Adapting Minds

I've been searching for a pretext to plug David Buller's book Adapting Minds which I'm working my way through, and today's David Brooks column offers an excellent opportunity. Brooks writes:

Consider all the theories put forward to explain personality. Freud argued that early family experiences relating to defecation and genital stimulation created unconscious states that influenced behavior through life. In the 1950’s, the common view was that humans begin as nearly blank slates and that behavior is learned through stimulus and response. Over the ages, thinkers have argued that humans are divided between passion and reason, or between the angelic and the demonic.

But now the prevailing view is that brain patterns were established during the millenniums when humans were hunters and gatherers, and we live with the consequences.

This is precisely the rhetorical move Buller's book is concerned with. You start with the notion that the mind/brain is a physical and biological system created by the process of evolution. This is what Buller calls "evolutionary psychology." But then you leap to a rather different notion -- what Buller calls "Evolutionary Psychology" -- that the mind is a massively modular system whose models are adaptations to conditions prevailing during the Pleistocene epoch, i.e. "the millenniums when humans were hunters and gathers" or the "environment of evolutionary adaptadness." Buller's argument, and it's quite convincing so far, is that while the evidence for evolutionary psychology is very strong, the evidence for Evolutionary Psychology is quite weak.

Comments

I look forward to hearing more about this!

One of the big issues I have with Evolutionary Psychology is that it's hard for it to make distinctive and well-supported predictive claims about how humans will act. Brains don't leave a fossil record, and we don't know what the prevailing social customs were in the Pleistocene. This is part of what makes it easy for pop-EP people to just project the social norms of 1950s America onto the era of evolutionary adaptation, and generate the conclusion that 1950s American behavior is selected for. (Sahotra Sarkar, who teaches philosophy and biology here at Texas, calls this the 'Flintstones Principle.')

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | September 17, 2006 2:33 PM

Are you denying the importance of the lag between cultural and genetic change generally? Obviously, our natural appetites for carbs is not adapted to a world with Macdonald's and Ben-and-Jerry's. Or are you saying it doesn't go back to the Pleistocene?

As for modularity, why is it easier for toddlers to learn languages than for teenagers to learn differential calculus?

Posted by Pithlord | September 17, 2006 2:34 PM

But see also this review of Buller (pdf),

http://www.pitt.edu/~machery/papers/debunking%20Adapting%20Minds%20Machery%20Barrett.pdf

Posted by Lars Smith | September 17, 2006 2:44 PM

As for modularity, why is it easier for toddlers to learn languages than for teenagers to learn differential calculus?

One can certainly formulate theories of mind don't rely at all on modularity -- see, for instance, Merlin Donald's A Mind So Rare. And Jerry Fodor, who is a hugely influential cognitive scientist, has for years been saying that Pinker et al have been outstripping what he claims and believes about modularity. And yes, Buller argues that evolutionary adaption can happen much more rapidly than the "Pleistocene minds" formulation would suggest.

The book is good, although parts of it are much stronger than others (I largely felt that the first half of the book felt much more strongly reasoned and argued; I thought his attacks on Buss were pretty devestating, but that his response to Cosmides and Tooby, while spot on about some the experimental design, ignored some problems; etc.), but I'd be curious as to the reaction of someone who knows more about the subject than I do and is more generally sympathetic to the Buss/Pinker wing of the paradigm.

Posted by Steve | September 17, 2006 3:08 PM

From the Pitt paper, "The reason is that evolutionary psychology is not “wrong.” Nor can it
be, any more than behavioral ecology, cognitive neuroscience, or experimental
economics can be “wrong.” Evolutionary psychology is an approach within the
behavioral sciences."

This is silly, approaches can be wrong, in that they posit models that are wrong, in that they don't have the predictive power that they claim to have. The problem with evo-psyc is that most of the models end up being just-so stories, e.g. consciousness must be slected for because ... it is selected for. Have a look a Gould's Spangrel paper for a refutation of this point of view. Have a look at jerry fodor if you think that the mind is massivly modular.

Posted by eric | September 17, 2006 3:11 PM

Hosanna.

Now if we can get someone who is equally adept to do the same thing for Evolutionary Ethics. Clearly, any sort of ethics we might have is a product of evolution, if we are a product of evolution. But that's a far different claim from what seems to be in vogue these days, namely, that what we count as Ethics these days is itself a fitness adaptation that is coded in our genes and selected for by the rough and tumble game of survivor that eliminated our closely related ancestry. That thesis seems to me not just too simple but far too simple to be worth the support it seems to have received.

Posted by ScottA | September 17, 2006 4:04 PM

Er, thats spandrels, not spangrels. and I think Gould was quite effectively debunked by Dennett in "Darwin's Dangerous Idea". And if you have any interest in evolutionary theory, read that first.

Posted by lelliot | September 17, 2006 4:39 PM

@ lelliot,

Have read all of denet's work, basicaly he is a rehash of Gilbert Ryle and his behaviorism. There are good reason to think that behaviorism is not true, and so there are good reasons to think that Dennet's thinking (while interesting) does not do the work that he thinks it does, and your right about the spelling of spandrels.

It simply could be the case that inteligence as a phenotype of humans is merely some by product of some other selected process and came along for the ride. Evo-psyc just posits and assumes that it necessarily was selected for. Why? Becase it must have been. That aint an argument but an assertion.

E.

Posted by eric Smith | September 17, 2006 5:27 PM

I freely admit to being fairly ignorant of all things neruoscience. But what fascinates me about human cultural behavior as it is found in the fossel record is that it doesn't seem to fit an evolutionary trajectory.

Take "art", for example. It is my understanding that at the end of the last ice age ecological conditions were such that there was a high population density on the coast of Europe. With this high denisty you see a lot of cave painting, and other fossel remains indicitive of art or culutre. As conditions changed, the population dispersed, and the instances of art artifacts dropped.

So, making art may not have been something that evolved at that given point, but was something that lay dorment within the human mind until population pressure brought it about. Could the ability have existed in earlier homonids who never met the right conditions to bring it out? There is no way you could possibly tell.

Without a greater understanding of the neurological or genetic basis of specific human behaviours, Evolutionary Psychology and sociobiology would seem to be jumping the gun on our current understanding of human evolution. Even if their claims were true, how would you go about testing or proving them?

Posted by Justaguy | September 17, 2006 6:24 PM

As for modularity, why is it easier for toddlers to learn languages than for teenagers to learn differential calculus?

Well, what's at issue here is the difference between modularity and massive modularity. Jerry Fodor's view, if I recall correctly, is that there are a few modules, certainly including a language module (whose existence seems pretty well-established), but not the hundreds or thousands of modules that the Evolutionary Psychologists want us to believe in.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | September 17, 2006 6:59 PM

Does Buller actually believe that human nature is "what distinguishes humans from other animals on the planet"? Or that "there were no stable adaptive problems during the majority of psychological evolution"? (From the Pitt paper) If so, what he's debunking is not evolutionary psychology, but evolution.

Does he really say that the cortex is shaped only by experience, and that all that we have inherited is plasticity? Well, I guess Skinner's "black box" is such an appealing paradigm that it will pop up again and again no matter what neuroscience says.

I understand that evolutionary psychology (yes, small letters, Buller's precious and meaningless distinction will not be used here) is an unpleasant rebuke to the good old Enlightenment idea that we are indeed blank slates. That anything is possible, that we have no limitations. Or, perhaps, to the idea that men and women are psychologically the same. But evolutionary psychology does a pretty good job of answering questions about things like mating and prejudice that other areas within psychology haven't the foggiest idea how to approach. Anyone who wants to knock it down would do well to come up with testable alternative explanations.

Posted by calling all toasters | September 17, 2006 8:01 PM

But evolutionary psychology does a pretty good job of answering questions about things like mating and prejudice that other areas within psychology haven't the foggiest idea how to approach.

What do you mean by a pretty good job? It does a pretty good job of making up a plausible just-so story, but I've never read anything more than that.

Posted by DivGuy | September 17, 2006 8:11 PM

" Anyone who wants to knock it down would do well to come up with testable alternative explanations."

Therein lies the problem, evo-psyc itself has no models to test, only assertions. Why is the case that men seem to be more agressive, well looking at other close species we see that males are agressive (excepting when they are not), and we evolved from a similar beastie so ah that is why we are agressive. Well that is a just so story that is arguing the conclusion to the prove it self. Evo-psyc has the same problems that the underpants gnomes have onto the path to profit.

Now nowhere have I said someting silly lke evolution is false or just a theory, it is the case that evolution is a good and proven model for explaining how adaption works. BUt it is not very useful in explain how a particular adaption came about.

e.

Posted by eric Smith | September 17, 2006 8:20 PM

ugh, there it is. every defender of evolutionary psychology at some point or other unleashes the "so you don't believe in evolution" defense. come now. i happen to be a student in one of the hotbeds of ev-psych research and i'm firmly committed to a 4-fields approach to anthropology, which of course includes evolutionary perspectives. yet i've been accused in one way or another many times of not "believing in" evolution itself because i'm skeptical of a lot of ev-psych methods and claims ("16 UCSB sophmores can't be wrong!"). the real problem with ev-psych is the house-of-cards arguments that all rely on having "figured out" one part of human behavior, based on some guy who ran some game-theory experiments, and then building the next part of the argument from there -- all on the way to "figuring out" the whole of human culture. never mind the hubris of it all, discounting all other supposedly non rational explanations but the ones that work, the small-scale methods don't match the large-scale goals.

Posted by ktothem | September 17, 2006 8:36 PM

It seems to me that the evolutionary psychology/Evolutionary Psychology distinction might actually cut the other direction here, at least with respect to Brooks.

To see what I mean, suppose that all three of the following things turn out to be true: (a) the mind isn't massively modular, (b) human cognition has significantly evolved since the Pleistocene era, and (c) there really are innate cognitive differences between the sexes. Well, if (a) and (b) are true, then E.P. will be doomed. Still, as long as (c) is true, it seems to me Brooks shouldn't really care. At least for the purposes of today's editorial, it seems to me all he really wants is (c). I assume that he's not really interested in modularity as such, for instance.

The upshot of this is that yes, E.P. is pretty controversial. But, once we get clear on the E.P./e.p. distinction, we can see that conservative commentators like Brooks don't really need to sign up for everyhing in the E.P. brochure to get what they think they want. There's plenty of evidence for innate psychological differences between men and women which is independent from the case for E.P. Maybe, pace Brooks, these differences don't add up to anything very interesting policy-wise. Still, the weakness of E.P. isn't entirely to the point.

Posted by Justin | September 17, 2006 9:08 PM

ktothem--So you can look at Buller's statements and say that they don't implicitly attack evolution? What a positive attitude you have! Sorry those evpsych people were so mean to you, tho.

eric--
it is the case that evolution is a good and proven model for explaining how adaption works. But it is not very useful in explain how a particular adaption came about.
Not to nitpick, but then it's not really a model, is it? Anyway, evpsych operates both from general principles of evolution (behavior is adaptive for survival, probably of the gene line) and from the understanding that evolution is slow but material progres is recently quite fast. So we had a prolonged period of hunting-gathering, with limited biological change between then and now. Therefore, what should find pervasive behaviors that would be adaptive then, but are no longer. Which we certainly seem to do (the explanations that "it's societal pressure" have always been reflexive and self-contradicting). We see this in physical features but the lack of surviving brains makes this more speculative in the neural area of course.

Posted by calling all toasters | September 17, 2006 9:18 PM

"Not to nitpick, but then it's not really a model, is it? "

Well it kinda is, does a really god job in explaining diversity and how it came about. That is the amazing leap that Darwin made on the Beagle.

Now does it do the work the evo-psyc want it todo at explaining why say consciousness came about in humans. That is a bit more problematic for reasons stated above.

e.

Posted by eric | September 17, 2006 9:33 PM

Not intentional, god !=good.

e.

Posted by eric | September 17, 2006 9:39 PM

Huh, sounds like an interesting book. I generally avoid reading nonfiction unless it's directly related to work, but maybe I can come up with some convoluted reason it's work-related.

But evolutionary psychology does a pretty good job of answering questions about things like mating and prejudice that other areas within psychology haven't the foggiest idea how to approach.

But can it explain blog commenters' and Matthew Yglesias' tendency to terrible spelling and punctuation? That should be the real test of its validity.

Appropos of nothing, except someone upthread mentioned Skinner, I know a woman whose college roommate was raised in a Skinner box.

Posted by flippantangel | September 17, 2006 10:37 PM

Calling all toasters: You did not understand Buller's point. At all.

Posted by Walt | September 17, 2006 10:51 PM

"But can it explain blog commenters' and Matthew Yglesias' tendency to terrible spelling and punctuation?"

Well kinda,, in my case the fordorian languange module that controls writing is a bit flawed. I have a learning disablity that is called dysgraphia, similar to dyslexia. So writing is painful whereas talking is just fine.

e.

Posted by eric Smith | September 17, 2006 11:34 PM

Walt, thanks for clearing that up. I now see the error of my ways: not understanding.

Also, I put a gun to Buller's head and made him write those idiotic over-generalizations. Mea culpa.

Posted by calling all toasters. | September 18, 2006 12:05 AM

"Now does it do the work the evo-psyc want it todo at explaining why say consciousness came about in humans. That is a bit more problematic for reasons stated above."

Can neuroscience even start to explain the neurological basis of consciousness? It is my understanding that they decided to ignore this until quite recently. It would seem to me that in order to understand the evolution of consciousness in biological terms you would first have to understand consciousness itself. Otherwise, can you even know what it is that you're talking about?

Most of what I've read about human evolution has delt with physiology. To what extent can you even begin to talk about psychology (subjective experiences, cognative ability or mental predispositions) or behavior in pre-modern humominids? While there are certain things that leave lasting marks - tool building, cave paintings, etc. I would imagine that most of day to day life did not. And a lot of what some people take as evidence for specific behaviors, is actually quite vague and ambiguous (did hominids bring those animal bones to a spot to split them open, or were they washed there by the rain; is that a burial or a body that was thrown into a pit, etc.)

Is evolutionary psychology comparing known past behavior to present behavior? Or is it trying to speculate as to what past behavior might have been? I'm not saying that isn't an interesting line of investigation. I would think, however, its only going to get you answers that may be true, but certainly aren't testable.

Posted by justaguy | September 18, 2006 1:11 AM

It's important to remember that Tooby & Cosmides's Evolutionary Psychology (TM) sneaks the study of sex differences onto politically correct campuses by signing up as the truest believers in other P.C. dogmas. The EP fundamentalists like to point out they don't believe in all this IQ and race stuff.

Therefore, Buller's attack on Evolutionary Psychology (TM) is, in effect, an endorsement of the much derided g theory of intelligence, which Stephen Jay Gould sputtered was "the rotten core of the "Bell Curve."

Similarly, Buller's attack on the "era of evolutionary adapationism" functions as an endorsement of Cochranism -- the theory that humans are continuing to evolve new differences down through recorded history.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 18, 2006 1:47 AM

Calling all toasters: Given that you have no idea what Buller's point is, your statement about his overgeneralizations is totally unsupported. I would try to persuade you, but what's the point? Two seconds into the thread, you're already striking the heroic pose that evo-psych defenders always strike when they meet any criticism whatsoever. Buller's claim is that the most dramatic _evolutionary_ development is cortical plasticity. He agrees we have modules in our mind that are the product of evolution: he disagrees on how many they are. That's the whole point of his "evolutionary psychology" versus "Evolutionary Psychology" distinction: the believers in the capitalized version claim that we have a gigantic number of finely-tuned modules. Buller, for example, agrees that we have a module for jealousy; he disagrees that the evidence demonstrates that men and women have sex-specific versions of the module.

Posted by Walt | September 18, 2006 10:06 AM

walt--
Much as I appreciate your from-the-ass ad hominems, I must beg to disagree with you. First, I'm not sure what's so "heroic" about dismissing Buller's rather stupid remarks. If that's heroic, than anyone blogging or commenting is like unto Achilles. Secondly, you're being too modest. Buller doesn't just claim the achievement of plasticity, he claims that because genes are the mechanism of evolution and they only code for proteins, that brain evolution can only be physiological, not anatomical (perhaps I am being unfair by using his actual argument; if so, I await correction). Interestingly, I haven't found him exploring the implications of that applied to the rest of the body, i.e. you our bodies are formed by the environment. Perhaps you could explain that to me, in my ignorance.

Buller, for example, agrees that we have a module for jealousy
I'd be interested in seeing how he explains that in purely physiological terms. Please post a link.

Posted by calling all toasters | September 18, 2006 3:54 PM

"you our bodies" => "how our bodies"

Posted by calling all toasters | September 18, 2006 3:55 PM

I think steve is right that the first half of the book is more persuasive than the second half. The arguments he makes in the final chapter against human nature are horrible.

Here is what some random amazon reviewer had to say:

>Doubtless the least effect part of this book is Buller's extended attempt to deny that there is a such thing as "human nature." Borrowing an argument from Hull, he asserts that species are "individuals" rather than "natural kinds" and only "natural kinds" have the sort of being that allows us to discuss their "nature." This, to my mind, is exactly the type of philosophizing that renders the philosophical critique of science so bizarre and ineffective. Ducks have duck nature. It is what we learn when we study the character and behavior of ducks. Mosquitoes similarly have mosquito nature. Humans being are no different. The philosopher is not allowed to define the terms of science in his own bizarre way and then claim to have detected a synthetic a priori inconsistency in the scientific use of the term.

Posted by joeo | September 18, 2006 5:36 PM

what i find funny about this is how many people seem to be assigning the burden of proof based on outdated ideas or what're effectively PC-based assumptions. e.g., tabula rasa has no legit claim to being the default assumption. instead, the default assumption would be that our brains are a product of our evolutionary heritage, and if you want to say different (that we're more flexible than that would suggest, etc.), you've got to prove it. similarly, men and women have different brain structures and act differently. so if you want to say that there are not meaningful differences in their brains, you've got the burden of proof rather than other way round.

Posted by dj superflat | September 18, 2006 7:04 PM

calling all toasters: You started with ad-hominem, and you've never moved away from it. You've shown zero interest in an actual discussion. Either a) you're a researcher in the field, which is clear evidence that the field is fucked, totally populated by dishonest hacks who lie about other research so that they can play the "more scientist than thou" card, or (much more likely) b) you read about evo-psycho in a book somewhere, you've become a loyalist, and you can't bear to see your baby insulted. I'm impressed by your PDF searching skills, but you've shown no interest in a serious discussion. You're a dishonest hack, and really, ad-hominem is the only language you understand. Consider it an evolved response, monkey-boy.

Posted by walt | September 18, 2006 9:37 PM

Walt, please, don't have a stroke. Not for my sake.

Posted by calling all toasters | September 18, 2006 10:32 PM

Walt -
Not to put too fine a point on it, nor to call bullshit on you, but calling all toasters did not attack you until after you started in on him. And you still have yet to explain how Buller's hypotheses/proposals/anal-extractions can be shown to be valid. (Other than the semantical point you make re: quantity of modules existent in the brain, etc.)

Look, I have no dog in the Buller argument - although I'm sure I'll merit a "monkey-boy" or similarly witty riposte from you - but do try to be a little more mature about trying to dispute a contention. If you can't do anything other than "You just don't understand, and I'm not going to explain it to you", then it becomes clear that you don't understand nearly as much as you believe/profess. Either that, or you're intellectually dishonest. (But I won't call you a hack, yet).

Posted by SFAW | October 13, 2006 6:25 AM