Comments on: I didn’t go to evil medical school for seven years to be called Mr Evil!

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:12:59 +0000

So why is it so often Mrs Thatcher, instead of any of her many other titles?

By: RS

RS — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 12:44:46 +0000

Been away but will make a few points: 1. Dsquared, your point about the human genome project ‘only’ finding 30k genes meaning that genes can’t be the unit of selection is a) wrong, b) mixing up levels/domains of explanation. Genes in the context of 30k is stretches of DNA that make proteins. Genes in the context of units of selection could be stretches of DNA, variation in which fitness is affected. These things are different. As some one else pointed out, and as we all know, regulatory regions of DNA aren’t necessarily ‘genes’ in the nice introns/exons making proteins sense, but can be in the affecting-the-action-of-other-genes-and-thus-the-phenotype sense. 2. You have conceded that rather than brain injuries disproving modularity (your original move you’ll recall) modularity is simply an unproven assumption about the brain. I think you’ll appreciate the loss of rhetorical force here. 3. ” stand by my view that the vast majority of the interesting things human beings do are things that can be relearned by people who have lost the ability to do them after a brain injury, and thus that the brain is not a swiss army knife.” While I agree that the brain is not just a swiss army knife, you are simply wrong about people being able to relearn most things after brain injury. In fact you are very very wrong, so wrong i don’t really know what to say. I suggest reading some introductory neuroscience and neuropsychology. 4. You may not have noticed, but i happen to regard EP as a pretty rubbish field of second-rate scholarship – however I think your dismissal of Dawkins’ concept of the selfish gene, and by extension, much of modern evolutionary biology, is over the top. I should point out again, just because you think he is (because he falls into you catch-all bag of ultra-darwinians like Pinker), dawkins does not do EP, nor does he talk that much about it, nor is his idea of the selfish gene in any way concepually dependent on a EP type view of social behaviour. 5. The reason I mentioned Midgley is that you seem to have made the same mistake she did – taking a metaphor literally when the author says it isn’t to be, then attacking said author. see: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/dawkins_genes.htm 6. You can have an idea of genes without necessarily making them identical with DNA. Mendelian genetics was way before anyone had discovered that DNA was the material of genetic inheritence.

By: nick

nick — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:02:08 +0000

This one’s all over the place, but anyway: If you check the faculty list there is still a moderate number of people on it referred to as Mr (or Mrs, or Ms) [and not all of them are graduate students who haven’t quite finished their D.Phil]. True, which is something I do like about Oxford faculty. Though one wonders how many non D.Phils get hired these days; the philosophy faculty is a bit unusual, given that the B.Phil , but the days when the ‘undoctored’ were commonly elected to fellowships are sadly quite distant.

By: skippy

skippy — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 20:33:18 +0000

Dsquared wrote: “However, seeing is not part of psychology. The kind of behaviours that psychologists (and evolutionary psychologists) are concerned with, however, are not (or to make the weaker claim, not provably) determined by specialised modules” What an odd thing to say. Visual perception is an utterly gigantic subject of study within psychology. And the degree to which low level visual processing interacts with higher level cognitive processing is one of the central battlegrounds in modularity/interactivity debates. I had the feeling you were loading the deck with what you were willing to accept as “interesting human behaviors”. Also, since this seems to have gotten lost in the mix, your earlier claims about bouncing back from brain damage are largely incorrect as well. As has been mentioned upstream, the older you get, the less able to compensate the brain is (though there’s some recent interesting data showing that old folks aren’t quite as doomed on this front as once believed). But for the most part, any stories you read about people regaining abilities after brain damage have to do with post-trauma swelling subsiding, allowing the surrounding areas to get going again. To be sure, therapy can help people regain some degree of lost functioning in some cases, but you don’t get back up to 100%, which is what one would expect if the brain was globally equipotential.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 03:59:28 +0000

And, wrapping up loose ends, eudoxis posted (once more, thanks for doing so clearly and politely) This sounds suspiciously like irreducible complexity. It does, and my apologies for that. All I wanted to express was the idea of “no possible simple one-to-one mapping of genes to traits”. In particular, the grudger-sucker models from Maynard Smith, popularised so well in “The Selfish (but really ‘selfish’) Gene (but not really ‘gene’), have a fairly obvious interpretation if there is a one-to-one mapping, but are very difficult to interpret in the world as it is; one would have to come up with some pretty fancy footwork in order to explain how the “sucker” or “grudger” traits managed to be inherited in the way the model needs them to be.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 03:45:41 +0000

Cac, I think is right; Joan Robinson would have been a dame if she’d won the honour herself, but as wife of Sir Austin, she’d be “Lady Robinson”, so “Lady Joan Robinson” is a mistake. I don’t know whether Vik was sincere in saying goodbye, but on the supposition that he wasn’t, I’ll make the following points: first, I have never been under any obligation to respond to him point by point. This was a discussion about ways of addressing female academics. As an example thereof, I linked to Dusek’s essay, in which he describes people being rude to a female academic. This point has been, I think, completely conceded. It appears that Vik, and peter, and RS, mistook the phrase “Val Dusek” for the phrase “yer mother’s a whore and evolutionary psychology is shit, every single word of it”. An easy mistake to make, I guess, but not a claim that I am committed to. However, I am interested in the EP debate, and thus volunteered a few opinions. To keep things clear, I provided a numbered list (sorry; I cocked up the numbering when I repeated it). In so far as the questions on this list were addressed, vik appeared to address number 3 (on the second list) by pointing to some examples of interesting work on animals, and then making large claims about how they supported conclusions about addiction in humans (and now, apparently, “workaholics” as well!). These objections just don’t meet the original contention, that psychology is not reducible to physiology. Nor could they, because that statement is a philosophical position, not one which is a statement of the physical sciences. I immediately accused Vik of conducting a “fishing expedition”, trying to trap me into saying something I couldn’t prove about the physical sciences, and it appears I was right. The rest of the questions went unanswered; 4, on Gould vs. Dawkins is a sociological question about what “most biologists” believe. I think I’m right on this one, but would be prepared to be proved wrong (I’ve given a list of specific falsifiable claims about what I think “most biologists” believe), and I doubt much turns on it, because either way, it’s just an appeal to majority voting. 2: on cultural versus genetic inheritance, is in principle an empirical claim, but one that the science is obviously not advanced enough to answer. I think a powerful argument in my favour is that Lamarckian inheritance (of acquired cultural traits) is a much faster mechanism than Darwinian selection. and 4, on Dusek, appears to be correct. Dusek made the following claims, endorsed by me: a) that evolutionary psychology is the intellectual heir of sociobiology b) that sociobiology made a number of extremely “politically incorrect” claims, including a number of claims about racial differences and gender roles which would be wholly unacceptable in polite society today. c) that many evolutionary psychologists appear to have found intellectual rationales for dumping the utterly unacceptable claims of sociobiology but keeping the merely un-PC ones d) that many evolutionary psychologists have used extremely dishonest rhetorical tactics. all of which are empirical claims about intellectual history, and all of which appear to be true. Dusek also makes the claim, endorsed by me, e) that c) above is much more likely to be explicable in terms of the sociology of the evolutionary psychology profession, rather than in terms of objective facts discovered by the current generation of evolutionary psychologists for which I take as evidence that the fit between the puportedly objective conclusions, and what it would be politically convenient for them to be is just a little bit too perfect (hahaha, an “argument from design”!). Dusek might also believe the following two claims: f) that evolutionary psychology is complete shit, every word of it and g) that particular CT commenters’ mothers are whores, but he doesn’t make them in his essay, and if he did I wouldn’t endorse them. I look forward to discussing the matter at future dates with anyone who is able to keep the argument straight. I may apply a somewhat more rigorous standard of politeness, however; I have learned from this experience that if someone’s first remark on the subject is to accuse me of endorsing the equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I shouldn’t be expecting miracles.

By: Bruce Bartlett

Bruce Bartlett — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 03:04:36 +0000

The female equivalent of being called “Sir” (i.e., a knighthood) is “Dame”, not “Lady.” The latter is the female equivalent of a Lord. However, I do not believe that the wives of knights were typically called dames. I think they only use that title if they have earned it themselves.

By: vik

vik — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 02:31:07 +0000

ok dsquared now that i have found out your identity and character from numerous ppl I too am taking myself out of this argument. Wish you well in the world….

By: vik

vik — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 02:26:53 +0000

This is for your second 1,2,3,4 list: Yes, further to your number 4 I am still defending the claim I made that Dawkins, Maynard Smith, et al. are much closer to the consensus than Gould, etc. Your number 3 has been challenged numerous times with examples from the literature and real life (the psychology of workaholics, the use of antidepressants, etc.). About your number 2, again no one has conceded that point at all. In fact it has not been argued to any extent by anyone (though I did offer you the chance to argue it later if you wished) Finally, your number 1 about Dusek…i think the posts speak for themselves… Also as for abuse, I dont think pointing out that you are being dishonest in your arguments and your rhetoric and have not offered a single piece of evidence (such as papers, citations, etc.) for anything you have said counts as personal abuse. Some of your examples of my language (“stale”, “outdated”, “simplistic” “pop science”) refer to comments I made about gould, etc. while others (accusing you of not reading information correctly, rephrasing things in your mind, etc.) are factually true. Maybe you need to change your standards of abuse…

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 02:18:04 +0000

Yes, Vik, “Dsquared” is “Dan” is “Daniel”. This is his stomping ground, and the adjective is well earned. That nasty Val Dusek paper was what lured me to comment. I’ll now return to my customary silence. Good luck in your work.

By: vik

vik — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 02:12:41 +0000

actually i address 1, 2 and 3 pretty well (read it again if you need to)…nice of you to be so concerned about politeness btw but its a pity you arent so concerned about actually addressing the numerous arguments posted by myself or Eudoxis…meaningless repetition of a catch phrase about how selection occurs at all levels does not actually constitute evidence of any kind or even a real argument. trust me, you can do better—there’s plenty out there if you only try… “It is indeed obvious ‘that the visual cortex of the brain has evolved as a visual cortex, for the purpose of seeing. However, seeing is not part of psychology. The kind of behaviours that psychologists (and evolutionary psychologists) are concerned with, however, are not ….determined by specialised modules.” again reread the more sophisticated arguments made by me and Eudoxis and then see if your reply makes any sense in this context (huh? seeing is not psychology? that is the best you have as a response to the papers and reviews cited?)…its clear that you also have no idea about what the word module conveys in a scientific sense or how it would be related to the concept of neural pathways… “There is nothing in evolution which commits me to believing that there are important psychological statements which aren’t reducible to statements about genetic history” of course you dont tell us what these important psychological statements are…as for evolution committing you to anything, if you reread my original post, maybe you will be able to understand what i actually said and not what you rephrased it in your mind as… Reading comprehension is an important skill which if I were you, i would focus on, and if one can’t handle sarcasm, irony, or having the flaws in one’s arguments pointed out, then perhaps whining about how everyone else is dishonest or rude isnt the most productive course.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 02:03:40 +0000

btw, further to my 4), vik, are you still defending the claim: almost all evolutionary biologists or indeed, biologists in general (at least those who kept up with the literature) have reached a default position that is much closer to the evolutionary psychology view of Dawkins, Maynard Smith, Wilson, et al. than to anything Gould or Lewontin have presented It’s just that you haven’t mentioned it since I suggested otherwise; this thread has got rather involved and I like to keep things tidy.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 02:00:08 +0000

Could I invite neutral observers to take a breath at this point and count the amount of personal abuse I have dished out, compared to the amount I have been asked to take? In the meanwhile, the only claims I am currently defending are: 1) Dusek was substantially right in claiming that evolutionary psychology has taken on the mantle of sociobiology; in particular it has taken on the habit of some very dishonest debating tricks. Status: seemingly still defensible. Peter and Vik seem to be very keen indeed on personal abuse and on stigmatising anyone disagreeing with them as “anti-science”. 2) Cultural inheritance is more important than genetic inheritance Status: basically conceded(?). Note that I have never said that sociobiology/EP is “full of crap” and a couple of times said the opposite. I have said that I regard the specific individuals Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins as wrong on a particular point of science (so-called “ultra-Darwinism”) and in the habit of using dishonest rhetoric. The same was true of early theorists of the smoking/cancer link, however; it is a logically separate point. 3) that psychology is not reducible to physiology (also; sociology is not reducible to individual psychology). Status: so far, not challenged. 4) That Dawkins’ view of genetic selection was wrong, and something much more like Niles Eldredge’s was right. Status: so far, not challenged. Thanks very much to eudoxis and Kevin D, who appear to be disagreeing with me in a civil manner. I hope to continue this debate tomorrow.

By: vik

vik — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 01:50:09 +0000

Eudoxis: that was a very good explanation of selection at the gene level and much much better than my own hurried effort—needless to say, your assessment of dusek is accurate in my opinion… Peter, are dan and dsquared the same person? i have never had an argument on the site with anyone and now regret having participated in this one if in fact, it really is going to descend into a flame war. in any case, i had a similar experience to yours several months ago…pretty unpleasant to say the least…

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 01:44:55 +0000

Narrowing the opposition to the “ultra darwinian” viewpoint, however, is something I won’t object to Good, since it’s my only intention. Selection takes place at all levels, including the gene level, and every level of selection has an associated level of explanation. Vik: reading between your abuse, I see that you have, admitted that Dusek was right on the specific claims that he made. Thank you. On brain modularity, I think that you have also, wisely, admitted that Chris Stephens is correct and that the hypothesis of massive modularity is completely unproven (by the way, it becomes extremely difficult to know exactly what you intend to claim, because you mix up your claims with so much personal abuse. Please stop.) It is indeed obvious that the visual cortex of the brain has evolved as a visual cortex, for the purpose of seeing. However, seeing is not part of psychology. The kind of behaviours that psychologists (and evolutionary psychologists) are concerned with, however, are not (or to make the weaker claim, not provably) determined by specialised modules. Your comments about neurochemicals are a clear red herring, btw. Finally, I’d point out that it’s simply not true that believing in evolution commits me to your whole bill of goods and saying it does, doesn’t make it so. There is nothing in evolution which commits me to believing that there are important psychological statements which aren’t reducible to statements about genetic history. Finally, after admitting that my 4) above was right, you appear to have ignored 1, 2 and 3 and instead settled for fishing and abuse. Please try to argue politely and honestly.