The merits of evolutionary psychology

I don’t understand your immediate contradiction of yourself there - but if he’s wrong, then I’m curious where or how you think he’s wrong (in “The Righeous Mind”). What is your source for that critique - or the substance of it?

Even if it turns out he’s right, he hasn’t demonstrated it. If he’s right, it’s for the wrong reason. In everything else he does. He’s got legs. His ideas. His thinking. His honesty. And there’s only ONE source!

You don’t even know that he’s not right yet - much less then the “why” of anything. As to how successfully he’s demonstrated his thesis; I’m in no position to argue that point either way. I’m under the impression that he’s presenting a plausible, maybe even probable thesis - not a conclusively demonstrated one. If there are other better ideas on offer, then I’d be interested to hear them.

We know he’s not right about group selection because the dialectical synthesis doesn’t need it.

Of course not all of us are card carrying members of the Hume fan club. :wink: But I personally don’t have so much experience with thesis/antithesis/synthesis to dismiss anything which challenges it. Hume’s ideas have to compete with the others for me.

That needs a lot more unpacking for me to see how it demonstrates something to be wrong. Is this an Occam’s Razor thing where a reductive biology wants to imagine it’s got everything of interest explained already?

They just mean it processes information.

I like this:
https://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/mrossano/evo_psych/readings/overview%20of%20ep-2014.pdf

1 Like

Thanks, @Trunyon90!

Chaps.

It’s not a level playing field, not a flat cookbook like fundamentalism, historico-grammatical theology (where everything is equally true in some deeply meant way). There is no equal to Hume, to gene based individual vehicles, to the dialectic, to disinterested rationality. Hume-Haidt is right that morality - Nietzsche’s herd behaviour in the individual - emerges from our genetically coded, very hard wired brains, pre-wired with moral taste receptors for experience. Haidt’s Humean analogies are perfect.

And yes it is an Occam’s razor thing, not that reductive biology (reduced from what? Magic?) has everything of interest explained already, but that the tools it has hard won are sufficient until overwhelmingly proved otherwise. Evolution occurs in gene based individual vehicles (in group, population, species environments), that is the dialectical synthesis. Nothing else is needed to explain anything, including and especially the unexplained. As in all areas of physicalism: physicalism does not reject the supernatural, it never has to include it in the first place. Historically it has had to swim hard upstream against the evolution of religion. Itself behaviour emerging from the hard wired, brain, moral taste receptor of the sacred.

Haidt isn’t wrong. He’s not even wrong; in weakening his otherwise excellent rational arguments, with which I totally agree, with group selection.

Looking at the OP, there are no demerits to evolutionary psychology. It is the overwhelming default with no alternative. None at all. Apart from the ineffable working of the Holy Spirit of course.

1 Like

Watched this over the weekend and found it really helpful. Also found this intro lecture from the University of Worcester here in the UK helpful, as well as this and this from the evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad.

I also found this interview with Biologos’ Jeff Schloss helpful on the question of the evolution of religious belief.

1 Like

I’m curious- if our adaptations as defined by evolutionary psychology were forged by our hunter-gatherer ancestors when their very survival was at stake and led to the origin of language, hunting skills, larger brains etc, I wonder what will be conjured up to counter Covid-19 as that is a similar existential threat.

Nothing more - and less - than was conjured up by the 1918 influenza pandemic, Wiki: ‘A 2006 study in the Journal of Political Economy found that “cohorts in utero during the pandemic displayed reduced educational attainment, increased rates of physical disability, lower income, lower socioeconomic status, and higher transfer payments compared with other birth cohorts.” A 2018 study found that the pandemic reduced educational attainment in populations.’. The evoltutionary impact will be unquantifiable.

This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.