introduction to evolutionary psychology, the looking at

psychology from an evolutionary perspective, and trying to make

a case and give some examples of how it can help illuminate and

illustrate certain aspects of how the mind works.

One of the advantages of an evolutionary perspective on the

mind is that it forces us to look scientifically at what we

would otherwise take for granted.

There are a lot of aspects of how we are and what we are and

what we do that seem so natural to us.

They come so instinctively and easily it's difficult,

and sort of unnatural, to step back and explore them

scientifically but if we're going to be scientists and look

at the mind from a scientific perspective we have to get a

sort of distance from ourselves and ask questions that other

people would not normally think to ask.

And the clearest case of this arises with the emotions.

And as a starting point there's a lovely quote from the

psychologist and philosopher William James that I want to

begin with. So, he writes:

To the psychologist alone can such questions occur as:

Why do we smile when pleased and not scowl?

Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single

friend? Why does a particular maiden

turn our wits upside down? The common man--[None of you

are the common man.] The common man can only say,

"Of course we smile. Of course our heart palpitates

at the sight of the crowd. Of course we love the maiden.

And so probably does each animal feel about the particular

things it tends to do in the presence of certain objects.

To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved;

to the bear the she-bear. To the broody hen,

the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a

creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not utterly

fascinating and precious and never to be too-much-sat-upon

object which it is to her. Now, there's a few things to

note about this passage. First, it's incredibly sexist.

It assumes not just merely in reflexive use of phrases.

It assumes that--William James assumes he's talking to males,

male humans who sometimes take the perspective of male bears.

And so, it assumes a male audience.

You wouldn't normally--You wouldn't actually ever write

this way. A second point is it's

beautifully written and you're not--;also, not allowed to write

that way anymore either. It's poetic and lyrical and

if--William James characteristically writes that

way. I think he writes so much

better than his brother, Henry James,

an obscure novelist. [laughter]

Finally though, the point that he makes is a

terrific one, which is yes,

all of these things seem natural to us but the reason why

they seem natural is not because they are in some sense necessary

or logical truths. Rather, they emerge from

contingent aspects of our biological nature.

And so we need to step back. We actually--We need to step

back and ask questions like--and these are questions we're going

to ask--Why does poop smell bad? Avoid the temptation to say,

"Well, poop smells bad because it's so stinky."

The stinkiness of poop is not an irreducible fact about the

universe. Rather, the stinkiness of poop

is a fact about human psychology.

To a dung beetle poop smells just fine.

Why does chocolate taste good? Well, chocolate--The good

tastiness of chocolate isn't some necessary fact about the

world. It's a fact about our minds

that doesn't hold true for many other creatures.

And so, we have to step back and ask why to us do we find

chocolate appealing? Why do we love our children?

Don't say they're lovable. Many of them are not [laughter]

and, as William James points out, every animal,

most animals, many animals love their

children. They think their children are

precious and wonderful. Why?

Why do we get angry when people hit us?

Suppose somebody walked up to you and slapped you in the face?

You'd be afraid. You'd be angry.

Would you get sleepy, feel nostalgic,

suddenly desire some cold soup? [laughter] No.

Those are stupid alternatives. Of course if somebody slapped

us you would--we would get angry or afraid.

Why? Why do we feel good when

someone does us a favor? Why don't we feel angry?

Why don't we feel fearful? What we're going to do

throughout this course is step back and ask these questions.

We're going to ask questions nobody would have otherwise

thought to ask, where the common man wouldn't

address, and this is,

of course, standard in all sciences.

The first step to insight is to ask questions like why do things

fall down and not up? And I imagine the first person

who articulated the question aloud probably met with the

response saying, "What a stupid question.

Of course things fall down." Well, yes, of course things

fall down, but why? Why is our flesh warm?

Why does water turn solid when it gets cold?

These are natural facts about the universe,

but the naturalness needs to be explained and not merely

assumed. In this class we're going to

explore, throughout the course, what seems natural to us and

try to make sense of it. And to that end we have to ask

questions that you wouldn't normally ask.

We've already done this to some extent with domains such as

visual perception, memory, language and

rationality, but now we're going to move to the case where it's

maybe even somewhat more difficult to do this.

Now, we're going to start dealing with the emotions.

We're going to talk about the emotions, why they exist,

what they're there for, and how they work.

I want to start off with the wrong theory of the emotions.

And the wrong theory of the emotions is beautifully

illustrated in the television and movie series Star

Trek. In this alternative fantasy

world, there are characters, Mr.

Spock in the original Star Trek, Data in one of the

spin-offs, who are described as competent,

capable, in fact in many ways, super competent and super

capable people. But they're described as not

having emotions. Spock is described as not

having emotions because he's half Vulcan, from a planet where

they lack emotions. Data is an android who is said

to lack an emotion chip. This lack of emotions on

this--on a TV series does not hurt them much.

They're able to fully function. And in fact,

in a TV series emotions are often seen as a detriment.

You do better off without them. And there are many people in

sort of common sense who might think "Gee, if only I could just

use my rationality, think reasonably and rationally

and not let my emotions guide my behavior I'd be much better

off." It turns out that this is a

notion of how to think about the emotions that is deeply wrong.

And in fact, makes no sense at all.

Using the example of Star Trek, Steven Pinker,

in his book How the Mind Works, nicely illustrates

the problem here. He writes, "Spock must have

been driven by some motives or goals.

Something must have led him to explore strange new worlds,

to seek out new civilizations and to boldly go where no man

had gone before." Presumably, it was intellectual

curiosity that set him to drive and solve problems.

It was solidarity with his allies that led him to be such a

competent and brave officer. What would he have done if

attacked by a predator or an invading Klingon?

Did he do a handstand, solve the four-color map

theorem? Presumably, a part of his brain

quickly mobilized his faculties to scope out how to flee and how

to take steps to avoid a vulnerable predicament in the

future. That is, he had fear.

Spock did not walk around naked around the ship.

Presumably, he felt modesty. He got out of bed.

Presumably, he had some ambitions and drive.

He engaged in conversations. Presumably, he had some

sociable interests. Without emotions to drive us we

would do nothing at all. And you could illustrate this

scientifically. Creatures like Spock and Data

don't exist in the real world but there are unusual and

unfortunate cases where people lose,

to some extent or another, their emotions.

And you could look at these people and see what happens to

them. The classic case,

the most famous case, is that of a man called Phineas

Gage. Phineas Gage is the classic

Intro Psych example – an extremely poor guy,

poor schmuck. In 1848--He was a construction

foreman. In 1848 he was working at a

site with explosives and iron rods.

And due to an explosion, an iron rod passed through his

head like so. Imagine that rod shooting

upwards. It went under his eye and

popped out the top of his head. It landed about one hundred

feet away covered with blood and brains.

The rod itself weighed thirteen pounds.

Amazingly, Gage was not killed. In fact, he was knocked

unconscious only for a short period and then he got up and

his friends surrounded him and asked, "Are you okay?"

And they--And then they took him to the hospital.

On the way to the hospital, they stopped by a tavern and he

had a little pint of cider to drink, sat down and talked to

people. And then he had an infection,

had to have surgery. But when it was all said and

done he wasn't blind, he wasn't deaf,

didn't lose language, didn't become aphasic,

no paralysis, no retardation.

In some sense, what happened was much worse.

He lost his character. Here's a description at the

time of what Gage was like. And this is from Damasio's

excellent book Descartes' Error:

He used to be a really responsible guy,

a family man, very reliable,

very trustworthy. But after the accident he was

fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the

grossest profanity, manifesting but little

deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or

advice, a child in his intellectual

capacities and manifestations. He had the animal pleasures of

a strong man. His foul language is so debased

that women are advised not to stay long in his presence.

And he couldn't hold a job. He lost his family,

couldn't hold a job. He ended up in the circus.

He was in the circus going around the country with his big

iron rod telling everybody the story as they surrounded him and

clapped. There are other cases like

Phineas Gage, cases where people have had

damage to that same part of the brain, parts of the frontal

cortex. And what they've lost is they

basically lost a good part of their emotions.

And what this means is they don't really care that much

about things. They can't prioritize.

Damasio tells a case of one of his patients who was under the

pseudonym here of Elliot. And Elliot had a tumor in his

frontal lobe. And the tumor had to be removed

and with it came a lot of Elliot's frontal lobe.

And again, as a result of this, Elliot was not struck blind or

deaf or retarded, and he didn't become the sort

of profane character that Phineas Gage became,

but he lost the ability to prioritize.

He lost the ability to set goals.

Damasio describes him here:

At his job at an activity he would read and fully

understand the significance of the material [He works in an

office.] but the problem was he was

likely, all of a sudden,

to turn from the task he had initiated to doing something

else and spending an entire day doing that.

He might spend an entire afternoon deliberating on which

principle of categorization he should apply to files.

Should it be the date or the size of the document,

pertinence to the case or another?