The Cultural Determinists and Their Lies
by tdaxp ~ August 27th, 2006
(This first reaction paper combines information from Alford and Hibbing [article. notes], Pinker, [amazon. notes], Ridley [amazon. notes], and Tooby and Cosmides [article. notes]. It also amounts to a renunciation of the ideas that drove my computer science thesis.)
The criticisms thrown against biological factors in human behavior from the outside are rational — from the perspective of ideology, prestige, and power. Substantive criticisms of biological factors have come from the researchers themselves, who criticizer earlier work in the field and make better explanatory models than what previously existed.
The Standard Social Science Model is based on a “utopian vision” (Pinker 27), and this ideology led researchers to greet genetically-related findings “with fear and loathing because they were thought to threaten progressive ideals” (103) or to support racism, sexism and… “biological determinism” (Tooby and Cosmides 35). Such findings were considered closer to fascism (Ridley 3,186) instead of the more fashionable Marxism (Pinker 127, 410, Ridley 243-244). “Immoral” thoughts (269) that threaten the utopia are attacked as such, even though it is the job of researchers to think about even disquieting things (279). This bias in favor of the world as they want it has lead to embarrassing hoaxes (Ridley 204, Tooby and Cosmides 44), blinded them to short (Pinker 311) and long (307) term declines in violence, and other incorrect assessments of the field (Alford and Hibbing 718).
Prestige is an important element as well. The existence of the social sciences as they exist now is traceable to an ancient division of labor between the social and natural worlds (Tooby and Cosmides 20) and the subsequent belief that cultural effects have cultural, not physical, causes (Ridley 205, Tooby and Cosmides 22). A unification, whether of practical questions like homicide and war (Pinker 323) or entire fields such as psychology and anthropology (Tooby and Cosmides 121) leads to questions of why psychologists as we know them and their methods should even exist (21). Likewise, for the same reason that much of art criticism is merely “the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes” (Pinker 277), intellectuals have denounced those who focus on genetic factors to keep their own place secure. A realization that one’s political theories or methods of research may be genetically influenced (Alford and Hibbing 716-717) places a social scientist’s behavior into a world of limitations and frailties (Pinker 239).
The most disturbing line of attack against new knowledge is the desire for power. Pinker beings his book by writing “The belief that human tastes are reversible cultural preferences has led social planners to write off people’s enjoyment…” (Pinker x), which is perhaps why Leftism is not only a mover against genetic factors (133) but also in favor of earlier disasters like eugenics (153). More recently, social scientists have pushed an authoritarian agenda centered on “renewing” once vibrant neighborhoods (170) or making families eat in large dining halls (246). It is perhaps not surprising that totalitarianism requires the super-plasticity of environmental determinism (Ridley 185). The possibility that the scientific enterprise to understand society is under malevolent attack from certain political forces should not be doubted – especially when attack from other political elements is widely recognized (Pinker 129).
Regardless of the motive, the substance of criticism matters, and for the most part the criticism has been absurd. Life-long liberals such as E.O. Wilson (110) and entire research programs (105-106) were accused of being tools of oppression, racism, and other ills. Critics often ignored basic rules of logic, focusing on irrelevancies such as the sex-life of researchers (114). Of course, this was when criticisms were at least made in the medium of writing: death-threats (Pinker 114) and attempted (115) and successful (314) censorship have also been used. Robert Kurzban, whose work was featured in Pinker (257), mentioned last year in a lecture at UNL that movements have been made to censor his work because they “challenged” a student’s “identity.”
These attacks are doubly unfortunate because many claims are debatable. Tooby and Cosmides say that children are born with the same potential (25,33), but if traits associated with violence (Pinker 315), intelligence (Ridley 25), and even political beliefs (Alford and Hibbing 714-715) are largely heritable then some infants come equipped with more potential in a given society than others. Likewise, the seminal claim that humans have an enforced uniformity (Tooby and Cosmides 38) is questioned by computer models showing stable dimorphism (Alford and Hibbing 718). Even more so, the utility of a theory built around a universally-designed (Tooby and Cosmides 35) “incredibly intricate, contingent set of functional programs” (24) may decline to zero if the majority of the program is regulatory and not structural (Alford and Hibbing 717). Such a finding would call into question the factual validity of the mind as an information-processing machine with “invariant relationships between informational inputs and “behavioral” outputs” (Tooby and Cosmides 66). Even central questions of whether investigation into selection’s pressures should focus on genes (67) or not (Alford and Hibbing 708,712) has been left to biological researches themselves (also Tooby and Cosmides 36), and rarely their so-called critics.
I think this is your...
August 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
“It also amounts to a renunciation of the ideas that drove my computer science thesis.)”
In what sense?
August 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Phil,
I've been waiting for you to ask that
My thesis was based on the realization, and frustration, that there had never been a serious modeling of nations as the primary actors in the world. Individuals, States, and Systems had all been looked at, but not the nations that seem to me to be the center of history (the French, the Germans, etc.) The thesis was based on the idea that Nations could be shown to be the primary movers on the world stage — that all of this grand competition was really cultural competition – and that be evolving cultures one could accurately simulate a slice of history.
Some of the results were surprisingly accurate, such as a predicted European hostility to Jews, but the brute work involved in building a model burned me out of that approach.
More and more, though, I'm skeptical not for practical reasons but from foundations. My work, A Computer Model of National Behavior, was channeling Emile Durkheim when he said “omnis cultura ex cultura.” The more I think of it, the less likely that seems. My model excludes systematic competition, but surely that's important. My model excludes genetic and psychological factors, but surely those are important. (To use a funny example, is it just a coincidence that America may be a state composed of hyperactive neanderthals? [1] )
So in short, I don't believe that a culture-based model of the world can show what's really going on. Systems which effect how individuals deal with each other, sure, but not Cultures as these superorganisms that are separate from the individuals comprising them.
There is a romance in imagining Nations as first-class entities, but I do not believe it is a love justified by facts.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/08/20/are-americans-hyperactive-neanderthals.html