Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 04:17:18 -0500
From: "Anthony P. Brown" <abrown4_mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>
To: yeh_harlequin.co.uk
Subject: Evolutionary Psychology


To Yehouda Harpaz,

I am a student of Evolutionary Mind Theory, and was looking for some
good criticisms of Cosmides and Tooby...yours is disgusting.
Academically, I think your interpretation is nothing more than a laundry
list of name calling. You state vague problems, and provide little if no
support. Your analysis is so subjectively written and biased that I can
hardly stand to read through the lines. And, I see from your
understanding of the subject, you are a PSYCHOLOGIST, not a BIOLOGIST,
not an ANTHROPOLOGIST, CHEMIST, COMPUTER-SCIENTIST and you have little
or no grasp on these relevant subjects or the problems at hand...You
should keep quiet about that which you do not understand. Don't post
garbage on the internet either.

Anthony P. Brown
Tulane University

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Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 04:40:56 -0500
From: "Anthony P. Brown" <abrown4_mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>
To: Yehouda Harpaz <yeh_harlequin.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Evolutionary Psychology


I wrote in reference to your 'Innate vs. Learned" article. I ask you to
reply to each of the following points:

1. Please give me a convincing argument for the aquisition of language
in children from 0-2 years old that would explain their ability to
explain complex sentence structure, grammar, and a few thousand
words...something which Noam Chomsky vividly described as somewhat
impossible without some innate mechanism.

2. Evolution works in one main way: Natural selection. This selection
DOES NOT select for those things which are 'general-purpose' but are
rather adapted to help the organism survive- hence all the organs, and
the various parts of the brain (not necessarily spatially correllated)

3. EXACTLY how neuroscience disagrees with EP, and what if anything
neuroscience knows about macroscopic identification of domain-specific
mental functions.

4. Brain-Damage evidence suggesting the MIND IS MODULAR- patients losing
one of the following but no more- short term memory, long term memory,
verbal ability, mathematical ability, spatial recognition, grammar, and
an array of other SPECIFIC things.

The purpose of EP is to look at our Ancestors (ANTHROPOLOGY), primates
(PRIMATOLOGY), and US in the form of children (CHILD PSYCH) and adults
(PSYCH)....all from different perspectives (BIO, COMP, etc.)

What is so horrible about looking at the problem from an evolutionary
look when Psychology makes some assertions that seem to be incompatible
with what we know about evolution and biological development?



Yehouda Harpaz wrote:
> 
> > I am a student of Evolutionary Mind Theory, and was looking for some
> > good criticisms of Cosmides and Tooby...yours is disgusting.
> > ...
> 
> You contribution is now recorded in
> http://www.human-brain.org/anthony-brown.html
> 
> If you realy want to ever understand anything, you should get used to
> first find what is actually wrong in other people writing _before_
> rejecting it.


=======================================================
=======================================================

From: Yehouda Harpaz <yeh_harlequin.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 11:09:42 GMT
To: abrown4_mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu
Subject:  Re: Evolutionary Psychology
CC: yeh_harlequin.co.uk
In-Reply-To: Anthony P. Brown's message of  Mon, 01 Mar 1999 04:40:56 -0500  <36DA60A8.36BD_mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>



> 
> 1. Please give me a convincing argument for the aquisition of language
> in children from 0-2 years old that would explain their ability to
> explain complex sentence structure, grammar, and a few thousand
> words...something which Noam Chomsky vividly described as somewhat
> impossible without some innate mechanism.

0-2 years old children cannot understand complex  sentence structure,
let alone explain them. 
The ability of older children (and they have to be _much_ older to
actually _explain_ sentences)  to deal properly with is simply a result
of learning it.

For examples of how psycholinguists overinterpret the data about
children capabilities, see http://www.human-brain.org/nonsense.html,[2.3]. 


> 2. Evolution works in one main way: Natural selection. This selection
> DOES NOT select for those things which are 'general-purpose' but are

Why not? Evolution selects for everything that increase the viability
of the lineage, and if general purpose system or mechanism does this,
it will be selected for. You need to explain why you think
general-purpose mechanism or system cannot improve the viability of
the lineage. 


> 3. EXACTLY how neuroscience disagrees with EP, and what if anything
> neuroscience knows about macroscopic identification of domain-specific
> mental functions.


The main evidence is that there is not correlation between brain
damage and cogbitive defects (except broa and Wernicke areas). Nobody
yet came with an answer how you can code for something in the brain
without localizing it, and localization should appear as correlation
between brain damage and the cogbitive defect. 

The other evidence is that neurons act through their connections,
so toe cod something in neurons you need to specify their
connections.  The connectivity of neurons in the brain is not
well-specifed, so very little is coded in it.



> 4. Brain-Damage evidence suggesting the MIND IS MODULAR- patients losing
> one of the following but no more- short term memory, long term memory,
> verbal ability, mathematical ability, spatial recognition, grammar, and
> an array of other SPECIFIC things.

This is a reasoning error, and I explain it in
http://www.human-brain.org/errors.html [3.19]. 

It is rare, if it ever happens, that a patient realy lose only one of
these things. Stating that they do shows that you didn't actually
study the literature in this area. 



> 
> The purpose of EP is to look at our Ancestors (ANTHROPOLOGY), primates
> (PRIMATOLOGY), and US in the form of children (CHILD PSYCH) and adults
> (PSYCH)....all from different perspectives (BIO, COMP, etc.)

It is not the purposes of EP which are wrong, it is the conclusions
that they make. 

> 
> What is so horrible about looking at the problem from an evolutionary
> look when Psychology makes some assertions that seem to be incompatible
> with what we know about evolution and biological development?

You can see from my hope page that I don't agree with what cognitive
psychologist think either. 

The propblem with EP is that the assumption of innateness is leading
the interpretation of the research, without looking for other
alternatives. 

If you want a serious discussion, take some of the points that I
raise,, and see if you can find out what is wrong with them. 


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Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 10:33:22 -0500
From: "Anthony P. Brown" <abrown4_mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>
To: Yehouda Harpaz <yeh_harlequin.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Evolutionary Psychology]


>Possibly, but the hard-wired machanism can also be general
>intelligence. 
>Very funny.
>1) hands - these are used for an indefinite number of purposes. 
>2) Liver - The number of different things  it does is huge.
>3) Mouth - eating breathing, talking, sexual contact. 
>4) Bones - Mechanical support, Calcium stores, generation of blood
>  cells. 

And I also say, very funny. You seem ignorant to common understandings
of evolutionary biology. If you think that each of these things is a
specific adaptation in itself, you've missed the point. Each function of
each organ has a specific function that came about through evolution. In
the same way, the 'brain' seems 'general-purpose' like the hands do. It
is an illusion, one that stems from various purposes of the same
mechanism through specific adaptations. The brain has specific
adaptations that can be traced through our ancestral line. 

>It is selected if it increases the viability of the lineage, point.
>Whether it is general or not it is irrelevant to the selection, except
>during the effects on viability. 

Do you understand molecular genetics? Have you ever read a text or taken
a course? I say once again, general-purpose adaptations do not happen.
Your examples tell me you really don't have a clue about molecular
evolution, and how this process leads to adaptations over time. I
suggest you take some time and read up on the subject- otherwise no one
is going to take you seriously.

>A general purpose system arises by an existing system which execute
>one function, starts to perform additional function by chance.
>Initialliy it does it badly, but as time goes by it improves. if the
>old function does not become defunct, the system may become good at
>doingboth function. It then can aquire more andmore functions in the
>same way. 

Again, this seems to be drivel based on incorrect assumptions about
molecular genetics. Adaptations are made to pre-existing structures, not
useless structures that build up over time, and then one day kick-in to
be a general-purpose mechanism. Explain to me that you do understand
molecular biology...what you say is extremely inconsistent.

>... and how can they code for a newly designed, specific-purpose
system?
>The explanation for the way a general-purpose system arises was given
>above. Note that we know that human have a general-purpose system,. >because theycan do things that they could not acquire by evolution, >from reading to flying planes to riding horses to opening doors. 

Again, you miss the point. I see you may be incapable of understanding
this. I think you are so biased in favor of your neuroscience training
that you can not see the larger picture, which looks as if there are
innate mechanisms... something which you must take seriously before
anyone will take you seriously. 

On another note, Neuroscience, and all its areas, have Failed to find
anything determinate out about the human brain on a large scale. If it
were successful there WOULD BE NO NEED for evolutionary psychology.
Recognize your field's failure has led to the growth of EP, or the field
that I am part of, Cognitive Science- which studies an array of
disciplines, including neuroscience. I find neuroscience to be anything
but helpful in understanding how the brain really works above the
cellular level. Therefore, we enter the theoretical realm, and make
assumptions based on good evidence and logical reasoning. You do realize
that you are up against a number of highly intelligent, well trained men
and women, who seem to have a much better understanding than you do
about psychology, anthropology, biology, and evolution? Yes, you may
know the intricacies of neuroscience, but does this not limit your
understanding, especially in a field that has been shown to fail when
asked to explain the very things EP is trying to solve?

Many animals demonstrate innate knowledge. Example...birds building
nests, beavers building dams, etc. This is a fact. (and if you disagree
here, read some more books) Why, then, would humans be so completely
different, as to not have any kinds of innate knowledge? Are you going
to say we diverge on the evolutionary chain somewhere, and leave our
innate-knowledge-having ancestors in the past?

What about infants who understand the danger of height? How about their
knowledge of dangerous animals, insencts....snakes and spiders? What
about their facial recognition abilities? I fear you will merely respond
as you have before with vague 'you reason badly' remarks that really
lead nowhere. Obviously, your logical association needs some work, as
does your deep undertstanding of the subject... 

After reviewing some of your site I find a common trend in many
fields...
The neuroscientists ignore the physcologists, who ignore the
evolutionary biologists, who ignore the neuroscientists, who ignore
computer science, who ignore psychology, who ignore anthropology...and
so on..and you end up with a big pile of shit that no one can sort
through because each discipline has tenets that are incompatible with
another. Cognitive Science, which I am part of, studies all disciplines
in an attempt to unfy the theories and make sense of the
discontinuities. You do know that the psychologists accuse you
neuroscientists of being 'absurd' and 'not understanding macroscopic'
models of the brain....as you do them, and back and forth and so on and
so on...

Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 10:40:14 -0500
From: "Anthony P. Brown" <abrown4_mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>
To: yeh_harlequin.co.uk
Subject: Rejections


You will never be published as long as you lack understanding of
higher-level brain functions in terms of their macroscopic scope. The
problems I find with your views are much in common with your rejections
on your web page for publication. You need to remove your wall of
stubbornness and open up to some new ideas- or you will fade away into
the background of cognitive understanding. You have some good ideas, but
I fear they are clouded in your hostile arguments and your lack of
understanding beyond the cellular level.