308. The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature (2)
1 (12m 31s):
And so what, why, you know, why, why now?
2 (12m 36s):
I, you know, my research does not allow me to answer this question. I can only speculate. I don't have the professional background to address it. I haven't done, so I can imagine that there might be a link between climate change between the pressures that it puts on migration and therefore to the sense of threat that some people feel because of the migration and those things kind of combined together. What I can bring to the mix is this notion of when people object to the notion of human nature, their objections might impart be sparked by external cultural and, and political social situation.
2 (13m 20s):
It may also the, the way it may also be sparked by the way we reason about innateness generally. So the question is, is there something in how the mind works that renders the notion of innate difficulties particularly difficult for humans? Innate, I'm sorry, let me rephrase. Are, is there something in the human mind that renders the notion of innate differences between individuals particularly difficult for us to grasp?
1 (13m 50s):
Hmm. So back to language example, all humans learn languages. Which one you learn and what accent you pick up depends on the culture in which you're, you're raised in. So obviously that's interactive, but the moment, and that's relatively politically neutral, I think if, but if you say women are have a maternal instinct, you could see how say conservatives, Christian conservatives would use that and say aha, well, so it's it fixed in their nature. You really belong in the, the home raising children. That's what you should be doing. You shouldn't be in the workplace and so on and so on and so on. So I can I, yeah, maybe that's what's behind it. Something like that.
2 (14m 27s):
Yeah. And if you're liberal you're equally offended. So yeah, no, it's a kind of forms but yeah,
1 (14m 33s):
But but what if there is a maternal instinct? I mean whether there is or not or to what extent there might be on average differences between men and women on their propensity to wanna spend a lot of time with an infant, even if there is an average, it is whatever it is, right? The science says whatever the science says regardless what somebody in the political sphere may do with that information.
2 (14m 56s):
Yeah. So I think that the question, and what I try to raise in the op-ed is the question of why do we perceive harm in those claims? Why is the claim? So putting aside the question of whether the hypothesis of maternal instinct is correct or not, let's assume it is for the moment why by merely suggesting that people find it offensive. Whereas saying that, you know, women are predisposed to breast cancer because of a certain gene, right? That is not considered offensive. And in fact, we now recognize that is essential to look for these differences in order to deliver care. So why is it the psychological innateness that people find so offensive?
2 (15m 37s):
And my claim is people find it offensive because they think it makes no sense and therefore if you make a frivolous claim like that, then you must be a bigot, right? Because there cannot possibly be a scientific basis to argue that there are innate differences in something like maternal instinct. So if it's clear to us that this is an nonsensical claim and you're still making it, then you are indeed eliciting harm. My claim in this oped is that the harm is not coming from the science because what the sciences that people are a tribute to the science, all kinds of claims the science actually does not make. And it is our interpretations that come from how our mind works that color those perceptions and therefore, you know, the responsibility for that lies not on the science, but rather on the human mind.
2 (16m 26s):
And therefore it's the role of scientists to help individuals recognize A, what the scientist is actually saying in B, what we incorrectly project into the science.
1 (16m 38s):
Yeah, exactly. And the rest in your book actually deals with that in great depth. But before we get there, let me just punctuate this point that I repeat endlessly and it can't be repeated enough. Whatever the science says is irrelevant to the rights of women to have equal opportunity in the workplace. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred percent genetic for maternal instincts or whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You should be free to do whatever you want. Yep. No obstacles, right? So, and, and you know, I say this with the trans movement, wouldn't matter if it's 10%, 1% 0.01%, one person on the planet, right? Trans, right. So human rights and we have to separate that from whatever the science is. And this is where we get into trouble.
1 (17m 18s):
People want the science to come out a certain way cuz they feel like if it doesn't, if the numbers aren't big enough, then there's gonna be bigotry and rights violations and so on.
2 (17m 26s):
Yeah, absolutely. And in fact you can, you know, tell the argument on its side and say, if we recognize our innate individual differences, then we can ensure equity because we can compensate the people who need of additional help and make sure that they get this help just as we ought to do the same in the case of healthcare.
1 (17m 50s):
Exactly. Let me, one of the things I liked about your book is your writing is very clear. And so I found this passage here in your first chapter kind of outlining the thesis of the book here in a nutshell is the gist of what I will argue. You can see why that popped out. Oh, okay, she's gonna tell us what this book is about. I like that. I believe that our resistance to innate ideas is, but one of many examples of our blindness to our own human nature. And I suggest that all of these cases of self blindness arise from the collision between two Titanic forces that are buried deep in our psyches. Both ironically are likely to be innate ideas. I like that meta on top of meta. The first is our instinctive belief in dualism, the notion that our minds are immaterial, distinct and separable from our material bodies.
1 (18m 36s):
The others are deep seated belief in essentialism. The idea that living things are each defined by some innate, immutable and necessarily material essence. I've recently introduced these, well then you get into the details. So let's just start there. What define what you mean by human nature and then dualism and then essentialism, and then we can deconstruct each of those.
2 (18m 55s):
Human nature is the belief that the way we are is innately determined that, so I think this, you know, makes it perhaps easier for people to grasp when it comes to personality traits or to emotions. But the claim is that it's not only our emotion, it's only not our personality. It includes possibility that there are some stuff that we know innately, that there are, there is such thing as innate knowledge.
1 (19m 31s):
Okay? And then dualism.
2 (19m 37s):
Dualism is the belief that the mind is separate from the body. And we're talking about an intuitive belief that even very young children showed as opposed to the carts doctrine,
1 (19m 49s):
Right? And then essentialism,
2 (19m 52s):
Essentialism is the belief that we are who we are because we have some inherent essence, right? So if you ask a child why is a dog brown like its mother? And the answer that is telling you is there must be something that is a little piece of matter that the doggy got from its mother. And that's what determines what it is. It will never change that determines its essence. So there is some hidden essence that make living things what they are,
1 (20m 22s):
Right? So, okay, let's dive into these. The resistance to the idea that we have a human nature, as you you've mentioned, can be politicized. So that's one reason. But, but I think what you're saying is that it doesn't feel intuitively like we have a nature, we feel like there's a spirit soul thing floating around up there called the mind, or my body has a soul that floats off when I die and goes somewhere else. That's my essence. And that feels very flexible. Like there's no nature to it. I can make myself whatever I want. That is that what you're arguing? That is kind of an evolved intuitive psychology, a folk psychology about our natures.
2 (21m 3s):
So this has not evolved. I don't think that our, so let's narrow down the discussion because talking about human nature, it's a very broad claim. Let's talk about the notion of innate knowledge specifically. So when you ask lay people, what do you think newborns know? Do they have a sense of object? So if they're going to see an object that disintegrates in there, like the challenger disaster, if they were to see that for the first time, would they find it surprising? Would they know that that's not how objects behave? Would they know that objects, you know, only move when they're contacted by another object? Right?
2 (21m 42s):
When you ask these questions of lay people, they tell you there is no way that a newborn has this understanding. And of course we're talking about ta subconscious understanding it's all completely under the hood, but by the infants behavior, the infants can show you that they know this stuff. So if you ask lay people, will infants show demonstrate knowledge of that? Will they be surprised, demonstrably surprised when the see an impossible event and people tell you, no way, this is not possible. And basically they're assuming that there, there's no way that this knowledge can possibly be innate in this infant. So it precise specifically the notion of innate knowledge that people find very unlikely.
2 (22m 28s):
And, and, and you know, confusing,
1 (22m 33s):
Right? So like at Paul Bloom's lab with the infants showing a little puppet show where one puppet is trying to push this ball up a ramp, I think it was, and the other puppet comes in and either helps it or arms it and pushes, pushes the ball back down is either being cooperative or, or not. The infants know immediately they're attracted to the cooperative one, they reward the cooperative one, they punish, slap down or push away the the not the naughty puppet. That was not helpful. And so the interpretation of that is what that babies are born with a sense of, I don't know, right and wrong or this is a good person, this is a bad person,
2 (23m 11s):
Prefer to good guys, to bad guys. In a very rudimentary sense, that's what it seems to suggest. This is just a description of what they're reflecting in their behavior. So I won't, I won't say morality in general, but rudimentary notion of good and bad. So referring helpers to hinders as they describe it.
1 (23m 30s):
Right? So where would that come from? If if it's dif they're too young to learn, they don't even have language yet. It has to be an involved propensity that would be part of nature. We're we're given this, this part of our hardware.
2 (23m 42s):
Right? Right. And in the case of what is an object, in fact, so a you see it in newborns, this has been shown in human newborns and you also see it in other species. So we have an evolutionary history there that we know makes it even more likely to suggest that these capacities are innate. So yeah, the, the these specific innate ideas that we seem to have, seem to come innately to us.
