22 Philosophy Now ●August/September 2019 Interview
psychology is quite a popular trend that
appeals to evolutionary theory when explain-
ing or justifying various human behavioural
traits, from marital promiscuity to attitudes
towards refugees during migration crises. To
what extent can we appeal to evolutionary
explanations in this sort of context, and to
what extent should we remain sceptical?
Generally this is an area in which for a
long time I have urged scepticism. I
have to say that there is, in my view, a
lot of very bad science being applied
here. I have argued for many years that
the evolutionary psychology that under-
stands contemporary human behaviour
in terms of mental modules evolved in
the Stone Age is based on an obsolete
and indefensible view of evolution. And
much behavioural genetics still assumes
a relation between genotype (your
genetic make-up) and phenotype (your
characteristics) that has been entirely
refuted by recent work in genetics.
Again, all of this becomes much clear-
er from a view that sees organisms, and
humans in particular, as highly plastic
developing processes rather than things
with a fixed set of essential properties.
The human developmental process
depends on a wide variety of factors
among which the genome, for all its
importance, has no special privilege.
Moreover, many vital external influences
are highly variable between cultures and
historical periods, and are subject to
constant change, in part as a result of
deliberate human action. The increas-
ingly influential idea of niche construc-
tion in evolutionary biology is very help-
ful in this context. Humans are the
supreme niche constructors, developing
in an enormously complex environment- cities, schools, hospitals, and much
more – that reflects many generations of
intense human activity. To suppose that
the kinds of behavioural traits you men-
tion are to be understood merely in
terms of genes selected in a distant
epoch ignores these crucial influences in
a way that makes the attempted explana-
tions largely worthless. - Edit Talpsepp-Randla is a Research Fellow
of Philosophy of Science at the University of
Tartu, Estonia. She received her PhD in
2013 from the University of Bristol, and
specialises in the Philosophy of Biology.
Starting with processes on an evolu-
tionary time scale – evolving lineages –
these are of course unique processes, and
processes with no predetermined trajec-
tory. The constituents of these evolving
lineages are individual organisms. These
organisms, we now understand, exhibit a
high degree of developmental plasticity
themselves, which is to say, they also do
not follow a precise preset trajectory in
their development. So a species is a set of
variable processes interacting to generate
a process with a trajectory that is chang-
ing unpredictably, partly in response to
the unpredictable activities of the organ-
isms themselves. Finally – and very
importantly – these lineages are far from
being independent from one another.
The near universality of symbiosis tells
us that lineages are deeply intertwined in
vital but evolving relations to other lin-
eages. Sometimes this intertwining of
processes reaches a point at which we
consider the whole to be a single process.
In summary, a world consisting of con-
stantly evolving, constantly intertwined
processes, is not one that will provide a
single privileged set of descriptions of its
constituent elements. The pluralist, or
promiscuous realist, perspective becomes
necessary for any coherent understand-
ing of the actual world.
Your pluralistic approach to classification
also concerns humans. This is one of the
issues that illustrates why philosophy of biol-
ogy has relevance outside the disciplines of
biology and philosophy. What are some
implications of pluralist reasoning concern-
ing human categories?
Debates in the human sciences – for
example on the relations between genet-
ics, evolution, and culture – could also be
much more productive if the tendency to
suppose that there is one right way of
describing the phenomena could be
avoided. One particularly clear example
would be the question of race. If it were
generally appreciated that the human
species encompasses multiple overlapping
and cross-cutting patterns of variation
with regard to culture, genotype, and
phenotype, it would be hard to defend
any idea of race, which sees us as com-
prising distinct natural kinds with their
own essential properties. But as this case
illustrates, I tend to think that promiscu-
ous realism is in many ways more rele-
vant to consumers of science – not least
philosophers! – than to producers of it.
Most scientists work comfortably within
a set of categories tailored for their own
questions and interests, and probably
don’t think a lot about whether these cat-
egories are well adapted for quite differ-
ent concerns. But scientists interested in
a topic such as the correlations between
disease-disposing genetic variants and
geographic origin, say, need to be more
aware that their findings are likely to be
interpreted as support for a generally
racialist framework of ideas.
I also have a longstanding interest in
the metaphysics of sex and gender –
another question that becomes much
clearer from the perspective of a process
metaphysics. Sex itself is not a straightfor-
wardly dichotomous concept, since nature
provides us with a range of intermediate
cases, which are sometimes assigned to
one side of the dichotomy by fairly brutal
surgical intervention. And gender pro-
vides an even more culturally and histori-
cally diverse set of social categories. All
this is exactly what should be expected
from a process perspective that stresses
that sex and gender are both developmen-
tal outcomes depending on a wide range
of internal and external influences.I’d like to touch upon one more topic that
illustrates how the philosophy of biology finds
its way into wider social issues. EvolutionaryPNScience