I just posted this on the PsychoBabble messageboards (you know the Deakin Psych Book Club thing that i do now):
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A few more comments

Earlier, Lee said:

1. The author, Matt Ridley, alternated between determinism and free will through the book, at times he implied that we had no choice, at others that the genes responded to environment. Happily he ended with a chapter on free-will and I felt (a little) in control.

On this topic, I really liked the point Ridley makes in the chapter on instinct abour determinism. There's been all sorts of extreme deterministic theories in psychology and the social sciences - Freud: early childhood determinism, Pavlov/Skinner/Watson/etc: conditioning determinism, Marx & Lenin: political determinism, etc. Logically, these perspectives are just as incompatible with free will as genetics and innateness. Ridley puts it more eloquently:

"In one of the great diversions of all time, for nearly a century social scientists managed to persuade thinkers of many kinds that biological causation was determinism while environmental causation preserved free will..." (pg 92)

So true. You tell it like it is, Ridley.

Personally, I feel perfectly cosy being 100% free-will free, as long I get to be a product of nature and nurture interacting. If I can't be magic, then I’m more than happy to settle for complexity.

I'm still only mid way through the book, so I reserve the right to change my opinion in a couple of weeks.

Here's a question for you all. Forget for a moment what is scientifically true about what causes human behaviour. What would you most like to be scientifically true about what causes human behaviour? Keep in mind you are permitted to violate the laws of physics and use as many miracles as you like in your answer.

On another topic, in the same chapter, I was intrigued by the idea of evolutionary psychology on a collision course with behavioural genetics. If a common variation in a gene that's linked to something (higher IQ, for example) was important, then it would get selected for and be species wide. Therefore, these variation in genes that behavioural geneticists find, by definition, can't be that important.

Have I got that right? My mind is struggling to digest this. For a moment I was going to cite the example of immune systems, where variation is itself adaptive and selected for to keep the germs confused. But then, that kind of variation isn't common variation, is it.....is it?...Hmmm.

Either the common variations are variations because they neither help nor hinder fitness, or the variation is itself adaptive... I can't think of any other possibilities.

Help!

Ok, that's all.