Arguably, the preeminent spokesman for the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology is the psycholinguist Steven Pinker. Pinker has been the staunchest proponent and popularizer of the position peculiar to the field that the form of mental activity follows and may be deduced from its function. That is, just as one may deduce what arms, legs, and hearts are like from what they do, the statistical isolation of universal behavioral functions (e.g. incest aversion, sexual attraction, altruism) permits the psychologist to logically deduce the corresponding mental processes engrained in the mind by a genome shaped by evolution.
This resulting evolutionary model of the mind rests upon the conceptual foundation of 'massive modularity'. Modularity configures the mind as a collection of metaphorical computational devices that like a Swiss army knife are activated depending upon the 'problem' at hand, whether it be recognition of a threat, a mate, or a competitor. However, the key issue is not whether this theoretical perspective is logical or whether it maps perfectly (either in an ad hoc or predictive way) to the facts of behavior, but whether it is neurally or biologically realistic. That is, is the biological mind a computational, information processing device that can be 'reverse engineered' (as Pinker would have it) from knowledge of its inputs and outputs, or is it something else?
Strikingly, an emerging consensus from the fields of biology, learning theory, affective neuroscience, and philosophy holds that the mind is not modular, thought is not computational, and that behavior occurs in predictable and unpredictable (i.e. like a spandrel) ways through an exquisite intertwining of general purpose thinking mechanisms (neo-cortex) and far more ancient structures (midbrain) that predate our paleolithic ancestors. This new model does not cohere to the 'blank slate' metaphor that Pinker correctly excoriates, but it is also incompatible with the modularity principles that are so core to Pinker's arguments and to evolutionary psychology itself. Indeed, if the principle of modularity is rendered false, much of the philosophical agenda of EP and Pinker must be dismissed, root and branch.
To understand how this unique and potentially decisive criticism of Pinker and Evolutionary Psychology is evolving (no pun intended), I am presenting a compendium of articles, all available separately on the web, that develop this criticism from the vantage of learning theory (behaviorism), affective neuroscience, biology, and philosophy. For what its worth, I am also contributing separate review s of Pinker's 'How the Mind Works' and 'The Blank Slate', and a short essay on Pinker's modular interpretation of incest. (Oh yes, and all of this followed by a Q and A with a Pinker of a different sort, to which I ask the reader for forgiveness.)
