I agree with most of what's written in the article, but I think there are some additional points to be made, a critique of the critique if you will
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Yeah, I appreciate this, but then you go over to convert_me and run into Philosophy majors who link to these kinds of squabbles within the genuinely difficult and hairy study of evolution and psychology and then conclude that Kant must have lowered morality down to us on a skyhook, and that morality was ontologically rigged up as the red carpet H. Sapiens was destined to arrive on, or... something.
Actually, part of my break from being an evo-psych cheerleader is because of them. My current ambivalence might also be unacceptable to them, but I'm not exactly dying to test whether that's true.
SciAm definitely has a liberal bent, which must be taken into consideration, but I don't see evolutionary psychology appealing to social conservatives. It seems to suggest that religion-at least any specific doctrine-is unnecessary for morality and that many "unsavory" human behaviors are biologically driven. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with your first comment, but I'm interested in your take on this.
I agree, something shouldn't be dismissed out of hand simply because it cannot be definitively proven; scientists and educators just have to be careful about how they phrase things and be clear about how much of what they are saying is solidly backed by evidence and what is largely conjecture.
Michael Shermer's still there. His most recent book was on behavioral economics/psychology and I seem to remember him on some podcast criticizing some of the grander claims made by evolutionary psychology, but I don't have that reference and don't remember for sure.
I might read the article, but my pre-article-reading response is:
Ev psych is sort of a batch of just so stories, as far as I know. And subjectivity and vested interests are always in the mix, skepticism is important, etc. But I think that it makes a good thought experiment, and I loved The Selfish Gene, for example. Things like ESS and thinking of people as creatures with developmental histories instead of just things that are or aren't what you want them to be helps with understanding them a little better on their own terms, I think.
I wish I had something more concrete to say about it.
I think the basis for evolutionary psychology makes sense: human emotion and behavior should have an evolutionary history like physical traits. This especially fits with the materialistic view of neuroscience. I generally agree with this statement from the article: Although some work in evolutionary psychology backs modest claims with careful empirical research, a dominant strain, pop evolutionary psychology, or Pop EP, offers grand and encompassing claims about human nature for popular consumption..
Yeah, that kind of statement is agreeable to me. You also have to worry about culture, environment, etc. Raw genetic information can be expressed in countlessly many ways, depending on culture, family, upbringing, etc. We're very malleable, and EP has to take this into account. It makes things pretty tricky.
There are a few instances in which EP has been tested, and come out on top. The only one I can recall offhand is the idea that, because mothers know the kid is theirs but fathers can have doubt, fathers should invest less. But that's fraught with social complications, so they moved it up a level - a maternal grandmother is 100% certain that the kid has her genes, a paternal grandfather is most uncertain, and the other two both have one uncertain link. If it was all gender roles and conditioning, the effort and money spent on the grandkid should fall out on gender lines, but if there was an evolutionary basis, it should fall in accordance with certainty of genetic relationship. They tested it (I forget all the nitty gritty details, but it seemed reasonable and they got a good sample size), and the EP hypothesis was strongly supported
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It sounds like somebody's arguing a no-perfect-solution about EP, really. Steve Pinker, one of the throw-away pop-EP folks mentioned, doesn't present the ideas in EP as ultra-rigorous, readily directly investigated, or conclusive.
It's important to have ongoing dialogue in areas of scientific research that are obviously ATM very speculative, of course, and creating a straw man "pop EP," and nailing your four objections to it, to the door of Scientific American, is worthwhile stuff. We all know how dumb it is when people start making up their stupid little cosmologies out of a poor understanding of recently developed hypotheses. I look forward to hearing the EP guys respond in the editorial section.
I think the main critique xians have about science and evolution is not there is healthy debate instead of dogma, but that there is debate at all. In their worldview there is "the truth" of the Bible and then there's everything else. Most xians, particularly Fundies, are very uncomfortable with science because it always leaves room for error or debate or new evidence to wipe out the old theory. It goes directly against their black/white, good/bad, Jesus/Satan duality.
IDers and other creationists often try to label “Darwinism” a dogmatic, absolutist worldview that is no different in that regard than a religion. This isn't the principle problem or criticism that theists have, but it's a falsehood that you see thrown out there from time to time.
As with any demographic, the loudest voices frequently belong to the dimmest bulbs. I challenge you to provide support for the hypothesis that a majority of Christians (or people of any faith) are uncomfortable with science, error, or debate. The founding principles of Christianity, as put forth in the quotations of Jesus in the four gospels, are to love people and to use reason to detect the spirit of the law rather than following the letter of the law
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I agree, something shouldn't be dismissed out of hand simply because it cannot be definitively proven; scientists and educators just have to be careful about how they phrase things and be clear about how much of what they are saying is solidly backed by evidence and what is largely conjecture.
Michael Shermer's still there. His most recent book was on behavioral economics/psychology and I seem to remember him on some podcast criticizing some of the grander claims made by evolutionary psychology, but I don't have that reference and don't remember for sure.
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Ev psych is sort of a batch of just so stories, as far as I know. And subjectivity and vested interests are always in the mix, skepticism is important, etc. But I think that it makes a good thought experiment, and I loved The Selfish Gene, for example. Things like ESS and thinking of people as creatures with developmental histories instead of just things that are or aren't what you want them to be helps with understanding them a little better on their own terms, I think.
I wish I had something more concrete to say about it.
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It's important to have ongoing dialogue in areas of scientific research that are obviously ATM very speculative, of course, and creating a straw man "pop EP," and nailing your four objections to it, to the door of Scientific American, is worthwhile stuff. We all know how dumb it is when people start making up their stupid little cosmologies out of a poor understanding of recently developed hypotheses. I look forward to hearing the EP guys respond in the editorial section.
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