Author Archive

Posted on July 23, 2010 - by David

12.5 % of ER Visits Related to Mental Illness or Drug Use

There should be no doubt that mental illness represents one of the greatest burdens on the American health care system.  A recent report published by HCUP (Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project) tells us that 12.5% of ER visits in 2007 (12 million out of 95 million) were related to mental illness or substance abuse. While in many cases these were secondary diagnoses, over 4.1 million visits had mental illness or substance abuse as a first-listed or principal diagnosis.  40% of the 12 million resulted in hospital admission, making ER visits for mental illness and substance abuse 2.5 times more likely to lead to hospitalization than visits for all other conditions.

Two years ago, HCUP published a report about hospital stays related to mental health for the year 2006. 3.4% of all hospital stays (1.35 million out of 39.45 million) had a principal diagnosis of mental illness, with mood disorders and schizophrenia accounting for the overwhelming majority. Also significant is the fact that admissions with a principal diagnosis of a mental health condition had an average length of stay of 8.2 days, considerably longer than the average of 4.6 days for all stays.

Of course these are just a few of the many figures floating in the sea of statistics on the topic, but they seemed worth noting.

Posted on June 20, 2010 - by David

Steven Pinker: Stuck in a Biological Loop

In an op-ed piece published last week in the New York Times, Steven Pinker weighs in on the question of whether technology is dumbing down society. Pinker likens this concern to instances of “moral panic” over new forms of media throughout history, and believes that “far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.” He writes:

For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying.

Of course, the “state of science” today has a lot to do with the state of science yesterday, and for a few hundred years now (for cultural/historical reasons), science as an institution has been steadily increasing in prestige, accelerating its activity, and calling more and more of modern society’s brightest minds to carry on its glory. It seems there is virtually nothing that could stop the momentum that science has built up; certainly not the (still recently acquired) text or tweet habits of those who have already dedicated their lives to the cause. But who’s to say these habits aren’t detrimental to scientific inquiry? The benefits of technology for scientific study of all kinds are so obviously great, how could we possibly know what small subtraction from its “dizzying” progress the various distraction-inducing developments might be making?

Nicholas Carr, author of the new book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, responded to Pinker on his blog Rough Type. There is nothing hysterical about Carr’s position; he merely believes that the ways we read, write, and communicate will affect our cognition. Where Pinker celebrates the accumulation of scientific advances, Carr sees the erosion of our ability to concentrate and think critically.

After reading Pinker’s 2007 book, The Stuff of Thought, I’m not at all surprised that he shrugs off these fears about the effects of technology on thought.  As I noted in an earlier post about evolutionary psychology, Pinker seems to see anything acquired as having a negligible impact on the way our minds work. He tells us, “one reason that the language we speak can’t be too central in our mental functioning is that we had to learn it in the first place.” ( 149) Pinker maintains that there is a strict difference between language as such and the “language of thought”; in his framework, the set of innate concepts and categories (largely derived from Kant) which provide the boundary conditions for the way we process information. “Language,” he cautions, “is above all a medium in which we express our thoughts and feelings, and it mustn’t be confused with the thoughts and feelings themselves.” (24) If language is just a medium for communication, then the way we choose to package the message is really of little importance to the functioning of the mind.

The Stuff of Thought is Pinker’s attempt to reverse-engineer language to get at the real “language of thought.” This is a fully enculturated adult, who reads, writes, and speaks, explaining that the cognitive processes of the human animal really don’t have that much to do with language. He tells us that “studies of the minds of prelinguistic infants have shown them to be sensitive to cause and effect, human agency, spatial relations, and other ideas that form the core of conceptual structure.” (149) But sensitivity to these categories is obviously not the apex of intellectual achievement. What would happen to these babies if they weren’t touched by language, if they could somehow be shut off from all symbolic communication? Of course, this would be a completely unethical experiment, but if a child was somehow  kept alive while being deprived of all culture (using Liah Greenfeld’s definition of culture – symbolic transmission of human ways of life), would whatever set of innate concepts it possessed cause the spontaneous development of the mental processes of a normal, enculturated adult Homo Sapiens?

I’m sure I could be accused of misconstruing Pinker’s argument. Maybe he’s not saying language in general isn’t important to mental functioning, but that the particular language one learns doesn’t do that much to shape thought because all Homo Sapiens think using the same set of innate concepts. In his argument against Linguistic Determinism, Pinker concludes that it is not that a society’s language determines the way it sees the world, but that the way it sees the world is reflected in its language. Now I’m not saying that this idea is wrong, but it is very clearly incomplete. If the ideas/biases/tendencies of our societies are reflected in our languages, than we become conditioned to experience reality in certain ways as soon as we begin to acquire language. As we learn a language, we don’t just amass a vocabulary and figure out the correct way to use verbs, we inherit ideas and beliefs which go to the core of our identities as individuals and as whole cultures. But I wouldn’t expect Pinker to be impressed with this observation, since he has already characterized the idea that “language affects thought because we get much of our knowledge through reading and conversation” as “banal” and “utterly trite.”

In Pinker’s model, innate concepts are just that: innate. They are fundamental characteristics of the brains of individual organisms. But language is not, as Pinker’s book suggests, just another part of culture, it is the foundational element of the culture, which is a symbolic (non-material), historical process. How does he account for the leap from biologically programmed concepts to a symbolic form of communication based on these concepts? On the one hand, he tells us that “word senses are mentally represented as expressions in a richer and more abstract language of thought” (150), but also that “each of these [abstract conceptual frameworks] is an empty form that must be filled in by actual instances provided by the senses or the imagination.” (160) What is it that fills in these empty forms if not information transmitted through the symbolic system of language?

In the final chapter of the book, Pinker includes the following “caveats,” which I find particularly revealing. (I’ve bolded certain words for emphasis):

The phenomena may not be literally universal, since the words and constructions in a given language depend not just on the psychology of its speakers but on its history of fads, conquests, and neighbors. Nor are the phenomena necessarily direct reflections of the genetic patterning of our brains; some may emerge from brains and bodies interacting in human ecologies over the course of human history. (428)

Pinker allows history to account for a small portion of language, but even in this he emphasizes the material aspect. If “genetic patterning” can explain the behavior of those “brains and bodies interacting,” then all the accidents of human history have an essentially biological cause. This means that all variation within and between cultures is essentially caused by individual genetic variation. If this view is not clear from Pinker’s analysis of language, consider what he writes in this 2009 New York Times article, titled ‘My Genome, My Self’:

During my first book tour 15 years ago, an interviewer noted that the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had dedicated his first book to his father, who took him to see the dinosaurs when he was 5. What was the event that made me become a cognitive psychologist who studies language? I was dumbstruck. The only thing that came to mind was that the human mind is uniquely interesting and that as soon as I learned you could study it for a living, I knew that that was what I wanted to do. But that response would not just have been charmless; it would also have failed to answer the question. Millions of people are exposed to cognitive psychology in college but have no interest in making a career of it. What made it so attractive to me?

As I stared blankly, the interviewer suggested that perhaps it was because I grew up in Quebec in the 1970s when language, our pre-eminent cognitive capacity, figured so prominently in debates about the future of the province. I quickly agreed — and silently vowed to come up with something better for the next time. Now I say that my formative years were a time of raging debates about the political implications of human nature, or that my parents subscribed to a Time-Life series of science books, and my eye was caught by the one called “The Mind,” or that one day a friend took me to hear a lecture by the great Canadian psychologist D. O. Hebb, and I was hooked. But it is all humbug. The very fact that I had to think so hard brought home what scholars of autobiography and memoir have long recognized. None of us know what made us what we are, and when we have to say something, we make up a good story.

An obvious candidate for the real answer is that we are shaped by our genes in ways that none of us can directly know. Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Each of us is dealt a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes, like curiosity, ambition, empathy, a thirst for novelty or for security, a comfort level with the social or the mechanical or the abstract. Some opportunities we come across click with our constitutions and set us along a path in life.

For Pinker, cultural explanations of his interests and identity are “all humbug”; only biology can provide a “real answer.”  Later he writes:

The most prominent finding of behavioral genetics has been summarized by the psychologist Eric Turkheimer: “The nature-nurture debate is over. . . . All human behavioral traits are heritable.” By this he meant that a substantial fraction of the variation among individuals within a culture can be linked to variation in their genes. Whether you measure intelligence or personality, religiosity or political orientation, television watching or cigarette smoking, the outcome is the same. Identical twins (who share all their genes) are more similar than fraternal twins (who share half their genes that vary among people). Biological siblings (who share half those genes too) are more similar than adopted siblings (who share no more genes than do strangers). And identical twins separated at birth and raised in different adoptive homes (who share their genes but not their environments) are uncannily similar.

Then:

Behavioral genetics has repeatedly found that the “shared environment” — everything that siblings growing up in the same home have in common, including their parents, their neighborhood, their home, their peer group and their school — has less of an influence on the way they turn out than their genes. In many studies, the shared environment has no measurable influence on the adult at all. Siblings reared together end up no more similar than siblings reared apart, and adoptive siblings reared in the same family end up not similar at all. A large chunk of the variation among people in intelligence and personality is not predictable from any obvious feature of the world of their childhood.

These findings are based on a definition of  “environment” that basically boils down to geography and the institutions to which the individual is in closest proximity. But if by “environment” we mean the wider cultural context which provides the boundary conditions for an individual’s beliefs and desires, we then see how open the possibilities are, especially for the modern American and European societies from which, Pinker tells us, these results are typically taken. Despite a “shared environment,” it would be absolutely impossible for two siblings to have the same experience. Will both be present to witness the same moment of frustration when mom comes home from work complaining about the boss and wishing she had pursued a different career path? Will they have the same teachers, and read exactly the same books, in the same order? Will their classmates express the same opinions? Will the magazine on the coffee table that, in a moment of boredom, catches the eye of one of them, still be sitting there when the moment is right to catch the eye of the other? There’s no way to count all the possible variations in experience within this “shared environment,” but the point is that those slight variations can make all the difference.

As much as I think Pinker is aware that the typical definition of “environment” is problematic, he continues to use it in his case to prove the primacy of genes in determining our personalities. He writes:

A common finding is that the effects of being brought up in a given family are sometimes detectable in childhood, but that they tend to peter out by the time the child has grown up. That is, the reach of the genes appears to get stronger as we age, not weaker. Perhaps our genes affect our environments, which in turn affect ourselves. Young children are at the mercy of parents and have to adapt to a world that is not of their choosing. As they get older, however, they can gravitate to the microenvironments that best suit their natures.

But the wider cultural environment – its values and its possibilities – are also “not of their choosing.” Children are not released into the wild by their parents when they turn 18. The moment the TV is turned on, the first day of kindergarten, they become part of something much larger. The key sentence in the above paragraph is “perhaps our genes affect our environments, which in turn affect ourselves.” For Pinker, these “microenvironments” may be historical phenomena, but they are also biological necessities, created to satisfy a range of genetically determined drives. If the particularities of environment are shaped by the peculiarities of genes, which express themselves in response to the particularities of environment, then we are stuck in a biological loop.

I don’t claim to have covered every aspect of Pinker’s argument (either about language or genetics), but I’ve tried to follow a few of the main points to their logical conclusions.  Pinker’s view ends up looking like a form of historical materialism, with some of the same dangers. I think Louis Menand sums it up well in his review of The Blank Slate (2002):

The notion is that a particular arrangement must have been “selected for”—as though the struggles among individuals and groups and ideas were nature’s way of making sure that we end up with the best. Evolutionary psychology is therefore a philosophy for winners: it can be used to justify every outcome. This is why Pinker has persuaded himself that liberal democracy and current opinion about women’s sexual autonomy have biological foundations. It’s a “scientific” validation of the way we live now. But every aspect of life has a biological foundation in exactly the same sense, which is that unless it was biologically possible it wouldn’t exist. After that, it’s up for grabs.

Posted on May 23, 2010 - by David

Rand Paul: Loud, But Not So Clear

The day after Dr. Rand Paul, son of congressman Ron Paul and darling of the Tea Party movement, won the republican nomination for senate in Kentucky, he got himself into some trouble on the Rachel Maddow show discussing the piece of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which banned discrimination by private businesses.

part 2 of the Maddow interview

Two days later, on Good Morning America with George Stephanopolous, Rand Paul is obviously frustrated with the barrage of media criticism he faced after the interview with Rachel Maddow.

I might be inclined to stick up for Rand Paul if he seemed inclined to stick up for himself. Calling the criticism he is facing politically motivated and accusing George Stephanopolous of getting his talking points from the Democratic National Committee is a waste of valuable air time. Of course they are politically motivated – so what? Did he expect things to be different for him? Is he surprised that he is being attacked in media outlets that his own Tea Party movement decries for being leftist/socialist?

As George Will put it, “He doesn’t understand that his job is to win a Senate seat, not conduct a seminar on libertarian philosophy.” To be fair, Dr. Paul may not have known back in 2002 that in 8 years he’d be heading out on the campaign trail, and now there are public statements he must account for. He may not be able to avoid sounding extreme, but he could at least avoid looking stupid. When forced into a corner on the Civil Rights Act, he argued that outlawing abhorrent racist practices by privately-owned businesses is a slippery slope to undermining the first amendment. But for someone defending free speech, he is doing an awful lot of back-pedaling and equivocating about what he has already said.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think more people would respect Rand Paul if he simply stopped stammering. When someone in the media brings up something he said in the past, and asks if he still stands by the statement, he ought to give a clear “yes” or “no,” or, if really in a bind, an “I don’t know.” The people of Kentucky could then decide whether they agree with Paul’s principles, rather than puzzling over whether he agrees with himself.  For someone bringing a message that is “loud and clear and does not mince words,” things are getting awfully muddled. The golden rule might be something like, ‘if you don’t have anything smart to say, don’t say anything at all,’ but that may not really be an option.

part 2 of April 15, 2010 Tea Party address in Louisville, KY

In the above Tea Party speech, Dr. Paul is critical of legislators who pass bills without reading them, but on NPR he admitted to not having “really read all through” the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Now I’m not saying the two are equivalent, but it presents his opponents with another point of attack. Paul’s position(s?) on the Civil Rights Act has turned into a debate over whether libertarianism can provide practicable solutions to actual problems. For readers interested in intelligent libertarian commentary on the issue, I’d recommend the posts written by David Bernstein, Randy Barnett, and Ilya Somin over at the group blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. I think Dr. Paul himself would benefit greatly from browsing these posts, but something tells he won’t have a lot of time to read now that he’s in campaign mode.

While the guys at Volokh (almost all of them professors of law) seem excited about Rand Paul, it may just be that their impulse to uphold the libertarian position in general led them to amass their considerable legal/historical expertise in (something resembling) his defense.  Unfortunately for Paul, TV interviews are not particularly conducive to the kind of detailed (and often hypothetical) considerations that these bloggers have the luxury of making at any time of day or night. But TV is where he must shine. One might ask, ‘Isn’t Rand Paul in the same position as any other political candidate who has to deal with having his own words turned on him?’  I would say no. Paul, as a Tea Partier, cannot afford to flip-flop. Those already on Paul’s side will see the criticism he now faces as further evidence of the entrenchment of liberals in the media – it’s more fuel for their fire. But to those in Kentucky who must be won over, and those around the nation just becoming acquainted with the Tea Party phenomenon, this whole thing may is bound to be a little unsettling.

See this politico article on what the GOP thinks about Paul’s early missteps. I have by no means attempted to cover this thing in detail. There are literally thousands of blog posts and news articles out there. Happy reading!

Posted on May 19, 2010 - by David

Does Ethan Watters Believe Culture Can Cause Mental Illness?

Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us (see my commentary), was on PRI the other day (listen to the audio here). I was pleased to get a prompt response to my comments, which I’ve copied below. Go here to follow the entire discussion in the PRI science forum.

Posted on May 12, 2010 - by David

Arizona Immigration Debate is America’s Problem

Everybody has an opinion about Arizona’s new immigration law. Some have praised it as a reasonable attempt to fix a broken system that the federal government has neglected to deal with. President Obama and California’s legal immigrant Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have cracked jokes. The U.N has raised a critical voice.  On Sunday, U.S Attorney General Eric Holder mentioned the possibility of bringing a suit against Arizona for creating a law which might lead to civil rights violations. Cities from LA all the way to Boston are deciding whether to boycott the law by terminating public contracts with Arizona-based business, while  states like Michigan, Oklahoma, and Maryland are considering following Arizona’s lead in drafting tough immigration legislation. Meanwhile, several challenges to the law have already been filed and are on their way to federal courtrooms.

Some of those on the pro-side, (like Margaret Bengs of the Sacramento Bee and Brit Hume of Fox News), cite the limited context in which immigration status will be checked and the specific language prohibiting racial profiling as evidence that this law is not racist in spirit, and will not be racist in practice. The problem with such a defense is that this evidence comes not from the initial version of SB1070 which Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law on April 23, but from the revised version produced a week later in response to the uproar over the law’s supposedly racist measures. Opponents of SB 1070 will not easily forget that it was watered-down from what its sponsors initially wanted.

When it first became law, SB1070 did have some seriously troubling teeth, but now that it’s been toned down, its supporters say it merely upholds the federal government’s own laws on immigration enforcement. Even if this is so, it is still a constitutionality question, as the law basically turns every police officer in the state into a U.S immigration agent. Of course the supporters can then counter by telling the federal government, “Do your job and enforce the law so we don’t have to, and secure the border while you’re at it.”

Though George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in October of 2006, which called for the construction of 700 miles of double reinforced fence along the border with Mexico, it seems that slipping across the border (and constantly going back and forth if you’re a drug smuggler) is still a totally realistic goal.  The fence is still under slow and harshly criticized construction, and trying to figure out how much of it has actually been built was rather difficult,  but according to the U.S Customs and Border Protection website, about 300 miles of vehicle fence and 370 miles of pedestrian fence are in place (see a virtual map here). Of course this still leaves over 1200 miles of border open, with the feasibility and timeline of the high-tech measures which were supposed to serve as a “virtual fence” being called into question.

So, while I wouldn’t say I’m in favor of SB 1070, it’s pretty clear that Washington isn’t living up to the standards it has set for itself. If the nation really has a problem with Arizona cops doing the job of immigration agents, then we should reconsider the federal laws, as Michael Zuckerman suggests.  And while various cities and organizations clamor for a boycott of everything Arizona, there are a number of products which you can bet will continue to flow from Arizona to the rest of the country without interruption: illegal drugs. There is plenty of outrage and accusations of racism, but little sympathy for the situation Arizona finds itself in due only to its geography. The bloodbath between Mexican cartels that is spilling over into this border state is driven by America’s desire to get high. As Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote the other day:

The war on the supply of drugs was launched more than 40 years ago because the U.S. found that prohibition failed to contain Americans’ appetite for drugs. Thousands of Latins have since died for the cause. In 2008, according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, 36 million Americans had used illicit drugs in the past year. Rounding up low-skilled Mexican workers and walling off the entire border is not likely to solve the problem.

The condensed version of the complaint against  immigrants from south of the border (whether legal or illegal) looks something like this: “they bring in drugs and take our jobs.” As the O’Grady article points out, lumping the criminal element in with those willing to trek 50 miles through the desert in search of a better life is probably an unfair distortion. And I don’t think I’d be the first to question who, exactly, the immigrants are taking jobs from? Are they simply doing the jobs we now consider beneath us? I understand the claim that the growing number of immigrants who are willing to work for very little is keeping wages low, and I can’t say I know enough to argue against it. But I wonder if the people making this complaint are really concerned about whether the immigrant workers  are legal or not? And I wonder how many of us pass up the jobs that these immigrants “take” because they would be an intolerable blow to our dignity? In the meantime, we either fight for our right to party, or get so lost that we become slaves to substance, while thousands are slaughtered in Juarez over the right to supply us with what we demand. This is not just Arizona’s problem. It is not all Mexico’s fault. This issue has its roots in an American mentality that can’t be changed by writing a law, or by putting up (or tearing down) a fence. Whether immigration legislation is aimed at enforcement, reform, amnesty, or security; whether drug policy goes the way of legalization, regulation, or prohibition, all I believe we will see are subtle shifts in the dynamics of the current conundrum. Without a change in our culture, which is to say, a change in our minds, we’ll be dealing with this problem for decades to come.

Posted on May 3, 2010 - by David

Evolutionary Psychology: A Stone Age Mindset

The following paper was presented May 1, 2010 at a student conference at Boston University called ‘Mentalism, Madness, and the Mind.” Audio from the conference is available here. Thanks to all those who participated.

“Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause preceding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.”

-          Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)

In the conclusion to this book – a work of undeniable importance to modern science and modern thought in general – after tracking natural selection through amazingly detailed observations of nature and logical deductions, Darwin imagined what his discoveries might mean for the study of humanity. He writes:

“In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” (Darwin, Origin 476)

Empowered by the growing acceptance of his theories, Darwin himself endeavored to throw this light on human experience in The Descent of Man. His believed that there was “no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties,” (Darwin, Descent 34) and attributed our sense of morality, in his eyes man’s most distinctive feature, to highly developed social instincts and advanced powers of reasoning.

Nevertheless, one can sense another phenomenon at work in Darwin’s descriptions. He notes man’s “large power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas,” and sees the central place of language in the mind, writing that “a long and complex train of thought can no more be carried on without the aid of words, whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures or algebra.” (Darwin, Descent 53, 55) His insistence that the difference between man and animal was one of degree and not kind is challenged by obvious differences between cultures. He attributes the lower moral sense of “savages” partly to “insufficient powers of reasoning,” and speculates that moral tendencies might be inherited traits, though he admits that there is “hardly sufficient evidence on this head.” (Darwin Descent 93, 98) In trying to account for the many “absurd rules of conduct” proscribed by various religions, Darwin makes a decidedly non-materialist observation, writing, “it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated in the early years of life, while the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.” (Darwin, Descent 95-96) This power of culture was literally right next to him, waiting to be discovered and explained, on the ship which took him around the world. He writes: “The Fuegians rank among the lowest barbarians; but I was continually struck with surprise how closely the three natives on board  H.M.S “Beagle,” who had lived some years in England, and could talk a little English, resembled us in disposition, and in most of our mental faculties.” (Darwin, Descent 33-34) It seems with all his powers of observation and scientific genius, his attachment to his newly embraced theory and the predictable (and accepted) prejudices of a 19^th -century Englishman would not allow Darwin to see what he was missing.

I consider this extended Darwinian introduction justified, because despite the fact that these ideas were published nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, they are, with many of the same troublesome claims and implications, still very much alive today in the various strains of evolutionary psychology.

Before going any further, I must turn to mentalism, as developed by Liah Greenfeld, so that the basis for my objections to evolutionary psychology is clear. In her yet unpublished work (to which this conference is directly related), Greenfeld actually demonstrates how Darwin’s work made her own theories possible. Here I quote Greenfeld directly:

“On the basis of meticulously constructed circumstantial evidence (that is, pieces of empirical evidence, gaps in empirical evidence, considerations of scholars in other fields, specifically geology, certain beliefs regarding the nature of reality, contradictions in other beliefs regarding it, etc., that were fitted perfectly together, creating a logically watertight argument) Darwin proved that there was a law pertaining to the development of life on earth that had nothing whatsoever to do with laws of physics, and yet was logically consistent with them, because it operated within the boundary conditions of the physical laws. That is, in distinction to philosophical materialists, Darwin proved that life indeed could be irreducible to inanimate matter, but, in distinction to philosophical idealists, or vitalists, who claimed that life was independent from the material reality studied by physics, he proved that laws of life could only operate within the conditions provided by physical laws. By proving that life was an autonomous reality, Darwin made biology independent from physics: biologists now could take physics for granted and explore the ways biological laws operated.” (Greenfeld 69-70)

In short, rather than create “a unified framework in which everything could be understood,” Darwin made it possible to see the world in terms of emergent phenomena. Greenfeld defines an emergent phenomenon as “a complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the sum of its elements, a case in which a specific combination of elements, which no one element, and no law in accordance with which the elements function, renders likely, produces a certain new quality (in most important instances, a certain law or tendency) which in a large measure determines the nature and the existence of the phenomenon, as well as of its elements.” (Greenfeld 71)

Unlike Darwin or the evolutionary psychologists, we see humanity as distinguished from all other forms of organic life by the emergent phenomenon of culture. Culture can be defined most generally as the symbolic transmission of human ways of life across generations and distances. In ‘Nationalism and the Mind,’ Greenfeld describes it like this:

The products of this cultural process are stored in the environment within which our biological life takes place, but the process itself goes on inside us. In other words, culture exists dynamically, develops, regenerates, transforms only by means of our minds – which makes culture a mental process. Let me reiterate: culture is a symbolic and a mental process. The fact that it is a mental process means that it occurs by means of the mechanisms of the brain. The fact that it is a symbolic process means that its logic cannot be reduced to the logic of the brain mechanisms, that it is an emergent phenomenon and a reality sui generis. (Greenfeld “N&M” 213)

Greenfeld has therefore described the mind as “individualized culture,” or “culture in the brain,” making the mind, like culture, an emergent phenomenon. Again I quote from her current work, to make clear that culture and mind should not be taken separately:

“These are not just two elements of the same — symbolic and mental — reality, they are one and the same process occurring on two different levels — the individual and the collective, similar to the life of an organism and of the species to which it belongs in the organic world. The fundamental laws governing this process on both levels are precisely the same laws and at every moment, at every stage in it, it moves back and forth between the levels; it cannot, not for a split second, occur on only one of them. The mind constantly borrows symbols from culture, but culture can only be processed – i.e., symbols can only have significance and be symbols — in the mind.” (Greenfeld 81)

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In On the Origin of Societies by Natural Selection (2008), Jonathan Turner and Alexandra Maryanski provide a theoretical description of how our nature as individualistic apes has shaped the evolution of human societies. In the conclusion to the first chapter they make the following statement: “All societies, we argue, go against humans’ ancestral ape propensities for weak ties, individualism, and mobility, but some social formations impose greater conflicts with our ape ancestry than others.” (T&M 27) They hypothesize that the development of an emotional language would have played the most important role in creating solidarity among our ape ancestors. They imagine an almost infinitely deep pool of complex emotions that could have been formed through combination of the four primary emotions – happiness, fear, anger, and sadness – which they say “all researchers agree” are hardwired into our brains. These emotions would have been communicated through vocalizations, gestures, and facial expressions to forge stronger social ties. Symbolic communication through language is given a kind of secondary status to this primary language of emotions. They tell us that, “sociality is enhanced by speech because inflections of voice and substance of sentences can add extra layers of emotional content to interaction.” (T&M 117). The chapter titled ‘The Emergence of Culture,’ is mostly devoted to describing the adaptations they believe would have been selected for to create an individualistic ape who forged social ties via an emotional language but also possessed the brain capacity for verbal, symbolic communication. Culture and its development, therefore, are just products of natural selection, though they admit the rules seem to change a bit once culture emerges. They outline five “forces of the social universe” which generate selection pressures – population, production, distribution, regulation, and reproduction. (T&M 125) Equipped with a theoretical image of our progenitors and these five forces, they proceed to explain the rest of human history, which for Turner and Maryanski consists of emotional, individualistic apes moving from one “sociocultural cage” to another.

In the final chapter, they defend individualistic modern society because it is less constraining than most of the “cages” we have lived in throughout history. They say that sociologists who see pathological elements are confused about our heritage. “Humans are not the descendants of monkey ancestors, as most sociological criticisms of modernity imply.” (T&M 316) I can’t rightly say what “most sociological criticisms of modernity imply,” but I know that it wasn’t confusion about our primate ancestors that led Émile Durkheim to first describe anomie; rather, it was the study of a real phenomenon, the fact that people in modern societies seemed to be killing themselves at an alarming rate. Likewise, Liah Greenfeld’s current work aims to address a similar phenomenon: the emergence of mental illness with the rise of modernity and its increasing prevalence in particularly individualistic and anomic societies like America.

For me, the most frustrating part of this book was the misuse of Durkheim. At one point, they give a one paragraph summary of his work in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life and then guess, on the basis of occasionally observed gatherings of groups of chimpanzees, that “there may be a hardwired basis for this propensity to symbolize social relationships with sacred totems.” (T&M 148) Durkheim’s name is sprinkled throughout the book, and– in what appears to me an attempt to give sociological weight to a book more concerned with apes than humanity – they conclude by quoting Durkheim on the importance of turning to the past if we want to accomplish something useful. What they effectively do is turn all the way back past the emergence of the very thing that makes us human, which allows them to make such insightful speculations as, “Contemporary humans enjoy travel perhaps because they are evolved apes.” (T&M 307)

Unfortunately, Durkheim’s own mistake of making a god out of society allows his ideas to be easily misappropriated, such that Turner’s and Maryanski’s congregation of chimps howling out their innate emotions doesn’t seem a far cry from the effervescence of a religious ritual. We can summarize Durkheim’s misstep using Greenfeld’s words from an essay written 15 years ago: “…Durkheim imagined the emergent phenomenon of society as, fundamentally, physical energy generated by the physical proximity of individual biological organisms,…” (Greenfeld “Praxis” 132) It is nevertheless clear that when Durkheim talks about society, he is describing something other than a material force, namely, the emergent phenomenon of culture and mind. The following comes from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, interestingly enough, from his chapter on ‘The Notion of the Soul’:

“… there really is a part of ourselves that is not immediately subordinate to the organic factor: namely, everything inside us that represents society. The general ideas that religion or science imprint in our minds, the mental operations these ideas presuppose, the beliefs and feelings that are at the basis of moral life – all the higher forms of psychic activity that society awakens and develops in us – do not follow in the wake of the body, like our sensations and our bodily states. This is because, as we have shown, the world of representations in which social life unfolds is overlaid on its material substrate and does not originate there.” (Durkheim 201)

This “world of representations” is a world of symbols. We can define symbols as intentionally articulated signs. What I see described in the Origin of Societies is a kind of gradual emergence of culture, and kind of effortless slide to symbols from signs. Statements like “we know that symbolic capacities were enhanced as the brain grew,” and “with the first push for a larger brain in Homo habilis, it became possible to construct a more symbolic culture,” give me the impression that symbolic processing was occurring in the brains of our ancestors before the emergence of articulate speech. (T&M 113,110) But how could symbolic thought take place without symbols to be processed?

The elements that made possible the emergence of symbols (and therefore culture and the mind) were a highly developed brain, the use of signs, and the larynx, but this combination in no way made the emergent phenomenon likely. Greenfeld writes:

“The biological species of homo sapiens had completely evolved — brain, larynx, and all — hundreds of thousands of years before the mind made its first appearance among its members. This means that it was not caused by the organic combination that made it possible, but a result of a most improbable accident — the transformation (a complete change in character) of one of its elements.” (Greenfeld 77-78)

This transformation of sign to symbol – however exactly this incredible accident occurred – was the point of emergence for culture and the mind. I quote Greenfeld again, because I believe highlighting the difference between signs and symbols is necessary to distinguish mentalism from evolutionary theories describing a weak, gradual emergence of culture:

“The meaning (the significance) of a symbol was not given in the phenomenon it was signifying – its referent, or genetically; it was given to it by the context in which it was used, and increasingly this context became mostly the context of other symbols. Thus the significance of symbols constantly changed. Unlike signs, which could be very many, but whose number was essentially limited by their referents in the environment, symbols were endlessly proliferating. (The very introduction of a symbol would change the environment and initiate a symbolic chain reaction.) Unlike signs, which exist in sets, they, from the first formed systems, ever changing and becoming more complex and connected by constantly transforming ties of inter-dependence. Symbols, in other words, constituted a world of their own; an autonomous, self-creative world in which things were happening according to laws of causation which did not apply anywhere else.”   (Greenfeld 78 -79)

I feel it’s important to state, despite how obvious this may seem to some of you, that this symbolic reality was made possible only by some collectivity. The homo sapiens who first discovered the ability to intentionally articulate a sign would have had to intentionally articulate to someone in order to spark the symbolic process which has created the world we live in today. Therefore, while the symbolic process occurs only in individual brains, to see it as a product of individual brains is a mistake.

Steven Pinker, in the The Stuff of Thought (2007), puts forth the theory of conceptual semantics, the idea that the true “language of thought” is a set of innate concepts, closely corresponding to the Kantian categories of space, time, causality, substance, and so on. Like Turner and Maryanski with their emotional proto-language hypothesis, Pinker tends to treat language itself as a kind of secondary phenomenon, almost coincidental to our innate conceptual processes. In a section of the book arguing against linguistic determinism, he writes:

“One reason that the language we speak can’t be too central in our mental functioning is that we had to learn it in the first place. It’s not hard to imagine how language acquisition might work if children could figure out some of the events and intentions around them and tried to map them onto the sounds coming out of their parents’ mouths. But how a raw stream of noise could conjure up concepts in the child’s mind out of nothing is a mystery. It’s not surprising that studies of the minds of prelinguistic infants have shown them to be sensitive to cause and effect, human agency, spatial relations, and other ideas that form the core of conceptual structure.” (Pinker 149)

But is Pinker saying that humans are the only animals sensitive to cause and effect or spatial relations? To demonstrate the existence and operation of this innate “language of thought,” he has to actually break down language itself. In other words, it is only when confronted with a system of symbols that these innate capacities or tendencies can have the sort of explicit work to do which Pinker describes. Apart from culture, we probably only possess these biological sensitivities to a slightly greater degree than other very intelligent animals.

At points, Pinker’s resistance to the idea of mind as a symbolic process is very clear, and rather weak. Using the example of Shakespeare, he argues that “a name really has no definition in terms of other words, concepts, or pictures,” but rather “points to a person in the world in the same way that I can point to a rock in front of me right now.” I understand that the thoughts that occur to me – what I know or feel about Shakespeare, – are not a definition of Shakespeare.  However, the flow of ideas and images which begins when I hear his name is much more than a connection to “the original act of christening” as Pinker puts it – it is steeped in the cultural context in which I learned about Shakespeare, and includes innumerable strands of connection to other ideas which, removed from the context of the symbolic process happening in my head, bear no relation whatsoever to the sound Shakespeare’s parents decided would signify their newborn child.  (Pinker 12)

Pinker’s theory still leaves us with the problem of the emergence of culture, and seems unable to account for the development of cultural differences apart from the idea that they are merely the result of the peculiar interplay of a set of biologically programmed concepts.

In Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained (1992), it seems to me there is also no strict emergence of culture in terms of a transformation from signs to symbols. He mentions “communicative (or quasi-communicative) acts” in which hominids would have shared useful information with one another -“asked” and “answered” each others questions – and hypothesizes that a hominid would have discovered that he could ask and answer his own questions, this over time becoming a silent internalized cognitive process. Again, like in Turner and Maryanski’s retelling, signs slide into symbols without much notice. (Dennett 194-197)

Once culture does exist, (I don’t feel I can say “emerge” and remain consistent with Dennett’s rendition), the law that governs its evolution is natural selection. Dennett subscribes to idea of the meme, defined by Richard Dawkins as a “unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.,” (in Dennett 202) Dennett tells us that Dawkins meant this to be taken literally: “Meme evolution is not just analogous to biological or genetic evolution, not just a process that be metaphorically described in these evolutionary idioms, but a phenomenon that obeys the laws of natural selection exactly. The theory of evolution by natural selection is neutral regarding the differences between memes and genes; these are just different kinds of replicators evolving in different media at different rates.” (Dennett 202) Memes spread (and mutate), not necessarily because they are good for the individuals whose brains they infest, but simply because they are good replicators. Meme-vehicles are essentially physical – books, recordings, buildings, etc. – but, “memes still depend at least indirectly on one or more of their vehicles spending at least a brief, pupal stage in a remarkable sort of meme nest: a human mind.” (Dennett 206) Memes therefore are in competition for residence in a limited number of minds – memes may aid or block or be neutral to other memes.

It is definitely possible to see the meme story as culture in the brain, but lest we get confused, we should remind ourselves that culture is a symbolic process. A meme is an artificial chunk, chopped out of the process, removed from the mind, the only context in which elements of culture come alive. Attempting to explain culture by a law that supposedly governs the transmission of discrete units of culture necessarily does violence to the idea of a symbolic process. It seems to me that with the mental gymnastics required to extend natural selection to units of culture – constantly grasping for analogies from biology to provide justification – there would be little time to even attempt a true historical analysis.

In an article published last year in Behavioral and Brain Sciences Dennett and Ryan McKay look at ‘The Evolution of Misbelief.’ Dawkins’ cultural evolution says that memes, (and both true and false beliefs would be memes), are selected because they are good self-replicators and not necessarily because they enhance fitness. But here Dennett and McKay take a much more biological approach, working from the general assumption that “evolution has designed us to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs.” (M&D 494) Not surprisingly, they dismiss psychotic delusions rather quickly as “instances of biological dysfunction,” and spend a good deal of their time addressing “religious (mis)beliefs.” (M&D 493) When Yorick Wilks makes an insightful response to the paper, asking why the discussion of misbeliefs which are not genetically heritable is “taking place in the context of natural selection and Darwinian evolution,” they seem to duck behind the cover of the cultural evolution claim which they advanced with very little force or substance in the original article. (Wilks 539) If they can simultaneously apply the law of natural selection to two very different orders of phenomena – memes, as they call them, and genes – then it looks like they get to have their cake and eat it too. “Gene-culture co-evolution” looks to me like a seductive catch-all that explains very little.

While I feel I’ve only had time to briefly sketch the differences between mentalism and evolutionary psychology, and I especially regret not being able to address the specific structures of the mind as Greenfeld describes them, I felt it was important to first deal with this symbolic reality in general. The original title of this paper, ‘Evolutionary Psychology: A Stone Age Mindset,’ emerged simply out of the need to create a title for the conference program, but now that it’s all said and done I’m not sure it’s the most fitting. Still, it reflects my frustration with an approach that is stuck in the past, looking at humanity from tens of thousands to millions of years away from where we are now, telling us what we are based on what “science” seems to say we should be, dogmatically drawing authority from the name of Darwin, floundering out of its depth in a symbolic reality it has not even begun to explain. Humanity, a most worthy subject of study, deserves better.

Posted on April 27, 2010 - by David

Mentalism, Madness, and the Mind

The Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences announces a Student Conference on:

Mentalism, Madness, & the Mind

The conference will be held in Room 312 of the George Sherman Union,
775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Saturday, May 1, 2010, 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The public is welcome.

This Student Conference was inspired by the discussions of Professor Liah
Greenfeld’s Modernity Seminar participants from the 2009-2010 academic year.
These discussions addressed the relationship between culture and the mind by
examining mental illness of unknown etiology–schizophrenia and manic
depressive illness–in an historical comparative perspective. The panelists’ bring
their diverse backgrounds–trained in disciplines including sociology,
anthropology, political theory, philosophy, and neuroscience– to bear on their
presentations on mentalism, madness, and the mind.

Conference Program

1:00 pm

Opening Remarks by Katrina Demulling

1:10 pm to 3:00 pm
Panel I. Comparing Mentalism with Existing Explanations of the Mind and Culture

David Phillippi, “Evolutionary Psychology: A Stone Age Mindset”
Megan Faralli, “Psychoanalysis and Culture”
Mark Simes, “Social Neuroscience: Premises and Promises”

3:20 pm to 5:50 pm
Panel II. Understanding Mental Health and Mental Disease

Anna Graves, “Pregnancy Cravings through the Lens of Medical Anthropology”
Henry Feng, “Red Badge of Courage, Invisible Scars of War: Understanding Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder Through the Broken Identities of Combat Veterans”
Javier Soler, “Megalomania and Modernity”
Ben Solomon, ” A Cultural Prescription: The Key to Psychological Recovery”

5:50 pm
Concluding Remarks by Prof. Liah Greenfeld

Posted on April 18, 2010 - by David

Darwin in the English Department?

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an article on the “Next Big Thing” in English, discussing the growing movement of scholars looking to incorporate science, or more specifically, theories of evolutionary psychology, into the study of literature:

Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said “it’s a new moment of hope” in an era when everyone is talking about “the death of the humanities.” To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half. Zealous enthusiasm for the politically charged and frequently arcane theories that energized departments in the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s — Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis — has faded.

A student of literature myself, I was required on more than one occasion to read these ridiculous works of criticism and reference them in my own critical essays, so I can certainly feel Mr. Gottschall’s pain. But does rejecting the useless modes of interpretation that were popularized over the last few decades mean that Darwin becomes the authority on the modern novel?

At about 5 and half minutes in to this video, part 3 in a series of 6 interviewing scholars “on literature and science,” listening to Gottschall made it clear to me that some people in the humanities are pretty much fed up and ashamed of the failure of literary study to provide the kind of objective, enduring knowledge that science has been able to give us, and they feel it’s high time to start sharing in science’s success.

5:41

…the ideas of one generation of literary scholars can rarely survive the critique of the next generation of literary scholars, and it’s a very different model than what you find in the sciences, where again, in the sciences, they’re mostly wrong too, but there is also this slow accretion of information, knowledge, concepts, that most reasonable people have to admit are probably true, and so my hope is that we can retain the best aspects of our traditional modes and supplement them with new tools from the sciences.

Soon after the initial article was published, a debate titled ‘Can ‘Neuro Lit Crit’ Save the Humanities’ appeared on the New York Times website, with a number of authors and English professors contributing their opinions. There was nothing resembling unanimous agreement about the value of this new approach, but there was a general consensus that the humanities are suffering from a serious lack of funding and lack of interest. Without even considering the interaction of various social and institutional forces leading to this state of crisis in the humanities, I can say from experience that most people who don’t study literature (and plenty of us who do) are very skeptical about its usefulness. I remember this embarrassed, can’t-look-you-in-the-eyes-or-speak-clearly feeling that would wash over when someone asked me what I was studying and I had to admit that I was an English major. The response to my confession was usually, “so what do you wanna do, you wanna, like, be an English teacher?” and I would mumble something about wanting to write. What I wrote were poems, and a lot of my marginal work (i.e poems scribbled in the margins of the notebooks I was supposed to be filling with pertinent information from class) was dedicated to the frustration and disillusionment of studying literature.

So I can understand the element of personal crisis that leads a literary scholar to look for a more solid foundation to stand on. In last few minutes of the video posted above, Joseph Carroll describes how his frustration with the condition of literary scholarship drove him to a kind of intellectual breaking point:

8:54

“I need something more wholesome, more adequate, more coherent, closer to the truth, and then I went and read Darwin and I had a sort of cleansing vision of deep time, humans emerging out of millions of years of evolution, it just cut through all of the… intellectual confusion at superficial levels that prevailed in literary study, so I set about trying to reconstruct literary study… working from the ground up…using an evolutionary vision of human nature as the basis for reconstructing all the concepts that we need to understand literature”

So what does this kind of work actually look like?

One example is The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, a collection of essays from the evolutionary perspective published in 2005, with contributions from Gottschall and Carroll as well as several of the other authorities. I think this review, by Travis Landry of the University of Washington, published in Evolutionary Psychology, (an obviously friendly audience), is telling:

On the heels of these dueling forewords [by E.O. Wilson and Frederick Crews] comes the editors’ anecdotal introduction, highlighted by a rather unremarkable recounting of the misunderstood Darwinian graduate student, Jonathan Gottschall (“Jon’s Story”), who finally meets his open-minded, maverick mentor, David Sloan Wilson (“David’s Story”). They state the collection’s three guiding questions: What is literature about? What is literature for? What does it mean to apply a scientific perspective like evolutionary theory to a non-scientific subject like literary studies? An attempt to resolve these queries begins with part one, “Evolution and Literary Theory.” This section aims “to grapple with some of the problems and opportunities presented by the collapse of the constructivist foundations of contemporary literary theory” (4). Perhaps someone should tell the constructivists (apparently all literary critics who are not naturalists) about this “collapse.” In any event, the editors are quick to qualify: “a more restrained version of social constructivism is fully compatible with the emerging evolutionary models of human nature” (4). Such disclaimers, grounded in the reassurance that “the nature-nurture dichotomy is a false one” (4), represent a recurrent strategy used throughout The Literary Animal to ease imagined misgivings about takeover, but they do little to temper an all too often pedantic tone and the unmistakable, unapologetic imbalance of power, evident each time it boils down to which side holds the knowledge key.

While Landry does find some things to praise in The Literary Animal, he’s clearly turned off by the air of superiority running throughout the work, and he restates this criticism in the final paragraph of his review:

There is little doubt that this text contains enough quality ideas to merit an attentive read, and its intended public, both in the humanities and the sciences, should take advantage of this resource in order to become better informed about a legitimate discourse that does not seem likely to fade away anytime soon. Nonetheless, one repeatedly gets the sense that these naturalist critics would be better served without their ‘us against the world’ mentality. The empirical chest thumping and emblazoned rhetoric that permeate this work quickly wear thin and may ultimately alienate the very literary critics these scholars hope to convert. In the final analysis, greater humility and a more respectful voice are certain to be more persuasive and will ultimately allow the interpretive fruits of this evolutionary enterprise, which is strong enough to stand on its own, to do the talking.

Landry, I’m afraid, misses the point. All the talk about an evolutionary perspective complementing existing approaches, about taking both culture, (whatever they mean when they use that word), and biology into account seems to amount to little more than a strategy of temporary appeasement before the final takeover. If that sounds paranoid or harsh, consider what Joseph Carroll has to say about the brand new journal, the Evolutionary Review, of which he is a founding member and co-editor:

…the aim of the journal is to give evidence that evolutionary perspective, “this view of life,” one of Darwin’s phrases, is adequate to encompass every aspect of human concern…

…the idea is that the evolutionary perspective is an ultimate, encompassing, final, absolute, total perspective… this is what makes people most nervous outside the field… you start talking about thousand year reich, you know, and you think “well you’ve got global, imperialist ambitions intellectually,” and it’s true [chuckles], it’s absolutely true… there’s a wager, the wager is that the evolutionary perspective is adequate… as the central linking conceptual framework that forms a genuine scientifically established foundation of knowledge for everything in the social sciences and the humanities, we think that’s true…

This attitude renders empty all their talk about “consilience” and “emergent properties” (see pt. 4 of the “on literature and science” series). In short, culture is seen as determined rather than constrained by biology. It’s difficult for me to understand how the theory of evolution and ideas about the behavior of stone-age man are adequate for understanding the humanities, which Joseph Carroll himself calls “the highest level of emerging complexity.”

William Deresiewicz, in an essay called ‘Adaptation: on Literary Darwinism’ published in The Nation last year, gives a strong critique of this movement, providing good background on the history and nature of its goals, and summarizes the dismal state of affairs which allowed the evolutionary perspective to enter the discussion. By touching on the work of a number of the prominent figures in this emerging field, Deresiewicz is able to address some of the most glaring problems with the evolutionary psychological approach. It’s definitely worth reading; I can say that he states some of my own criticisms in more detail and in better context than I am able to do here. Towards the end of the essay, he gets to what is, as far as literary scholarship is concerned, perhaps the most important point:

Seeking to displace Theory, literary Darwinism may end by becoming it. Each is reductive. Each leads in outlandish directions that make sense only to initiates. Each has a penchant for hero worship. (For Dutton, the father of natural selection is not “Darwin,” but “Darwin himself.” Carroll makes a trinity of Darwin, Wilson and Pinker.) Each is predictable. If Marxist criticism is always about the rise of the bourgeoisie, literary Darwinism is always about mate selection or status competition. Each looks to literature only for confirmation of its beliefs. Shakespeare, it turns out, agrees with Darwin, as he once agreed with Freud and Frye. (Though if science is the exclusive standard of truth for the Darwinists, it’s not clear why it matters whom Shakespeare agrees with.) Authors who won’t get with the program–who don’t deal with mate selection or status competition, or refuse to solicit our attention in evolutionarily correct ways–are demoted in rank. (Darwinian aesthetics exhibits a strong antimodernist animus, as if it were unnatural to prefer Conrad to Kipling, or Rothko to Rockwell.) That so many of the greatest works of literary art–the Iliad, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Hamlet, King Lear, Paradise Lost, Faust, Moby-Dick, the novels of Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Woolf and Coetzee–are ultimately concerned not with mate selection or status competition, however seriously they might consider such matters, but with the human place in the cosmos; that such a commitment is precisely what begins to distinguish these works from the kinds of things that are better studied with polling data and cheek swabs; that the finest books demand a criticism that attends to what makes them unique, not what makes them typical: these are not possibilities that literary Darwinism envisions.

From what I can see, evolutionary psychology used in the study of literature functions in essentially the same way as the theories which Carroll and Gottschall are so critical of. It is just another game for clever people to play, but the authority of the name ‘Darwin’ and the use of buzz-words like “selection” “adaptation” and “fitness” create the illusion that this is somehow a more empirical, ‘scientific’ approach.

In part 2 of the series, Philip Kitcher, philosophy professor from Columbia, criticizes the general and haphazard way in which a few pieces of evolutionary theory get applied to humans:

9:10

“It always amazes me the ease with which people who have spent years of their lives as it might be working on some other organism, social insects for example, very well studied, E.O Wilson has an amazingly deep and detailed knowledge of the behavior of social insects, people think “well you know I’ve done social insects and now it’s just a matter of applying the same principles to human beings,” but you know we aren’t actually that similar to the social insects, there are quite a lot of differences and those need to be taken into account…”

I’m obviously very skeptical not only of this approach to literature, but of evolutionary psychology in general. If biology studies life, and physics studies the laws governing the physical world, what does evolutionary psychology study? It can’t study so-called “evolutionary man,” because he’s not around for us to talk to, nor has he left records by which we can know him. Furthermore, the assumption that the human mind is a product of evolution over millions, or at least hundreds of thousands of years means that historical comparison over the past few thousand years probably won’t tell us much. What emerges then is a universalistic view of the mind which looks at the complex, diverse, symbolic behavior of human individuals and societies and tries to pinpoint the more basic, animalistic drives that are working underneath to determine the behavior. Under the multitude of dramatically different cultures, they find a set of motives/traits common to all man, destroying the possibility of a culture possessing its own internal logic that may not have developed towards “evolutionary fitness.”

As I said earlier, the occasional reassurances that they are not trying to replace or override discussion of culture, but to complement it, seem pretty hollow. When they use the word culture, they are talking about the shared practices of a particular society, not the general symbolic process of culture, Culture with a capital C, if you will. If there is no accounting for the appearance of particular cultures other than as products of biological evolution, as adaptations to specific physical environments (i.e no theory of culture as an emergent phenomenon, something more than biology) then obviously Culture as such is reduced to evolution/genetics/the functioning of the brain, and with such a view, there is in fact no reason that evolutionary psychology should defer to, or even consider, any other approach to the humanities.

My own approach to literature changed when I began to study with Liah Greenfeld in 2004, as a sophomore English major at Boston University. Those of you who have been reading this blog are hopefully becoming acquainted with her work. The following is a very brief summary of some of the fundamental principles of her view which lead me to reject the position of evolutionary psychology.

• Humans lack a genetically given order necessary for survival
• We derive this order from society
• Society is structured symbolically, on the basis of culture– the process of symbolic transmission of human ways of life across generations .
• This symbolic process occurs simultaneously on the individual and collective levels, with individual human minds as the only the active elements of culture.
• Culture is an emergent phenomenon and a reality sui generis. As Greenfeld writes, “the neural processes by means of which the cultural process occurs serve only as boundary conditions outside of which it cannot occur, but are powerless to shape the nature and direction of the cultural process.”

True ‘consilience’ would take full account of the emergent nature of culture. As the characteristic which distinguishes humanity from all other forms of life, culture is the proper subject for the empirical study of humanity in all its aspects, and it is precisely such a science that Greenfeld is attempting to establish. Up until now, her published work has dealt most directly with modern culture, but her forthcoming book seeks to establish the theoretical groundwork and philosophical justification for the empirical study of humanity, while examining a particular phenomenon which she believes is culturally caused, (mental illness).

I think it’s evident to anyone who watches those videos that there is a highly personal aspect to the work these people are doing. Like myself, I bet they entered college with a passion for literature and a notion that they were embarking on a quest for deep truths – that they would, in fact, learn something about human nature. But the humanities, as an institution, could not live up to our hopes. So, Carroll and Gottschall and the rest of them turned to science, and it’s easy enough to see why. Science enjoys a privileged place in modern society, and though part of this can be explained culturally and historically, (Greenfeld has written extensively about the emergence of science as a social institution in 17^th century England), the fact remains that science has given as more objective knowledge of reality than any other method of inquiry. In ‘Literature and Science as Social Institutions,’ Greenfeld writes, “However indirect and imperfectly systematic and effective, science, one has to conclude in all fairness, is the most direct, systematic, and effective way to objective, valid empirical knowledge available to mankind.” The thing is, evolutionary psychology is not science. It is a set of theories (and not a particularly coherent one) that some people are using to understand the world around them, in effect, to provide the mental order that nature neglected to encode in our genes. For me, it is not a satisfying view of the world. It does not help me understand the society I live in, it does not explain why I think the way I do, it does not ring true with my experience. Science, at its most basic, is a method, and when a particular science is developed and equipped to study specific aspect of empirical reality, valid and valuable knowledge can be gained. Because culture does not constitute merely a more complex level of a biologically given nature, but a qualitatively distinct layer of reality, a new science is called for. With the construction of the ‘New Humanities,’ these scholars literally want to take us back to the Stone Age. My goal is to help build the alternative.

These thoughts are being developed into a longer piece comparing evolutionary psychology to mentalism – the name given to the theory Liah Greenfeld has developed, to be presented at a student conference at Boston University on May 1, 2010. Details will be posted soon.

Posted on April 8, 2010 - by David

Health Care Reform and Impossible American Ideals

Since Barack Obama’s election in November of 2008, health care reform has been at the center of our nation’s attention. This debate has been almost inseparable from discussion of the ongoing economic crisis, both because of the question of what effect reform measures might have on the economy, and because many individuals are unemployed or making less money and cannot afford health insurance. Naturally, because the most visible players in this game are politicians, much of the discourse surrounding the health care debate has been boiled down to Democrats vs. Republicans, or, (to essentially say the same thing twice), liberals vs. conservatives. Obama and the Democrats have been demonized by their opposition as socialists instituting a totalitarian regime, and the responses of those pushing for reform have not been much kinder.

As we all know, the new legislation has been passed, and with the sounds of celebration on one side and apocalyptic lament on the other, it still seems easiest to conceive of this issue in terms of a conflict between two political parties or groups with opposed economic interests. It strikes me, though, that there is a more basic and more powerful force driving this debate, and it goes straight to the heart of what it means to be an American. This is the contradiction between our two supreme national values: liberty and equality.

The chapter on America in Liah Greenfeld’s Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, provides an excellent analysis of how conflicting ideals of liberty and equality have shaped the nation’s history and identity.

“It must be realized that individualistic-libertarian nationalism sets itself an impossible task. A nation, ideally, is a society composed of individuals equal in their human worth. But in fact such perfect equality cannot be achieved. The reality of an individualistic nation and its ideals are necessarily inconsistent, and this inconsistency breeds discontent and frustration.” (449-450)

Before America was truly a “nation,” (according to Greenfeld’s careful account this was not until after the Civil War), and in fact even before independence from England, liberty and equality existed here to a greater degree than in any country across the Atlantic, conferring on the individuals who experienced these values an unparalleled sense of dignity. Of course, despite rhetoric about the natural birthrights of all mankind, initially only white male land-owners could enjoy these rights. The inconsistency between social reality and the professed ideals would inevitably have to be confronted. Greenfeld writes of the decades preceding the Civil War:

“That equality in American society had advanced beyond anything imaginable elsewhere at the time cannot be disputed. But the American society was also committed to equality to an extent that was unimaginable elsewhere. Thus, while the reality in America in this regard was incomparably better than in any other society, the gap between it and its brilliant ideal was nonetheless wider.”(452)

“Inequality inherent in social reality was blatantly inconsistent with American national commitment. In a society which believed that “all men are created equal,” the denial of equality meant that one was not human, was less of a human than others.” (453)

Of course, slavery, the most blatant contradiction of the national principles, was eventually abolished, and, though it took almost another 60 years, women were given the right to vote in 1920. In many ways, the course of American history can be characterized as an attempt to close the gap between social reality and the national ideals. But there is an important distinction between equality of rights under the law and equality of conditions. Equal rights can be, to a large extent, provided by government, but they cannot guarantee that conditions will be equal. On the contrary, in a free society where individuals are not only able, but expected to achieve for themselves what they can, inequality of conditions will necessarily result. Even if we admit that “all men are created equal” does not mean that everyone is born with the same natural ability, Americans still desire equality of opportunity – the sense that we all start on a level playing field, that achievement will not be dictated by inherited wealth, geography, or social connections. But common sense and observation tell us that equality of opportunity is not achieved through equality of rights. The federal government, then, becomes a means of creating equality of conditions:

“In a society which sets great store by equality, economic inequality acquires a significance which goes beyond the effects of differences in material well-being. It is necessarily seen as unjust by the “have-nots” and is perceived as an affront to their dignity, because it belies the proposition that all men are created equal and have equal rights to life and happiness. Equality in liberty (that is, self-government) becomes less important in such situations. In fact, rather than being regarded as an absolute good, it is likely to be seen as a tool for the perpetuation and concealment of existing inequalities. Liberty is infinitely divisible; other goods are not. An increase in the liberty of another does not imply a proportional decrease in one’s own; increase in another’s share of a finite quantity of something, whether power or wealth, does. When these resources become scarce, the demand for equality of opportunity, dignity, and respect commensurate with one’s abilities gives way to the demand for equality of result. It is clear that equality of opportunity, which does not provide for the equality of result, would appeal more strongly to those who have the qualifications necessary to realize the opportunities open to them. It is also clear that in the early American society, actually characterized by equality of conditions, equality of opportunity would be generally acceptable without special provisions for the equality of result because it would appear that the latter was implied, inherent in the former. But when actual equality of conditions no longer obtains, the provisions for equality of opportunity only (the legal equality of rights) must appear unsatisfactory. The transformation in the nature of desired equality began to be evident in America in the 1830s. It initiated the transformation in the perception of the functions of the government: government as essentially a protective agency (guarding against encroachments on the people’s rights by others) no longer appeared sufficient; there was a feeling that it should act as a distributive agency. This, in turn, affected the attitudes towards centralization, making it acceptable and even necessary.” (439)

We know that equality of health care does not exist, and this bothers us. It is difficult to accept that some individuals might be held back from achieving their goals or providing for their families, that children might not grow up to enjoy life on earth to the fullest, because they could not afford a treatment that millions of others receive. At the same time, we understand that health care is not an infinite resource – many opponents of the new legislation who are more or less satisfied with their current health insurance fear there will be “rationing” of care. This idea is offensive to the American mind, because it limits the individual’s ability to obtain the level of care he has worked hard for. Those wealthier individuals who currently enjoy a high level of care also fear having to pay a greater portion than others in order to fund a system which threatens to limit their choices. Can coverage be expanded without also being limited? It seems some must give more so others can receive more. While the goals may be liberty and equality, this legislation may actually send a contradictory message. If some people experience a reduction in their level of care, does that tell them that hard work doesn’t pay off after all? Does providing coverage to the uninsured send the message that they are unable to provide for themselves?

Of course there are also serious concerns about how this health care bill will impact the national debt. If the nation’s commitment to equality results in a worsening of the economic situation, liberty and equality will be put at further risk.  But the supreme value we place on the individual life, and the belief in equal access to all forms of treatment as a fundamental right, may prove to be dangerously expensive. In a March 31^st article from the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Molly Cooke says it’s time to give up the old lie that doctors give 100% to each and every patient, and advises that considerations of cost must be taught in med school:

“…we must abandon the myth of the physician as single-minded advocate for any amount of benefit for every patient. We make all kinds of choices in caring for patients; some involve denying care that patients perceive as — and that might actually be — beneficial. Given that we make value-based decisions about the deployment of other finite resources, such as our time and the use of beds in the intensive care unit, why not about costly treatments? In fact, numerous studies in the United States and Europe confirm that bedside rationing of care is common practice. Problematically, it is done in an occult and unpredictable manner.”

Practical as this sounds, I think these are tough words to hear for most Americans. When it comes to health and life, the idea of dollar-value calculations is extremely distasteful to us. It is not that we are fundamentally opposed to the idea of discontinuing care or deciding against a potentially beneficial treatment. It makes perfect sense to us when a family decides it’s time to “pull the plug” on a relative whose chance of recovery is virtually non-existent. We don’t question the cancer patient who finally elects to move home and receive hospice care rather than undergo another risky and painful surgery, even though it could buy him some extra time. We accept these decisions because they are made on the basis of individual dignity and liberty. Of course, with advances in medicine and technology our options are constantly multiplying. That any of these options might be denied to us on the basis of cost almost amounts to cultural blasphemy, but this may be the reality.

A New York Times article published online yesterday also acknowledged the impending cost crisis in health care. Author David Leonhardt identifies some of the same cultural values I mentioned above as obstacles, but is hopeful that reform measures which require that patients be provided with more information may actually help to keep spending down:

“The health act requires Medicare and other agencies to help hospitals and doctors give patients more information — which is practically a no-lose proposition. In the course of receiving more control and more choice, two distinctly American values, patients will probably help hold down costs.”

Whether or not this proves to be true, it’s interesting that this potential solution still relies on the sense of individual liberty and dignity.

My intention is not to guess at whether or not health care reform will work, but to suggest that the principles driving this national debate are older than the nation itself. In an introduction to President Obama’s speech following the historic signing, Vice-President Joe Biden told us that, “For much too long, for much too long, Americans have been denied what every human being is entitled to — decent, affordable health care.” I am sure that 200 years ago, no one in the nation could have imagined health care as a basic human right, but the identification of the American value of equality with basic human rights would have made perfect historical sense. For better or worse, it seems America will keep striving to create a world that matches our impossible ideals.

Posted on March 27, 2010 - by David

Texas Rewrites Textbooks, But Will Kids Even Read Them?

Over the last several weeks, the preliminary approval of new social studies curriculum standards by the Texas State Board of Education on March 12^th has turned into major national news. As the story goes, because Texas is one of the nation’s largest textbook purchasers, the standards it sets will impact the content of textbooks across the country as publishers try to meet the Lone Star state’s requirements. And why is this such a problem? Because a group of conservative board members pushed through a number of controversial revisions, and rejected many of the changes proposed by liberals in a 10 – 5 vote split down party lines.

These changes include:

• An emphasis on the Christian identity and values of the founding fathers and a shift away from teaching about the separation of church and state. (As a result, Thomas Jefferson get’s scratched off the list of thinkers who inspired revolutions in the 18^th and 19^th century, replaced, according to the New York Times, by St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and William Blackstone).
• Referring to the U.S government as a “constitutional republic” rather than calling it “democratic.”
• Using the term “free-enterprise system” in place of “capitalism” to avoid its negative connotations.
• Including in discussions of McCarthyism that “the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.”
• A Greater focus on the conservative movement of the 70’s and 80’s

If you’re really interested in finding out about the revisions, I’d suggest you skip the major news outlets and check out this annotated version of the Board’s standards that was put together by writers at www.texastribune.org.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s a clip from ABC’s Nightline, highly critical of lame-duck board member Don McLeroy who seems to be the driving force in this “conservative bloc.”

And I couldn’t resist including the less reverent but more entertaining perspectives of Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Don’t Mess With Textbooks
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
I’s on Edjukashun – Texas School Board
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

If you watched the clips above or read any of the news articles out there, you probably picked up on the less than subtle jabs at some of the prominent conservative board members who have little or no background in education or history. The New York Times refers to Don McLeroy as “a dentist by training.” David Bradley is characterized as “a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate.” Whether or not these are valid criticisms, they’re definitely easy shots, and it’s hard to blame journalists for taking them.

So what happens next? The Texas Education Agency website will post a document containing the revisions by mid-April, at which time an official 30- day public comment period will begin. But everyone seems to expect that when the Board reconvenes in May, the ratification of the new curriculum will occur without much further discussion.

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When I started to think about what these changes might actually mean to students, a thought occurred to me which wasn’t mentioned in any of the media coverage. I’m not sure how else to put this, so I’ll just say it… Most high school students will not read these textbooks. They will be able to pass U.S history with a minimal amount of reading if they pay a little bit of attention in class and maybe take some notes when the teacher reviews the material. All this hype is based on the assumption that students are actually reading what’s printed, but what if that’s not the case?

I’m pretty sure my experience with American history was not typical. I attended a large public high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. There were around 750 students in my graduating class. In 11^th grade, I took AP (advanced placement) U.S History. I believe there were only two sections of the class, so if each class had approximately 25 kids, that’s about 50 total for the year. That means over 90% of my classmates got some other, less rigorous education in our nation’s history, split up between classes designated as honors, college prep, career prep, and basic instruction. Besides the fact that we were (supposed to be) the best and the brightest of our class, we had real incentive to learn because we were all hoping to score a 4 or a 5 on the AP exam and receive college credit for our work in the class (BU actually gave me credit for 2 U.S history classes).  

This class was no joke. Our main text, The American Pageant, was the fattest book in my locker, over a thousand pages long, and we were expected to have read a good chunk of it over the summer before we showed up to school. Its companion was The American Spirit, a book of primary source materials compiled by the authors of The American Pageant. Add to this occasional readings from After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, a collection of cases studies from American history designed to teach students to think critically about context and how “history” and “the facts” come into being. Of course there were also novels, biographies, and other historical texts which the ambitious or desperate-to-pull-his-grade-up-at-the-last-second student could read and write about for extra credit, and the various relevant news and magazine stories of that our teacher brought in from time to time.

There was a lot to read, and I didn’t come close to reading it all. I don’t think any of us did (except maybe our valedictorian, who google tells me is currently doing graduate work in quantum physics at Stanford – my head hurts just looking at it). I’m sure a lot of students were like me, and tried to cram as much of the textbook as possible into their minds in the few nights before the AP test in May. Throughout most of the year, I skimmed the textbook on some of the nights we had assigned reading (which was most nights), and neglected to even carry the massive thing home on others. I think I probably absorbed the majority of the information through the instruction and discussion which took place in class each day. I don’t think I’m generalizing too much from my own experience when I say that regardless of the level of the history class, the teacher’s particular methods and what he/she emphasizes has more of an impact on what students will learn than what is written in the textbook. A good teacher will acknowledge when there is controversy on a particular topic, present the various positions with as little bias as possible, and encourage students to think critically about the information before they jump to conclusions. Obviously, this is an ideal, and there’s no doubt that the political views of a history teacher are likely to become visible in the classroom, at least occasionally. In my class, we spent a good deal of time talking about current events, (which tend to be the most charged with emotion), and considering that this was the year that the Towers fell and the war in Afghanistan started, there was plenty to talk about. Interestingly, because we had so much to cover, we barely even got up to 1980 in our textbook, so the years of this “conservative resurgence,” which seem central to the Texas Board’s amendments, were passed over fairly quickly.

The point is, regardless of how influential the Texas Board of Education may be in the composition of new American History textbooks, the claims that they are determining what the rest of the nation’s kids will learn are exaggerated. As journalist Brian Thevenot of The Texas Tribune points out in “The Textbook Myth,’ (by FAR the best article I’ve read on this subject), technology has made it much easier for publishers to customize their content to meet the standards of different states, lessening the impact of Texas’s large market share. Even within Texas, new laws regarding digital materials may undermine the power of the conservatively-crafted textbook. Thevenot writes:

Because of their sheer buying power, large states with statewide textbook adoption processes did once indeed influence what went into the books, which used to be printed almost exclusively in national editions, Diskey and other industry experts said. But since the mid-1990s and the rise of the state curriculum standards and testing movement, publishers have increasingly been forced to customize their books for different states, as well as for larger school districts in the roughly 30 states without statewide adoptions. Simultaneously, advances in publishing and printing technologies allow far more customization at lower cost, much like large newspapers that issue several geographically customized editions every day.

What’s more, rapidly shifting politics and the digital revolution in instructional materials promises to dilute the power of state school boards even further — both here in Texas and nationally. Texas remains one of only two states that has shunned the national standards movement being pushed out of Washington, which, if it progresses as expected, would no doubt dwarf the market influence of even giant states. And here in Texas, new legislation that impinges on the board’s previously well-guarded curricular turf allows Commissioner of Education Robert Scott, who does not report to the board, to create a separate list of approved digital materials over which the board has no say. The new law only requires that schools buy one “classroom set” of board-approved textbooks, rather than one for every student.

As Thevenot’s article suggests, even the idea that the new curriculum standards will drastically alter what students in Texas learn seems suspect. I understand that there are several layers of administration from the state to the district to the individual school which prescribe and monitor what kids should be learning. I also understand that for a teacher, going against the grain or trying to squeeze in extra lessons on excluded or controversial subjects can be risky and complicated. But if a teacher wants to spend 10 minutes talking about a little known Latino figure like Oscar Romero, or allow an interested student to write a report about him, does the Texas Board of Education’s vote against including him in the curriculum do anything to prevent that?

Though I’m skeptical about the impact of these changes, I’m not saying that what’s going on in Austin doesn’t matter. Certainly, I believe the attempt to balance out the perceived liberal bias by unabashedly injecting a conservative slant into the new standards demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of what it means to teach history. And the idea of a governmental mandate that praise for America’s “limited form of government” be included in the history books strikes me as just a bit ironic. But there is one important domain that all of the conservative muscle of the Texas Board of Education can’t do much to reshape: the internet. I suspect that as time goes on, despite what teachers and administrators might hope, kids who have grown up online will rely more heavily on google and Wikipedia for the answers to their history questions than the textbooks that get handed out at school. Simply put, it takes more effort to flip through a thick book and scan for key information than it does to type the name of an important historical figure into a search engine and find this key information already neatly packaged in hyperlinked, outlined form. Will this make lazy students even lazier? Perhaps, but I think it also opens doors for those students who are curious about what really happened. If there is controversy over a certain subject, they won’t have to look that hard to find it, and after informing themselves, they can draw their own conclusions. The message to conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education – don’t be surprised if these historical conclusions aren’t the same ones you’re about to vote into law.