Sugli inserti culturali dei giornali infuria la polemica su Darwin, rinfocolata questa volta dalla pubblicazione di un libro di Jerry Fodor e Massimo Piattelli Palmarini, Gli errori di Darwin . Com'è ovvio, il libro ha ricevuto favorable reception in the newspapers close to the clerical circles ("Il Foglio "), and received authoritative slating from people who know the topic (Luca Cavalli Sforza on " Republic", and Guido Barbujani on "The Sole24ore ).
Here I do not mind going into the merits of the arguments, because I have not read the book, but you already know the substance (and therefore do not even think of wanting to read). I would rather discuss the background to this battle. Because, in the twenty-first century, there are still people attacking Darwin? Who they are, where they come out?
A basic premise is that Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli Palmarini are not idiots (especially to guarantee the first), and that has nothing to do with the vogue of creationism, even though they may be involuntary accomplices. That however does not make them anti-Darwinism, as we shall see, less ideological and more scientific. What, then, the cultural roots of their anti-evolution?
Fodor and Palmarini are not biologists or geneticists, as has been abundantly pointed out by their critics that they began to emphasize the several errors with the red pen. Are cognitive psychologists, and to understand the reasons for their criticism should therefore be traced back to the origins of their discipline. Which has a founder, a very revered as discussed, is of undoubted genius, but also very controversial because of its tendency to wander, in its opinion, in any field of knowledge: Noam Chomsky.
When Chomsky began writing his essays on linguistics, the dominant paradigm in psychology was behaviorism of Watson and Skinner: just a vicious review of Chomsky's book Skinner's Verbal Behaviour, 1959, is considered birth of cognitivism. Chomsky's approach was strongly nativist language: the language is not any social skill that is learned through experience and conditioning, but it is already inscribed in our brains, at least in its deep structure, from birth. Language is treated as any other body which would develop as well-defined stages as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.
The Chomsky's nativism would seem at first sight, marry well with a Darwinian view, nature, evolution of language. If language is inscribed in our brains would seem obvious to think that this is an option, a tool, in the prehistory of our species evolved through natural selection. Paradoxically, however, Chomsky has always been rather skeptical about this link.
The title of one of his most famous ( Cartesian Linguistics), and in fact could have suspected that the look, rather than to naturalism, he addressed the philosophical tradition of rationalism, anti-empiricist. The language, as well as higher activity of thought, conceived as the sole and exclusive power of the human mind, and irreducible to its material components. If the interest from Darwinism is to emphasize the continuity and kinship with other human species, Chomsky emphasizes instead the gap between humans and animals without reason, as well as the higher primates (hence the controversy over language learned from monkeys).
Note, in fact, as Chomsky is also deeply skeptical about the discipline that can be considered the most fruitful result of cognitive psychology, that is all the research field of artificial intelligence. The reduction of the human mind to engineering problem (or natural) is unacceptable for human prejudices. Chomsky's position on the complexity of the brain in some ways anticipates that of Penrose, the mind is something too mysterious and fascinating to be left to biologists or even programmers, perhaps a help can come in the future by developments in quantum physics.
The fact is that resistance to explain the features most specifically through human evolution is coming, sometimes from the same evolutionary environments (after all the co-inventor of the theory, Wallace, he disagreed with Darwin on this) . A distinguished support to Chomsky from the front of evolution was, for example, Stephen Jay Gould. To frame the debate historically, we must consider that in 1975 released book Sociobiology. The new synthesis , Wilson, and Dawkins' The Selfish Gene in 1976. These are two tremendous punches humanism, and the reaction (especially against Wilson), was immediate.
accused the author (Wilson) wanted to revive the Nazi eugenics, was born a united front against sociobiology, and against reductionism in general. The evolutionary explanations are good for animals, but to want to adapt to the behavior of human beings is not only wrong, it is dangerous and potentially criminal. Stephen Jay Gould, in his ideological struggle, a brilliant popularizer of Darwinian thought ends slowly and imperceptibly, to move to the opposite side: do not write directly against Darwin, but his repeated appeals to pluralism and his attacks on what he calls the "ultra- Darwinists "(guilty of intellectual coherence) have the effect of making even a paradoxical hero for supporters del creazionismo.
Paradossale perché le critiche di Gould al "paradigma adattazionista" enfatizzano proprio il ruolo del caso come motore dell'evoluzione, al contrario di chi vede la selezione come principale agente. E proprio questo è uno dei cavalli di battaglia dei sostenitori del "disegno intelligente": non è possibile che creature complesse come l'uomo, e organi sofisticati come il cervello umano, siano venuti al mondo per caso, ci dev'essere un progetto, e quindi un progettista. I darwinisti hanno una soluzione: il caso interviene solo nel momento della mutazione, ma non è certo la casualità a decidere quali mutazioni sopravvivono oppure no, è la selezione operata dall'ambiente. Apparently, behind the simplicity of this explanation, Gould sees a threat to the dignity of man is so simple that it is applicable to everything, including social behavior, the psychological traits, and for some this is unacceptable.
Jerry Fodor is a brilliant scientist cognitive former student of Chomsky's own, and its path it follows in the footsteps in many ways. Initially it is a bearer of cognitive psychology more close to the developments of artificial intelligence, and functionalism. He writes, for example The Modularity of Mind, which suggests that the activities of the mind are indeed organized in "modules" specialized in various sub-functions. Again, this is a vision that seems to be going to a wedding coll'evoluzionismo: the modules can be considered as "tools" distinct and separable from the rest, responding to needs arising in the course of human evolutionary history.
Fodor Note that in some ways is more functionalist reductionism of many of his colleagues: If the dominant view is that things like thoughts and mental representations to be identified in a holistic way, as things that "emerge" at the higher level functional apparatus of the brain, but for Fodor it is true "inscriptions" in the brain, localized individually. Similar to Chomsky, however, Fodor leaves out of his own theory of the most interesting part: the mind is massively modular, but only for certain aspects, while the essence of things such as consciousness remains a mystery and probably will forever.
Meanwhile, after the political ban of the '70s and '80s, sociobiology back in vogue, under the new guise of evolutionary psychology. Steven Pinker, who is a major supporter and resumed his major insights of Chomsky and Fodor (on the innate structure of language and the modularity of mind) classification, consistent, within the neo-darwinina theory and evolutionary psychology, which is nothing but Darwinism applied not only to the explanation of how the human body, but also to the mind, regarded as part of the nature of the body the same way.
How does the mind is the title of a book by Pinker, 1997 (a considerable effort, much too generous and courageous, to explain all the features of behavior in the light of the new paradigm), which Fodor reply immediately with a book entitled The mind does not work like . Fodor does not like the use made of his own ideas, seem to want to retract the point. Too invasive, all-encompassing to be attracted to the new paradigm, in his opinion, and perhaps too vulgar, too materialista, il concetto di umanità che ne esce fuori.
Va detto che la psicologia evoluzionistica, disciplina ancora giovane e per certi versi immatura, potrebbe avere le sue pecche. Le spiegazioni di natura evoluzionistica sono diverse da quelle di tipo fisico, nel senso che non sono così immediatamente falsificabili. Ci può essere, talvolta, la tendenza a formulare ipotesi in maniera troppo disinvolta, e a farne un passepartout che va bene per qualsiasi cosa. Di ogni fenomeno è ipotizzabile una spiegazione evolutiva, con sufficiente fantasia: più difficile è saper discriminare le spiegazioni buone da quelle cattive e stiracchiate. Il successo impressionante, anche a livello di pop culture and media, evolutionary psychology, has also helped to further fuel suspicions, which eventually passed on Darwinism tout court, with great joy of his enemies even more traditional.
A concrete example is possible and the supposed innate mental mechanism to find the cheaters. It was noted that the human mind often fails to recognize certain basic rules of inference, like the fact that "P implies Q" is logically equivalent to "non-Q implies not-P". Suppose you have four cards in front: a blue card, a red, an ace, a king. We are told that the rule is: "All the boards are red on the back." What cards do you have to turn to verify or falsify the rule? Everyone understands the need to turn the ace on the back (or the relevance of P), but most experimental subjects fail to recognize the importance of the case-Q (or do not turn blue paper).
Those performances get much better when the same problem is formulated in another way: it is said that in a place only those over 18 are allowed to drink beer, while all children can only drink Coca- Cola. Everyone here understands that it is important to check that minors actually holding a glass of Coke, and check that beer drinkers are actually older. La spiegazione proposta dallo staff di John Tooby è che vi sia un meccanismo mentale innato per riconoscere gli imbroglioni: la selezione naturale ha favorito il riconoscimento delle regole logiche nel caso siano socialmente rilevanti ai fini della sopravvivenza, mentre non ci ha dotato tutti di un apparato altrettanto efficace per riconoscere le regole logiche fini a se stesse.
Fodor, in La mente non funziona così , ha contestato vigorosamente questa spiegazione. Secondo lui a fare la differenza non è il diverso contesto sociale nel quale il compito cognitivo è inquadrato, ma si tratta proprio di due problemi differenti, dalla diversa forma logica. Il primo esprime semplicemente una relazione di tipo logical, while the other expresses a prohibition (an assertion is deontic), where the relevance of the case "not-Q" is inevitably more manifest.
Now, it may well be that Fodor is right (or wrong, I have no idea). This is just a hypothesis to be explored, it makes sense to criticize (even new experiments can be designed to settle the issue). It should be clear, however, believe that from now discredited the entire evolutionary psychology there runs. Even more risky is the next step, but that Fodor has made, or to question the whole theory of Darwin.
Why Fodor is clearly legitimate and respectable, when expressing his opinion about something that is a recognized authority and an expert (cognitive psychology), and the same can be said Massimo Piattelli Palmarini. But, alas, is not when speaking of evolutionism in general. And this is not an appeal to the principle of authority, the point is that Fodor and Palmarini just do not understand the logic of evolution, which is obvious even to a simple fan like myself. Their objections are trivial, almost as old as evolution itself, and largely overcome.
When there is a systematic refusal to understand things, excluding the imbecility, Occam's razor has it that behind the refusal there is no genuine scientific justification, but something more profound and difficult to touch. Darwin is still fear simply because it assigns no special role to man in the universe, because they fear the moral and ethical implications of Darwinism, because, in a word, may not be politically correct. And this is the error that unites left-wing thinkers such as Chomsky and the religious fundamentalists: the naturalistic fallacy, the belief that nature obeys our moral demands.
In a free society, fortunately, this type of dissent is not dangerous, e anzi può essere persino stimolante. Vale la pena ricordare, comunque, quali danni ha prodotto in un passato neanche troppo lontano.
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