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Another Pleasant EvPsycher with a Shoddy Argument, February 16, 2011
This review is from: Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (Hardcover)
Kurzban opens this little volume by recounting his attendance at a workshop on "self-deception" that included such luminaries as Thomas Schelling and Robert Trivers. He found that the august group failed to get a handle on the phenomenon. Kurzban relates that after the meeting he concluded that "the concept of modularity...easily unraveled the Gordian knot of self-deception." (ix) Of course! The whole world believes the human mind is a unified entity with a single center of consciousness dictating consistency from its various parts (the unitary mind model), whereas Evolutionary Psychology has definitively shown that the human mind is actually a beanbag collection of information processing modules, each adapted for a particular fitness-enhancing purpose at some point in our emergence as a species. Self-deception is no problem because there simply is no "self." There are just lots of little interconnected and jostling modules. "The very notion of the `self'", says Kurzban, is "something of a problem, and perhaps quite a bit less useful that one might think... "you"---the part of your brain that experiences the world and feels like you're in "control"---is better thought of as a press secretary than as the president." (22) In other words, there is no one giving orders in the brain, and our conscious selves merely report on and try to justify behavior that is inherently without reason.
Kurzban presents a long list of well-documented psychological phenomena, from optical illusions to preference reversal, showing in each case that the concept of modularity makes sense of the seeming nonsensical. The problem with his argument is that there is more structure to the brain than is suggested by the concept of modularity. In addition the brain exhibits a hierarchical arrangement of modules, with higher-level units controling, coordinating, and synthesizing the lower-level modules in the hierarchy. In particular, there are domain-general brain functions that account for the unitary nature of the brain.
Kurzban is a bright and engaging young researcher who is tragically shooting himself in the foot by his faith in a psychological theory that has no future, and probably never did. When Noam Chomsky proposed his theory of innate predisposition for human language in the 1960's, modularity of mind seemed plausible. But no other autonomous and independent modular structure has been isolated, and Chomsky's theory is now widely rejected by linguists in favor of more general Bayesian developmental models of language acquisition.
I am sure the skeptical reader is asking, what about the fact that accident and stroke can lead an individual to lose incredibly specific mental capacities, such as recognizing faces or forming plurals. These and related phenomena show that the brain has localized information processing structures, but they do not show the absence of overarching coordinating functions in the brain. Moreover, we now know that the structure of the brain is not determined genetically at birth, but rather evolves endogenously with experience over the first several years of life, through which process the number neurons in the brain falls as the number of interconnections increases. The brain is thus a developmental unity. There are certainly regions of the brain that stress specific forms of information processing, but there are so many interconnections among these regions that it is not plausible to think of modules as largely autonomous and self-controlling.
Methodologically, Kurzban shows that the absence of domain-general modules can explain some otherise puzzling aspects of human behavior. The two problems with this methodology are there are other explanations of the same phenomenon that do not deny the existence and synthesizing power of domain-general mental processes.
Perhaps the clearest example of the weakness in Kurzban's reasoning is the story behind the title of the book. If the brain were unitary, he claims, we would have a set of moral principles which we both affirm and obey. But what about the politician who condemns prostitution but is discovered consorting with prostitutes? Clearly this shows the brain is modular, with a "morality module" that forbids consorting with prostitutes and an "erotic module" that promotes the consorting. Kurzban's argument is weak on two grounds. First, Kurzban makes the mistake (here and throughout the book) of treating morality as a set of constraints on behavior, when in fact it generally consists of values we place on behaviors. For instance, I value being honest, so I am willing to sacrifice other valuable things (e.g., money) to preserve my integrity. However, honesty is not an inviolable constraint for me. If conditions are such that I might gain from lying, then I might well lie. This is just a matter of trade-offs (a concept not in Kurzban's lexicon). For trivial example, suppose I send a book to a friend in another country, and I must declare the value on a customs form. The actual value is $11, but if I declare this, my friend will have to go the customs office, a several hour trip, to pay a 25 cent duty, which take officials about a half hour for doing the paperwork. If I declare $10, the book will be delivered to his home, reducing the cost of the transaction both to my friend and the government of his host country. So I lie.
Second, there is absolutely no contradiction between thinking prostitution is immoral and consorting with prostitutes. The flesh is weak, as we all know. Indeed, I might prefer that prostitution be outlawed because only if the cost is sufficiently high will my weak flesh be deterred from consorting. I recall quite vividly condemning smoking while feeding my two-pack a day habit. I was actually grateful for people who criticized my smoking; without these good Samaritans, I probably would not have been able to quit.
A good example of showing that modularity implies behavior without considering whether there are plausible alternative explanations of the same behavior is the case of self-delusion, the example with which Kurzban opens up the book. For instance, a terminal cancer patient may convince himself that if he eats right, prays daily, and fights the disease with optimistic thoughts, he will get well. If the brain is modular and he can shield this thought from evaluation by what we may call a "science" module that would find it wanting, then he may be happy long into his final illness. However, an alternative theory is that there is no such evaluative module, and humans are capable of believing a vast number of things for which there is no proof, even if one has a hypertrophied "science" module. To my way of thinking (following Peirce) judging the truth of assertions is a social, not an individual, process, and the scientific method takes place across, not within, minds.
Kurzban's denial of domain-general brain mechanisms leads him to doubt the existence of a self. But is there really no "self" inside there? Who wrote this book? Who put together a unified, connected argument? Is Robert Kurzban merely a press secretary? I think not.
One of Kurzban's chief arguments is that specialization leads to efficiency (Adam Smith's pin factory?). He example is computer software, which consists of tens of thousands of highly specific pieces of information processing and decision-making. What, however, about the computer itself? Despite its obvious modularity, the digital computer is a highly general, unified entity, each of whose parts contributes in some way to the computer's flexibility. Humans are like computers: we are generalized processors that can be programmed in a myriad of different ways. Here are two aspects of human programmability.
First, Homo sapiens is also Homo ludens---man, the player, to use Huizinga's apt phrase. A young child understands the concept of a game, and understands that one can change the rules, but that the rules apply to all participants. Children can play many diverse games, and adults play even more, in the form of social roles (mother, daughter, professor, church communicant, voter, etc.) among which they switch constantly. Non-human animals play, but only what they are "wired" to play. The success of Homo sapiens lies largely in the ability of its members to adapt the rules of the game in society to changing survival needs. These domain-general capacities are the antithesis of modularity.
Second, human internalize moral values from their society, leading them to behave in highly diversified ways. Moral values are not localized to specific modules. They pervade our thinking and affect all our behaviors, even when we behave in ways of which we disapprove.
This of course does not mean that we don't have distinct parts of the brain that are responsible for fulfilling distinct needs. We obviously do. Part of my brain is monitoring my blood sugar and telling how much I want food at the moment. Another part is monitoring my temperature, and yet another my sexual cravings. Each of these parts can be more or less insistent depending on my current state of being and my current environment. I have no problem calling these "modules," so long as we recognize that evolutionary pressures will tend strongly to bring such modules into a coherent whole. This Kurzban appears not to understand.
For example, suppose I have three modules, one for temperature, one for hunger, and one for light (dark is better because I can avoid predators in the dark). Suppose when I am in a certain state, I have three choices, A, B, and C, each of which has a certain temperature, lighting, and available food. Suppose my temperature model has preference ordering ACB (A preferred to C and C preferred to B), while my light module has ordering BAC and my hunger module has ordering CBA. If all three are weighted equally in my choosing among the three options, I prefer B to A because two of my options prefer B to A; I prefer A to C and I prefer C to B. Thus I have classically intransitive preferences: A > B > C > A. However, suppose in this state A is in fact the most fitness enhancing, and a mutant comes along that has reduced weight on the CBA module and increased weight on the other two. Such a mutant would be more fit than its parents, and would pass the mutation onto its offspring. In the long run, the intransitivity would disappear. Darwinian evolution leads "modules" to work with, not against, each other.
Does this mean I am denying the laboratory evidence concerning the error-proneness of human decision-making? Of course not. I am denying that this evidence supports radical notions of the insufficiency of human reasoning power. Let me give an analogy. There are many optical illusions. Does the fact that there are optical illusions mean that we are radically deficient in see correctly? Of course not. The human brain is imperfect and it makes systematic mistakes. It is important to understand and deal with the frailty of human decision-making. Just calling everything modular and denying the efficacy of the self does not get us far.
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Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind 0691146748
Robert Kurzban
Princeton University Press
Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind
Books
Another Pleasant EvPsycher with a Shoddy Argument
Kurzban opens this little volume by recounting his attendance at a workshop on "self-deception" that included such luminaries as Thomas Schelling and Robert Trivers. He found that the august group failed to get a handle on the phenomenon. Kurzban relates that after the meeting he concluded that "the concept of modularity...easily unraveled the Gordian knot of self-deception." (ix) Of course! The whole world believes the human mind is a unified entity with a single center of consciousness dictating consistency from its various parts (the unitary mind model), whereas Evolutionary Psychology has definitively shown that the human mind is actually a beanbag collection of information processing modules, each adapted for a particular fitness-enhancing purpose at some point in our emergence as a species. Self-deception is no problem because there simply is no "self." There are just lots of little interconnected and jostling modules. "The very notion of the `self'", says Kurzban, is "something of a problem, and perhaps quite a bit less useful that one might think... "you"---the part of your brain that experiences the world and feels like you're in "control"---is better thought of as a press secretary than as the president." (22) In other words, there is no one giving orders in the brain, and our conscious selves merely report on and try to justify behavior that is inherently without reason.
Kurzban presents a long list of well-documented psychological phenomena, from optical illusions to preference reversal, showing in each case that the concept of modularity makes sense of the seeming nonsensical. The problem with his argument is that there is more structure to the brain than is suggested by the concept of modularity. In addition the brain exhibits a hierarchical arrangement of modules, with higher-level units controling, coordinating, and synthesizing the lower-level modules in the hierarchy. In particular, there are domain-general brain functions that account for the unitary nature of the brain.
Kurzban is a bright and engaging young researcher who is tragically shooting himself in the foot by his faith in a psychological theory that has no future, and probably never did. When Noam Chomsky proposed his theory of innate predisposition for human language in the 1960's, modularity of mind seemed plausible. But no other autonomous and independent modular structure has been isolated, and Chomsky's theory is now widely rejected by linguists in favor of more general Bayesian developmental models of language acquisition.
I am sure the skeptical reader is asking, what about the fact that accident and stroke can lead an individual to lose incredibly specific mental capacities, such as recognizing faces or forming plurals. These and related phenomena show that the brain has localized information processing structures, but they do not show the absence of overarching coordinating functions in the brain. Moreover, we now know that the structure of the brain is not determined genetically at birth, but rather evolves endogenously with experience over the first several years of life, through which process the number neurons in the brain falls as the number of interconnections increases. The brain is thus a developmental unity. There are certainly regions of the brain that stress specific forms of information processing, but there are so many interconnections among these regions that it is not plausible to think of modules as largely autonomous and self-controlling.
Methodologically, Kurzban shows that the absence of domain-general modules can explain some otherise puzzling aspects of human behavior. The two problems with this methodology are there are other explanations of the same phenomenon that do not deny the existence and synthesizing power of domain-general mental processes.
Perhaps the clearest example of the weakness in Kurzban's reasoning is the story behind the title of the book. If the brain were unitary, he claims, we would have a set of moral principles which we both affirm and obey. But what about the politician who condemns prostitution but is discovered consorting with prostitutes? Clearly this shows the brain is modular, with a "morality module" that forbids consorting with prostitutes and an "erotic module" that promotes the consorting. Kurzban's argument is weak on two grounds. First, Kurzban makes the mistake (here and throughout the book) of treating morality as a set of constraints on behavior, when in fact it generally consists of values we place on behaviors. For instance, I value being honest, so I am willing to sacrifice other valuable things (e.g., money) to preserve my integrity. However, honesty is not an inviolable constraint for me. If conditions are such that I might gain from lying, then I might well lie. This is just a matter of trade-offs (a concept not in Kurzban's lexicon). For trivial example, suppose I send a book to a friend in another country, and I must declare the value on a customs form. The actual value is $11, but if I declare this, my friend will have to go the customs office, a several hour trip, to pay a 25 cent duty, which take officials about a half hour for doing the paperwork. If I declare $10, the book will be delivered to his home, reducing the cost of the transaction both to my friend and the government of his host country. So I lie.
Second, there is absolutely no contradiction between thinking prostitution is immoral and consorting with prostitutes. The flesh is weak, as we all know. Indeed, I might prefer that prostitution be outlawed because only if the cost is sufficiently high will my weak flesh be deterred from consorting. I recall quite vividly condemning smoking while feeding my two-pack a day habit. I was actually grateful for people who criticized my smoking; without these good Samaritans, I probably would not have been able to quit.
A good example of showing that modularity implies behavior without considering whether there are plausible alternative explanations of the same behavior is the case of self-delusion, the example with which Kurzban opens up the book. For instance, a terminal cancer patient may convince himself that if he eats right, prays daily, and fights the disease with optimistic thoughts, he will get well. If the brain is modular and he can shield this thought from evaluation by what we may call a "science" module that would find it wanting, then he may be happy long into his final illness. However, an alternative theory is that there is no such evaluative module, and humans are capable of believing a vast number of things for which there is no proof, even if one has a hypertrophied "science" module. To my way of thinking (following Peirce) judging the truth of assertions is a social, not an individual, process, and the scientific method takes place across, not within, minds.
Kurzban's denial of domain-general brain mechanisms leads him to doubt the existence of a self. But is there really no "self" inside there? Who wrote this book? Who put together a unified, connected argument? Is Robert Kurzban merely a press secretary? I think not.
One of Kurzban's chief arguments is that specialization leads to efficiency (Adam Smith's pin factory?). He example is computer software, which consists of tens of thousands of highly specific pieces of information processing and decision-making. What, however, about the computer itself? Despite its obvious modularity, the digital computer is a highly general, unified entity, each of whose parts contributes in some way to the computer's flexibility. Humans are like computers: we are generalized processors that can be programmed in a myriad of different ways. Here are two aspects of human programmability.
First, Homo sapiens is also Homo ludens---man, the player, to use Huizinga's apt phrase. A young child understands the concept of a game, and understands that one can change the rules, but that the rules apply to all participants. Children can play many diverse games, and adults play even more, in the form of social roles (mother, daughter, professor, church communicant, voter, etc.) among which they switch constantly. Non-human animals play, but only what they are "wired" to play. The success of Homo sapiens lies largely in the ability of its members to adapt the rules of the game in society to changing survival needs. These domain-general capacities are the antithesis of modularity.
Second, human internalize moral values from their society, leading them to behave in highly diversified ways. Moral values are not localized to specific modules. They pervade our thinking and affect all our behaviors, even when we behave in ways of which we disapprove.
This of course does not mean that we don't have distinct parts of the brain that are responsible for fulfilling distinct needs. We obviously do. Part of my brain is monitoring my blood sugar and telling how much I want food at the moment. Another part is monitoring my temperature, and yet another my sexual cravings. Each of these parts can be more or less insistent depending on my current state of being and my current environment. I have no problem calling these "modules," so long as we recognize that evolutionary pressures will tend strongly to bring such modules into a coherent whole. This Kurzban appears not to understand.
For example, suppose I have three modules, one for temperature, one for hunger, and one for light (dark is better because I can avoid predators in the dark). Suppose when I am in a certain state, I have three choices, A, B, and C, each of which has a certain temperature, lighting, and available food. Suppose my temperature model has preference ordering ACB (A preferred to C and C preferred to B), while my light module has ordering BAC and my hunger module has ordering CBA. If all three are weighted equally in my choosing among the three options, I prefer B to A because two of my options prefer B to A; I prefer A to C and I prefer C to B. Thus I have classically intransitive preferences: A > B > C > A. However, suppose in this state A is in fact the most fitness enhancing, and a mutant comes along that has reduced weight on the CBA module and increased weight on the other two. Such a mutant would be more fit than its parents, and would pass the mutation onto its offspring. In the long run, the intransitivity would disappear. Darwinian evolution leads "modules" to work with, not against, each other.
Does this mean I am denying the laboratory evidence concerning the error-proneness of human decision-making? Of course not. I am denying that this evidence supports radical notions of the insufficiency of human reasoning power. Let me give an analogy. There are many optical illusions. Does the fact that there are optical illusions mean that we are radically deficient in see correctly? Of course not. The human brain is imperfect and it makes systematic mistakes. It is important to understand and deal with the frailty of human decision-making. Just calling everything modular and denying the efficacy of the self does not get us far.
Herbert Gintis
February 16, 2011
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5

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