Comments on: Are we designed for violence?

By: Alex Fradera

Alex Fradera — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 10:24:34 +0000

I’m glad that’s what you took away from the Blank Slate. I worry that there are two polemic aims of the Blank Slate, one laudable and one rather more shady. The first is to take away the Blank Slate, and moreover show that we need not fear its loss. That part is argued with lucid reasoning and a good degree of objectivity. The second is to say ‘in this post-Blank-Slate world, what political objectives should we be working towards?’ – the so-called “Hot Button” sections.
This second section rides on the neutral, reasonable nature of the first, making it seem more objective than it actually is In his preamble, Pinker admits that this section is more charged: opinion as well as assessment. But this quickly becomes obscured, and the movers and shakers who will take these messages and say e.g. ‘science proves we must use punitive sentencing’ need to be corrected, by pointing out where is the science, where is the opinion, and where is the scientism.
I think it is possible to conduct research looking at underlying programs of violence etc – and I’m sure many if not most of them are being pursued. These include: looking at the developmental time-course of violent behaviour – is it absent at certain ages and present in others, does it seem too sophisticated to be learned, do children act as if to intentionally cause pain before they are understood to mentally represent the feelings of others; a serious investigation into the epidimiology of violence with a consideration of base-rates – so making pronouncements about how humans have always had a bloody history doesn’t cut it. In my opinion the strongest evidence for a hard-wired program would be evidence that neurological damage selectively impairs violent behaviour – this is the classic way to show evidence for a specific brain/mind module, by demonstrating selective impairment. The cases described in the post and Blank Slate of psychopathy are in effect the opposite of this, showing evidence for a ‘pacifist’ module if they show anything at all; it may seem counterintuitive but if you want to pick extreme cases to demonstrate designed violence you should look at the non-violent and figure it out from there. (This wouldn’t require zero violent behaviour, but if found a class of actions that ordinary people are capable of doing was denied to that patient you could conclude that those actions are tightly controlled by that brain area, and suggestive of violent design.
My biggest problem is I think people are trying to hang a label – ‘violent nature’ or what have you – when it is not apparent what we really mean by that.

By: Juzam29

Juzam29 — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 01:44:10 +0000

It has been a while since I read the Blank Slate but I think what I took away from it is the concept of the so called Blank Slate is a myth. I do not see this book as been written for scientists, none the less some issues raised are quite important to those in the field of psychology. Like all people we are susceptible to commonly held ideas, but we have a particular obligation to try and find answers that are not bound by myths and false beliefs. I agree with you in order to really know if humans are programmed for violence that it would have to be supported with proof. How this process could be achieved I suspect would never get approval from any ethics committee. With what we do understand about behaviour and evolution I think out best guess would be people are wired for both good and bad which kinds of behaviours are most successful for the modern world would depend on where you live, as it would have always been. To be able to learn language we require the ability to do so as is likely the case for behaviours that go along with violence. To be able to get angry, feel jealousy, get enraged, display unique protective behaviours towards ones family we must have some capacity to process these feelings, the stimulus that act to elicit these cannot be only learned.

By: Alex Fradera

Alex Fradera — Tue, 31 May 2005 10:56:29 +0000

I should make it clear that I’m not proposing to rule anything out. The post above assesses the current evidence and makes a judgment from that. To make a case for violence being coded as programs of behaviour as a result of adaptative forces one needs to demonstrate evidence of such programs, not merely the ubiquity of violence. It is this treatment of the issue, made by Pinker in his most recent book, that I am taking issue with; it just doesn’t make the grade.
In my opinion, Pinker and other evolutionary psych advocates are very strong at gesturing to the adaptative forces that inevitably, inexorably, just must have been the cause of behaviour we see today (perhaps because it gives them a chance to take a break from proper science and read lots of Hobbes on the ‘war of all against all’). The danger is when they stop before the real heavy lifting, that of showing how the patterns of behaviour seen in the real world are better characterised as adaptive than learned behaviour.
This is very tricky to do (even the classics in the field like the Cosmides and Tooby use of the selection task to show our preference for social contracts have come under heavy fire); many researchers rely instead on the axiom ‘if we can demonstrate selection pressure on a behaviour, then it must be an adaptation’, which demonstrates an overzealous and unscientific faith in the freedom and power that evolution actually has. This leaves their arguments to rest on some notion of plausibility, rather than evidence.
If these popular treatments made stronger arguments, I would address these. As it is, this is in no way my area, so I don’t have the time or aptitude to generate a stronger one; I’m happy just to knock down this one by giving it a knock and listening for the echoes in its hollow spaces.
As to choices, granted. This kind of research should not lead us into the explain/excuse fallacy, which is something that The Blank Slate does cover very well.

By: Juzam29

Juzam29 — Tue, 31 May 2005 06:49:53 +0000

Killing for the sake of killing might not be an adaptive behaviour. But killing for access to something would be. If human behaviour is selected by consequences as Skinner suggests. Why can we rule out that aggressive behaviour is not inherited? Putting aside all the ideas about where the behaviour is coming from, ultimately at any given time there are always choices about what we do.