Abstract:
Buller recently posted a critique of evolutionary psychology (reproduced below). Although I disagree with many of his assertions, this is the most credible attempt to critique evolutionary psychology that I have encountered. Bullers arguments regarding improper motivational inferences from evolutionary psychological explanations are largely correct--such inferences are indeed erroneous. Furthermore, the mistakes he identifies have been made by some prominent evolutionists including, apparently, W. D. Hamilton (Symons, personal communication). However, most evolutionary psychologists are not saying what he claims they are saying. Buller wishes to find evolutionary psychology trapped in Freudian quicksand so that he can rescue it. Instead, it is he who must hoist himself from the bog using the theoretical rigging created by evolutionary psychologists over the last two decades, including, most prominently, Don Symons, a primary target of his essay.Keywords:
Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionism
Evolutionary Theory
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Evolutionary psychology is a discipline full of debates, the focus of which is the suspect of its methodology. The explanatory evolutionary psychology is criticized for making up stories, but they have confused abductive reasoning with the making up of stories. The predictive evolutionary psychology follows the way of cognitive psychology, using the method of functionalism. But even if these two methods are reasonable, the evolutionary psychology is also accused of lacking empirical evidence, for which it cannot be a good science.
Evolutionary Psychology
Empirical psychology
Suspect
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In light of the claim that evolutionary psychology is a 'new paradigm', a 'new science of the mind' (e.g., Buss ; Cosmides and Tooby ), this paper reviews the lengthy and intense effort made in the late nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century to establish the concept of instinct in psychology and the social sciences. Whilst a single definition of the term 'instinct' was not settled upon, attempts at a definition never lost grounding in Darwinian theory and most proponents explicitly invoked Darwin to support their case. The instinct debate suggests that evolutionary psychology is not new and the 'Standard Social Science Model' thesis it deploys to substantiate the claim is incorrect. I conclude by suggesting that Boring's analysis of The Psychology of Controversy may be usefully drawn upon by evolutionary psychology if it is to avoid the fate of its predecessor.
Instinct
Evolutionary Psychology
Social Darwinism
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Sociobiology
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Argument Evolutionary psychologists argue that because humans are biological creatures, cultural explanations must include biology. They thus offer to unify the natural and social sciences. Evolutionary psychologists rely on a specific history of cultural anthropology, particularly the work of Alfred Kroeber to make this point. A close examination of the history of cultural anthropology reveals that Kroeber acknowledged that humans were biological and culture had a biological foundation; however, he argued that we should treat culture as autonomous because that would bring benefits to the biological sciences as well as the human sciences. Hence, the historical caricature of his work by evolutionary psychology fails. The paper concludes that cultural anthropologists were successful in creating their discipline, at least in part, because they argued by pragmatic definition. Evolutionary psychology, on the other hand, offers an essentialist definition of “culture” and thus offers a much less promising vision of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Creatures
Argument (complex analysis)
Evolutionary Psychology
Cultural Anthropology
Essentialism
Biological anthropology
Ecological anthropology
Consilience
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Arguing that literary scholarship remains largely oblivious to important late-twentieth-century scientific advances in human cognition and behaviour, this essay reviews biological and anthropological evidence contradicting the oedipal model, and presents an evolution-based analysis of the Oedipus myth. Literary interpretation and theory derive their legitimacy from the tacitly accepted yet largely unexamined premise that characters are representations of human beings and, as such, exhibit the same psychology as their author and audience. To put it another way, literary characters not exhibit the thought processes of okapis, ostriches, octopi, or any other species. (Even the metamorphosed Gregor Samsa thinks, perceives, and responds primarily as a human.) We assume that literary characters have human beliefs, desires, emotions, and perceptions, for example, that a (mentally competent) character's conceptualization of dog, fetch, and devotion reliably corresponds to our own. By virtue of its subject matter, then, all literary criticism is in one way or another psychological criticism, and, in a fundamental way, literary study is the study of human cognition. Nicholas K. Humphrey writes that the novelist is in the most literal sense a 'modeller' of human behaviour, someone whose skill as a psychologist is required not simply to comprehend but to invent the things that other people do (67, emph. in original). The same principle applies to the literary scholar, whose skill as a psychologist is required to understand the things that literary characters and narrators do. Yet, despite the fact that literary scholarship regularly makes assumptions about the operations of the mind, its practitioners customarily receive no training in cognitive design and evolution. This essay addresses a specific--yet widespread--manifestation of this problem: the persistence of the oedipal paradigm. This model, which in various literary permutations is commonly invoked to analyze everything from male sexuality to family dynamics to narrative structure, is founded upon an inaccurate conception of what the mind is designed to do. Freud did not understand that, in order for a psychologi cal feature to evolve, it has to contribute to fitness (a biological term referring to the differences in physical and psychological attributes that cause some individuals within a given population to contribute more genes to subsequent generations than other individuals do). As a result, he posited a highly unlikely phenomenon. Freud's mistake is understandable, but, given what is now known about human cognition, behaviour, and biology, the continued use of this model by his intellectual descendants is not. In this essay, I am not presenting a critique of Freud or his work per se. The problems inherent in much of Freud's methodology and theoretical conclusions have been elucidated by several critics (Crews; Daly and Wilson, Homicide; Degler; Eysenck; Grunbaum; Sulloway). Rather, I seek to acquaint literary scholarship with the integrated approach to human cognition known as evolutionary psychology, which conceptualizes the mind as a vast set of operations, each designed by natural selection to solve a specific problem. Specifically, I argue that the incest-avoidance mechanism proposed by the oedipal model does not accord with the principles of natural selection or what is known about the evolved design of the mind. I am not the first to present an evolutionary critique of the Oedipus myth (Daly and Wilson, Homicide; Erickson). Previous analyses, however, are aimed at social scientists; my analysis is aimed at a literary audience unfamiliar with evolutionary theory and incest-avoidance research. I begin with a br ief description of the principles of evolutionary psychology; next, I review evidence contradicting the Freudian explanation of incest avoidance and present an evolutionary explanation in its stead; finally, I analyze the Oedipus myth in evolutionary terms to demonstrate one of many interpretive applications of this new model and the vast potential it offers to literary study. …
Consilience
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It is convenient to append as a comment on Beckner's stimulating paper some remarks made in part in reaction to other presentations, including those of Medawar, Edelman, and Monod, and in a final section to the presentations of Dobzhansky, Thorpe, Eccles, Birch, Rensch and Skolimowski. Beckner, Medawar, Edelman and Monod are among my fellow 'reductionists', in so far as there are any 'reductionists' present at this conference.
Causation
Section (typography)
Append
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Evolution is one of those rare words that illicit strong and often contrary emotional reactions among people who usually share similar worldviews. Within the academic community, the Darwinian definition of the word is practically worshipped and thought by some to be the greatest theory ever posited, but certainly not by all. While evolutionists like E.O. Wilson or Richard Dawkins believe they have answers to the questions of ultimate meaning (and sound almost as they speak or write about evolution), others are much more skeptical. Among the lay population, and especially among those who identify themselves as very religious, Darwinian evolution is mostly scorned, but again, not by all. Among Christian academicians, some are calling for a (necessary) clarification of terms (e.g., Johnson, 1997), while others are pointing to the flaws in the theory (e.g., Behe, 1996; Johnson, 1991), and still others are proposing opposing theories (Dembski, 1999). The responses among the majority vary from strong su pport (e.g., the theistic evolutionists) to strong criticism (e.g., creationists). An argument could be made that just a few decades ago the word elicited similar disparate reactions (at least in some Christian circles). Hence, it comes as no surprise that the new field of is generating powerful and conflicting opinions. Within some academic circles, evolutionary psychology (EP) is being hailed as the most powerful theoretical tool available for explaining human behavior (e.g., Buss, 1995; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). According to Buss (1995) the goal of EP is to explain the human mind by discovering and describing our evolved psychological mechanisms or mental organs. Believing in a universal human nature, and believing that millions of years of evolution was the main designer of our minds, supporters of EP believe that their approach will revolutionize all of the social sciences, including psychology, in the process. Others are highly skeptical of such claims, especially among certain evolutionary biologists, feminists, and philosophers of science, re ferring to EP as a mistaken, even dangerous myth (Gould, 2000; Rose & Rose, 2000). Many critics have a difficult time distinguishing EP from sociobiology, and hence they have a grave distrust of the field, believing it reinforces old gender stereotypes and biology-as-destiny views. Since it is a fairly recent movement, responses to EP from within Christian and other religious groups are still formulating. There are some who believe that EP and religion are highly compatible (e.g., Kirkpatrick, 1999), though these appear to be a minority opinion. Although other Christians critical of EP have registered brief responses, the field is new enough to have escaped more sustained reflection. Within Christian academic disciplines, and among psychologists in particular, there seems to be a wait-and--see attitude, with few thus far commenting on the field. …
Evolutionism
Skepticism
Evolutionary Psychology
Argument (complex analysis)
Surprise
Creationism
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Evolutionary psychology has faced ‘implacable hostility’ (Dawkins, 2005) from a number of intellectual fronts. Critics of evolutionary psychology have tried to paint this perspective variously as reductionist and overly deterministic, at best, and as sexist, racist, and downright evil at worst. The current paper argues that all psychological frameworks which assume that human beings are the result of the organic evolutionary forces of natural and sexual selection are, essentially, evolutionary in nature (regardless of whether they traditionally fall under the label of evolutionary psychology). In other words, the perspective presented here argues that all psychology is evolutionary psychology. Two specific mis-characterizations of evolutionary psychology ((a) that it is eugenicist in nature and (b) that it is a fully non-situationist, immutable perspective on behavior) are addressed here with an eye toward elaborating on how these distorted conceptions of evolutionary psychology are non-constructive and non-progressive. A final section focuses on how the social sciences in general could benefit from being evolutionized.
Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary neuroscience
Reductionism
Situationism
Constructive
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Evolutionary psychologists argue that genes determine not just human physical, but human behavioral tendencies to a much greater degree than many people want to believe. In particular, they argue that certain behavioral tendencies distinguishing men from women are reflective of different male and female reproductive strategies which evolved during the early history of the human race. In this article, evolutionary psychology's claims to be a rigorous science are questioned, with particular reference to its conclusions about gender relations. In addition, evolutionary psychology as a metaphysical world view is contrasted with the biblical creation account, which calls for gender co-operation, not competition, and which does not see pair-bonding as a reductionistic strategy for getting individuals' genes copied in the next generation.
Evolutionary Psychology
Reductionism
Evolutionary Theory
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Moral philosophy
Normative ethics
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