The Wider Domain of Evolutionary Thought (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science)

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The Wider domain of evolutionary thought (Book, ) [www.farmersmarketmusic.com]

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The Wider domain of evolutionary thought

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Some critics have suggested that our genes cannot hold the information to encode the brain and all its assumed modules. One controversy concerns the particular modularity of mind theory used in evolutionary psychology massive modularity. Critics argue in favor of other theories. Critics have questioned the proposed innateness of certain phobias , such as fear of snakes. One method employed by evolutionary psychologists is using knowledge of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness to generate hypotheses regarding possible psychological adaptations. Part of the critique of the scientific basis of evolutionary psychology is of the concept of the environment of evolutionary adaptation.

Evolutionary psychology often assumes that human evolution occurred in a uniform environment, and critics suggest that we know so little about the environment or probably multiple environments in which homo sapiens evolved, that explaining specific traits as an adaption to that environment becomes highly speculative. The evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides state that research is confined to certainties about the past, such as pregnancies only occurring in women, and that humans lived in groups.

They argue that there are many environmental features that are known regarding our species' evolutionary history. They argue that our hunter-gatherer ancestors dealt with predators and prey, food acquisition and sharing, mate choice, child rearing, interpersonal aggression, interpersonal assistance, diseases and a host of other fairly predictable challenges that constituted significant selection pressures. Knowledge also include things such as nomadic, kin-based lifestyle in small groups, long life for mammals, low fertility for mammals, long female pregnancy and lactation, cooperative hunting and aggression, tool use, and sexual division of labor.

Some hypotheses that certain psychological traits are evolved adaptations have not been empirically corroborated. Their model suggested that, on average, the costs of rape for a typical year-old male outweigh benefits by a factor of ten to one. On the basis of their model and parameter estimates, they suggested that this would make it unlikely that rape generally would have net fitness benefits for most men. They also find that rape from raiding other tribes has lower costs but does not offer net fitness benefits, making it also unlikely that was an adaptation.

In a study of the Waorani tribes, the most aggressive warriors had the fewest descendants. Others have criticized the assertion that men universally preferred women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0. Studies of peoples in Peru and Tanzania found that men preferred ratios of 0. Recent studies utilizing realistic stimuli [ clarification needed ] , by contrast, show that men display a cross-cultural consensus in preferring a low waist-to-hip ratio i.

Criticism of evolutionary psychology

A number of theories in evolutionary psychology that are hinged on the assumption that sheer number of calories constitute the only important bottleneck in nutrition are challenged by research on hidden hunger, types of malnutrition in which deficits of specific essential micronutrients cause diseases or even death despite a suitable number of calories. This means that humans do not stand out in requirements for calories at any stage of life, though human brains stand out in requiring higher amounts of many different essential nutrients while other organs in other species may require higher amounts of two or three specific micronutrients.

While studies of blood flow in the brain's dura mater in fossil humans show a negligible difference in oxygen and with it caloric requirements between Neanderthals and modern humans, the fact that some Neanderthal groups in Belgium lived exclusively of large land animal meat while other Neanderthal groups in Spain lived exclusively of plants that were present there at the time with a much narrower range of nutrients than the diets vegans eat today shows that although Neanderthals were capable of varying their diets, they could also survive off non-varied diets that would cause lethal deficits in modern humans.

Since many micronutrient deficits in modern humans cause neurological symptoms, this is explainable as a result of less flexible synapses in Neanderthal brains requiring lower levels of many specific mincronutrients than the highly flexible synapses of modern humans. This contradicts the claim that human females were under unique selection pressure to evolve curvy shapes for fat storage for fetal brain development, as fat would only store calories and not micronutrients which could be stored without affecting body shape and nonhuman animals with other high fetal calory requirements do not have curvy females.

The claim that human females evolved large breasts to feed infants needing many calories is also challenged, empirically citing the human example that while most asian women have small breasts, asian people do not have smaller brains than other people and that explaining it away as a "trade-off" would be a misuse of the term as the observation is one trait brain size being unaffected by a dramatic reduction of another trait breast size as opposed to the correct definition of "trade-off" which is an otherwise adaptive trait being reduced by a change of something else. The distribution of essential nutrients between different types of food varied dramatically between regions in the paleolithic before the exchange of breeding stock of domestic and feral plants and animal species over long distances at the dawn of agriculture and the many micronuitrients required in higher levels by sapiens than by archaics meant that in every region, one or more types of food became narrower bottlenecks for sapiens group size than for archaic group size though the specific bottleneck food varied from region to region.

This contradicts evolutionary psychology's claim that sapiens evolved in larger group sizes and since many essential nutreients are in types of food that cannot be prevented from going rancid in short times while other essential nutrients degrade fast even if the food in which they are contained does not become rancid, trade over long distances could not address the problem.

The discovery of stone tools further from the origin of the stone at sapiens sites than at archaic sites is therefore not explainable by trade between tribes, but can be explained by people moving further to eat the essential nutrients and that the same movement patterns in other sapiens groups making them less capable of consistent territorial defense than archaics were, allowing sapiens to move longer and take their tools with them.

A frequent criticism of evolutionary psychology is that its hypotheses are difficult or impossible to test, challenging its status as an empirical science. As an example, critics point out that many current traits likely evolved to serve different functions from those they do now, confounding attempts to make backward inferences into history. Critics argue that many hypotheses put forward to explain the adaptive nature of human behavioural traits are " just-so stories "; neat adaptive explanations for the evolution of given traits that do not rest on any evidence beyond their own internal logic.

Therefore, many human behaviours will always fit some hypotheses. Leda Cosmides argued in an interview:. A review article by evolutionary psychologists describes how an evolutionary theory may be empirically tested. A hypothesis is made about the evolutionary cause of a psychological phenomenon or phenomena.

Then the researcher makes predictions that can be tested. This involves predicting that the evolutionary cause will have caused other effects than the ones already discovered and known. Then these predictions are tested. The authors argue numerous evolutionary theories have been tested in this way and confirmed or falsified. Accordingly, he views evolutionary psychology as a paradigm rather than a theory, and attributes this view to prominent evolutionary psychologists including Cosmides, Tooby, Buss, and Pinker.

One aspect of evolutionary psychology is finding traits that have been shown to be universal in humans. Many critics have pointed out that many traits considered universal at some stage or another by evolutionary psychologists often turn out to be dependent on cultural and particular historical circumstances. For example, anthropologist Susan McKinnon argues that evolutionary theories of kinship rest on ethnocentric presuppositions.

Evolutionary psychologists assert that the degree of genetic relatedness determines the extent of kinship e. Steven Pinker , for instance, stated "You're either someone's mother or you aren't". McKinnon argues that such biologically centered constructions of relatedness result from a specific cultural context: However, evolutionary psychologists [ who? It is not a focus on local behavioral variation which may sometimes be considered ethnocentric that interests evolutionary psychologists; rather their focus is to find underlying psychological commonalities between people from various cultures.

Some critics view evolutionary psychology as influenced by genetic determinism and reductionism. Evolutionary psychology is based on the theory that human physiology and psychology are influenced by genes. Evolutionary psychologists assume that genes contain instructions for building and operating an organism and that these instructions are passed from one generation to the next via genes. Lickliter and Honeycutt have argued that evolutionary psychology is a predeterministic and preformationistic approach that assumes that physical and psychological traits are predetermined and programmed while virtually ignoring non-genetic factors involved in human development.

Even when evolutionary psychologists acknowledge the influence of the environment, they reduce its role to that of an activator or trigger of the predetermined developmental instructions presumed to be encoded in a person's genes. Lickliter and Honeycutt have stated that the assumption of genetic determinism is most evident in the theory that learning and reasoning are governed by innate, domain-specific modules.

Evolutionary psychologists assume that modules preexist individual development and lie dormant in the structure of the organism, awaiting activation by some usually unspecified experiential events. Lickliter and Honeycutt have opposed this view and suggested that it is the entire developmental system, including the specific features of the environment a person actually encounters and interacts with and not the environments of distant ancestors that brings about any modularity of cognitive function. Critics argue that a reductionist analysis of the relationship between genes and behavior results in a flawed research program and a restricted interpretation of the evidence, creating problems for the creation of models attempting to explain behavior.

They argue that reductionist explanations such as the hierarchical reductionism proposed by Richard Dawkins will cause the researcher to miss dialectical ones. As an example she cites Martin Daly and Margot Wilson's theory that stepfathers are more abusive because they lack the nurturing instinct of natural parents and can increase their reproductive success in this way.

According to Rose this does not explain why most stepfathers do not abuse their children and why some biological fathers do. She also argues that cultural pressures can override the genetic predisposition to nurture as in the case of sex-selective infanticide prevalent in some cultures where male offspring are favored over female offspring.

Evolutionary psychologists Workman and Reader reply that while reductionism may be a "dirty word" to some it is actually an important scientific principle. They argue it is at the root of discoveries such as the world being made up of atoms and complex life being the result of evolution. At the same time they emphasize that it is important to look at all "levels" of explanations, e.

Workman and Reader also deny the accusation of genetic determinism, asserting that genes usually do not cause behaviors absolutely but predispose to certain behaviors that are affected by factors such as culture and an individual's life history. A common critique is that evolutionary psychology does not address the complexity of individual development and experience and fails to explain the influence of genes on behavior in individual cases.

Critics assert that evolutionary psychology has trouble developing research that can distinguish between environmental and cultural explanation and adaptive evolutionary explanations. Some studies have been criticized for their tendency to attribute to evolutionary processes elements of human cognition that may be attributable to social processes e.

Evolutionary psychologists are frequently criticized for ignoring the vast bodies of literature in psychology, philosophy, politics and social studies. Both sides of the debate stress that statements such as "biology vs. Evolutionary psychologists respond that their discipline is not primarily concerned with explaining the behavior of specific individuals, but rather broad categories of human behaviors across societies and cultures. It is the search for species-wide psychological adaptations or "human nature" that distinguishes evolutionary psychology from purely cultural or social explanations.

These psychological adaptations include cognitive decision rules that respond to different environmental, cultural, and social circumstances in ways that are on average adaptive. Evolutionary psychologists Confer et al. Critics point out that within evolutionary biology there are many other non-adaptive pathways along which evolution can move to produce the behaviors seen in humans today.

Natural selection is not the only evolutionary process that can change gene frequencies and produce novel traits.

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Genetic drift is caused by chance variation in the genes, environment, or development. Evolutionary by-products are traits that were not specially designed for an adaptive function, although they may also be species-typical and may also confer benefits on the organism. A " spandrel " is a term coined by Gould and Lewontin a for traits which confer no adaptive advantage to an organism, but are 'carried along' by an adaptive trait.

Gould advocates the hypothesis that cognition in humans came about as a spandrel: Some have argued that even if the theoretical assumptions of evolutionary psychology turned out to be true, it would nonetheless lead to methodological problems that would compromise its practice. That is, the inability to correctly choose, from a number of possible answers to the question: The disjunction problem [69] [70] occurs when a mechanism appears to respond to one thing F , but is also correlated with another G.

Whenever F is present, G is also present, and the mechanism seems to respond to both F and G. The difficulty thus involves deciding whether to characterize the mechanism's adaptive function as being related to F , G , or both. The grain problem [69] [71] refers to the challenge in knowing what kind of environmental 'problem' an adaptive mental mechanism might have solved.

Is the problem of mate choice a single problem or a mosaic of many distinct problems? These problems might include: When should I be unfaithful to my usual partner? When should I desert my old partner? When should I help my sibs find a partner? When and how should I punish infidelity?

Franks states that "if both adaptive problems and adaptive solutions are indeterminate, what chance is there for evolutionary psychology? Franks also states that "The arguments in no sense count against a general evolutionary explanation of psychology.

Evolutionary psychologists have proposed explanations, such that there may be higher fertility rates for the female relatives of homosexual men, thus progressing a potential homosexual gene, [73] or that they may be byproducts of adaptive behaviors that usually increase reproductive success. However, a review by Confer et al.

Many critics have argued that evolutionary psychology and sociobiology justify existing social hierarchies and reactionary policies. It has also been suggested by critics that evolutionary psychologists' theories and interpretations of empirical data rely heavily on ideological assumptions about race and gender. Philippe Rushton 's work on race and intelligence was influenced by preconceived notions about race and was "cloaked in the nomenclature, language and 'objectivity'" of evolutionary psychology, sociobiology and population genetics.

Moreover, evolutionary psychology has been criticized for its ethical implications. Richardon and Wilson et al. Evolutionary psychologists caution against committing the naturalistic fallacy — the idea that "ought can be derived from is" and that "what is natural" is necessarily a moral good. The naturalistic fallacy is the idea that what is found in nature is good. It was the basis for Social Darwinism, the belief that helping the poor and sick would get in the way of evolution, which depends on the survival of the fittest.

Today, biologists denounce the Naturalistic Fallacy because they want to describe the natural world honestly, without people deriving morals about how we ought to behave -- as in: If birds and beasts engage in adultery, infanticide, cannibalism, it must be OK.

The moralistic fallacy is that what is good is found in nature. It lies behind the bad science in nature-documentary voiceovers: It also lies behind the romantic belief that humans cannot harbor desires to kill, rape, lie, or steal because that would be too depressing or reactionary. Instead, they argue that understanding the causes of rape may help create preventive measures. The authors have argued that a factual statement must be combined with an ethical statement to derive an ethical conclusion.

Thus, "ought" cannot be described exclusively from "is". They have suggested that if one combines Thornhill and Palmer's theory that rape increases the fitness of a woman's offspring with the ethical premise that it is right to increase fitness of offspring, the resulting deductively valid conclusion is that rape has also positive effects and that its ethical status is ambiguous.

Yet, it is Thornhill and Palmer who are thinking fallaciously by using the naturalistic fallacy in this way.

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