Konrad Lorenz suggests that adequate grounds for classifying some behaviors as innate are to be found in the results of what he calls “the deprivation experiment“: ”… the experiment of withholding from the young organism information concerning certain well-defined givens of its natural environment.” (Lorenz 1965, p. 83). Thus, a stickleback fish is deprived of the information that its rival has a red belly. The stickleback is then confronted, for the first time, with a red-bellied rival (or a red-bellied dummy). (...) If that stickleback responds with species-typical rival-fighting behavior, then (according to Lorenz) the experiment has established that the stickleback possesses certain innate information about its natural environment. On the other hand, should the stickleback fail to respond in this way, Lorenz tells us that ”…we should not be justified in asserting that this response is normally dependent on learning. (shrink)

The notion of information has figured prominently in much modern evolutionary theorizing. But while theorists usually concede the importance of distinguishing between our ordinary use of this notion and its special acceptation in information theory, some biological theorizing requires "information" to serve a double duty. Lorenz's ethological theorizing is a case in point, and this paper challenges its conceptual underpinnings. Special attention is paid to Lorenz's contention that adaptation to an environment is akin to representation, and it is urged that (...) many purportedly (phylogenetically) adapted behaviors might well instead be better interpreted as non-information-laden (ontogenetically) adaptive behaviors. (shrink)

Konrad Lorenz does not view behaviors as innate; he does not even regard differences among behaviors (of different species) as innate. Rather, he construes information (about the environment to which the behavior is adapted) as the innate component of (some) behavior. His noted deprivation experiments are intended to withhold environmental sources of that information from the organism: should the organism nevertheless exhibit behavior evidencing possession of such information, then that information must be innate. Lorenz interprets this conclusion to mean that (...) the information is transmitted to the organism genetically, by way of a sort of blueprint in the genome.D.S. Lehrman quarrels with the figure of a blueprint:A blueprint is isomorphic with the structure that it represents…. It is not true that each structure and character in the phenotype is “represented” in a single gene or well defined groups of genes; it is not the case that each gene refers solely or even primarily, to a single structure or character; and it is not the case that the topographical or topological relationships among the genes are isomorphic with the structural or topographical relationships among phenotypic structures to which the genes refer. (Lehrman 1970, p. 34). (shrink)

Despite the biological turn of recent discussions of behavior, insufficient attention has been paid to methodological-philosophical issues about the experimental basis for talk of instincts, social or otherwise. This paper examines the credentials of one standard technique, the deprivation experiment, exploited by the ethologists in their efforts to provide an inventory of species-specific, innate behaviors. It is argued that, given some hypothetical facts and plausible theoretical assumptions (of D. S. Lehrman, Kurt Koffka, and others) about the role of environmental factors (...) in the development of behavioral repertoires, the ethologists' efforts to identify innate behaviors on the basis of the deprivation technique are not just futile but misguided. (shrink)

A critical examination of Carol Gilligan's study of “psychological theory and women's development,” this essay begins by exploring her concerns about malebiased developmental theorizing. I consider in detail Gilligan's criticisms of Sigmund Freud and her own empirical studies of moral development, as they relate to the work of L. Kohlberg. After defending Freud to some degree, I propose various alternative interpretations of her data-interviews with males and females about hypothetical ethical dilemmas and with females about actual abortion decisions. I contend (...) that Gilligan is too willing to concede the adequacy of Kohlberg's categories for fathoming the moral reasoning of males and that she may, in consequence, exaggerate differences between males and females. Noting the ironic similarities between Gilligan's claims and Schopenhauer's misogyny, I suggest that there may be something undesirably self-limiting about the ‘different’ course of development she sketches. To move toward a morally preferable, feminism-compatible version of an “ethic of care,” I recommend that it be extended — by the imagination — beyond the ‘here and now’ and that it not be restricted to existing webs of personal relationships. (shrink)

Unconsciousness might seem to most people a more genuinely problematic state than consciousness, but McGinn's title alludes to a problem posed to Descartes, and thereby bequeathed to philosophy, by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. She wondered how a thinking substance, the soul of a man, could determine his bodily spirits to perform voluntary actions. McGinn is concerned with some more contemporary, less obviously Cartesian variants of this mind-body problem--for example, "How is it possible for conscious states to depend on brain states?" (...) and "How could the aggregation of millions of insentient neurons generate subjective awareness?". He suggests that such queries about "the psychophysical link" are in fact what Chomsky calls mysteries, that they are fated to elude our understanding. Using an idea of "cognitive closure" derived more from the notion of a closed mind than from that of a closed system or set, McGinn contends that our cognitive equipment is unequal to the task of apprehending a mysterious property, P, that would, if grasped, render the mental-physical link intelligible to us. His confidence that there is such a property seems inspired by a naturalistic belief that there are no miracles which could be presumed to account for consciousness as a magically emergent entity discontinuous with physical reality. (shrink)