Evo psych and the burden of proof

One criticism of evolutionary psychology is that the evidence is often not very strong. We can't perform controlled experiments. Even if something is present in all cultures we have studied, the cultures could just be parallel by happenstance. So critics will call evo psych stories they don't like "just so" stories.

The assumption is that the SSSM is true by default, meaning that any human trait can be transformed if culture is changed. All we have to do is change it. Unless evo psych can provide compelling evidence, SSSMers say its story is presumed false.

SSSM does not deserve the presumption of truth, that is, that all aspects of society are malleable until proven otherwise. If we have observed both A and its opposite in a number of stable human societies, that is strong evidence that A is not strongly caused by innate factors. But what if it has been present in just about all human cultures and has not been different, as far as we know? (Complete universality is not required for an evo psych story to be true. The Heaven's Gate cult -- a sort of mini-society -- believed in universal suicide in order to reach an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Shakers believed that human should not have sex and lived in a society with no reproduction. These cases do not disprove claims that a desire to survive and a desire to have sex are innate human tendencies.)

When faced with some aspect of society that is universal in human cultures that we have observed, the SSSM does not offer any compelling reasons why it can be changed -- at least I have never read any. Evo psych explanations are at least explanations with some basis in reasoning. They should be considered on an equal footing. A great deal of the time, our conclusion will be that we simply do not know yet if there is a significant innate influence or not.

There is a big difference between "is" and "ought". Science should always be about "is". This is a pointed rejection of the postmodern view that science (along with every other form of argument or information) just serves power. That certainly can happen, but it should be argued on a case-by-case basis, pointing to the particular power that is being served and links between those who push the view and that powerful interest.

There is a strong association between SSSM as a scientific position ("is") and progressivism as a political position ("ought"). They really should be separated.

I made a <blog post>  11 years ago with quotes from Peter Singer's book, "A Darwinian Left" (1999). He makes a series of suggestions about what we should and should not assume in formulating a leftist agenda that is also in line with evo psych principles. I think the post is still worth a look.

Progressives would like to transform society in some particular way, and are engaged in a political struggle to make it happen. They would typically appeal to the SSSM scientists to say it is possible. Opponents might appeal to evo psych theories to buttress their case that it cannot be done easily.

But evo psych scientists and SSSM scientists, as scientists, should have no opinion on the matter. They should consider the attempt to change society as the source of new data. A successful and stable change that does not require exertions anew in each generation is strong evidence that the supplanted aspect of human behavior did not have an innate basis. Failure would tend to weakly support any evo psych story -- not strongly because maybe the attempt was just done wrong. There really shouldn't be a distinction between SSSM scientists and evo psych scientists. They should all be just scientists, willing to adopt whichever position the data indicates for each aspect of human society that is studied.

Suppose we consider the view that evo psych is fundamentally a tool of the right. There is little evidence suggesting many evo psych scientists themselves have right-wing views. It is true that evo psych results will tend to be conservative, arguing against the possibility of transforming society. But they will also argue against misguided if well-intentioned attempts to change society. A critical example is the ideal of people working for the collective good without any reward accruing to them personally for doing a good job. Collective agriculture has always been a failure -- often catastrophic. It also might argue against utopian schemes where all children live in one specialized facility while adults live elsewhere. Such an arrangement was tried on some Israeli kibbutzim and was not popular with mothers and was soon discarded. That suggests women want their children around them on a daily basis, and likely has an innate source.

Evo psych will also argue against changes that those on the right might wish to make as well as ones progressives might wish to make. In arguing that women are wired by evolution to hate rape, evo psych is lending support to the idea that we could not transform society so that rape is not such a big deal. That hasn't been a serious proposal publicly in the US, though it seems lots of men hold that view privately -- a likely factor in police skepticism about rape reports. It shows evo psych's results can be progressive. If we suggest that women have an innate tendency to want to not give their babies up for adoption, that argues that any attempt to force less-than-ideal mothers to do so will face serious resistance, even it we argue it's for the benefit of the child.

Evo psych is not inherently against progressive values. And its proposed explanations for innate tendencies in human behavior should be considered on an equal footing with other explanations that claim no innate source for the tendency.