Abstract
In Chap. 1, I attempted to show why propositional-attitudes take evolutionary psychology down wrong path. In this chapter, I intend to address the role that motivational endowments, or what Millikan (1993) refers to as imperatives, play in the explanation of behavior. Some philosophical psychologists have attempted to conceptualize motivational endowments in terms of intentionality. Sterelny (2003), for example, refers to motivational endowments as ‘preference-like’ states in a way that corresponds to his formulation of cognitive states as ‘belief-like’ states.
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Notes
- 1.
Sterelny refers to this view as the ‘Simple Coordination Thesis’ (2003, p. 6).
- 2.
Hence it turns out to be the frontal pole, not Dennett’s “East Pole” that turns out to be the cognitive center (Dennett 1998).
- 3.
That is to be able to understand not only that “I know what you are thinking, but rather that I know that you know what I’m thinking, or even that she knows that you know what I’m thinking”, and so on.
- 4.
One could therefore argue that the modularity of emotional expression is fundamental to the fixation of desire, that is, if one were inclined to defend a propositional-attitude approach to emotions.
- 5.
See p. 21 in Chap. 1.
- 6.
E. G. Boring noted a similar difficulty with the reflex concept. Once drives or reflexes were decoupled from physiology a potentially infinite number of either could be hypothesized: “Not only may you have sugar-reflex as distinguished from a salt-reflex but you have a stuffed-olive reflex as different from an anchovy-reflex” (Skinner 1979, p. 145). See Walter (2007) where I discuss the manner in which ideas about everything can be turned into memes.
- 7.
See pp. 16–17 in Chap. 1.
- 8.
Walter and Buyske (2003) update the models that were presented in Walter (1997).
- 9.
For example, Gangestad et. al. (2005) and Flinn et al. (2005).
- 10.
I have to admit that I am perplexed by the claim that low 2D:4D ratio is reputed to be associated with homosexuality in general. I would expect and hence predict that the ratio depends for each sex on which gender role the individual prefers. In other words, I would expect that males and females who prefer to take the male role in a sexual encounter would exhibit low 2D:4D ratio (as some female homosexual subjects seem to exhibit), and that females and males who prefer to take the female role will exhibit a contrary high 2D:4D ratio. One could take a sample of males and females and partition it into homosexual subcomponents, then partition that into male vs. female role preference and then associate those partitions with 2D:4D finger ratio. A hierarchical log-linear or logit procedure might be useful in finding such relationships.
- 11.
See Gangestad et al. (2005) for the short version.
- 12.
It should be noted that the researchers did not collect hormone data from the subjects in the study but relied upon previously established schedules of ovulation cycle phase and hormone level.
- 13.
It should also be noted that Rantala et al. did collect hormonal data from their subjects.
- 14.
I refer the reader to two of my own papers that offer further reflections on the issue: Walter (2000, 2002).
- 15.
I say vigilant because even when there is a strong principled commitment to the mechanist stance, there is still a tendency to wax poetic with propositional-attitudes. For example, Peter Ellison, who is one of the editors of the recently published and highly monumental mechanist tome, Endocrinology of Social Relationships (Ellison and Gray 2009), can be found to characterize hormones as carrying information about the state of an organism such that adaptive allocation of reproductive effort can be made in response to those states. Is there someone present who is making decisions about how to allocate resources? Or is evolution itself capable of such propositional-attitudes? This problem, of course, arises when trying to connect the proximate part of the explanation to the ultimate part. However, the solution is not to turn the environment of selection into a purposive selector that executes decision-rules. Such a move cannot but turn evolution into a process akin to the dialectical unfolding of Hegel’s Geist.
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Walter, A. (2012). Why I am not an Evolutionary Psychologist: On the Imperative Nature of Motivational Endowments. In: Evolutionary Psychology and the Propositional-attitudes. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2969-8_2
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