This is part 3 of a series of blog posts. Please read part 1 first.
Category 2: why even many scientists refuse to apply science to the human brain
Why are so many people reluctant to use the scientific method to study the human mind?
The most important reason must be the biggest crime ever committed: the holocaust. Darwin‘s theory of evolution was used to construct a pseudo-scientific justification for mass killings on an industrial scale. But the arguments used were based on a very poor understanding of the theory. They were (and still are) so terribly flawed that it seems quite obvious they were only used as a pretext to steal jewish wealth.
I seems pointless to explain why some obviously idiotic and criminal view is flawed. But, first of all, the historical importance of the claims requires a discussion here. And, to be honest, the outrageous consequences let me overestimate my understanding of the problem for many years too.
Or simpler put: the case is not as easy as it seems to be obvious.
The fundamental mistake many people make when discussing evolution is the following: while it is indeed true that the individual with superior genes will likely have more successful offspring, there are several important complications to consider:
- Fitter (in the sense of biology!) does not mean stronger in a clearly perceivable sense (like stronger muscles or high „intelligence“). Fitness can come in thousands of traits of the phenotype. Things like having a good intuition, superior social skills, efficient immune system (and many many other features and skills) must be included. Each human being is an ultra complex compromise defined by millions of parameters.
- The only way to „measure“ fitness is to actually let an individual live and try to create fit offspring (note: this is obviously a recursive process which would need an infinite amount of time, which makes it practically unfeasible). Biological fitness can express itself in a thousand ways and - even more importantly - it‘s completely unknown which ways will matter in the future, as the future is impossible to predict (except maybe for the very near future). Therefore, there is absolutely no reliable way for humans to measure/assess fitness!
- Fitness also depends on epigenetic changes and culture. I don't want to invest much time explaining this, but their contributions to fitness are highly significant too (just think about education!).
- We are by no means obliged to make „nature“ happy, by fulfilling its „goals“. Nature is not a person. Nature does not care about anything. We are totally free (and also capable) to shape our world to our liking, whether aligned with evolutionary theory or not.
Therefore, the theory of evolution (which should explain the structure and functioning of our brain as described by neuroscience) is completely useless for controlling the future.
And this is why so many people fiercely reject evolutionary psychology. And some of them even go so far to deny any contribution of the genes to the structure of the mind. You might now recognize the notorious „nature“ vs „nurture“ debate. And even if, as mentioned above, the contribution of culture is most significant, it seems silly to reject the influence of the genes completely. Or did our mothers teach us our fear of spiders? Or did somebody teach you your sexual preferences in school (starting with - probably - desiring the other sex)? I guess (and hope) not.
But there is still a good reason to look at our mind from the perspective of evolution nonetheless:
Evolutionary biology and neuroscience can help us to figure out who we are. Who we are in the sense what we truly enjoy to do. This kind of knowledge is essential if we want to create a future world we really enjoy to live in.
Again most people fear that such research would reveal only that we are horribly primitive creatures which are only interested in sex and violence. And because of this we should not start digging there but reject any ideas regarding genetic contributions to our psyche and put all our hopes on a change of culture instead („let‘s start on a blank page again!“).
But this is not a very promising strategy, simply because the page is quite clearly not blank. „Nurture“ does play an important role, but it does by no means fall on unprepared soil. Even if we work in good faith, ignoring this reality will let us surely fail.
And fortunately such fears regarding our „violent nature“ are, as we will see very clearly soon, not justified. The lives of (most) of our early ancestors were far less violent than ours. Early humans simply couldn‘t afford frequent violence. This is even more true if we also consider the „structural violence“ (a term I want to borrow from the political left) of our modern society.
The critical flaw in the pessimistic view of human nature is the idea that human behavior is independent of the environment the human grew up in and live. That evil is an intrinsic property of human nature which will always manifest itself somehow, independet of the environment.
A huge advantage of humans - compared to other animals - is actually the enormous flexibility of our brain. Humans are able to thrive in a very large number of different environments. Many of them have substantially different properties and require different mental strategies to survive in them.
Human behavior in the current environment (i.e. our modern society) is therefore not transferrable to other environments. This opens huge opportunities to reduce the prevalence of evil by altering the environment.
Another reason while many scientists reject evolutionary psychology has to do with the severe methodological problems which plague the field. We don’t know much about the conditions (including the social structures) our distant ancestors lived in. Evidence from excavations is very limited and its interpretation difficult. Therefore we cannot reliably reconstruct the evolutionary history of our brain. There is only little we can do about this. But I still see great value in the field: even if we cannot be sure in detail about our conclusions, we can at least - by combining all the available knowledge - construct a sufficiently plausible view of how history shaped our mind.
The last problem many people would mention, is that a crude „mechanistic“ model of the human mind cannot possibly explain the extremely complex psychical phenomenons we experience in our daily lives (like compassion, love, group psychological effects etc.). This is true. But we don‘t need the model to explain everything. It also does not need to be good enough to allow us to replace „classic“ psychology (which is, by the way, also doing a great job without fully understanding so many things).
A model is only „crude“ if we apply it in a context where it is too simple to work well (like using the simplest equations relating volume and pressure of a gas at extremely low temperatures, where a more sophisticated quantum model would be more appropriate). Not falling into this pit means just doing good science.
And yes, probably we will never have a model which will be able to explain human behavior in its full complexity. But this will be, for our purposes, also not required.
Please continue here with part 4 of this series.
Image: Shutterstock / ArtMari
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