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I'm David Petrozuski.

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I'm David Pinsov, and this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast, Actual Evolutionary

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Psychology by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists.

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David, today we have another wonderful episode with a philosopher.

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Yes, I believe our second philosopher on the podcast.

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I love talking to philosophers, and we actually reiter reiterate this in the episode.

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Uh, just because I find that they have um uh really precise ways of communicating ideas and

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a really good handle on concepts and distinctions that I think is sorely lacking in in the

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social sciences.

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I think we need to be better about uh defining our terms precisely and making uh more

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fine-grained distinctions and being clear about what we mean.

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And I think philosophers are specialists in that task.

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I completely disagree, David.

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I think we should be more muddled and confused.

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I'm kidding.

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Um No, of course, yeah.

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Um and uh I think so.

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This is Lauren Ross, who's at UC Irvine, uh uh close to us, um,

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Southern California.

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And I think what is exciting about this conversation is I came across Lauren's work and

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work when I was working on my own struggles dealing with things like mechanisms and

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modules, um, and the whole confusion about the things that we're postulating as

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evolutionary scientists.

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Um, and it was very validating.

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And it was really great to have this conversation because I feel like it was a real-time

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example of uh here's a philosopher of science who's been thinking about these issues,

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not at all uh from the perspective of what we're doing, but then is hearing

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what we're doing and seeing commonalities with things that she's doing.

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And it was just very helpful.

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And I feel like there's much more to do.

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I I don't know how you feel, David, but I thought I felt like it was a very cathartic

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conversation to have to be seen and heard.

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Yes, totally.

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Yeah, we joked about how philosophers should be the therapists of scientists.

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Exactly.

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And yeah, this was a therapeutic conversation in that regard where we got to voice our

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frustrations with the uh conceptual confusions and difficulties in our field,

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and how we struggle to communicate our explanatory frameworks to people who are not

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familiar with that way of thinking and and what it means to you know be at a different

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level of analysis or a different level of explanation, uh how low we should go in terms of

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our explanations and our level of reduction.

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This was a really fun and enriching conversation.

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Yeah, and Lauren was really great about also articulating what is sort of state of the art

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for philosophy of science, including a very practical functional approach to well, what is

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a science explanation for?

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And if you, you know, not that there's a one-size or grand theory uh of this is what an

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explanation should be.

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So this was just great.

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Uh I I really had a good time.

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And hopefully, if you're a embattled evolutionary behavioral scientist or know someone who

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is, this will also be a uh therapeutic um episode for you.

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Yep.

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Enjoy.

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Lauren, thank you for being here.

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Um, I want to just uh start with a preface, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to

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have you on this podcast, which is about evolutionary behavioral sciences, is that a

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lot of us evolutionary psychologists or evolutionary anthropologists, we are

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working with colleagues who sometimes react to us talking about

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mechanisms in a way that makes them uh maybe to just put

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it bluntly, sort of grumpy or angry.

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Like I've literally heard people say, well, why do you have to talk about a mechanism for

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that?

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Or why do you have to postulate that there's some system that does something?

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Why can't you just say there's this experimental effect and I'm interested in that?

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And so this is all my preface.

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Um, oh we lost David, uh, but hopefully he'll come back.

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Uh that happens occasionally.

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But this is my uh preface of saying when I came across your work, I was really excited

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because you're doing um from a very different perspective, an idea of well, what is a

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mechanism, for example, what's a pathway?

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And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on was to sort of at least maybe buck us up

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or um uh oh David's internet cut out but we'll just we'll have him come back in a in

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a moment here.

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Um either buck us up or sort of help us understand from your perspective how did you get

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into this idea of mechanisms or pathways or causation in biology.

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Um maybe we can start with that and we can see to what extent what we're doing either needs

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correction or we can sort of feel somewhat vindicated, if that makes sense,

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as we are, as evolutionary behavioral scientists, sort of

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among empirical scientists, trying to postulate mechanisms, and

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we're often sort of crying in the wilderness about mechanisms, I would say, to put it in a

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way.

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Great.

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This is a nice concrete example of questions about mechanism

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and perhaps also the importance of it in science.

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So I'm a philosopher of science, and in particular, I work on causation and

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explanation, how scientists are providing explanations, the standards

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their explanations need to meet, or the standards that need to be met to have a good

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explanation.

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And then causation often shows up here because we think many explanations in science are

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causal, although, of course, we're often interested in varieties of explanation, some of

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which we might think are non-causal.

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But explanation is, you know, a very important project in science.

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We sometimes think of it as one of the most important projects where you're getting deep

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understanding of the world.

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And so mechanism is showing up in many cases where we're interested

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in A explanation or B causation.

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And they're both sort of related to each other because we often think that a main way

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we get explanations is by getting causal information about the world, or we're getting some

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kind of causal information about the brain, some causal structure, or the causes that

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matter for and that account for some kind of outcome of interest.

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So I think an important question to ask when

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mechanism is coming up is what's the point of this concept in science?

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What is it supposed to be doing for us?

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And what are we using it for?

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What is it what is it, you know, being used in order to do in terms

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of like scientific goals, but also if it's referring to causal systems in the

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world, you know, what types of causal systems is it referring to?

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So if we're interested in you know getting explanations, it makes sense that

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mechanism is coming up in those discussions.

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Um And I think it's important to focus

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on if it if we're interested in giving explanations, kind of

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how mechanisms are are serving that goal, and if they're giving us a causal explanation,

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essentially what kind of causal stuff in the world are they referring to.

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I guess some other points to note are that mechanism is a status term

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in the life sciences?

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And you often see this in the calls for grants that

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scientists are applying to, and you see it in the publication guidelines for journals.

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It's often suggested in many life sciences that if you want to get your work funded and

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published, you need to identify mechanisms and provide mechanistic insights.

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So part of what that shows is that it's a status term.

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um, the challenge is there isn't agreement on how to define a mechanism or

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what it means.

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And so this sort of connects to and nicely

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supports this situation you're referring to, where one scientist says they have a mechanism

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and the other scientist is sort of like, well, wait a minute, do you really?

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That's a debate that shows up in many different domains.

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And it's an important debate to discuss because

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mechanism is viewed as a standard in science.

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And if we don't have a clear notion of what it means, then part of what that implies is

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that the standard we're using isn't very clear and that there isn't kind of consensus on

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what that is.

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So if a journal is using that as their standard for publishing a paper, but you have two

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reviewers that have very different conceptions of mechanism in mind, um, you know, we're

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going to get different types of suggestions for whether this paper is

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meeting our standards or not.

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So Um so yeah, I think

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part of what this shows is the importance of asking this question

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of what are we interested in when we're bringing up the notion of mechanism and what do we

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want it to do and what do we think it is doing?

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And maybe that's a start for unpacking these debates and and topics in this

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space.

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Yeah, that's great.

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And one thing, I mean, so I can to have a dialogue about sort of what we do as evolutionary

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behavioral scientists, one thing I think many of us experience, and I can make this with a

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concrete example, is when we use mechanism, we're often doing sort of design stance

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level, like Dan Dennett's sort of design stance level.

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So we really want to say what a mechanism is, is not just a sequence of causation

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out in the world, but it's a packet of evolved systems at an abstract

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functionalist level.

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And I think many of us come up against an idea where people will use the word mechanism.

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And I would talk about like social psychologists would often do this.

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Well they'll say something like you know, the number of ice cream cones correlates with

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number of shark attacks.

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And then they'll say, well, the mechanism behind that.

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And when they say the mechanism behind that, they'll say, well, it's not a direct causal

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link.

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It's that when it's warmer out, there's more people at the beach, and therefore there's

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more people at the beach and it's hot and they have more ice cream, and also there's more

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people swimming.

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And that's the mechanism behind that correlation.

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And I think for many of us, uh evolutionary behavioral scientists, I at least, and

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David, you can correct me, I kind of feel like, oh, that's not a mechanism, that's a a

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causal pathway.

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I would prefer to use mechanism as in our case, something that

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was designed by natural selection and that um is in

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some sense a you can make predictions about what it's going to be like and

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how it's going to work in future situations, um, in a kind of functional

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teleological perspective.

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And um, so that's like an example concretely of one of the uh uh

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we find each other at cross purposes among us behavioral scientists talking about

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mechanism.

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I'm curious what your thoughts are on that example, um one way or the other.

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Oh yeah, absolutely.

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So part of what I think it reveals is the sense in

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which there are different types of causal systems and causes

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and systems in general that we're interested in referring to, studying,

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that we think matter in our work.

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And we need a way to systematically talk about what those are and

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to distinguish them.

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And those differences, you know, those differences matter for all sorts of

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reasons.

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And sometimes the term mechanism is getting in the way of our ability to do that well.

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So if we have a type of causal system that involves

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functional considerations and it's maybe goal-directed, that could be different from a

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causal system that's sort of mere maybe domino causation, where it's just a sequence of

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causes that in succession lead to an effect.

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We need a way to talk about the differences between those two types of causal systems.

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That's one example.

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This is a situation that you see just all across the

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sciences where there are different terms that are used to refer to different types of

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causes and different types of causal systems, right?

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A scientist will call a cause deterministic or probabilistic, it's more proximal or

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distal, it's operating on different timescales.

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That's those are distinctions with respect to a single cause, but causal systems also,

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if we call them pathways or cascades, or mechanisms, there's often a suggestion that they

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have additional features and that there's differences across those types of causal systems.

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So I would say part of what we see here is the sense in which there are causal

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varieties that scientists care about.

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And we need a way to clearly capture them and refer

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to them because the differences across those systems matter for the behaviors they produce,

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for how we study them.

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And right now, the term mechanism is getting in the way of our ability to do that.

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I mean, mechanism just means so many different things to different people.

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Sometimes in the same paper, you see it being used in different ways.

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And so sometimes I wonder if just setting that term aside and talking about

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types of causal systems or types of explanatory factors is a more helpful way

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to move forward because ultimately that's what we care about.

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I mean, we want explanations and we want to identify causes and causal systems if we're

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giving a causal explanation.

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So mechanism is often a kind of

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problematic term in the sense that it's ambiguous or it's not giving us the clarity we

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need because it's it's used in so many different ways.

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So yeah, that would be, I would say part of what

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your examples show is that there's uh

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causal distinctions that matter in science.

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And I think we currently lack the ability to

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clearly refer to those and to refer to the ways in which those

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differences matter for different scientific projects and maybe even

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theoretical projects as well.

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Yeah, that's great.

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Yeah, I mean, I think it's also a symptom of the distinction I'm making is a symptom

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of a different implicit view of science.

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So I think for a lot of evolutionary behavioral scientists, our goal is to not document an

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experimental effect.

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It's to have a claim about here's a bit of abstract functions, sort of like

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physiology used to be.

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Like I think there's a system that does this, this, and this.

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With the caveat of these are rough takes, and it's probably more complicated when you get

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to the lower levels of instantiation, versus a view of science that is we're really

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interested in factors that are predictive, but maybe not causal.

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So we want to do an intervention or describe experimental effects or behavioral

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tendencies.

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And that's often from an applied perspective or a very experimental perspective, where the

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goal is to document here's the way people behave.

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Here's the if you put them in this context, they'll behave in this way.

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And I think that evolutionary behavioral sciences grew up in a more, we're interested in

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the mechanisms, not necessarily predicting behavior.

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And we'd rather have a good model the causal systems like we have for

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vision or motor control for social things, for example.

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But we'd rather have a description, a schematic, a functional schematic of how it works,

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and maybe not one where you could predict the outcomes unless you

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experimentally control them, right?

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Like that's, I think, I think we're good at experimental control.

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Um, and I think we have really good predictive validity in our models, but maybe not real

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world predictive validity, right?

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Um, in the sense of the real world's complicated.

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So, but I think that I think the the misuse of mechanism, I think, is a symptom

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of the goals being somewhat different.

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I don't know, David, if you would agree with that.

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Um Yeah, I I would agree.

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I mean, uh, it seems to me that what separates the evolutionary behavioral sciences from

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the non-evolutionary behavioral sciences is a desire to go to a deeper level of explanatory

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depth.

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And we can get to what it means to explain something and what it means to explain something

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at a deeper level of analysis.

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But it seems to me that a lot of social science uh rests at the approximate level

00:18:17.490 --> 00:18:22.610
of A causes B, B causes C, but we don't have a deeper explanation of where the causal

00:18:22.610 --> 00:18:28.530
system come comes from, what its function or teleological purpose is, uh, how it came

00:18:28.530 --> 00:18:34.530
into existence, uh, how it is situated uh in the evolutionary history of the

00:18:34.530 --> 00:18:38.530
organism in question, and typically in the social sciences, it's it's humans we're talking

00:18:38.530 --> 00:18:38.850
about.

00:18:39.090 --> 00:18:44.680
Um and I think what we seek to do in the evolutionary behavioral sciences is to um offer a

00:18:44.680 --> 00:18:49.400
framework that is concilient with the natural sciences and ideally all the way down to the

00:18:49.400 --> 00:18:54.520
physical sciences, where we have natural selection as an antientropic process that builds

00:18:54.520 --> 00:18:57.400
functional order and complexity into biological systems.

00:18:57.560 --> 00:19:01.960
And we want to understand all living things, uh, including humans, including the human

00:19:01.960 --> 00:19:07.880
mind, including uh human social structures, uh, in terms of that overarching framework.

00:19:08.120 --> 00:19:13.970
Um and so I'm I'm curious um if what you what you see as the

00:19:13.970 --> 00:19:19.970
as the pitfalls um of that project and and and whether there are ways to get lost

00:19:19.970 --> 00:19:25.970
in that attempt to uh integrate the human sciences with the natural sciences and to

00:19:25.970 --> 00:19:28.450
offer a deeper level of of explanation.

00:19:29.410 --> 00:19:34.420
So just out of curiosity, by deeper level, what do you mean here?

00:19:34.660 --> 00:19:36.420
Deeper level of explanation?

00:19:36.980 --> 00:19:40.500
Asking why uh a second time or a third time.

00:19:41.300 --> 00:19:41.860
Yeah.

00:19:42.580 --> 00:19:47.780
And I think also, and just to interrupt too, I think also to add to that, there's often a

00:19:47.780 --> 00:19:53.380
um heuristic where, again, to just appeal to Dennett, uh Dan Dave and I often talk about

00:19:53.380 --> 00:19:53.540
this.

00:19:53.620 --> 00:19:58.350
I think uh it's also typically in psychology, there's often a lot of intentional level

00:19:58.350 --> 00:19:59.310
description.

00:19:59.630 --> 00:20:05.470
And often in certain areas of psychology, including evolutionary, it's

00:20:05.470 --> 00:20:09.230
a more design stance uh level description.

00:20:09.390 --> 00:20:15.230
So we kind of want to eschew intentional level in the sense of uh the

00:20:15.230 --> 00:20:20.220
intentional level is the thing to be explained, but it's not the level at which

00:20:20.220 --> 00:20:22.940
mechanisms or predictions lie.

00:20:23.100 --> 00:20:26.540
We prefer to say there's a system that's sensitive to these cues.

00:20:26.780 --> 00:20:31.660
It produces these pro it generates this kind of, it's algorithmically does this process,

00:20:31.900 --> 00:20:33.340
produces this output.

00:20:33.500 --> 00:20:39.420
So even among the in the proximate system that has nothing to do with evolutionary time,

00:20:39.500 --> 00:20:44.620
it's more of a focus on software as opposed to theory of mindy intentional level.

00:20:44.780 --> 00:20:50.750
And then what David was alluding to is also then that even when we have that software

00:20:50.830 --> 00:20:56.750
level functionalist description, we also want a causal story out

00:20:56.750 --> 00:21:02.670
in the world that is historical, that's constrained by the deductive logic of natural

00:21:02.670 --> 00:21:03.150
selection.

00:21:03.230 --> 00:21:08.830
And to say any of these functions we're postulating need to be deductively

00:21:08.830 --> 00:21:13.980
consistent with what would be selected for, given certain auxiliary assumptions about

00:21:13.980 --> 00:21:18.780
selection pressures, features of the world, what outcomes would be selected for and not.

00:21:19.020 --> 00:21:20.300
And that is missing.

00:21:20.380 --> 00:21:21.740
Um, David is correct.

00:21:21.820 --> 00:21:27.500
I mean, that that last part especially is missing in in most of psychology, yeah.

00:21:28.300 --> 00:21:28.860
Perfect.

00:21:29.180 --> 00:21:30.300
Very clear.

00:21:30.620 --> 00:21:36.380
In so in philosophy of science, there has been interest in

00:21:36.380 --> 00:21:40.700
capturing what it means to give a scientific explanation.

00:21:41.070 --> 00:21:47.070
And then there's also interest in what makes explanations deeper or better

00:21:47.230 --> 00:21:48.510
or more complete.

00:21:48.910 --> 00:21:54.750
And earlier on in my field, I mean, perhaps actually, you know,

00:21:55.150 --> 00:22:00.590
um in the 1960s at least, you still

00:22:00.590 --> 00:22:05.940
saw ideas that deeper explanations or better explanations

00:22:06.180 --> 00:22:09.780
often involved including lower level details.

00:22:09.940 --> 00:22:15.620
There was also a sort of default assumption that explanations in physics were were

00:22:15.620 --> 00:22:19.140
better automatically than explanations at higher scales.

00:22:20.980 --> 00:22:26.830
And this was often combined with the suggestion

00:22:26.830 --> 00:22:30.270
that explanations are better when you include more detail.

00:22:31.070 --> 00:22:36.670
Now there has been movement away from those

00:22:36.670 --> 00:22:42.670
types of assumptions where if you look, I mean, part of what we care about

00:22:42.670 --> 00:22:46.030
doing in philosophy of science is capturing actual scientific work.

00:22:46.190 --> 00:22:50.670
And if you look at the explanations that social scientists provide, and biologists and

00:22:50.670 --> 00:22:56.600
neuroscientists, they don't cite fundamental physics and they do quite well with respect to

00:22:56.600 --> 00:22:57.240
various goals.

00:22:57.320 --> 00:23:00.600
And you might think this is because they don't need to.

00:23:00.840 --> 00:23:06.360
And so part of what you see now in work in

00:23:06.360 --> 00:23:11.640
philosophy of science, and I think work that's helpful, is starting to show

00:23:12.280 --> 00:23:17.490
that when we're interested in this question of what how do you how do you give an

00:23:17.490 --> 00:23:18.370
explanation?

00:23:18.610 --> 00:23:20.690
And what makes explanations better?

00:23:20.930 --> 00:23:24.690
A first thing you have to be very clear about is what do you want to explain?

00:23:24.850 --> 00:23:26.530
What's the explanatory target?

00:23:26.770 --> 00:23:31.810
And part of what your discussion is pointing to is there's very different types of things

00:23:31.810 --> 00:23:33.570
we might want to explain.

00:23:33.970 --> 00:23:38.130
There's very different types of explanatory why questions that scientists ask.

00:23:38.290 --> 00:23:43.650
And so some are going to be more evolutionary type questions, and others just aren't.

00:23:44.060 --> 00:23:50.060
And part of what that helpfully captures is a view where

00:23:50.060 --> 00:23:55.980
the only way you can capture a scientist giving an explanation is when they

00:23:55.980 --> 00:23:59.420
have a very clear explanatory target, in my opinion.

00:23:59.580 --> 00:24:01.420
And it needs to be precise.

00:24:01.660 --> 00:24:07.500
There are other views that I think are less helpful in philosophy of science that suggest

00:24:07.830 --> 00:24:13.750
that whole or better explanations have explanatory targets that are like

00:24:14.070 --> 00:24:19.910
complete and multifaceted, and you want to explain everything about a

00:24:19.910 --> 00:24:20.150
system.

00:24:20.310 --> 00:24:23.750
It's sort of a theory of everything type of explanation.

00:24:23.990 --> 00:24:29.990
Now, if you think of the explanatory target being everything about

00:24:30.150 --> 00:24:33.940
a human, how on earth could you ever give an explanation?

00:24:34.100 --> 00:24:35.380
I mean, it doesn't even right.

00:24:35.460 --> 00:24:40.980
So part of what I think it's helpful for philosophers of science or theoreticians to do in

00:24:40.980 --> 00:24:46.420
this space is we have to capture what the standards are for first the explanatory why

00:24:46.420 --> 00:24:48.260
question or the explanatory target.

00:24:48.420 --> 00:24:52.660
You can't give an explanation until you know what it is you want to explain, right?

00:24:52.900 --> 00:24:55.940
You have to have a very clear explanatory target to do that.

00:24:56.100 --> 00:25:00.350
And we sometimes forget that that step is difficult for scientists.

00:25:00.430 --> 00:25:05.550
We're more focused on how do you give the explanation once you have the why question?

00:25:05.710 --> 00:25:09.710
We forget there's standards for the kinds of why questions you can ask in science.

00:25:09.950 --> 00:25:15.870
You don't get to just ask any kind of question for it to count as a well

00:25:15.950 --> 00:25:17.390
defined explanatory target.

00:25:17.550 --> 00:25:22.510
So there's an example, the philosopher Nagel has this example that nicely fits with this

00:25:22.510 --> 00:25:25.230
discussion, which is why do humans have lungs?

00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:27.680
And he says it's ambiguous.

00:25:27.760 --> 00:25:31.680
Like that's actually not well defined enough yet, because it might be asking a more

00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:34.800
evolutionary type question or a physiological one.

00:25:35.040 --> 00:25:40.960
That's a small example that just shows, and I think it's helpful in scientific context

00:25:41.040 --> 00:25:43.920
because sometimes you have scientists who are talking past each other.

00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:46.960
They want to explain consciousness, right?

00:25:47.120 --> 00:25:48.240
Or something else.

00:25:48.320 --> 00:25:54.210
And the word they use, it actually can refer to and can be interpreted

00:25:54.210 --> 00:25:56.290
in terms of many different properties.

00:25:56.450 --> 00:25:59.090
And sometimes even the contrast you need to specify.

00:25:59.170 --> 00:26:01.490
You often need to say as opposed to what.

00:26:01.730 --> 00:26:07.090
So if you want to explain an eye color in a fruit fly, you know, you need to say the as

00:26:07.250 --> 00:26:11.570
opposed to what, or else it just isn't clear enough what you want to explain.

00:26:11.730 --> 00:26:17.480
So part of what I think your discussion suggests is look, there's different

00:26:17.480 --> 00:26:23.400
types of explanatory why questions that we need to capture in this project

00:26:23.400 --> 00:26:26.920
of understanding how scientists give explanations.

00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:32.200
And part of what that reveals is that there isn't one way scientists give explanations

00:26:32.280 --> 00:26:34.840
because there's not one kind of explanatory target.

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:37.720
So now in philosophy of science, we're more pluralist.

00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:43.830
We think there are many different types of explanations that scientists give

00:26:43.830 --> 00:26:49.430
that are legitimate, the challenge is explanation isn't an anything goes type project.

00:26:49.510 --> 00:26:54.710
So you have to put kind of standards and boundaries on what counts because you don't want

00:26:54.710 --> 00:26:57.750
your pluralism to just be anything goes.

00:26:57.830 --> 00:27:03.590
And you want to be able to say when someone is giving a bad explanation.

00:27:04.080 --> 00:27:09.520
And I mean, in contexts where we're communicating to the public, we want to be able to say

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:15.680
how science is giving us our best understanding of the world and why COVID isn't explained

00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:17.360
by 5G wireless networks.

00:27:17.520 --> 00:27:23.520
So you need to be able to say when an explanation is bad, as opposed to just

00:27:23.760 --> 00:27:25.810
if it's satisfying it counts.

00:27:25.970 --> 00:27:28.610
That would be a standard that's too low.

00:27:28.850 --> 00:27:34.050
Um so yeah, we're more pluralist, or I think we should be, but with that pluralism comes

00:27:34.050 --> 00:27:34.690
precision.

00:27:35.010 --> 00:27:37.570
You need a very precise explanatory target.

00:27:37.810 --> 00:27:43.570
And you can just ask different questions about the same like system or like

00:27:43.570 --> 00:27:45.090
thing in the world.

00:27:45.330 --> 00:27:50.180
And so that's a different view of explanation that's more piecemeal as opposed to like a

00:27:50.180 --> 00:27:54.660
theory of everything, explanation, it also suggests that

00:27:56.260 --> 00:27:59.700
the lower you go, you don't always get a better explanation.

00:28:00.420 --> 00:28:06.340
Um, sometimes I refer to this in terms of explanation isn't a game of how low can you

00:28:06.340 --> 00:28:11.140
go, but what gives you control or what gives you information about

00:28:12.100 --> 00:28:12.420
control.

00:28:12.900 --> 00:28:18.070
But yeah, very interesting deeper levels of explanation, and that's um something

00:28:18.070 --> 00:28:20.070
philosophers latch onto as well.

00:28:20.230 --> 00:28:24.870
And I think even in science, we we're very attracted to maybe

00:28:26.150 --> 00:28:31.750
going to lower and lower levels, or just if you ask more follow-up why questions, you sort

00:28:31.750 --> 00:28:34.550
of change the explanatory target as well.

00:28:34.870 --> 00:28:38.470
Yeah, that's that that's amazing because I think like as you were talking, I was just

00:28:38.470 --> 00:28:44.040
thinking a lot of I think the even my experience of science is the explanations

00:28:44.600 --> 00:28:47.640
are just this ad hoc aggregate.

00:28:47.960 --> 00:28:52.120
So in social psychology, there's just certain kinds of explanations.

00:28:52.280 --> 00:28:54.440
The explanatory target is always implicit.

00:28:54.520 --> 00:28:58.600
And then as a graduate student, you sort of, well, there's the neuroscientists and they

00:28:58.600 --> 00:28:59.720
have these kinds of explanations.

00:28:59.880 --> 00:29:02.440
There's social psychologists and they have these kinds of explanations.

00:29:02.600 --> 00:29:06.840
There's evolutionary psychologists, there's cognitive scientists, there's developmental

00:29:06.840 --> 00:29:07.720
psychologists.

00:29:07.880 --> 00:29:13.090
Nobody is being explicit about their explanatory targets, but it's a pile of

00:29:13.090 --> 00:29:14.050
explanations.

00:29:14.290 --> 00:29:19.250
And then I think what students do, and I know I did this, and I still do this, it's just

00:29:19.250 --> 00:29:23.570
this implicit individual difference of like what kind of explanation do I find appealing?

00:29:23.810 --> 00:29:29.170
And I think many of us go through our entire careers without even having a discussion about

00:29:29.810 --> 00:29:31.970
what are the different kinds of explanations?

00:29:32.130 --> 00:29:33.330
How do they all fit together?

00:29:33.490 --> 00:29:38.380
And I think what we, what David and I, and I think many evolutionary psychologists were

00:29:38.620 --> 00:29:44.540
were worried about this because we feel like we're victims of misunderstandings, of

00:29:45.020 --> 00:29:50.380
where people misunderstand what we're trying to do, and they think sometimes we're in

00:29:50.380 --> 00:29:52.220
conflict with them when we're not.

00:29:52.460 --> 00:29:58.450
And then it's also the opposite where there are times where I am in conflict

00:29:58.450 --> 00:30:00.530
with somebody, but they don't think I am, right?

00:30:00.690 --> 00:30:06.530
Um, and I think it's this, it's a consequence of uh, and I just

00:30:06.530 --> 00:30:07.970
make this concrete.

00:30:08.210 --> 00:30:10.370
Uh, so I study social groups.

00:30:10.530 --> 00:30:15.010
I'm really interested in sort of like, well, how does the mind define a social group at a

00:30:15.010 --> 00:30:17.170
level that you can engineer into a system?

00:30:17.730 --> 00:30:20.960
And I'll get people saying, you well, why do you need that?

00:30:21.120 --> 00:30:23.280
It's obvious what a social group is.

00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:29.440
And that's an example of the person, it wants to use their own evolved psychology,

00:30:29.520 --> 00:30:34.080
which does produce and is useful in everyday, like in a Dan Dennett sense, like you know,

00:30:34.160 --> 00:30:39.440
you understand what a group is, but they're failing to see why there's another

00:30:39.440 --> 00:30:42.870
explanation of, well, how does your intuition work?

00:30:43.110 --> 00:30:43.430
Right.

00:30:43.590 --> 00:30:47.590
Um, and so that's something like I've personally dealt with, where I've literally gotten a

00:30:47.590 --> 00:30:53.430
paper rejected because people don't even accept the premise that my opening question is

00:30:53.430 --> 00:30:54.070
valid.

00:30:54.230 --> 00:31:00.070
Um, and so I think that's just a clear example of a consequence of this ad hoc

00:31:00.390 --> 00:31:05.990
accumulation of explanations, as opposed to this like it's very therapeutic to hear you

00:31:05.990 --> 00:31:10.680
talk because I feel like you're articulating, you're like you're like a counselor for the

00:31:10.680 --> 00:31:14.520
behavioral sciences to explaining why we're not coordinating.

00:31:14.600 --> 00:31:18.840
And I feel like we need a better coordination of explanatory targets.

00:31:20.440 --> 00:31:25.720
It's funny that you say that because there's a famous philosopher of science, Bill Wimsat,

00:31:26.200 --> 00:31:31.970
who suggests that philosophers can or should be like therapists to

00:31:31.970 --> 00:31:32.610
scientists.

00:31:32.770 --> 00:31:36.290
I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm totally on board with that.

00:31:36.450 --> 00:31:42.370
It's a very I mean I I know it's very it's quite I mean I

00:31:42.370 --> 00:31:47.970
think philosophers should work to be helpful to

00:31:47.970 --> 00:31:53.780
scientists and they actually what's interesting is WIMSAT and others

00:31:53.780 --> 00:31:59.380
also refer to philosophy of science as conceptual engineering or cognitive engineering,

00:31:59.700 --> 00:32:04.580
where there's a functional element involved in how we're looking at scientists because we

00:32:04.580 --> 00:32:10.020
think they're doing things on purpose with a function or a goal in mind, and we're trying

00:32:10.020 --> 00:32:11.300
to figure out what that is.

00:32:11.460 --> 00:32:17.170
So yeah, it's a little bit of a function coming in in a different way.

00:32:17.730 --> 00:32:23.490
But part of our job, I mean, part of it is coming into a space and trying to figure

00:32:23.490 --> 00:32:25.330
out what you all care about.

00:32:25.810 --> 00:32:31.650
Because I think, and most of us think, you have the, you

00:32:31.650 --> 00:32:36.370
know, you have the, like you know what you're doing, but then sometimes there are these

00:32:36.370 --> 00:32:41.010
disagreements where this, you know, super,

00:32:42.120 --> 00:32:46.440
you know, technical work and philosophy that's been happening for decades can be helpful

00:32:46.600 --> 00:32:50.520
because we went down a rabbit hole and something didn't work out.

00:32:50.760 --> 00:32:55.640
Or hopefully we can help kind of clarify what is going on.

00:32:55.800 --> 00:32:59.160
But that's a high that's a high bar for people in my field.

00:32:59.320 --> 00:33:03.160
And uh they don't always care about science as much as they should.

00:33:04.070 --> 00:33:10.070
But um but yeah, we're also kind of studying what you all do, although I your

00:33:10.070 --> 00:33:11.990
field is more theoretical too.

00:33:12.310 --> 00:33:17.990
So um there's a kind of a similar angle because our work

00:33:17.990 --> 00:33:21.590
certainly has that aspect as well.

00:33:21.830 --> 00:33:26.150
Yeah, I think for me and David I feel probably I David I'll let speak for himself, but I

00:33:26.150 --> 00:33:32.060
feel like I've become like I love philosophy, but I become uh I've been pushed into it as

00:33:32.060 --> 00:33:35.580
well because I wanted to just do engineering.

00:33:35.740 --> 00:33:39.580
Uh, I was just like, I want to think about people mechanistically.

00:33:39.740 --> 00:33:45.740
It's fun to think about social things from like uh what's the doohickey behind this,

00:33:45.820 --> 00:33:47.740
you know, like what's the software?

00:33:47.980 --> 00:33:51.820
Um, and uh in an evolutionary approach was really helpful for that.

00:33:52.060 --> 00:33:57.980
But then it was just it with the sociology of the social sciences

00:33:58.460 --> 00:34:03.910
were not already understanding these different kinds of explanations.

00:34:04.150 --> 00:34:08.070
And so people just got really angry at me as a graduate student.

00:34:08.150 --> 00:34:13.030
And I had to figure out, well, why that people are getting angry when I'm talking about

00:34:13.030 --> 00:34:16.470
there's like a system that does this, it has this function.

00:34:16.710 --> 00:34:19.670
People, it wasn't what people were used to doing.

00:34:19.940 --> 00:34:24.020
and I I can see now why that is and where we are at historically.

00:34:24.180 --> 00:34:30.020
But it was for me, it was just like it was it was born out of just a confusion about why

00:34:30.100 --> 00:34:34.660
isn't what seems pretty straightforward being accepted sociologically.

00:34:34.740 --> 00:34:37.860
But I'll let David kind of speak for himself too.

00:34:38.340 --> 00:34:42.340
Yeah, no, I I I would agree with that account and and second it.

00:34:42.420 --> 00:34:47.890
There's definitely um different philosophies within the social and

00:34:47.890 --> 00:34:53.250
behavioral sciences, uh, that often collide with each other, uh, in rather unproductive

00:34:53.250 --> 00:34:53.730
ways.

00:34:53.890 --> 00:34:59.090
Um, and I for one think that uh the social sciences would greatly benefit from more

00:34:59.170 --> 00:35:04.610
philosophy or from more uh philosophical rigor about the concepts that are being used, uh,

00:35:04.690 --> 00:35:10.000
and about, you know, what those concepts mean and about what goals we're actually pursuing.

00:35:10.400 --> 00:35:12.080
I don't think there is enough of that.

00:35:12.240 --> 00:35:14.080
And and I think there ought to be more.

00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:18.080
I think, I mean, a big part of it is just the theory crisis, which we've talked about on

00:35:18.080 --> 00:35:19.840
many episodes of the podcast.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:25.680
I don't think there is an overarching theory that the social

00:35:25.680 --> 00:35:29.920
sciences have gotten behind in the same way that other sciences have had overarching

00:35:29.920 --> 00:35:31.360
theoretical frameworks.

00:35:32.240 --> 00:35:35.520
And that is enormously helpful for scientific progress, I think.

00:35:36.350 --> 00:35:41.230
Um, and I think I I think of philosophy as in large part a kind of theoretical science, or

00:35:41.310 --> 00:35:45.790
or at least the non-empirical aspects of scientific work, where we're talking about we're

00:35:45.790 --> 00:35:50.590
making deductive and inductive and abductive arguments, uh, and we're making inferences to

00:35:50.590 --> 00:35:54.670
the best explanation and working out what the implications are of particular empirical

00:35:54.670 --> 00:35:55.070
results.

00:35:55.150 --> 00:35:59.550
That that to me is essentially what philosophy is: working out the implications of various

00:35:59.550 --> 00:36:00.270
premises.

00:36:00.350 --> 00:36:02.270
Um, and I don't think we're doing enough of that.

00:36:02.540 --> 00:36:06.540
Um so I I would agree that, yeah, w with with Dave that there's not enough coordination,

00:36:06.700 --> 00:36:11.660
there's not enough theoretical integration, uh, and I think greater philosophical rigor can

00:36:11.660 --> 00:36:12.220
help with that.

00:36:12.300 --> 00:36:18.060
But I'm curious if you if you share that opinion, uh being from you know outside

00:36:18.060 --> 00:36:19.660
of our discipline.

00:36:21.100 --> 00:36:22.300
Absolutely.

00:36:22.540 --> 00:36:28.150
It's I mean, I'm biased, of course, because I was

00:36:28.710 --> 00:36:34.550
trained from philosophers who take science very seriously and who

00:36:34.870 --> 00:36:40.790
expect it to accommodate descriptively what scientists are up to,

00:36:40.950 --> 00:36:45.830
but also have a normative element where it's searching for the justification and the

00:36:45.830 --> 00:36:48.390
rationale behind the work.

00:36:48.790 --> 00:36:54.640
And so I I got very nice examples of philosophers doing that when I was in

00:36:54.640 --> 00:36:55.200
grad school.

00:36:55.360 --> 00:36:57.280
Jim Woodward is one of them.

00:36:57.440 --> 00:36:59.280
Uh I mentioned Bill Wimsat.

00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:01.840
He's another fantastic example.

00:37:02.320 --> 00:37:08.240
And so I mean, I think it's not easy for philosophers to do that

00:37:08.240 --> 00:37:13.840
for all sorts of reasons that have to be well versed enough in a scientific domain.

00:37:14.240 --> 00:37:20.130
And you're, you know, if you're if you're talking with scientists, which

00:37:20.130 --> 00:37:25.410
you should be, they're just so expert in their field that you need to learn a bit of the

00:37:25.410 --> 00:37:26.610
language that they use.

00:37:26.770 --> 00:37:32.290
I mean, all of our fields have, and I have to also not use philosophical jargon because

00:37:32.290 --> 00:37:33.970
it's not always going to be helpful.

00:37:34.130 --> 00:37:38.920
So it is partly figuring out when you're talking with scientists or if you're engaged with

00:37:38.920 --> 00:37:43.480
scientific work, which you should be if you're interested in writing about how explanations

00:37:43.480 --> 00:37:49.080
work in, you know, the social sciences or evolutionary psychology or physics, you know, you

00:37:49.160 --> 00:37:52.200
gotta know a little bit about what's going on in those domains.

00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:53.720
But it can be non-trivial.

00:37:53.880 --> 00:37:58.680
I mean, many philosophers of science start studying in a scientific domain and then they

00:37:58.680 --> 00:38:01.160
get drawn into philosophy of science.

00:38:01.320 --> 00:38:04.040
That's a common path for us.

00:38:04.710 --> 00:38:10.630
But even still, we have to avoid science reporting, where we're just

00:38:10.710 --> 00:38:12.710
kind of saying what scientists are up to.

00:38:12.870 --> 00:38:18.390
If you're searching for that justification, that normative element, that's where you can

00:38:18.390 --> 00:38:20.310
really, I think, do helpful work.

00:38:20.550 --> 00:38:26.230
And that's where I think you can work with scientists so that they can

00:38:26.640 --> 00:38:32.240
pitch their ideas in a way that shows, like, look, here's the question I'm focused on.

00:38:32.720 --> 00:38:37.040
Your question is a great one too, and you're working on that.

00:38:37.120 --> 00:38:39.440
But here's this specific thing I'm interested in.

00:38:39.600 --> 00:38:40.640
Here's how it's different.

00:38:40.800 --> 00:38:42.880
And here's the approach I'm taking to do this.

00:38:43.040 --> 00:38:48.970
It's interesting how it's a bit of a social, I mean, getting reviewers to see what

00:38:48.970 --> 00:38:51.530
you're up to or grants accepted.

00:38:51.930 --> 00:38:57.370
I mean, there's a very interesting just social scene where

00:38:57.850 --> 00:39:03.450
you're trying to persuade someone and use words to indicate, you know, that you're

00:39:03.450 --> 00:39:07.610
doing uh what you're up to and to kind of convince them it's a good project.

00:39:07.690 --> 00:39:12.810
So it's it's interesting to see scientists manage that, but it's very,

00:39:13.600 --> 00:39:18.800
it's very fun, and it can be very rewarding as a philosopher to look at that

00:39:18.800 --> 00:39:22.720
justification for this work and being able to.

00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:26.080
I mean, part of what we're doing is there's just these distinctions.

00:39:26.320 --> 00:39:30.960
You're trying to distinguish explanation is one thing scientists are interested in,

00:39:31.200 --> 00:39:34.480
description is another project, and those are different.

00:39:34.880 --> 00:39:38.160
And within explanation, maybe there's different types.

00:39:38.400 --> 00:39:40.880
How do we capture what those types are?

00:39:41.680 --> 00:39:46.990
And um yeah, I think we want to be useful to

00:39:46.990 --> 00:39:52.510
scientists, and then we also want to help with science communication sometimes.

00:39:52.670 --> 00:39:56.990
If scientists are communicating their work to the public, it's very useful to have the

00:39:56.990 --> 00:40:02.830
justification because then you can say, hey, look, here's why we view this as

00:40:03.150 --> 00:40:08.830
a helpful way to understand, you know, what explains this

00:40:08.830 --> 00:40:11.310
outcome and also what doesn't.

00:40:11.620 --> 00:40:17.620
Um, but that's yeah, can it can be challenging because it's sort of

00:40:17.620 --> 00:40:18.820
different audiences.

00:40:19.620 --> 00:40:24.020
Um, but yeah, I definitely favor of you who are philosophers.

00:40:24.260 --> 00:40:30.020
And philosophy of science can be helpful and can be continuous with scientific work.

00:40:30.420 --> 00:40:35.090
I think Jerry Fodor, I think this is a joke, but I think he was meaning it sarcastically.

00:40:35.250 --> 00:40:39.730
But I like most things, I admire Jerry Foder, but I think he was wrong to be sarcastic

00:40:39.730 --> 00:40:39.970
about it.

00:40:40.130 --> 00:40:46.130
He has a line that said, The reason why um social sciences or psychology isn't working is

00:40:46.130 --> 00:40:49.890
because n or even philosophy of mind isn't working is because not enough distinctions are

00:40:49.890 --> 00:40:50.450
being made.

00:40:50.690 --> 00:40:53.010
And he was, I think, joking about that, but I think that's right.

00:40:53.170 --> 00:40:58.770
I think uh for me at least, like we I have a we have a paper about modularity,

00:40:59.040 --> 00:41:04.240
anyways, just saying there's two sides, there's a debate about modularity, but the argument

00:41:04.240 --> 00:41:10.160
is that um the distinction about what we one side means by it and another means by

00:41:10.160 --> 00:41:11.520
it, they're just missing each other.

00:41:11.600 --> 00:41:14.320
So there's this debate that's completely unnecessary.

00:41:14.560 --> 00:41:20.080
Um and so I like this idea that um part of coordinating

00:41:20.080 --> 00:41:26.000
everybody is to just see if the scientists are hitting each other for a for a

00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:27.440
bad reason or a good reason.

00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:31.950
And if it's for a good reason, well then let them do that within the rules of the game.

00:41:32.110 --> 00:41:37.790
But if for it's a bad reason, then please fix that so that it's the unnecessary debate.

00:41:37.950 --> 00:41:38.430
Yeah.

00:41:40.350 --> 00:41:46.350
Um, what do you concretely, if if evolutionary behavioral scientists want help from a

00:41:46.350 --> 00:41:51.870
philosopher or philosopher of science to uh look at what we're doing,

00:41:52.030 --> 00:41:57.840
characterize it, almost be an ethnographer or translator of what we're doing, Is it

00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:00.960
something that those of us who are doing it are in a best position?

00:42:01.040 --> 00:42:05.760
Or just concretely, what can we do as a community

00:42:07.120 --> 00:42:12.800
to communicate with outsiders about what our explanatory goals are?

00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:16.800
Are there particular conferences or people?

00:42:17.680 --> 00:42:23.590
Um, you know like how do we how do we hire a philosopher of science to help us uh to

00:42:23.590 --> 00:42:29.110
consult in in sort of for PR or say here's the here's the way you um

00:42:29.430 --> 00:42:34.230
can explain what you're doing um and maybe that's an ill posed question because it's very

00:42:34.230 --> 00:42:40.070
uh discipline specific but do you have any practical suggestions for us

00:42:40.230 --> 00:42:46.120
um well one would be that you all probably are

00:42:46.120 --> 00:42:51.960
philosophers a little bit already, and that I mean you

00:42:52.120 --> 00:42:57.960
you brought up Dennett a number of times, but in some cases, finding the places

00:42:57.960 --> 00:43:03.800
where the kind of theoretical elements of your work, whether

00:43:03.800 --> 00:43:08.920
it's assumptions or differences in methods, um

00:43:09.560 --> 00:43:15.410
or kind of topics are coming up, I guess, is kind of seeing how

00:43:15.410 --> 00:43:21.090
that's very similar to and already involves a bit of philosophy of

00:43:21.090 --> 00:43:21.650
science.

00:43:21.810 --> 00:43:27.330
Philosophy of science is a pretty small field, and so it's

00:43:27.330 --> 00:43:31.570
probably um helpful to

00:43:33.400 --> 00:43:39.160
um talk to people that seem people that work in philosophy of science

00:43:39.320 --> 00:43:41.800
who seem useful.

00:43:42.920 --> 00:43:48.440
There's also the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is a great resource that

00:43:48.440 --> 00:43:53.480
often reviews different topics in philosophy of science and gives a lot of different

00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:54.120
citations.

00:43:55.160 --> 00:44:00.530
I think probably figuring out what you what you think

00:44:00.530 --> 00:44:05.570
philosophy could be helpful for in the context of your work, and then seeking out either

00:44:05.570 --> 00:44:11.330
philosophers or philosophical work would be good ways

00:44:11.330 --> 00:44:12.290
to start.

00:44:13.490 --> 00:44:19.490
And um yeah, I think we've brought up a number of places

00:44:19.490 --> 00:44:23.570
where philosophy can be useful.

00:44:24.690 --> 00:44:30.100
Um Topics that came up are like mechanism or

00:44:30.100 --> 00:44:35.300
giving accounts of different types of explanations that are showing up,

00:44:35.540 --> 00:44:38.260
perhaps also standards in science.

00:44:40.500 --> 00:44:45.220
Um, but yeah, maybe kind of starting first with

00:44:47.490 --> 00:44:53.090
Concrete challenges in your field that you think philosophers can be helpful for,

00:44:53.330 --> 00:44:57.410
or if there are particular things that you think are particularly difficult to communicate

00:44:57.410 --> 00:45:03.250
to different audiences, like the public, kind of figuring out what those are and why

00:45:03.250 --> 00:45:06.530
it's um why it's difficult.

00:45:06.770 --> 00:45:12.700
I mean, I work on causation, and so even just telling people outside of academia,

00:45:12.860 --> 00:45:17.340
I mean, if you tell them you weren't you're a philosopher of science, that doesn't usually

00:45:17.340 --> 00:45:18.540
get a lot of yeah, yeah.

00:45:18.700 --> 00:45:23.420
And but even causation, it's a it's a little non-trivial to think of.

00:45:23.500 --> 00:45:29.260
And of course, like the the shark and the ice cream sales examples come up quickly.

00:45:29.740 --> 00:45:35.580
But it's good to just continuously be open to new ways of clearly

00:45:35.850 --> 00:45:40.650
capturing what's going on in a scientific domain or an academic one when you're

00:45:40.650 --> 00:45:42.810
communicating to different audiences.

00:45:44.490 --> 00:45:50.170
I think when you become expert in an area, you sort of lose your theory of mind or your

00:45:50.170 --> 00:45:52.170
vantage point from somewhere else.

00:45:52.410 --> 00:45:58.410
And so you forget that your comp your the complicated words in your field

00:45:58.410 --> 00:46:00.570
don't, you know, mean something to someone else.

00:46:00.650 --> 00:46:06.420
So you sort of forget when people are outside your field what they understand quickly

00:46:06.500 --> 00:46:07.220
and what they don't.

00:46:07.380 --> 00:46:10.820
So maybe interdisciplinary discussions can help with that a bit.

00:46:10.980 --> 00:46:16.340
But yeah, I do think we need to focus more on communication to the public,

00:46:16.580 --> 00:46:18.500
science communication to the public.

00:46:18.660 --> 00:46:23.700
And maybe part of this pluralism angle would be one helpful way forward, right?

00:46:23.860 --> 00:46:29.620
I mean, there's lots of interesting biases about how science works in everyday life

00:46:29.780 --> 00:46:35.650
and in science, the sort of picture of the lower you go, the

00:46:35.650 --> 00:46:38.210
better the explanation is, is one of them.

00:46:38.450 --> 00:46:44.370
Also, mechanism sometimes is used in a machine-like way, where the human body is

00:46:44.370 --> 00:46:49.570
just a machine and you got to find the lower level engine that does the stuff that

00:46:49.570 --> 00:46:50.210
produces.

00:46:50.610 --> 00:46:55.490
If you have that picture of the world, then what about social factors at a higher level or

00:46:55.490 --> 00:46:56.770
environmental factors at a high level?

00:46:56.930 --> 00:47:02.220
Yeah, you just can't capture things that causally influence and modern medicine is

00:47:02.220 --> 00:47:07.660
criticized for for not being able to capture social causes as much.

00:47:07.820 --> 00:47:13.260
So maybe, maybe working to figure out what are these more

00:47:14.460 --> 00:47:17.420
simple, cartoonish default pictures we have.

00:47:17.580 --> 00:47:18.700
And we have them in science too.

00:47:18.780 --> 00:47:23.500
It can be attractive to let go, or it can be attractive to have that lower level picture

00:47:23.580 --> 00:47:25.580
and hard to kind of let go of it.

00:47:25.850 --> 00:47:31.770
And so, yeah, maybe when it comes to communication to the public, figuring out

00:47:31.770 --> 00:47:37.770
what the sticky points are and the challenging concepts and um yeah, how to how to

00:47:37.770 --> 00:47:43.450
communicate them clearly and how to show that there isn't this like one

00:47:43.770 --> 00:47:49.640
way it all works where there's this more pluralistic picture, and

00:47:49.640 --> 00:47:51.480
that science is an ongoing process.

00:47:51.720 --> 00:47:57.560
You're getting more and more information in your explanation, but maybe

00:47:57.560 --> 00:48:02.840
they're all a little partial too, more schematic, like you mentioned earlier.

00:48:03.240 --> 00:48:08.040
Yeah, I really like um, I think from my two sense bet is um dualism.

00:48:08.200 --> 00:48:14.070
So implicit dualism, where sort of low-level stuff is resigned for low level body

00:48:14.070 --> 00:48:14.390
stuff.

00:48:14.550 --> 00:48:17.910
And then mental stuff is resigned for the little homunculus in the head.

00:48:18.150 --> 00:48:23.990
So the idea that something like breastfeeding is gonna make like a kid uh have a

00:48:23.990 --> 00:48:26.950
better mental existence is sort of unintuitive, right?

00:48:27.030 --> 00:48:30.790
Like it's just, you know, people don't really think that way, or like the food you eat is

00:48:30.790 --> 00:48:33.510
gonna affect like your well being your mental well being, you know.

00:48:33.590 --> 00:48:36.950
Like that's a little bit it's even it's hard hard for me to even think that way, right?

00:48:37.190 --> 00:48:41.120
It's more just sort of like, well, you should decide to be happy or you know think about

00:48:41.120 --> 00:48:47.120
being happy or the idea that um something like cues low-level cues

00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:52.960
in the ecology are affecting your risk taking or um things like that.

00:48:53.280 --> 00:48:55.120
I think that's very unintuitive to people.

00:48:55.200 --> 00:48:59.680
And I think like part of training in cognitive science is this idea that

00:49:01.110 --> 00:49:06.950
The stuff that you're conscious of is only a subset of all the things that are causing

00:49:06.950 --> 00:49:10.070
your mental um experiences.

00:49:10.230 --> 00:49:14.710
And I think that's a lot of a lot of what we run up against is sort of dualism.

00:49:14.790 --> 00:49:19.910
So I think that would be an example of this kind of sticky way of thinking that really is

00:49:19.910 --> 00:49:25.110
almost like a scientific bias that the public and frankly many of us, I mean, I would

00:49:25.110 --> 00:49:28.150
include myself, have uh as scientists.

00:49:29.430 --> 00:49:35.140
Do you think that that has to do with an expectation that causal relationships

00:49:35.460 --> 00:49:40.420
need to be physical or physically interact, like billiard ball cases?

00:49:43.860 --> 00:49:48.180
I have this uh um thing about the evolutionary psychology of psychology.

00:49:48.260 --> 00:49:50.020
So I think like it's it's very denet.

00:49:50.260 --> 00:49:55.490
It's very much like I think we have this folk physics, and so it's very intuitive for that

00:49:55.730 --> 00:50:00.050
system to sort of there's certain things in the world that are into that are intuitively

00:50:00.210 --> 00:50:01.890
applicable to the that system.

00:50:01.970 --> 00:50:06.050
So if we think about like brains, oh yeah, I can imagine billiard ball interactions.

00:50:06.290 --> 00:50:11.970
But that system doesn't really help me for like day-to-day human behavior, right?

00:50:12.130 --> 00:50:16.450
Because it's it's not matter that I can see moving around and hitting each other.

00:50:17.120 --> 00:50:20.000
And then I think we have this folk artifact system.

00:50:20.080 --> 00:50:24.880
And I think a lot of what I what we do as scientists, so kind of like software engineering

00:50:24.880 --> 00:50:30.880
or reverse engineering functionalist systems, like I study things about groups, and

00:50:30.880 --> 00:50:36.240
I think there's a system that is attentive to this class of cues, and it

00:50:36.710 --> 00:50:41.910
produces these outputs, and it's all very uh abstract, functional design stance.

00:50:41.990 --> 00:50:44.710
And I think that's an output of the artifact system.

00:50:44.870 --> 00:50:48.070
And then there's our theory of mind system, the intentional level.

00:50:48.230 --> 00:50:50.550
Um, and that's the beliefs, desires.

00:50:50.630 --> 00:50:54.470
There's a little person in my head, there's the stuff that's me, there's the stuff that's

00:50:54.470 --> 00:50:57.190
not me, and there's interactionism between those.

00:50:57.350 --> 00:51:01.910
Um, I think those three ontologies are produced by these evolved systems.

00:51:01.990 --> 00:51:06.560
And I think when when a scientific enterprise

00:51:07.120 --> 00:51:10.400
involves more than one, it gets complicated.

00:51:10.560 --> 00:51:16.320
I think psychology is really hard because maybe uniquely it's three uh evolved ontologies.

00:51:16.400 --> 00:51:22.080
Like physics is is the weird empirical results and our intuitive physics, you know.

00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:27.970
Um uh chemistry uh maybe you know

00:51:28.050 --> 00:51:32.850
maybe two systems I don't know but I think like psychology is the intentional the design

00:51:32.850 --> 00:51:37.810
stance well I mean engineering would be like the design stance the physical stance and the

00:51:37.810 --> 00:51:42.210
empirical results but I think psychology involves this intentional thing too so we have

00:51:42.210 --> 00:51:48.200
these three ontologies on top of the empirical data And I think for

00:51:48.280 --> 00:51:54.040
my my take on psychology is it's just a mess because those three ontologies are

00:51:54.040 --> 00:51:58.680
still not integrated conceptually.

00:51:59.240 --> 00:52:04.840
And uh we are still generations of scientists who were

00:52:04.920 --> 00:52:10.200
trying to, those of us who are trying to be clear about which ontology we're contributing

00:52:10.200 --> 00:52:15.930
to, are interacting with a world that those ontologies aren't clear

00:52:15.930 --> 00:52:17.930
among reviewers or funding agencies.

00:52:18.090 --> 00:52:19.210
I think we'll get there.

00:52:19.370 --> 00:52:24.890
But I think the evolutionary sciences, not uniquely, but I think the evolutionary sciences

00:52:25.690 --> 00:52:31.450
are rare in that we really are design stancy about things that are

00:52:31.450 --> 00:52:33.530
typically intentional right now.

00:52:33.690 --> 00:52:36.250
Um, we're more designy than intentional.

00:52:36.410 --> 00:52:38.730
And I think we we get a lot of blowback for that reason.

00:52:38.810 --> 00:52:40.170
I think that's where we're at.

00:52:41.860 --> 00:52:47.860
Yeah, I would have thought that the design stance would have various

00:52:47.860 --> 00:52:53.540
advantages and even allow it to the field or one of the

00:52:54.980 --> 00:53:00.820
one of the kind of theoretical modules to be viewed as advantageous.

00:53:02.330 --> 00:53:05.050
I think it I think it has to do with explanatory.

00:53:05.210 --> 00:53:10.890
I think it's because intentional level uh descriptions are so adequate because we have this

00:53:10.890 --> 00:53:11.770
theory mind system.

00:53:11.930 --> 00:53:16.090
If I tell you that David loves France, you know, it's like a Jerry Fodor point.

00:53:16.170 --> 00:53:20.490
You know, it's like everyday common sense, belief, desire psychology is so effective.

00:53:20.730 --> 00:53:24.890
And I'm not like an eliminativist where I think, like, you know, like I don't think lower

00:53:24.890 --> 00:53:26.810
levels of reduction are better.

00:53:27.040 --> 00:53:29.280
I just think you have to supplement, right?

00:53:29.360 --> 00:53:33.760
And so I don't want to get rid of an intentional level description, but I want to explain

00:53:33.760 --> 00:53:35.520
it in terms of mechanism.

00:53:35.840 --> 00:53:41.520
And I think where there's institutional selection for the

00:53:41.840 --> 00:53:47.760
most succinct description, um, for some reason

00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:51.600
the design-mindedness is more maybe too precise.

00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:53.280
It's not super helpful yet.

00:53:53.440 --> 00:53:58.250
Like I don't know if from a predictive perspective it's always

00:53:59.450 --> 00:54:03.930
um accurate outside the context of a very delineated study.

00:54:04.170 --> 00:54:07.930
And so I think people are in the habit of intentional level descriptions.

00:54:08.090 --> 00:54:09.210
That's my that's my guess.

00:54:09.370 --> 00:54:12.730
And I don't know, maybe David has a thought about the sociology.

00:54:12.970 --> 00:54:17.130
But but I definitely think that that's I agree with you, Lauren, that like it seems

00:54:17.130 --> 00:54:22.720
puzzling that the design stance um is the uh

00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:25.040
upstart um underdog.

00:54:25.520 --> 00:54:28.720
Um but I but I kind of wonder if historically that's always true.

00:54:28.880 --> 00:54:34.560
And it's just that eventually, because it can be a bit more precise, even if

00:54:34.560 --> 00:54:40.000
it's not because if it can be more precise and while it's accompanied by the higher level

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.240
description, both do better than just the high-level description on its own.

00:54:44.480 --> 00:54:50.210
But I think until you start having enough data or people figuring out

00:54:50.210 --> 00:54:55.490
how to do those design level descriptions, it seems very speculative.

00:54:55.730 --> 00:54:58.930
Like just like I think a physiology is a good example.

00:54:59.090 --> 00:55:05.010
So, like the idea that um, like when I I um coming across like in

00:55:05.010 --> 00:55:10.930
like um physiology for a long time, the the concepts or the entities were things

00:55:10.930 --> 00:55:15.090
like moisture, darkness, warmth, which are the things that you like find when you cut into

00:55:15.090 --> 00:55:19.700
a body, there was no, and those were the kinds of intuitive apparent phenomena.

00:55:19.860 --> 00:55:24.820
Something like a filtering nephritia, you know, like nobody was going to come up with that

00:55:25.140 --> 00:55:30.420
because that's not a substance, that's not a feature that you kind of find when you cut in.

00:55:30.500 --> 00:55:33.620
It's a theoretical concept based on an idea about function.

00:55:33.860 --> 00:55:38.260
And if you postulate, I think there's a system that does filtering, somebody will be like,

00:55:38.420 --> 00:55:39.780
Well, what's your data for that?

00:55:40.420 --> 00:55:44.870
And right now, early days of physiology, there was no data.

00:55:45.030 --> 00:55:47.270
So people would be like, I don't have any data, right?

00:55:47.430 --> 00:55:51.430
So so in other words, like there's a there's a million ways to measure the moisture of

00:55:51.430 --> 00:55:52.630
different parts of the body.

00:55:52.790 --> 00:55:55.910
There's a million ways to measure the warmth of different parts of the body.

00:55:56.070 --> 00:56:01.670
There's a million, so if your currency is data, I think that there's sort of like a

00:56:01.670 --> 00:56:07.240
local minima that uh is can be defended, which is sort of if you're

00:56:07.240 --> 00:56:11.320
postulating an abstract function that we don't even know how to look for yet, we don't have

00:56:11.320 --> 00:56:14.120
any data for, it seems very speculative.

00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:20.920
That can be um argued against because there's no data for it, if the currency is

00:56:20.920 --> 00:56:21.240
data.

00:56:21.720 --> 00:56:27.720
And so I uh that's actually my my full uh theory of why we're we're at this intentional

00:56:27.720 --> 00:56:32.360
level description for many areas, not all areas, and it's changing, but that's that's my

00:56:32.360 --> 00:56:33.570
thesis, Yeah.

00:56:35.170 --> 00:56:36.130
Fascinating.

00:56:36.290 --> 00:56:41.970
And it reminds me of cases in medical

00:56:42.130 --> 00:56:48.130
sciences and neighboring fields where different types of disease phenotypes can

00:56:48.130 --> 00:56:52.690
have signs and symptoms that are easier or harder to basically measure.

00:56:52.930 --> 00:56:58.530
And so there's sometimes a view that if a disease has

00:57:00.160 --> 00:57:06.080
so symptoms are typically viewed as something that a patient experiences, but a third

00:57:06.080 --> 00:57:09.280
party can't easily measure, like pain or dizziness.

00:57:09.440 --> 00:57:13.120
If I'm dizzy or I'm in pain, you sort of have to rely on my report.

00:57:13.280 --> 00:57:17.280
I might be acting a certain way, but you can't measure it the way you could measure my

00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:18.960
temperature or if I have a rash.

00:57:19.120 --> 00:57:20.080
That would be a sign.

00:57:20.240 --> 00:57:24.720
So we often distinguish between signs and symptoms and symptoms are a little more

00:57:25.360 --> 00:57:31.210
viewed as questionable, because you just can't easily measure

00:57:31.210 --> 00:57:31.530
them.

00:57:31.850 --> 00:57:37.770
And then if you get various diseases like in psychiatry or other fields, where the

00:57:37.770 --> 00:57:42.730
cluster of signs and symptoms is variable across patients that we think have the same

00:57:42.730 --> 00:57:48.650
condition, again, you run into this like, how do we measure how many people have

00:57:48.650 --> 00:57:54.640
schizophrenia when the list of characteristics that a patient needs to have to

00:57:54.640 --> 00:57:59.920
get that diagnosis, we allow wiggle room in terms of what how they need to present.

00:58:00.080 --> 00:58:05.280
Compare that to something like, you know, hypertension if you have high blood pressure, you

00:58:05.280 --> 00:58:08.720
have like a single property and it's super easy to measure.

00:58:08.880 --> 00:58:14.800
And that's the so there's there's different things that we're interested

00:58:14.800 --> 00:58:17.930
in, maybe in the natural world.

00:58:18.650 --> 00:58:24.330
Um, and some of them are are easier or

00:58:24.570 --> 00:58:26.410
harder to measure.

00:58:26.570 --> 00:58:32.410
I wonder if that's one way to put it, or there's biases about how real something is based

00:58:32.410 --> 00:58:37.050
on it being more physical, more material, and sort of easier to measure.

00:58:37.130 --> 00:58:42.680
But of course, it's very important to appreciate that a

00:58:42.680 --> 00:58:47.960
patient's in pain or they're experiencing some symptoms when we have no ability to get the

00:58:47.960 --> 00:58:51.160
same kind of measurement of it as something else.

00:58:51.400 --> 00:58:56.520
So, yeah, interesting where there's cases of more complex

00:58:56.840 --> 00:59:01.880
phenomena of interest where we are really working

00:59:01.880 --> 00:59:07.850
conceptually to build the category that matters and maybe showing people

00:59:07.850 --> 00:59:12.570
examples of cases where we do that and where they wouldn't want to deny it's a real thing,

00:59:12.730 --> 00:59:17.450
but where it is just different from that intuitive physics picture of, well, there's a

00:59:17.450 --> 00:59:19.610
baseball and it hit the window.

00:59:20.090 --> 00:59:25.930
You know, not everything in science is going to be as like simple as

00:59:25.930 --> 00:59:26.730
those cases.

00:59:26.970 --> 00:59:31.930
And when you get a human involved, there's tons of examples that show up, of course.

00:59:32.200 --> 00:59:37.560
um disease examples and many others, just where things get get so complicated.

00:59:37.880 --> 00:59:38.120
Yeah.

00:59:38.200 --> 00:59:40.680
And I think that's like I would David mentioned the theory crisis.

00:59:40.760 --> 00:59:44.760
And one of the symptoms of the theory crisis, especially in the behavioral sciences, is

00:59:44.760 --> 00:59:49.480
that constructs are re-descriptions of the data.

00:59:49.720 --> 00:59:54.930
And I think that's a consequence of these things that are not just the bait window and the

00:59:54.930 --> 01:00:00.530
baseball, it requires institutional tolerance of ambiguity and patience.

01:00:00.690 --> 01:00:04.850
Because if a grant reviewer is like, well, where's the where's the data?

01:00:05.010 --> 01:00:10.370
You know, it's it's indirect, or it's it's or it's a more complicated, abstract,

01:00:10.610 --> 01:00:13.250
latent thing we're trying to make an inference about.

01:00:13.540 --> 01:00:19.220
But if you have a measure and it's you can measure it, and this is the construct, you know,

01:00:19.540 --> 01:00:21.140
social dominance orientation.

01:00:21.220 --> 01:00:24.660
It's these 13 questions, it's the number I assign.

01:00:24.820 --> 01:00:28.660
I can give you Lauren and you, David, a number for it.

01:00:28.820 --> 01:00:29.700
It's concrete.

01:00:29.860 --> 01:00:33.140
Nobody can argue with that concreteness.

01:00:33.220 --> 01:00:35.940
They can argue with the validity of it, but not the concreteness.

01:00:36.020 --> 01:00:40.990
And I think um I think the patience for understanding.

01:00:41.150 --> 01:00:43.230
I think it comes back to the explanatory goals.

01:00:43.390 --> 01:00:49.390
If you're trying to make an inference about an inferred entity, like a

01:00:49.390 --> 01:00:55.390
system in the body or the mind, especially, that isn't just a baseball and a

01:00:55.390 --> 01:01:01.340
window, it requires tolerance for um it

01:01:01.340 --> 01:01:02.620
doesn't look sciencey.

01:01:02.700 --> 01:01:07.900
It doesn't have, you know, like a neuro, a picture of neurons looks sciencey.

01:01:08.380 --> 01:01:09.980
The numbers look sciencey.

01:01:10.220 --> 01:01:15.020
But if I say I think there's a system that tracks alliances, and there's

01:01:15.260 --> 01:01:21.100
75 ways to measure it, and they all get at it indirectly, that's words on

01:01:21.100 --> 01:01:21.900
a page.

01:01:22.060 --> 01:01:27.190
Um, and I might be right, but if somebody's measuring a single neuron and has beautiful

01:01:27.190 --> 01:01:32.790
figures, um, or if somebody can take a picture of it, for people who are not experts, it

01:01:32.790 --> 01:01:35.430
just seems more concrete and more real.

01:01:35.990 --> 01:01:38.310
Um so yeah, I don't know.

01:01:38.390 --> 01:01:39.430
I yeah.

01:01:41.190 --> 01:01:46.400
Yeah, there's famous examples from the history of medicine and

01:01:46.400 --> 01:01:52.320
bacteriology, where Robert Koch, who was postulating that germs were the cause of certain

01:01:52.320 --> 01:01:58.320
diseases, couldn't early on take pictures of like anthrax bacteria because

01:01:58.320 --> 01:02:02.160
photography wasn't advanced enough at that point for him to do that.

01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:07.440
So early on, he was drawing pictures of these bacteria that he saw in this microscope,

01:02:07.690 --> 01:02:10.250
trying to convince his research community.

01:02:10.490 --> 01:02:16.090
And um yeah, but once photography was more advanced, that

01:02:16.410 --> 01:02:22.250
was more motivating for the community to get on board with the fact that

01:02:22.250 --> 01:02:26.570
there were these tiny bacteria that were single species.

01:02:27.770 --> 01:02:31.520
But even then it took a very long time to change the medical community.

01:02:31.680 --> 01:02:33.280
I mean, or the scientific community.

01:02:33.360 --> 01:02:36.480
And part of what's interesting is to think of how we do that.

01:02:36.720 --> 01:02:42.480
The how because it in in grant calls and the idea of scientific work is that you are doing

01:02:42.480 --> 01:02:43.520
something novel.

01:02:43.680 --> 01:02:48.800
And in grants, there is often the suggestion that you need to do something transformative,

01:02:49.270 --> 01:02:54.630
but like you're sure it'll work out, but you're not totally sure because it's so novel and

01:02:54.630 --> 01:02:55.270
transformative.

01:02:55.590 --> 01:03:01.350
So it's it's sort of like you have to play in the you have to play within

01:03:01.350 --> 01:03:07.190
the rules enough so that you can kind of break them a little bit down

01:03:07.190 --> 01:03:08.070
the road.

01:03:08.310 --> 01:03:09.510
And so it is interesting.

01:03:09.670 --> 01:03:14.320
We have this in philosophy too where you sort of have to work in some ways, or you feel

01:03:14.320 --> 01:03:19.840
like you're constrained a bit by the current views, and you have to show you're working

01:03:19.840 --> 01:03:25.840
within them enough to then make progress in another direction.

01:03:26.240 --> 01:03:31.040
But then there are examples from the history of science where someone is coming, you know,

01:03:31.200 --> 01:03:37.120
just from a completely different field and they're maybe ignored

01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:39.440
for a long time, or they can make a big change.

01:03:39.600 --> 01:03:45.570
But it it is interesting kind of how to think about the steps

01:03:45.570 --> 01:03:51.010
to take to advance programs that

01:03:51.330 --> 01:03:52.930
are different.

01:03:53.170 --> 01:03:57.570
Um yeah.

01:03:58.850 --> 01:04:04.610
And what kinds of evidence, as you're suggesting, does look

01:04:04.610 --> 01:04:10.460
more sciencey to the researchers who were essentially

01:04:11.660 --> 01:04:13.100
evaluating your work.

01:04:14.780 --> 01:04:19.260
I want to um pitch you on a way that I've been thinking about

01:04:19.900 --> 01:04:20.940
explanations.

01:04:21.260 --> 01:04:26.460
Uh and uh and you know, I I recognize that this is my own intuitive way of understanding it

01:04:26.540 --> 01:04:29.580
and and looking for what counts as a good explanation or a bad explanation.

01:04:29.660 --> 01:04:35.050
I'm curious to see if if you can tear it apart and tell me why I'm wrong.

01:04:35.210 --> 01:04:40.810
But the way I'm thinking about how to evaluate a good explanation is in terms of the ratio

01:04:40.810 --> 01:04:45.290
of what it assumes to what it successfully predicts or explains.

01:04:52.570 --> 01:04:55.040
And that it makes very few assumptions.

01:04:55.120 --> 01:05:00.640
You know, few assumptions about variation, heritability, uh, non uh sorry, differential

01:05:00.640 --> 01:05:01.280
reproduction.

01:05:01.440 --> 01:05:06.160
And these are really uh plausible, rock solid assumptions that would be hard to deny.

01:05:06.400 --> 01:05:11.600
And yet by making those very uh that very small number of very plausible assumptions, um,

01:05:11.760 --> 01:05:16.320
you get this enormous explanatory and predictive boon, right?

01:05:16.480 --> 01:05:22.320
Where you can uh essentially explain the adaptedness of organisms

01:05:22.320 --> 01:05:25.070
around the world to their environment.

01:05:25.550 --> 01:05:31.470
And you get a whole array of predictions you can make about how organisms will

01:05:31.470 --> 01:05:35.390
be adapted to their environment, how those traits will change over time.

01:05:36.750 --> 01:05:42.750
And it's essentially the centerpiece of biology in terms of an

01:05:42.750 --> 01:05:45.150
underlying explanatory and predictive framework.

01:05:45.310 --> 01:05:49.870
And so the ratio of what it assumes to what it successfully predicts and explains is

01:05:49.870 --> 01:05:50.510
enormous.

01:05:50.670 --> 01:05:55.320
It's mind-boggling to think about the difference between that numerator and that

01:05:55.320 --> 01:05:56.520
denominator, right?

01:05:56.680 --> 01:06:02.520
And so that's what I strive for in terms of providing explanations for things in my work

01:06:02.600 --> 01:06:07.080
and what I how I try to evaluate theoretical frameworks is to think about, well, what are

01:06:07.080 --> 01:06:08.360
the assumptions it's making?

01:06:08.520 --> 01:06:10.440
Um, how many of those assumptions are there?

01:06:10.600 --> 01:06:13.160
How many of those assumptions are implicit and unstated?

01:06:13.810 --> 01:06:19.730
How plausible are those assumptions based on everything we know from the empirics?

01:06:19.970 --> 01:06:25.010
And then what is it buying us in terms of successful predictions and explanations?

01:06:25.570 --> 01:06:29.490
And I'm basically just looking at the ratio of those two things, and that's how I'm

01:06:29.490 --> 01:06:29.730
thinking.

01:06:29.810 --> 01:06:35.410
I'm curious if you think that uh is is the right way to think about explanation, or if I'm

01:06:35.410 --> 01:06:39.490
missing something, or if there's uh something else to the story.

01:06:40.020 --> 01:06:40.900
I like that.

01:06:40.980 --> 01:06:46.420
There's a couple of follow-up questions I would ask, which would be in

01:06:46.420 --> 01:06:52.340
terms of assumptions, what if you just toggled the plausibility, not

01:06:52.340 --> 01:06:53.460
how many you have?

01:06:53.620 --> 01:06:57.140
But suppose you just have a lot of assumptions, but they're all super plausible.

01:06:57.460 --> 01:06:57.860
Yeah.

01:06:58.180 --> 01:07:00.500
Versus uh just having few.

01:07:00.660 --> 01:07:04.900
Suppose I only have one assumption, but it's really not so medium.

01:07:04.980 --> 01:07:10.870
So one question would be what do you think about Plausibility more than how

01:07:10.870 --> 01:07:13.430
many assumptions you bring on board, but I like that.

01:07:13.670 --> 01:07:19.430
And then the other thing is we get into this topic and

01:07:20.070 --> 01:07:25.910
question about prediction because sometimes we can get predictions from

01:07:25.910 --> 01:07:28.310
stuff we think isn't explanatory.

01:07:28.550 --> 01:07:34.400
So would you want to beef that up more and say This is

01:07:34.400 --> 01:07:37.440
giving me more than just prediction.

01:07:37.840 --> 01:07:43.840
It's giving me information about hypothetical changes or

01:07:43.840 --> 01:07:45.120
hypothetical control.

01:07:45.840 --> 01:07:51.280
That would be a question I would have about the prediction

01:07:51.600 --> 01:07:57.440
piece only because mirror correlations or sometimes things we think are

01:07:57.440 --> 01:08:00.240
not explanatory can be predictive.

01:08:00.400 --> 01:08:02.480
So, yeah, what would you think about that?

01:08:03.070 --> 01:08:05.550
I I totally buy both of those amendments.

01:08:05.710 --> 01:08:08.190
Yeah, plausibility is the better way to think about it.

01:08:08.270 --> 01:08:11.710
Um yeah, as you as you say, a single assumption could be very implausible, and you could

01:08:11.710 --> 01:08:13.710
have ten assumptions that are all extremely plausible.

01:08:13.790 --> 01:08:17.230
Um it really what matters is the the plausibility of your assumptions.

01:08:17.390 --> 01:08:20.910
Uh granted there will be a correlation, but if you're making lots of assumptions, chances

01:08:20.910 --> 01:08:23.390
are, you know, not all of them can be true.

01:08:23.470 --> 01:08:27.140
I mean, just probabilistically speaking, but in general, plausibility is the more important

01:08:27.140 --> 01:08:27.940
thing to look at.

01:08:28.180 --> 01:08:32.900
And yeah, um, and not mere prediction, but I think successful prediction, predictions that

01:08:32.900 --> 01:08:35.220
turn out to be vindicated by the data.

01:08:35.300 --> 01:08:40.260
Uh and and I think of an explan uh, you know, uh explanatory power as a prediction of

01:08:40.260 --> 01:08:41.860
something that we already know is true.

01:08:42.020 --> 01:08:42.260
Right.

01:08:42.420 --> 01:08:46.420
Like uh you can work out an implication from this model that it predicts the state of

01:08:46.420 --> 01:08:48.900
affairs, and turns out that we we live in those state of affairs.

01:08:48.980 --> 01:08:52.500
And I think of that as an explanation rather than a prediction.

01:08:52.660 --> 01:08:54.890
But I that's that's how I'm thinking of it.

01:08:54.970 --> 01:08:57.370
And I I I buy your uh amendments.

01:08:58.170 --> 01:08:58.410
Good.

01:08:58.570 --> 01:09:04.330
I mean one one question too is is if you think breadth is something that gives you a better

01:09:04.330 --> 01:09:10.170
explanation, or is it fine for it to explain a kind of narrow set of cases or

01:09:10.170 --> 01:09:11.930
systems or circumstances?

01:09:12.570 --> 01:09:18.520
Um yeah, um, I would think that breadth is

01:09:18.520 --> 01:09:20.040
better, all else equal.

01:09:20.200 --> 01:09:24.920
Um, the more stuff that you can successfully predict or explain, the better.

01:09:25.240 --> 01:09:29.320
Granted, there are going to be limitations, and that if you're if you're trying to explain

01:09:29.320 --> 01:09:33.640
a small piece of the world, there's going to be limits to how much you can successfully

01:09:33.640 --> 01:09:34.440
predict or explain.

01:09:34.520 --> 01:09:38.920
But in general, yeah, I would say intuitively, the more you can explain and predict, the

01:09:38.920 --> 01:09:39.240
better.

01:09:39.750 --> 01:09:43.030
But a trade-off would probably be the realistic susiga.

01:09:43.350 --> 01:09:44.150
I mean, in practice.

01:09:44.950 --> 01:09:45.590
In practice, yeah.

01:09:45.750 --> 01:09:50.550
Nothing's going to explain everything or predict everything, but um you want to get as you

01:09:50.550 --> 01:09:53.990
know as much bang for your uh buck as possible, I think.

01:09:54.070 --> 01:09:54.470
Yeah.

01:09:55.830 --> 01:09:57.510
Sorry, Lauren, go ahead and you're gonna say something.

01:09:57.910 --> 01:10:03.260
Um I wanted to ask both of you, Lauren especially, um, is so the the one thing we do a lot,

01:10:03.420 --> 01:10:07.900
I'm gonna again sort of this is my therapy session of like we evolutionary behavioral

01:10:07.900 --> 01:10:13.580
scientists, um, we speculate about mechanisms prior to

01:10:13.900 --> 01:10:15.980
coming up with tests of them.

01:10:16.220 --> 01:10:21.660
And so I'm curious from a like a history of science or philosophical perspective, where

01:10:21.820 --> 01:10:27.020
we're talking about David's talking about we want an explanation that accounts for the

01:10:27.020 --> 01:10:32.750
data, But we're also in this weird situation where when we're doing it

01:10:32.750 --> 01:10:38.590
real time, we're making a claim that we don't even know how what data to

01:10:38.590 --> 01:10:40.190
collect yet, right?

01:10:40.350 --> 01:10:41.790
Like in some sense.

01:10:41.950 --> 01:10:47.950
This is the physiology analogy where if you think there's something like a filter, that

01:10:47.950 --> 01:10:53.660
is a speculation prior to figuring out if there is such a filter,

01:10:54.300 --> 01:10:58.220
this is what it should look like if it's doing this job.

01:10:58.460 --> 01:11:01.740
Therefore, we should collect these data.

01:11:01.820 --> 01:11:04.460
And if we're right, this is what the data will look like.

01:11:04.620 --> 01:11:10.060
But there's a delay between what you think exists and what data you collect.

01:11:10.220 --> 01:11:14.850
As Marvin Minsky, who is one of the founders of AI, put it, you can't look for something

01:11:15.010 --> 01:11:20.930
till you have the idea of it, which I think is a good but funny, funnily apt point that

01:11:20.930 --> 01:11:22.130
people sometimes forget.

01:11:22.370 --> 01:11:28.370
And so I wonder if historically those things where it's a

01:11:28.370 --> 01:11:34.240
claim, but it's a prediction where the data aren't there yet, if

01:11:34.240 --> 01:11:40.000
those are sort of don't win out as well, or they get more um beaten down than

01:11:40.000 --> 01:11:46.000
those where the prediction can be pretty quickly turned around, um,

01:11:46.240 --> 01:11:52.080
such that we already have the data, for example, or we we know very quickly how to measure

01:11:52.240 --> 01:11:53.520
the prediction.

01:11:53.760 --> 01:11:55.760
Um, if that question makes sense.

01:11:55.920 --> 01:12:01.810
So it's this idea that some ideas, there's almost uh an extra step of

01:12:01.810 --> 01:12:07.570
auxiliary assumptions to even know how to generate the data versus those where the data, if

01:12:07.570 --> 01:12:13.410
it doesn't already exist, is pretty reasonably gettable with very

01:12:13.410 --> 01:12:17.010
minimal work, time, effort, auxiliary assumptions, etc.

01:12:19.410 --> 01:12:24.690
I wonder if so to me that sounds like a very reasonable

01:12:24.930 --> 01:12:30.860
approach for um tackling various types of

01:12:30.860 --> 01:12:32.060
systems and problems.

01:12:32.220 --> 01:12:35.420
I wonder if it's characteristic of a more

01:12:36.380 --> 01:12:41.740
function-based, goal-oriented system

01:12:42.380 --> 01:12:47.580
where you can you can play that game actually quite well or better than in other cases

01:12:47.660 --> 01:12:51.340
where you don't have the the goal or the function piece as much.

01:12:52.140 --> 01:12:58.050
But It reminds me of some situations in in COG-SI where there's studies of causal

01:12:58.050 --> 01:13:03.170
cognition where you're first sort of seeing what humans are up to and what they're doing

01:13:03.170 --> 01:13:04.290
and how they're reasoning.

01:13:04.450 --> 01:13:09.250
And then you're sort of postulating like what's going on in their cognitive process for

01:13:09.250 --> 01:13:10.210
doing that thing.

01:13:10.450 --> 01:13:15.730
And you're you're very much focused on like what's the function of their reasoning in this

01:13:15.730 --> 01:13:16.370
situation.

01:13:16.610 --> 01:13:22.500
And then you are sort of reverse engineering, well, what's the reasoning process that

01:13:22.500 --> 01:13:24.340
allows them to do that?

01:13:25.220 --> 01:13:30.820
There's a book called Causation with a human face, where this is discussed in a more

01:13:30.820 --> 01:13:34.500
theoretical way by the philosopher Jim Woodward.

01:13:35.220 --> 01:13:41.220
But um, but yeah, I wonder if leaning into the sense in which that's

01:13:41.220 --> 01:13:47.220
something you can do in a very principled way with the function piece and with the goal

01:13:47.300 --> 01:13:53.210
or the goal oriented piece, where that's, I mean, we sometimes talk about explanations that

01:13:53.210 --> 01:13:59.130
are functional explanations, where those look a bit different from standard causal

01:13:59.130 --> 01:14:00.090
explanations.

01:14:00.890 --> 01:14:05.690
Some of the examples here look a little cartoonish where it's, you know,

01:14:05.930 --> 01:14:11.580
you're interested in explaining um the existence of

01:14:11.580 --> 01:14:14.060
something on the basis of the fact that it serves a function.

01:14:14.380 --> 01:14:16.540
Like a doorstop would be a good concrete example.

01:14:16.700 --> 01:14:17.740
Like a doorstop, yeah.

01:14:18.380 --> 01:14:19.580
Yeah, like a doorstop.

01:14:19.740 --> 01:14:25.580
So there's this artifact or this system in a living organism that's present, and you're

01:14:25.580 --> 01:14:27.260
sort of like, why is this present?

01:14:27.420 --> 01:14:32.620
And the way you give the explanation for why it's present or why it exists is the sense in

01:14:32.620 --> 01:14:38.220
which it serves a function or it serves a goal, and it evolved to come into being, or

01:14:38.470 --> 01:14:43.430
a uh someone designed it or created it on the basis of the fact that it so that's an

01:14:43.430 --> 01:14:49.430
explanation where the parts are set up differently than here's the disease, what's

01:14:49.430 --> 01:14:51.270
the cause that explains this disease?

01:14:51.430 --> 01:14:53.670
There's no, I mean, there's no functional.

01:14:54.150 --> 01:14:57.910
You can do away with functional considerations more in that case.

01:14:58.390 --> 01:15:03.750
And so I I wonder if there are certain strategies or

01:15:03.750 --> 01:15:09.700
heuristics you can use if you have that functional piece and so much

01:15:10.020 --> 01:15:15.300
of our the way we're thinking about living systems, it needs to have that functional piece.

01:15:15.380 --> 01:15:20.580
I mean, genes aren't just, you know, these things aren't just doing random, you know,

01:15:20.900 --> 01:15:26.580
actions or engaged in random processes without very much

01:15:26.580 --> 01:15:29.700
being tuned to functions and goals.

01:15:30.100 --> 01:15:31.550
So no, I quite like that.

01:15:31.630 --> 01:15:36.510
It would be interesting to look at cases where you get pushback with that kind of model.

01:15:36.910 --> 01:15:42.670
When a reviewer is looking at it, or someone who's maybe coming from a paradigm that is the

01:15:42.670 --> 01:15:47.790
more I found a gene, let me wiggle it, or I found a

01:15:48.430 --> 01:15:51.070
single molecule, let me intervene on it.

01:15:51.230 --> 01:15:55.070
It'd be interesting to see scientists from those other domains.

01:15:55.310 --> 01:15:58.680
What are their main thoughts when they first see that picture?

01:15:58.760 --> 01:16:04.520
And is there a way to present it that keeps the hackles down?

01:16:04.840 --> 01:16:10.520
Or I don't, yeah, it maybe it depends too on who the main um yeah

01:16:10.920 --> 01:16:13.080
reviewers are or different audiences.

01:16:13.560 --> 01:16:14.520
Yeah, I really like that.

01:16:14.600 --> 01:16:19.720
The idea of function, um, yeah, it especially this is where I mean that's why I'm an

01:16:19.720 --> 01:16:21.240
evolutionary person too.

01:16:21.320 --> 01:16:25.800
And I think it's no accident in my experience, and David, you can tell me what yours is, is

01:16:25.800 --> 01:16:31.390
that it's people who already are thinking functionally about the mind that find evolution

01:16:31.390 --> 01:16:32.190
helpful.

01:16:32.590 --> 01:16:37.630
And the people who either, and I don't want to be too, I mean many of these are my dear

01:16:37.630 --> 01:16:41.790
friends, and I don't want to be too dismissive, but I think individual differences and how

01:16:41.790 --> 01:16:46.990
much they like thinking about the mind as a mechanical functional entity

01:16:47.390 --> 01:16:50.270
track how useful they find evolution.

01:16:50.430 --> 01:16:56.200
Um, in the sense of if you have a belief, desire, intentional level description,

01:16:56.280 --> 01:16:57.880
like people like social groups.

01:16:57.960 --> 01:17:03.480
And I I can run through my theory of mind of is this the kind of social group I would like?

01:17:03.640 --> 01:17:06.920
I can do a lot of studies just based on that model.

01:17:07.800 --> 01:17:13.480
Um, but for me, uh I I wanted a more

01:17:13.480 --> 01:17:19.330
mechanical explanation, a functional explanation of well, what does it mean to um why

01:17:19.490 --> 01:17:21.410
why do people like joining groups?

01:17:21.490 --> 01:17:25.810
And you just there's no um how would you engineer a system?

01:17:25.970 --> 01:17:30.130
What rules would it have to say this is a good group or this is a bad group?

01:17:30.370 --> 01:17:34.610
And then you start to say, well, I don't know how to do that from an intentional

01:17:34.610 --> 01:17:35.170
perspective.

01:17:35.330 --> 01:17:38.450
I could give you examples, but I don't know what to program into the robot.

01:17:38.610 --> 01:17:42.930
But from an evolutionary perspective, you could say, well, there's these abstractions in

01:17:42.930 --> 01:17:44.920
the world, like there's costs.

01:17:45.000 --> 01:17:48.440
There's a class of outcomes where somebody could hurt you or take your stuff.

01:17:48.600 --> 01:17:54.520
And so people providing entity agents providing like loyalty and assistance

01:17:54.520 --> 01:17:55.000
to you.

01:17:55.160 --> 01:18:00.120
So you're starting to come up with these abstractions that are grounded in classes of

01:18:00.120 --> 01:18:01.000
outcomes.

01:18:01.320 --> 01:18:07.190
But it's it's you're talking about new constructs, like it's still loyalty, but it's like a

01:18:07.190 --> 01:18:08.550
system that's looking for loyalty.

01:18:08.630 --> 01:18:09.590
And well, how would that work?

01:18:09.670 --> 01:18:11.030
And what cues would that use?

01:18:11.190 --> 01:18:16.950
And so um I think an evolutionary approach um populates

01:18:17.590 --> 01:18:22.630
the a design level or this mechanical level um

01:18:22.870 --> 01:18:28.150
account um in a way that the intentional level um account doesn't.

01:18:28.390 --> 01:18:34.340
And uh and yeah, I think the pushback sometimes people give for you don't

01:18:34.340 --> 01:18:39.380
need a mechanism is is missing that that transition.

01:18:39.620 --> 01:18:40.260
Yeah.

01:18:41.700 --> 01:18:47.700
Yeah, I will give you um a link to the name of

01:18:47.700 --> 01:18:53.620
this book, this Woodward book I'm mentioning, because there it does really sound like

01:18:53.940 --> 01:18:59.850
what would be interesting to look at is whether this is a different sequence of

01:18:59.850 --> 01:19:02.090
steps in explanatory practice.

01:19:02.250 --> 01:19:08.170
And I think there are other cases where there's attempts to capture what's going on in

01:19:08.170 --> 01:19:13.930
some of these situations where maybe you have more clearly identified an agreement on the

01:19:13.930 --> 01:19:16.410
assumption of what the goals are for a system.

01:19:16.730 --> 01:19:20.170
And then you're sort of like, well, these are the goals.

01:19:20.330 --> 01:19:22.330
You can see how it's useful for the system.

01:19:22.410 --> 01:19:28.360
And then you're like, if we find something that serves those goals, then this gives

01:19:28.360 --> 01:19:34.200
us a way of um, yeah, I forget

01:19:34.200 --> 01:19:40.120
how to kind of recreate this explanatory, but it's very different from this kind of

01:19:40.120 --> 01:19:46.040
standard garden variety picture of you have the explanatory target over

01:19:46.040 --> 01:19:51.400
here, you have the explanatory stuff on the other side, but doesn't involve this

01:19:51.400 --> 01:19:52.840
functional piece.

01:19:53.400 --> 01:19:59.210
Um so yeah, I wonder if the distinction of types of explanation

01:19:59.210 --> 01:20:05.210
and types of explanatory practice you can do with a functional

01:20:05.210 --> 01:20:06.090
orientation.

01:20:06.330 --> 01:20:08.650
You can do something more with that.

01:20:08.890 --> 01:20:11.690
Of course, you have to get them to agree with the goals.

01:20:11.850 --> 01:20:16.250
That's an assumption, but I don't think that will be the difficult part.

01:20:16.410 --> 01:20:22.330
What might be nice is to just show the sequence of steps where look, once

01:20:22.330 --> 01:20:28.260
you agree with these goals, now you can um show

01:20:29.540 --> 01:20:35.300
the kind of utility of understanding a system that

01:20:35.620 --> 01:20:41.540
is like hooked up to them or um has various

01:20:41.540 --> 01:20:43.380
mechanisms that are serving those goals.

01:20:43.540 --> 01:20:49.380
But yeah it is I mean partly if mechanism does mean something very particular to

01:20:50.650 --> 01:20:56.490
A researcher who's who you're talking to, um, they're

01:20:56.570 --> 01:21:02.330
you know, it could it could be difficult or they they might just resist it based on the

01:21:02.330 --> 01:21:02.570
word.

01:21:02.730 --> 01:21:07.210
We see this partly in neuroscience where you have neuroscientists talking about network

01:21:07.210 --> 01:21:10.090
mechanisms or cognitive mechanisms.

01:21:10.330 --> 01:21:14.730
And the more reductive molecular biology researchers are like, you guys don't have

01:21:14.730 --> 01:21:15.610
mechanisms.

01:21:15.930 --> 01:21:20.900
We have mechanisms, they involve lower level molecular

01:21:21.140 --> 01:21:26.900
cellular entities, but they're like a network mechanism just doesn't so

01:21:26.980 --> 01:21:32.580
it's more of a rhetorical game there where it's it's not

01:21:32.580 --> 01:21:38.260
always very helpful to use that word if it if it just means

01:21:38.260 --> 01:21:39.540
different things.

01:21:40.270 --> 01:21:46.110
but maybe explanation and prediction or causation, and

01:21:46.430 --> 01:21:52.270
highlighting the utility of function and what it allows you to do in cases, and maybe

01:21:52.270 --> 01:21:57.950
philosophical work where other people have already said, hey, look, this is an explanatory

01:21:57.950 --> 01:21:58.590
pattern.

01:21:59.150 --> 01:22:02.990
This you see it in cognitive science in this crazy area.

01:22:03.150 --> 01:22:08.110
You see it over here in Uri Allen's work in systems biology, where he's reverse

01:22:08.190 --> 01:22:13.320
engineering, you know, circuits that function to do all sorts of things, oscillate and

01:22:13.320 --> 01:22:13.800
whatever.

01:22:14.040 --> 01:22:19.400
So if you if you have other people referring to this as an explanatory pattern and and

01:22:19.400 --> 01:22:25.000
you're sort of able to say it's different from the one you're used to or that like

01:22:25.320 --> 01:22:30.200
maybe more traditional one, I wonder if that would wonder if that would help.

01:22:30.570 --> 01:22:34.010
Yeah, I think I think function is hitting the nail on the head.

01:22:34.090 --> 01:22:39.610
And I think that's both our bet our what we bring to the table, but it's also our um

01:22:39.850 --> 01:22:40.970
our vulnerability.

01:22:41.130 --> 01:22:45.770
And I think like you see this where people will say, oh, evolutionary psychology or

01:22:45.770 --> 01:22:48.650
evolutionary behavioral scientists, they just think everything's adaptive.

01:22:48.730 --> 01:22:52.250
So it's this Panglossian thing where, you know, like, oh, noses are for holding up

01:22:52.250 --> 01:22:53.210
eyeglasses.

01:22:53.370 --> 01:22:58.680
Um, and I love that example because it's a great example of it, it uh it

01:22:58.680 --> 01:23:02.120
eliminates its own argument because it's obviously absurd.

01:23:02.200 --> 01:23:05.640
Because if you think about a nose, it's not well designed to hold up eyeglasses at all.

01:23:05.800 --> 01:23:08.760
Like the design features of a nose are not at all well designed.

01:23:08.840 --> 01:23:12.120
And that's so obvious that it's absurd.

01:23:12.440 --> 01:23:17.000
But then you think, well, people are saying you could just postulate anything as has any

01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:20.680
function, and there's no pre functional predictions about what it should look like.

01:23:20.760 --> 01:23:26.670
When in fact the the example relies on that you can do the very thing they're

01:23:26.670 --> 01:23:30.190
claiming you can't do, which is say something doesn't look like it's well designed to do

01:23:30.190 --> 01:23:30.270
that.

01:23:30.430 --> 01:23:33.870
I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but it's basically the nose is not well designed.

01:23:34.030 --> 01:23:36.350
Obviously that functional account is wrong.

01:23:36.590 --> 01:23:39.470
So therefore you could just say any functional account will go.

01:23:39.630 --> 01:23:41.550
Like that's the logic of the yeah.

01:23:42.030 --> 01:23:47.790
I mean maybe what would be nice is to have a very clear um

01:23:48.920 --> 01:23:53.240
discussion on the like just so story criticism.

01:23:53.400 --> 01:23:53.640
Yeah.

01:23:53.800 --> 01:23:57.080
And sh because that does come up so often.

01:23:57.160 --> 01:24:03.160
And so to actually bring it up and to show what this is used to suggest

01:24:03.240 --> 01:24:09.080
and how it's actually um not a criticism of a type

01:24:09.080 --> 01:24:11.640
of this work that does this particular thing.

01:24:11.800 --> 01:24:16.730
But yeah, we are sometimes stuck with these very

01:24:16.730 --> 01:24:22.570
cartoonish suggestions or pictures of what's wrong with

01:24:22.570 --> 01:24:25.290
something or what science is really like.

01:24:25.450 --> 01:24:30.970
And so maybe tackling it head on and just being like, you know, here's

01:24:30.970 --> 01:24:31.530
exactly.

01:24:31.610 --> 01:24:37.130
And sometimes it's difficult too to say exactly what's wrong with this

01:24:37.450 --> 01:24:42.460
very just common view that's out there.

01:24:42.620 --> 01:24:47.340
You see it with mechanism, the view that everything is caused by stuff at lower levels.

01:24:47.500 --> 01:24:49.820
It's sort of like, how else could it be?

01:24:50.140 --> 01:24:56.060
How could you how could you have any other way of giving an explanation or any other way

01:24:56.060 --> 01:24:56.940
of causality?

01:24:57.100 --> 01:25:02.910
And so being able to tackle those assumptions head

01:25:03.070 --> 01:25:08.910
on, I think is a nice focus, both probably for scientific

01:25:08.910 --> 01:25:11.470
contexts and then in in everyday life.

01:25:11.790 --> 01:25:11.950
Yeah.

01:25:12.190 --> 01:25:16.510
So like an example of that would be something like if you go to the doctor and your leg

01:25:16.670 --> 01:25:22.030
circulation is bad, most people would want a physiological explanation and saying something

01:25:22.030 --> 01:25:25.940
structural like you don't have public transportation, you're not walking enough.

01:25:26.100 --> 01:25:30.420
Like those kinds of explanations just fall off the radar and people want just the

01:25:30.420 --> 01:25:34.980
physiological, like what's happening in my veins for why I'm not having sufficient

01:25:34.980 --> 01:25:35.700
circulation.

01:25:36.260 --> 01:25:36.820
Oh sure.

01:25:36.900 --> 01:25:40.500
Or suppose you have two different patients of two different races.

01:25:40.660 --> 01:25:46.490
One of them is more um has higher blood pressure and is more stressed than the

01:25:46.490 --> 01:25:50.090
other, and one of them experiences racism more than the other.

01:25:50.250 --> 01:25:56.010
And you want to know why is it the case that you know the patients I'm

01:25:56.010 --> 01:25:58.330
seeing that differ in terms of race?

01:25:58.490 --> 01:26:03.130
Some of them have higher blood pressure, higher cortisol, they're more stressed out than

01:26:03.130 --> 01:26:03.530
others.

01:26:03.770 --> 01:26:09.690
And talking about their physiology isn't helpful because the main difference maker across

01:26:09.740 --> 01:26:15.580
those white patients or the, you know, black or Mexican patients is the fact that they're

01:26:15.580 --> 01:26:21.580
in these very different social situations, or they're experiencing racism differently,

01:26:21.660 --> 01:26:23.660
or socioeconomic status.

01:26:23.900 --> 01:26:29.660
So, yeah, it is partly finding those cases and being able to

01:26:29.660 --> 01:26:33.420
show the justification and the rationale.

01:26:34.060 --> 01:26:39.890
And it's still, it still requires

01:26:39.890 --> 01:26:41.810
walking someone through carefully.

01:26:41.970 --> 01:26:46.370
In some cases, they'll say it looks like downward causation, which is viewed as mysterious.

01:26:46.530 --> 01:26:52.210
So yeah, there's all sorts of ways in which higher level causes producing lower

01:26:52.290 --> 01:26:58.210
level outcomes is viewed as obscure or mysterious.

01:26:58.370 --> 01:27:04.180
But yeah, that's exactly the kind of cases I'm thinking of, where you know,

01:27:04.260 --> 01:27:09.620
a patient isn't buying their medication and they're said to be non-compliant, and you

01:27:09.620 --> 01:27:13.300
realize they don't have the money to kind of buy the medication in the first place.

01:27:13.460 --> 01:27:17.620
So why are they not taking their medication, their their choice?

01:27:17.780 --> 01:27:23.540
So you blame the patient as opposed to, you know, the fact that they

01:27:23.630 --> 01:27:27.150
can't afford the medication in the first place.

01:27:27.310 --> 01:27:32.990
But yeah, it's worth these are sometimes called examples of cases where

01:27:32.990 --> 01:27:36.830
physicians need to be have structural competency.

01:27:36.990 --> 01:27:42.670
And so there's um there's been a push to include

01:27:42.990 --> 01:27:46.350
this type of work in medical education.

01:27:47.600 --> 01:27:53.040
Um, but you know, there's there's so many things that physicians need to

01:27:53.040 --> 01:27:56.080
study and that are part of their education.

01:27:56.240 --> 01:27:58.080
And the system is so big.

01:27:58.240 --> 01:28:01.600
There's yeah, so there's lots of changes that it would be good to make.

01:28:01.680 --> 01:28:06.480
But one of them, kind of related to what you're saying, one of them is to first show that

01:28:06.480 --> 01:28:10.800
it even makes sense to think of these as causes that are explanatory, right?

01:28:10.960 --> 01:28:15.490
Before you go intervene on them or before you go get data, you need to show that

01:28:15.490 --> 01:28:17.010
conceptually this makes sense.

01:28:17.250 --> 01:28:21.250
So maybe that's another similarity with your project where you're first saying, like, look,

01:28:21.490 --> 01:28:25.650
for this question and for this explanatory target, this makes sense.

01:28:25.810 --> 01:28:29.250
This is conceptually principled and justified.

01:28:29.570 --> 01:28:35.410
And having social things as causes is perfectly fine.

01:28:35.570 --> 01:28:36.370
Here's why.

01:28:36.530 --> 01:28:38.370
It's similar to these other cases.

01:28:38.530 --> 01:28:38.930
Yeah.

01:28:39.170 --> 01:28:45.020
So maybe places where that conceptual and theoretical work is important

01:28:45.180 --> 01:28:50.380
and where you're giving that justification, and where you can sometimes use it, you can

01:28:50.380 --> 01:28:55.820
find other examples in other sciences that they're okay with the same

01:28:55.820 --> 01:28:56.460
justification.

01:28:56.700 --> 01:28:58.620
You kind of use it to support your view.

01:28:58.780 --> 01:29:03.340
Where it's like, look, over here in physics, you're perfectly fine with these like

01:29:03.340 --> 01:29:05.740
structural causes or constraints.

01:29:05.980 --> 01:29:10.870
You should be fine with them over here too in the social sciences, where you got the same

01:29:10.870 --> 01:29:11.430
kind of thing.

01:29:11.670 --> 01:29:11.910
Yeah.

01:29:12.710 --> 01:29:18.550
But yeah, maybe a little more of a I kind of want to

01:29:18.550 --> 01:29:23.670
um push back on a on an earlier point you made about the um the how low can you go

01:29:23.990 --> 01:29:29.830
perspective uh that um people often uh espouse in in philosophy of

01:29:29.830 --> 01:29:30.390
science.

01:29:30.550 --> 01:29:36.260
Um and I I want to defend a more limited version of the how low you can go uh thesis,

01:29:36.500 --> 01:29:41.860
which is, you know, I agree that we don't want to be explaining uh jealousy or anger in

01:29:41.860 --> 01:29:44.020
terms of quarks and electrons.

01:29:44.260 --> 01:29:48.660
Um, but I do think that there is a defensible version of that hypothesis where you don't

01:29:48.660 --> 01:29:53.300
want to necessarily go all the way down to the floor, but you do want to go at least one

01:29:53.300 --> 01:29:54.580
level uh below you.

01:29:54.660 --> 01:30:00.110
And you want to be at the place where you can pass the baton to the to the level below you,

01:30:00.190 --> 01:30:05.790
um, such that you're not positing theories and mechanisms and explanatory factors that are

01:30:05.790 --> 01:30:09.790
inconsistent with or incompatible with the lower the level below you.

01:30:09.950 --> 01:30:14.750
So if I'm a microbiologist, I don't want to be positing uh microbiological structures that

01:30:14.750 --> 01:30:19.310
are incompatible with what we know about chemistry and with what and with what molecules

01:30:19.310 --> 01:30:20.270
are stable, right?

01:30:20.350 --> 01:30:24.270
Similarly, if I'm a chemist, I don't want to be positing molecular structures that are

01:30:24.270 --> 01:30:29.860
incompatible with what we know about how atoms work and interact with each other,

01:30:30.100 --> 01:30:30.420
right?

01:30:30.740 --> 01:30:35.540
And in the same way, if I'm positing psychological mechanisms, I don't want to be positing

01:30:35.540 --> 01:30:40.740
mechanisms that are incompatible with what we know about how natural selection works or

01:30:40.740 --> 01:30:44.500
with how information processing structures work, right?

01:30:44.980 --> 01:30:49.780
And so I think w what our goals are, at least from our perspective in terms of evolutionary

01:30:49.780 --> 01:30:55.090
psychology, is to get psychology and cognitive science in a place where we can be

01:30:55.490 --> 01:31:01.170
putting forward ideas and theories and mechanisms that fit with and are

01:31:01.170 --> 01:31:06.690
consistent with everything we know about evolutionary biology, about how biological systems

01:31:06.690 --> 01:31:07.490
evolve.

01:31:07.890 --> 01:31:13.420
And what Dave and I sometimes get frustrated with is theories in

01:31:13.660 --> 01:31:19.500
psychology that are actually pretty incompatible with and inconsistent with things we

01:31:19.500 --> 01:31:21.580
know about how evolution works.

01:31:21.740 --> 01:31:22.060
Right.

01:31:22.620 --> 01:31:27.980
A lot of the times we see people positing um theories of how the mind works that really

01:31:27.980 --> 01:31:32.540
don't make a lot of evolutionary sense or that could not have plausibly evolved by natural

01:31:32.540 --> 01:31:36.380
selection if you if you go through and do the do the game theory, like the strategy would

01:31:36.380 --> 01:31:38.220
be defeated by this other strategy.

01:31:38.700 --> 01:31:40.220
It's implausible that we have this.

01:31:40.380 --> 01:31:46.090
Or a lot of the thinking in psychology views our psychological mechanisms uh in a kind of

01:31:46.090 --> 01:31:48.570
intentional or in a kind of design stance.

01:31:48.650 --> 01:31:50.090
But the design is wrong.

01:31:50.170 --> 01:31:52.570
The function or the telos of the system is wrong.

01:31:52.730 --> 01:31:58.090
The telos is framed as achieving happiness or uh mental well-being, as if there's a little

01:31:58.090 --> 01:32:02.170
homunculus in the head that's pursuing a mental substance called happiness.

01:32:02.330 --> 01:32:08.170
Uh, and that is the design criteria, where how how well does this uh system produce uh

01:32:08.200 --> 01:32:10.360
the mental substance called happiness?

01:32:10.600 --> 01:32:13.800
Is it maximizing feelings of well-being and good vibes?

01:32:13.960 --> 01:32:16.520
And that's how we evaluate whether it's well designed or not.

01:32:16.680 --> 01:32:20.040
When from an evolutionary perspective, that makes almost no sense at all.

01:32:20.200 --> 01:32:25.960
To have a biological system that's engineered to seek out a substance within itself, it

01:32:25.960 --> 01:32:30.600
makes more sense that the system would be uh designed to seek out something in the world

01:32:30.600 --> 01:32:33.880
that uh facilitates its biological fitness.

01:32:34.200 --> 01:32:39.990
Um so I want to get your take on whether you find that view plausible, that we

01:32:39.990 --> 01:32:45.430
don't want to go down to the floor necessarily, but I think we should be working to go uh

01:32:45.590 --> 01:32:50.950
uh the level below us so that we can meet up with the level below us and at least have a

01:32:50.950 --> 01:32:55.110
kind of handshake or baton passing to the level below us.

01:32:55.510 --> 01:32:59.670
Oh, that's so cool to think about.

01:33:00.070 --> 01:33:05.980
And part of what it it captures for me is the

01:33:05.980 --> 01:33:11.660
sense in which there are sometimes cases where we're interested in an

01:33:11.660 --> 01:33:16.060
explanation or a theory where it needs to be compatible with something else.

01:33:16.300 --> 01:33:21.340
Or it's a kind of game over situation, and you can use the fact that it's not compatible

01:33:21.340 --> 01:33:26.250
with something else to say, look, guys, we have a problem here.

01:33:27.050 --> 01:33:32.490
The question is, what counts as the thing it needs to be compatible with?

01:33:32.730 --> 01:33:38.730
And I would say, why or does everything in

01:33:38.730 --> 01:33:42.170
biology and social science need to be compatible with physics?

01:33:42.410 --> 01:33:43.530
Does it need to be?

01:33:43.770 --> 01:33:47.050
What would it why don't they need to be compatible with us?

01:33:47.930 --> 01:33:52.820
Or so I think the question is we don't want to assume that

01:33:53.140 --> 01:33:58.420
understanding things in biology or neuroscience or cognitive science or evolutionary

01:33:58.420 --> 01:34:03.780
psychology, we wouldn't want to just assume that successful

01:34:03.780 --> 01:34:08.100
explanations in those domains need to be compatible with lower level physics unless there's

01:34:08.100 --> 01:34:09.620
a good reason for them to be.

01:34:09.860 --> 01:34:12.500
I'm not sure we have that exactly.

01:34:12.740 --> 01:34:18.100
I think we have an assumption that the world is layered and that lower things are more

01:34:18.100 --> 01:34:23.790
fundamental or more um foundational and more

01:34:23.790 --> 01:34:26.430
explanatory, but I think we need to question that.

01:34:26.590 --> 01:34:31.310
We don't want to question that there's stuff down there in a just a physicalist picture.

01:34:31.390 --> 01:34:32.750
No one should question that.

01:34:32.990 --> 01:34:38.990
The question is whether it's explanatory for the higher level stuff, or do we need

01:34:38.990 --> 01:34:41.550
to be compatible with fundamental physics?

01:34:41.710 --> 01:34:44.590
We need a good reason for that without just assuming it.

01:34:44.750 --> 01:34:50.320
I think your examples show cases where there is something

01:34:50.960 --> 01:34:55.440
that is a standard that the theory needs to be compatible with.

01:34:55.600 --> 01:35:00.000
I like your cases of the evolutionary considerations a lot.

01:35:00.320 --> 01:35:04.800
And I wonder if there's other cases where you play the same kind of game in science, where

01:35:04.800 --> 01:35:10.720
it's like, here's your theory, but if it's not compatible with this thing about chemical

01:35:10.720 --> 01:35:16.670
reactions or with some other kind of like feature that we know

01:35:16.670 --> 01:35:18.830
is present, then you have a problem.

01:35:18.990 --> 01:35:24.670
I would just say I wouldn't assume that physics gets to play that

01:35:24.670 --> 01:35:27.550
role for everything in the life sciences.

01:35:28.030 --> 01:35:33.630
Um why not, you know, why not the other way around?

01:35:34.270 --> 01:35:39.310
But then, yeah, so but I I think it I think there are cases where

01:35:40.140 --> 01:35:46.140
lack of compatibility with another theory or another principle is a way

01:35:46.140 --> 01:35:51.260
to say, like, look, there's something wrong here, or this isn't quite right.

01:35:51.740 --> 01:35:57.660
I'm just more non-reductive in the sense that I don't assume physics gets to

01:35:57.660 --> 01:36:03.180
be the rule that biologists and social scientists and

01:36:03.340 --> 01:36:08.810
evolutionary psychologists need to always care about or follow.

01:36:10.250 --> 01:36:12.730
And there's a lot more to say about that.

01:36:14.330 --> 01:36:19.050
And that might even be resisting a kind of common picture or a default assumption.

01:36:19.130 --> 01:36:25.130
The one thing I'll add is that I'm not denying that there are things at lower scales.

01:36:25.290 --> 01:36:30.730
The question is does information about that stuff at lower scales constrain what you get to

01:36:30.730 --> 01:36:32.890
say in the social sciences?

01:36:33.210 --> 01:36:38.200
I wouldn't I don't want to assume it does, and I think there's lots of successful work in

01:36:38.200 --> 01:36:43.240
all sorts of higher level sciences that's totally ignorant of fundamental physics and is

01:36:43.240 --> 01:36:44.120
very successful.

01:36:44.360 --> 01:36:49.640
So I wouldn't want to assume always we would need to be beholden to

01:36:50.600 --> 01:36:55.970
physicists, but this kind of relates to debates about

01:36:57.250 --> 01:36:57.250
it.

01:37:02.850 --> 01:37:07.490
But I don't need I don't think that psychologists necessarily need to be beholden to

01:37:07.490 --> 01:37:08.210
physicists.

01:37:08.450 --> 01:37:11.810
I think they do in the sense that we don't want to posit theories that defy the laws of

01:37:11.810 --> 01:37:12.210
physics.

01:37:12.290 --> 01:37:16.440
Like I don't want to say that, you know, uh Superman is the cause of this thing and he can

01:37:16.440 --> 01:37:20.360
fly without means of propulsion, or that there's some kind of telekinesis or whatever.

01:37:20.440 --> 01:37:22.680
We don't want to act, you know, defy the laws of physics.

01:37:22.840 --> 01:37:26.360
But I don't think we need to be constantly thinking about the laws of physics when we

01:37:26.360 --> 01:37:28.920
construct our psychological theories.

01:37:29.080 --> 01:37:34.600
But I think we do need to be thinking about um biology and evolution as a way of

01:37:34.600 --> 01:37:37.960
constraining our theories in the same way that chemists, chemists need to be thinking about

01:37:37.960 --> 01:37:41.400
physics and uh microbiologists need to be thinking about chemistry.

01:37:42.470 --> 01:37:46.790
Yeah, I wonder if there's things at certain scales that you see and that you can capture,

01:37:46.870 --> 01:37:48.390
but if you go down, you lose it.

01:37:48.550 --> 01:37:53.270
Like some emergent phenomena are said to be like this: viscosity, or

01:37:53.990 --> 01:37:59.990
there's some types of features that you can only kind of see or capture, supposedly, at

01:37:59.990 --> 01:38:01.430
one sort of scale.

01:38:01.670 --> 01:38:06.760
And once you go, when you go down, you actually don't get a better handle on things.

01:38:06.920 --> 01:38:08.440
At least that's the suggestion.

01:38:08.600 --> 01:38:11.480
But I wonder if it relates to the target, the explanatory target.

01:38:11.640 --> 01:38:17.480
Are there some targets in chemistry where, I mean, you don't

01:38:17.480 --> 01:38:22.840
want to, yeah, where you don't need to be beholden to physics.

01:38:22.920 --> 01:38:26.040
But yeah, it's certainly, it's certainly worth considering more.

01:38:26.280 --> 01:38:30.440
I think I do want to highlight the sense in which your the examples you give with

01:38:30.440 --> 01:38:35.530
evolutionary considerations, I think those are those are quite nice.

01:38:35.610 --> 01:38:39.530
It'd be interesting to look at other cases where you can play the same kind of game.

01:38:39.770 --> 01:38:42.010
Um it's also helpful, right?

01:38:42.170 --> 01:38:47.530
Because you can use that to show here, this theory is actually better than this other one

01:38:47.690 --> 01:38:53.530
because it's compatible with our best understanding of evolutionary systems

01:38:53.530 --> 01:38:54.730
and whatnot.

01:38:55.160 --> 01:38:59.880
Yeah, I think like it motivates, like maybe there is a sense in which there the account

01:38:59.880 --> 01:39:03.080
could be reasonable with respect to what we know about natural selection, but that

01:39:03.080 --> 01:39:04.840
researcher hasn't articulated it.

01:39:05.000 --> 01:39:09.560
Like that would be a first kind of pass take on it.

01:39:09.720 --> 01:39:13.000
I'm very partial to David's take, but I will be devil's advocate too.

01:39:13.080 --> 01:39:16.360
Like I think there, I'm not an expert in this, but there are examples in the history of

01:39:16.360 --> 01:39:22.350
science where, for example, like DNA, the people DNA was a function first because I'm I

01:39:22.350 --> 01:39:22.990
like function.

01:39:23.070 --> 01:39:26.190
I'm a you know I'm a proselytizer of functional thinking.

01:39:26.350 --> 01:39:31.150
Uh the functional think functional thinking started before there was evidence of what DNA

01:39:31.150 --> 01:39:31.310
was.

01:39:31.390 --> 01:39:36.510
And somebody was like, well, there has to be a molecule that can reproduce aspects of

01:39:36.510 --> 01:39:38.430
itself with like near perfect fidelity.

01:39:38.510 --> 01:39:40.270
And chemists were like, There's no such thing.

01:39:40.430 --> 01:39:42.980
And they laughed at the person who said that.

01:39:43.140 --> 01:39:47.140
So that was a good example of like at the time the chemists were saying that's not

01:39:47.140 --> 01:39:51.860
consistent with what we know about how chemical substances work, but it was because they

01:39:51.860 --> 01:39:56.340
hadn't discovered that one chemical substance that had that property, that functional

01:39:56.340 --> 01:39:56.820
property.

01:39:56.980 --> 01:40:02.740
So I do think like there's examples where I think this also happened in chemistry and

01:40:02.740 --> 01:40:06.110
physics, where chemists were saying there were certain things that happened, and the

01:40:06.110 --> 01:40:07.790
physics were like, Well, that's not consistent.

01:40:07.870 --> 01:40:10.270
And actually, what changed was physics and not the chemistry.

01:40:11.550 --> 01:40:12.190
So, yeah.

01:40:12.350 --> 01:40:14.750
So, I think like I completely agree with David.

01:40:14.910 --> 01:40:16.830
I think it's good to have those fights.

01:40:17.070 --> 01:40:21.630
Um, and sometimes you can steel man, it's good to sort of steel man the non evolutionary

01:40:21.630 --> 01:40:24.750
account into a the best case adaptationist account.

01:40:24.910 --> 01:40:29.640
But I agree with David that there's just some things that they're almost imp they're not

01:40:29.640 --> 01:40:30.760
even coherent, I guess.

01:40:30.920 --> 01:40:33.880
They don't even like start, they don't even go out the get out of the gate.

01:40:33.960 --> 01:40:35.480
You know, that's that's one way to put it.

01:40:35.560 --> 01:40:35.720
Yeah.

01:40:35.880 --> 01:40:41.320
Uh I I would love for psychology to be at the at the place where we could have a strong

01:40:41.320 --> 01:40:44.680
enough body of evidence where we could contradict something in biology.

01:40:44.840 --> 01:40:46.840
Where you could say, No, we have the better data.

01:40:47.000 --> 01:40:49.160
You need to trust us and not the other way around.

01:40:49.880 --> 01:40:52.680
Um, but I don't think we're we're anywhere close to that point.

01:40:53.000 --> 01:40:54.760
Daryl Bem almost had us being psychic.

01:40:55.750 --> 01:40:56.150
That's true.

01:40:57.910 --> 01:40:58.550
Oh my gosh.

01:40:58.790 --> 01:41:00.070
You almost turned everything around.

01:41:00.310 --> 01:41:00.550
Yes.

01:41:00.710 --> 01:41:02.310
Um, Lauren, is there anything?

01:41:02.390 --> 01:41:05.030
Uh we're we're kind of but this has been so wonderful.

01:41:05.110 --> 01:41:09.110
I feel like we should we should have you on again, but um, we're coming up on our usual

01:41:09.110 --> 01:41:09.830
timing here.

01:41:09.990 --> 01:41:12.230
Um, is there anything about your own work?

01:41:12.470 --> 01:41:17.960
Because you know, we really uh we selfishly sort of um again, this was our therapy session

01:41:18.280 --> 01:41:21.240
with you, but um, is there anything about your own work?

01:41:21.320 --> 01:41:25.960
Um, both in terms of like your work or your books that are coming out, or things for people

01:41:25.960 --> 01:41:31.400
who are interested in philosophy of science or causation, in particular what you're doing,

01:41:31.560 --> 01:41:34.920
that you might want to point people toward, or is there something we should have talked to

01:41:34.920 --> 01:41:36.360
you about or you'd like to mention?

01:41:36.440 --> 01:41:36.840
Yeah.

01:41:37.480 --> 01:41:43.450
Oh, um nothing that we should have discussed but didn't get to,

01:41:43.770 --> 01:41:49.690
lots of great topics and a nice discussion that starts to kind of unpack

01:41:49.770 --> 01:41:54.410
also what philosophers of science are up to and what they're interested in.

01:41:54.810 --> 01:41:59.290
The um yeah, so maybe I'll just briefly mention

01:42:00.860 --> 01:42:03.420
Um a couple things.

01:42:04.060 --> 01:42:09.900
So I have a book that was recently published, Cambridge Elements book.

01:42:09.980 --> 01:42:12.140
It's called Explanation in Biology.

01:42:12.380 --> 01:42:17.740
It discusses different types of causal explanation and non-causal explanation.

01:42:18.300 --> 01:42:24.060
If people are interested in mechanism, there's a paper that Danny Bassett and I wrote in

01:42:24.050 --> 01:42:29.170
Nature Reviews Neuroscience called Causation in Neuroscience Keeping Mechanism Meaningful.

01:42:29.410 --> 01:42:33.570
So there we talk about different notions of mechanism in the field of neuroscience.

01:42:33.810 --> 01:42:37.170
It's similar to notions in other scientific domains.

01:42:37.410 --> 01:42:39.410
So there's that paper if there's interest.

01:42:39.490 --> 01:42:45.170
And then yeah, just to highlight part of what we discussed, um,

01:42:45.410 --> 01:42:50.980
philosophers of science in this space are interested in capturing real types of

01:42:50.980 --> 01:42:56.260
explanations that scientists provide, but also the standards that they need to meet.

01:42:56.580 --> 01:43:02.420
And we now, in current work in philosophy of science, are more pluralist about what

01:43:02.420 --> 01:43:02.820
counts.

01:43:02.900 --> 01:43:07.780
It used to be the case that philosophers were looking for the one single way that

01:43:07.780 --> 01:43:09.140
explanations worked.

01:43:09.380 --> 01:43:15.310
And now, fortunately, we're more under the view that there's different

01:43:15.310 --> 01:43:16.910
types of legitimate explanations.

01:43:17.070 --> 01:43:22.750
Our discussion has nicely kind of supported that kind of view where there's different

01:43:22.750 --> 01:43:27.470
explanatory targets or why questions, and then just different steps you take to answer that

01:43:27.470 --> 01:43:30.750
why question and to give an explanation.

01:43:30.990 --> 01:43:36.350
And then, yeah, just final things to note for why that matters that came up in our

01:43:36.350 --> 01:43:36.990
discussion.

01:43:37.230 --> 01:43:40.030
We want to know when explanations are good or bad.

01:43:40.190 --> 01:43:45.460
And so you need standards to be able to say when they're good

01:43:45.540 --> 01:43:47.300
explanations, when they don't count.

01:43:47.460 --> 01:43:53.460
We need that for the public too, because there's lots of conspiracy theory types

01:43:53.460 --> 01:43:58.260
of topics and explanations that are inconsistent with scientific work.

01:43:58.340 --> 01:44:03.890
And so scientists need to be able to tell the public why we think that X

01:44:03.970 --> 01:44:06.370
explains Y and what the rationale is.

01:44:06.610 --> 01:44:11.330
So it's important for those discussions, but also as we mentioned, for the standards in

01:44:11.330 --> 01:44:15.810
science for pay for the standards that determine the papers that are published, the

01:44:15.810 --> 01:44:17.090
research that's funded.

01:44:17.250 --> 01:44:22.610
And when you're making progress in science, like we're talking about, being able to say,

01:44:22.850 --> 01:44:28.380
look, here is this explanatory program that I'm

01:44:28.380 --> 01:44:31.820
operating within, and it's different from this other one.

01:44:31.980 --> 01:44:35.340
It's important for making progress in science.

01:44:35.580 --> 01:44:41.500
So, yeah, a lot of interest here in capturing distinct types of explanation,

01:44:41.740 --> 01:44:47.020
what their standards are, and then the justification and rationale for viewing them as

01:44:47.020 --> 01:44:52.540
explanatory as opposed to merely descriptive or predictive or just

01:44:52.540 --> 01:44:58.270
classifying and showing how it um they're

01:44:58.430 --> 01:45:03.950
they may be serving different goals and how they do have justification to kind of capture

01:45:03.950 --> 01:45:07.070
how science is giving us our best understanding of the world.

01:45:07.230 --> 01:45:09.230
So yeah, just a little bit of recap.

01:45:09.470 --> 01:45:15.230
Very happy to talk more at future points and

01:45:15.230 --> 01:45:18.320
bring in more philosophy of science if it's ever of interest.

01:45:18.640 --> 01:45:19.360
Yeah, that'd be great.

01:45:19.440 --> 01:45:24.000
I mean, I think this conversation has been a beautiful, nice microcosm of I think it's

01:45:24.000 --> 01:45:25.440
really a productive thing.

01:45:25.600 --> 01:45:31.520
It's it's fun for us to think about that there are other people who have tackled

01:45:31.520 --> 01:45:33.280
these issues and we don't have to do it on our own.

01:45:33.440 --> 01:45:38.960
But then it's also helpful in clarifying um uh to hear what

01:45:38.960 --> 01:45:41.130
those precedents are.

01:45:41.370 --> 01:45:46.410
And um, and I hope it was helpful for you to see what mess we're in

01:45:47.130 --> 01:45:47.770
ourselves.

01:45:47.930 --> 01:45:53.370
Um, but yeah, no, um, we as we mentioned before we started, we're all local, and um there's

01:45:53.370 --> 01:45:56.810
a lot of evolutionary behavioral scientists in the Southern California area.

01:45:56.970 --> 01:46:02.730
And I think it would be lovely to have a philosophy of science and evolutionary sort of um

01:46:03.050 --> 01:46:06.010
um uh some get together or something like that.

01:46:06.090 --> 01:46:08.090
Um, I think that would be that would be fantastic.

01:46:08.250 --> 01:46:09.610
So that sounds great.

01:46:09.780 --> 01:46:10.260
Yeah.

01:46:10.580 --> 01:46:12.500
So uh Lauren, thank you so much.

01:46:12.660 --> 01:46:18.660
Um uh it was a pleasure and um yeah, I I look forward to talking more um uh with

01:46:18.660 --> 01:46:20.260
you and other philosophers.

01:46:20.340 --> 01:46:26.100
It's it's a real treat and um we always appreciate having I think David put it, um I love

01:46:26.100 --> 01:46:28.420
talking to philosophers, they're so clear-minded.

01:46:28.500 --> 01:46:29.780
I think is that what you said, David?

01:46:30.020 --> 01:46:30.180
Yes.

01:46:30.980 --> 01:46:31.460
Yes.

01:46:32.340 --> 01:46:35.460
Um well yeah, it was a total pleasure for me.

01:46:35.620 --> 01:46:37.910
So thank you so much for having me on.

01:46:38.070 --> 01:46:44.070
And yeah, loved learning more about the work and uh debates in

01:46:44.070 --> 01:46:44.710
your field.

01:46:44.870 --> 01:46:46.390
So yeah, thank you for that.

01:46:46.630 --> 01:46:47.510
Yeah, thank you, Lauren.

01:46:47.750 --> 01:46:49.030
It was fantastic.

01:46:52.390 --> 01:46:54.790
David, that just flew by like usual.

01:46:55.030 --> 01:46:56.150
Yep, it always does.

01:46:56.230 --> 01:46:56.470
Yeah.

01:46:56.710 --> 01:46:57.270
Time flies.

01:46:57.590 --> 01:46:59.750
So there's probably work on time perception.

01:46:59.830 --> 01:47:05.340
Um, I mean, I know there's work on time perception and how it gets, you know, expanded or

01:47:05.340 --> 01:47:06.300
contracted.

01:47:06.780 --> 01:47:07.100
Yeah.

01:47:07.260 --> 01:47:08.700
I I haven't really read much about it.

01:47:08.780 --> 01:47:13.420
It seems like a really interesting uh uh topic for an evolutionary psychologist to dive

01:47:13.420 --> 01:47:13.660
into.

01:47:14.060 --> 01:47:16.140
I got contacted by a grad student.

01:47:16.220 --> 01:47:17.740
Um shout out to you.

01:47:17.900 --> 01:47:23.500
Um I'm not gonna mention names but but somebody's thinking about it um uh who's uh who's at

01:47:23.500 --> 01:47:28.940
Fullerton um oh cool with Patrick Durkey and it's a wonderful uh

01:47:29.100 --> 01:47:34.810
idea and um um she reached out to contact me about if she knew if anybody was doing it

01:47:34.970 --> 01:47:39.370
i'm not aware but yeah the an adaptationist approach to time perception is fantastic so

01:47:39.370 --> 01:47:41.770
please keep I would love I would love to read that paper.

01:47:42.010 --> 01:47:43.370
So please write it so I can read it.

01:47:43.770 --> 01:47:46.090
So yes you're please keep going.

01:47:46.250 --> 01:47:50.170
Uh you're you're on the right track for for what my two cents is worth.

01:47:50.250 --> 01:47:52.970
So yes it would be about time.

01:47:53.380 --> 01:47:54.340
Oh my goodness.

01:47:55.380 --> 01:47:56.900
You are a professional comedian.

01:47:57.460 --> 01:47:58.020
I sure am.

01:47:58.340 --> 01:48:00.500
Uh as George Carlin once put it.

01:48:00.580 --> 01:48:02.660
Um that was one of his bits, right?

01:48:02.980 --> 01:48:06.820
I'm a professional comedian and like the people in your around the water cooler, which I

01:48:06.820 --> 01:48:07.940
don't think it's true anymore.

01:48:08.180 --> 01:48:08.740
But yeah.

01:48:08.980 --> 01:48:09.300
Yeah.

01:48:09.700 --> 01:48:10.660
Um okay.

01:48:11.140 --> 01:48:14.980
Um Patreon, uh, go check out the show notes.

01:48:15.140 --> 01:48:18.820
Lots of cool up the there should be a lot of good show notes for for this episode.

01:48:18.980 --> 01:48:24.410
Lauren talked about a bunch of uh her work, a book, and other other such things.

01:48:24.570 --> 01:48:26.810
I don't know, do you have been anything else?

01:48:27.290 --> 01:48:27.930
Uh no.

01:48:28.010 --> 01:48:29.450
I mean leave us a kind review.

01:48:29.690 --> 01:48:31.770
Say nice things about us on social media.

01:48:31.930 --> 01:48:35.050
Tell a friend about this uh wonderful podcast.

01:48:35.210 --> 01:48:39.530
Uh anything you can do to support us so that you can keep hearing our wonderful voices in

01:48:39.530 --> 01:48:40.010
your ear.

01:48:40.330 --> 01:48:42.570
I think we really should get t shirts.

01:48:42.890 --> 01:48:43.370
Yeah?

01:48:43.610 --> 01:48:44.250
Yeah.

01:48:44.740 --> 01:48:50.660
But really just I would, especially if it was a black t-shirt with like subtle font

01:48:50.740 --> 01:48:53.620
um where it was just the podcast.

01:48:54.420 --> 01:48:55.140
Just the podcast?

01:48:55.460 --> 01:48:56.660
Yeah, just in parentheses.

01:48:58.260 --> 01:49:02.100
Although we'd have to make sure that there isn't a podcast that's just called the podcast

01:49:02.180 --> 01:49:03.140
in parentheses.

01:49:03.220 --> 01:49:04.340
Um, but yeah.

01:49:04.580 --> 01:49:05.700
Maybe that's too subtle.

01:49:05.780 --> 01:49:06.100
I don't know.

01:49:06.180 --> 01:49:07.060
What do you think?

01:49:07.350 --> 01:49:09.030
I think that might be a bit subtle.

01:49:09.270 --> 01:49:12.550
It's weird though, because if it was too big and in your face, I'd probably be too be

01:49:12.550 --> 01:49:13.270
embarrassed to wear it.

01:49:13.750 --> 01:49:14.310
Yeah, I know.

01:49:14.390 --> 01:49:17.350
I kind of don't want to wear an evolutionary psychology shirt because I'm gonna walk by and

01:49:17.590 --> 01:49:20.230
be like, oh, that guy's a jerk because he's an evolutionary psychologist.

01:49:20.310 --> 01:49:24.310
So yeah, I don't want to get eggs thrown at me and tomatoes.

01:49:25.270 --> 01:49:30.150
In the in the pro in the professional literature of stigma, it's a remote, it's a um it's a

01:49:30.150 --> 01:49:33.110
concealable stigma of being an evolutionary psychologist.

01:49:33.270 --> 01:49:39.040
Unlike, you know, being a member of a racial minority or a physical

01:49:39.360 --> 01:49:42.640
deformity, for example, where you can't remove it.

01:49:43.520 --> 01:49:48.800
Being a kind of scientist is not something people can readily perceive to the extent that

01:49:48.800 --> 01:49:51.360
it's a stigmatized thing among some people.

01:49:52.240 --> 01:49:52.960
That is true.

01:49:53.120 --> 01:49:58.610
And so we gotta, you know, be patient about revealing it in the right

01:49:58.850 --> 01:49:59.330
setting.

01:49:59.730 --> 01:50:03.890
And this is a safe space for us to um to reveal our stigmatized identity.

01:50:04.370 --> 01:50:07.090
Maybe this is just a long walk to face tattoos, but I don't know.

01:50:07.170 --> 01:50:08.050
Maybe maybe we shouldn't.

01:50:08.210 --> 01:50:09.170
Yeah, that'd be pretty cool.

01:50:09.410 --> 01:50:10.290
Okay, yeah.

01:50:10.690 --> 01:50:15.170
Uh that's an adjective I wouldn't use, but it's it's an idea.

01:50:15.250 --> 01:50:15.490
Yeah.

01:50:15.810 --> 01:50:17.330
I mean it would be a very costly signal.

01:50:17.570 --> 01:50:21.170
We'd only get the most loyal, devoted evolutionary psychologists.

01:50:21.570 --> 01:50:23.570
Somebody does face tattoo uh work.

01:50:23.810 --> 01:50:24.400
Is it Louis?

01:50:24.640 --> 01:50:25.760
I think is it Louie?

01:50:26.720 --> 01:50:32.720
I think there was a Dan Fessler paper on commitment signals and tattoos was I don't know if

01:50:32.720 --> 01:50:34.560
there's more work on this, but I remember reading.

01:50:35.040 --> 01:50:39.280
If you see somebody with a face tattoo about something, you know that they're committed to

01:50:39.280 --> 01:50:39.760
that thing.

01:50:40.080 --> 01:50:45.280
I think there's stuff on like prisons where they have prison tattoos to like signal what

01:50:45.360 --> 01:50:46.480
gang you're a part of.

01:50:46.800 --> 01:50:47.040
Yeah.

01:50:47.360 --> 01:50:48.000
I don't know.

01:50:48.160 --> 01:50:50.830
But yeah, no, uh I think we should do face tattoos.

01:50:50.990 --> 01:50:56.430
I think um I think we'll we'll uh we'll filter out all the uncommitted evolutionary

01:50:56.430 --> 01:50:56.910
psychologists.

01:50:57.230 --> 01:50:58.110
Like myself.

01:50:58.430 --> 01:50:59.470
Yeah, exactly.

01:51:00.270 --> 01:51:02.910
Would you get a would you really get a face tattoo, David?

01:51:03.870 --> 01:51:05.310
Are we joking or serious?

01:51:05.550 --> 01:51:06.190
Seriously no.

01:51:06.350 --> 01:51:12.270
Joking is uh so if somebody wants to start a club where

01:51:12.270 --> 01:51:15.630
you demand a face tattoo, you might be a member of that club yourself.

01:51:15.790 --> 01:51:16.830
So um yeah.

01:51:16.990 --> 01:51:17.390
Yeah.

01:51:17.720 --> 01:51:18.040
All right.

01:51:18.200 --> 01:51:18.680
Anyway.

01:51:18.920 --> 01:51:19.480
All right.

01:51:19.880 --> 01:51:20.840
I don't know how we got there.

01:51:21.080 --> 01:51:21.880
It was, it was, yeah.

01:51:22.040 --> 01:51:22.840
Enjoy your week.

01:51:22.920 --> 01:51:24.520
Um, enjoy the summer.

01:51:24.760 --> 01:51:30.680
And um, you know, uh, I think a good lesson from this conversation is

01:51:30.920 --> 01:51:36.520
if somebody if you disagree with somebody or think somebody is wrong, think about how they

01:51:36.520 --> 01:51:40.440
might be explaining something different than what you're trying to explain.

01:51:40.680 --> 01:51:41.320
Yep.

01:51:41.690 --> 01:51:43.370
Great, beautiful advice.

01:51:43.690 --> 01:51:44.730
Go forth and use it.

01:51:44.810 --> 01:51:45.290
Take care.

01:51:45.450 --> 01:51:46.010
See you next week.

01:51:46.250 --> 01:51:47.450
See you next week.

01:52:10.020 --> 01:52:10.980
Pontum Pon P,

01:52:16.660 --> 01:52:22.340
and Canton, Pontum, Pantum,

01:52:23.300 --> 01:52:27.780
Pont, Pontum, Pontum, Canton,