I do appreciate your post; see Yvain’s comment below for my response. It prompted me to re-read the famous letter Against Sociobiology from 1975. Points to note:
Several of the lynchpins of this letter are based on dogmas that we now look back on as having been upheld for purely ideological reasons. The opening paragraphs criticizing ideas that behaviors could be genetically-biased as “absurd” are one example. The claim that animal behavior can’t teach us about human behavior is another. The revisionist pre-history story they allude to which rejects the idea that hunter-gatherers had sexually-defined roles is another.
The motivation for the letter, and its main arguing point, is not about truth, but about EO Wilson’s alleged reactionary motives.
They associated Wilson with the Nazis in the second paragraph.
Recall that this letter is the very best argument ever made against sociobiology, by the most prestigious biologists (including Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin), which most later arguments cite as authoritative.
This letter was written by a group that met regularly for over a month to compose it, in a room very near E.O. Wilson’s office. No one ever told him about it until after it was published. If the authors of the letter had any interest in truth, they would have walked down the hall, shown him the letter, and said, “What do you say to this?”
I have the impression that 1970 marked the onset of a new dark age in science, after which ideology played a much larger role in the selection of ideas.
Recall that this letter is the very best argument ever made against sociobiology, by the most prestigious biologists (including Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin), which most later arguments cite as authoritative.
Are you endorsing it as the best argument made against (brand-name?) sociobiology? I imagine that it’s better than most of the later arguments that endorse it, but that’s a much weaker claim than denying the existence of better arguments. You can’t rely on opponents of an idea to filter for the good arguments against it. In particular, if the best arguments against it are less sweeping, they may be ignored.
I interpreted your comment as meaning that ad hominem (etc) arguments should be seen as in contrast to good arguments. I see it as the opposite. We should expect the use of effective rhetorical techniques and prestigious authors to lead to fame. These are good reasons to expect not to hear of better critiques. [ETA: this is what I was groping towards in my earlier comment]
I read the letter after writing my comment and it is not sweeping, contrary to my claim. Its arguments are pretty reasonable and it doesn’t explicitly misrepresent Wilson much. But it is very effective at producing false beliefs, such as my belief that it was sweeping, and TAW’s beliefs elsewhere on this thread.
The letter is a pretty good example of problems of communicating over a paradigm difference, how convincing you find it seems highly based on which paradigm you accept.
And it seems to be mostly criticizing a version of sociobiology that attaches changes in post-Paleolithic to changes in genetic basis of humanity, and existing variety of behaviour to existing variety of genes in modern individuals.
As far as I can tell, they’re perfectly right about this, they won, and nobody holds such beliefs any more. What’s left today is far milder claim that all humans share pretty much the same range of highly flexible behaviors that was well adapted to ancestral environment, and cultural evolution is based on memes not genes. (and this mild version is what I was looking for counter-evidence for in my post)
The point that evidence for what Wilson was talking about was pretty much non-existent is as valid today as it was then. There are very few genes known to be linked with anything behavioral, and now that we know how few genes there are, it severely limits possibility of their existence. As they point out, there is also very little evidence that our ancestral environment was anything like what sociobiology tends to so happily assume, and variety and rapidness of change of human cultures is huge.
The point that scientific theories are often given much more credit than they’re due when they’re convenient for those benefiting from status quo, is a valid argument. This doesn’t apply as much to mild sociobiology of today as to radical sociobiology they are criticizing, which basically says poor people have bad genes etc., you can easily imagine people in power happily accepting it even without proper scientific evidence. If there was overwhelming evidence for it, then well, tough luck, but as they point out, such theories were often proposed and widely accepted against the bulk of scientific evidence. As far as I can tell, this seems historically correct.
Was Wilson claiming that genetic variation within modern humans accounted for behavior variation within modern humans, other than in the case of male-female differences? I haven’t read Sociobiology, but I don’t remember hearing that claim attributed to him.
Perhaps the Against Sociobiology letter made valid arguments against the version of Sociobiology that it described. But was that the version put forth by Wilson, as the letter claimed?
And it seems to be mostly criticizing a version of sociobiology that attaches changes in post-Paleolithic to changes in genetic basis of humanity, and existing variety of behaviour to existing variety of genes in modern individuals.
Where are you getting this? You go on to mention their complaint #5 that they don’t like Wilson’s reconstruction of the ancestral environment, which makes it sound like they’re saying that he believes in uniformity.
They do say that some people say “poor people have bad genes” and they fear that those people will turn to Wilson, but they do not say that Wilson claims that. They talk about two forms of “biological determinism,” contrasting Davenport, Jenkins, and Shockley as eugenicists / people who believe in diversity against people who make uniform claims about humanity, based on evolution namely Wilson, Lorenz, Ardley, and … Spencer. OK, where they chose to put Spencer (who subscribes to both) speaks volumes, but there’s a reason they don’t come out and say it.
There are some places that could be read as saying that Wilson believes in diversity, but none of those places are very clear. The clearest is the part about homosexuality: surely, no gene for homosexuality is fixed, at least not fixed on! But they follow that with “for Wilson, what exists is adaptive, what is adaptive is good, therefore what exists is good” which makes it sound like he’s talking about uniformity, as with “conformer genes” at the beginning of the paragraph. Anyhow, Wilson responds that he explicitly warns against the naturalistic fallacy and that the whole thing is a gross misrepresentation.
Nor does the letter seem to portray Wilson like Spencer, a believer in rapidly changing uniformity.
I do appreciate your post; see Yvain’s comment below for my response. It prompted me to re-read the famous letter Against Sociobiology from 1975. Points to note:
Several of the lynchpins of this letter are based on dogmas that we now look back on as having been upheld for purely ideological reasons. The opening paragraphs criticizing ideas that behaviors could be genetically-biased as “absurd” are one example. The claim that animal behavior can’t teach us about human behavior is another. The revisionist pre-history story they allude to which rejects the idea that hunter-gatherers had sexually-defined roles is another.
The motivation for the letter, and its main arguing point, is not about truth, but about EO Wilson’s alleged reactionary motives.
They associated Wilson with the Nazis in the second paragraph.
Recall that this letter is the very best argument ever made against sociobiology, by the most prestigious biologists (including Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin), which most later arguments cite as authoritative.
This letter was written by a group that met regularly for over a month to compose it, in a room very near E.O. Wilson’s office. No one ever told him about it until after it was published. If the authors of the letter had any interest in truth, they would have walked down the hall, shown him the letter, and said, “What do you say to this?”
I have the impression that 1970 marked the onset of a new dark age in science, after which ideology played a much larger role in the selection of ideas.
Are you endorsing it as the best argument made against (brand-name?) sociobiology? I imagine that it’s better than most of the later arguments that endorse it, but that’s a much weaker claim than denying the existence of better arguments. You can’t rely on opponents of an idea to filter for the good arguments against it. In particular, if the best arguments against it are less sweeping, they may be ignored.
Perhaps I should have said “most famous” or “most influential”. I’m not qualified to judge whether it’s the best.
I interpreted your comment as meaning that ad hominem (etc) arguments should be seen as in contrast to good arguments. I see it as the opposite. We should expect the use of effective rhetorical techniques and prestigious authors to lead to fame. These are good reasons to expect not to hear of better critiques. [ETA: this is what I was groping towards in my earlier comment]
I read the letter after writing my comment and it is not sweeping, contrary to my claim. Its arguments are pretty reasonable and it doesn’t explicitly misrepresent Wilson much. But it is very effective at producing false beliefs, such as my belief that it was sweeping, and TAW’s beliefs elsewhere on this thread.
The letter is a pretty good example of problems of communicating over a paradigm difference, how convincing you find it seems highly based on which paradigm you accept.
And it seems to be mostly criticizing a version of sociobiology that attaches changes in post-Paleolithic to changes in genetic basis of humanity, and existing variety of behaviour to existing variety of genes in modern individuals.
As far as I can tell, they’re perfectly right about this, they won, and nobody holds such beliefs any more. What’s left today is far milder claim that all humans share pretty much the same range of highly flexible behaviors that was well adapted to ancestral environment, and cultural evolution is based on memes not genes. (and this mild version is what I was looking for counter-evidence for in my post)
The point that evidence for what Wilson was talking about was pretty much non-existent is as valid today as it was then. There are very few genes known to be linked with anything behavioral, and now that we know how few genes there are, it severely limits possibility of their existence. As they point out, there is also very little evidence that our ancestral environment was anything like what sociobiology tends to so happily assume, and variety and rapidness of change of human cultures is huge.
The point that scientific theories are often given much more credit than they’re due when they’re convenient for those benefiting from status quo, is a valid argument. This doesn’t apply as much to mild sociobiology of today as to radical sociobiology they are criticizing, which basically says poor people have bad genes etc., you can easily imagine people in power happily accepting it even without proper scientific evidence. If there was overwhelming evidence for it, then well, tough luck, but as they point out, such theories were often proposed and widely accepted against the bulk of scientific evidence. As far as I can tell, this seems historically correct.
Was Wilson claiming that genetic variation within modern humans accounted for behavior variation within modern humans, other than in the case of male-female differences? I haven’t read Sociobiology, but I don’t remember hearing that claim attributed to him.
Perhaps the Against Sociobiology letter made valid arguments against the version of Sociobiology that it described. But was that the version put forth by Wilson, as the letter claimed?
Where are you getting this? You go on to mention their complaint #5 that they don’t like Wilson’s reconstruction of the ancestral environment, which makes it sound like they’re saying that he believes in uniformity.
They do say that some people say “poor people have bad genes” and they fear that those people will turn to Wilson, but they do not say that Wilson claims that. They talk about two forms of “biological determinism,” contrasting Davenport, Jenkins, and Shockley as eugenicists / people who believe in diversity against people who make uniform claims about humanity, based on evolution namely Wilson, Lorenz, Ardley, and … Spencer. OK, where they chose to put Spencer (who subscribes to both) speaks volumes, but there’s a reason they don’t come out and say it.
There are some places that could be read as saying that Wilson believes in diversity, but none of those places are very clear. The clearest is the part about homosexuality: surely, no gene for homosexuality is fixed, at least not fixed on! But they follow that with “for Wilson, what exists is adaptive, what is adaptive is good, therefore what exists is good” which makes it sound like he’s talking about uniformity, as with “conformer genes” at the beginning of the paragraph. Anyhow, Wilson responds that he explicitly warns against the naturalistic fallacy and that the whole thing is a gross misrepresentation.
Nor does the letter seem to portray Wilson like Spencer, a believer in rapidly changing uniformity.