A summary of Fodor, Jerry. “The Selfish Gene Pool,” The Times Literary Supplement (July 27, 2005), reviews Buller, David. Adapting Minds. MIT Press.
Evolutionary psychology is the set of theses committed to that (i) our minds are massively modular (ii) a lot of psychological structure is innate and (iii) much of that organization are adaptations due to selection pressures in our past. However, Buller is largely an anti-nativist in which experiential knowledge is accrued via a general purpose topic-neutral cognitive mechanism, but the challenge is to accommodate that with the fact that we know more than what our environment instructs us. Buller doesn’t contest that a lot of mental organization are evolutionary adaptations, but largely contests which are the adaptations. However, Fodor contests this commitment to adaptationism later on. However, Fodor agrees with Buller that a lot of EP is overhyped and inconclusive.
Consider standard adaptationism: some heritable phenotype F is explained by a scientific account in which F would have conferred increased fitness (the probability of a given organism contributing to the gene pool of his breeding group). EP extends this to behaviors which are explained by a psychology, that in turn acted upon adaptational forces. However, the introduction of motives complicates the issues as a variety of motives are compatible with a single type of behavior. For instance, Jones is seen carrying an umbrella. One motive might be that he thinks it will rain and desires to avoid getting wet. Another motive might be that he is returning the umbrella to another person. Insofar as behavior is a manifestation of adaptation, EP needs to get motives right and such that the motives conduce to fitness.
However, EP may have to appeal to “unattached motives.” For Jones the proximal cause of his carrying an umbrella may to avoid getting wet to avoid dying to cold. But the ultimate cause is maximize his contribution to the gene pool. But this is a motive that Jones neither consciously or unconsciously has, let alone his ancestors. Who has these floating motives? Some say Mother Nature – but there is no such thing. Buller talks of our motivational systems being designed to cause us to act in certain ways – but nothing designed our motivational systems. Clearly our motivational systems are involved with reproductive success – but what it causes is one thing, what it is designed to cause is another. We can invoke neurological structure in a story about migraines, but that doesn’t mean the former was designed to give us migraines.
Buller says that hypotheses about the evolution of marriage are hypotheses about the beneficial effects of marriage, not hypotheses about motives. But he also says EP seeks the ultimate cause of those motives. But that doesn’t work – a beneficial aspect of my nose is to support glasses, but that doesn’t mean that my nose was designed to support glasses. (Much the other way around) Note that glasses are designed to be supported by noses whether or not our noses do so succeed. For intentionality, you can’t infer effects desired from the effects produced.
There is a problem in distinguishing what is selected from what is selected-for. This is an issue for evolution in general, but particular problematic for EP. For instance: why do we have a lot of sex? Here are two potential answers. (i) Because we like it and it’s fun (ii) because it furthers our genotype (whose mind are these motives in? our genes? Mother nature?) Notice first, unlike the Jones case, that whether one has sex for fun or one has sex to try to make heirs doesn’t make a difference in the number of children had (there’s a tie in terms of reproductive success). So, is interest in sex a by-product of interest in reproduction or vice versa? This can’t be in principle be answered for unanchored motives – we can’t stipulate that the unanchored motive selected-for was the one that increased reproductive success since here there is no difference. Here (i) looks better.
This is an instance of a more general puzzle about intentionality. Behaviors can often have unintended effects. Jack climbed a hill and tripped and fell down – but his intention was to get a pail of water. Then does it follow that a desire to climb hills is an adaptation? That depends on the extent to which it promotes reproductive success but as we saw the effects are not sufficient that decides whether a given mental disposition is an adaptation. Once again, one can’t reconstruct the mental dispositions from the given effects of behavior – does one want to marry because it’s nice or because it promotes breeding? We can’t simply settle that by determining which would have lead to reproductive success in the ancestral environment.
Here’s a potential EP response: “Motives don’t make a difference insofar as sex and reproduction remain linked. But what if the connection had been broken? Would we still have sex nonetheless?” Fodor says yes (consider our enthusiasm for birth control) but the EP supporter might retort that “If the connection had been broken, evolution would have selected the ones that favored reproduction over sex.” However, there were no such competitors and evolution doesn’t act on counterfactual competition. Also, evolution acts on whole organisms, not individual traits – indulgence is possible as long as viability is maintained on balance. As Fodor urges, the idea that there is only ever one goal we pursue is erroneous ; perhaps selection forces could have been such that no trait survives unless it conduces to fitness, but there is no indication of us evolving in such conditions. It seems that we have been having sex, singing, dancing, etc for fun from the start – things we do for no reason in particular and not because of unattached motives to our genes or “Mother Nature.” The idea that everyone really wants to maximize their contribution to the gene pool is no more credible than other “theories” of what people “really” want.
rayndeon 