Before I announce the winner, I should note that Harper One San Francisco has announced that 5 hardback copies of both Steve Meyer’s Signature of the Cell, ( 2009) and Beauregard and O’Leary’s The Spiritual Brain (2007 ) are available free to contest winners. Like, win and add them to your library for free.
Okay, now to Question 5:
Winner VJ Torley writes, What is the down side for serious Darwinists to just cutting the “evolutionary psychology” psychodrama loose, and focusing on what real science can say about evolution?
The down side to cutting “evolutionary psychology” loose is that Darwinism would then no longer be a comprehensive theory of all features of organisms, in the same way that atomic theory is a comprehensive theory of all substances and all states of matter in chemistry. A Darwinism which placed psychology outside its explanatory ambit might still be able to account for the entire gamut of organisms’ biological characteristics, but it would no longer be a satisfactory theory of their behavior.
This should not be a problem to science as such. However, contemporary science is profoundly reductionistic in its outlook. In the current intellectual milieu, irreducible higher-level properties (such as mental states) are likely to be just as annoying to scientists as surds were to the Greeks, who threw into the sea the man who first proved that the square root of two was irrational.
There is one way in which today’s scientists might be persuaded to cut “evolutionary psychology” loose, and that would be if psychology itself came to be regarded as a pseudo-science. A few philosophers and scientists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland, deny the existence of mental states altogether and regard talk of mental states as a “folk theory,” which will eventually be superseded by a theory that explains human behavior in terms of brain states. If these views ever gained scientific acceptance, then evolutionary psychology would vanish as a discipline.
What is the down side for serious Darwinists to just cutting the “evolutionary psychology” psychodrama loose, and focusing on what real science can say about evolution?
The down side to cutting “evolutionary psychology” loose is that Darwinism would then no longer be a comprehensive theory of all features of organisms, in the same way that atomic theory is a comprehensive theory of all substances and all states of matter in chemistry. A Darwinism which placed psychology outside its explanatory ambit might still be able to account for the entire gamut of organisms’ biological characteristics, but it would no longer be a satisfactory theory of their behavior.
This should not be a problem to science as such. However, contemporary science is profoundly reductionistic in its outlook. In the current intellectual milieu, irreducible higher-level properties (such as mental states) are likely to be just as annoying to scientists as surds were to the Greeks, who threw into the sea the man who first proved that the square root of two was irrational.
There is one way in which today’s scientists might be persuaded to cut “evolutionary psychology” loose, and that would be if psychology itself came to be regarded as a pseudo-science. A few philosophers and scientists, such as Paul and Patricia Churchland, deny the existence of mental states altogether and regard talk of mental states as a “folk theory,” which will eventually be superseded by a theory that explains human behavior in terms of brain states. If these views ever gained scientific acceptance, then evolutionary psychology would vanish as a discipline.
VJ Torley needs to be in touch with oleary@sympatico.ca to provide a current postal address, to collect his prize, a year’s free subscription to Salvo (decidedly not yer granny’s explanation of why younger Christians are getting tired of all this materialist rubbish, but a more plausible one) plus free, fun back issues.
Here is how this contest got started: At Robert Murphy’s “Free Advice” blog, a post called – advisedly – Just-So Darwinism:
“Art and hairlessness co-evolved because they fed off each other. The girl whose skin was least hairy could paint it, tattoo it, decorate it and clothe it more adventurously than could her furry sisters. So she got more and better men. And in consequence her children – even the males, though to a lesser degree – lost their hair too. We had become the naked ape.”
OK, you got that? Remember, the whole point of this story is to explain why older men with thinning hair are implausibly attractive to young women (despite the myths that Rogaine and others would have you believe, and despite all those male models with full heads of hair). So to do that, the story starts out with why evolution made women lose their (body) hair, which then caused their male offspring to lose their (body and scalp?) hair, even though the original motivation (sexual selection a la the peacock) never caused female baldness to become prevalent.
Hat tip: Darwinian Tales (by “Vox Day”), who kindly wrote to say, “Knowing of your intense interest in the “big bazooms” theory [of evolution], I think you’ll enjoy this.”
Yes,Vox said that. I collect stupid theories (like the sexy baldy and the “big bazooms”) theory of evolution, the way some people collect ceramic busts of Elvis Presley, not because they admire them but because they are intrigued by the fact that anyone, anywhere would actually admire them.
Terence Kealey is vice-chancellor of Buckingham University