Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology has many problems because they want mechanistic explanations cheaply. The worst of evolutionary psychology occurs when they explain a more complex social behavior as fully represented by the cheap mechanistic trick. Cheap tricks, or simple mechanistic maneuvers, are useful in evolutionary terms for changing and controlling behavior. Often, as long as the behavior is created a good portion of the time, then whatever mechanism gets applied will be adequate, from an evolutionary perspective. The evolutionary psychology program can give us many accounts for animal behaviors, though certainly with some social and situational processes there may be a complexity that gets covered over, or that becomes inexplicable when we get to real life animal behaviors.

When we get to human behaviors, some of these stories, that are underwritten by some kind of mechanical process, can be useful in describing behaviors. Certain mechanisms probably have shaped social institutions and they are still structuring behavior to some extent. There is a complex dialectical process, either within institutional development across a society or in the development of individuals as they are shaped by any institutional/social matrix. Mechanisms that encouraged behaviors at earlier times have been in constant relationship with those social dialectical processes, that is, they constantly and continuously create some kind of effect.

One example is the sugar explanation. The idea is that we have pleasurable sensations from eating sugar, and that this arises because sugar is high in calories and would have benefited individuals who ate more of it. Mechanistically, we can probably (eventually) tell some story about the baseline structures of taste receptors and brain functions that make that story true. Human tastes can be complicated by social factors (e.g., conditioning), but there is good reason to believe that such a mechanistical tale will make some sense, in a similar way that sex is so pleasing because of the needs of reproduction. The problem arises, however, as we explain our institutional sugar use (the products created, the refining of it, the marketing of it, etc.). And also as we try to explain any individual's intake of sugar. An individual sits within an environmental setup (say cheap sugar from the gas station), and also has been created by a long developmental process, thus the structure of their brain/mind at the time that they choose to intake sugar. A repeated process of sugar intake or sugar refusal by the individual we can read as the “trait” of sugar intake. The problem is that what that “sugar trait” is at any time can be made far different given a different institutional setup, as well as a different developmental process. This may mean that the individual, the self, we are seeing within one social system and one developmental history may be a completely different self or identity than the one made under largely differing conditions. Both individuals may have similar mechanistic processes in response to sugar on the tongue, but the behaviors, the thoughts, the choices being made can be radically different between the same set of genes (general body structure) within those two different worlds. Thus there is a distance between the mechanistic process and the trait of a given individual.  

We can see some of this by telling the same story about the “cocaine trait.” Most of us today have a far different cocaine trait than we do sugar trait. Though different, we can probably say that both sugar and cocaine have some strong pleasure-inducing sensation, I assume. The institutional structures (product availability, general norms around use) and developmental programs mean that the pleasure-inducing sensations of these two substances lead to two different “traits” in most of us. Though I doubt we will go that far, it is possible to imagine a society that would try to make most people's sugar trait be similar to most people's cocaine trait today. Part of doing that may be through demonizing sugar, like we do with cocaine, but it may be by strong prohibition like factors of denying supply.

Evolutionary psychology gets in trouble by overstating the necessity and indelible nature of our institutions and our brain/minds as regards choice making, hence our traits. They often ignore the historical social dynamics that lead to any matrix of institutions and character development, that thus produce the brain/mind as it engages with a present environmental condition, say a woman “desiring” a tall man. The mechanistic story, that they buy rather cheaply, that is, without actually understanding or stating the mechanistic process, gets confused for more complex behavioral programs. Yes, often times those more complex behaviors have been guided and shaped by the simpler mechanistic origins, but evolutionary psychology often presents the complex behavioral phenomena as we should be presenting the indelible, underlying mechanistic force. Some of this also has to do with the age we are living in, which is one that often proclaims certain social factors (say capitalism, gender and family structures) as unchangeable social givens. If we take certain institutions and developmental structures as given, then the simpler mechanistic forces can look one and the same as the latter complex behavioral activity.

Against Virtue Ethics

We are machines. As reflective machines we want to be well-honed, highly skilled and knowledgeable. We want to live in strong families and strong societies, ones that help us build things and explore more things, and that help us have more pleasures, probably both base and more refined.

There is no reason to call the capacities we arrive at virtuous. The definition and connotation of the word simply means it needs to be abandoned. We understand the well-honed nature of the machines we can be. What it means to be skillful or not skillful. What it means for a machine to be able to perform an activity to a greater or lesser extent. Why we would take machine-like activity and describe its functioning, and then tack on the idea that a certain threshold performance of the machine is virtuous, just seems flat out unnecessary.

I am also a strong moral anti-realist, meaning there is no such things as morality (and hence ethics in many configurations). The language of morality or ethics is not the best descriptive language in the end, and I argue that it will not help us achieve the best societies and worlds, mainly because of its descriptive muddling. We want to build robust selves and a robust social world, probably because it will lead to even more robust selves and burgeoning worlds.

It is not a “moral good” to the world that the evolutionary machines that are Homo sapiens arrive at highly functioning selves and highly functioning societies. Our best description of those societies and selves is not helped one iota from describing that society as moral, or those individuals' lives as virtuous. Arriving at our best understanding about what we are requires the best description about what we are. In the end, using clear language that does not cause endless philosophical (or descriptive) debates, whether “morality,” “intentionality,” or “consciousness,” is going to give us the best descriptions. As we arrive at our best understanding, mostly through science and some conceptual refinement, such descriptions should encompass most of the stupidities that so much ink and terabytes have been spilled. Though, like trying to map every phylogenetic turn of the entire history of life's tree, such mapping of why there was so much argument over semantics and social descriptions may be an unnecessary enterprise, even if the historical philosophers demand there is some hidden virtue in just that.

Stephen Hawking's Theory of Everything (TV)

Unnecessary and impossible probability calculating.

Hawking, in an effort to dramatize and to express the “dangers of technologies,” says that intelligence may not be completely beneficial to survival, and gives the idea of a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of a nuclear war that devastates life. He then ups the ante, tells us to imagine humans over 100,000 years, and says we are now looking at the very scary odds of 1 in 10 that humans will experience a nuclear war.

Nuclear war is bad, we should try to avoid it.

The capacity to make a nuclear weapon should become easier, and we should develop ways to make even deadlier weapons. But trying to create probability of human use of such weapons seems a rather futile process. I think this may edge into something I complain about Joshua Greene (Moral Tribes, recommended). We can boil the position down to something like we have natures and a social world that is immutable. 

I have faith that in 300 years (say maximally) that we will greatly overhaul inter-nation relationships. Any body of people who have the hardware to create an arsenal of nuclear weapons (though this will get cheaper), will fully accept that inter-nation hostility, and particularly hostility to the point of war or nuclear war, will be unthinkable. On a global scale we will put social safeguards against nuclear war, as well as safeguards of say the arise of a Nazi-Germany like state (or I guess an United States during the 1940's).

The threat that madmen may release a few nuclear weapons may be more real for longer, but this would not constitute nuclear war. Furthermore, detection capacities (probably including invasive monitoring tools) should also continue to expand, which negate the lone crazies to some extent.

To do what I complain about, it seems like there is a much lower possibility of nuclear war within the next decade than the possibility of nuclear war during the decade of the 60's. Though some (fools) think we are entering a new cold war, there is not good reason to think nuclear war will be that serious of a threat going forward, unless something dramatic changes.

Such a complaint probably sums up what I think of the show. Overly dramatic, cool graphics, low narrative sound so that you have to pump up their theatrical music, some good general information.

A more positive account of genetic sexuality structures

(Identity Series: see Defining Sexuality, Intelligence, Blank Slate)

Though by no means an actual positive account. This is simply because most human behavior, especially social relationships and what is happening within the brain/body of an individual during a social encounter, is far beyond our descriptive reach.

I have read a little on these issues and this is the only specified genetically based positive account of sexuality that I recall noticing, albeit for mice. The analysis I read of this study was suggesting a possible route for genetic sexuality structures in humans. This is the general idea, see section 6.4.1.3 here. I originally read this elsewhere, but it was an analysis of this paper. The whole chapter that is linked is a good rundown of pheromones. We can take or leave the study given that what we care about is the possibility of what a mechanistic picture looks like. The main idea is that a gene in male mice was controlling some social behavioral responses, especially as coupled with the female releasing a certain pheromone. The claim is that male mice that lacked the gene were more likely to engage in same sex behavior, partially because their male-male aggressive response was no longer as strong. And similarly, female mice would be more likely to engage in same-sex behavior if the same gene was turned off.

Physical lesions of the VNO impair lordosis behavior in female mice (Keller et al. 2006), suggesting that pheromones sensed by the vomeronasal system also play an important role in female sexual behavior (Keller et al. 2009). However, once again, the behavioral deficits of TRPC2 knockout mice appear to differ from the effects of physical lesions of the VNO. Dulac reported that TRPC2 knockout female mice showed significantly higher levels of malelike sexual behavior, including ultrasonic vocalization and mounting of other females (Wysocki and Lepri, 1991; Kimchi et al. 2007). This would suggest that sex-specific behavioral patterns of male and female mice are at least partly dependent on ongoing sensory input rather than being developmentally determined. But, other groups have not reported such effects, and both male and female mice with physical VNO lesions are capable of discriminating sexual identity of urine odors (Keller et al. 2009). The differences that have been reported between the behavioral effects of physical VNO lesions and knockout of the TRPC2 gene might arise due to developmental effects of the knockout, or due to the presence of VSNs that do not use the TRPC2 transduction pathway (Kelliher et al. 2006).

Though we have very little understanding of the human mechanistic picture when it comes to social behaviors (and hence social emotions, complex desires, etc.), there is good reason to believe that many mechanistic facts, like the above, structure some of our bodily/brain responses. But there is a good reason to believe that there would be multiply tiered, multiply nested structures there. Our social behaviors and bodily response systems have all sorts of factors at play, including more reflective and socially learned behavioral responses. Even for the mices' sexual behaviors and social behaviors, the authors of these papers recognize that such social behaviors in mice are effected by all sorts of things. But they have enough evidence, holding some other factors in place, that the mechanisms they find (say the turning off of certain genes) are leading to changes in behaviors to some degree.

The key here though is the gap between our description of human social behavior and the kind of categorizing we do. Two linguistic notes. One is just that categorization and naming tends to erase differences, to make those differences non-noticeable. This effect is likely multiplied as we delineate broad social behaviors into categories. The second is a reifying factor, especially as reflective human behaviors are concerned. The taking in of an identity category, one that we believe is salient, can shape our behaviors. When that category is about one's self or other selves, such categories will go on to shape and reshape social responses and to influence further thoughts, actions, and social institutions.

Just to lighten the mood, let us similarly dispel the concept of love. If mechanistically something like this happens between two people who are in “love”, say between a female/female couple, and this is what causes attachments and subsequent emotions, it is quite common to hear things to the effect, "but oh well, such a mechanistic picture does not matter, such feelings and emotions are still real.” Well the problem is that despite being emotional beings, we are also reflective beings. And if a scientist comes along and showed that feelings of love between two individuals is only bodily reaction to a chemical that gets attuned between two people, and the scientists proves such by duplicating the chemical and spraying it on the nearest teddy bear, and both individuals instantly love the teddy bear as much as each other, well these individuals are likely to be a little weary of what their bodily responses mean. This is of course an absurd picture, there is good reason to think that our attachments and bodily responses are at least a little more complex. There may be some underhanded confabulation. Something like “she loves her voice,” where the connection only is ephemerally tied in after the fact of the chemical attraction (assuming such a story). In time, however, such things may become tied, such as the partner and the partner's voice become an intellectually inseparable fact in the brain, even if at first such attachment was only some chemical quirk.

With all that said, if love is only this mechanism by cellular and bodily processes, and then taken in more widely within an intellectual sphere, I think many people may respond significantly differently to relationships. We humans are probably wont to say that: “If this idiotic pheromonal response is all coupling amounts to, then why should we respect it as a way to organize our selves, and our relationships, when I can just as easily spread a little pheromone over here on this teddy bear and experience the blissfulness of the emotional response. There are other things we need from relationships, but this bodily response is not what such should be built on.” Now, with that said, given both that our stories are not that simple nor can we begin to understand them, and given the way that all of this seats into our brain/mind/body in a nested mesh, we will probably never be able to fully reproduce the above, given that attachments, emotional responses, and thoughts are intertwined. We also probably do not have the intellectual architecture to make such acknowledgments and arrangements. Though, I will say, that some people have probably been moved by lines like “sugar intake is a blissful experience caused by evolutionary arrangement,” and then have gone on to alter behavior. There will be even more profound changes in the future as we reflect on the accidents of our evolutionary and genetic makeups, and find ways to alter or get around such, whether through medicine, technology, or social attitudes.

Back to mechanism, it does not matter what exactly the mechanistic story is that is configuring at the most baseline level, say the level evolution originally “cared” about. Such a level is going to be vastly bereft of the conceptual imagery that we lay on top of it. And this, quite frankly, is the psychologists' problem, that is, they are helping to reify characteristics that when cognitive scientists or even evolutionary psychologist go fishing for mechanisms or a mechanistic story, they are going to find something that is vastly different than the socially proposed or psychologically proposed definition of a given characteristic. The cognitive scientist along with biologists of various stripes should eventually be able to tell the story, but it is going to come with endless culturally mediated behavioral aspects that get nested onto more fundamental structures. The mechanisms may be active and encouraging some of the complex social behavior in question, but the entire story will not be anywhere close to represented, at least within the more general mechanisms at the inherent genetic level.

Joseph Ledoux at Spacetimemind

Hosts Pete Mandik and Richard Brown have Jospeh Ledoux at Spacetimemind.

Cool stuff on optogenetics and memory. Also the idea of emotional dampening of memories has been in the news a bit lately. As Ledoux explains, it is the idea that we could keep propositional and informational structures of a memory but get rid of some of the emotions that attach to that memory. 

Enjoyable discussion, check it out.