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Post by Smithee on Apr 8, 2013 16:48:17 GMT 10
The best part of a week has now elapsed since the announcement. Seach Google News for "Evolutionary Psychology" "BRAIN Initiative" - The silence is deafening from the Evolutionary Psychology camp. The gig is up.
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 9, 2013 6:32:03 GMT 10
The best part of a week has now elapsed since the announcement. Seach Google News for "Evolutionary Psychology" "BRAIN Initiative" - The silence is deafening from the Evolutionary Psychology camp. The gig is up. If they truly believed their own tripe about physical modules (whether in massive numbers or not) accounting for specific, complex human behaviours, one would imagine their community would be abuzz with welcoming excitement about this initiative.
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 10, 2013 7:17:31 GMT 10
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Post by Smithee on Apr 10, 2013 16:11:00 GMT 10
If they truly believed their own tripe about physical modules (whether in massive numbers or not) accounting for specific, complex human behaviours, one would imagine their community would be abuzz with welcoming excitement about this initiative. Maybe Evolutionary Psychologists will be able to use their qualifications as evidence for Recognition of Prior Learning in Creative Writing courses.
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Post by Smithee on Apr 10, 2013 19:09:24 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 11, 2013 6:36:08 GMT 10
LOL. A quick Google search shows that while Ramachandran may have intended his paper to be a hoax, many in the EP community argue it was a legitimate scientific hypothesis. Seems they do not understand the predictability and testablility criterion of genuine science (thus proving the point of his hoax).
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Post by Smithee on Apr 18, 2013 14:03:54 GMT 10
Any model or description that leaves out conscious forces ... is bound to be sadly incomplete and unsatisfactory ... This scheme is one that puts mind back over matter, in a sense, not under or outside or beside it. It is a scheme that idealizes ideas and ideals over physical and chemical interactions, nerve impulse traffic, and DNA. It is a brain model in which conscious mental psychic forces are recognized to be the crowning achievement of some five hundred million years or more of evolution. Roger Wolcott Sperry, US neuropsychologist, neurobiologist (Nobel Laureate) Died this day 1994
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Post by Smithee on Apr 20, 2013 12:02:41 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." It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change Charles Darwin, FRS
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 24, 2013 16:36:45 GMT 10
Would Darwin Date an Evolutionary Psychologist?Sigh, that's sure how it was here when our former resident EP troll was active. I'll leave it to readers to decide which side is swayed by a politically correct agenda (the political right has a very vociferous political correctness of its own).
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Post by Tamrin on Apr 25, 2013 11:03:12 GMT 10
(the political right has a very vociferous political correctness of its own). The political right notoriously invokes two-dimensional slogans, which they feel should be enough on their own to decide issues. - To shut down examination of structural inequalities, they declare “Class War!”
- To silence debate about gender construction, they shout “Feminazi!”
- To shut up those calling for relief for the dispossessed, they proclaim “Socialism!”
- To dismiss objective and rational discussion of science, history, justice or, indeed, any subject which characterises us as civilized beings, they feel it ought to be enough to prefix “Liberal” to whatever term is used (or better still "bleeding-heart liberal").
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