. There are some aspects which are nurture and some aspects which are nature. And a lot of evo-psych is about looking at these differences. But one of the things you find is that any trait is a mixture of proximate and ultimate causes. Anything working with in the life time of the individual is a proximate cause, and often contributed to the nurture end of the scale. Ultimate causes are basically phylogenetic origin and the selective influences that shaped the trait. They are not exclusive of each other. If one is describing the development of the waist to hip ratio in women there is a large list of proximate factors, from diet, to hormones, to receptor cites, to genes to parasite. But just because all these things affect the WHR doesn’t mean there can’t be an ultimate casual explanation for it. The WHR is a sexually selected trait. Men prefer smaller WHR cross-culturally for a varity of reasons (parasite load history, pregnancy, fertility, ect.) So you can say there are nurture affects and nature affects on the WHR. Evo psych would then look at what the proximate factors are that contribute to WHR and look at the proximate benefits of male assessment of the trait and then build an ultimate hypothesis off this data. So if WHR is heavily affected by the likely hood a given female can become pregnant, and that men prefer smaller WHR and that men who are with women with smaller WHR have greater reproductive success. You can formulate a hypothesis that the preference for WHR evolved because of the increased RS and the trait itself evolved because of the sexual selection on it.Buss’ distinction of human nature from animal nature was loose language. Actually huge areas of research in evo-psych are comparative biology. A large number of hypotheses are generated by examining both homologous and analogous traits and behaviors. Often evo-psych will look at our close relatives for hints at homologous traits or look at animals far off on the tree but that posses similar environments for traits. Birds are a wealth of hints because many have developed mating systems similar to ours. A lot of fruitful research in humans has come from research initially done with birds.The snake example is again somewhat loose language. What the research that has been done has found is that individuals will develop associations with negative conditioning to snakes or biological threats SIGNIFICANTLY faster than to novel and non-biological stimuli. So if you create a classic pavlovian shock experiment and show a snake and then shock, you will get the conditioned response a LOT faster then if you show a gun and then shock. Also a lot of research has been done analyzing phobias. Phobias develop disproportionately higher for biological threats. Not everyone has a phobia of spiders or snakes but a disproportionate number of people due who have never had contact with them. So what the research says is that there is not a universal fear of snakes, but that people’s psychologies are set up to develop fears and negative conditioned responses a lot easier for these threats than other threats. Another, somewhat related idea, is the disgust reaction. The facial expression of disgust is almost identical for people across cultures, and the disgust reaction is exclusively reserved for biological or biological like phenomenon. What people find disgusting can be very different, but it has some pretty common traits and is a universally recognized facial reaction. This too can bring up interesting hypothesis about the evolution of disgust.The incest taboo is another interesting idea. Actually what evo-psych says is that there really doesn’t HAVE to be an incest taboo. People naturally avoid it. The research was looking at what cultures due have an incest taboo and what was it related too. For example, medieval Europe in the higher aristocracy developed laws and taboos on incest. But Daly and Wilson saw that as not incest but rather wealth concentration. The laws were an attempt to make it difficult for families to concentrate wealth. The evolutionary psychologist doesn’t look to CULTURES for their answers to adaptations but the people. People do not like to mate with those individuals they grew up with in close proximity. Evolution didn’t select against incest per say because there is no way to know for sure in the EEA who was a relative. You had to use cues from the environment, those individuals you grew up with, were told were family, ect. When you look at the historical records you see some interesting phenomenon. For those that used incest, especially in political families the relatives who were to be married were often raised separately from each other. And under those conditions in which they were not very little fecundity was associated with the unions. Basically, the idea in evo-psych is that those who were less likely to want to reproduce with individuals they were raised in close proximity with had greater RS and over time this fixated into the population.Jealousy research is very interesting as well. In most cultures there is guarding of mates, I would have to really look carefully at examples of cultures where there was no sexual jealousy over long-term mates. Maybe you can give a few good sources? You brought up wife swapping. That’s in interesting example and I think evolutionary psychology can make some interesting predictions about it. Just for example, I would bet men were LESS likely to want there wife to participate during periods of peak fertility in the cycle.There is some really cool stuff in jealousy though. There was a lot of research about sexual dimorphism in jealousy. For example, men were more likely to be jealous if there long term mate had a one-night sexual encounter with no emotional intimacy than a deep emotionally intimacy with no sexual contact. Women were the opposite.So lets see where this takes us from here, maybe from here I can get a better idea of what your issues with the field is.

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Why don't you do a cursory research on decision, such as make some guess at the location of the decision in time at which it became very likely that there would be such a thing as human beings. So as to say that at that point people (or superintelligent beings) were basically created, with some variation up to later decisions.

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Wow so how the heck did we go from PEOPLE making decisions to GOD making decisions to create people? Bit of a leap there.

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I know about the difference between social darwinism and evolutionary psychology, but since evolutionary psychology has so quite transparantly changed it's name from socio-biology much for the reason to escape criticism, I think it is legitimate to change the meaning of words in responds to that, and simply make evolutionary psychology a subset to social darwinism, lest we let evolutionary psychologists escape criticism by trickery.

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There is a bit of a difference between sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. But I admit it was mostly a PR game, doesn't mean either one is Social Darwinism.

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I was hoping to see a response to Holmes post above.

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Coming up this weekend Thrusdays and Fridays are 16 hour days for me.

I agree your story is logical, it could have happened that way. But there are other just as logical stories that have been proposed. For example, that the system of very hardwired nature did not change into a more blank slate design but instead new areas with this ability were incorporated. So say, older areas of the brain have very strong instinctual effects, while the pre-frontal cortex has lots of plasticity. Or maybe very little plasticity evolved at all.As in all science, I think the verdict has to come from empirical studies. The bad news is that there is a lot lacking in this area, not the least of which is because all previous methods of study were extremely invasive and couldn’t be done on humans. The good news is we are starting to develop technology that is making this possible. So the research is starting to be done.As an example of the kind of research that I think is going to start coming out in droves is an experiment being performed now up in Michigan. Female mice assesse certain genetic alleles in males during their estrous point as well as strong testosterone cues. A specific area of the brain was identified in the mice that were instrumental in the process. When removed, the assessment and preferences disappear. A VERY similar structure was found in human females. They are doing a series of FMRI studies now on women to see if during their peak fertility points on the cycle the brain lights up in these areas in a similar fashion as in the mice while assessing testosterone cues of men in photos. This is conservation and constraint. If the processes worked well then it would continue to be co-opted into each organism even over great spans of evolutionary time. Since the experiment is being done now and isn’t published I am not drawing any conclusions from it. But the idea is being looked at, about older areas of the brain, or more domain specific areas of the brain and how we can study them.In the mean time, just how much evidence is there that the human brain is produced as a blank slate? Well I think it can be shown that humans are born with a lot of things built into them. We are not blank slates by any means. Something as simple as looking at language acquisition can tell you that the brain has system to incorporate language at birth, and that we are born with this system in place. The language we learn is encoded differently but the rules we use to learn language, we seem to be born with. And you can find a range of other such instincts we are born with, from precipice avoidance, to attachment. Also as we grow older, the sexual responses, mating strategies, mate assessment, hell liking fatty foods, all seem to have components that are intrinsically born into us. A blank slate would mean that humans could in theory develop an infinite range of cultures and interactions. But that doesn’t seem to happen. We should be able to find cultures where people hate fatty foods, where men are not attracted to young women with small waist to hip ratios.The evidence I can see now against the blank slate is pretty strong. You have evidence from people who have suffered brain injuries to specific areas which show deficits in specific areas. You show evidence of specific areas of the brain that respond to specific stimuli. You see VERY VERY little neuronal plasticity. Brain tissue from other areas of the brain can not co-opt function in most cases. And some of the most dramatic examples of neuronal plasticity aren’t that impressive. There was that seminal study where they wired the optical nerve of ferrets into the audio cortex and showed that the ferrets could still see. But really the audio cortex is structured VERY similar to the visual cortex, and the ferrets actually saw with the kind of restraints (directionality, frequency, intensity) we normally find in hearing. If the blank slate were real I would expect to see a whole lot more evidence for it.You then bring up the idea that I think is basically encapsulated into the theory of adaptationism. The phrase we coined in the Gould/Lewontin articles on spandrels and exaptations. They argued that many things that could be identified as adaptations are really just evolutionary spandrels or exaptations. There has been a raging debate on both sides for twenty years. How do you know something is an adaptation and how do you know the selective forces behind it? This isn’t just a problem for evolutionary psychology it is a problem for all of evolution.You have trait A at one point in time then trait B at another point in time. That’s all you have. How do you know that the change in the trait was due to selection pressures? How do you know what the trait was for? There is no sure fire way in evolutionary science to answer these questions but people have been trying to come up with ideas.Concepts such as universality, early development, and optimization have been proposed. But you have yourself pointed out some problems with these. For example, in evolutionary psychology we say there is a universal language acquisition device. But you can’t just use the fact that it is universal to prove it. In 100 years everyone might know how to read, but that doesn’t mean we have psychological adaptations for reading, in fact there is really no way we can. In language Steven Pinker offers how we begin to try and solve this problem. Pinker points out that the universal language acquisition device makes it so people just naturally learn language. You don’t have to be taught it during the critical period, you just have to be exposed to it. In fact, if you are not exposed to it you often develop your own pseudo languages. This doesn’t happen with reading, learning to read is a struggle. You can’t just be shown a series of pages and over time pick it up naturally.This is exhibiting what has come to be called functional design or special design (don’t start dredging up Intelligent Design quite yet, hear me out on this). Selection pressures are unique in evolution in that they can shape traits for a specific function. Things like spandrels, exaptations, and drift do not have this ability. Selection though favors variants and over time traits get shaped for performing specific operations. In a sense you can call this designed but I don’t like to use that word in these kind of environments because its deadly. Instead I will say, functionally shaped. Assume a trait has developed because of evolution, if it has a specific function shaped to a specific reproductive or survival problem, selection is the only known mechanism that can do this. And the better we understand what the specific function is the more sure we can be of the selective force that shaped it.The waist to hip ratio is an interesting problem. It is good for at least 5 different things, but it was only shaped by selection for one thing and later exapted for these other functions. How can you tell what the selection force actually was? Well one way that’s being looked at is to see what WHR is optimal for each function. So a WHR of .7 is optimal for parasite load detection but a WHR of .8 is better for assessing pregnancy. If the preferred WHR is .7 then you have stronger evidence that the shaping selective force was parasite detection.You also bring up the question of heritability and genetics. We have no proof that psychological mechanisms are derived by genes. It’s all anecdotal. But at this point I am not too worried about it. I would be bold enough to state that any complex phenotypic trait it is unknown exactly how it is related back to genes. With as few as 20,000 genes in our genome how we get from gene A to trait B is a long and winding path involving introns/exons, pre-rna processing and vast regulatory networks. Is our hand a product of evolution? It think most people would say yes, but how do we know? We don’t have a model for how we got from our genes to our hand and how that worked through evolution. Instead we have the fact that most people have a hand, that we can find examples of similar hands in close species, similar adaptations in other animals in the similar niche as ours, and more primitive examples in the evolutionary past of our species. And even functional shaping of our hand.We have all of this for psychological mechanisms except for fossilization. Why is so crazy to think that our behaviors are caused by the same things as other more somatic phenotypes? There is STRONG heritability of various mental states and abilities in our species even in examples of same gene different environments.

First of all I think you might be asking more of evolutionary psychology then you are asking of other evolutionary studies. There are no complex traits, somatic or psychological in nature, that we know how we get from genes to the trait. Yet we can infer function and selective pressures for somatic phenotypes and not get too much guff, yet we try and do the same for psychological phenotypes and people go nuts.Your pigeon holing what evo psych says to some degree. We do not say that people have an intuitive fear of snakes directly. Rather the qualities surrounding snakes makes fear develop more easily for them. Certain characteristics of stimuli are associated to assess risk. And these characteristics have little to do with actual risk. So someone doesn't look at a car or gun or sharp knife and run statistical analysis to determine their fear of it. Rather the processes that derive a fear reaction assess qualities that would have been important in the EEA. Such as: is it biological? is it unknown or known? does it have any features which trigger risks such as sounds, teeth, movements, ect.? What evo psych says is that we use these kind of assessments to determine risk. So when we are faced with a potential threat, and then receive some sort of punishment effect (such as a minor shock) we develop a fear response to those stimuli VERY quickly. The same is not true for novel threats that don't share these qualities.Many fears, such as the undead, while not direct fears, have characteristics common of biological threats. They are biological, show aggression, involve the disgust factor, ect. Even made up fears share these traits. The thing does not have to be real to create a fear response. That’s not what we are saying.There is no fear of snakes brain domain, and fear of spiders brain domain. There is a risk assessment area of the brain that is primed to assess qualities that would have been important in our EEA. That’s all we are saying. And the undead have these qualities.Maybe its time to get into more specifics, you mentioned wanting to know more about the Waist to Hip Ratio. The first problem you brought up is that some cultures hide the WHR by covering the female. That doesn’t effect the evo psych predictions at all. People can choose to do what ever they want, doesn’t make the preference go away. The men in cultures where women are covered are predicted to still show the exact same preference. The stimuli does NOT need to be present for the preference to develop. That’s the whole point.I have no knowledge of any human racial body type that drastically increases the Waist to Hip ratio. You mentioned preferences for large hips, buttocks and breast, that’s exactly what we are talking about here. The waist to hip ratio is measured by taking the smallest circumference around the waist and the largest circumference around the hip. Then divide the waist by the hip. Human males have a strong preference for a WHR between .6-.8 and post-pubescent, pre-menopausal human females very rarely have WHR above 1.0, except during pregnancy. Men on the other hand are usually larger than 1.0.The work was done primarily by Devendra Singh. He would show drawings, photographs and various other stimuli to men and ask for attractiveness judgments. While total body fat preferences shifted around the WHR stayed the same. So he could show low body fat, with varying WHR to high body fat with varying WHR. While preferences across the groups for total body fat could change, the preference for the smaller WHR held constant. You can check out some of the papers:Body weight, waist-to-hip ratio, breasts, and hips: Role in judgments of female attractiveness and desirability for relationships. Singh, Devendra; Young, Robert K.; Ethology & Sociobiology, Vol 16(6), Nov 1995. pp. 483-507.

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Ethnic and gender consensus for the effect of waist-to-hip ratio on judgment of women's attractiveness. Singh, Devendra; Luis, Suwardi; Human Nature, Vol 6(1), 1995. pp. 51-65. The second paper found the same exact results in Indonesia and African-American populations.A cross-cultural comparison of ratings of perceived fecundity and sexual attractiveness as a function of body weight and waist-to-hip ratio. Furnham, A.; McClelland, A.; Omer, L.; Psychology, Health & Medicine, Vol 8(2), May 2003. pp. 219-230.This paper found it in Kenyan men and British men, exact same phenomenon.A cross-cultural study on the role of weight and waist-to-hip ratio on female attractiveness. Furnham, Adrian; Moutafi, Joanna; Baguma, Peter; Personality & Individual Differences, Vol 32(4), Mar 2002. pp. 729-745.This paper added in Greece and Uganda to the mix.The papers go on and on. The EXACT same phenomenon is found in every culture studied. You also find that women with the smaller WHR have healthier children, children earlier, more likely to become pregnant in any given sexual encounter, ect.So here we are with a measurable psychological phenomenon in mate assessment that exists cross culturally in basically the same exact way. It is clearly linked to reproductive success and shows clear sexual dimorphism between men and women. The WHR assessments have been shown to be made by women and children too. Both women and children will report a smaller WHR women as more attractive than a larger WHR women.So what exactly can the WHR tell us about women? Studies are being performed all the time, but we know of for sure so far:1) Young women
2) Not pregnant
3) Healthy in general
4) High estrogen
5) High fertility (both conception and gestation capability)It is then hypothesized that men, who preferred smaller WHR had more children and grandchildren then men who preferred larger WHR. This provides a sexually selected pressure for women to exhibit small WHR, but its is a VERY difficult thing to develop. It is an honest signal, and honest signals have great evolutionary import.But my guess is your issues with all this is saying that men have an evolved preference for smaller WHR. So taking into account all of this, why exactly do you feel we are unreasonable to hypothesizing such an evolved preference?The food issues you brought up again highlight the issue between current environment and the EEA. Evo psych does not say a preference for fatty food necessitates a mcdonalds on ever corner in every country. There could be very few sources of fat or sugar, and people will eat what they can get. But if you took any one from any culture and fed them something with sugar, and something with out sugar, which do you think they would prefer?

what is the "selfish gene doctrine?"