• Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    The idea of evolution has been accepted in polite intellectual society for a long time now, but there's a been a further turn-of-the-screw in the mainstreaming of evolution over the past couple decades. It's a plug-and-play explanation of [everything.] You can bet good money that if you're reading a pop-psych article (or listening to a pop-psych podcast) eventually someone will say something like ('and the reason this problematic thing exists is because, on the savannah, it was adaptive to do x when a lion appeared, even if we no longer encounter lions')

    Bracketing the truth of those claims, you can see how functionally this has become a stock rhetorical topos. It functions very similarly to the god-based teleological explanations of yesteryear. Why does x exist? Well, as someone in the fold speaking to another in the fold, one must first remember that the world was organized by God in such a way that each part supports every other part.

    I want to make clear that I'm not trying to do something like "Atheism is its own faith." I'm trying to draw attention to the way in which evolutionary explanations function - independent of whether those claims are true. In their role as that kind of function, such explanations are subject to the the same tendencies that affect any species of the genus. They become more and more reflexive, automatic and unilluminating. Its something thats said, I think, less to illuminate the matter at hand than to reinforce the feeling of having a shared framework. The presumed audience already knows that the threat of a lion on the savannah lies behind everything, they've heard it many times before, so they're not really learning something new. They're being reassured that this thing too fits in the same framework, a respectable one.

    I get frustrated by these explanations not because I don't believe evolutionary theory is more or less accurate - I do - but because they're casually deployed to explain everything. And that is the background I'm bringing to this:


    Descartes, as we all know, asked: how do we know a demon isn't creating our experience and tricking us into thinking its real?

    I think we can imagine (and we don't really have to, its out there) an evolutionary Descartes asking: How do we know that a blind evolutionary process isn't creating our experience, tricking us into thinking its real?

    We don't really experience the Savannah, we experience an affordance-interface that allows us to most efficiently escape the lion.

    Ok. And so we evolve from apes to proto-humans to humans, and live a while as hunter-gatherers. Then eventually, we create agricultural societies, and begin to evolve socially at a pace that greatly outstrips biological evolution. Eventually we create the scientific method, and eventually the theory of evolution.

    But why, in principle, can't the plug-and-play evolutionary explanation fit here too?

    I.e.

    - It's adaptive to have evolutionary explanations. That's what those explanations are - adaptations that enable survival.

    To which someone would respond:

    - Well, no, in this case we have an exaption of capacities evolved for different purposes. We're able to re-direct rational thought for purposes other than their original function. There's no strict adaptive benefit to learning about evolution.

    The response to which is:

    -But how would you know? People experience the beliefs that keep them alive as true, even when they're not, even when they're simply heuristics that help them preserve their lives. How do you know this is true?

    - Well, because of x
    -But what if you only believe x because its adaptive?
    -No x is true because of y
    - But what if you only believe y because its adaptive?

    and so forth.

    -----
    Now, certainly, the 'evolutionary Descartes' is behaving like, say, someone on a philosophy forum. He seems to lack the artful understanding that we, as real people 'thrown' into a world, use fluidly to move between language (cognitive, ethical, aesthetic) games. I personally wouldn't follow him all the way down his rabbit hole, to share in an empty, formal 'gotcha!' I'm a good later-Wittgensteinian here and I'd tsk him accordingly.

    But! I think he is simply the inverse image of how easy evolutionary explanations are used in the wild today. You often see people invoke them without any robust explanation of the details - it's just a 'well the evolutionary explanation is certainly the most acceptable way to couch my point, so let me cobble together a few things quickly that sound plausible enough : dinner with your boss is like a lion.'

    What's my point? Not sure. I think it's something like: a lot of psychological explanations are bad because, in taking for granted the instant acceptability of a gesture toward an evolutionary explanation, they too quickly find a conceptual resting point, and you get shallow insights (loose soil) that only appear to have depth because they invoke/hyperlink a worldview seen socially as impeachably sturdy bedrock.
  • frank
    14.5k

    I have a notion that people can't process masses of unorganized detail. They have to have a 'skeleton' to tell them where to put the bits of data flesh they come across.

    An evolutionary outlook can be a skeleton. Maybe they're not explaining so much as sharing their skeleton. Skeletons can be viral.

    Maybe conspiracy theories are like skeletons, helping to make sense of events. The unknown is scary, possibly the scariest thing, so skeletons calm the poor prey animal so it doesn't constantly freak out at every twig breakage (out on the savannah).
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    The unknown is scary, possibly the scariest thing, so skeletons calm the poor prey animal so it doesn't constantly freak out at every twig breakage (out on the savannah).frank

    ha, :up:

    Yeah, I think you're right that there has to be a 'skeleton' - and definitely agree that that's what conspiracy theories are; its probably no accident that people are most apt to get into conspiracy theories when there's an absence - or breakdown- of their unifying frame (like, in some ways Plato's theory of forms is a 'conspiracy theory' taking root in the vacuum left by Socrates' aporetic whirlpool.)

    I guess my beef is something like: I think evolutionary theory is better approached as a bone (a good sturdy one, to be sure, maybe the femur) but is too often used as the entire skeleton.
  • frank
    14.5k
    guess my beef is something like: I think evolutionary theory is better approached as a bone (a good sturdy one, to be sure, maybe the femur) but is too often used as the entire skeleton.csalisbury

    Unfortunately astrology has a bad reputation, but if you delve into for the symbolism instead fortune telling, it's pretty fascinating.

    So if you're sitting across from your boss, is it a mentor and student? Is it a father and son? Is it that you're the fool on the hill and he or she is the city folk?

    And relationships can be star crossed. He's supposed to be a mentor, but he lacks confidence.

    One way to advance off the savannah to a world with Starbucks, anyway. Speaking of which, is the boss Captain Ahab? :grimace:
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    I think we can imagine (and we don't really have to, its out there) an evolutionary Descartes asking: How do we know that a blind evolutionary process isn't creating our experience, tricking us into thinking its real?csalisbury

    That’s pretty well what Donald Hoffman says.

    On the general point of the OP, I agree that evolutionary theory has become the de facto ‘theory of everything’ as far as humanity is concerned. Where once we had the myth of the fall, we now have the scientifically-sanctioned theory of evolution by natural selection. The problem with it is that it is reductive, in that the only criterion for what constitutes a successful outcome is that of surviving and procreating. It doesn’t say anything about what is good, aesthetically or morally, but only what works, from the purported aim of surviving. Arguments can be made that it favours altruism and that kindness is more effective than cruelty, but they seem highly artificial to me.
  • Manuel
    3.9k
    Which isn't much different from a creationist argument: this creature has the capacity because God willed it so.

    Evolution certainly plays a factor in change, but appealing to it alone does not offer much by way of explanations.
  • Anand-Haqq
    95


    . Descartes and his so-called philosophical system is reigning on the western philosophy ... you watch it carefully ... on all the dimensions ... and you'll see it so ...

    . There is a famous dictum of this western philospher Descartes: cogito ergo sum - I think, therfore I am. This is probably the most stupid, absurd and catastrophic idea ever created by any human being who philosophize ... on earth ...

    . This stupid sentence has made the western man ... mind-oriented ... materialistic-oriented ... stingy, ambitious ... male-oriented ... not female-oriented ... instead ... of being-oriented ... instead ... of heart-oriented. Your mind is not existencial ... it is a by-product of millennia ... utilitarian, useful ... yes ... but not when you're alone ... and you want peace and ecstasy rising up in you ... there is no other source of suffering and misery but mind ...

    . And this question arises ... Why do I say this ... ?

    . Because, it shows that thinking is primary and being is secondary - I think, therefore I am.

    . Descartes was a great thinker ... but he was not a man of peace ... a meditator ... unless you're a meditator you cannot be a man of peace ... Why is it so ? ... Because mind activity with no inexistence of mind activity leads to psychological suffering ... Have you ever noticed this fact on your Life ... ?

    . Thinking is secondary ... not primary. Being is first. First you are, then you think. First you exist, and then ... yes ... the substance comes after. First you be ... and then ... thinking follows ... as shadow follows man.

    . I want you to understand this ...

    . If you're not, then who is going to think? Thinking cannot exist in a vacuum. If somebody says, "I am, therefore I think," it is right. But to say "I think, therefore I am", is absolutely foolish, idiotic, absurd.

    . Descartes must have been an absurd thinker ... and all of them are. They cannot see their existencialist nature.

    . But still, there is a meaning to his maximum: Descartes is the father of western philosophy, and the whole western has been influenced by two persons - Aristotle and Descartes. So, in the west anything goes through thinking; even being goes through thinking. Even being is not a simple fact; you have to think about it first, then you are - as if it is a logical conclusion ... this is just absurd.

    . Life is existencial ... It is not logical ...

    . When will you understand this ... While alive ... or while you're in a graveyard ? You choose ...

    . Life is a paradox ... Life is beyond logic ... it is beyond any syllogism ... it does include illogical phenomena too ...

    . There is no logical phenomena why a bird must sing ... Why does these people sing, for what purpose? For what logical reason? ... What do they gain with it ... ? This is the thinking of a western mind ...

    . They cannot see that which is ... and that which is ... does not need any explanation ... it just exists ... the beauty and the sweetness of their song is enough ...

    . The mystic is beyond any mind activity ... And I would like you to be mystics ... one with the whole ...
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Unfortunately astrology has a bad reputation, but if you delve into for the symbolism instead fortune telling, it's pretty fascinating.

    So if you're sitting across from your boss, is it a mentor and student? Is it a father and son? Is it that you're the fool on the hill and he or she is the city folk?

    And relationships can be star crossed. He's supposed to be a mentor, but he lacks confidence.

    One way to advance off the savannah to a world with Starbucks, anyway. Speaking of which, is the boss Captain Ahab? :grimace:
    frank

    I've found that astrology (& tarot etc) are really good ways to get a conversation going in groups that otherwise have trouble articulating their feelings and thoughts about their life-situation. Whether its 'true' or not, it offers a safe-conversational space to talk about things, in part because its often half-tongue-in-cheek which loosens people up if theyre used to conversations about real shit being deadly serious and so to be avoided.

    But, yeah, there's also a huge archetypal layer to psychology and you can often get a much more fine-grained understanding of people's psychological experience of interpersonal stuff by going into narrative mode and asking if they think of a difficult boss more like an Ahab, or a Fagin, or a Leslie Knope (or whatever shared cultural touchstones you have)- they say ahh its some of all of that, but, let me see, its more like, how do I put it - and then, they begin articulating something they haven't quite thought out.

    Obviously there's no reason why evolutionary thought can't, in principle, shed light on the complex, nuanced ways in which we experience and articulate stuff like this. But it is often the case that it seems like the evolutionary explanation is pretending these layers don't exist, or are somehow irrelevant. Which leads to the philosophical point that even if something is an 'illusion', you have to account for the reality of the illusion to have a real explanation.

    But I also want to note that there are plenty of sharp evolutionary theorists, but, again, its the cultural function of evolutionary explanation as a hyperlinked anchor-point that stops exploration that I'm beefing with.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    That’s pretty well what Donald Hoffman says.Wayfarer

    Yeah, Hoffman was one of the ones I was thinking of when I said 'We don't have to imagine it' - but I didn't want to cite him explicitly only because I've merely heard a single podcast interview with him and haven't read his boo. He seems like a smart, rounded guy and I wouldn't be surprised if he engages with the thornier theoretical aspects in his work.

    On the general point of the OP, I agree that evolutionary theory has become the de facto ‘theory of everything’ as far as humanity is concerned. Where once we had the myth of the fall, we now have the scientifically-sanctioned theory of evolution by natural selection. The problem with it is that it is reductive, in that the only criterion for what constitutes a successful outcome is that of surviving and procreating. It doesn’t say anything about what is good, aesthetically or morally, but only what works, from the purported aim of surviving. Arguments can be made that it favours altruism and that kindness is more effective than cruelty, but they seem highly artificial to me.Wayfarer

    Well, when we're talking about biology, we wouldn't want to interpret evidence, and create models, based on whether they satisfy our aesthetic and moral values. I'm not trying to morally appraise evolutionary models - that seems like mixing up domains, right? I want - and expect - the work of scientists to satisfy scientific criteria. I do get what you're saying, but I think we're coming at this from very different angles.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Perhaps we are, but I thought I was agreeing with you. :worry:
  • Janus
    15.4k
    Interesting OP!

    We don't really experience the Savannah, we experience an affordance-interface that allows us to most efficiently escape the lion.

    Ok. And so we evolve from apes to proto-humans to humans, and live a while as hunter-gatherers. Then eventually, we create agricultural societies, and begin to evolve socially at a pace that greatly outstrips biological evolution. Eventually we create the scientific method, and eventually the theory of evolution.

    But why, in principle, can't the plug-and-play evolutionary explanation fit here too?
    csalisbury

    Once there is society and culture, then there is a network of intentionallity and agendas that create quite different, more volatile, selection pressures than the natural environment alone does.

    I don't think there are any clear correlations between the existence of beliefs, or practices, and their survival efficacy (even if they could be thought to bestow an increased chance of survival).
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Let me try to explain. I think that if you have strong aesthetic and moral values, you also need a good understanding of how stuff works to live in accordance with them. To take a pulpy, simplified example: If I'm a detective who's trying to prevent suffering in my community, I'm going to be much more effective at doing that if I don't begin, say, with a worldview of general harmony that is only occasionally punctuated by the base actions of the lower class. I might miss the fact that a lawyer or priest is guilty of sex crimes, because it doesn't gibe with my understanding. I need to follow the evidence where it leads me in order to effectively reduce suffering. (Now obviously you don't have the worldview I imputed to the detective, but thats just a particular illustration of the general idea)

    At the far extreme, letting aesthetic and moral values dictate your understanding of stuff leads you into Don Quixotism.

    The problem with it is that it is reductive, in that the only criterion for what constitutes a successful outcome is that of surviving and procreating. It doesn’t say anything about what is good, aesthetically or morally, but only what works, from the purported aim of surviving. Arguments can be made that it favours altruism and that kindness is more effective than cruelty, but they seem highly artificial to me.Wayfarer

    It seems like here you're taking 'success' as a moral term, when the evolutionary theorist just isn't using it that way. Now, I also think that people who use evolutionary theory as the ground of their morality are confusing domains as well. But that's another thing.

    But my beef here isn't a moral one, at least not directly. It's that many overly-simple, naive uses of evolution qua description of how things work (especially when it comes to psychology) actually limit understanding of how things work, independent of morality.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    My response to this is probably shallow but I agree with you about the overuse and misplaced use of evolution/Darwinism. I also include neuroscience in this as every second person now seems to crib pop nonsense about behavior based on some random magazine understanding of neuroscience. The savannah and neuroplasticity have a lot to answer for.

    Quick and dirty aside: theologian and philosopher Alvin Plantinga makes the point that we can't rely on the truth of our beliefs and human knowledge in an evolutionary worldview since it is all simply acquired for survival value in a largely random environment. Truth is not a criterion of value in our naturalistically derived knowledge and belief systems.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Once there is society and culture, then there is a network of intentionallity and agendas that create quite different, more volatile, selection pressures than the natural environment alone does.

    I don't think there are any clear correlations between the existence of beliefs, or practices, and their survival efficacy (even if they could be thought to bestow an increased chance of survival).
    Janus

    Yeah, I agree. And I think this is why casual, psychological uses of evolution are often so misplaced. There's often this unquestioned drive to distill some psychological phenomenon to a n early human essence (so you so very often hear something like: 'our brains developed to the thing they are now, before agriculture etc'). In some cases, fair enough. But in others there's a cutting-away of all of that social and cultural complexity as though it can't really factor into the real explanation, because it doesn't get into the biology of the brain of a hunter-gatherer.

    The idea with the evolutionary cartesian demon is that if you take that same approach, if you reduce everything to the adaptive biology of the brain as an already more-or-less-finished product on the savannah, you're cutting off the limb you're standing on. You have to understand the scientific method and process as, in some way, autonomous from the biology of the brain. We can understand when things satisfy scientific criteria for reasons other than adaptive fitness. But if you do that for the scientific method, there's also no reason, in principle, why it can't hold of other things we do.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    My response to this is probably shallow but I agree with you about the overuse and misplaced use of evolution/Darwinism. I also include neuroscience in this as every second person now seems to crib pop nonsense about behavior based on some random magazine understanding of neuroscience. The savannah and neuroplasticity have a lot to answer for.Tom Storm

    Ha, yeah exactly. This thread, tbh, is 90% a philosophy forums version of a cranky Andy Rooney reaction to just the kind of thing you're talking about. This isn't a criticism of evolutionary theory in general, it's more about its sloppy applications.

    In terms of the Plantinga argument (which - my own quick and dirty aside - sounds very close to Husserl's argument against who he called the 'psychologists' of his day) I half-agree with it. I think you can't explain truth away as adaptive advantage on pain of inconsistency, since you undermine the very argumentative route you took to explain truth away as adaptive advantage - (this is what Jordan Peterson tries to do, and when someone challenged him on it along these lines, he tailspun very quickly.) But I do think (as in my response above to Janus) that you can have an explanation for how something comes into being, without that explanation of its origins being able to explain emergent, autonomous logics. That may be what Plantinga is saying too though, I'm not sure, but I just want to say I think you can have both evolutionary theory and independent criteria of truth and falsity.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    Your approach of comparing one kind of super simplicity with another is interesting. The survival of the "fittest" has been presented as adapting to the environment along with other "adapters" The complexity of codependency in Ecology is mind blowing. To have the resulting species be seen as winners in some kind of contest does not advance an understanding of the interrelationships. Simply being able to reproduce is not a value by itself.

    The adaptation was thought to have happened during an organism's lifetime by Lamarck. The opposing idea is that genetics keeps putting out these different models at birth and some make it or don't because they "fit" or not. Whatever is going on is probably a bit of both. Accepting that aspect of evolution is a country mile from any kind of certainty.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Yeah, good evolutionary thought, from what little I know of it, seems much, much more nuanced than what I've been talking about so far on here. Ecological systems approaches, to meet you, do seem particularly interesting to me, but I haven't dug in too deep (largely because I've got no math, and it seems like there's a lot of math involved. I always get a tinge of envy when people like @fdrake get into the nuts and bolts of this kind of stuff.)

    Speculatively: it feels to me like once you take that first step, and realize there's no good theoretical reason to privilege the species-level - then you can zoom in and out of different levels (i.e. a whole is always a part of a bigger whole ---and the part of any whole is itself a whole made up of other parts...cells-individuals-species-ecosystems-...[whatever an ecosystem of ecosystems is?])

    Then you can see, emerging from the mist, a kind of generalized evolutionary theory : the state-of-things-in-general, in leading to the next state-of-things-in-general, will need to retain certain features, while losing others. Genetics, in this case, are just one part (a super important part, to be sure) of this whole story.
  • Tom Storm
    8.3k
    That may be what Plantinga is saying too though, I'm not sure, but I just want to say I think you can have both evolutionary theory and independent criteria of truth and falsity.csalisbury

    I agree. I've been vaguely interested in self-refuting arguments and the evolutionary argument against naturalism is a nice one. My favorite is probably the logical positivist's verification principle which can't be demonstrated using its own principle. The way out of this is of course to say it that the principle isn't an axiom, it is merely a recommendation.

    I do find that there is something compelling in Donald Hoffman's notion regarding our senses developing/evolving to manage our environment but not ascertain things as they really are. I am no philosopher, but I have wondered about this since I was a child.
  • khaled
    3.5k
    But why, in principle, can't the plug-and-play evolutionary explanation fit here too?csalisbury

    Whether or not it is does doesn’t make the evolutionary explanation wrong. It can be the case that evolutionary explanations are adaptive AND correct.

    The best thing to do is probably to call out people for lack of detail when they do this:

    people invoke them without any robust explanation of the details - it's just a 'well the evolutionary explanation is certainly the most acceptable way to couch my point, so let me cobble together a few things quickly that sound plausible enough : dinner with your boss is like a lion.'csalisbury
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    Yeah I feel you, I went through a lot of that in the response posts.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    'and the reason this problematic thing exists is because, on the savannah, it was adaptive to do x when a lion appeared, even if we no longer encounter lions'csalisbury

    :lol: Something to laugh about for me. Evolution is a dynamic process though and will, at some point, explain why you find this ridiculous as of this moment, separated as it were by a couple of million years from your hominin ancestors.

    It's all got to do with the brain though. Whatever else it might be, its powers of reasoning, the rational faculty, is what I liken to the much-discussed "technological singularity." Evolution has, in a way, produced just by randomly tinkering around with DNA an organ capable of not only grasping its secrets but also will, in the distant future, control it [genetic engineering]. The brain then represents the evolutionary singularity

    The brain, in turn, seeks its own singularity, a technological one that is, and once achieved, evolution can be discarded like a pair of old "jeans."
  • Janus
    15.4k
    You have to understand the scientific method and process as, in some way, autonomous from the biology of the brain. We can understand when things satisfy scientific criteria for reasons other than adaptive fitness. But if you do that for the scientific method, there's also no reason, in principle, why it can't hold of other things we do.csalisbury

    Yes, truth and falsity cannot be properties of neural processes (the biology of the brain) or adaptive fitness; from which it certainly seems to follow that thoughts and beliefs cannot be reduced to neural processes or adaptive fitness; the attempted elimination of semantics is thus a performative contradiction.

    The brain, in turn, seeks its own singularity, a technological one that is, and once achieved, evolution can be discarded like a pair of old "jeans."TheMadFool

    To me it seems wrongheaded to speak of the brain seeking anything; it is people who seek things, not brains.
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