The Blank Slate is … a stylish piece of work. I won’t say it is better than The Language Instinct or How the Mind Works, but it is as good—which is very high praise indeed. What a superb thinker and writer he is: what a role model to young scientists. And how courageous to buck the liberal trend in science, while remaining in person the best sort of liberal. Pinker is a star, and the world of science is lucky to have him.
Yes, Dawkins doesn’t mention evolutionary psychology at all, but he praises three books by an author, only one of which is generally considered a work of evolutionary psychology. Of course H. Allen Orr’s review of The Blank Slate was quite critical, for all of the same reasons being discussed here. My challenge stands: cite a biologist praising (or even defending) evolutionary psychology as science.
Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist; it’s his métier. I don’t know on what grounds you say that “only one” of the three books mentioned is considered a work of evolutionary psychology (I don’t even know which one of the three you mean! -- I’m guessing How The Mind Works?); but in any case, given Pinker’s reputation for advocating evolutionary psychology, it is extraordinarily unlikely that Dawkins would have praised Pinker in those terms if he (Dawkins) shared your view that the subject is pseudoscience. The quote strongly implies that Dawkins holds a view of evolutionary psychology that is drastically different from yours, which I don’t think you anticipated. Update!
No, I meant Blank Slate as the one of three which is ev.psych. I haven’t read How the Mind Works but assumed from the title that it is into the mechanism of mind rather than its evolutionary origin. I read most of The Language Instinct and formed the impression that it too was mostly about mechanism rather than origins. But I will take your word for it (and Tim’s word) that I was wrong.
“In this extraordinary book, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 bestseller The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit, clarity, and verve that earned The Language Instinct, worldwide critical acclaim and awards from major scientific societies.”
Similar blurb from “The Language Instinct”:
“With wit, erudition, and deft use of everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling theory: that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.
The theory not only challenges convention wisdom about language itself (especially from the self-appointed “experts” who claim to be safeguarding the language but who understand it less well than a typical teenager). It is part of a whole new vision of the human mind: not a general-purpose computer, but a collection of instincts adapted to solving evolutionarily significant problems—the mind as a Swiss Army knife.”
I agree that evolutionary psychology is not well-regarded by biologists in general, but Dawkins is an exception to this trend. He’s even praised one of the most obviously sloppy practitioners (Satoshi Kanazawa.) Dennet, as a fellow adaptationist (though no biologist per se), is in a similar camp.
I don’t have a copy to check, but from what I can remember Dawkins was careful to say that what he was doing is not real science but merely a counter to a hypothetical theist argument along the lines of “If God doesn’t exist, then where do our ideas of God and morality come from?” That is, his claims were no stronger than “It is plausible that it might have happened this way.”
In any case, I have admitted I was wrong about Dawkins. He now seems to me to be a moderate supporter of the ev.psych enterprise, rather than, as I had believed, someone who cringed but kept his mouth shut rather than alienate fellow “Darwinists”.
I was pretty amazed at how Dawkins pussy-footed around his opponents in “The God Delusion”. His claims seemed pretty mild—along the lines of “it is OK to be an atheist”.
He discusses “the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology” directly—on page 208:
“The idea of psychological by-products grows naturally out of the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that, just as the eye is an evolved organ for seeing, and the wing an evolved organ for flying, so the brain is a collection of organs (or ‘modules’) for dealing with a set of specialist data-processing needs. There is a module for dealing with kinship, a module for dealing with reciprocal exchanges, a module for dealing with empathy, and so on. Religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules, for example the modules for forming theories of other minds, for forming coalitions, and for discriminating in favour of in-group members and against strangers. Any of these could serve as the human equivalent of the moths’ celestial navigation, vulnerable to misfiring in the same kind of way as I suggested for childhood gullibility.”
Dawkins on Pinker:
Yes, Dawkins doesn’t mention evolutionary psychology at all, but he praises three books by an author, only one of which is generally considered a work of evolutionary psychology. Of course H. Allen Orr’s review of The Blank Slate was quite critical, for all of the same reasons being discussed here. My challenge stands: cite a biologist praising (or even defending) evolutionary psychology as science.
Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist; it’s his métier. I don’t know on what grounds you say that “only one” of the three books mentioned is considered a work of evolutionary psychology (I don’t even know which one of the three you mean! -- I’m guessing How The Mind Works?); but in any case, given Pinker’s reputation for advocating evolutionary psychology, it is extraordinarily unlikely that Dawkins would have praised Pinker in those terms if he (Dawkins) shared your view that the subject is pseudoscience. The quote strongly implies that Dawkins holds a view of evolutionary psychology that is drastically different from yours, which I don’t think you anticipated. Update!
No, I meant Blank Slate as the one of three which is ev.psych. I haven’t read How the Mind Works but assumed from the title that it is into the mechanism of mind rather than its evolutionary origin. I read most of The Language Instinct and formed the impression that it too was mostly about mechanism rather than origins. But I will take your word for it (and Tim’s word) that I was wrong.
Updated.
Back cover blurb from “How the Mind Works”:
“In this extraordinary book, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 bestseller The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit, clarity, and verve that earned The Language Instinct, worldwide critical acclaim and awards from major scientific societies.”
Similar blurb from “The Language Instinct”:
“With wit, erudition, and deft use of everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling theory: that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.
The theory not only challenges convention wisdom about language itself (especially from the self-appointed “experts” who claim to be safeguarding the language but who understand it less well than a typical teenager). It is part of a whole new vision of the human mind: not a general-purpose computer, but a collection of instincts adapted to solving evolutionarily significant problems—the mind as a Swiss Army knife.”
I agree that evolutionary psychology is not well-regarded by biologists in general, but Dawkins is an exception to this trend. He’s even praised one of the most obviously sloppy practitioners (Satoshi Kanazawa.) Dennet, as a fellow adaptationist (though no biologist per se), is in a similar camp.
Chapter 5 (“The roots of religion”) of the God Delusion is largely a work of evolutionary psychology.
I don’t have a copy to check, but from what I can remember Dawkins was careful to say that what he was doing is not real science but merely a counter to a hypothetical theist argument along the lines of “If God doesn’t exist, then where do our ideas of God and morality come from?” That is, his claims were no stronger than “It is plausible that it might have happened this way.”
In any case, I have admitted I was wrong about Dawkins. He now seems to me to be a moderate supporter of the ev.psych enterprise, rather than, as I had believed, someone who cringed but kept his mouth shut rather than alienate fellow “Darwinists”.
I was pretty amazed at how Dawkins pussy-footed around his opponents in “The God Delusion”. His claims seemed pretty mild—along the lines of “it is OK to be an atheist”.
He discusses “the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology” directly—on page 208:
“The idea of psychological by-products grows naturally out of the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that, just as the eye is an evolved organ for seeing, and the wing an evolved organ for flying, so the brain is a collection of organs (or ‘modules’) for dealing with a set of specialist data-processing needs. There is a module for dealing with kinship, a module for dealing with reciprocal exchanges, a module for dealing with empathy, and so on. Religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules, for example the modules for forming theories of other minds, for forming coalitions, and for discriminating in favour of in-group members and against strangers. Any of these could serve as the human equivalent of the moths’ celestial navigation, vulnerable to misfiring in the same kind of way as I suggested for childhood gullibility.”
Surely all those works are heavily laced with evolutionary psychology.