First of all, what is the Evolutionary Psychology that is being criticised here? There are admittedly big misunderstandings among outsiders what the research agenda is, and I’ll summarize a brief outline from Schmitt & Buss (2011, see above). The central idea is that our mental setup, including thoughts, feelings etc., has to be seen as outcome of an evolutionary process just like our physical one, with natural and sexual selection as the mechanisms that shape them. The in my opinion first somewhat counterintuitive and heuristically relevant claim is that this evolutionary process is manifested in quite specialized „psychological mechanisms, information processing devices“ that also respond to specific classes of information. Our thoughts, feelings and behavior then are the result of combination, coordination and integration of a large number of these mechanisms (and consciousness itself can be seen as an evolved device to achieve this integration). To think of Evolutionary Psychology as biological determinism is thus a common and big misunderstanding, because appropriate response to and interaction with different environmental factors is what these mechanisms are all about.

The search for these mechanisms is what characterizes most of Evolutionary Psychology research as far as I can tell, and is indeed a unique heuristic approach. All the same, the basic idea that evolution has shaped our mental setup seems to me about as trivial (very) as the basic claim of Neuroscience, that mental processes take place in the brain. And the value in and of itself of showing this in concrete examples I also consider equally low in both cases — the mere existence of a psychological mechanism that can be predicted from evolutionary hypotheses is as exciting (not at all) as the mere demonstration of a certain mental process correlating with activity in a certain brain region. Thus my first critique of Evolutionary Psychology: the field needs to be legitimized as achieving something more in either philosophical self-understanding or practical application.

This leads to my preliminary position on what and how we can know about „reality“, and what the role of science is in that process. I think that an at least mild constructivism is the only reasonable stance to adopt there. That means what we bring to our inquiry of reality in terms of interests, theoretical frameworks and research procedures has (at least) some impact on what we find — and that because a correspondence with reality beyond these preconditions is impossible to establish, scientific results cannot be evaluated based only on this correspondence with reality. The most reasonable proposed alternative (or complement) to „correspondence to reality“ as the standard for good science has been beautifully described by Jerome Bruner (1990. Acts of Meaning. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London) as „the pragmatist’s questions — How does this view affect my view of the world or my commitments to it?“ And for me it follows from there that a critical examination of these influences as well as the „pragmatist“ consequences is indispensable.

If that sounded too abstract, be reminded of the myriad ways in which the design of a study, statistical techniques and interpretation of the outcomes influence the results. There is so much discouraging research on how findings are exaggerated in medicine (e.g. Thomas A. Trikalinos et al. (2004). Effect sizes in cumulative meta-analyses of mental health randomized trials evolved over time. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 57(11), 1124–1130. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2004.02.018), a field with very rigorous established standards of research and also a powerful party with interests opposed to those of the primary researchers (inventors and marketers of new medical procedures and drugs vs. governments and insurance companies who pay the bills) — imagine what happens in a field like Evolutionary Psychology where there are much less established procedures and which relies a lot on questionnaire research in Western culture contexts, often using descriptive correlational findings in a specific culture as support for universal claims about causal genetic mechanisms. Actually, you don’t have to imagine, read „Why Most Published Research Findings Are False“ by John P. A. Ioannidis (PLoS Medicine 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124) who concludes in the abstract: „for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.“

While this doesn’t render the idea of „better“ and „worse“ research in the sense of correspondence with reality useless, it certainly underlines the importance of examining which „mistakes“ in research are systematic due to an explicit or implicit agenda of the researchers and the dynamics inherent in the development of a theory. And to take into account the „pragmatist’s questions“ when considering accepting certain findings and whole research programs as part of our worldview.

I think this is not often made explicit by feminist critiques of Evolutionary Psychology, but I believe that most of them operate from a perspective on science similar to mine. And this is where evolutionary psychologist completely miss the point, and prefer to think of themselves as a purely „positive“ science describing „facts“ — dismissing criticism as committing the „naturalistic fallacy“. Let me illustrate this with two excerpts about „sexual coercion“ (the non-scientific term would be rape):

More generally, we believe that proponents of all theoretical perspectives should keep an open mind about the scientific hypothesis (and it is only that, a hypothesis), that men may have evolved adaptations for sexual coercion. It should go without saying that rape is illegal, immoral, and terribly destructive to women, and should in no way be condoned, whatever the ultimate causes turn out to be. Unfortunately, what should go without saying has to be repeated over and over, since those who advance evolutionary psychological hypotheses are unjustly accused of somehow condoning or excusing rape. The naturalistic fallacy, mistakenly inferring an ought from an is, seems to be a particularly stubborn error committed by critics of evolutionary psychology, despite the many published descriptions of this error (e.g., Confer et al. 2010). (Buss & Schmitt, 2011, see above)

In this spirit of simply stating the facts, this is the abstract of an article concerned with the connection between different female „mating strategies“ and sexual victimization:

Women show stable individual differences in mating strategies ranging from short-term to long-term. Short-term mating strategies may put women at greater risk of sexual victimization through increased exposure to risky situations or to men most inclined to pursue a strategy of sexual coercion. To test these predictions, we studied female college students who had experienced a completed rape, an attempted sexual victimization, or no sexual victimization. Women’s mating strategies were assessed through the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory. Victims further reported whether they engaged in consensual intimate behaviors with their victimizer before or after the victimization. Victims of completed rape scored highest on short-term mating strategy pursuit; non-victims scored lowest; women experiencing attempted victimization scored between these two groups. Victims of completed rape also more frequently reported consensual kissing and intercourse with their victimizer before and after the victimization than women who experienced attempted victimization. The findings of this study should not be interpreted as blaming the victim, but rather as identifying circumstances that put women at greater risk. Clearly, perpetrators are to blame for sexual victimization. Discussion focuses on future research directions and on practical implications for reducing rates of sexual victimization. (Complete Abstract of Carin Perilloux, Joshua D. Duntley, David M. Buss (2011). Susceptibility to sexual victimization and women’s mating strategies. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 783–786. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.06.032)

From a feminist point of view it is cynical (and will often lead to an emotional rather than cool-minded response) that these statements which so obviously contribute to what is called „Rape Culture“ refer to aspirations of reducing sexual violence as their practical implications. The pillars of Rape Culture relevant here, in a nutshell, are the cultural believes around „men cannot resist sexual temptations and control their urges (at least some, and at least at a certain point)“ and „Women can and should avoid being raped in a variety of ways, especially through the way they dress and by avoiding casual sexual encounters“. These believes are at odds with findings in the feminist tradition that rapists are on the one hand a quite distinct group of men, and rape cases show a considerable amount of deliberation in choice of victim and circumstances, contradicting the „impulse“ trope. And on the other hand, they are enabled by widespread reiteration of exactly these believes, especially by other men.

A personal eye-opener for me was a seminar by „Men Can Stop Rape“ which I attended during my internship in a counseling center specialized in issues of sexuality (which means a lot of abuse and rape) in Glasgow. The seminar was attended by both men and women, and the facilitator started by asking the question „What do men usually do to avoid being raped“. After some laughter, the two responses from the plenum which were written on the blackboard were „avoid going to jail“ and „don’t pick up the soap“. The same question asked concerning women yielded a long long list of behaviors related to being in vulnerable places in public and especially in the dark, and all sorts of safety behaviors around going out and dating. So while recommendations for women on how to avoid getting into „risky“ situations may sound reasonable especially to male researchers and laymen at first, there is already a ridiculous amount of concerns women carry around on the issue, severely limiting their freedom to live a rewarding life. And while they don’t provide any real safety, because they don’t really causally relate to rape, they might help a little bit by at least avoiding to provide excuses to the perpetrators. But again, there are so many things women are supposed to do to avoid getting raped that it will be hard to find a single rape case where the woman didn’t do something that is seen as related to getting raped, tilting public opinion and the outcome of a court case in favor of the perpetrator.

What has here been illustrated for the problem of rape (which I consider one of the most pressing ones) applies in a similar fashion to questions of work, access to jobs in leading positions or political responsibilities. It applies to questions of housework and childrearing. It applies to domestic violence and abuse, where a recent publication by the same group (David M. Buss & Joshua D. Duntley (2011). The evolution of intimate partner violence. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16, 411–419. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2011.04.015) innocently reports findings like a link between sexual infidelity and being victimized.

The conclusion of this epistemological line of thought is that even though I cannot at this point provide the reasons (and they would be interesting to know), social science that doesn’t have an explicit sociopolitical agenda seems to always slip into having the same implicit one: maintaining the status quo. And I believe this to be especially true for Evolutionary Psychology, Psychology in general and, as I have recently begun taking up to demonstrate, Economics.

Related to this is my argument that all social sciences should be „reflexive“ in two ways: Be able to explain their own activity as scientists and researchers as part of the psychological and social theories they develop, and be aware of the effects of their descriptions of people and society on what people actually do. I have recently started to look into that for economics, and was especially surprised to find how ignorance of the way our social organization and the descriptions thereof shape our behavior leads economists to cling to a thoroughly disproved „founding myth“ of pre-market societies‘ economic structures. As a side note, as far as I can tell our actual knowledge about what life was like in the „deep evolutionary time“ that has a central role in Evolutionary Psychology arguments is very limited, and feminists have a point when they say that what evolutionary psychologists think about especially the gender relations of that era looks „suspiciously like the American 50s“.

For evolutionary psychologists who advocate that even complex high-level behavior such as romantic feelings and relationships are essentially governed by evolved psychological mechanisms in the service of self-preservation and procreation, the same assumption certainly has to be made for their research endeavors. It already does a lot to take the edge out of their claims to objectivity and universality if you view their activities and proclamations as a means of predominantly upper-class men to advance their access to desirable „mates“ by, e.g., claiming that what they have to offer on the „mating market“ is what women in general are (and most people will read: should be) looking for.

This naturally leads to the other side of the reflexivity issue. I strongly believe that a culture in which stories like this are passed around for facts will have different relationships than a culture with a different, or maybe just more diverse, story on the interactions between men and women:

Sexual conflict, for example, can occur on the “mating market” over whether or not sexual intercourse will occur or in the amount of time and investment required before sexual intercourse will occur. Deception and sexual persistence are two common tactics men use in the “battleground” of pre-mating sexual conflict (Buss, 1989a; Haselton, Buss, Oubaid, & Angleitner, 2005). Deflecting sexual attention, imposing longer time delays, and requiring additional signals of commitment are common tactics women use in the “battleground” of pre-mating sexual conflict. (Buss & Duntley, 2011, see above. Emphasis original)

First of all, take a moment to link the descriptions of normal and expected male „tactics“ like deception and sexual persistence back to the rape culture arguments. Second, while the argument makes immediate sense from a point of view of evolutionary logic, think about how well this describes what you observe in your own love life and that of the people around you. My personal answer to that is: not very. And while I don’t want to claim that personal experience is what science has to be measured against, I want to make the point that often to see the flaws in a certain argument you have to step out of the frame of reference of that argument (in this example: from abstract-logical to concrete-experiential). Thus my bottom line: A valid and successful feminist critique of Evolutionary Psychology does not try to disprove empirical claims to differences between men and women applying the same methods as Evolutionary Psychology does. It points out the flaws in Evolutionary Psychology’s objectivist scientific premise and holds it accountable for both motivations guiding the research process and practical implications of its results, including their public reception.

Where does all this leave Evolutionary Psychology as a field? In my opinion in need of an explicit agenda of why they are doing research and what they want to achieve with it. And a good argument as to how their products (both their explicit „findings“ as well as spreading their mode of thinking into popular culture) contributes to a better society. I believe that for some branches of Evolutionary Psychology, that can be done successfully. But for many others I am pessimistic, and this includes the whole field occupied with evolutionary gender roles and relations.

It also means that feminist critique that seems to misunderstand Evolutionary Psychology, especially where the „naturalistic fallacy“ comes into play, should be read as coming from some roughly constructivist-pragmatist viewpoint similar to what I have described, and as asking accountability for what findings and research process do to our actual social world. Which certainly doesn’t mean that all feminist critique is right. But a lot of it that sounds stupid if you stay within a positivist view of science suddenly makes sense if you appreciate what they are actually talking about.

But this just for background, what want I want to write about here is the experience I had writing the application, because I feel it illustrates and supports constructivist concepts of a „narrative self“ which I like a lot.

So, the work was going well, given that I had been removed from the academic world for so long it was surprisingly easy to compose something like a scientific text again for the ten-page exposé. I even had profoundly happy moments doing that sitting in a beach restaurant with internet access in Zanzibar and did not regret to spend that time outside of the water at all. So I had plenty of time for the last step — a simple one-page motivational letter, detailing why I want to get a Ph.D., what motivation is behind my activism, and why I want to be in that specific organization.

Now that should be easy enough, done something like that many times, but for some reason I took the invitation to sum up the core themes of my life in a few sentences. After all, a Ph.D. is a serious time commitment for some crucial years in life. And that proved quite challenging. Which maybe has something to do with my life situation right now — my „big story“ for this year is basically „new experiences, step-by-step decisions, follow your guts“ (even though I think I did a lot of planning ahead compared to other „world travelers“ which I still don’t really see myself as). And it has also been pretty clear for me from the start that I want something more solid and stable to grow out of this.

Which it has, and that’s maybe the thing: my task was to make explicit this evolved feeling which actually led me to take the decision to go back to Freiburg for a Ph.D.. And thus to collect together the strands of sometimes random and isolated experiences of this year. It took me some writing, going away from it for some days, rewriting, and so on (and some feedback from friends and family what doesn’t sound like it makes a lot of sense yet, or what sounds too abstract) to come to a story that I feel at home in. And now the fascinating discovery is: having written this story feels astonishingly good, and has taken on a meaning for me way beyond the original purpose. I feel how it energizes me for the tasks which lie ahead in the next months, and helps to focus my thoughts and reflexions and guide my decisions.

Bottom line: I think we should all write or tell about our „big life story“ every now and then. But we certainly should also have the times of creative chaos in between, where this life story can change, so it doesn’t turn from support and guidance into prison.

The case becomes interesting and even illustrative because it pits two camps against each other that I both subscribe to: open communication (and sexuality) advocates and feminists. And because the fascinating issue of „privilege“ (in this case the classic „male privilege“) comes in, which I’m starting to find a useful figure of thought in a number of social issues. To give my conclusion away: I’m siding with the feminist critique. And here’s why:

The woman who made public her complaint about the guy’s behavior is Rebecca Watson, and here’s her summary (quoted from an article of hers about the back-and-forth discussions):

You may recall that last week I posted this video, in which I describe an unpleasant encounter I had with a fellow atheist that I thought might serve as a good example of what men in our community should strive to avoid – basically, in an elevator in Dublin at 4AM I was invited back to the hotel room of a man I had never spoken to before and who was present to hear me say that I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed.

I unfortunately couldn’t watch the video (yay, developing world internet) but on second reading I find it noteworthy how much apologies she feels she has to offer for taking offense — „he heard me say I was tired before“!

A probably prototypical criticism of her complaint is this, quoted by Watson from Stef McGraw from UNI Freethinkers:

My concern is that she takes issue with a man showing interest in her. What’s wrong with that? How on earth does that justify him as creepy? Are we not sexual beings? Let’s review, it’s not as if he touched her or made an unsolicited sexual comment; he merely asked if she’d like to come back to his room. She easily could have said (and I’m assuming did say), “No thanks, I’m tired and would like to go to my room to sleep.”

Now, I see two criticisms here (without any claim to being exhaustive). The first is the one Watson makes herself, saying that the comment in its first sentence

[…] demonstrates an ignorance of Feminism 101 – in this case, the difference between sexual attraction and sexual objectification. The former is great – be attracted to people! Flirt, have fun, make friends, have sex, meet the love of your life, whatever floats your boat. But the latter involves dismissing a person’s feelings, desires, and identity, with a complete disinterest in how one’s actions will affect the “object” in question.

True, but the to me more relevant line of thought starts when rising numbers of (especially male) commentators weigh in, like it seems even Richard Dawkins did (quoted from a comment by Jen McCreight):

The man in the elevator didn’t physically touch her, didn’t attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn’t even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that.

If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics‘ privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker. PZ didn’t physically strike any Catholics. All he did was nail a wafer, and he was absolutely right to do so because the heightened value of the wafer was a fantasy in the minds of the offended Catholics. Similarly, Rebecca’s feeling that the man’s proposition was ‚creepy‘ was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.

What he basically says is: it’s all in her head. She had the freedom to interpret the guy’s „only words“ and it’s her own fault she interpreted in a way that offended her. And he ignores there are certain interpretations delivered by the context and history of men and women interacting, which he can be (and is) oblivious of because he is on the happy side of the gender divide in this respect. As Jen McCreight elaborates:

Words matter. You don’t get that because you’ve never been called a cunt, a faggot, a nigger, a kike. You don’t have people constantly explaining that you’re subhuman, or have the intellect of an animal. You don’t have people saying you shouldn’t have rights. You don’t have people constantly sexually harassing you. You don’t live in fear of rape, knowing that one wrong misinterpretation of a couple words could lead down that road.

You don’t, because you have fucking privilege.

And she links to a „privilege 101″ that has a nice metaphor about a furry dog and a lizard living together in a house in a temperate area, where the dog controls the air conditioning to keep the temperature low and nice for him. Now, when the lizard complains about the cold, the dog has no clue what cold feels like, because being too cold is no experience in his life. That’s his privilege, which, as is explicitly pointed out, is not his fault. The problem (and his wrong behavior) arises when he denies the feeling of cold could exist because he doesn’t know it, and makes a „in your head“ argument similar to Dawkins.

This is illustrated for human life with a (sadly commonplace) exchange about leering:

A man has the privilege of walking past a group of strange women without worrying about being catcalled, or leered at, or having sexual suggestions tossed at him.

A pretty common male response to this point is “that’s a privilege? I would love if a group of women did that to me.”

And that response, right there, is a perfect shining example of male privilege. [emphasis in the original]

Back to the dog and lizard, it looks like this:

So one day, she sees the dog messing with the A/C again, and she says, “hey. Dog. Listen, it makes me really cold when you do that.”

The dog kind of looks at her, and shrugs, and keeps turning the dial.

This is not because the dog is a jerk.

This is because the dog has no fucking clue what the lizard even just said.

Consider: he’s a nordic dog in a temperate climate. The word “cold” is completely meaningless to him. He’s never been cold in his entire life. He lives in an environment that is perfectly suited to him, completely aligned with his comfort level, a world he grew up with the tools to survive and control, built right in to the way he was born.

So the lizard tries to explain it to him. She says, “well, hey, how would you like it if I turned the temperature down on you?”

The dog goes, “uh… sounds good to me.” [emphasis in the original]

Back to humans, the relevant male privilege in a nutshell: „you don’t ever have to be wary of sexual interest“ [emphasis in the original].

This, as some commenters have rightfully pointed out, is of course not true, and that’s the twist in the privilege argument that I’m happy I found brought up and answered in the comments. Men do have to be wary of sexual interest in some circumstances, and not in all of them the perpetrator is another men (which isn’t even relevant to the argument, but an important point in its own right). In addition to that, one could talk about the (female) privilege of receiving sexual interest in the first place, the lack of which seems to be the reason why some men react so dismissingly to complaints about sexual harassment in the form of leering etc. The problem lies in the perspectives, as commentator LoneLobo sums up:

The parable is self-refuting because it both claims to offer knowledge of the subjective states of the dog and the lizard, then claims that precisely the reason privilege is incomprehensible to many dogs is because this sort of knowledge is impossible. That’s a big contradiction.

The practical effects on the parable are obvious: we have no way of knowing if the dog would not suffer equally by any change in temperature, or even if the dog also currently suffers as much or more than the lizard in the situation he is in. Thus, it is impossible to establish who has privilege in a situation, because that would require one of them or a third party knowing what both of them feel (which the parable says is impossible). It’s a logical contradiction. So the parable may be a fine illustration of the concept of privilege, but what it reveals is that this concept is severely flawed.

Which sounds reasonable, and can throw you into the abyss of relativism and so on. But got very wisely answered by a lauraT, thank you:

Listen, one thing. No the Lizard does not share some absolute knowledge of the Dog’s subjective existence, but he does have a better grasp on it than vice versa. Why? Because he lives in the Dog’s world, interacting with all of the structures that benefit the Dog and impede the Lizard.

This is like saying that any minority can’t possibly understand the majority world because they aren’t the majority, when the majority dominates almost every aspect of our shared culture and society except in the tiny niches said minority may have carved out as places to share their common aspect.

This minority, which doesn’t actually have to be a minority for this to be true, usually understands the dominant group better because they have to, they are constantly exposed to it and subjected to and often to exist on its terms.

The Other is not unfathomable, there is no “absolute otherness” in play here. We observe each other constantly, and part of the process of rectifying privilege is actually paying attention to the realness of the other persons experience, and that they may not have the option to conduct themselves on the same terms as you.

So, as always, a sound relativism or perspectivism is — relative. No side can objectively judge what the other side feels, nor is either side forever barred from learning and empathizing. But the starting point is obviously better (in terms of understanding the other’s life) for the party that has to live their life in the other’s world, so to speak, and has to do a lot of learning to get along.

But this is only a starting point, and in the knowledge of it we have to find ways of negotiating „privilege“, which so often finds the typical „but I am disadvantaged in this other area“ response (see my comment on Oppression Olympics if you haven’t already). We need to find a way to answer sentiments like increasing numbers of white people in the US feeling on the worse side of racism now [!], as indicated in a study also quoted by that same critical commentator. Again, this will have to be somewhere between objective and subjective. What in qualitative social research is called inter-subjective…

I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth.

Simplifying to the extreme I define post-modern as incredulity toward the metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences; but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of ligitimation corresponds most notably the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university function which in part relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great voyages, its great goal (Jean-Francois Lyotard. The Post-modern Condition, 1977).

He obviously has both the Marxist Left’s („emancipation of the […] working subject“) and the economical right’s („creation of wealth“) holy cows under attack there.

I also like the author’s summary:

Lyotard regards as metanarrative all philosophical and social conceptions that proceed from the possibility of arriving at a general understanding of the world and society—a scientific understanding which could then provide the basis for consciously changing the world. Lyotard firmly rejects any such conception.

I would very much underline the word general understanding here, though — otherwise the impulse becomes nihilistic, a fate which apparently some, but certainly not all, post-modern thinkers have suffered.

The author first turns to the political past of the post-modernists:

A cursory investigation of the roots of many leading figures in the post-modernist movement reveals at some point either membership in, or, at very least, close contact with Stalinist or left-wing radical organisations. […] The further degeneration and move to the right on the part of Stalinism in the post-war period, the party’s crimes in relation to Algeria and Vietnam, the betrayal of the radicalised student and workers‘ movement in 1968, and finally the collapse of the Soviet block were crucial in spreading disillusionment and disorientation and catapulting a part of the intelligentsia to the right.

A good summary of what that means is quoted, interestingly, from Czech President Vaclav Havel:

The fall of Communism can be regarded as a sign that modern thought—based on the premise that the world is objectively knowable, and that the knowledge so obtained can be absolutely generalised—has come to a final crisis (quoted in Intellectual Impostures, p. 181).

The more or less parallel experience of the fascist / nazi cruelties plausibly contributed to a disillusionment with the concept of history as a progressive process.

Of course, this should not and did not make most thinkers of post-modernism unpolitical Foucault is quoted with an explanation of the possibilities for political action and „resistance“ after abandoning the big meta-narratives:

“There is no locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case.”

Together with Deleuze, Guattari and Lyotard, Foucault emphasised the necessity of developing micro-politics and micro-struggles. Such a strategy has an obvious appeal to advocates of single-issue type politics: separatists and nationalists of every shade, environmentalists, feminists, and so on.

So far, all this makes a lot of sense to me. But I am equally fascinated with the promise of an alternative, to be found in the idea of „dialectics“, a word right now even harder for me to fill with meaning than the term „post-modern“. I do like the phrase of a „relative relativism“ a lot, though:

“We communists are also relativists, but our relativism in not absolute, but relative.… Comrade Chuzhak argues not according to Heraclitus, who asserted that everything flows, everything changes, but according to Zeno, who proposed that it is impossible to step into the same stream twice, for ‘everything flows, everything changes.‘ Heraclitus was a dialectician, while Zeno was a metaphysical relativist. In the camp of bourgeois scholars there are now very many such relativists” (Aleksander Voronsky, Art as the Cognition of Life. p. 107).

Unfortunately, the article fails to provide any insight into what exactly a „relative relativism“ could look like, but to pursue that concept will still be on my intellectual agenda for the year to come. Exciting!

PS: The article I’m citing from is actually a book review, but obviously goes way beyond that with a line of argument of it’s own. The parts describing the books content are again quite predictable and boring, and I suppose so is the book (Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont).

This randomness is of course the source of what we often deplore as procrastination, but I’m realizing it can also set free creativity, by presenting side by side concepts that seem only very loosely related at first. So here is my starting point, a very insightful remark on what difference it makes if we speak about Capitalism or Free Market Economy, from John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-American economist and author, published in the article Free Market Fraud in The Progressive magazine in 1999:

Let’s begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes–indeed, deletes–the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.

He goes on to denounce many instances where we (as a society as well as our appointed specialists on that matter, economists) fail to see the power workings of the „Free Market Economy“ and especially its influence over the government.

This argument, including its reference to how the public discourse about the issue is confused by objectivist language, could come straight out of a sketch-book of my own critiques of Capitalism (see NeuerPlan, „new plan“), even though the article is very short, and mostly stays on common knowledge grounds using the american military industry as its main example. (Oh I wish I’d come around to completing my own series of critique begun long ago!)

Now, this thought is not new to me in itself, but became more urgent when I came across a definition of Fascism that has some authority, coming from the Italian self-described „philosopher of Fascism“ Giovanni Gentile and being endorsed by Mussolini:

Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

(This, by the way, is quoted from the FAQ of the „Political Compass“ where you can localize yourself and some historical figures politically on the dimensions of „Economic Left/Right“ and „Social Libertarian/Authoritarian“. The FAQ is much more interesting than the actual test, though.)

And the suggested consequence, that increased influence / merger of corporate interests and government leads onto the continuum of fascist politics, is pretty plausible to me. And reminded me of a (only partly humorous) postcard I found when I was in Stanford almost three years ago, which features a summary of „Early Warning Signs of Fascism“ (claiming to be from independent research on actual fascist regimes, but according to a quick search more plausibly just written down in an Op-Ed in 2004, itself still worthy reading and considering):

The argument, which the author (Laurence W. Britt) also put forward in his book „June, 2004″ is that in the Bush era, America was visibly moving in that direction. How implausible is it to assume that again, corporate interests‘ hold of the government had a role to play in this?

True to my current randomness, and to end on a more cheerful tune on this sunny Sunday afternoon, here a cartoon of Capitalisms core problem by Dan Perjovschi.

I liked watching the first few classes of Robert Sapolsky’s „Human Behavioral Evolution“ course at Stanford from 2010, which are available for free on iTunes U (yes, you need iTunes). Even though the pointedness and entertainment of his arguments can be a little too much for a European audience, I highly recommend it for everybody who wants to fill in gaps in his or her understanding of evolution. And for people who consider themselves solid on the basics, I recommend a 20-minute summary of the criticism of evolutionary biology, at least as it is perceived and used by the public. I’m talking about the last 20 minutes, starting at 1:14, of the lecture 3 — Behavioral Evolution II (April 2, 2010). Here is a brief summary:

Sapolsky argues that evolutionary theories are criticized in three basic assumptions that they rest on, which he calls:

• Heritability (of behavioral traits)
• Adaptiveness (of every feature of organisms)
• Gradualism (of the evolutionary process)

The main problem with the heritability assumption is, of course, that things are very muddy on the actual genetic/molecular level if you try to point to genes that are causal to certain behavioral trends. But (as I would add) this could be dismissed as a temporary problem, waiting for advances in the science involved. Nobody doubts the general role of the brain in causing our behavior just because our knowledge of the brain regions and processes involved is still very rudimentary.

Much more important to me, then, is the critique of the adaptiveness assumption. It has been argued (and Sapolsky himself is mostly convinced, as am I) that many observable features of organisms (including many behavioral features) are merely „spandrels“ (from architecture as „space between arches“), meaning they are there only as unavoidable by-products of something that evolution is really about. This has, for instance, been famously shown for the evolution of human chins as a by-product of our „shortened muzzle“, after interesting theories on the adaptive value of chins had been put forward. And that leads to another important critique of the adaptiveness arguments: They are mostly what Sapolsky calls „Just-So-Story-Contests“ — finding the most convincing story to explain why something is (and has to be) the way it is.

What was really new to me was the argument against the assumed gradual way in which evolution takes place, and which is the foundation of the famous idea that small advantages pay off over time. Actually, there is evidence pointing towards a more stepwise evolution, long phases of relative stability interrupted by short, drastic episodes of change, a theory called „punctuated equilibrium“. As a result, the element of constant competition which feature so centrally in our „narrative of evolution“ has to be revised, with its importance reduced drastically. And that’s quite a revolution, especially to the layperson’s perception of (social) evolution.

And I’m very happy that in this context he even discusses the political side of evolutionary theories of (human) behavior. Coincidentally, the dominant model of evolution, focussed on constant competition, was put forward by a number of white southern (US) male researchers, while the challenges and modifications come from researchers from the more politically liberal North-East of the US, called „Marxist“ by Sapolsky. And he mentions sociobiologists form the former Soviet Union who have developed models of evolution more focussed on the interaction with difficult external living conditions rather than the competition within a species, called „abiotic selection“. Whoever wants to claim that science is just progressing on its path of objective truth, with random imperfections that will be smoothed out over time, good luck

The range of social issues he mentions which are justified as „natural“ through the dominant understanding of evolution is broad, from male domination to social hierarchies, aggression and sexual coercion.

I am very impressed that somebody who so obviously enjoys looking at human behavior through the evolution glasses sides on most points with the critics who argue for keeping the researchers own interests, world-view and ideology in mind, and who modify the dominant image of evolution in ways that very much change the implications for our (human) social life that are commonly drawn. And I’m very curious how he will live up to that standard in the classes to come.

The idea is to, as a social scientist, be aware of the impact of one’s theorizing in the „object“ studied, and also of the fact that you are subject and object of your theories at the same time, because as a social (and in our times also unavoidably economical) being you are always also explaining your own behavior. Let’s have more of that, and more serious!

But this is a good start. The topic chosen as a humorous exercise in the article by Ariel Rubinstein titled „Freak-Freakonomics“, published in Economists’ Voice in 2006, is the hugely popular 2005 book „Freakonomics“ by Levitt and Dubner, which I partly read and (I think like Rubinstein) both enjoyed and felt a little uneasy about.

Let’s start with his definition of the problem of lacking reflexivity:

The book gives expression to the economic worldview that sees people as “economic agents,” responding to mainly material incentives (though in keeping with the new behavioral economic approach, the book also recognizes the existence of additional
psychological motives). This worldview seeks a simple explanation for the behavior of human beings that is consistent with their aspirations to attain a goal, attributing high importance to money and status and low importance to moral values. All human beings are seen as economic agents, except for one group of angels looking down at the world from above: the economists.

So, what happens if you look at this profession, that likes to comment on economic dealings from above, through their own glasses? Among readable detours, you can find a sting like this in Rubinstein’s text — why do economists earn more than mathematicians?

The chapter is inspired by Freakonomics’ discussion of the question of why “the typical prostitute earns more than the typical architect” (106). The comparison between architects and prostitutes can be applied to mathematicians and economists: the former are more skilled, highly educated and intelligent. Moreover, just as Levitt has never encountered a girl who dreams of being a prostitute, I have never met a child who dreams of being an economist. Like prostitutes, the skill required of economists is “not necessarily ‘specialized’” (106), so why do economists earn so much more than mathematicians?

Here, I offer a new explanation for the salary gap between mathematicians and economists: many economists are hired to justify a viewpoint. In contrast, I have never heard of mathematicians who proved a theorem to satisfy their masters.

Ouch! But I can’t help seeing a certain truth in this satire. And another example for what can go wrong in (economic) science, looked at as an economic activity:

Chapter 4: what do grocers and economists have in common? The title of this chapter competes with “What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?” (19). The chapter will begin with the findings of the study I will conduct on my grocer’s invoices. Eight out of fifty will be erroneous, including seven in the grocer’s favor and one (with a trivial error) in my favor.

I do not agree with Levitt, who asks “Who cheats?” and responds: “Well, just about anyone, if the stakes are right” (24). My grocer is not a cheater. But grocers, like economists, make mistakes, even without being aware of them, with a tendency to favor their own interests. The grocer wages a struggle for survival against the big supermarket chains and hopes for a large bill. The economist struggles for his professional advancement and wants his findings to confirm his hypothesis. In economics, there is no tradition of checking data and repeating experiments. In the few cases in which I conducted experimental research, I myself felt the pressure not to search further at a stage in which the experimental results went in my favor and to check findings seven times when they appeared not to support the assumptions I was sure were correct. All this should convince me to place no greater faith in an economist’s findings than in my grocer’s tally.

I very much appreciate the open relating of personal experience on top of the (convincing) economic argument. And there are very good examples of (probably, if not assumed to be consciously misleading) exactly that happening to the Freakonomics authors in the article. Pretty blunt mistakes revealed through simple re-analysis by Rubinstein.

Another, final, argument about experts turned on the „other“ expert — himself:

Levitt writes: “The typical expert … is prone to sound exceedingly sure of himself. An expert doesn’t so much argue the various sides of an issue … That’s because an expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn’t get much attention. An expert must be bold if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom” (148). It is possible to suspect that this paragraph refers to Levitt: an expert, who is sure of himself, who presents a view other than his own only to disprove it, and who is brave enough to touch upon a subject like the right to abortion. But this paragraph is written in the book in disparagement of other experts (in “parental sciences”).

I wish somebody did that for every economic (and, of course, psychological, where this virtue is known more in theory than practice) publication. And I wish it would become common practice to reflect on your own perspective, motivations and resulting limitations for your results.

To finish with a „real-world“ (as opposed to the mostly for-entertainment character of Freakonomics) example of the topic which I’ve found particularly striking for a long time now: Milton Friedman. He proclaims a very general distrust for people caring about something else than their own interest. In the economic sphere this is popularized by his „four ways to spend money“ (from a Fox News interview in 2004, also somewhere on youtube):

There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.

Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!

Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40 percent of our national income.

In the political sphere, he is famous for arguments for a very very small government (military and law enforcement), arguing for instance like this (from the introduction to his 1962 book „Capitalism and Freedom“, via Wikiquote)

Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Now, in this deep distrust for people’s willingness and/or ability (usually rather the willingness, called „incentive“) to further somebody else’s good, we are still for some reason to believe that the person putting forward these arguments, Milton E. Friedman, has the common good in mind, rather than his own or maybe that of a circle of friends. How does that make sense?

Not to me. Pretty much amounts to a logical contradiction. Either his argument is flawed, as in at least himself has to be excluded from the general assumption of self-interest. Or his argument cannot be trusted, for it is self-interested…

And in any case, I very much belief that his radical free-market arguments benefit some people and disadvantage others. And he (and people emotionally or financially relevant to him) would certainly be on the „right“ side of this.

The symbolic significance of Jesus is that he is God exposed to the spectrum of human experience — exposed to the first-hand knowledge of what being a man entails. But could God, incarnate as Jesus, truly claim to be a man, to encompass the spectrum of human experience, without coming to know two of the most basic, most elemental facets of the human condition? Could God claim to know the totality of human existence without confronting two such essential aspects of humanity as sexuality and paternity? We do not think so. In fact, we do not think the Incarnation truly symbolises what it is intended to symbolise unless Jesus were married and sired children. The Jesus of the Gospels, and of established Christianity, is ultimately incomplete — a God whose incarnation as man is only partial. The Jesus who emerged from our research enjoys, in our opinion, a much more valid claim to what Christianity would have him be. (Baigent, Michael; Leigh, Richard; Lincoln, Henry (1982). The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Corgi. ISBN 0–552-12138-X.)

Incidentally, also a fairly good example of what I would see as a helpful pragmatist-constructivist line of argument on the issue. What view of the world and social practices do I commit myself if I believe this or that?

And I am fascinated by (also historically and biblically plausible) ideas of Mary as an „apostle to the apostles“ and founder of a Christian movement promoting female leadership. I wish there were any of that still in the Catholic church!

It has so many important things to say about science, culture, and psychology that I believe it should be on every psychologist’s and non-psychologist’s bookshelf, but one part I like to refer non-psychologists to most frequently is about „relativism“, or as I prefer to say: Constructivism.

These are actually two parts, one on „epistemological relativism“ and one on „values relativism“, which have an insightful aside on motivation as an intermezzo, which I have omitted here.

If culture forms mind, and if minds make such value judgments, are we not locked into an inescapable relativism? We had better examine what this might mean. It is the epistemological side of relativism, rather than the evaluative, that must concern us first. Is what we know „absolute,“ or is it always relative to some perspective, some point of view? Is there an „aboriginal reality,“ or as Nelson Goodman would put it, is reality a construction?[31] Most thinking people today would opt for some mild perspectival position. But very few are prepared to abandon the notion of a singular aboriginal reality altogether. Indeed, Carol Feldman has even proposed a would-be human universal whose principal thesis is that we endow the conclusions of our cognitive reckonings with a special, „external“ ontological status.[32] Our thoughts, so to speak, are „in here.“ Our conclusions are „out there.“ She calls this altogether human failing „ontic dumping,“ and she has never had to look far for instantiations of her universal. Yet, in most human interaction, „realities“ are the results of prolonged and intricate processes of construction and negotiation deeply imbedded in the culture.

Are the consequences of practicing such constructivism and of recognizing that we do so as dire as they are made to seem? Does such a practice really lead to an „anything goes“ relativism? Constructivism’s basic claim is simply that knowledge is „right“ or „wrong“ in light of the perspective we have chosen to assume. Rights and wrongs of this kind–however well we can test them–do not sum to absolute truths and falsities. The best we can hope for is that we be aware of our own perspective and those of others when we make our claims of „rightness“ and „wrongness.“ Put this way, constructivism hardly seems exotic at all. It is what legal scholars refer to as „the interpretive turn,“ or as one of them put it, a turning away from „authoritative meaning.“

Richard Rorty, in his exploration of the consequences of pragmatism, argues that interpretivism is part of a deep, slow movement to strip philosophy of its „foundational“ status.[33] He characterizes pragmatism–and the view that I have been expressing falls into that category–as „simply anti-essentialism applied to notions like ‚truth,‘ ‚knowledge,‘ ‚language,‘ ‚morality‘ and other similar objects of philosophical theorizing,“ and he illustrates it by reference to William James’s definition of the „true“ as „what is good in the way of belief.“ In support of James, Rorty remarks, „his point is that it is of no use being told that truth is ‚correspondence with reality‘ … One can, to be sure, pair off bits of what one takes the world to be in such a way that the sentences one believes have internal structures isomorphic to relations between things in the
world.“ But once one goes beyond such simple statements as „the cat is on the mat“ and begins dealing with universals or hypotheticals or theories, such pairings become „messy and ad hoc.“ Such pairing exercises help very little in determining „why or whether our present view of the world is, roughly, the one we should hold.“ To push such an exercise to the limit, Rorty rightly insists, is „to want truth to have an essence,“ to be true in some absolute sense. But to say something useful about truth, he goes on, is to „explore practice rather than theory … action rather than contemplation.“ Abstract statements like „History is the story of the class struggle“ are not to be judged by limiting oneself to questions like „Does that assertion get it right?“ Pragmatic, perspectival questions would be more in order: „What would it be like to believe that?“ or „What would I be committing myself to if I believed that?“ And this is very far from the kind of Kantian essentialism that searches for principles that establish the defining essence of „knowledge“ or „representation“ or „rationality.„[34]

Let me illustrate with a little case study. We want to know more about intellectual prowess. So we decide, unthinkingly, to use school performance as our measure for assessing „it“ and predicting „its“ development. After all, where intellectual prowess is concerned, school performance is of the essence. Then, in the light of our chosen perspective, Blacks in America have less „prowess“ than Whites, who in their turn have slightly less than Asians. What kind of finding is that, asks the pragmatic critic? If goodwill prevails in the ensuing debate, a process of what can only be called deconstructing and reconstructing will occur. What does school performance mean, and how does it relate to other forms of performance? And about intellectual prowess, what does „it“ mean? Is it singular or plural, and may not its very definition depend upon some subtle process by which a culture selects certain traits to honor, reward, and cultivate–as Howard Gardner has proposed?[35] Or, viewed politically, has school performance itself been rigged by choice of curriculum in such a way as to legitimize the offspring of the „haves“ while marginalizing those of the „have nots“? Very soon, the issue of what „intellectual prowess“ is will be replaced by questions of how we wish to use the concept in the light of a variety of circumstances–political, social, economic, even scientific.

That is a typical constructivist debate and a typical pragmatic procedure for resolving it. Is it relativism? Is it the dreaded form of relativism where every belief is as good as every other? Does anybody really hold such a view, or is relativism, rather, something conjured up by essentialist philosophers to shore up their faith in the „unvarnished truth“–an imaginary playmate forever assigned the role of spoiler in the game of pure reason? I think Rorty is right when he says that relativism is not the stumbling block for constructivism and pragmatism. Asking the pragmatist’s questions–How does this view affect my view of the world or my commitments to it?–surely does not lead to „anything goes.“ It may lead to an unpacking of presuppositions, the better to explore one’s commitments.

In his thoughtful book The Predicament of Culture, James Clifford notes that cultures, if they ever were homogeneous, are no longer so, and that the study of anthropology perforce becomes an instrument in the management of diversity.[36] It may even be the case that arguments from essences and from „aboriginal reality,“ by cloaking tradition with the mantle of „reality,“ are means for creating cultural stagnation and alienation. (p. 24–27)

[…]

Both the irrationalist and the rationalist approaches to values miss one crucial point: values inhere in commitment to „ways of life,“ and ways of life in their complex interaction constitute a culture. We neither shoot our values from the hip, choice-situation by choice-situation, nor are they the product of isolated individuals with strong drives and compelling neuroses. Rather, they are communal and consequential in terms of our relations to a cultural community. They fulfill functions for us in that community. The values underlying a way of life, as Charles Taylor points out, are only lightly open to „radical reflection.„[40] They become incorporated in one’s self identity and, at the same time, they locate one in a culture. To the degree that a culture, in Sapir’s sense, is not „spurious,“ the value commitments of its members provide either the basis for the satisfactory conduct of a way of life or, at least, a basis for negotiation.[41]

But the pluralism of modem life and the rapid changes it imposes, one can argue, create conflicts in commitment, conflicts in values, and therefore conflicts about the „rightness“ of various claims to knowledge about values. We simply do not know how to predict the „future of commitment“ under these circumstances. But it is whimsical to suppose that, under present world conditions, a dogged insistence upon the notion of „absolute value“ will make the uncertainties go away. All one can hope for is a viable pluralism backed by a willingness to negotiate differences in world-view.

Which leads directly to one last general point I must make-one further reason why I believe that a cultural psychology such as I am proposing need not fret about the specter of relativism. It concerns open-mindedness–whether in politics, science, literature, philosophy, or the arts. I take open-mindedness to be a willingness to construe knowledge and values from multiple perspectives without loss of commitment to one’s own values. Open-mindedness is the keystone of what we call a democratic culture. We have learned, with much pain, that democratic culture is neither divinely ordained nor is it to be taken for granted as perennially durable. Like all cultures, it is premised upon values that generate distinctive ways of life and corresponding conceptions of reality. Though it values the refreshments of surprise, it is not always proof against the shocks that open-mindedness sometimes inflicts. Its very open-mindedness generates its own enemies, for there is surely a biological constraint on appetites for novelty. I take the constructivism of cultural psychology to be a profound expression of democratic culture.[42] It demands that we be conscious of how we come to our knowledge and as conscious as we can be about the values that lead us to our perspectives. It asks that we be accountable for how and what we know. But it does not insist that there is only one way of constructing meaning, or one right way. It is based upon values that, I believe, fit it best to deal with the changes and disruptions that have become so much a feature of modern life. (pp. 29–30)

Notes

31. See Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters, for a well-argued
statement of the philosophical foundations of this position.

32. Carol Fleisher Feldman, „Thought from Language: The Linguistic Construction of Cognitive Representations,“ in Jerome Bruner and Helen Haste, eds., Making Sense: The Child’s Construction of the World (London: Methuen, 1987).

33. Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972–1980
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).

34. Richard Rorty, „Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism,“ in
Consequences of Pragmatism. Quotations from p. 162ff.

35. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983).

36. James Clifford, The Predicament ofCulture: Twentieth-Century
Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1988).

40. Taylor, Sources of the Self.

41. Edward Sapir, „Culture, Genuine and Spurious,“ in Culture,
Language and Personality: Selected Essays, ed. David G. Mandelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 78–119.

42. B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1972).

What I like especially is that the argument doesn’t stop where many constructivist arguments unfortunately do stop, at convincingly dismantling our usual essentialist view of reality, but also has a very convincing alternative way of dealing with things, what it calls the „pragmatist’s question“.

I bought it in Palo Alto before my real traveling started, and it has lasted me well into the second quarter of this year, of course as frequent visitors of my blog know with another big and some small readings in between.

Once again, my generally high esteem of artists‘ late work was reinforced — while the original book is funny, the later books are far better. I laughed my hardest reading the second last one, „So Long and Thanks for All the Fish“, and the last one, „Mostly Harmless“, apart from still being very funny, I found most insightful. That despite how I just read on Wikipedia the author himself describing this book as „bleak“, and saying he had a very bad year when he wrote it. I suppose that tells us something about the relationship between art and happiness…

Anyway, here are just some examples of important topics of life made understandable with the help of absurdity, Science-Fiction at its best.

Let’s start with Astrology, explained by a modern (you could say cynical) Astrologer, and en passant Parliamentary Democracy, Psychology and maybe life itself…

„I know that astrology isn’t a science,“ said Gail. „Of course it isn’t. It’s just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or, what’s that strange thing you British play?“

„Er, cricket? Self-loathing?“

„Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. They don’t make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It’s just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It’s like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that’s now been taken away and hidden. The graphite’s not important. It’s just the means of revealing their indentations. So you see, astrology’s nothing to do with astronomy. It’s just to do with people thinking about people.“

In a similar vain, and maybe taking that thought one step further, we get a cosmology for Constructivism (or at least you can look at it like that)…

The first thing to realize about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.

It is also important to realize that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you try and realize that a little later, after you’ve realized that everything you’ve realized up to that moment is not true.

The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn’t actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did.

The reason they are not parallel is the same reason that the sea is not parallel. It doesn’t mean anything. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home.

Please feel free to blither now.

Next up, a painfully accurate description of the history (and in many ways present working) of scientific Psychology:

Now logic is a wonderful thing but it has, as the processes of evolution discovered, certain drawbacks.

Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else which thinks at least as logically as it does. The easiest way to fool a completely logical robot is to feed it the same stimulus sequence over and over again so it gets locked in a loop. This was best demonstrated by the famous Herring Sandwich experiments conducted millennia ago at MISPWOSO (The MaxiMegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious).

A robot was programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches. This was actually the most difficult part of the whole experiment. Once the robot had been programmed to believe that it liked herring sandwiches, a herring sandwich was placed in front of it. Whereupon the robot thought to itself, „Ah! A herring sandwich! I like herring sandwiches.“

It would then bend over and scoop up the herring sandwich in its herring sandwich scoop, and then straighten up again. Unfortunately for the robot, it was fashioned in such a way that the action of straightening up caused the herring sandwich to slip straight back off its herring sandwich scoop and fall on to the floor in front of the robot. Whereupon the robot thought to itself, „Ah! A herring sandwich…, etc., and repeated the same action over and over and over again. The only thing that prevented the herring sandwich from getting bored with the whole damn business and crawling off in search of other ways of passing the time was that the herring sandwich, being just a bit of dead fish between a couple of slices of bread, was marginally less alert to what was going on than was the robot.

The scientists at the Institute thus discovered the driving force behind all change, development and innovation in life, which was this: herring sandwiches. They published a paper to this effect, which was widely criticized as being extremely stupid. They checked their figures and realized that what they had actually discovered was „boredom“, or rather, the practical function of boredom. In a fever of excitement they then went on to discover other emotions, Like „irritability“, „depression“, „reluctance“, „ickiness“ and so on. The next big breakthrough came when they stopped using herring sandwiches, whereupon a whole welter of new emotions became suddenly available to them for study, such as „relief“, „joy“, „friskiness“, „appetite“, „satisfaction“, and most important of all, the desire for „happiness“. This was the biggest breakthrough of all.

Vast wodges of complex computer code governing robot behaviour in all possible contingencies could be replaced very simply. All that robots needed was the capacity to be either bored or happy, and a few conditions that needed to be satisfied in order to bring those states about. They would then work the rest out for themselves.

Also one of my favorites, and very suitable to the recent debate about (former) Pope John Paul II’s Beatification:

He had discovered that the reason for the carnival atmosphere on Saquo-Pilia Hensha was that the local people were celebrating the annual feast of the Assumption of St Antwelm. St Antwelm had been, during his lifetime, a great and popular king who had made a great and popular assumption. What King Antwelm had assumed was that what everybody wanted, all other things being equal, was to be happy and enjoy themselves and have the best possible time together. On his death he had willed his entire personal fortune to financing an annual festival to remind everyone of this, with lots of good food and dancing and very silly games like Hunt the Wocket. His Assumption had been such a brilliantly good one that he was made into a saint for it. Not only that, but all the people who had previously been made saints for doing things like being stoned to death in a thoroughly miserable way or living upside down in barrels of dung were instantly demoted and were now thought to be rather embarrassing.

So much for the more or less deep thoughts. Here’s something that became relevant to me in trying to get the concept of definite (e.g. „the“) and indefinite (e.g. „a“) articles across to people who’s native language doesn’t feature articles at all:

Ford shouted in Arthur’s ear, „Where did he say we were going?“

„He said something about a King,“ shouted Arthur in return, holding on desperately.

„What King?“

„That’s what I said. He just said the King.“

„I didn’t know there was a the King,“ shouted Ford.

„Nor did I,“ shouted Arthur back.

I’ll finish with two little quotes that are well worth becoming aphorisms (and which I have, accordingly, added to my growing Quotes Collection). The first can be seen as relevant to psychological practice, but certainly at least as much to a traveller in different cultures like myself:

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training. — Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Mostly Harmless, p. 742, 1992

And the second, which has the beauty and limitation of perspectivist thought in a nutshell:

“I think we have different value systems” – “Well, mine’s better” – “That’s according to your… oh, never mind.” — Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Mostly Harmless, p. 772, 1992