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Post by Tamrin on Jan 19, 2014 15:03:46 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." Why is Evolutionary Psychology not even wrong? Because, by way of example, if it had set out to explain the highly specialised behaviours of, say, Gelada Baboons, the theory of brain modules on which EP is based may be right or it may be wrong, and the possibility would only want experimental proof to have some legitimate scientific standing. As a way of explaining our extreme generalist abilities to adapt to highly diverse and novel situations, it is not even wrong, especially not the "massive modulation" version originally proposed. In other words, if it was a possible explanation of actual human behaviour it might be wrong (perhaps even right) but what it describes is not human behaviour as it is, so its explanation is not even wrong, it is simply a bizarre irrelevance.
As Homer Simpson was told (episode #104): "Tis a fine barn, but sure 'tis no pool, English." Watered down versions of the original, which still propose some modules accounting for some specific behaviours, fare no better — retaining all the difficulties of the original, while acknowledging that modulation is not a sufficient explanation for most behaviours — it remains to be shown WHAT remaining behaviours are necessarily innate and could not be accounted for as learned behaviours.
For Evolutionary Psychologists to build on their demonstrably irrelevant model of human nature and propose how we should and should not behave is utterly perverse.
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Post by Tamrin on Jan 19, 2014 17:50:42 GMT 10
In other words, if it was a possible explanation of actual human behaviour it might be wrong (perhaps even right) but what it describes is not human behaviour as it is, so its explanation is not even wrong, it is simply a bizarre irrelevance. Thus, not only has the emperor no clothes, he is not even an emperor — simply a self-justifying, pseudoscientific bigot, lacking the courage of his prejudices.
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Post by Smithee on Feb 19, 2014 20:03:58 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 20, 2014 13:55:14 GMT 10
In other words for humans nature has led to nurture. Then it is all nurture. Earlier you posted this except from the following, linked article.
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Post by Smithee on Feb 27, 2014 19:19:50 GMT 10
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Post by Smithee on Feb 27, 2014 19:30:39 GMT 10
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 9, 2014 7:53:45 GMT 10
If you've got a religious belief that withers in the face of observations of the natural world, you ought to rethink your beliefs — rethinking the world isn't an option
Look at the bible as a pastiche, a collection of mutually and often internally inconsistent fragments slapped together for crude reasons of politics and art and priestly self-promotion and sometimes beauty and a lot of chest-thumping tribalism, and through that lens, it makes a lot of sense. It does tell us something important … about us, not some fantastic mythological being. It tells us that we are fractious, arrogant, scrappy people who sometimes accomplish great things and more often cause grief and pain to one another. We want to be special in a universe that is uncaring and cold, and in which the nature of our existence is a transient flicker, so we invent these strange stories of grand beginnings, like every orphan dreaming that they are the children of kings who will one day ride up on a white horse and take them away to a beautiful palace and a rich and healthy family that will love them forever. We are not princes of the earth, we are the descendants of worms, and any nobility must be earned
What I want to happen to religion in the future is this: I want it to be like bowling. It's a hobby, something some people will enjoy, that has some virtues to it, that will have its own instit- utions and its traditions and its own television programming, and that families will enjoy together. It's not something I want to ban or that should affect hiring and firing decisions, or that interferes with public policy. It will be perfectly harmless as long as we don't elect our politicians on the basis of their bowling score, or go to war with people who play nine-pin instead of ten-pin, or use folklore about backspin to make decrees about how biology works
I wanted to discuss a good paper or two [on Evolutionary Psychology] … And people sent me links and papers. Only problem: they were all awful. Every one. I couldn’t believe that even these papers that some people were telling me were the best of the bunch were so lacking in rigor and so rife with unjustified assumptions. I read through about a dozen before I gave up in disgust and decided that there were better things to do in my time
I have a real problem with evolutionary psychology, and it goes right to the root of the discipline: it’s built on a flawed foundation. It relies on a naïve and simplistic understanding of how evolution works … it appeals to many people, though, because that misconception aligns nicely with the cartoon version of evolution in most people’s heads, and it also means that every time you criticize evolutionary psychology, you get a swarm of ignorant defenders who assume you’re attacking evolution itself. That misconception is adaptationism
Now you can see that the first problem the evolutionary psychologists have to confront is whether the feature they are examining is actually a functional adaptation; they can’t simply assume that it is, as they often do, and then proceed on their merry way, building hypotheses to explain an assertion that they haven’t yet established as true. Wait, check that. Actually, the first thing they have to do is show that the feature they’re examining is a direct product of a genetic variant in the first place, and shows some pattern of inheritance. They often skip this step, too
I know what science denialism is. I think denying the flaws in your own science is a pretty good example of itP.Z. MyersAmerican biologist (Evolutionary Development) (In 2006, the journal Nature listed his Pharyngula as the top-ranked blog by a scientist) (Born this day 1957) The word for people who are neutral about truth is "liars"
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Post by Tamrin on Sept 8, 2014 8:53:29 GMT 10
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