Talk:Evolutionary psychology

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Contents 1 Archived talk pages 2 Research heading 3 Spandrels 4 Evolutionary Study of Social Behaviour 5 falsifiability 6 Is this an accepted developed branch or proto or pseudo science? 7 Reductionism 8 External links 9 somewhat biased, and using a sort of ad hominen fallacy 10 Geary article tagged for deletion

[edit] Archived talk pages

Archives: Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Archive1 ['03-(Jun)'06]

[edit] Research heading

I just added a heading and subheadings for research in ev psych. Would this be a good structure for such a section? EPM 20:05, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spandrels

Spandrels are at best controversial. It is misleading to include them here as if there were agreement about what spandrels are. Most biologists do not believe there are any spandrels--everything has a purpose. At the very least the "spandrel" but should be attributed to its creator Stephan J. Gould who does not accept anything in evolutionary psychology and has been among its most vociferous critics.

This article is filled twisted bits of info like this. I have have tried to fix but changes keep getting reverted. Please do not rely on this entry for information on this topic!

I believe i have gone some way in addressing the objection raised above concerning the reference to spandrels in the article. If the author of the above comment would like to point out any more parts he considers to be "twisted bits of info" then please feel free to. Orgone 03:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is an interesting essay on the topic of Spandrels: Ne Plus Ultra-Darwinism: Adaptations, Spandrels and Evolutionary Explanations Orgone 23:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Twisted Bits? Here you go... If you read Wilson, Pinker, Mayr, Miller, Maynard Smith, or any evolutionary biologist associated with EP you will not find the idea of spandrels as a "product" of evolution.

More problems? I fixed the def. of heritability earlier (which was totally wrong) but here are a few: " theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain certain mental and psychological traits" Not true. It is both theoretical and experimental. Not some but all, I would say. That is the point, really.

" The purpose of this approach is to bring the functional way of thinking about biological mechanisms such as the immune system into the field of psychology, and to approach psychological mechanisms in a similar way" Also not at all true. This is not the purpose of EP. What you are describing really the premise of EP. Very misleading, as it is.

Most research is NOT on humans, primates, langurs, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, baboons, maybe, but social animals is most accurate. Franz de Waal, Wrangham, Sapolsky, and many bird researchers are often invoked when talking about EP. One of the most critical essays in the field (Trivers) is based on deer research, not human. The use of non-human analogs is in fact one of the most important ways EPs use to provide evidence of evolution--if a behaviour or response is cross-species and common, it is not unique to humans and can be safely argued to be adaptive.

The article misses the flavor of the controversies this topic engenders entirely, and I do think it is important to provide that perspective. It is one of the most popular and interesting controveries in science and it goes to the core of all kinds of important issues from education to health to politics.

The article fails to show how EP as a "discourse" for lack of a better word provides insights into such diverse things as behavioural economics, parenting, literary interpretation, and infantcide.

The Massive modularity idea is really ONE approach. There are others which are quite different. The article does not capture the intrafield differences.

The article VASTLY underplays the role of sexual selection in evolution. Critcial concepts that are left out are the handicap theory and Fisher's runaway concept. Runaway may well explain the rapid evolution of the human mind.

Sexual selection is PART of natural selection, not something separate.

The line "Darwin and Wallace proposed that natural and sexual selection, and not a supernatural designer" is bizarre. What is the point of mentioning a supernatural designer at all?

Inclusive fitness does not resolve the altrusim question at all. This is just wrong. Entirely new ideas about altuism as a way of demonstrating fitness are emerging.

There are 2 products of evo process-adapations and mutations and that is all.

The most interesting non-evo ideas about evolution come from Lynn margulis

Okay, if I get more time, I will go through the rest of the article. What happened to Ian Pritchford's orginial brilliant account that used to be here? Cheers and good luck,.

I would agree with you on almost everything you have said, and hope you continue to edit and improve the article!

On the topic of spandrels, perhaps I am unaware of some more technical usage of the word "product" in biology. In the Gould quote is the phrase: "nonadaptive side consequence", I would have taken this to carry pretty much the same meaning. This topic is also of course connected to the issue of panadaptionism, which is the subject of on going debate, which the article does not adequately present. I would also agree that EP is not necessarily grounded on massive modularity.

I would ask you what you believe the "purpose" of EP is as distinct from its "premise", given that EP is ultimately, to quote Pinker: "not a single theory but a large set of hypotheses" and, to quote Pinker again: "EP has also come to refer to a particular way of applying evolutionary theory to the mind, with an emphasis on adaptation, gene-level selection, and modularity." (Both quotes from his Butterflies and Wheels interview) I would put it that it is this second sense of the term 'EP' that the article should describe the debate in, but that the introduction should describe the first, broader sense, which I think it does. Orgone 05:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evolutionary Study of Social Behaviour

I've suggested "merging" Evolutionary Study of Social Behaviour into this article. I don't see how the topic of that article is distinct from this. I also don't really see any novel material in that article, a straight redirect seems appropriate. Pete.Hurd 16:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Arguably, the psychology of social behaviour is only one part of looking at psychology through the evolutionary lens, as it is only one part of psychology as a whole (admittedly a rather large part!). Therefore I would suggest having it as a section within the EP article, not merged with or neccesarily seperate from it. Orgone 03:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree but would say that this page should redirect to sociobiology, rather than Evolutionary Psychology because, to quote this argument of Buller which distinguishes EP from SB: "examples -- such as singing Wagner, consciousness of mortality, and religious belief -- are of specific behaviors, mental acts, beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. Such phenomena are the outputs of psychological mechanisms, generated in response to the inputs of current experience and experiences during development. But Evolutionary Psychologists claim that our psychological adaptations are the mechanisms, or "major faculties of the mind," that generate such outputs, not the outputs generated by those mechanisms." David J. Buller http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/ep.htm What do you think? Orgone 01:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] falsifiability

If EP is falsifiable, can someone describe an EP experiment or something that tested it? Jonathan Tweet 03:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. If you want to find out about EP, I suggest you read the formal literature. Mikker ^(...) 21:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I mean that if it's falsifiable the article should give an example of an experience or test that could have demonstrated it wrong but didn't. The current wording is general and would be improved by an example. The example could even be a link to another page, if that's possible. Jonathan Tweet 02:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

In principle, wouldn't psychometric tests which shows that groups of people with more similar DNA would score more similar results than when compared to the general population (taking care to eliminate environmental factors) demonstrate that EP has merit to it?

Like twin studies, for instance. (I believe Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate has a decent round-up of the results of such studies over the last decades.)

Going from there to falsifiability looks like a short step. E.g. if psychometric studies consistently found no factor of heritability, I guess honest scientists would consider EP false..?

(This may boil down to asking: does demonstrating heritability validate EP?)

Sorry for the rambling. Mortene 08:13, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for attempting an answer, rambling or not. Twin studies could have disproved EP by disproving heritability of psychological traits. But they're a long way from proving that human psychology evolved as an adaptation to life in a hunter-gatherer tribe. Blank Slate is a marvelous book, by the way. I'm totally down with EP, but if it's not falsifiable, then we need to own up to that. Maybe the best we can say is that every related theory is falsifiable (human origins, heritability of behavioral traits, suitability of human social capacities to hunter-gatherer life, etc.). Jonathan Tweet 17:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this is quite a complicated issue - and something that is actually discussed in some detail in the literature. (I've seen refs to articles on this question in Buss's handbook). Personally, I think EP is tied up with evolution in general and (of course) with the computational theory of mind. If the mind is indeed a hyper-complex entity best understood as an information processing device, and "the mind is what the brain does" (as Pinker puts it), then evolution by natural selection is the only no-sky hooks explanation of its existence we have. So some form of EP has to be true; even if the Daly-Wilson-Buss-Pinker-Tooby-Cosmides approach is not acceptable. Mikker ^(...) 17:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is this an accepted developed branch or proto or pseudo science?

I noticed that some "scientists" tried to explain everything with the evolution, but this is already in article, as a criticism i.e. of non-falsifiability. To be serious, what is the status of this branch within the scientific community? Is it fully accepted as a science? Andries 17:10, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Usually categorised as science or proto-science since many of its hypotheses can be falsified. It publishes academic, respected journals and evolutionary psychologists have published material on these topics in notable multi-purpose science journals. Basically a lot of evolutionary psychology exists on the back of cognitive psychology - if the brain is massively modular then in a sense a form of evolutionary psychology is inevitable. However, that is not to say that all hypotheses proposed by evolutionary psychologists are falsifiable. --Davril2020 17:39, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

(To repeat what I've said above) I think it is important to make a distinction (as Buller does) between EP in the robust sense advocated by Wilson, Daly, Pinker, Tooby, Cosmides & Buss; and EP in the sense that the mind is a product of the brain, the brain is complex, and evolution by natural selection is the only possible (non-sky hooks) explanation of that complexity. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that the brain evolved by natural selection like any other physical organ and, unless one is some sort of outdated Cartesian, "the mind is what the brain does" (as Pinker put it). You can agree with the latter sense - i.e. that some sort of EP has to be right - without agreeing with the details about Wilson et. al.'s approach. So, yes, EP is a science and is regarded as such - but not everything done in its name necessarily is. (Just like physics or any other science - physics as a whole is clearly a science, but that doesn't mean every physicist is a good scientist or everything every physicist says is necessarily scientific.) Mikker ^(...) 17:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

The emerging consensus is to use evolutionary psychology (lower caps) when referring to the general and entirely uncontroversial idea that the brain evolved under natural selection, and Evolutionary Psychology (upper caps) to refer to the more 'extreme' ideas of Tooby and Cosmidies etc, this convention should be explained and made use of in the article, and unhelpful abbreviations such as EP and Ev-Psych (which were always messy in terms of usage anyway) should be replaced. Orgone 18:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Heres a paper you will find revealing on this subject, which also sets up this uppercase/lowercase distinction in definition: http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/ep.htm Orgone 19:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reductionism

As regards how reductionism is defined, im not sure that "a research philosophy which assumes that" is better than "a theory which asserts that", research philosophy is an odd term but ill put up with it, however, im not sure about the pejorative-sounding use of the word assumes, and i would seek to avoid it if possible. A pretty pedantic point i admit, but i wondered if anyone else had any opinion on it? If no one does, i'll simply change it, as no unbiased definition of reductionism (Google "define:reductionism") mentions anything about "assumptions made", but "theories held" and "doctrines according to which" etc. Orgone 03:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the point above and that it should be changed. --Ubiq 05:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Im hoping my last edit should really put pay to the idea that reductionism is any kind of problem for EP once and for all, but even so, explain why the issue arose in the first place. Its just a bit annoying that other fields of study concerning the mind or brain dont have to make simmilar moves in their own defence, but mention the word 'evolution' and every nut crawls out of the woodwork.Orgone 18:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I removed the link to the essay by Dr.Beetle (http://drbeetle.homestead.com/topten.html) because it was not up to academic standards, whatever else he may have written:

New Scientist web links of 2002 "Controversial site with alternative views on many of the building blocks of modern biology. Often thought-provoking, offering lots of material for debate. Good design and links, worth a visit" (Review of his website, found on the front page)

This particular essay is pretty poor in places, containing such unsubstantiated speculation as:

"If it takes some 2300 genes to work an eye, which is a complicated piece of machinery, then a guess is that it takes perhaps 1000 genes to work each other sense (say 4 x 1000 = 4000). A similar number must be needed for each emotion, which are often complicated and coordinate a range of physiological reactions such as a narrowed eye, frown, release of adrenalin, flush etc. I can think of about 50 emotions = 50,000 genes."

not to mention repeatedly drawing moral conclusions from EP (particularly the metaphor of the "selfish" gene), and using those as criticisms, when of course EP is not a theory of ethics, but an approach to psychology, and cannot be discredited as such.

Orgone 05:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Reply - there was a link to a scientific paper showing that it does take 2300 genes to control an eye. In the absence of similar research for the other senses such as hearing, touch, smell, what is wrong with the conservative estimates for these senses, to give ball park total numbers? How many genes would you suggest are required to produce an emotion? The article raises a number of issues in an entertaining and provocative style, and is not meant to be a dreay journal article. Wikipedia should be able to link to other articles fully available on the web, and not just to scientific journal references and abstracts that are out of the reach of most people using it.

Firstly, the "scientific paper" linked to in Dr.Beetle's paper (http://w3.igb.cnr.it/workshop/Workshop95/SpeakAbs/Gehring.html) is actually just an abstract, nevertheless, it reports the finding that there are some 2500 genes involved in eye morphogenesis (the formation of the eye on a cellular level), not the control of the eye, which is a different matter. This in itself would actually strengthen the argument in the paper (which argues a "gene shortage" for EP), because it means that it would take more than 2500 genes to both form and control the eye (you have the area of the brain which processes visual information and coordinates eye movement to account for as well). However, it also means that to move from eye morphogenesis to emotions is to make an even greater false analogy:

The paper arbitrarily posits "about 50 emotions", and then, given a faulty analogy ('formation of the eye' and 'elation' are phenomenon on quite different explanatory levels) and guesswork about our other senses, posits 1000 genes per emotion. This, quite frankly, is childishly simplistic. Why presume, as the paper does, that a "frown" produced by anger should be "controlled" by a different gene from a frown produced by say, frustration? Are these sufficiently distinguishable emotions to have an entirely different set of 1000 genes to account for them? The "x number of genes per property" way of describing things is too simple, allot if not most properties arise from the complex interaction of genes. That’s my problem with that particular section of Dr.Beetles paper alone(whatever he has a doctorate in, its NOT biology).

Heres a piece that discusses and dispells the "gene shortage" objection to EP: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/genecount.html Orgone 19:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Secondly, that Wikipedia shouldn’t just link to "dreary journal articles", that may be so in general, but not when the entry is scientific in nature, if people want unqualified opinion on a subject then can Google away to their hearts content, but lets try and keep to some standards. There are plenty of qualified critiques of evolutionary psychology to point people to, this kind of link isn’t necessary. Orgone 02:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] somewhat biased, and using a sort of ad hominen fallacy

I think that the part:

Why then, is the accusation of reductionism commonly used as a criticism of Evolutionary Psychology, and not say, as a criticism of Neuropsychopharmacology? (A discipline in which an implicit premise as regards psychology is that all states of mind, including both normal and drug-induced altered states, and diseases involving mental or cognitive dysfunction, have a neuro-chemical basis at the fundamental level.) The reason is that Evolutionary Psychology is a controversial field in itself, and to quote Richard Dawkins: "'reductionism', like sin, is one of those things only mentioned by people who are against it." The Blind Watchmaker, 1986 p.13. Here Dawkins makes a distinction between "direct" and "hierarchical" reductionism: organisms can be described in terms of DNA, DNA in terms of atoms, atoms in terms of sub-atomic particles etc; but knowledge of sub-atomic particles will not directly explain animal or human behavior, nevertheless, one can make adequate explanations and predictions at a higher levels.

Not only has a partial tone, but also the Dawkins quote seems to try to dismiss generalizedly all the possible criticism that mentions reductionism. I also doubt that there would be no criticism of neuropsychopharmacology in regarding reductionism, and it is arguably that if evolutionary psychology apparently has more, it is probably because it has gained more space in pop culture, with a few criticism along with. --Extremophile 07:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Geary article tagged for deletion

I thought that I would bring to peoples' attention here that that David C. Geary, (who has made a lot of contributions to evolutionary psychology), has been tagged for deletion. If there is anyone here who would be interested in working on the article, please feel free. EPM 20:09, 16 March 2007 (UTC)