First, I don’t think the really interesting evo psych is about the difference between humans and chimps. The most interesting evo psych is about ideas like coalition politics, mating behavior, and emotions which we share with chimps and with many other primates as well.
(this also brings up the related points about the major “psychological” differences between different primates, or between chimps and bonobos; these seem to clearly exist, but are hard to attribute to culture; if chimp/bonobo differences can be attributed to evo psych, why not chimp/human differences?)
The more fundamental problem I have with your response is that it seems to be placing the burden of proof on Orthonormal by asking “Given such minor anatomical differences between chimps and humans, why are you expecting huge brain differences equivalent to completely new organs?” But who’s positing huge brain differences equivalent to completely new organs? Given that there are hundreds of small anatomical differences between chimps and humans, I would almost want to throw the burden of proof back at you and ask “Given all the anatomical differences between chimps and humans, why are you expecting there to be zero mental differences at all except those related to scale?”
It may be that we are thinking of different things when we say “evolutionary psychology”. I agree that there’s no specific novel human brain module responsible for (let’s say) religion: that would be equivalent to evolving a new organ. But could the brain modules handling sex, which certainly exist in other animals and chimps, have a slight difference in humans which explains why we’re more naturally monogamous or polygamous or whatever the theory is nowadays? Sure. And that’s what I think evo psych is about, more than it’s about saying “We must have evolved a specific religion module in the last million years!”
I’ve nothing against what you think evo psych is about. Clearly, the sensitivity of receptors at synaptic junctions can be altered in global manner, and clearly, the intensity of any existing process can also be adjusted—similar to how shape of human body differs from that of a chimp, so can the ‘shape’ of human psyche.
The argument with orthonormal is on an orthogonal subject, ha ha: the evo psych as proposed by Cosmides, Tooby, Pinker, and Symons, whom exactly propose the cognitive modules as complex as organs, in the past 1.8 millions years, and whom even draw organ analogies themselves. I’m aint making up any strawmen here.
edit: Actually i didn’t even want to bring up this whole debate, that’s why i didn’t directly refer to any of that in my original post. I just want to make a sensible argument, people can apply it, and discard the nonsensical variations of evo psych, especially when the evo psychologists themselves make organ analogies. I’d rather attack the fallacious lines of reasoning, than specific arguments.
Are you sure they believe what you think they believe? I mean, obviously all animals have sexual behaviors, many of them very complicated and different from one another, so it would be pretty nonsensical to say humans were the first animal with a “sex behavior module” in their brains. I can’t imagine someone like Cosmides & Tooby would make that mistake
Language seems like an easier mistake to make, but I agree with you that it’s a modification and upscaling of existing organs rather than anything new; primates seem to have Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in about the same place we do doing about the same sort of thing.
I’m not clear on what timeframe do they think the ‘modules’ have evolved in, but they argue for a bunch of high level ones related to cognition, as described here:
The argument presented here in course notes is that we have some sort of social contracts module, circa—not quite sure but rather recent—that helps us solve Wason Selection Task better—when we read off paper, mind you, in english language, better when it mentions social contracts than when its letters and numbers. Apparently we have some domain limited intelligence that does Wason Selection Task correctly using logic when it is presented as social contracts—in 75% of people, but sleeps in 75% of people when it is presented as letters and numbers. This is pretty ridiculous. The Wason selection task is a pretty regular language processing bug—you misinterpret it off carelessly as instructions to execute—flip cards with numbers, see if the even have red on the back—rather than as propositions to be tested. When you word it as something concrete, be it social contract, or testing of the medications, then people actually think beyond careless misunderstanding. In natural language, if A then B is very often misused when one wants to say iff A then B.
edit: that is to say, the field is badly suffering from lack of ‘probability of evolving’ prior, akin to the occam″s razor used elsewhere. The difference is more than adequately explained by a zillion causes having nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with education and culture. It’s a huge give-away that you can train people to be a lot better on this and similar tasks; the ‘evolved module’ explanation is redundant, and on top of this is highly implausible unless one’s treating evolution as magic.
So I have two problems with your response here.
First, I don’t think the really interesting evo psych is about the difference between humans and chimps. The most interesting evo psych is about ideas like coalition politics, mating behavior, and emotions which we share with chimps and with many other primates as well.
(this also brings up the related points about the major “psychological” differences between different primates, or between chimps and bonobos; these seem to clearly exist, but are hard to attribute to culture; if chimp/bonobo differences can be attributed to evo psych, why not chimp/human differences?)
The more fundamental problem I have with your response is that it seems to be placing the burden of proof on Orthonormal by asking “Given such minor anatomical differences between chimps and humans, why are you expecting huge brain differences equivalent to completely new organs?” But who’s positing huge brain differences equivalent to completely new organs? Given that there are hundreds of small anatomical differences between chimps and humans, I would almost want to throw the burden of proof back at you and ask “Given all the anatomical differences between chimps and humans, why are you expecting there to be zero mental differences at all except those related to scale?”
It may be that we are thinking of different things when we say “evolutionary psychology”. I agree that there’s no specific novel human brain module responsible for (let’s say) religion: that would be equivalent to evolving a new organ. But could the brain modules handling sex, which certainly exist in other animals and chimps, have a slight difference in humans which explains why we’re more naturally monogamous or polygamous or whatever the theory is nowadays? Sure. And that’s what I think evo psych is about, more than it’s about saying “We must have evolved a specific religion module in the last million years!”
I’ve nothing against what you think evo psych is about. Clearly, the sensitivity of receptors at synaptic junctions can be altered in global manner, and clearly, the intensity of any existing process can also be adjusted—similar to how shape of human body differs from that of a chimp, so can the ‘shape’ of human psyche.
The argument with orthonormal is on an orthogonal subject, ha ha: the evo psych as proposed by Cosmides, Tooby, Pinker, and Symons, whom exactly propose the cognitive modules as complex as organs, in the past 1.8 millions years, and whom even draw organ analogies themselves. I’m aint making up any strawmen here.
edit: Actually i didn’t even want to bring up this whole debate, that’s why i didn’t directly refer to any of that in my original post. I just want to make a sensible argument, people can apply it, and discard the nonsensical variations of evo psych, especially when the evo psychologists themselves make organ analogies. I’d rather attack the fallacious lines of reasoning, than specific arguments.
Oh, okay.
Are you sure they believe what you think they believe? I mean, obviously all animals have sexual behaviors, many of them very complicated and different from one another, so it would be pretty nonsensical to say humans were the first animal with a “sex behavior module” in their brains. I can’t imagine someone like Cosmides & Tooby would make that mistake
Language seems like an easier mistake to make, but I agree with you that it’s a modification and upscaling of existing organs rather than anything new; primates seem to have Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in about the same place we do doing about the same sort of thing.
I’m not clear on what timeframe do they think the ‘modules’ have evolved in, but they argue for a bunch of high level ones related to cognition, as described here:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/hum100/evolutionary_psychology.html′
The argument presented here in course notes is that we have some sort of social contracts module, circa—not quite sure but rather recent—that helps us solve Wason Selection Task better—when we read off paper, mind you, in english language, better when it mentions social contracts than when its letters and numbers. Apparently we have some domain limited intelligence that does Wason Selection Task correctly using logic when it is presented as social contracts—in 75% of people, but sleeps in 75% of people when it is presented as letters and numbers. This is pretty ridiculous. The Wason selection task is a pretty regular language processing bug—you misinterpret it off carelessly as instructions to execute—flip cards with numbers, see if the even have red on the back—rather than as propositions to be tested. When you word it as something concrete, be it social contract, or testing of the medications, then people actually think beyond careless misunderstanding. In natural language, if A then B is very often misused when one wants to say iff A then B.
edit: that is to say, the field is badly suffering from lack of ‘probability of evolving’ prior, akin to the occam″s razor used elsewhere. The difference is more than adequately explained by a zillion causes having nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with education and culture. It’s a huge give-away that you can train people to be a lot better on this and similar tasks; the ‘evolved module’ explanation is redundant, and on top of this is highly implausible unless one’s treating evolution as magic.