Episode 225: Forbidden Modules

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:01:04] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, we said we weren't going to talk about the whole University of Austin thing, but I mean, you gotta be fucking kidding right? Where's your self control man? Where's your self control?

[00:01:27] I put it off as long as I could. I'll give you this break so yeah I didn't want to talk about it because I feel we can talk about why later, but really like what I don't want to be is part of the problem.

[00:01:37] But here's where I'll give you a pass. It's in Texas and I feel like you guys should have a little bit of pride about somebody just setting up fake shop in your backyard.

[00:01:46] I mean we had like, we have a lot of that you know, like Elon Musk you know. So we're used to that and we're not that proud lately of like our state legislature and what their priorities are so yeah.

[00:02:03] I guess I feel a little more defensive of the academic institution as not that I think it's perfect. Are you? I don't have any problems with it, but oh man. Are you really just sad that they didn't invite you to be on the advisory board?

[00:02:19] Well we were talking a little bit about this before and I just don't think and I really, you know I could be wrong. I invite them to prove me wrong. I don't think there's a price they could pay me to be a part of this. It's too lame.

[00:02:32] It's like it's the lamest thing that they've ever done and that's like a high bar and it's lamer than that. Like I can't even think of the second lamest thing. Yeah, it is lame.

[00:02:45] So here I don't want to talk about it because I don't want to fan the flames of a like a culture war that I don't particularly think is productive for anybody but just talking

[00:02:56] about this in terms of being a professor like it's this has all of the marks of a grift. And I'm honestly, this isn't a funny conversation but I'm disappointed in some of these people for like being on this website like on the advisory board or whatever.

[00:03:15] Like Jonathan Haidt? Like here's a tweet that he did. Talk about disappointed. I like you know I don't have anything against him. Here's the most hope giving event in higher ed in years. The launch of Austin U, a new U constructed around the telos of truth.

[00:03:32] I want my kids to go there. I am proud to be on the advisory board. Now if I was one of John Haidt's kids like that's just like saying he doesn't love me. I'm not loved by my father. It's like you know Brian Cox in succession.

[00:03:50] Did you I feel like if I even told my daughter that there was a university I wanted her to go to because of the telos of anything she would just slap me. Oh my God. So I assume people know what we're talking about but yes.

[00:04:07] But let's just say for and we're not devoting the whole opening segment to this. No and I'm actually a little confused as to what it is. Right, right. Because it's not an accredited university. It doesn't exist as a space. There are no classes there.

[00:04:21] Yes, there's no physical space yet. There are no classes. There are no degrees. There's proposed. Well yes including in the summer of 2022 maybe this is what John Haidt wants his children to go to a course called Forbidden Courses or like this is what I mean by it's

[00:04:38] like breathtakingly lame. Forbidden courses. Real disappointing. Forbidden courses. We'll talk about the gender wage gap. Maybe not being entirely due to sexism. Maybe. So like yeah so like I so it will I think it has like somehow an MA I don't know if it's

[00:05:01] a real MA or like when like what I did after college like Masters of Mixology at Harvard which was essentially me doing a bartending two days bartending course and they called it that. It might be that I don't know.

[00:05:16] Like is it like a real Masters like can you give a real Masters if you're not accredited. Well even if it is it's a Masters in leadership so it's not really okay let's let's say who's who's affiliated with this hold on I'm trying to pull up the.

[00:05:32] So I look I actually looked just before this podcast recording for the first time at

[00:06:38] the time it's just been on a roll in terms I on her Siley so Rob I'm a Stacy Hawks Jonathan Rouch and Nadine Stross and Rob Henderson. I don't know some of those people. I know David Mamet.

[00:06:52] Yeah that's what mammoth why David Mamet you know I great playwright you know some of a ton of respect for him love some of his movies but this is not surprising if you know his political views. I did not.

[00:07:05] It's funny that they like so this is what they then say our backgrounds and experiences are diverse our political views differ not really though do they differ like a little bit like on the margins.

[00:07:20] This is the gods honest truth I don't care about the politics what I am insulted by is the implication that at our universities we've abandoned the notion of truth and we're somehow picking it up when it really is just like three or four political issues

[00:07:38] that they're opposed to. It's as if like you know genetics research has been going shitty at Cornell because no fuck you for implying that. Yeah they just want a place where they can talk about reason IQ gender differences

[00:07:53] like and woke people and woke you know what there isn't also is any anti Israel not like the ideological diversity that they can tolerate. The anti Israel anti Zionist like you know that has no place at Austin University.

[00:08:11] Did you hear Barry Weiss get a mention in the latest episode of Curb. Oh yeah but what was it? It was the Jewy Hulu guy. Yeah. Oh yeah. He was just like he was just like doing the Jew thing too much for Larry.

[00:08:30] And like he was like J to J. And at the end when Larry's leaving he's like Larry come over to house for Shabbos dinner anytime he just had Barry Weiss over. So funny. Talk about cancel like she's tried to cancel so many like pro-Palestinian voices

[00:08:55] in her time and the idea that Austin University is going to have like Norm Finkelstein or something like that someone who's genuinely fucking canceled is there going to be a course like apartheid and Israel like what are the

[00:09:08] differences if any like that's not going to be that that's that's why this is such fucking bullshit. Okay let me read this the next sentence what unites us in spite of that the vast political differences between all those people but what unites us

[00:09:22] is a common dismay at the state of modern academia and a recognition that we can no longer wait for the Calvary and so we must be the Cavalry. What do you mean? It's like it's so great like I'm so embarrassed like I would be so embarrassed

[00:09:41] to be a part of this like I said this on Twitter but it's like the British office where it's funny but it's also just like also hard to watch the mismatch between the grandiosity versus like the reality is just it's too much.

[00:09:56] It's a pretty website well if Tamler if it receives the support of the people and you can easily go to the support page and right you can actually become there like different tiers that's like their patreon you can be a founding

[00:10:16] you can give 500 grand to support 10 faculty fellows and give 400 grand oh wait this is just how much is going to cost yeah three million dollars per named chair 25 to 100 million dollars for land in

[00:10:33] Austin for the tech for the campus I think it's very hard to start a new university at all and it's really hard if you have ever sat on any committee you probably have where you have to you have to like get your accreditation

[00:10:47] stuff in order yeah it's hard and it takes a lot of energy a lot of administration and years and I don't know that they'll have the steam I don't doubt that they can raise the money but I don't know that they'll have

[00:11:00] the steam to do it and honestly I think the future of these kinds of universities is going to be online mostly yeah I think that's what it'll turn out to be yeah they're explicitly trying to not be online they want a physical

[00:11:15] presence right yeah and I think like there's just not enough like students for this like this it's not a lot of 20 year olds that are going to want to go to this I don't think well I I don't know I mean I guess I guess so

[00:11:31] like most of the demographic that's about like 25 to 35 is the one that would really want to go but they've already either gone to college or either not or not going to college right I mean they go just like because they want to

[00:11:43] meet whoever Peter because and look it's not that because you know you have people this has received a lot of well justified ridicule and like it deserves more than it's gotten but people have said they are like raising

[00:12:01] real issues about the academia and and in some sense that's absolutely true there isn't enough ideological diversity on campuses I think there is a kind of climate of not fear but just people feeling like I don't want to say

[00:12:18] something that will will get a lot of woke people getting mad at me now I think a lot of that is because these same people have just been instilling so much fear in the professors you know these kinds of centrist professors like

[00:12:32] just telling them that if they use a pronoun wrong they'll be cancelled and before some sort of committee and they'll have you know get like or the subject of some title nine lawsuit or something like that and all that's

[00:12:46] bullshit like none of that stuff it happens but so unbelievably rarely that it wouldn't be something that a sane person would be living in fear of but setting that aside setting the exaggerated like paranoia that has

[00:13:02] been created around this issue there is actually a problem that they are you know that they allude to even if they don't correctly describe the scope of it but this is not the solution to this in any way

[00:13:19] this any faculty just any department faculty is more diverse politically ideologically than that group of people yeah it's it's it seems to have like just the opposite of its intended effect if the intended effect is to promote whatever heterodox beliefs are like it seems to be just pushing

[00:13:39] people in one direction at look like I I'm I agree with you about the exaggeration of the problem and about there being a problem like it's not I know that a lot of listeners you know don't email us about this but but I

[00:13:53] know that they really don't argue I know they like to argue about you know how bad the situation is and and but I'm not denying that it's like a lot of it is draining and annoying but like I was telling you on the phone we're

[00:14:08] talking last night I literally have spent more time taking this shitty online drivers instruction course to lower my insurance than I have the whole year even sitting on a committee talking about diversity it's not I just haven't and right sure like you could say maybe my experience isn't

[00:14:25] representative but don't deny me that it is an experience and also you know like when I say that which is totally true for me like I don't have to deal with this stuff pretty much ever and I don't know I feel like we kind of

[00:14:38] say what we want on this podcast without getting a lot of shit for it no the motion we get is from the the interest exactly from these people yeah like I can't even remember the last time we got shit for like defending Dave

[00:14:51] Chappelle or something like that but like people can say to me you know will you live in Texas it's different in Texas you know like I get this sometimes but you're literally a fucking Cornell you're in the northeast

[00:15:03] you're like at an Ivy League the elite of the elite kind of institution where this stuff even when they pull back and say okay fine maybe this isn't happening at the University of Arkansas but it is happening at fucking all the

[00:15:16] like really good northeast in California schools but it's not even there it's not no it's a thing and even in my my city is like extremely liberal like like alarmingly on the on the left and it's just it's just not but people

[00:15:36] don't hear this stuff like I was telling you there were faculty members who wanted to do this curriculum where we'd have to like professors would have to take diversity classes it went for a vote and it got shut down like it

[00:15:50] just but that doesn't make the headlines because of course why would it it shouldn't make the headlines right because it's just an internal little thing that you guys had to work out right it's you know what these what

[00:16:01] what happens is that they're p hacking all of these stories right so every day nothing happens to me about diversity you know we talk I want I mean I want to encourage diversity so I'm director graduate studies certainly we have

[00:16:16] discussions about like recruiting more you know having a more diverse student body and diversity in fact but that's that's not that controversial I think I think everybody is okay trying to make an effort in that direction

[00:16:30] but I don't I it's just not most days go by and it doesn't cross my mind like what crosses my mind is like the stress of on my students like you know the all of the other communities that I have to be on like that right now

[00:16:47] we've had a hard time at Cornell there was these bomb threats and then there was a shooting yesterday like all that stuff takes up all of my time I don't I don't worry that I'm accidentally going to say the wrong thing in class

[00:16:57] you know when all seems lost you have to protect the light Cicero protected it and John Adams found it and now and I are free once again the light is sputtering out join us freedom won't die on our watch

[00:17:16] David actually cured I'm actually curious of all of the truth that people think are being suppressed like if somebody just wrote them out and posted them yeah I would like to know I would like to know what's being suppressed

[00:17:28] is it that there is a relationship between race and IQ I don't think so I talk about this in intro psych yeah it's not like I would like to know is it that I can't say blacks anymore like is that the blacks I can

[00:17:44] know like I don't I'm not trying to make light of this we all we've been bitching about these people because we don't have enough material to bitch about the left right now exactly and certainly not in academia like if you want to

[00:17:57] bitch about this and have an and me be more sympathetic it would be media like Hollywood that kind of stuff like I still think probably the problem there is more exaggerated and maybe somebody who's actually in it could tell

[00:18:12] me it's actually not that bad but from I do know some people who are in it and they seem like they're a little concerned about it okay I actually have like here I'm gonna I'm gonna actually raise something that will get we'll finally

[00:18:25] get back our Sam Harris listeners they're already it has annoyed it has annoyed me to no end the amount of TV shows that explicitly try for diversity in such a heavy-handed way as to make the writing unbearable yeah and I love that

[00:18:42] in the latest Kirby enthusiasm episodes did you know that Netflix offices and the Hulu offices have essentially the same the same four people so funny I didn't even notice it at first like Eliza had to point it out to me

[00:18:58] because like you know like she's already like more attuned to that stuff but it's so funny and I love that for it's just funny that it's in the Netflix office like but then it's also in the Hulu office logo and everything

[00:19:13] I really I really want to be privy to how they got that that arrangement made because the gag is that there is in both cases like the white guy is the head of the meeting of the head of the network and then there's three people

[00:19:26] on a couch that are sort of say a couple of words but they all represent some you know in one case it's like a handicap black woman and like a queer person you know I don't know it's like it's it's so so on the nose and the funny

[00:19:40] kind of way and again you know what nobody's like nobody's saying cancel fucking Kirby or enthusiasm you know like I think even there there's some self-awareness about like yeah it is a little like that isn't it and nobody

[00:19:54] I haven't seen a single person bitch about that right I um yeah maybe at some point we should talk about this there is the growing divide in rotten to not the rotten tomato should be how you judge things but the growing divide

[00:20:07] in rotten tomatoes critic scores and audience scores and what that says about that's more concerning to me than all of the university bullshit that people complain about but you know what like people are saying like I won't

[00:20:17] ever know if this is true but the Eternals suffers from this people say that why the last man that adaptation of the graphic novel series I love that graphic novel I yeah and I actually read that graphic novel also

[00:20:30] like it people say that those both of them got derailed by by the wokeness and you know I don't know I haven't seen either of them sounds plausible though to me to some extent although there's a lot of bad TV shows and

[00:20:48] movies so like yeah bad writing is bad writing there there is a difference between having characters who incidentally happen to be black or gay and and announcing them as like in this sort of just a heavy handed way as

[00:21:07] like the gay one right but I like I want to stress that this is not like it's not like that in academia to anywhere like if you are somebody even like because I have friends that I've been talking to this about and like the

[00:21:22] the perception they get from from like just reading the Atlantic or or this bullshit and the sub stacks they subscribe to is nothing like how it is on actual college campuses and that's true both for you know like

[00:21:37] the University of Houston which is a great I love it one of the most diverse and wonderful universities in the country but you know not somewhere that people could call like you know woke a woke enclave

[00:21:50] but it's also true even in Cornell and just it's just not like that you know with the possible exception of certain departments or maybe certain whole colleges like Hampshire or something like that where they've always been

[00:22:03] like that yeah and and and look people like people will always be able to find something like you know there was there are mockable moments like the class that somebody taught here co-taught on whether whether black holes were racist so don't send me those articles

[00:22:21] because I know like I know but it's just really like believe me believe me we live it we're actually like live it you can't tell us that what we're living this is our lived experience and you know what there are

[00:22:36] definitely cringible and you know like the woke moments there are examples they can bring that are really just that's bad that's that that's ludicrous that's lame but nothing as bad as as we can no longer wait for the cavalry that's the that's so we must be the cavalry

[00:22:55] it's histrionic it's just it's like it is it is so dramatic it's so dramatic that all of the pictures of the founding members are in black and white it's just a collection of drama queens that want to be able to

[00:23:15] talk about race and IQ that's too you know I was telling you that Cicero who I've read a little bit of is also a little bit of drama queen so in some ways it is kind of like appropriate spirit in the spirit

[00:23:29] but Cicero at least was kind of forced to commit suicide by the Romans and so actually had to die for it instead of just resign from a position because they couldn't wait to be because the institution

[00:23:43] wouldn't fire them so they had to just resign and I hope his I hope his suicide was glorious he wanted to be we weren't going to talk about this this this segment is didn't didn't happen should we even talk about

[00:23:57] what we're going to talk about saving we should save it we've this is enough yeah all right but I do have something funny to do but we'll say that for another time all right obviously we didn't talk about like

[00:24:12] the main right we never got a question we're talking about built on a recent word we're talking about a recent article called why evolutionary psychology should abandon modularity but I think the conversation will be more broadly about modularity and psychology and what it is this is not necessarily

[00:24:33] something that would be a forbidden course but well a board borders on you know evolutionary psychology that's true I feel like sometimes they they're just out to justify gender differences okay yeah we have some forbidden course

[00:24:50] material coming up in the next segment we'll be right back today's episode is brought to you by one of our favorites give well.org you know donating money to help people can be a wonderful and selfless act but how can you feel confident

[00:25:08] that your donations are improving or saving lives effectively the first question all students ask when you teach Peter Singer stage one stage one stage one singer stage one you could do weeks of research to find the charities that are out there what programs they run how effective these

[00:25:28] programs are and how the charity might use your money or you could just visit give well.org and there you'll get a short vetted list of the best charities they found at improving or saving lives per dollar. Give Well spends over 20,000 hours each year researching charitable

[00:25:50] organizations like I said many times they are spreadsheet nerds who are dedicated they've dedicated their nerdiness to finding these charities and they only recommend a few of the highest impact evidence backed charities they found 50,000 over 50,000 donors have used give well to donate more

[00:26:09] than 750 million dollars we're proud to say that the very bad wizards listenership really kicked this off you know really we take credit for this we have like over 200,000 of those dollars yes that's right listeners yes our generous listeners so rigorous evidence suggests that all these that

[00:26:29] these donations will save tens of thousands of lives and improve the lives of millions more and here's the best part give well is absolutely free they want to empower as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about their donations they publish all of their research

[00:26:45] and recommendations on their site for free no sign up required you could say that they're open science but without the attitude they allocate your tax deductible donation to the charity you choose without taking a cut at all

[00:27:02] yeah and when I give to give well at least the last few times I've chosen of their I think nine charities that they've vetted cash transfers for extreme poverty this is a charity where they just give cash to

[00:27:25] very poor families mostly in Africa to spend as they like and these participants make investments in business and agriculture assets housing and education it is very cost effective and it helps people living in dire poverty who live on less than three thousand seven hundred dollars per

[00:27:50] year that's cool I use the cheat code basically I just let give well pick the top charities and allocate my money accordingly which is really the lazy man's way out but but I trust give well to do this so so I just set it up

[00:28:07] for for the top charity picks and let them do what that will with my money so here's here's something cool if you've never donated to give wells recommended charities before you can have your donation matched up to

[00:28:24] two hundred and fifty dollars before the end of the year as long as matching funds last two hundred and fifty dollars will be matched of your donation as long as matching funds last before the end of the year so to claim

[00:28:38] your match go to give well dot org and pick podcast and enter very bad wizards at checkout just once again go to give well dot org and pick podcast and enter very bad wizards at checkout make sure they know you

[00:28:54] heard about give well from very bad wizards to get your donation matched thank you to give well for sponsoring this episode welcome back to very bad wizards this is the time of the episode where we like to take a moment and

[00:30:06] pause and thank everybody who has contributed to the community contributed to the discussion contributed to our morale really by just supporting us and and one of the most important ways in which you

[00:30:20] support us as you you talk to us you email us you contact us you engage in discussion with us if you want to be a part of that you can email us at very bad wizards at gmail dot com you can tweet to us at tamler or at

[00:30:34] peas or at very bad wizards you can engage on the lively discussions in the cantankerous fuck group of reddit the reddit dot com slash r slash very bad wizards where you can listen it read some like

[00:30:48] minded criticism of us and some group some group think talking points that just smear us every once in a while the one exception about how we love to receive your emails concerns are opening segment topic yes Tony

[00:31:08] about this week's you can follow us on instagram where where you can see the release of every episode you can please rate us on apple podcast if you listen there we always appreciate getting those ratings getting those reviews especially when they're good five star reviews but yeah that

[00:31:32] helps us also get seen hopefully by other people who might not know about us you can listen to us at Spotify subscribe there and just tell a friend who has any sort of similar sensibilities as you if you like it

[00:31:46] tell a friend to listen to us but thank you for all the ways yeah that you reach out to us we really really appreciate that and if you would like to support us in more tangible ways you can find all the

[00:31:59] different ways at our support page on the website you can give us a one-time or recurring donation on PayPal you can get some merch some pretty cool merch some mugs some t-shirts hoodies baby bibs all sorts of things

[00:32:18] and you can become one of our patreon supporters we love our patrons we try to put bonus episodes up somewhat regularly we just put one up recently on pine barons and we have some other ideas coming up for this

[00:32:39] holiday season season for episode ideas for the bonus episodes that's at the two dollar and up per episode at five dollars and up you get to vote on a topic for one of our main segments and actually I think

[00:32:57] we're about it's we're about ready to open that up get some ideas from all our patrons and then have our five dollar and up supporters vote on it five dollar and up people also get Dave's intro lectures one day perhaps

[00:33:11] a couple lectures that I did during the pandemic and then also you get our brothers Karamazov series directly to your podcast feed so that's at the five dollar and finally the ten dollar and up we've been

[00:33:27] releasing these ask us anything videos that actually have been kind of fun to do I don't know how much staying power it has and if our if our you know most generous tiered listeners have any other ideas but at least for now with the

[00:33:46] questions we're getting we're having fun doing those two so yeah definitely thanks for all of your support it means so much to us it keeps us going at every level and we are really thrilled that you have decided to support

[00:34:04] this community thank you all right welcome back to very bad wizards and we're going to talk about something even more controversial at least in cognitive science today we're talking about this article why evolutionary psychology should abandon modularity where was this a neuro skeptic tweet I

[00:34:24] think so like I don't like if I am 80% sure that that's why I put it in the slack yeah but essentially this article is about this debate that's been going on for the last I don't know 20 30 years about mod basically the organization of

[00:34:41] the mic how is them like how do we describe the way that the mind is organized is it modular and I'll get to what that is or is it not and there has been sort of this beef between some cognitive psychologists cognitive

[00:34:55] scientists and some evolutionary psychologists who are so this article argues talking past each other in this debate but one reason I want to do it is because you and I we've never really talked about modularity and I think it's actually

[00:35:12] a really fascinating part of the whole you know question about psychology and how the mind is is organized and it's something that I've been reading about since I think Paul Bloom first made me not made me suggested that I read

[00:35:27] photo or book modularity and mind and so I just want to talk about it but yeah you what is your like how did you come across this is something that in philosophy people talk about I mean well I'm not a philosopher of mind

[00:35:41] but I did you know I did a lot of philosophy of biology and graduate school so we're talking year 2000 to 2005 when we met for the first time exactly right so cosmities and to be yeah so I think of modularity of mind

[00:35:59] more in terms in the evolutionary psych terms as you know like the cheater detector right you actually mentioned cheater detection the other day yeah yeah and like I feel like that's got to be outdated so I'm actually excited

[00:36:13] to learn more about it right okay cool so I'm gonna try to give like a little like a brief background about this whole debate and where it started and I will say right now everything I learned I think I learned first from

[00:36:25] Paul Bloom in this cognitive science seminar so you're just going to blame him for anything I get wrong but okay so in the history of psychology in the 50s 60s behaviorism had really taken hold a lot and associationistic theories of how the mind is organized were dominant

[00:36:53] and what that what this meant was that there's there's theories that say the mind is one thing it's one big thing and there are theories that say the mind is a bunch of little things general process behavioristic associationistic accounts

[00:37:11] really want to say that the mind is like a general purpose learning machine and what it does is it builds up associations that it picks up from the environment but it doesn't require any real specialization so everything we learn

[00:37:27] we learn because it's just a modern version of empiricism right versus nativism everything we learn is learned through experience and that experience self like it organizes the mind over time merely through inputs that we're getting from the environment and so the idea is

[00:37:44] for instance the behaviorists believed that you know either through classical conditioning like Pavlovian conditioning or through Auburn conditioning like reward and punishment learning the mind could tie two things together and from that we would build up literally everything we know including language and all that stuff

[00:38:04] there's modern incarnations of this that are a bit more sophisticated and they say like we're like Bayesians or whatever but everything we learn is through statistical learning we don't really have any specialized learning mechanism I mean we don't have any super differentiated specialized modules in the mind

[00:38:23] what we have is just a general purpose computer like it's just like a processor that we have up there Jerry Fodor who made the notion of modularity popular in 1983 publishes this book called modularity of mind

[00:38:37] and in it he sort of takes these associationistic you know monolithic general purpose views of the mind he takes them to task and he tries to propose what he thinks is a better way of understanding how the mind is organized

[00:38:52] and he makes an analogy to like organs in the body so he says look the mind is composed of a bunch of sub-units each of those sub-units being in charge of just one thing so you have like a visual processing modules

[00:39:13] you have language modules so Chomsky famously proposed that we have this language acquisition device that might be modular and they all pay attention to only specific information in the environment and process that information alone and then pop out the solution

[00:39:29] or pop out like the whatever the output is and so organs was one metaphor but also phrenology he made an appeal to sort of he said the central idea of phrenology that we have a bunch of subsystems in the mind

[00:39:44] that are in charge of different kinds of things so that got abandoned too quickly so he thought so okay so we are in forbidden course territory right this is probably a source of mockery

[00:39:57] that's probably where the all of the accusations that evolutionary psychologists are looking for lumps in your skull come from it was literally on the cover of modularity of mind was one of the old phrenology skulls with like every area mapped out right now I've seen Django

[00:40:13] I forgot that was in jing um yeah so so here was the central idea that photo was trying to promote he believed that there were these subroutines these computational

[00:40:34] mechanisms that were in charge of only a specific kind of information they were adapted for like they had actually evolved evolved exactly that these modules had evolved to serve a specific function and he appealed to a lot of vision science in this so he said for instance

[00:40:55] when you see a visual illusion like the Mueller Liar illusion where you have two lines that are the same length but they look like they're completely different because of the diagonal lines

[00:41:07] or the shepherd table illusion where you see two tables that are in different orientation and they look like they're completely different size and shape but they're actually the same size and shape he says take these visual illusions

[00:41:20] and what your mind is doing and I keep saying mind instead of brain for a reason because he's really talking about the level of mind not the level of brain

[00:41:30] he says what's going on is that your visual system is paying attention to key pieces of information in the environment and it's taking those into account and it's popping out like a perception

[00:41:42] it's saying these two tables are different size and shapes or these two lines are of a different length because the information that it's taking into account is you know these visual illusions are designed to trick you into thinking that things are far apart when they're not or whatever

[00:41:58] and importantly even when you know that those two lines are the same exact length they don't look like they are so they're kind of separated from each other this is what they call informational encapsulation the knowledge from one module can't reach the knowledge from the other or perception

[00:42:24] your general beliefs, your thoughts, your desires they can't creep into the little computational process that's going on that's making you see those lines of different lengths no matter what by the way like we can post a link to the paper

[00:42:40] that led to this discussion and in that they do a visual illusion that I've never seen before called terror subterra and it's just this what looks like a big giant chasing like a little giant through a tunnel

[00:42:58] and this is such like this is better than Mueller liar to like I cannot see them as anywhere close to the same size like I've tried to and I can't yeah it's an amazing illusion I don't know if I had seen it

[00:43:15] if I had seen it I'd certainly forgotten about it and it's because again there are lines that are converging in the distance that trick you into thinking that the one in the back is much farther away so you see it as bigger

[00:43:28] like Mueller liar I can kind of even though it doesn't look that way but this one is just like I don't believe it it can't be the same size so it's a great example of what they're talking about

[00:43:41] these two things not being able to be in contact with each other or to get it to some you know centralized processing information processing entity right and so for photo this was like super important for things like visual perception

[00:44:01] and in particular there was another set of studies not the behaviorism stuff but another source of motivation for photo was that in the 40s and 50s there was this work on what people

[00:44:15] have called the new look in perception psychologist named Jerome Bruner who had argued that your basic perceptions can change as a result of your beliefs and desires and he did these famous studies where he had rich kids and poor kids draw a quarter

[00:44:34] like he just saw 25 cent American point and he found that poor kids drew them to be bigger than rich kids and what he argued was that this is because you know for poor kids like they actually it was more money

[00:44:51] like it represented more and so they drew them as bigger in fact he did this in a number of different ways and for Fodor which he says at some point in the praisy that he wrote for his book he says

[00:45:04] this thought shook him because if it's true it would mean that we couldn't agree on the most basic perceptual facts of the world and he even explicitly says and I don't want relativism of that sort to be true so I want this to be true

[00:45:21] Right and in criticisms of the modular view and I don't know what the status of these experiments are but I remember justy prince talking about it in some talk where the Mueller liar illusion doesn't work as well for

[00:45:37] like tribal communities that don't live in like environments where there are corners Right angle, yeah exactly so that would I guess a tweak against the modular Yeah although I've never understood that line of attack because you know maybe it is true

[00:46:02] I believe that it's probably true that we need you know people who see the Mueller liar in particular relies on outward turning lines and inward turning lines that look like you're seeing a building from the outside

[00:46:16] or from the inside and so it's providing different information but like the one that we're looking at the Roger Shepherd Terror subterra like I'm sorry I got that I don't believe that there's going to be any culture that doesn't see

[00:46:29] Right I mean I don't believe it but I guess and I don't even know what would like cause any culture would have access to caves But I guess the idea of these objections is that culture and environment matter more than what these accounts can admit

[00:46:47] Right I think that a reasonable view might be that in some cases the environment and cultural upbringing make a difference in how we see these things But in a lot of cases it's probably not so really then the debate becomes about what's modular and what's not

[00:47:06] Like how much of the visual system for instance is modular But okay so Brunner has all these studies arguing for this new look and perception basically saying that desires and beliefs

[00:47:17] What we would call higher level cognitive processes or central processes like you're thinking your beliefs your desires your wishes That they would influence something as basic as perception Fodor thought was wrong and so he was sort of attacking both of those things like the general purpose associationistic view

[00:47:37] And the new look and perception view in proposing this So for Fodor he said these little subcomponents and he didn't even try to say you know he relied on visual perception And he said that's probably true for other stuff too

[00:47:53] But he really wasn't trying to outline how much of the mind would be modular He was just trying to propose that at least some of it is He said that these modules were like little computational subroutines that were separate from central cognitive functioning

[00:48:10] Informational encapsulated or as some people say cognitively impenetrable Which is hilarious Right And that it would be automatic so that is you wouldn't notice that it's going on Like right now we're not aware of the computations our brain is doing when we see this illusion

[00:48:28] And that informational encapsulation is what everybody understands to be the central feature of a Fodorian module So okay we have that So the idea of the modular view of the mind that the mind has these mental modules that are domain specific

[00:48:48] Meaning that it's like dedicated to vision or hearing or language or whatever Kind of took fire and a lot of people in cognitive psychology and cognitive science in general sort of ran with this idea

[00:49:02] So there's a lot of work in visual perception describing the computations that these modules make Right exactly how they work In the intervening years as evolutionary psychology grew They also appeal to the concept of a module

[00:49:19] And it's unclear to me whether the first evolutionary psychologists to talk this way were explicitly appealing to Fodorian modules or not But they started referring to all kinds of mental processes as modular And famously sort of Pinker's book How the Mind Works

[00:49:41] It's a good example of this so Pinker has chapters on like love and emotions He has chapters on morality And he argues or he claims that we can understand all of these processes as modular And modular here meaning at least the domain specific

[00:49:59] Like he thinks that your emotions adapted to compute a particular kind of information in the environment Like fear is giving you is a response to certain kinds of risks in the environment And that these happen automatically and quickly And that they were selected for it

[00:50:18] That natural selection divided up the mind into a bunch of little things And in those little things are included even like why we argue shit like that Like our combativeness is a result of the organization that evolution gave us

[00:50:34] And this is like controversial area where it'd be like your attraction to younger women with a certain hip to waist ratio or something like that Or even the idea that love is a kind of feeling to get parental investment or something like that

[00:50:53] Yeah all that stuff or sexual jealousy in men for instance More than women And so the reason that evolutionary psychologists were going for was look Let's agree that biological organisms like humans are the product of natural selection Okay like that's step one

[00:51:17] This means that whatever the mind is is a result of natural selection as well And just sort of logically what you have left is that everything that you can observe in human beings In their biological and mental system is either an adaptation or it's a byproduct of adaptation

[00:51:38] Or as the authors of this paper say it's noise Right And they argued that selective pressures would have created a bunch of different systems That really would take into account these different domains of information And problem solve

[00:52:02] So they said look human beings experienced regular problems enough that the mind in some ways evolved to handle them And so this is why they talk about the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness and they care about what was going on when we were evolving

[00:52:18] And it's almost just like a natural result of the view that the mind was selected for in specific ways That you might think that it's functionally organized and separate in this modular way

[00:52:30] Right so here's an example that people like back when I was learning about this stuff like the sweet tooth So in our environment of evolutionary adaptiveness It was really good to eat berries and things that were sweet

[00:52:46] They gave you all sorts of vitamins and so we developed this module that found sweet things tasty And then 200,000 years pass We still have this module for the sweet tooth but now it's like German chocolate cake

[00:53:06] And Baskin Robbins chocolate chip ice cream and all this stuff that's not good for you But like with the visual illusion where we can't like even though we know it's not good for us It still tastes good because this is that informational encapsulation thing where it's like

[00:53:22] We can't affect our knowledge of nutrition or whatever our doctor tells us Can't affect the fact that that tastes fucking good and you want more of it And even though it's not adaptive the way to understand that is to understand that the environment was different

[00:53:40] Back in the day That's exactly right so things like aggression you know if you can tell the story of ancestors who were more likely to survive Because they aggressed against people who did them wrong then you have a system like this

[00:53:54] The system that would have favored aggression and just by what it means to say you have a system of favorite aggression They're referring to this as modular Today's episode is brought to you by one of my favorite sponsors Chess.com everybody's playing chess these days why wouldn't you

[00:54:14] And especially on chess.com their numbers have grown five times since 2020 The pandemic has been good to them and it's been good to me and well not the pandemic actually Chess.com has been good to me You're not Jeff Bezos Or like pharmaceutical

[00:54:42] Yeah it's free it's easy to play you can play your friends you can play your family you can play strangers Lately I've been playing some listeners I can't play all of them I got a bunch of challenges usually now every day

[00:54:58] But I try to play when I can And improving your chess game is easy on chess.com after you play your game I do this all the time You have a computer go through tell you when you were a bonehead tell you when you made a great move

[00:55:13] Tell you when you made a the best move or what move would have been better and you can play out the game If you had played the better world and like this hypothetical possible world where you had played the better move

[00:55:26] Are you sure you're not feeding the AIs so that eventually they become smarter than us in time I think I probably am except that if they look at my games they'll just be dumb too dumb to take over the world

[00:55:40] So that's good so I'm doing my part to stop the existential threat of AI I have a diamond membership at chess.com which gives me unlimited puzzles So I haven't even talked about the puzzles they have over 50,000 chess puzzles which is good because I've done almost that many

[00:55:59] Unlimited lessons unlimited game analysis and more and I absolutely love it and I've been doing it for over 15 years So check out chess.com they have speed games low pressure fun games You can play on your phone, on your iPad, on your computer all your devices

[00:56:23] And yeah just do it join up improve your chess game head over to chess.com slash very bad Just chess.com slash very bad no wizards at the end and start playing

[00:56:39] That's chess.com slash very bad to start playing your friends your family and learning how to play chess today Thank you to chess.com for sponsoring this episode

[00:56:50] Now at this point is where I was introduced to this whole debate and I have to admit one of the reasons So one of the reasons that I really like this paper is that it kind of set me straight about this debate because

[00:57:03] I would read evolutionary psychologists like tubing Cosmeides and Rob Kurzman who would talk about things like emotions being modules And it never made sense to me I thought it was profoundly dumb to say that because an emotion of all things is open to information from your central processing

[00:57:26] Right like my emotions change all the time depending on what I believe and what I know like it's almost like ridiculous to think that they would be informationally encapsulated

[00:57:37] And then they would say no, no we didn't mean we don't mean a fedorian module like we don't mean an informationally encapsulated module and I would say well then why the fuck are you using the word module right because this is what a module means

[00:57:50] Fodor is the one who like made the shit what it is But wait I want to understand your objection before we get to like how the levels of analysis are different because while emotions are certainly open to being revised in light of information from central processing

[00:58:09] There are certain things like jealousy one might argue or you know just an like a feeling of outrage and resentment and aggression if you're insulted or disrespected or certain things that like there it's much at least harder for whatever information to break through your just natural reaction to those things

[00:58:36] Or just loving your child you know like there's not that much information that's going to make you not love Bella right you know Right okay good this so it turned to me on the understanding of what information like central cognitive information is

[00:58:55] So for me the knowledge that your wife Jen is cheating on you is what caused your jealousy if you were to change that belief Wait time out what do you know What do you know that I don't

[00:59:09] I thought you had a guy that the conversion I thought the natural selection had given us a conversion by now Yeah that's I didn't involves conversion so That wouldn't be funny if different people had different evolutionary sort of like Like trees

[00:59:24] So sorry I just realized we lapsed right into racism with that one We're trying to get on to the forbidden 22 forbidden course I want to guess spot for like A hundred thousand dollars So for me that was central like that kind of information is what I was thinking

[00:59:49] Not to mention that you can also regulate your emotions with something more willful but even just the like knowledge that you know people who

[00:59:56] If you know maybe now would be too late but you can imagine that you have a baby and you're like oh my god I love it And then somebody says DNA test shows it's not yours and you'd be like fuck it I'm out

[01:00:08] Yeah that kind of information is a belief in the way that I would consider a top down or a cognitive penetration of the module or system

[01:00:19] So and I remember arguing with Rob Kurzman about this stuff and and not understanding how like why they were even appealing to modules

[01:00:30] And and pink are the same so thinker writes this book how the mind works right and and other people were at the time also proposing this sort of massive modular account of the mind And uh Fodor hated it

[01:00:47] So for Fodor says look man I was talking about like maybe a handful of sub like a more basic cognitive faculties like perception and maybe language whatever Not this shit that Pinker's talking about the like love is modular that doesn't that didn't even make sense to him

[01:01:03] Right and so he writes a book called so Pickers book was how the mind works photo published the book called literally the mind doesn't work that way Which is petty and awesome at the same time I guess Like a lot of photo

[01:01:18] Yeah so so so the debates the debate started there and this paper that we're at now the why evolutionary psychology should abandon modularity is an attempt to offer a way out of this debate

[01:01:36] So what the authors are trying to argue broadly is that the reason that evolutionary psychologists and sort of fedorian cognitive scientists The reason that they're disagreeing so bitterly is because they've been talking about two completely different kinds of processes two different levels of analysis

[01:01:57] So we can get into that but like at this point is that explanation about modules enough Yes very very much And I was outstanding

[01:02:06] Thank you a little bit of history of science too so when I went to grad school Paul Bloom had just arrived and Frank Kyle had been there

[01:02:15] Sorry Paul Bloom arrived like my second year Frank Kyle arrived my first year maybe and they they were hiring people they hired a cognitive psychologist named Brian Scholl who does visual stuff Oh yeah I know him

[01:02:28] He was like a big his advisor was this big guy in visual perception and they full on were of the modular view this view is as I mentioned before deeply tied to nativism right so you are born with these modules as opposed to the associationistic views

[01:02:46] And so I was sort of instructed by about Frank Kyle and Paul Bloom hardcore nativists Can you just say briefly if that's possible like what that means what nativism nativists

[01:02:58] Yeah so people like Paul Bloom and Frank Kyle believe that infants are born with all sorts of concepts already baked into the brain into the mind

[01:03:08] Concepts of numeracy you know Paul even at one point was arguing that basic moral perceptions about like good and bad that these were you're just born with them And they unfold but they're there

[01:03:21] Meanwhile there's like a whole different brand of cognitive science say like so MIT was always like the Chomsky and those guys were always associated with nativism

[01:03:32] And over at UC San Diego you had like this the hotbed of a rebirth of empiricism and never the twain would meet like they actually just beefed with each other a lot So what would be a debate that they would have like

[01:03:47] Language language is a hotbed of this so right is language the result of a dedicated computational process So Chomsky argued of course because if you look at how quickly children acquire language and you look at how much input they've had

[01:04:06] There is no way that they could have just acquired this by wrote like brute learning he thought that the brain was obviously Biased toward picking up grammar and he thought that the rules of grammar were in the mind already and that and then

[01:04:24] Other people who study language learning thought no the same way that you learn whatever is how you learn language and it's might not be through Reward and punishment like skin or thought but it's just through statistical learning and so they would do computational models trying to show that

[01:04:40] Children by the time whatever their age to have been able to acquire the rules of grammar It's not necessary to argue that that the rules had to be in there because there's plenty enough information

[01:04:53] So a general system like statistical learning that results in all knowledge it was in charge of language So the fact that children can so much more easily learn language than adults like which side does that favor or can both Sides explain that equally well enough

[01:05:14] It's a good question. I think both sides can explain it in a different way So the people who appeal to the general learning mechanisms like statistical learning Would appeal to the plasticity of the brain just being it's just more malleable early in life

[01:05:29] And I think that you know the then you have these people who believe that they're these critical periods That I think are more likely to be the nativists that that the modules are extra sensitive early in life Right. Yeah And where is four door on that?

[01:05:46] So yeah, I think four door believed that language wasn't it. I think he was he was buddy buddy in eight modules Chomsky yeah, yeah in fact Pinker and Paul Bloom had an argument with Chomsky

[01:05:58] They had a debate with Chomsky and one of Paul's early publications was an attack on Chomsky Not because they just read about the modularity. They were all on the same side in terms of nativism and modularity Chomsky just believed that language module was a complete accident

[01:06:13] It was just a blip and that it unlocked this thing and I think Pinker and Bloom believed that there would have been selective pressures to create a language module But but photo or did really jump ship when it came to modules for beliefs, right?

[01:06:31] He thought he thought it was an abuse of his his view that that it was you know taking what he said and misapplying it He was really opposed to using the concept of modules to explain really any social behavior or social life

[01:06:52] But most higher level things. He's like no like we have a we also have a central processor, you know like our When we think and reason that's not it's not modular at all. So for our philosophical brain is not modular

[01:07:07] It's just our like except for maybe trolley problems. Those are obviously modular and selected for Well, you know when we encountered trolley switches in the environment of early adopters Right that's the thing it was it wasn't adaptive

[01:07:24] Or it was it wasn't adaptive to push it wasn't adaptive to push because you know like overweight people are more likely to have like aggressive family members that will come get revenge They would have beat your ass Yeah I love that explanation

[01:07:44] The intuition is we're all sugared up That's why the intuition is weaker if you describe him as a man wearing a big backpack I could probably take him I could probably take his relatives I bet you somebody has proposed that

[01:08:01] Maybe so so say why they're talking past each other because of different levels of analysis Yeah, so this paper tries to demonstrate that they've this whole time this debate has been just a confusion about levels of analysis

[01:08:16] So in order to do that they present I guess this distinction in levels of explanation for the mind that they borrow from The internet and somebody named Mar who I don't know

[01:08:28] And they say there are three different ways that are not necessarily inconsistent with each other that you would describe something like mental life or psychology But by the way did you find this paper to be a little bit a little bit exaggerating

[01:08:44] Yeah, although it was hard to pin down exactly why They were like saying this is perhaps been the biggest setback in all of psychology Even more than the replication crisis This has set back like I'm such a good audience though for like methodological fuck ups

[01:09:04] Like being like responsible for like I am just I want this Take me, ravage me with your like methodological criticism Okay, so three levels of analysis They say there's the intentional level the functional level and the implementation level the intentional level

[01:09:23] I think a lot of people know about this the intentional stance that Dan Dennett talks about where when you're describing say Why did Tamler say that you appeal to belief desire psychology say Tamler wanted to do that he thought this he believed it

[01:09:39] That intentional level is to quote the paper by the way I didn't even say the name David Petroshowsky I'm sorry and Annie Ferts are the authors

[01:09:51] That intentional level is so they say this level also contains the first person phenomenology of how things feel and includes mental states such as emotions beliefs thoughts desires and so on

[01:10:00] So you can have a whole sort of theory of causality that appeals to intentions and desires and it makes sense to say You know, why did I drop this because I wanted to it's not wrong to say that it's just a very high level of description

[01:10:16] And it's also like knowing a little bit about this the Dennett stuff on this it's like how we sometimes successfully sometimes not

[01:10:24] What we use to predict people's behavior is to kind of think well, this is what they believe this is what they want and so I think they'll do this

[01:10:33] And we're just talking about their psychology as we understand our own psychology that's how I understand how I act is you know I want to take an edible so that I will find succession even funnier you know whatever

[01:10:50] Yeah, curb you know so like now obviously this isn't true all the time but we understand ourselves is acting according you know at this level and so we assume that other people are going to act like that and we and we can understand it

[01:11:05] Right and they have like causal you know that this has some sort of causal influence on on like their motor movements right when you go get your edible your your arms moving or a result of you wanting to get that edible

[01:11:17] Yeah, it's like folk psychology and it would be folk psychology. Yeah, and it would be weird to say no Temmler didn't take the edible because he wanted to he took the edible because you know his hippocampus was firing in this particular way right

[01:11:31] You'd be like well yeah I mean I'm sure like we always say like I'm sure the brain did it but yeah you know what's so funny is that I was just lecturing on Plato's dialogue the phato and he makes this exact point

[01:11:45] Like he makes this distinction between levels of explanation and analysis he says if somebody wants to know the phato is when he's about to die and he's you know like it's the dialogue that takes place right before he drinks the hemlock and ends with him drinking the hemlock and it's beautiful

[01:12:00] And he says if somebody wants to know like why I'm here in this prison cell about to drink the hemlock and they start talking about like my bones and sinews and like flesh like that won't that's just not that's not going to answer the question

[01:12:15] Right. The thing that answers the question is the Athenian jury thought it best for me to be sentenced to this and I thought it best not to escape and so that's why I'm here so it's like already then there was this idea that there are different levels of explanation

[01:12:30] and some are more suitable to tell you what you want to know. Oh that's great that's awesome yes exactly and and you know the the authors in this paper say we're talking about modularity but we think this is a deep problem in all of psychology

[01:12:44] and when when you think about it this is the complaint that we've often made when people talk about neuroscience and they say well your brain did it and you're like well like that doesn't supervene on the fact that I wanted to do it

[01:12:59] and that's true of literally everything that I did. Exactly. Yeah exactly it's not that insightful unless you want to know about the brain. It doesn't actually explain what it is.

[01:13:10] Right and the attitude that it somehow is a better explanation or the more scientific explanation is a silly one it's just a different it's a different explanation.

[01:13:19] It's just different levels of explanation. There are questions that it would be appropriate to invoke that but yes this kind of confusion happens a lot. Right. So how is that happening here?

[01:13:30] So then it's important for this when we get back to why this is a problem that the intentional stance holds the agent as central the I the agent is what's understood to be experiencing what their brain is doing all that stuff

[01:13:49] because we'll get back to that so that if you pop down one level you get to what they call the functional level of analysis. The functional level of analysis I guess maybe named after functionalism of some sort is still a layer of abstraction

[01:14:06] it's not your brain cells firing but it is a description of all of the subsystems that make who you are. So here is where you would include you know you have there is some part of your brain that's responsible for long term memory some part for short term memory

[01:14:23] but that the brain parts don't matter nearly as much as the fact that there is this level that we call short term memory long term memory you have describing what's going on in the brain as computational like inputs and outputs.

[01:14:37] Let me ask you about this because according to the authors this corresponds to what Dennett called the design stance which I understood as like this is what this mechanism is for like this is why it exists is so it can do this kind of things is that right.

[01:14:58] I don't remember how Dennett talks about it but it seems to make sense because what I think they're saying is that you can view the mind as a whole bunch of these sub processes that were probably selected for and you can explain all of those in terms of inputs outputs

[01:15:19] you get this visual stimuli you have this output so at this sort of computational layer this abstraction at the level of computation where if you ask somebody about like well where but where is tamler like you've just described to me like the 50 kinds of mechanisms that make up a mind which one of those is tamler you would say

[01:15:39] that doesn't make any sense because they're all tamler but we're not talking about tamler we're talking about like the how the mind is computing inputs and outputs.

[01:15:50] But so like let's say whatever the mechanism is that if I put my hand in the fire will get me to immediately remove my body will immediately remove my hand from the fire is the proper functional level of analysis here like we have some sort of module that

[01:16:09] gets us to find a verse of things that will do damage to our body.

[01:16:17] Yeah I think that's right that's the sort of set and in that sense it can be called the design stands without you know it's not necessarily designed by an after natural selection although like it seems plausible in one of these cases that that's why.

[01:16:30] Right you know it's important to note that these I think these people are evolutionary like people so so I think that if anything they're going to be biased to saying that that these are designed I mean sorry that these are selected for.

[01:16:41] So OK the quote so they say this yeah this level corresponds to what Dennis has called the design stands and encompasses both of Mars computational and algorithmic and representational levels.

[01:16:50] Causation at this level occurs because of the particular constellation of functions being carried out across different mechanisms and the abstract if then causal relationships between mechanisms.

[01:17:01] And so I remember as a grad I'm sorry as an undergrad in psychology when I learned about Chomsky's view of what he called the language acquisition device.

[01:17:10] I remember asking so is that like a brain is that a part of the brain and the answer was well that doesn't really matter what matters is that it's a computational system right right.

[01:17:21] And you could imagine and I think this is maybe why they call it the functional level of analysis you could imagine a system doing the same exact thing with the information of input and output but being.

[01:17:32] You know silicon based like a computer it could be instantiated in any of a number of ways what matters is the combination your rectum yeah. I'm a easy crowd.

[01:17:44] OK so the eye doesn't make any sense here nobody's talking about like the intentional sense finally the last one is just the physical stance there where you're actually talking about the physical instantiation instantiation like your neurons the networks of neurons.

[01:17:59] You know the molecules that make up the neurons you know electrochemical processes that are firing in the brain.

[01:18:05] That is the bottom level that is the most basic level of analysis so hopefully it makes it clear that talking you can talk about any given psychological process in any of these three ways and not be inconsistent.

[01:18:20] OK so here now now we have the tools to understand what's going on according to these authors which I'm convinced by they say.

[01:18:27] The reason that these two camps have been fighting with each other for the last 20 or whatever years or 30 years is that they've been actually using different levels of analysis and not realizing it or never making it explicit.

[01:18:41] And they think again that this is actually a problem in a lot of debates and psychology and so here's here was the insight which I actually really I feel like I learned from this insight.

[01:18:53] When Fodor describes modularity in the Fodorian sense where he says that there is no top down influence there is no cognitive penetrability beliefs and desires can't change your visual perception of the visual illusion.

[01:19:11] It is using the intentional stance and it's it sounds like he's only at the functional level like I would have said oh it's functional because it's a bunch of different systems that he's talking about.

[01:19:23] But it doesn't make sense to say that you don't have influence from your central cognitive processing or your beliefs and desires unless you're appealing to the intentional stance to the eye.

[01:19:38] When I say when I say I believe that coins are bigger and therefore I see them as bigger. That is absolutely referring to the eye level.

[01:19:49] Right. So there's something about even saying I can't get myself to see the two people chasing each other as the same size that it just is intentional stance essentially.

[01:19:59] Exactly. And and that that's a great way to put it I can't get myself to see it this way is the only way that Fodorian modularity of this encapsulated way makes any sense because Fodor was literally just saying I can't change the way that my visual system works.

[01:20:17] Right. Right. Right. I mean I guess right so are you saying then at the center just the whole idea of a central intelligence.

[01:20:24] Yes. Processing kind of can only make sense in from the intentional stance perspective because because of what he means by central processing because what he's including in what he calls whatever central processing is your beliefs and your desires.

[01:20:43] Those those just are the things that that we would how we would describe something in the intentional way because your systems don't have beliefs. Right. Right. Right. Right. You have beliefs.

[01:20:58] Right. So if you're talking about your computer it wouldn't make sense to say your computer can't see this thing exactly like you would just talk about the different systems and that's right.

[01:21:09] You're already kind of at the functional level unless you're speaking. Yeah I guess like metaphorically right something like no we're not as naturally inclined to do that with computers as we are.

[01:21:21] That's right. That's a great. That's actually a great example. I was trying to figure out like how to explain this part which is in the computer example to say that your computer can't tell whatever how the graphics are being processed is just a weird thing to say.

[01:21:39] Obviously part of your computer is processing the graphics and part of it is like whatever in charge of other background processes in part. And so it just it makes no sense to divide up the computer into the the central and then the other stuff.

[01:21:53] And the whole notion of top down influence or sorry informational encapsulation doesn't make sense if we're popping down into the functional level.

[01:22:02] So it doesn't make sense to say the graphics processor of your computer is informationally encapsulated because you would just say from what like the graphics processor is doing what it's supposed to do.

[01:22:15] The other thing is doing what it's supposed to do. The notion of encapsulation doesn't make sense because you have to be encapsulated from something and the inputs and outputs of all those systems are just the inputs and outputs of the system.

[01:22:25] So if I said but yeah can't they be encapsulated from each other from the different like other things that a computer can do. Yes display. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:22:36] They could have now imagine that you have like the graphics system and that you have I don't know what's the notion about computers to say this but let's say that there is. Yeah the audio good.

[01:22:47] So you have the graphics processor and you have the audio processor and they're taking different inputs. You could say that one is informationally encapsulated from the other but it doesn't do much work because all that they've done is program the visual system

[01:23:03] the graphics system to take this information and program the audio system to take that information and the notion of encapsulation doesn't help much above and beyond inputs and outputs.

[01:23:14] You just describe what's feeding in what's feeding into the graphics card what's feeding into the audio card. There's the whole and that's that's that's the insight that's the

[01:23:23] that's interesting. Yeah it's that it does you know good to describe the functional layer in terms of encapsulation and that is what they say evolutionary psychologists have been saying this whole time they've been saying

[01:23:36] there that's the reason that we don't just we don't use the term module in the fedorian sense because they believe that they are talking at the functional layer of all these systems that have evolved and so there's no real argument between these two it's

[01:23:51] just they've talked talk past this episode of very bad wizards is sponsored by better help online therapy check them out at better help dot com slash VBW. Tamler do you think that they'll finally let us do couples counseling even if I really go.

[01:24:10] That's a great question I mean we definitely should try to sign up we were you know we have a coupon code we should really go on and see if they'll they'll talk. We have a lot to iron out though. Yeah.

[01:24:24] But you know maybe you have a similar relationship in your life people who who you're completely dependent on but sometimes get get under your skin. Get along with it.

[01:24:37] If you do you should try better help better help is customized online therapy they offer video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to it's the ultimate in pen.

[01:24:51] And then you can start communicating with your therapist and under 48 hours these are licensed professionals who are there to help you out.

[01:25:01] And importantly I think people really need to know this if you don't like the therapist that you have you can always switch ask them to switch you know it's not always going to be a great fit but you don't have to stick with them so.

[01:25:14] So unload your stressors in life get some unbiased feedback you'll be pretty surprised at what you might gain from it so see if it's for you.

[01:25:23] This podcast again is sponsored by better help and very bad wizards listeners get 10% off their first month if they go to better help dot com slash VBW that's BETT ER HELP dot com slash VBW and you'll get 10% off your first month.

[01:25:40] Our thanks to better help for sponsoring this episode of very bad. Okay I have a couple questions about this. I feel like I get it blurrily.

[01:25:51] So something like how would you apply this to something like the debate over the cheater detection module say yeah our evolutionary psychologist saying that cheater detection module is just at the like functional level and the people who are saying this is bullshit this is like like how does this explain say that good so like we can appeal to my what I would say.

[01:26:14] I would have said before reading this article which is what I said about emotions which is how are you going to tell me that the cheater detection module is a module when obviously.

[01:26:23] You know in some of those tasks where you're trying to detect the cheaters you're like effortfully trying to figure it out. Yeah that's to me how that's not modular right there's no informational encapsulation and so what they would say is.

[01:26:38] What we mean is that there were selective pressures to make a subsystem that's really good at taking this particular information and then outputting this particular information.

[01:26:50] And there is no central you or I because it's all just subsystems they believe all of the mind is like that so you have a memory system you have a cheater detection system you have whatever the emotion.

[01:27:00] All of those systems work in tandem to make you but to rely on again the notion of encapsulation would mean that of the evolutionary psychologists are popping into the intentional level and saying that that evolution gave us an eye and that they're in that that's at the same level as the cheater detection module.

[01:27:19] Right that's okay and I think the reason why this is so hard for us to understand is it's not like we think of ourselves as eyes and so even just think about it.

[01:27:30] And if you're thinking about something like a cheater detection it's hard to think about that right like if you're not you it's hard to think about whether you would you know be able to spot the you know person that's drinking at a bar is not 21 or whatever.

[01:27:48] Because like that's the whole point yeah that you can do it you know like and so it makes sense.

[01:27:56] Why it wouldn't be that difficult to understand visual perception like I kind of get that that's a module but when you get to emotions there they're even the way we talk about same emotions is so intentional when we say I felt this.

[01:28:11] That doesn't even make it's hard to even make sense of what it means if you're not at the end right and so what but what they really are talking about is no what we what we mean is that early humans had enough encounters with like.

[01:28:24] In risky situations with a predator or with heights that this system evolved to get triggered and and you know kick in a fight or flight response when that information is processed from the environment and you know what you are just all of those processes that we're describing that's not there's no you like it doesn't make sense to talk about you you're just a bunch of sub routine at some level right it we're all a bunch of sub routines anyway.

[01:28:49] Sure. But it's. I guess I'm wondering though then whether even just the interest in evolutionary psychology almost presumes a kind of intentional stance view in the sense that like.

[01:29:08] I don't know like this is hard for me to describe but when you just said that it's you know if you're going to talk about you know emotions and cheater detection and these things that we just naturally associate with I in these other terms.

[01:29:27] Then why is this just different than people who are working on you know the mechanistic level neuronal like visual processing stuff that doesn't strike me as counterintuitive or controversial but it's just like under the hood stuff yeah that isn't that I can't connect with because for me to connect with something I have to think of me.

[01:29:55] And for me to even be like fully satisfied with an explanation I have to think about it right intentionally.

[01:30:02] I think you're you're pointing to something that I hadn't thought about which which the authors don't don't talk about again because I think they're sort of they lean toward the evolutionary psychology functionality so.

[01:30:15] The computational theory of mind is what's underlying all this that you have this non physical but computational layer of stuff that's going on. I think that your what you're pointing to is.

[01:30:28] That they're sort of bastardizing the concepts of emotions and whatever in only saying that they're at the functional level the subjective experience of emotion that there is an eye that's experiencing the emotion seems so central to our lay.

[01:30:42] Understanding the concept yeah that that it's hard to just think about the computational layer they really do want to though they want to say no we don't mean the like subjective you know that I felt jealousy we meant that you got this input from the environment and this you know that it produced this output.

[01:30:59] You sorry that that's just a subsystem in your brain they don't want to appeal at all to that intentional layer.

[01:31:06] But then it's like are you explaining anger then or are you just saying ones and zeros here and ones and zeros there they think that I think that they think that they're explaining whatever it might be you know cheater detection or anger.

[01:31:22] I think that they think that they're pointing to the computations that are going on so much like in the in the Mueller liar illusion or in these these other size illusions where the input is the parallel lines meeting converging in the distance that produce this illusion.

[01:31:40] They just want to use that same language to say thinking about your when men think about their wives fucking another guy they this response kicks in and that response leads to certain kinds of behaviors like keeping them away from other men so they won't get cuckolded.

[01:31:58] So while there is the eye that's doing it they don't care that to them it's just like well this is just the system that's in charge of of preventing cuckoldry and that was the system that was in charge of distance perception.

[01:32:13] I don't buy like I'm I have trouble with it too like I don't like this way of talking about emotions I don't think it it I don't think it's adding too much I think it's just describing.

[01:32:25] But I think that they just want it all in this hence the massive modularity they have they want they want it all to be modular.

[01:32:34] I guess the the like it reminds me then of the play doh thing are they just telling like the you know bones and sinews and like the whole cheater detection idea only makes sense in light of the intentional stance as as opposed to it just back I guess.

[01:32:54] So you could talk about it in terms of you know like just sets of behaviors.

[01:33:00] Like I guess you can talk about it in terms of input outputs but even start using terms like cheater detection or jealousy or something like that at a certain like for some of these things you're just presuming that there is a detector or a somebody who's jealous right like well in our in our language hard to talk about yeah yeah it is hard to talk about it.

[01:33:24] But here's I was just thinking of maybe a way to say it so so when I hear so remember that crazy article we read about like sperm detection from oral sex right yeah so like they're saying OK there's a system that like when calm is tasted it kicks in.

[01:33:42] I desire to keep your you know whatever your partner around because because you don't want them to like see I can't even say without a feeling you're going to go to town. I think I say.

[01:33:54] Well that's it's a crazy explanation like the reason that maybe I would not want my partner to talk to an attractive guy is because I personally don't want them to leave me like that's the way I think about it and I think that maybe a lot of these emotional mechanisms are best thought of as that just I have reasons and so so I might say you're kind of like

[01:34:20] you're confusing that there is a general purpose central processing unit that is just doing things like figuring out what the like how the world works and what I want and what I don't and what I don't want is for my wife to leave me so if I think if I believe that she might leave me I will have a reason to do this thing.

[01:34:39] And they're talking about it in terms of these subsystems so what they say is.

[01:34:44] Well yeah but even you're talking about your beliefs and desires about your wife is missing the point what we're saying is that the thing that is the thing that is giving you your beliefs and desires about this situation is this mechanism that was selected for.

[01:35:04] We're saying the tongue module is going to be. It's the come the come taste module. It's a fact actually the tongue and put a little bit of come on a baby's tongue they immediately know that they're being cuckolded. That's terrible.

[01:35:21] Were you able to understand their example of the modularity mistake the Barrett I guess Lisa Feldman Barrett and Kurzbaum with shy up and Gardner like because I had trouble figuring that out is how this was a great illustrator.

[01:35:40] And I think that's the foundation of this talking past each other which one says on page 16.

[01:35:47] Okay yeah so this is an exchange between yeah the evolutionary people and the and the fedora and people and the fedora and people being being Chiap and Gardner where they say when you're talking about what I remember what they're talking about here.

[01:36:07] So I haven't used this phrase but system one system yeah so they're saying like the discussion we just had about about whatever detecting that your wife is cheating on you or whatever.

[01:36:19] You could say well no what you're confusing is system one system two stuff so system one might be automatic stuff that could be described as modular but you have system to which is your general reasoning.

[01:36:31] Right you have you have the ability to think hard about something and decide whether or not you want to know want to take the action.

[01:36:39] And so maybe what you're calling modules is just an example of system one stuff that fast automatic stuff that maybe it's a heuristic maybe whatever it's like a computation that's being done automatically for the evolutionary people system one system two doesn't make any sense in the same way that general cognition and fedora and modules don't make sense.

[01:37:00] For them like system to like system to really is kind of an intentional stance it's effortful is appealing to thinking hard and trying and like deliberating that is directly appealing to the eye.

[01:37:14] So they would just say like all you're describing is different modules there's like a maybe there's a reasoning module there's a right right right right right and just to talk about system to presumes this central eye right.

[01:37:27] In fact a lot of the a lot of the this this example of levels of analysis sort of explains why there's a lot of brain people and cognitive psych people who hate system one system to and they their critique is usually something like there isn't there is no system one in the brain.

[01:37:47] Right or there you know system two is a whole bunch of things that what they don't realize is they're just popping up like when people talk about system to system one is just popping up a layer of abstraction. Right it's not really saying anything about the brain.

[01:37:59] No none of those people think there's anything about the brain. Well they shouldn't at least. Yeah okay interesting.

[01:38:07] Yeah so here's maybe something that will help about the evolutionary psychology thing evolutionary psychology proposes that an entire bounded computer exists for each problem that the mind is designed to solve and every problem has a design solution for them. Right but that seems implausible right.

[01:38:28] Well it's implausible in maybe in some sense but not in the sense that they want to appeal to which is are you saying and I've had conversations with Rob Kurzband I remember that frustrated me because he would say are you saying that somehow natural selection didn't produce the mind.

[01:38:45] I'm like no that's not what I'm saying but it's not like a every problem solve like it's not a solution for every problem right like there's got to be some stuff that you have to just collateral damage or it's a byproduct.

[01:38:58] Yeah no it could be a byproduct like sorry that whatever natural selection just caused everything in some way or another and so this quote is an entire bounded computer exists for each problem that the mind is designed to solve and I suppose that there are things that the mind isn't designed to solve but that could by mistake.

[01:39:15] But they yeah there's very very wed to this idea that it's all functional adaptation these are all functional systems.

[01:39:24] Alright interesting like I think I get it is a very elusive thing and I think the reason why it's elusive is because we so naturally are just kind of magnetically drawn to seeing this in terms of like intentional stance terms and so when you're telling us not to do that it's very hard to get our minds around it.

[01:39:44] That's right and I think that the difficulty that we're having is I think you know if they're right in this analysis. This is the difficulty that everybody's been having you know.

[01:39:56] And this is why there's a lot of right yeah careers have been made and on this difficult like just kind of not noticing that's right yeah for.

[01:40:06] I just want to read this like I'm going to conclude with this as they conclude confusing or collapsing across different levels of analysis is not just a problem for modularity and evolutionary psychology.

[01:40:17] Rather it is the greatest problem facing early 21st century psychology dwarfing even the current replication crisis. I would argue it's the greatest problem facing like humanity right now. Like the greatest problem like civilization has ever faced like besides wokeness. Only somebody were brave enough to talk about this.

[01:40:42] Well we're this is just a taste of what you'll what you'll learn. No we're going to like this. We're going to start our own university with forbidden topics but the forbidden topics will be very very different.

[01:40:57] Very bad wizards University you know what like we couldn't wait for the Calvary. So we are the Cavalry. We are the Cavalry. All right well join us next time for another fearless ideologically free exploration of another topic. Some other my new shot of the field.

[01:41:24] We're going to take apart the type token distinction next time. Daris. Oh no don't go get the sub stack ready. Join us next time.