[ExI] Is Evolutionary Psychology a deeply flawed enterprise?

[BillK]

Laurence A. Moran
March 12, 2018

<https://sandwalk.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/is-evolutionary-psychology-deeply.html>

Quotes:
The critique from biologists is summarized by Robert C. Richardson (a
philosopher) in his book Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted
Psychology.

The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology;
but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers
three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from
the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and
methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and
adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that
existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully
short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by
evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were,
beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is
inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on
the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims,
including such matters as variation in ancestral populations,
heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As
evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology,
Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks
the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary
biology. It is speculation rather than sound science—and we should
treat its claims with skepticism.

You may disagree with these criticisms of evolutionary psychology but
there's no denying that the discipline is being attacked. In fact,
it's hard to think of any other academic discipline whose fundamental
validity is being questioned so openly.

The field of evolutionary psychology is full of hyper-adaptationist
thinking. It's primary task is explaining modern features of human
behavior as adaptations that took place in primitive human
populations. From an evolutionary perspective, this requires that the
behavior has strong enough genetic components to be subject to
evolution by natural selection. It requires that primitive populations
contained alleles for the modern behavior as well as alleles for a
different behavior that reduced fitness. Finally, it requires that
selection for the modern behavior is strong enough to lead to fixation
in just a few hundred thousand years.

All of these assumptions require supporting evidence that is almost
always missing in evolutionary psychology publications.

In the absence of evidence, the default assumption should be that the
behavior is cultural. If there's evidence of a genetic component then
the default assumption should be fixation by drift unless there's
evidence of selection.
--------------

BillK