As I understand it, sociobiology was a field

a) pioneered by Edward O Wilson which
b) assumed a co-evolution of biology and culture that caused
c) behaviors to be expressed in an “extended phenotype”
d) which were adapted for gene-level evolution
e) which expresses itself in humans as either selfishness, recirprocal altruism, or kin selection

Evolutionary Psychology, which started with John Tooby and Leda Cosmides' “On the Psychological Foundations of Culture” [1,2] can be seen as an revision of the early sociobiology work.

Among other differences

I) adherents of Evolutionary Psychology, including E.O. Wilson (who has convereted) put less emphasis on kin selection than before. Wilson in particular has developed a theory of “eusociality” [3,4] which outlines how groupish behavior can evolve with kin selection playing a neutral, positive, or negative role. If you have different colonies which engage in genocide upon victory, then even colonies of non-related members will evolve very groupish and altruistic behaviors (because the colonies which haven't are dead).

II) Instead of our behaviors being adapted, EP focuses on adapted “modules” in the brain. In a trivial way, this explains the practice of birth control (which is not an adapted behavior, but compress from adapted modules for lust and loss-avoidance). Chomsky's language acquisition device, and the “cheater detection module” [5], are often cited as examples of mental modules

Another discipline is Behavioral Genetics. Both Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology believe in the “Psychic Unity of Mankind” — the idea that we all have equivalent genetic programs running in us, and that there is very little if any genetic difference between humans. Thus, while the Sociobiologists and Evolutionary Psychologists would disagree with Gopnick, Meltzoff, & Kuhl (because unlike GM&P, the sociobioloists believe there are genetically-guided behaviors and the Evolutionary Psychologists believe there are genetically-guided modules), both the sociobiologists & evolutionary psychologists would agree with graves (that there are no races, or that race is only trivially important).

Behavioral Genetics is much weaker on theory (they often don't even guess why differences exist) but much stronger on evidence than either Evolutionary Psychology of Sociobiology. The finding that a gene that leads to high-functional ADD is very low among East Asians, middling among Europeans and Africans, and very high among South American Indians would be an example of this field. [6] Why is this the case? Who knows. But it is, and is easily verified.

Both the Evolutionary Psychologists and the Behavioral Geneticists, it seems, are blessed by stupid enemies. Inspite of different assumptions and predictions, both get lumped into the “determinist” (and hence the “fascist, “racist,” blah blah blah) part of the spectrum. Perhaps because of this the big names EP and BG are quite cordial to each other and cite each other's work. Nerbaska's recent forum on the subject [4] included contributions from big-shots in both.

Wilson's “Sociobiology,” like Darwin's “Descent with Modification,” is no longer a leading idea. But just as Mendel's genetics (and not just “germplasm”) gave Darwinisn the power needed to explain variation in the biological sciences, so multilevel selection (and not just “selfish genes”) hopefully will give us the tools to explain variation in the social sciences.

[1] http://207.210.67.162/~striz/docs/tooby-1992-pfc.pdf
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/08/25/notes-on-the-psychological-foundations-of-culture-by-john-to.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
[4] http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/102/38/13367
[5] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/10/04/logical-thinking-v-cheater-detection.html
[6] http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/1/309
[7] http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/politicalsciencehendricks/

And yes, the opposition was nasty. Possibly the nastiest moment was the attempt to ruin Chagnon.

Could you explain “mentalism”… We may be talking past each other. The Massive Modularity Thesis is pretty compatible with cognitivist, Information-Processing psychology, with the difference that Massive Modularity presupposes a blueprint for creating neural faculties, while cognitivism is neutral on whether or not these are “learned.”

Mark and I have talked about the Massive Modularity Thesis before [1,2].. is this what you mean by mentalism?

Alopezn,

Thanks!

You're right that all of these approaches are part of ethology… Ethology and the materialism (no blank slate, no ghost in the machine, etc) behind it are much closer to the hard sciences than the Marx-infused social sciences. So perhaps it is natural that ethology is vilified in much of the social world but recognized in the hard realm.

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/06/16/the-evolution-away-from-modularity.html
[2] http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2006/06/modularity-movement-revisted-dan-of.html

Mentalism is pure bunk — much like String Theory in physics. It's junk science. Mentalism is an academic fraud, only a couple of steps above postmodernism.

Tooby & Cosmides describe Evolutionary Functional Analysis on pages 37-40 of “The Psychological Foundations of Culture” [1]

Massive modularity is a way of generating testable hypotheses about behavior. It's part of a research program. Once a module is proposed and described, it can be used to predict how humans behave under some circumstance. For instance, I had the pleasure of watching John Tooby give a lecture on “outrage” and its evolutionary origins. He described well-known “outrages,” and from these derived general conditions that should generate outrage. The next step is to operationalize outrage and operationalize the conditions, and see the conditions do indeed provoke the outrage. If yes, congrats, the module is useful for understanding behavior. If not, then back to the drawing board.

Evolution, in the historical sense, is similar. What historically happened is unfalsifiable, but certain interpretations are more useful (generate better hypotheses) than others.

Chomsky's language aqusition device makes similar predictions. It argues, among other things, that there is a critical period in learning languages and some grammer-forms should be easier to learn than others. Using the standard tools of social science, correlation and regression, we can see if the appropriate null hypotheses can be rejected.

Would it be easier or better if, instead of mental modules, they were called “mental instincts”?

Interestingly, the neurlogical complements to mental modules are readily identifiable. Fear, lust, anger, anxiety, disgust — a plethora of personal and social states — are objectively linked to certain parts of the brain. I would expect as functional MRI technologies becomes more available testing whether or not a proposed mental module corresponds to particular regions of the brain will become more common, as well.

PS: From what I understand of it, I agree with your view of string theory.

[1] http://207.210.67.162/~striz/docs/tooby-1992-pfc.pdf

Do you mean this question:

“I was just reading the wary guerrilla , but it is possible to read only until chapter IV, will you continue publishing the other chapters?”

If so, I replied

“The Wary Guerrilla is being published one section per day, every day (except Christmas) until December 29th. If you wish I can email you the whole thing… but what's the fun in that? :-p

Please keep commenting — feedback is the best part of blogging!”

That question was asked at anohter page:

http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/12/22/the-wary-guerrillla-part-iv-an-experiment.html#c1355957

Evolution is falsifiable. UG is not — neither Chomsky nor any of his cheelas has ever even proposed what UG might be. UG is purely an ad hoc creation. That isn't science. That's mythology. Superstition. It makes no difference how useful it may be in explaining phenomena. If it is neither testable nor falsifiable, it is mythology.