If you've taken a psychology course, you probably learned about the blank-slate theory. It states that the human mind is like, you guessed it, a blank-slate. The way a person grows to behave, reason, react, is all based on what the brain picks up from external sources. In other words, our social and mental life is based completely on how we were raised. For example, I feel that it is wrong to steal because the society I was raised in conveyed that message to me growing up.
The blank-slate theory is just one part of the Standard Social Science Model, which is the traditional model for social and behavioral sciences. In their article, "Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology", John Tooby and Leda Cosmides say that evolutionary psychology is trying to do away with this model. A goal of EP is to disprove these "defective assumptions about the nature of human psychology," blank-slate included. So if this model is indeed flawed, what's taking so long? Why hasn't it been trashed yet? Well, that brings up the question of what is at stake.
If evolutionary psychology can disprove this old model, then a new one will need to be built in its place. If it is disproved, then "the social science project of the past century is not only wrong but radically misconceived." You can imagine that social and behavioral scientists who haven't jumped on the EP bandwagon, and instead have been following the Standard Social Science Model, aren't too pleased about the possibility of the foundation of all their work being trashed. Tooby and Cosmides claim that this is the reason for "reflexive opposition" against EP.
Makes sense. Imagine if some new radical physics movement emerges that says our theory of gravity is wrong, force does not equal mass multiplied by acceleration, and Einstein was a fraud. Do you think physicists are going to embrace it with open arms? Pffff, fat chance. They're going to deny it to their graves.
But if the main source of opposition against EP is because a bunch of scientists don't want to be proven wrong... well doesn't that seem... I don't know... invalid? Then again, is all opposition against EP fueled by this reason? Or is EP just using it to defend itself? To undermine the opposition? I'm sure EP has some skeletons in its closet.
I have a difficult time understanding why they wouldn't come to some sort of consensus, like "society/culture shapes the individual, but only within the specific parameters which are set by evolution".
ReplyDeleteI don't think EP is entirely to blame for the defensiveness of Blank-Slate theorists, as genetic disease and mental illness have already dealt them a pretty heave blow. I do find it interesting, the unwillingness of scientists to tweak and change and adapt their theories to incoming evidence, I agree that it seems a bit "invalid" =)