[ExI] Is Evolutionary Psychology a deeply flawed enterprise?

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Wed Mar 14 14:14:36 UTC 2018


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.  bill k

Agreed.  But since it usually deals with the behaviors of ancient peoples,
what else could it be but speculation?  Bad theories are often very useful
things:  people want to go out and find evidence against them, and so a bad
theory, and I am not saying evolutionary psych is a bad theory, stimulates
research.  Just look at Freud's followers (granted, they did not do a lot
of experiments) and critics.

A bad theory is a good theory if it is testable and falsifiable.

bill w

On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 5:09 AM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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