308. The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature (1)
308. Iris Berent — The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature
1 (9s):
You're listening to the Michael Schimmer Show. Welcome to the Michael Schimmer Show. It is your host, as always, Michael Schimmer.
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1 (1m 53s):
That's pretty interesting. Clovis man, America's first culture. Of course, people challenge that, not just the alternative archeologists, but a lot of archeologists think Clovis first is not a viable hypothesis anymore, but we'll see what they say. Let's see. Poverty paint North Americans First. Clay. Okay. Madison Wheels. Oh yeah. Okay. The origin of Mississippian culture. Okay. I have not been to those sites, but I've seen pictures of them, documentaries on them and so on. Mississippian City of however you pronounce that, we'll just skip that. The Y Mississippian world.
1 (2m 35s):
Let's see. Get to the honest Azi. The Ancestral Puebla. Oh yeah, there we go. Chaco Chaco phenomenon. I've been to Choco Canyon, New Mexico. Mexico's just totally phenomenal structures that they built. Arch astronomy. I love Archie Astronomy. My friend at the Griffith Park Observatory directs it. There is a professional arch astronomer that is, you study these ancient sites and interpret how the people would've interpreted the sky. Anyway, check it out. wonder.com/trimmer. You get 50% off and you get access to, well, that course, or hundreds of others. Right. Thanks for listening.
1 (3m 23s):
Let's get started. My guest today is Dr. Iris Barr, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University in Boston and director of the Language and Mind Lab. Barren's research has examined how the mind works and how we think it does. These are two different things. She's the author of dozens of groundbreaking scientific publications and the recipient of numerous research grants. Her previous book, the Phonological Mind from Cambridge University Press, was hailed by none of it than Steven Pinker as a brilliant and fascinating analysis of how we produce an interpret sound. Her new book, relatively new, about a year old now, is this a title here, the Blind Storyteller, how We Reason About Human Nature.
1 (4m 8s):
I discovered Iris when I read her op-ed a couple weeks ago in the Los Angeles Times here. Here is how she opens that op-ed. And you can see why it got my attention here. In the past months, a growing choir of popular media has voice in passion concerns with the so-called innateness dogma. These critiques question the possibility that females are instinctively maternal. That biological sex, a notion distinct from gender is binary. And that biology shapes society is argued by the late EO Wilson's Sociobiology at the root of the anxiety, however, are not the technical scientific merits of these proposals, but they're social consequences, their potential to elicit harm and perpetrate injustice.
1 (4m 52s):
Now, these concerns have moved to curbing the scientific process itself, which I assume is what triggered this you to write this up in. In a recent editorial in the journal, human Nature, human Behavior, one of the most prominent journals in this area, the editors have stated that they may request modifications or in severe cases, refuse publication of content that is premised upon the assumption of inherent biological social or cultural superiority or inferiority of one human group over another. And then you write in the last sentences I'll read here, the editorial is No Doubt well intended and at first blush reasonable. Indeed, the notion of inherent cultural differences is not only morally objectionable, but also conceptually bankrupt, but inherent biological differences.
1 (5m 39s):
The topic of much active research is a different matter. In fact, there is evidence that individual differences in IQ reading and musical skills are heritable in the eyes of some. However, this research is socially harmful. Wow. So you Iris, have jumped right into the fray here. This is a huge controversial topic, but before we dive into the actual science behind it and the science behind the study of this, of the science, give us a little bit of background how you got into studying psychology and what drew drew you to the study of human nature and all its controversial aspects.
2 (6m 11s):
Well, I was originally interested in human nature. That's really what drew me to psychology. Actually, I was a music major in, in, in my training. I wasn't even a psychologist, but through the lens of music, I was interested in this idea that is there something that shapes all musical systems that renders them similar to each other as it seemed the case. And I thought this is an empirical question and wanted to go to the lab and figure out those things. And I started in music and went to language. And then I was interested in why people think that this question of innateness is so problematic, which got me to where I am now.
1 (6m 51s):
Right. So what are some of your scientific interests you study? I gather from the book, and by the way, let me just note that I've often, I quoted Steve Pinker's book, cited Steve Pinker's book The Blank Slate as the best treaties on the subject. I have to say yours is, is is now up there with me in terms of recommendations. Is the best book, cause that, that book was written back in the early two thousands, I think 2004. And you've really updated a lot of the science, but also it's a compliment to Pinker's book the blank slate because you also talk about how we reason about the blank slate or human nature. So maybe that's, that's a place to begin. What kind of research do you and your lab do on that subject,
2 (7m 33s):
On how we reason about human nature? Yeah, so we really do both, right? So, so there is, I've started with this research on trying to understand human nature through the channel of language and which is, you know, quintessential case. And as I was communicating these results to friends and colleagues and cocktail parties, I noticed this response that people were giving me. They're kind of giving me the look. And it took me many years to figure out what the look was about. At first I thought, well, maybe I'm not clear enough, maybe I need to explain it better. But it, with time I realized that the problem that they had is really in the question rather than the answer that I was giving them.
2 (8m 14s):
What they thought is that the question itself, the possibility that they are innate principle that we are born knowing staff, that strikes them as unreasonable. And once I was able to put this to words, then I thought, okay, you know, I'm a cognitive scientist, let's say first A, is this a thing? Do people really have this bias? Are they empiricist? And second why that's the case. And that's, you know, gave rise to a research program that I'm doing right now.
1 (8m 50s):
Right. So an example of this be your own accent. I I I I detect an accent. I don't know what it is. Yes, but I presume, I presume your children do not have that accent.
2 (8m 59s):
No. Yeah. So we are a trilingual household. My children speak, so Hebrew is my native language. They speak Hebrew to me, they speak Spanish to my husband. They only speak Hebrew to the cat, of which I am very proud of.
1 (9m 14s):
That's funny. And not, but that would, that would be an example of nature nurture, interacting, right? That, yeah, you got imprinted on your particular accent at a certain age, and that's it. You have it for life. Your children can speak the same language, but they're not gonna have the same accent because they have a different culture. They're born and raised here, I presume in America. And so language would be maybe our first dip into what this problem is. That is how do you tease apart nature nurture, you call these, you know, kind of cultural, what did you call them? Cultural, let's see, oh, the notion of inherent cultural differences morally bankrupt.
1 (9m 57s):
But, but the idea of a blank slate would be equally morally or just sort of conceptually bankrupt, right? Because the environment has to act on some machinery of course, of it's not, it's not an empty skull.
2 (10m 8s):
Yeah, yeah. No, I don't see any conflict between the two. So the editorial by nature, human behavior assume that the, the notion of inherent diff they, it's their term and it's a very confusing editorial because they object to the notion of, so they're saying if a scientist makes the assumption that there are inherent differences between growth, then we have the right to reject it. Now the question is a, what do you mean by assumption? If you go to the lab and demonstrate that, is it a hypothesis? Well, if you make an assumption and you don't test it and you provide no evidence for that and you should reject the paper because it's a bad paper, not because of any other reason.
2 (10m 51s):
Likewise, the way they define those differences between groups, they put in the same basket differences that are cultural. So claiming that there are inherent differences. So actually I should say that the second vague notion there is the notion of inherent. So what do you mean by inherent? I assume probably innate, although they don't want to use this word. If you assume that there are innate cultural differences. Now I don't know what you're talking about. Again, this is just a, doesn't make sense. You don't need the editorial to justify rejecting this paper, this paper. So the question is, are you really talking about inherent, presumably innate differences that are in general, which has a genetic basis?
2 (11m 41s):
Are you going to reject papers that claims that psychological differences between individuals are innate? I think this is highly problematic if that's where this is going.
1 (11m 51s):
Yeah, well that is where it's going inevitably, even if they don't intend it to be that, although it's kind of understandable, I guess the use of or misuse of biology in the name of some ideology has a pretty dark history. So, but we're long past the eugenics movement and the Nazis and all that stuff. So why is it rearing up again now? I mean we kind of went through the, the sociobiology evolutionary psychology wars in the nineties and they largely were triumph. The evidence is just overwhelming that we have an evolved nature on which culture operates in, in, you know, in an interactive effect.
