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Post by Tamrin on Apr 8, 2013 6:47:42 GMT 10
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Post by Smithee on Apr 8, 2013 16:53:29 GMT 10
Evolutionary Psychology is a self-bestowed title co-opted to give this pseudoscience an illusion of scientific respectability. Let us be clear. Evolutionary Psychology is not THE evolutionary account of our psychology. It is just one evolutionary account of it and a very odd one at that. It is hard to imagine how an evolutionary theory of human psychology could be more inconsistent with our present state. Incredibly Evolutionary Psychologists seek to explain how we evolved as the most successful and LEAST specialised ape by somehow acquiring more specialised and hardwired behavioural adaptations or rather instincts than any other animal. A more likely evolutionary scenario and one more in line with the genuine science on which Evolutionary Psychology clumsily presumes to impinge is that we evolved powerful general cognitive capabilities and capacities for learning which we each flexibly and organically use as individuals to lay down our own neuro-pathways. This has enabled us to exploit a vast diversity of ecological niches. Many more than has any other primate. We are omnivorous extreme generalists and we did not evolve that way by painting ourselves into a restrictive ecological corner with more and more specialised but awkwardly cobbled together behavioural adaptations which Evolutionary Psychologists postulate as either massively or relatively many mind modules. Whatever mind modules are and how they might be consistent with our huge degree of neuro-plasticity is another matter. Another problem for Evolutionary Psychologists is that in the decades since they morphed from Sociobiology each innate behaviour they postulate has failed to withstand critical scrutiny. As a theory to account for our peculiar psychology Evolutionary Psychology is just plain bizarre and wrong-headed. Like Wolfgang Pauli famously said of a theory which was not even in the scientific ballpark. "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
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