Abstract
There has been much controversy over whether the claims of sociobiology and related schools of thought, including Evolutionary Psychology, if true, imply that we humans are significantly less free than has traditionally been thought. The defenders of these schools themselves often respond to this concern by claiming that it presupposes that they believe in genetic determinism, which they do not. Philosophers, such as Janet Radcliffe-Richards, respond by appealing to compatibilist accounts of free will. The thought is that whether or not our behaviour is caused by evolved mental mechanisms has no bearing on whether or not it is free. The present paper takes issue with this use of compatibilist arguments, and argues that they do not absolve sociobiology’s most prominent successor-theory, Evolutionary Psychology, from the charge of suggesting that we have less free will than we might have otherwise thought. Compatibilist accounts of free will distinguish between situations where we are free and ones where we are not, the latter including not just situations of external coercion, but also situations where there are internal obstacles such as compulsions, addictions or phobias. While not attempting to outline a full account of what it is to be free, this paper outlines one set of conditions which are sufficient for our freedom to be said to be restricted – conditions which obtain in situations of addiction, etc. A central pillar of Evolutionary Psychology is that the mind consists wholly or largely of modules whose operation is mandatory. The present paper argues that this implies internal obstacles to free will that are relevantly similar to the obstacles of addiction, self-deception, etc. Moreover, it is Evolutionary Psychology’s commitment to their version of the modularity thesis, and not any genetic determinism, that leads to this conclusion. Hence, the view that Evolutionary Psychology implies that we are less free than has traditionally been thought is not without foundation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Some philosophical arguments for fatalism appeal not to determinism but to the logical point that if it’s true that I will do X on day Y then it always has been true that I will do X on day Y (e.g. Taylor 1962). It may be possible to bypass such arguments if one is willing to embrace the view that there are no truths about future events – i.e. that statements about a future event are neither true nor false, and only become true or false when the relevant time arrives. William James seems to have embraced this view. Be that as it may, I will leave this issue aside in the present paper.
- 2.
Admittedly, Evolutionary Psychologists often claim that evolved cognitive mechanisms can be relied on to develop in a wide variety of different environments by virtue of being guarded against environmental vicissitudes that might disrupt development. The mechanisms by which they are so guarded are never specified beyond vague expressions such as ‘feedback-driven compensation’ (Tooby and Cosmides 1992, p. 81). I will leave this issue aside in the present paper. For a sceptical view on this claim of Evolutionary Psychologists’, see Garvey 2005.
- 3.
A possible objection to this pair of conditions (which was actually raised to me by both Alex Neill and one of the referees for this volume) is the following: it might occur that, for some reason, I want to grow wings and fly, and on my account the fact that I can’t would then count as a restriction on my freedom. In response to this I say: (1) it is not news to anyone that we are unable to grow wings, whereas the point at issue here is whether Evolutionary Psychology, if true, gives us grounds for thinking that we have less free will than we would otherwise think we had; (2) it is in any event unclear whether we can be said to want to grow wings, rather than that we wish we could.
- 4.
It will be noticed that I have said nothing about whether any other scientific account of psychology is likely to lead to similar problems for free will. This is because I am concerned here with the issue of whether, specifically, Evolutionary Psychology raises distinctive problems for it. As I hope to have shown, Evolutionary Psychology’s distinctive combination of modularity with the claim that the mind is fundamentally adapted to Stone Age conditions, means that it does.
- 5.
I am grateful to Kristian Ekeli and Alex Neill, as well as the three (necessarily anonymous) referees for this volume, for extremely valuable comments and criticisms.
References
Allen, E. et al (1975): ‘Against “Sociobiology”’, New York Review of Books, August 17.
Ayer, A.J. (1954): ‘Freedom and Necessity.’ In Ayer, A.J.: Philosophical Essays. London: Macmillan.
Barkow, J.H., L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (Ed.) (1992): The Adapted Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blackmore, S. (1999): The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Buller, D. (2005a): ‘Evolutionary Psychology: The Emperor’s New Paradigm’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9: 277–283.
Buller, D. (2005b): Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Buss, D. (2008): Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Third edition, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Cosmides, L. and J. Tooby (1997): ‘Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer.’ http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html. Accessed June 25, 2009.
Cosmides, L., J. Tooby and J.H. Barkow (1992): ‘Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration.’ In: Barkow, J.H., L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (Ed.) (1992): The Adapted Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1982): The Extended Phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dennett, D. (1984): Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Fodor, J. (1983): The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Frankfurt, H. (1969): ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’, Journal of Philosophy 66: 829–839.
Garvey, B. (2005): ‘Nature, Nurture and Why the Pendulum Still Swings’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35: 309–330.
Gould, S.J. (1978): Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. Harmonsworth: Penguin.
Hamilton, W. (1964): ‘The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour’ (I and II). Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1-16 & 17–52.
Kimmel, M. (2003): ‘An Unnatural History of Rape’. In: Cheryl Brown Travis (Ed.) Evolution, Gender and Rape, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pinker, S. (1997): How the Mind Works. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Radcliffe-Richards, J. (2000): Human Nature After Darwin. London: Routledge.
Rose, H. and S. Rose ed. (2000): Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology. London: Jonathan Cape.
Rose, S. (1978): ‘Pre-Copernican Sociobiology?’, New Scientist 80: 45–46.
Ryle, G. (1949): The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson.
Smart, J.J.C. (1961): ‘Free Will, Praise and Blame’, Mind 70: 291–306.
Sterelny, K. and P. Kitcher (1988): ‘The Return of the Gene’, The Journal of Philosophy 85: 339–361.
Symons, D. (1992): ‘On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior.’ In: Barkow, J.H., L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (Ed.) (1992): The Adapted Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, R. (1962): ‘Fatalism.’ The Philosophical Review 71: 56–66.
Thornhill, R. and C.R. Palmer (2000): A Natural History of Rape. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Tooby, J. and L. Cosmides (1992): ‘The Psychological Foundations of Culture’, In: Barkow, J.H., L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (Ed.) (1992): The Adapted Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilson, E.O. (1998): Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. London: Little, Brown and Company.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garvey, B. (2012). Free Will, Compatibilism, and the Human Nature Wars: Should We Be Worried?. In: Plaisance, K., Reydon, T. (eds) Philosophy of Behavioral Biology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 282. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1951-4_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1951-4_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1950-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1951-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)