Episode 47: Genetics and Universality (part 1): How Our Genes Influence Us

How do we square genetically influenced mental disorders with the theory of explanatory universality?

In our last episode, Tracy asked Bruce how to reconcile her experience with mental disorders, like narcissism, with the idea of Universal Explainers. In this episode, Bruce does his best to tease out an answer. (While admitting that we can't answer her entirely--yet.) 

In "The Beginning of Infinity", David Deutsch offers some solid criticisms of current experiments to determine how much of a personality trait is 'heritable.' This has led some of his fans to take his ideas to some extreme conclusions not implied by the book. For example, some people now claim that genes play no role at all in influencing Universal Explainers. In fact, Deutsch did not say this. 

According to Deutsch (in BoI), genes can influence our ideas and personality traits via something as simple as how physiology (physical traits) interact with culture (standards of beauty) and that can in turn impacts one's personality (perhaps increasing happiness.) So we now have at least one example of how genes can have an impact on our personality and ideas. (Via physiology interacting with culture.) 

With this in mind, Bruce asks the obvious question: What are other ways genes can affect personality traits and ideas that do not violate explanatory universality? 

Bruce's list (partially revealed in this episode) is a testable set of ways genes may impact our personality and ideas. This suggests how we might go about responding to critics of the theory of Explanatory Universality without violating Popper's epistemology via either ad hoc saves or ignoring basic statements (i.e. repeatable observations) from existing experiments.

O Falibilista's review of "The Ape That Understood the Universe – how the mind and culture evolve" is an excellent example of how bad evolutionary psychology can be at times.