Evolutionary Psychology Refutes Itself

Why intelligent PhD psychologists
cannot see this implicates Darwinism
as a logic-destroying mind virus

 

 

Once you watch a Darwinist proposition implode, you never forget it. But you have to watch from outside evolutionary fogma to witness the collapse. From inside the fogma, everything looks rational and consistent all the way down to the singularity. Here is a classic illustration found at a quasi-“science” site, The Conversation, where various scientists share their findings and opinions for a lay audience.

As preparation for the implosion you are about to witness, we recommend re-reading Nancy Pearcey’s excellent piece “Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself” at Evolution News, 8 March 2015, where she explains that “An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity — which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet.”

Why consciousness may have evolved to benefit society rather than individuals (The Conversation, 10 July 2024). The authors of this article, we can agree, are highly gifted and intelligent people, conversant with more details about the mind and brain than many of us will ever be. Peter W. Halligan is an honorary professor of neuropsychology at Cardiff University. David A. Oakley is an emeritus professor of psychology at University College London (UCL).

Their intelligence, however, is not at issue: their logic is. All arguments, reasons and persuasions depend on the validity of logic. By its very nature, logic must be consistent and coherent, because without these, one can prove anything (therefore, nothing). That is the reason for the Law of Non-Contradiction; inconsistency allows a sophist to ‘prove’ that opposite conclusions are simultaneously true. It doesn’t matter how many pieces of evidence a debater can adduce, therefore; if he commits a self-refuting fallacy, it’s over. There is nothing more to say. And it doesn’t take a professor or PhD to notice such a catastrophic, show-stopping error.

Material Intuitions

In this essay, Halligan and Oakley offer a materialistic argument for the view that consciousness “evolved” as a social benefit rather than a trait to advance individual fitness. [Stop right there. An argument is not material.] They will appeal to the conscious mind as a lump of matter without a soul, and ascribe natural selection as the driver that gave rise to consciousness. And what is consciousness? “We define consciousness,” they begin, “as embodied subjective awareness, including self awareness” (emphasis on embodied—i.e., material, and subjective—i.e., irrational).

Their argument builds on the notion of “intuitions” evolving into consciousness. Watch as they set up a denial of the rational pillars of civilization:

Key intuitive beliefs – for example that our mental processes are distinct from our physical bodies (mind-body dualism) and that our mental processes give rise to and control our decisions and actions (mental causation) – are supported by a lifetime of subjective experiences.

These beliefs are found in all human cultures. They are important as they serve as foundational beliefs for most liberal democracies and criminal justice systems. They are resistant to counter evidence. That’s because they are powerfully endorsed by social and cultural concepts such as free will, human rights, democracy, justice and moral responsibility. All these concepts assume that consciousness plays a central controlling influence.

And yet, they will argue next, intuition is dangerous and unreliable. Our intuitions about having mental self-awareness (the most direct personal experience each of us has—cogito ergo sum) cannot be trusted. They will proceed to deny the existence of free will and mental causation. Along with those denials goes “human rights, democracy, justice, and moral responsibility” out the window. Everything left is subjective. Does their own argument escape?

Big Fail

The consequences of their argument, it’s easy to see, would be monumental for society. It would remove any objective foundation for law and justice. But already one can see the fuse burning on the coming implosion of their case. They said that arguments for mind-body dualism, though universal, are “resistant to counter evidence.” Question: Is it ‘bad’ to be resistant to counter evidence? Christians could say yes to that. But for these two, that sounds like a moral argument obtained by free will, which they have denied. It would also presuppose an objective and immaterial moral standard.

Intuition, however, is an automatic, cognitive process that evolved to provide fast trusted explanations and predictions. In fact, it does so without the need for us to know how or why we know it. The outcomes of intuition therefore shape how we perceive and explain our everyday world without the need for extensive reflection or formal analytic explanations.

Stop right there: intuition (and with it consciousness) “evolved,” they claim. How do they know that? That’s question-begging. They just admitted that most people in the world during all human history do not believe that consciousness evolved by natural selection. The burden of proof, therefore, is on them. Biblical creationists can argue that our intuitions are effects of the tarnished Imago Dei which our Maker installed into our living souls—i.e., our consciences—but Halligan and Oakley must cook them up from scratch, and with them all the downstream products of conscience like “human rights, democracy, justice, and moral responsibility.”

The Implosion Begins

The two psychologists just mentioned that “extensive reflection or formal analytic explanations” are not needed for the intuitions that give rise to beliefs in free will and human rights. People accept these intuitions, they said, “without the need for us to know how or why we know it.” Okay, then, do Halligan and Oakley need to know how or why they arrived at their epistemology (the philosophy of knowing)? Who’s “we,” Paleface? If they exempt themselves from the forces of evolution that produce false intuitions, then how do they know their own intuitions about evolution are true? Darwin’s Stuff Happens Law is oblivious to truth. It couldn’t care less if something is true, logically consistent, or good. Not even survival or fitness is “good” in Darwinism. Extinction is certainly an easier way out of any ‘evolutionary pressure.’ The worm can roll over and die far easier than it can wait for a lucky rare beneficial mutation to rescue it from the pressure.

The only way they can escape the evolutionary forces that they believe produced the human race is to leap into an exalted plane of thought we dub the Yoda Complex. From that vantage point in immaterial la-la-land, where they can act like little gods, they can look down on the evolved humans beneath them, pitying their non-free intuitions that make them think they know something about human rights, democracy, justice and moral responsibility. The behavior of someone with a Yoda Complex is indistinguishable from the behavior of someone on a hallucinogenic drug. Watch as Halligan and Oakley get high on their Yoda vapors:

While helpful and indeed crucial for many everyday activities, intuitive beliefs can be wrong. They can also interfere with scientific literacy.

Intuitive accounts of consciousness ultimately put us in the driver’s seat as “captain of our own ship”. We think we know what consciousness is and what it does from simply experiencing it. Mental thoughts, intentions and desires are seen as determining and controlling our actions.

Rescuing the Victim with Deprogramming

Painful as it is, tough love requires us to pull Halligan and Oakley out of the fogma and let them witness the implosion. They just denied that thoughts, intentions and desires have any control over our actions. They denied the existence of objective moral standards. Because (in their view) evolution actually determined those things instead, we can turn this argument against them.

• Intuitive beliefs can be wrong, including evolutionary beliefs.
• Intuitive beliefs can interfere with scientific literacy, including evolutionary beliefs.
• These evolutionists are not captains of their own ship. They are being acted on by evolutionary forces.
• Evolutionary pressures determined these two authors’ mental thoughts, intentions, desires, and actions.
• Their essay did not proceed from their free will, but from their selfish genes.
• They don’t believe a word they just said. Belief requires a mind capable of judging truth and freely choosing between moral options.

Deeper Troubles

To common sense folk, the first rule of holes is to stop digging. Well, Darwin didn’t tell that to his disciples. Halligan and Oakley continue digging. Perhaps, they intuit from their subjective sensations, “science” can conjure up comfortable feelings of “understanding” while their material neurons flash about within their material skulls.

The problem for scientific models of consciousness remains accommodating these intuitive accounts within a materialist framework consistent with the findings of neuroscience. While there is no current scientific explanation for how brain tissue generates or maintains subjective experience, the consensus among (most) neuroscientists is that it is a product of brain processes.

As we pull them out of the fogma, we gently turn their heads to witness the self-destruction of their arguments.

• Their brain processes, not truth or logic, determined the words that proceeded from their fingers as they typed.
• Their selfish genes fooled them into thinking that “findings” have something to do with “truth”.
• The motions of fellow meat robots cajoled them into lip-syncing jabber that “scientific explanation” is a real thing.
• Their arguments are mere byproducts of brain processes.

Next, these two self-admitting know-nothings role play shamans around the campfire— actions all determined by their genes. It becomes a tangled mess of meaningless vocalizations all contradicting other meaningless vocalizations.

Consciousness presumably evolved as part of the evolution of the nervous system. According to several theories the key adaptive function (providing an organism with survival and reproductive benefits) of consciousness is to make volitional movement possible. And volition is something we ultimately associate with will, agency and individuality. It is therefore easy to think that consciousness evolved to benefit us as individuals.

But we have argued that consciousness may have evolved to facilitate key social adaptive functions. Rather than helping individuals survive, it evolved to help us broadcast our experienced ideas and feelings into the wider world. And this might benefit the survival and wellbeing of the wider species.

It evolved because it evolved because it evolved. Since there are no moral yardsticks or pole stars in Darwinism, stuff just happens for no reason. There is no wellbeing. There are no benefits. There is no argument. Having denied will, agency, individuality and mind, there is not even thought. We repeat C.S. Lewis’s description of a logical implosion:

A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs.

In the materialistic world described by Halligan and Oakley, there are no proofs. There are no thoughts. There are only sensations and reactions generated by roving neural impulses and neurotransmitters in a blind material process.

Oblivious to this contradiction, back they go into the comfortable fogma where blind processes create in their material skulls the comfortable illusion of consistency. Their brains in vats conjure up Yoda manipulating their fingers.

Central to our account is the idea that sociality (the tendency of groups and individuals to develop social links and live in communities) is a key survival strategy that influences how the brain and cognition evolve.

Their essay is a mere survival strategy that influences stuff happening.

The idea that subjective awareness has a social purpose has been described previously by other reserachers [sic].

The meat robots groom each other. Grooming is a behavior determined by past genetic mutations. (“Idea” is a vocalization devoid of semantic meaning; only behaviors exist.)

While it is counter-intuitive to attribute agency and personal accountability to a biological assembly of nerve cells, it makes sense that highly valued social constructs such as free will, truth, honesty and fairness can be meaningfully attributed to individuals as accountable people in a social community.

Typing these words into a keyboard initiates neurotransmitter releases in their material brains that subjectively feel good.

Think about it. While we are deeply rooted in our biological nature, our social nature is largely defined by our roles and interactions in society.

Their peer group prompted them to type this essay to conform to a social role.

No Blood from a Turnip

Having denied the existence of a soul, these materialists have nothing but atoms and forces to draw from. They do not—indeed cannot, in principle—mean anything they just wrote. There are no thoughts or proofs in their worldview, remember?

To say otherwise requires stepping outside the fogma, taking off the Yoda mask, and drawing from the toolkit of Biblical creation, where truth, reason, and value all really mean what we humans think they mean. And in that worldview, plagiarism of others’ tools is actually morally wrong.

Meanwhile, the psychologists’ materialist argument has vanished in the singularity resulting from the implosion, leaving nothing but a vision of a Cheshire cat’s grin fading slowly away.

Exercise: Try your hand at identifying the self-refutations in the authors’ final paragraphs. Cross out all words reflecting ideas, concepts or values that do not belong in their worldview, such as the word “should” which is undefined in the Darwin Dictionary. Does anything remain?*

While we are deeply rooted in our biological nature, our social nature is largely defined by our roles and interactions in society. As such, the mental architecture of the mind should be strongly adapted for the exchange and reception of information, ideas and feelings. Consequently, while brains as biological organs are incapable of responsibility and agency, legal and social traditions have long held individuals accountable for their behaviour.

Key to achieving a more scientific explanation of subjective awareness requires accepting that biology and culture work collectively to shape how brains evolve. Subjective awareness comprises only one part of the brain’s much larger mental architecture designed to facilitate species survival and wellbeing.

Once you see a self-refuting argument implode, you can’t unsee it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Scoring: If you did it right, the whole quote will have been crossed out.