>The latest (Feb. 27, 2003) issue of the NY Review of
>Books has a review of Pinker's book *The Blank
Slate*, >"Darwinian Storytelling"
>[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16074] which is
>probably one of the harshest reviews I have seen yet
>of Pinker's book. Like myself, and one or two other
>people, Orr finds Pinker guilty of bashing strawmen
>(How many thinking people now a days accept a radical
>Blank Slate view?). Orr argues that most of Pinker's
I honestly can't think of *any* major thinker who really held such a view. Neither Skinner nor Watson did, though they are often accused of such. Locke did not deny human nature; his blank slate was different from the one Pinker attacks. Neither did Marx.
But is the idea that human nature *is* very malleable really such a bad thing? The ability to learn is a selective advantage -- cultural evolution is much faster than biological evolution. Cultural evolution has been shown to play a larger role in societies of other primates than previously thought. And they don't even have the human capacity for language or conscious labor.
>claims concerning human nature, especially on issues
>dealing with nature versus nurture, to be susceptible
>of formulation in terms of either weaker or stronger
>versions. Thus Orr agrees that Pinker IS successful
>in showing that a radical Blank Slate view of human
>nature is untenable but that the sorts of
A bit like showing the sky is blue, I think.
>evidence that Pinker presents in his book while
>supporting weaker versions of his claims do not
>necessarily support the stronger versions, yet Pinker
>in Orr's view tends to infer that evidence supporting
>the weaker versions does support the stronger
versions
>as well.
I agree. Moreover, much evidence exists *agaist* Pinker's stronger versions. Morever, the corollary, I think, is that a weaker version of the blank slate or the noble savage (two of Pinker's straw opponents) *is* at some level tenable.
>Orr finds Pinker to be not just critiquing the Blank
>Slate view of human nature but also to be arguing for
>Darwinian psychology, but the proposition that we can
>build a Darwinian science of mind is one that Orr
>contends to be quite distinct from the thesis that
the >slate is not blank. Orr finds Pinker to be
endorsing >all manner of hereditarian explanations of
various >forms of human behavior, far in excess of the
>available empirical evidence.
And how! In many cases, Pinker seems to have no familiarity with evidence contradicting his assertions at all, and utilized men oft-recycled myths. For example, he asserts -- as many EPs do -- that the !Kung San are more violent than those in industrialized societies. In support of this assertion, he cites their higher homicide rate. But in reality, this higher homicide rate reflects their far inferior access to medical care. The actual frequency of murder in their society is much, much lower than that found in the U.S. The same can be said of many politically and economically egalitarian societies, including those found *in* industrialzied countries, such as the Amish. The usual dubious twin studies are also of course present.
>Orr finds Pinker's adaptationism to be problematic as
>an explanatory strategy, basically finding him guilty
>of a weakness for "just so" stories of evolutionary
>adaptation. Thus, Orr charges that Pinker and
>other evolutionary psychologists have done little
>to support their hypotheses on the basis of rigorous
>research methods. Their work is lacking in terms of
>citations of twin studies, or analyses of chromosome
>locations or DNA sequences, that is of the type of
>research that is required now a days to support
>contentions that a given trait is under genetic
>control.
And even these tend to methodologically problematic.
>All the evolutionary psychologists have been able
>to give us is stories but Darwinian stories are
>not the equivalent to Mendelian evidence. In
>particular evolutionary psychologists fail to
consider >that the same evidence that they cite as
demonstrating >that a given behavior is adaptive (and
thus might be a >bona fide biological adaptation)
might also be >evidence of it being "economically"
advantageous. >That is organisms with suffficiently
large and complex >brains might be able to figure out
that the >advantageousness of the behavior in
question, so their >exhibition of that behavior might
have nothing to do >with evolved instincts or
specialized mental modules.
And where's the evidence for massive modularity in the first place?
>Years ago, B.F. Skinner made pretty much the same
>point, a bit more elegantly IMO than does Orr.
>Skinner pointed out that selection as a causal mode
>operates at three different levels: the genetic
level >in terms of what he called selection by
contingencies >of survival, that is natural selection,
the level (in >terms of the behavioral repertoires of
individual >organisms) of operant conditioning, and
the level of >the evolution of cultures. A
quarter-century ago, >Skinner found E.O. Wilson guilty
of taking certain >features common to natural
selection, operant >conditioning, and the evolution of
cultures and >attributing them all to genes.
>As Skinner it:
>"Genes no doubt explain behavior resulting from
>natural selection, and they are also responsible for
>operant conditioning as a process, but once that
>process has evolved, a different kind of selection
>accounts for the behavior of the individual and the
>evolution of cultural practices." (B.F. Skinner,
"Can >the Experimental Analysis of Behavior Rescue
>Psychology" from his book *Upon Further Reflection*,
>1987). In my judgement, the same sort of criticism
>that Skinner made of Wilson, is also applicable to
>contemporary evolutionary psychologists like Pinker.
>And as should be apparent from a reading of Skinner,
>there is nothing anti-Darwinian about such criticism
>as people like Wilson or Pinker would have us
believe.
>Returning to Orr's critique of Pinker, finds Pinker's
>discussion of the history of the early debates
>concerning sociobiology, to be full of
>misrepresentations of the arguments of its critics,
>especially the arguments of people like the late
>Stephen Jay Gould, and of Richard Lewontin. In fact,
>Pinker, according to Orr, rarely does these people
the >favor, of stating what their arguments were in
the >first place, thereby, allowing himself to
portrary >Gould and Lewontin as having engaged in a
purely >politically motivated attack on sociobiology.
In fact >Orr charges Pinker with induging in a certain
amount >of red-baiting in his discussions of Gould and
>Lewontin, in which their scientific arguments against
>sociobiology are almost completely ignored. In other
>words, Pinker, once again, is guilty of bashing
>strawmen, in order to make his own case in favor of
>evolutionary psychology.
Interestingly, the political affiliations and ideological motivations of sociobiologists and their defenders are almost never subject to the same scrutiny. In On Human Nature, Wilson suggested that women are evolved to stay home and take care of the kids and marshalled the old fashioend social Darwinist arguments against letting poor people breed excessively. He granted an interview to a French white supremacist magazine. He has praised J.P. Rushton's "research". He thanks Newt Gingrich in the acknowledgements of Consilience, in which he describes himself as "a social conservative". He's joiend in attacks on Women's Studies at Harvard. He's wined and dined and gives seminars for major corporations. Yet he's routinely described in the press and in Pinker's book as a liberal.
Pinker, likewise, has spoken at the American Enterprise Institute.
>In fact, Orr does not read either Gould or Lewontin
as >having endorsed a radical Blank Slate view of
human >nature. And he goes on to cite what he
considers to >have been their scientific case against
sociobiology
>and evolutionary psychology, including the famous
>"spandrels" argument that traits that are a part of
>our biological heritage are not necessarily the
direct >products of natural selection but might
instead be the >result of how organisms are built ,
just as spandrels, >in eccliastical architecture, are
the inevitable
>byproducts of placing a frame on arches. And also,
>Orr cites the arguments of Gould & Lewontin to the
>effect that behavior that is adaptive may not
>necessarily be optimal.
It should be noted that there are more radical critics of adaptationism and neo-Darwinism generally, such as Brian Goodwin and Mae-Wan Ho. Their arguments are compelling.
>While Orr concedes that the early radical critics of
>sociobiology often went too far, and overstated their
>case, the same can be said for the early proponents
of >sociobiology as well. In any case, Pinker in
Orr's >judgement presents a very unbalanced and
tendentious >history of the sociobiology debates.
A history of the sociobiology wars from the perspective of the radical scientists and their supporters really needs to be written. I actually emailed Val Dusek a while back suggesting he turn his "Sociobiology Sanitized" into a book.
I think I would agree that the rhetoric on from some of the radical scientists was sometimes a little much.
But I think their scientific critique itself was actually quite conservative.
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