Depression as an adaptation

According to the latest edition of Scientific American Mind, new research suggests that depression is not necessarily a a disease or aberration. In many cases, having a depression might increase your chances of survival.

[D]epression should not be thought of as a disorder at all. In an article recently published in Psychological Review, we argue that depression is in fact an adaptation, a state of mind which brings real costs, but also brings real benefits.
The researchers go out of their way to acknowledge that depression is a terrible problem for many people who should seek out help. Nonetheless, they also suggest that the mode of thinking characteristic of many bouts of depression is focused, highly analytical and systematic:

Analysis requires a lot of uninterrupted thought, and depression coordinates many changes in the body to help people analyze their problems without getting distracted . . . [D]epression is nature’s way of telling you that you’ve got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving. Therapies should try to encourage depressive rumination rather than try to stop it, and they should focus on trying to help people solve the problems that trigger their bouts of depression . . . [D]epression . . . seems . . . like the vertebrate eye—an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.

For further reference: I first rand in to this idea that many bouts of depression might be useful in a book called Why We Get Sick, by Randolf Nesse.

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What does evolution really have to do with religion? David Sloan Wilson argues that it’s time to find out.

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, is a runaway bestseller.  Dawkins is a relentless one-man religion wrecking-crew.  He carries a sharp knife for the many arguments that religions are somehow useful or worthy.

But isn’t religion sometimes good? Doesn’t religion sometimes heal the sick and feed the poor?  When it comes time to complement religion, Dawkins tends to give only backhanded complements.  When people are good, they are not really good because of religion.  To the argument that religion makes people happy, Dawkins cites George Bernard Shaw’s words: “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.”  (Page 167).  Indeed, Dawkins really doubts whether religion is worthwhile at all:

It is hard to believe, for example, that health is improved by the semi-permanent state of morbid guilt suffered by a Roman Catholic possessed of normal human frailty and less than normal intelligence. . . . . the American comedian Kathy Ladman observes that “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”

When it comes time to applying evolutionary theory to religion, Dawkins doubts that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. He suspects religion is only a wretched byproduct of evolution.

Moths fly into the candle flame, and it doesn’t look like an accident.  They go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves.  We could label it “self immolation behavior” and, under

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Continue ReadingWhat does evolution really have to do with religion? David Sloan Wilson argues that it’s time to find out.

Scientists who disagree: is religion an aberration or an adaptation?

For many scientists who study it, religion should be placed into one of two camps: 1) religion is an aberration, a mental virus; or 2) religion is an adaptation–that religion enhanced the survival of Believers.  A well-written article by Robin Marantz Henig explores this issue in the New York Times.  The title is “HeavenBound: a Scientific Exploration of How We Have Come to Believe in God.” Henig sums up the alternatives by reference to blood.  A trait might be “adaptive,” like the ability of blood cells to transport oxygen.  On the other hand, a trait might be simply a byproduct, such as the “redness” of blood.

Is blood prominent because it’s red or because it actually carries oxygen?

Several notable scientists and philosophers lead the charge from the first camp (that religion is a byproduct).  One of them is Richard Dawkins, who argues that “religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident.”  Others falling into this camp include Sam Harris, Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer and Daniel Dennett. These believers in religion as a “byproduct” would also include Stephen Jay Gould, who proposed the use of the term “spandrel” to describe traits that have no adaptive value of their own.

If religion is a byproduct or a “spandrel,” of what is it a byproduct or “spandrel” of?  Psychologists have looked carefully at several candidates: agent detection, causal reasoning and theory of mind.

We see agents everywhere, it turns out, even in inanimate objects.  The byproduct argument is …

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Continue ReadingScientists who disagree: is religion an aberration or an adaptation?