The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology - Konrad Lorenz Institute

Minding the Brainon the basis of real, physical knowledge rather thanthrough modeling. In the sociobiology controversy,experimentally oriented scientists voiced a similarcriticism of the efforts of sociobiologists, who wereperceived as constructing models which had little todo with reality. Sometimes the accusation went sofar as to allege that sociobiologists actually believedin the reality of such things as average gene frequencies,rather than considering these to be mere calculations.And just in the same way in the earlier (andoverlapping) IQ controversy, psychometricians hadbeen accused by largely the same critics of ‘reifying’a mere computation of test scores into a mysteriousentity, general intelligence, g. According to the critics,since this was a mere statistical construct, it‘could not’ exist in anyone’s head. 1 For the critics,real science had to do with research at the molecularlevel (cf. SEGERSTRÅLE 2000, especially chapters 13and 14).The sociobiologists, for their part, felt perfectlyjustified in constructing models, as did the psychometriciansin making their correlations and calculations.For them, these were quite legitimate approachesin their respective fields. They had nodoubts, meanwhile, that their results, obtained by adifferent scientific route, would be compatible withfuture molecular level research.Nowhere is the conflict clearer between a modelingand a ‘realist’ approach than in the case of themeaning of the ‘gene’. For instance, molecular biologistGunther STENT (1977) called DAWKINS’ notionof the selfish gene ‘a heinous terminological sin’,pointing out that the ‘true’ gene was ‘unambiguously’that unit of genetic material which encodedthe amino acid sequence of a particular protein (acistron)—and, in addition, that it was not selfish!Indeed, laboratory geneticists sometimes seemed especiallydispleased with sociobiological models—sometimes one got the feeling that they wanted sociobiologiststo go into the lab and do ‘real’ scientificresearch on genes (e.g., HOWE/LYNE 1992; SEG-ERSTRÅLE 2000, pp386–387).In other words, in these controversies there was aclear dividing line in regard to what was ‘good science’.The critics felt remarkably free to accuse sociobiologistsof scientific ‘error’ for holding viewsand using methods that these scientists themselvesconsidered standard in their own field! Some criticswent as far as using the ‘errors’ of sociobiologists asevidence that the sociobiological agenda ‘must’ bepolitically motivated. According to them, the sociobiologists’scientific quest ‘could not’ be driven byscientific interest, because the only interesting sciencewas done at the molecular level (e.g., LEWONTIN1975; CHOROVER 1979).Now in the case of the PANKSEPPs vs. evolutionarypsychology we seem to have a similar oppositionbetween two views of ‘good science’: a ‘hard data’approach conflicting with a model-happy one. Takethe PANKSEPPs’ criticism of the computational cognitivescience models used by evolutionary psychologists.According to them, real science is done at theanatomical, physical level. PET scans and otherfancy new methods for showing brain activity are atbest correlational, and can easily be misleadingabout the true neural processes. They also point outthat evolutionary psychologists, following the leadof cognitive scientists, use a digital model of mind.But the mind is analog, they protest.In other words, the battle for good science, so evidentin the sociobiology controversy, now continuesin the realm of neuroscience. Modelers again clashwith hardnosed scientific ‘realists’. But if the sociobiologistswere criticized for telling adaptive ‘just-so’stories about hypothetical genes ‘for’ behaviors andspeculating on the basis of very little evidence, thepresent authors go one step further. They accuse theevolutionary psychologists of ignoring a whole bodyof evidence that actually exists: the findings fromcomparative neuroscience! And the consequencesare grave, the PANKSEPPs maintain. Evolutionary psychologistsfeel free to postulate a system of massivemodularity in the neocortex. But from the point ofview of comparative neuroanatomy, such modulescould not have evolved.To rub this in, they cite TOOBY and COSMIDES’(1992) own call for consistency across scientificfields. TOOBY and COSMIDES criticize social scientistsfor what they call the Standard Social ScienceModel, which regards the human mind as a generalpurposemachine for learning. Such a model is anevolutionary impossibility, according to them. ThePANKSEPPs have no direct argument with this.Rather, they point out that when it comes to theirown research, TOOBY and COSMIDES are not applyingtheir own principle: they do not ground themselveson already existing knowledge about the brain.The whole premise of evolutionary psychology iswrong, say the PANKSEPPs. The problem is not theassumption of modularity per se, but evolutionarypsychologists are looking for modules in the wrongplace. Any claim about the structure of the humanmind/brain would have to take into account its evolutionaryhistory. If routinized behaviors of the‘module’ kind exist and confer survival value on humans,these are bound to be of a kind we share withEvolution and Cognition ❘ 7 ❘ 2001, Vol. 7, No. 1