Talk:Evolutionary psychology

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This article resembles other articles (like say feminism) written by and for the special interests who have a stake in the topic. There is almost no content on well known criticisms, controversies and other possible problems with EP as a thesis. Instead, in the discussions there seem to be the usual totalitarian tactics (like moving criticisms to another article, censoring references to prominent critics' works, etc) a dead giveaway that those EP interests who control this article have no genuine interest in NPOV balance about their pet topic. 12.107.17.150 03:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[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)

[edit] removed original research from controversies

Editors of this paged need to only add Wikipedia:Attributionable stuff. please avoid adding original research, such as the unsourced subsections of "Controversies". I've renamed the section "Evolutionary psychology and philosophy", because the only sourced sentences were those that dealt with philosophical criticisms.--Urthogie 04:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I've also removed original research and sticky sweet prose such as this:

As we can see, the matter is subject to debate, some believing that evolutionary considerations are correct and necessary, others that they are incorrect and a form of the naturalistic fallacy, and others indeed that they are morally harmful whether correct or not. This idea of the supposed moral harm done by bringing together the social sciences and ethics is arguably where the greatest controversy lies.

  1. Don't say "We" to the readers.
  2. Don't do original research, in attempting to synthesize the information you're supply the reader. You need to use secondary sources which can attribute your syntheses.
  3. Try to avoid these practices on other parts of the article. Invite other people to collaborate, as this article needs a major scientific review.--Urthogie 04:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


The large amount material you have removed from the 'controversies' section is not original research, it can be found in the literature, a better approach would have been to add "citation needed" tags and discuss removing the material here first. Also, the paragraph quoted above should have been rewritten, not simply removed, as it is needed to explain the quote it is referring to. The section as it stands now is also not really about "Evolutionary psychology and philosophy", but the consequences of evolution for metaethics. There are issues in the philosophy of psychology, biology and mind concerning EP (massive modularity, teleological notions of function e.t.c) but the article does not (yet, perhaps) discuss them. As things stand i think your edits should be reverted. Anyone else agree? Orgone 05:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It's important to me that we don't criticize something without using sources. Citation needed tags are generally reserved for sentences that people regard as a fact but just haven't found a source for. I think many of these criticisms were poorly stated, and did not reflect actual available sources. Also, metaethics are part of philosophy, so there's no problem in this name. Lastly, a criticism does not amount to a "controversy." So I think all the issues you raise are not problems.--Urthogie 15:51, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


I find it odd that there is a section in this article "References for rebuttals to criticisms" WITHOUT a section on the criticisms being rebutted!

This is a sure sign this article has a pro-EP slant.Nancymc 02:42, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV tag: Psuedo-religion or peer reviewed science?

I am an editor with only a cursory understanding of EP. However, after reading the discussions about controversies and criticisms, noting an almost complete lack of references to peer critics (people like Buller, Gould, or Ehrlich who I found in 10 minutes on the web), who challenge the reigning EP authorities (people like Tooby, Cosmides or Buss) and most importantly, after noticing no coverage of the criticisms in the article, I am seeing a pattern here that resembles that which "fascist" (please see Spreading Misandry by Nathanson and Young or Professing Feminism by Patia and Koerge) gender feminists use on the Feminism page to pander to their POV and to silence credible criticisms of their POVs. Therefore, I am going to place a POV tag on this article until such time as I see all (peer to peer) points of view about EP reflected in this article in some sort of balanced NPOV fashion. At a minimum, I would expect to see a list of criticisms as I do indeed see on the Religion page. However, as I said before I am far too unversed in EP to contribute such content...so I ask those editors who know far more about these 'controversies' (which are obviously raging right now) than I do to show what they are, who they are between and what they are about. Thanks 12.107.17.150 03:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

There was a large controversies section until very recently, (check the edit history) but it was removed. It needed improvement, but that shouldn't have happened. I protested, and if i wasn't so busy at the moment i would have done more about it. The old full and complete version of the article (which was taken from here) can be found at the WikiPsych [1] along with a forum for debating issue concerning EP [2] Orgone 03:39, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Why did the criticism section suddenly "disappear"? As far as I remember, there was nothing wrong with it. Oh, look, the "Rebuttals to criticism" section is still up. That is quite unusual, isn't it? --Onias 17:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Controversies" section restored

I have restored the "Controversies" section from a version before Urthogie's wholesale removal of material, it needs to be improved rather than just removed. Orgone 03:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Criticisms from Human Behavioral Ecology" section?

Should there be a section that discusses criticisms from human behavioral ecology? This might be interesting considering that human behavioral ecology is the field that grew out of sociobiology within anthropology, as opposed to evolutionary psychology, which grew out of sociobiology within psychology. See:

Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. and K. Hill (2001). Controversies in the evolutionary social sciences: A guide to the perplexed. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16(3):128-135. Full text

And here's a critical look at evolutionary psychology that isn't from human behavioral ecology, but it is certainly comensurate with HBE, (or behavioral ecology, in general). The claim, from page 442 (p. 3 out of 8), is that "Entropy is the Primary Adaptive Problem - Energetic Management is the Primary Adaptive Solution":

La Cerra, P. (2003). The First Law of Psychology is the Second Law of Thermodynamics: The Energetic Evolutionary Model of the Mind and the Generation of Human Psychological Phenomena. Human Nature Review, Volume 3: 440-447. Full text
EPM 13:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Memills and Dissembly on accusation of "Negatively biased editing and additions lately"

This is primarily a page to describe Evolutionary Psychology, not the controversy about EP. There has been negatively biased editing and additions lately, primarily by Dissembly focusing on criticisms and, frankly, misunderstandings or mischaracterisizations of EP.

Suggestion -- move the controversy material to its own page, titled something like "Evolutionary Psychology Controversies." --Memills 18:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Adding a separate page - A page that describes evolutionary psychology without mentioning the controvery about EP would be extraordinarily biased. The fact is that there is a great deal of published criticism of evolutionary psychology by experts within the relevant fields. Your claim that my editing was "negative bias" looks to me like a violation of "assume good faith"; i have provided appropriate references to each topic covered and have added aspects of the debate that the original article simply did not mention. Dissembly 13:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I did not suggest that the controversy section be deleted from article. Rather, the controversy section is expanding to a very large section of the article -- to the point that the level and amount of detail is exceeding what is appropriate for an encyclopedia page. I have no problem with further discussion of controversies, but, if this length and level of detail is included it would be more appropriate for a brief overview on the main page, with link to a page with more detailed discussion.
Fair enough, though I am wary of "breif overviews" obscuring aspects of the debate. If you have an article that claims to be of a scientific field and fails to include much detail in its opposition (beyond politically biased statements like "Marxists hate EP"), and its an area of science that is hotly disputed, well that just screams POV.--Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Further, EP fully integrates a nature-nurture interactionist position. Many of the arguments of the critics have been based on the incorrect assumption that EP supports genetic determinism. This is a very unsophisticated critique of EP.
First of all, EP/SB critics are not (all) interactionists (and people like Lewontin and Kohn have said so explicitly), and secondly, whether or not EP truly "integrates" nature-nurture interactionism is actually a point of contention. Thirdly, and probably most relevantly to this article, EP requires genetic determinism (just not solely), and the criticisms relating to that are wholly relevant and have been brought up many times currently and in the history of the topic, ever since Wilson. --Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Dissembly, can you name one EP scholar who is not a nature-nurture interactionist?
Please re-read me; i have never claimed that EP scholars are not "nature-nurture interactionists" - i claimed that some of the critics of EP had also critisized "interactionism". Dissembly 09:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
And, you've entirely lost me on how EP "requires genetic determinism"... For example, humans clearly have an evolved adaptation to learn a language (a species specific adapatation -- a human universal),
Only if you assume it is an "adaptation" - remember, that is in dispute. Dissembly 09:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
but what language one speaks (English, Spanish, etc.) is clearly culturally learned. Some folks are interested more in studying the human universals (most EP folks), others are interested in the cultural variations (cultural anthropologists, etc). However, that doesn't necessarily make them, respectively, "genetic determinists" and "cultural determinists." With a bit of reflection, both groups understand that you have to have both nature and nurture to have anything. Can you offer an example of an exception to this? --Memills 04:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I never claimed otherwise. I think you have your own preconceived notions about what critics of EP really think. Evolutionary psychology requires some genetic determination of behavioural traits, because traits need to be open to selection (thus they need a genetic component that determines, to a fairly reasonable degree, what is expressed). I never said that it requires ONLY genetic determinism, just that it requires genetic determinism. The interactionism of EP advocates includes a beleif in genetic determination of behavioural traits - not solely genes, but genes are necessary. Thus - and this is my original point - a critique of the genetic determination (or "component", or "factor") in behavioural traits is a wholly appropriate critique of EP, and not at all "unsophisticated" as you wrote earlier. Dissembly 09:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
The great majority of the additions/edits by Assembly have been critical of EP (see the history page), and, IMO some of these edits reflect a negative bias in presentation and wording. For example, the sentence: "Animal behavior studies have long recognized the role of evolution; the application of evolutionary theory to human psychology, however, has been controversial" is not POV as Assemlby asserts (and thus has deleted the sentence twice). I've taught Animal Behavior (and Evolutionary Psychology) at the university level for a couple of decades -- the sentence is simply a fact. --Memills 23:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Memills, i've learned and studied animal behaviour and evolutionary pschology at the university level, and the sentence is not fact at all. It states that early evolutionists applied evolution to animal behaviour but not human behaviour - that is demonstrably false. (It seems to have been lifted in some general way from Pinker, whose historical analysis has been shredded by Louis Menand in the New York Review, but it does resemble things ive only ever heard proponents of EP say.) And i have not "deleted the sentence twice", i simply modified it the second time to remove the POV since you seemed so insistent on keeping the sentence. The sentence is POV because it falsely claims that nobody beleived in evolution of human behaviour until SB/EP came along, and the sentence also implies that the criticism to SB/EP is based simply upon its application to humans, something which the actual scientific criticism belies (as well as the beliefs of EP/SB critics themselves, like Lewontin and Gould, but im not here to play "Quote Wars"). It is an erroneous historical beleif which conveniently serves the purposes of one side of the argument. --Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Couldn't disagree with you more. IMO you are reading way far more into a simple sentence than it states. --Memills 04:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I beleive i am reading only what it says: a sentence can be decomposed into particular clauses and premises. Some of these are historically incorrect. The only point where i go beyond the sentence is in pointing out that the particular factual error benefits one particular POV.
I don't think it is necessary to create a separate "evolutionary psychology controversies" page - Length does not appear to be a problem. If it were, the first place to look to shorten things would be the coverage of evolutionary biology - a topic already discussed at length in it's own page. Relevance certainly is not a problem; the controversy over EP has been relevant to every aspect of it, from the public eye to the debates within the scientific literature, from the basic premises of the field to the niggly details of specific cases. Wikipedia is not a forum for re-writing history by exclusion. Dissembly 13:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Again, this is not a page about the history of the controversy about EP, it is about EP. A lengthly page about the history of the controversy would be of interest in itself, and thus deserves its own page. --Memills 23:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Accusations of "misunderstandings and mischaracterisations" - there are no mischaracterisations in the material i added. It is all entirely drawn from the words of those actually carrying out the debates. You cannot pick and choose which words of relevant scientists you like and which words you do not like, you can only present those words with regard to their proper meaning and context, try to deliver them in a way free of POV, and assume good faith on the parts of other editors, thank-you very much. Dissembly 13:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I was suggesting that the mischaracterisations are from the original authors, not Dissembly (with the exception of my comment above re editing and deletion of text). --Memills 23:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
As you said in one of your edits, "this is not a debate page". If the original authors mischaracterised things (and that is still a subject of debate) then the EP position on that should simply be folded into the criticisms themselves. If you wanted to challenge their characterisation, the appropriate forum is an essay/paper of your own making, not Wikipedia.-- Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Lots of authors, and apparently yourself, have labeled EPers as "genetic determinists" -- a label they reject, and which is substantively false. How much space should be given to this issue -- 1/5th, 1/4th, ?, of the article?
See above for the "genetic determinist" stuff. Space must be given - enough space to capture the two sides of the issue in an way that accurately represents both their views without waffling on for too long. I beleive it's pretty good right now. Dissembly 09:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why does this article have two separate Reference sections?

Unlike every other moderately refined article on Wikipedia, this article has two separate reference sections. One section is under "Controversies", and is entitled "References to rebuttals of controversies". The other is a standard Wikipedia-format Reference section, and contains a list of pro-EP and a list of anti-EP references. I have several questions regarding this:

  • Does this mean we must add in a new "References to criticism of EP" list, aside from the one already present in the standard format References section?
  • Do we then need a "References to rebuttals for rebuttals of controversies" list?
  • Having actually read some of the references on the "rebuttals" list, i note that these references are not actually meant to be lists of rebuttals, and sometimes do not even try to rebut certain criticisms - so why is this being called a "references to rebuttals" list when a title like "References to pro-EP sources" could be much less POV and completely uncontroversial?
  • Why are so many books repeated on two lists (Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate", for example)? Dissembly 13:42, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I have previously collapsed the two separate references list into a standard Wikipedia format Reference section, with two lists with completely POV-free titles along the lines of "References to pro-EP" & "references to con-EP". This has been reverted twice so far, with absolutely no discussion and explanation beyond the blanket (and anti-AGF) accusation that my edits are "biased". On the grounds that:

  • Wikipedia articles are easier to read when they have a more standard, accepted format involving a single Reference section - not two,
  • Eliminating POV,
  • Eliminating unnecessary length and the "doubling-up" of references,

I suggest that we:

  • Collapses references into a single section with no doubling-up,
  • include a list of pro-EP and a list of con-EP references.

Dissembly 13:43, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the title of the section from "Some references for rebuttals to criticisms of evolutionary psychology" to "Reading list for rebuttals to criticisms of evolutionary psychology." These references deal specifically with addressing, and rebutting, many of the EP criticisms, and IMO it is appropriate that they be included. --Memills 23:28, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Re "include a list of pro-EP and a list of con-EP references." Again, this page is primarily about EP; it is not an EP controversies page about the pro and con arguments, or the history of the controversy (which, IMO, has significantly mellowed in recent years as most everyone now concedes that humans have evolved psychological adaptations and that "nature vs. nurture" debate is a straw man -- it is always "nature/nurture interactionism.") Go ahead and create an "EP Controversies" page to review the history and current status of the debate -- I encourage it. (On a tangential note: Gould apparently mellowed to EP in his last book, with a quote (that unfortunately I don't have in front of me) that sounded very supportive of EP.) --Memills 23:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Firstly, you have not addressed the unnecessary length and the POV problems with having two special reference sections. It is not appropriate at all, i cannot see any good faith reason for even having a separate reference section in the "controversies" bit. And you certainly cannot simply leave out books which criticise EP from the EP page, reserving them for a separate page. Secondly, the debate has not mellowed, you have simply outlived one of the most public opponents of EP. That is not a mellowing. The scientific criticisms have been unresolved, and the criticism within science continues today. --Dissembly 02:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Re: "Nature/nurture" - critics of EP have criticised the "nature/nurture" characterisation as a straw-man ever since the earliest stages of the debate. ("Nature/nurture interactionism" has also been heavily critisized.) This is not some recent change in the views presented, it may reflect a change in the way the media protrays the debate, but people like Richard Lewontin criticized what they called "cultural determinists" just as much as SB/EP edvocates. The idea that there ever was a "nature/nurture" debate is a straw man largely pushed by proponents of EP/SB (whether out of ignorance, because theyve relied on people like Pinker for their history, or out of agenda, like Pinker himself, its hard to say).
(Tangentially, Gould's last book is a 1400-page reiteration of his opposition to the hyper-adaptationism he perceives in fields like EP. The only positive statement he makes on EP is in saying that (paraphrasing) "at least some of them have started to embrace non-adaptive explanations for things"; and by this he is only referring to the characterisation of mental traits as "maladaptations." He criticises research into the "EEA", and treats the terms "EEA", "Sociobiologist" and "evolutionary pschologist" with a bit of disdain. He really just repeats the idea that human cognition is not adaptive at all. It's fairly consistent with his earlier writing.) --Dissembly 02:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Again, I disagree with you substantively on virutally all of the above. (What, by the way, is Pinker's "agenda," other than a scientific quest for the truth? Does he have a hidden political agenda? Did Gould, too?)
His agenda was to show that there was a "Blank Slate" view which has since been overturned by science. it has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere.
You complain about POV, but some of the above are clearly POV statements, and, as I suggested earlier, you apparently have allowed your strongly negative POV about EP to include edits/additions/deletions that would tend to turn an introductory encyclopedic page into a debate page.
I could say the same about your strong pro-EP POV. Your bias has clearly coloured your own contributions *enormously*, but such an assertion is obvious. This is a useless line of argument.
By analogy, while a creationist might like to turn the topic of evolution into a rousing debate page, but a good intro encyclopdia page on that topic would be primarily about evolutionary theory. And, while duly noting creationist objections, the article would refer the reader out to another page that deals specifically with that controversy. A similar approach is appropriate here. --Memills 04:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Your analogy is fundamentally flawed by the fact that scientists do not agree on evolutionary psychology. A better analogy would be wether or not we include rebuttals to the transactional interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in the page on the transactional interpretation. Someone heavily biased towards the transactional interpretation might be well sevred by saying "We should have a separate page on "quantum mechanics controversies", but that wouldnt make it a valid thing to do. 130.194.13.102 05:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Creation of Evolutionary psychology controversy page

Given the strong editing disagreements above, and the length and detail of the controversies section, I have created an Evolutionary psychology controversy page, and added a link to that page. --Memills 18:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Interesting discussion above. I would agree that a mention of the EP controversy is appropriate for this article, and perhaps one that is a little more detailed than what currently exists within the new revision of the controversy section of this article. However, I also agree that a detailed article on the evolutionary psychology controversy is both appropriate and necessary. My main argument would be that both the above discussion and the previous controversies section of the EP article only scratched the surface of the evolutionary psychology debate. Criticisms come from all directions. They come from:
  1. within evolutionary psychology,
  2. from other fields of evolution and human behavior, (e.g., evolutionary developmental psychology, human behavioral ecology, and dual inheritance theory),
  3. from biology,
  4. from non-evolutionary based perspectives within main stream psychology
  5. from the social sciences, and
  6. from the humanities, (e.g., philosophy)
Thus, I personally think that the reader may be best served (for simplicity's sake) if the focus of this article described evolutionary psychology as presented by evolutionary psychologists (including controversies within the field). A brief mention of controversies from outside the field plus a link to a more detailed article of those controversies would, I think, further best serve the reader. I don't say this to violate NPOV. I just think it would be more pragmatic when considering the shear scope of the controversies in all their complexity. EPM 23:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Whatever "controversy" surfaced by Harvard Marxist Biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin in their assault on Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, etc., has been "settled" after their repudiation of Darwinian adaptionism was exposed by sociologist Ullica Segerstrale in Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), wherein, if Darwin's adaptionism is true, then Marx's critique is false. Marx's critique IS false, and Darwin's adaptionism IS true. End of what can only be charitably-described ideology efforts to subvert science. Dshsfca 17:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)dshsfcaDshsfca 17:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] History

I feel that this page would benefit from a history of evolutionary psychology section. If anyone feels up to it I think that would be a great addition.--206.188.67.28 (talk) 16:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] The environment of evolutionary adaptedness

This section contains a fallacy of extension. It argues that more Americans each year are killed by hand guns then snakes, but that PEOPLE are just as likely to be afraid of snakes as they are a pointed gun. --Redroven (talk) 03:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Issue with Tone

There is a part of the first paragraph here that seems a bit sketchy to me:

Thus, in the broadest sense, EP is the rather dramatic announcement to the world that psychology has finally "graduated" to the status of natural science (somewhat analogous to the "graduation" of alchemy to chemistry) and that the fundamental dichotomy at the heart of science between human science and natural science is now (or will soon be) at an end. With the birth of EP, there will, eventually, be needed only the umbrella term "science" to represent one fully consistent "monolith" of falsifiable knowledge. Likewise, the phrase "evolutionary psychology" is seen as merely a stopgap terminology that will end upon the full recognition that psychology is, necessarily, a biological science.

I cannot speak to how far evolutionary psychology is thought within the scientific community to be a truly "graduated" form of science, but this bit of prose here seems to indicate that the question has already been decided. Sentences like, "With the birth of EP, there will, eventually, be needed only the umbrella term "science" to represent one fully consistent "monolith" of falsifiable knowledge" seem to be taking on a tone that is not quite befitting of an article in an encyclopedia. I think it would at least be just to say that there should be some distinction between what practitioners of EP think will probably happen, not just that they will happen. Again, I am no expert, so I cannot argue the claims here, only that they are being presented in a way that makes them seem very much like polemic. Corbmobile (talk) 07:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too many external links, changes being reverted

There is a ridiculous amount of external links. Please read WP:EL and WP:LINKFARM. Also, the reverts taking place are against what not to revert. Yes, they may be interesting, but this isn't the place for them. If you like a collection of links, try a DMOZ site. That would be great for you! If you want them all to stay here, this is not the place. This is an encyclopedia; not a collection of links to websites. Also, you may want to read WP:OWN. нмŵוτнτ 15:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Well that collection of resources was carefully compiled and edited by experts in the field of Evolutionary Psychology - including many professors in the area. But I guess this is what wikipedia is all about - the voices of people who know very little about a subject but a lot about Wikipedia drowning out the experts in a field. I notice that in the process of deleting all the valuable links to external resources you added a completely innappropriate link to a non-peer reviewed opinion piece on the personal website of Dale Glaebach.Factster (talk) 18:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
(a) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; not a collection of links. I don't doubt that they were carefully compiled, and that they have meaningful content. I know that some people have different motives and ideas. However, your motives are against official Wikipedia policy. Let me summarize relevant points:
  • "Links should be restricted to the most relevant and helpful." (WP:EL)
  • "Wikipedia is [not] a repository of links." (WP:LINKFARM)
  • "Wikipedia articles are not mere collections of external links... Excessive lists... detract from the purpose of Wikipedia." (WP:LINKFARM)
(b) I did not add any links to this article. Please see the diff, and make sure to refrain from making fully inaccurate comments about other editors. нмŵוτнτ 19:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Hmwith, I am with you on the removal of the linkfarm. However, the diff that you give above, as far as I can see, does show that you added the Glaebach link. Or am I missing something? --Crusio (talk) 20:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Nope. Sometimes, it shows that one added something in a diff when he or she did not in fact do so. That link is on the left side too. Search (usually Ctrl+F) for part of the link, & view the next occurrence after the one in the right column. It will show the link was actually in the left one. It's a problem that I notice a lot w/ diffs. Look carefully, it's toward the bottom of the left (previous) column (the last link in the "A small sampling of papers and research concerning Evolutionary Psychology" section right before "Online Videos"). Trust me. =) Thanks, нмŵוτнτ 23:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
You're right. Weird! Thanks for the explanation. --Crusio (talk) 23:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
No worries. Glad that you brought that to my attention. I'm sure others would have liked clarification, as well. нмŵוτнτ 23:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] overview

The very long first paragraph in the overview makes an important point but spends about twice as much space as needed to make it. Rtdrury (talk) 05:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I also suggest rewriting it. It really does not read well. I sensed an air of "we're going to reclaim psychology's dignity among the real sciences, just you wait and see!" --Adoniscik (talk) 02:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

The two articles are each rather long. If they are merged the new article will be too long for some computers to handle. Then there will be pressure to split the article or to delete large sections of the content. Am I being paranoid? Could there be a conspiracy by opponents of evolution/evolutionary psychology to sabotage part of the articles?Barbara Shack (talk) 17:08, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Background

All fields have minor controversies. Such a statement is designed to deflect attention from the outside criticism. For all you know, I could be a published evolutionary biologist. Chet Ubetcha (talk) 18:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Controversies page should remain a separate page

The main EP page should be about EP -- what it is. Historically, anti-EP folks have previously attempted to turn the main page into a political critique of the field. And, many of them have had a very meager understanding of the field.

It is significant that those here who promote a merger complain about bias, however, none of them contribute to the content of the article itself. If they have something useful to contribute re criticisms of the field, then do so. And, then let the other side state their counterarguments. This is an excellent way for readers to assess both sides of the controversy and to arrive at their own judgments.

There is a great deal of misinformation / disinformation about EP. This page helps to list the arguments pro and con. In addition, there are those who fall into the trap of the naturalistic fallacy and/or moralistic fallacy who simply misunderstand the field, and who may have essentially political, rather than scientific motivations. Memills (talk) 06:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


Don't know where I should put this comment, but I had to balk at this line: "The application of evolutionary theory to animal behavior is uncontroversial."

This is an absurd claim! People who dispute the validity of evolutionary psychology will dispute it in all cases; making the statement in this form speaks of an enormous EP bias. That most of the arguments against EP are discussed in terms of human behaviour is a product of the usual focus of EP, not proof that EP claims in wider animal studies are undisputed!

This page absolutely needs some coverage of the controversies involved - EP is still a subject of significant scientific and philosophical dispute, and to present it otherwise is dishonest. #### —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.187.96.11 (talk) 15:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Making this NPOV and verifiable

The lead-in on this article read like an extraordinarily naive assertion of Word Domination. I'm prepared to concede that this is what some proponents may suggest but we have to be NPOV and verifiable in WikiPedia. FWIW one of the reasons it is hopelessly naive is that it suggested that biology was the science of living things in the sense of "everything scientific that can be said about living things". But on that 'defintion' biology would include all the other sciences as well, since they all apply to living things. The whole point of having different branches of science is that different problems call for different techniques and levels of discourse. The same "arguments" that "reduce" psychology to biology also reduce biology to chemistry and chemistry to physics. But no-one in their right mind would use the Dirac equation to study (say) ecology or the beating of the heart. NBeale (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Someone seems to have restored the highly POV/OR stuff about the World Domination of EP. If you are tempted to so again, please try to justify it on talk and get a consensus first. NBeale (talk) 14:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
What do you mean by "World Domination of EP"? Chet Ubetcha (talk) 11:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External links section

The massive dump of links in the EL section is not in keeping with WP:EL, so I have trimmed it back again. Please discuss links to be added on a case by case basis, and please do not blanket revert to the former version. Links should be kept to a minimum, and that section was almost as long as the rest of the page. WLU (talk) 16:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I have revised the External Links, and trimmed it back. What remains is, I believe, appropriate in length and relevance. Memills (talk) 19:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I had thought you accidentally removed the cats and navbox, sorry for the revert, I've reverted myself.
I've removed more of the link, here's why:
      • Wikis are usually not good choices for external links for a couple reasons. Generally their content duplicates wikipedia, so it's questionable why you would link to basically the same sort of information at the same level of detail. Also, most wikis are not considered reliable sources. Overriding all of this is the first item in Wikipedia:External_links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided - if the page doesn't offer anything beyond a featured article, it's not a good choice. Accordingly, encyclopedic wikis aren't good choices (as above, they do the same thing as wikipedia).
      • The 'basic textbooks' I've moved into a section I created, 'further reading' - since they're really on-line versions of books, that's more appropriate.
      • Evovoyage I removed - there's a lot of advertising and it doesn't seem near as professional the remaining links in an already fairly linked section. Per WP:EL, links should be kept to a minimum
      • SEAL was there twice, so I removed the second
      • BBS on-line, based on its description, is only partially relevant to evo; given there's already four journals, I think this one can be removed unless it's the Science of EP
      • Transactionpub.com links to the transaction main page, and not to a specific EP journal. I've commented it out, this should be a permanent link to the stable front page of the journal
      • I also reordered the journals so the fundamental-sounding ones (i.e. EP is in the title) are first. I've also adjusted the titles, wording and punctuation in all the sections to be more in line with wikipedia's manual of style and threw in a couple wikilinks. That's about it. WLU (talk) 20:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure why you removed Citizendium, yet retained Scholarpedia. Both are encyclopedic wikis, however, both are edited only by pre-qualified academics / professionals. The Citizendium entry, as of now, is close to a copy of the current page, however, I anticipate it will evolve to offer unique contributions over time (no pun intended). I'll add it back in. 68.99.124.205 (talk) 23:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Wikis duplicate the existing content and purpose of wikipedia, so there is no advantage to having them. WP:EL specifically says why include a link that adds nothing beyond the page were it a featured article. Other wikis, like other encyclopedias, will not add more because of the same level of coverage and sourcing. Therefore removed.
Regarding the further reading list, two extra links to a site already in the EL section seems excessive. Why not simply add the relevant books to the further reading section? WLU (talk) 23:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Because the reading list at the HBES website is far more extensive (and far more material than would appropriate here). Memills (talk) 06:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Links to peer reviewed wikis

As I mentioned above, I believe external links to peer-reviewed wikis, such as Scholarpedia and Citizenium, are appropriate. They give the reader access to wikis developed by academic researchers and professionals in the field, and thus may offer more authoritative introductions to the discipline. Many academics will not spend time on editing Wikipedia, while they will on more authoritatively reviewed and non-anonymous wikis. WLU -- please discuss proposed deletions of these links, and other materials, before you make wholesale deletions. Memills (talk) 06:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that such peer-reviewed wikis provide supplementary and credible information that should be linked from here. -- Mietchen (talk) 14:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting article

"Stone age solutions to depression"

[edit] lead needs real work

A mediocre lead defines the topic. A good lead describes the topic so well that it could stand alone as a concise summary, independent of the body (see wp:lead). I've been getting the lead to look more like an accessible summary and less like a definition. Leadwind (talk) 15:14, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The body of this article is really hard going. I'm a highly informed lay reader, and I get lost. The average lay reader is going to have a really hard time. I'm going to work on the lead as the most accessible part of the article. Ideally, the lead will be good enough that a reader who reads nothing but the lead will walk away with a general understanding of the topic. Leadwind (talk) 20:02, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] recent edits

A large amount of edits have been made in the last couple of hours without any discussion on the talk page, beyond the mention of the lead bit (see above). I suggest such large edits be discussed here first.Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Shut up! Let them edit. The talk page is for working out issues of disagreement, mostly. If someone wants to do good work without discussing it, I say let 'em do it. Do you have a specific problem with the recent edits? Graft | talk 04:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Now Graft, be nice. But thanks for watching my back. Dbrodbeck, if you have issues with any edits, please bring those issues up here or tag the content on the page. For my part, I'll say that this page has a lot of totally solid material but that it's a hard hard slog. The lay reader is not going to fare well on this page. I'm trying to make the whole thing more fleshed out and less technical. Leadwind (talk) 05:42, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Shut up? Anyway... I guess to me the part about white male privilege and all of that is a bit much. Those are pretty old criticisms. If you read a popular account of EP such as the Blank Slate, such ideas are confronted head on, and they rarely come up (in my experience mind you) in actual journal articles. And Graft, I am just trying to be careful, I was entirely civil (correct me if I am wrong) in my post. I have seen decent pages get really wrecked (and I should say I do not think that is what is going on here).Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Just being colorful, no offense intended; you were entirely in the right to be cautious. I think those ideas are still very much discussed, and certainly that sentiment exists amongst many mainstream biologists today regarding EP (that it's just a pseudoscientific defense of privilege). They rarely come up in journal articles because (a) EP mostly has its own venues for publishing and (b) journal articles aren't always appropriate for that sort of thing. But that criticism still happens. See, for example Adapting Minds by David Buller. Graft | talk 18:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Regardless of how one regards the controversy, it is relevant and interesting. Let's describe EP and the controversy about it really clearly for the lay reader. Leadwind (talk) 19:42, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
No worries, I see the point of putting the stuff there of course. I still say it is falling for the naturalistic fallacy, however, I always go with the consensus. Oh and sorry to have taken offense, sometimes text can be a lousy conduit for nuance, (he said from experience....) Dbrodbeck (talk) 23:11, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone keeps deleting this from the lead: "Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, and others have criticized the idea that humans have significant inborn predispositions toward various behaviors, citing culture as creating psychological differences among individuals.[1] Critics depict EP as a prejudiced attempt to misuse science in defense of race, class and gender privilege.[1]" The lead should summarize the topic. EP has been controversial. We should describe this controversy in the lead. Leadwind (talk) 18:59, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] sex selection

Is sex selection different from natural selection or a subset of natural selection? The lead treats is as different. Leadwind (talk) 19:44, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Debatable, but it's fair to treat it as different. Graft | talk 04:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Separate. Darwin's concept of "natural selection" is better labeled "survival section" which creates adaptations for survival. Sexual selection creates adaptations for reproduction. Sometimes, they are at odds. Memills (talk) 22:08, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] really old EPMs

EP deals with EPMs evolved in the EEA. What about EPMs evolved long ago, such as reacting to baby faces as cute. That's a mammalian feature, not a hominid one. Is it part of EP? What can we say about this category of EPMs on this page? Leadwind (talk) 19:47, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

  • The following citation about the concept of the EEA is from Buss, D.M. (2004). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Pearson Education, Inc.: Boston.
"The environment of evolutionary adaptedness, or EEA, refers to the statistical composite of selection pressures that occurred during an adaptation's period of evolution responsible for producing the adaptation. Stated differently, the EEA for each adaptation refers to the selection forces, or adaptive problems, that were responsible for shaping it over deep evolutionary time. The EEA for for the eye, for example, refers to the specific selection pressures that fashioned each of the components of the visual system over hundreds of millions of years. The EEA for bipedal locomotion involves selection pressures on a shorter time scale, going back roughly 4.4 million years. The key point is that the EEA does not refer to a specific time or place, but rather to the selection forces that are responsible for shaping adaptations. Therefore each adaptation has its own unique EEA. The adaptation's period of evolution refers to the time span during which it was constructed, piece by piece, until it came to characterize a universal design of the species."

If we assume that many species-typical human psychological traits can also be shared with other species as well, than what this citation seems to imply is that the Pleistocene was not the EEA of the species-typical evolution of human psychological traits, per se. What it seems to imply is that the Pleistocene was the EEA of those species-typical human psychological traits that are uniquely human. Does that make any sense? EPM (talk) 18:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Middle-level evolutionary theories

This section should be broken up into subsections, one for each bullet point. Bullet points are good for shorter lists, but each of these items is worth its own page, so they should be subsections. Leadwind (talk) 19:54, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Overview of some foundational ideas related to evolutionary psychology

I love this chart, I've added to this chart, and I hate this chart. It's good information that deserves to be preserved. It's just too big and too specific for this page. Consider the fate of the poor lay reader who tries to follow it. Is there a "history of EP" page for details like this? Leadwind (talk) 19:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] bio or psych textbook anyone?

Does anyone have a university-level textbook on biology or psychology? I'd love to get an overview that's from an RS that isn't an EP source. Or a dictionary of science? There's lots of meaty material in EP sources, but I'd like to see how EP is viewed by the sciences that it claims to bridge: bio and psych. Leadwind (talk) 05:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I have an office full of them, what do you want to know specifically? Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:38, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I can say that in general, books like Myers 'Psychology' which is a pretty standard intro book, and widely used, now has a whole chapter on genetics, evolution and behaviour, which it did not up until the 6th edition (it is in the 8th now if memory serves). Kalat's Biological Psychology does the same thing, Kolb and Wishaw in umm, damn I ought to know the title as I am using it this term.. oh yeah, 'An Introduction to Brain and Behaviour' take an evolutionary bent throughout the book. Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Specifically I'd like some overview of the controversy (or of ev psych) from a non-ev-psych and non-anti-ev-psych source. If you could summarize what any of these books says about the controversy, or about EP's controversial claims, that would help give this page something more than just presenting EP and anti-EP as two competing outlooks. For example, do these books say, "EP was controversial in the 70s and 80s, but its findings are now generally accepted in psychology"? Or do they say, "EP has always been controversial and has never generated the hard data to make it more than (possibly sexist, racist, classist) speculation"? I'm sure that the EP folks can find EP books about how great EP is, and the anti-EP folks can find books about how rotten it is. What do the neutral textbooks say? But what's the general view in the psychology? Leadwind (talk) 01:16, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
I can look when I get a chance (once the term ends perhaps, pretty busy right now...) I can say that Myers does not have any problem with EP at all.. Indeed, most of the intro books on my shelf bring it up as pretty much just another topic in psychology. (It should be noted these are standard intro books that publishers send me, not ones I ask for). Many publishers now are touting their evolutionary perspective throughout given books. As I said, I will get a better chance to get at it once the term ends in a few weeks, and when I get this damned paper done that I am writing... Dbrodbeck (talk) 03:42, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
As a start, I pulled out my old intro book from when I took intro psych, 1984. We used Glietman at the University of Western Ontario and there is no section on EP, I'll try to look into more recent books soon. Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:37, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Until we get some authoritative reference about EP's acceptance outside its own little sphere, then I think editors would agree that we need to present both sides of the controversy evenly. We might each have our own ideas about what's right, but the WP policy is to present all notable opinions. Leadwind (talk) 15:45, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] computational theory of mind

I like that new bit, though I think it needs something about modularity. What do you guys think? Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:31, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

If I understand what "modularity" means, then I think both this section and the meager computational theory of mind page need it. Leadwind (talk) 15:39, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
Modularity is the notion that basically the mind is made up of a number of specialized 'organs' that solve different types of tasks. A good introduction to this idea is either looking at Sherry and Schacter (1987) "The Evolution of Multiple Memory Systems" in Psych Review or Randy Gallistel's book "the Organization of Learning" Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
I think I get modularity, and I could try to add something to that effect. But I have a question on this topic. While humans are said to have narrow EPMs (say, reacting to a a baby's distress cry, or the baby making a distress cry in the first place), what does EP say about the general ability to learn complicated stuff, like trigonometry? In addition to EPMs, does EP recognize a harder-to-train, more general mental mechanism for learning trig, memorizing historical dates, etc? Something domain-general? Is it that there's a domain-general learning capacity, one that takes real work to train because it's not built to preform any specific function, plus EPMs? Or is it all EPMs? Leadwind (talk) 14:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
I think that we can talk about some domain general modules sure, like the geometric module for dealing with spatial relations umm, there is probably a number module, and surely a time module. With number and time you could for example do correlations of events, that sort of thing. This would allow you to learn relationships between events. (In other words, classical conditioning say, which is pretty general). Does that make sense, or am I being confusing? I just finished a 7.5 hour drive, so I may be a tad confusing... Dbrodbeck (talk) 01:46, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV dispute

Per Wikipedia:NPOV dispute, I've added the {{NPOV}} tag to this article. Based upon the POV of particular content, User:Memills and several anon accounts have been removing criticism from this article, segregating it into a very small subsection, and forking it out into Evolutionary psychology controversy, a violation of NPOV.[3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] A criticism and merge tag have also been added,[12], [13] suggesting that the information be merged into related sections per the NPOV policy. (See also: Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Article_structure) These tags have also been removed by Memills.[14], [15] Please do not remove the NPOV tag until this dispute has been solved. Reliable sources documenting criticism and controversy (for example, [16], [17]) are abundant and should be accurately represented in not only the lead section, but the entire article as necessary. Viriditas (talk) 08:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas -- The EP page should be about EP -- what it is in theory and practice, not a debate about it. The main EP page, as I have stated before, has a long history of being turned into a debate page by critics, many of whom have either a meager understanding of EP or who have a political ax to grind. The EP Controversy deserves its own page, and, I do not see this as a violation of NPOV. See the pages Biopsychiatry controversy and Evolutionary theory and the political left -- they are appropriate examples of similar controversies that have their own page, apart from the main page. If Wikipedia wishes content experts to contribute relevant information, it needs to actually encourage such contributions and the main page needs to accurately describe the field. Otherwise, controversial fields, such as EP and evolution in general, will degenerate into debates among non-experts in the field and result in a page that is a caricature of the discipline, and the experts will eschew participation. Memills (talk) 04:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Memills makes an excellent point. I concur completely. Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
The point of this NPOV dispute has not been addressed. There is a large and significant body of criticism that needs to be represented within the article in relation to the primary points of contention, and the NPOV policy is clear on this point. See also: Wikipedia:Criticism and Wikipedia:Content forking. Viriditas (talk) 13:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Hi, just to clarify the issue Viriditas brings up, shuffling off criticism to a separate article is not within the framework of Wikipedia NPOV policy which states, The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one. The policy also requires avoidance of "POV forks", wherein there is "segregation" of text or other content into different regions or subsections, based solely on the apparent POV of the content itself. Please also see Content forking. --MPerel 19:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
This dispute has been ongoing since 2006 with no resolution:
  1. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology/Archive1
  2. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#POV_tag:_Psuedo-religion_or_peer_reviewed_science.3F
  3. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Making_this_NPOV_and_verifiable
  4. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Memills_and_Dissembly_on_accusation_of_.22Negatively_biased_editing_and_additions_lately.22
  5. Talk:Evolutionary psychology controversy
Both the archived and current discussions show that the opinion Memills and Dbrodbeck continue to maintain is a minority position, and this position has been repeatedly criticized. Both editors have had ample time to fix the problem. Viriditas (talk) 22:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Memills (myself) and Dbrodbeck (both psychology professors, by the way) are not in "minority position" any more than evolutionary theory is a minority position in the evolution vs. "intelligent design" controversy. EP is a theoretical approach to psychology, rather like evolutionary theory is a theoretical approach to biology. Psychology without evolution might be described as "psychological creationism" (see "The Blank Slate" by Pinker for more re this).
The controversy against EP was mainly initiated over 30 years ago by Marxist professors at Harvard in reaction to E.O. Wilson's book "Sociobiology." However, the current consensus of opinion in psychological science, IMO, is that the evolution of psychological traits is quite relevant to the discipline, and, it has become less controversial over time, with evolutionary psychological research appearing frequently in mainstream psychological science journals. There are certainly disagreements within the field (in particular, domain specificity vs. somewhat domain generality), but most of the criticism that have appeared here are rather outdated or sophomoric (e.g., the suggestion that EP doesn't differentiate between adaptations,byproducts and random noise, the "just so story" straw man, etc.).
I suggest that Veriditas take a look at the evolution page, and see the separate page about controversies that spawns from it: Social effect of evolutionary theory. Also, as I mentioned above, see the pages Biopsychiatry controversy and Evolutionary theory and the political left. These are, IMO, appropriate pages because they focus on a controversy worthy of coverage in and of itself, and are not "POV forks" as MPerel suggests below.
Again, let me reiterate: If EP scientists don't see the Wikipedia page on EP as an accurate description of their field, and/or the page emphasizes too much non-scientific and politicized criticism, they will abandon contributing to the page, and perhaps abandon Wikipedia in general. Instead, they will redirect their attention to peer-reviewed wikis, such as Scholarpedia or Citizendium. Citizendium was created by a founder of Wikipedia who saw the need for a wiki with qualified peer review to avoid the types of edit wars found here.Memills (talk)
Memills, stop threatening me. Dbrodbeck and yourself are indeed, in the minority position when it comes to not adhering to the NPOV policy, as the links to the past discussion for the last few years demonstrate above. There is a clear consensus on Wikipedia and on the discussion page for representing significant criticism in this article. Associating those who disagree with your failure to adhere to NPOV as "creationists" and "Marxists" is way over the top and dishonest. You keep claiming that POV forks prevent edit wars, but the page history shows that the only one engaging in edit warring is you and your army of anonymous IP's. Viriditas (talk) 09:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Viriditas, I think you have gone a tad over the top with that comment. Suggestion: why don't we both step back and allow others to step in. Memills (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
A guideline on how to balance and incorporate criticism into an article can be found at Wikipedia:Criticism (as mentioned above). Specifically note this section: Creating separate articles with the sole purpose of grouping the criticisms or to elaborate individual points of criticism on a certain topic would usually be considered a POV fork. This can't be ignored and needs to be addressed in this article, this isn't really an option. --MPerel 23:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
The keyword here is "usually." As I suggested above, I don't believe that is the case here. The criticisms on the Evolutionary psychology controversy page are primarily political or philosophical -- most are not strong scientific criticisms or are criticisms that have been already adequately addressed by the discipline (for example, see these articles). Scientific controversies with strong empirical basis, I agree, should be included in the main page. For example, one area of legitimate scientific controversy is the issue of domain specificity vs. domain generality. The fact that the brain evolved, and that many psychological traits reflect this evolution, is not particularly controversial in science. Memills (talk) 05:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Cherry picking criticism of EP is not acceptable. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a work "written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide", states:

To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.[18]

Many philosophers have criticized evolutionary psychology. Most of these critics are philosophers of biology who argue that the research tradition suffers from an overly zealous form of adaptationism (Griffiths 1996; Richardson 1996; Grantham and Nichols 1999; Lloyd 1999; Richardson 2007), an untenable reductionism (Dupre 1999; Dupre 2001), a “bad empirical bet” about modules (Sterelny 1995; Sterelny and Griffiths 1999; Sterelny 2003), a fast and loose conception of fitness (Lloyd 1999; Lloyd and Feldman 2002); and most of the above and much more (Buller 2005) (Cf. Downes 2005).[6] All of these philosophers share one version or other of Buller's view: “I am unabashedly enthusiastic about efforts to apply evolutionary theory to human psychology” (2005, x).[7] But if philosophers of biology are not skeptical of the fundamental idea behind the project, as Buller's quote indicates, what are they so critical of? What is at stake are differing views about how to best characterize evolution and hence how to generate evolutionary hypotheses and how to test evolutionary hypotheses. For evolutionary psychologists, the most interesting contribution that evolutionary theory makes is the explanation of apparent design in nature or the explanation of the production of complex organs by appeal to natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists generate evolutionary hypotheses by first finding apparent design in the world, say in our psychological make up, and then presenting a selective scenario that would have led to the production of the trait that exhibits apparent design. The hypotheses evolutionary psychologists generate, given that they are usually hypotheses about our psychological capacities, are tested by standard psychological methods. Philosophers of biology challenge evolutionary psychologists on both of these points.[19]

Another worry that critics have about evolutionary psychologists' approach to hypothesis testing is that they give insufficient weight to serious alternate hypotheses that fit the relevant data. Buller dedicates several chapters of his book on evolutionary psychology to an examination of hypothesis testing and many of his criticisms center around the introduction of alternate hypotheses that do as good a job, or a better job, of accounting for the data. For example, he argues that the hypothesis of assortative mating by status does a better job of accounting for some of evolutionary psychologists' mate selection data than their preferred high status preference hypothesis. This debate hangs on how the empirical tests come out. The previous debate is more closely connected to theoretical issues in philosophy of biology.[20]

These are simple examples of the type of criticism that needs to appear in this article. Please note the dates of the critics; they are current and are not from 30 years ago as you claim above. Viriditas (talk) 09:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Viriditas, again, note that the criticisms are coming from philosophers. The above is mostly a reiteration of the "just so story" straw man. In physics the "big bang theory" or "string theory" might also be so labeled. Instead, EP engages in the same theory and hypothesis testing which is a part of normal science. Perhaps it is a bit too easy to label a theory a "just so story" if it doesn't fit well with one's philosophical, religious, or political perspective (I'm sure creationists consider both the big bag and string theories as non-scientific "just so stories").
On the Evolutionary psychology controversy page there is another quote from a philosophy reference that comes to the opposite conclusion:
The the article Discovery and Confirmation in Evolutionary Psychology (in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Psychology) Edouard Machery concludes: "Although clearly fallible, the discovery heuristics and the strategies of confirmation used by evolutionary psychologists are on a firm grounding."
Also, to see what EP researchers are actually up to, see the recent Human Behavior and Evolution Society 2008 Conference Proceedings. For free online access to some current EP research, see the online journal Evolutionary Psychology. And, for more info and links, see the website of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
Again, however, I think it would be a good idea for both Viriditas and myself to disengage and listen to some other voices. Cheers. Memills (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
"Criticisms are coming from philosophers" - most of the criticism on the controversy page is from evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and biologists. The philosophers who question the methodology of EP have been widely published and covered in reliable sources. Viriditas (talk) 12:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I am curious, when did I not adhere to the NPOV policy? I have discussed things on the talk page as is policy, I asked a question a couple of times, and got told to shut up (which it turned out, was not meant to be negative) and then agreed with a point. Please, once, point out where I did not adhere to NPOV policy. Indeed, please find an edit in my wikipedia history where I did not adhere to the policy. My position in this is that the criticisms are coming from, typically, non psychologists, and are way out of date. Indeed, they typically fall for the naturalistic fallacy, I truly take offense to the notion that I have violated any policy. Science is not philosophy, at least when they taught me how to do it Sorry, I may be rambling some, I just had (another) rather long trip. Dbrodbeck (talk) 01:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I refuse to be baited into further tangents and I will not deviate from the topic of this discussion agian. The topic is "NPOV dispute" and this concerns the repeated failure by some editors to adhere to that policy. These editors persist in forking notable, relevant criticism out of this article into a separate article against best practices. The criticism of EP is widely published and available in books, peer-reviewed journals, reliable secondary sources, and the popular media. When asked why these critics aren't in the article, Memills responds with, "because they are philosophers" or "because they are Marxists" or "because I said so". Every single relevant published work on the history of EP refers to these critics and discusses their objections in the context of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology, while the philosophers stick to criticizing methodology. I see absolutely nothing controversial about representing this criticism in the article, and that is exactly what we do on Wikipedia: as editors we portray significant POV as best we can without undue weight and in relation to the topic. I could care less what Memills thinks of their politics or whether they worship Satan or don't floss or sleep in the nude with penguin plushies. Science doesn't shirk from criticism; it actively encourages it whenever possible, and responds to it directly. The POV forking is against NPOV and needs to stop. Viriditas (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Viriditas, so you accuse Dbrodbeck of POV edits, and then you refuse to substantiate your claim when he disputes it? Yikes.
However, one thing can we agree on -- science doesn't shirk criticism. My primary concern is the non-scientific criticism that has repeatedly appeared on the main page. At times here it has been rather like astrologers invading the astronomy page, and then the astrologers scream "POV!" because the astronomers delete astrological criticisms of their field. Based on his profile and talk page, Viriditas probably knows a lot more about Hawaii than EP.
My sense of the history of the EP page is that it stabilizes for awhile, then, someone with just enough knowledge of EP to be "dangerous" comes along and pipes in: "Hey, I heard this criticism of EP..." yet they lack a foundational understanding of the science, or the fact that EP researchers have already seriously considered the criticism and found it lacking. EP would have whithered back in the 70s if the criticisms leveled against it had substantial scientific merit. Instead, the field is growing, and is becoming a foundational part of mainstream psychological science. The "bio-psycho-social" (nature-nurture interactionism) perspective has become the predominate paradigm in the field of psychological science (about that there is no controversy).
Some EP researchers have patiently, repeatedly and directly responded to criticisms, even those that are out from left field. See online articles (and, also more references on the Evolutionary psychology controversy) page:
Controversies surrounding evolutionary psychology by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5-67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Why do some people hate evolutionary psychology? by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. (Also see his Evolutionary Psychology FAQ which responds to criticisms of EP.)
Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! … and here’s why … Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181-202 [21]
Some folks apparently wish EP research to stop (no kidding). But that is not how science works. If some folks don't like a theoretical paradigm, they can perform empirical research to test competing theories, and, time will tell whether scientific consensus grows to support which paradigm in the long run. Memills (talk) 17:35, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
"Sone researchers have patiently, repeatedly and directly responded to criticisms" - You are finally starting to "get" it. Now add that information to this article in the context of each issue and we will delete the controversy page. Viriditas (talk) 00:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I think the point that Memills was trying to make, (can please correct me if I am wrong Memills) is that the criticisms have been met, many times, head on, and been found wanting. I have been doing a little bit of work looking at intro psych books recently and I find now that most of the ones on my shelf have a section on EP, indeed books such as Myers and Weiten seem to be quite proud to have these expanded sections. Many intro books now make it pretty clear that this is a life science (psychology) and studying it from an evolutionary perspective makes sense. The, shall we call them, classic criticisms are not really controversies any more. The people making the criticisms really do not know the field, and are often say philosophers or other non scientists (as has been mentioned). I have, of course, no problem with scientific criticisms, and Memills has brought up a nice one, well controversy is likely a better word than criticism. Dbrodbeck (talk) 01:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
The topic of this discussion is WP:NPOV. What we personally think about the criticisms is irrelevant; They are notable and are part of the history of evolutionary psychology. Like any encyclopedic treatment of a subject, such criticisms are covered in the main article. Inclusion is really not debatable, as the sources that cover these criticisms are reliable, peer-reviewed, and found in most books on the subject. There is really nothing left to discuss on this topic. What needs to happen next is that the most significant criticisms should be merged into the main article and the controversy fork should be deleted. Viriditas (talk) 11:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Memills asked me to jump in, so here's my perspective about this issue (I'm an evolutionary psychologist who spent quite a bit of time contributing to this page in the early days). I guess I take a middle ground. On the one hand, it's true that EP has generated a lot of controversy, and that numerous criticisms from multiple perspectives have appeared in peer-reviewed venues. If it is wikipedia's policy that a summary of such criticisms appear on the main page, then I think there is no debate that there needs to be a "Controversies" section on the main EP page. In fact, when I worked on this page we did have such a section. On the other hand, what Memills and others say is true: it seemed that everyone and their dog would add their pet peeve to the page (many criticisms appeared to be motivated by some of the politically incorrect predictions made by EP, especially predictions of some innate sex differences in mating psychology). EPs would respond to these criticisms and, as a consequence, the controversies section grew long and unwieldily. As I recollect, that's why it was eventually moved to its own page. A second, and perhaps more important, problem was that tone of the criticisms, and hence the entire EP page (at least to me, an EP), was: Yes, it's true there is a field called EP, but everyone agrees they are a bunch of kooks. For example, someone above posted the following quote: "There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise." Wow, if that's true, how is it that EPs regularly publish empirical studies in all the mainstream psychology, behavioral biology, and general science journals, including fairly regular appearances in Science and Nature? How is it that EP is "deeply flawed," yet cognitive and social psychology are not? (EP uses a specific evolutionary framework to generate hypotheses, but then tests those hypotheses using *exactly* the same methods and computational approach to the brain as most cognitive and social psychologists.) How is it that EP is "deeply flawed" yet animal behavioral biology is not? (EP uses more or less the same evolutionary framework as most animal behavioral biologists.) How is it that EP is "deeply flawed" when its novel predictions of sex differences have been upheld in what is now approaching about 60 different cultures? Is it really possible to sit in one's armchair and declare a field with numerous empirical successes "deeply flawed"? In my admittedly biased opinion, EP has had enough empirical successes to encourage those in the field to continue, yet these successes are not so overwhelming as to convince everyone else to get off the fence. So I hope that the controversies section would be written in style that correctly conveys the substance of the criticisms, yet avoids language like "deeply flawed" which leaves the general reader with the incorrect impression that EP is a fringe enterprise. --Ed Hagen (talk) 16:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There seems to be an across the board inability to understand the NPOV policy, and I suppose that's because it is unique to Wikipedia. We aren't concerned with whether the claims the critics are making are true. We are concerned with what kind of weight we give them in proportion to the topic. See WP:UNDUE. There are a number of ways to defuse this issue; the easiest way is to present a small "history section" that touches very briefly upon the major players and then spirals out to history of evolutionary psychology. This is acceptable as an objective description of the field from nascent protoscience to contemporary research. Please note: whatever criticism appears in the history of the field will also appear in relation to key concepts that are criticized in the main article, but only if it is considered important or relevant. I really do not understand the continued objections, but I'm going to chalk it up to a misunderstanding of NPOV which is unique to this website. And to clarify, I never said that we must use the exact criticism you quote above. I said that they were simple examples of the type of criticism that needs to appear in this article. There's a difference. I think we can all agree upon the types of criticism that should appear here, and we can use pro-EP sources in many (but not all) cases to support inclusion. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was used as an example; It's considered a tertiary source, and as such, is not the best fit for Wikipedia. Viriditas (talk) 16:35, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
The NPOV policy does not mean that all criticisms, regardless of their innanity, should be included. On the astonomy page, should astrological criticims be included due to NPOV policy? I am sure astrologers would think so. There is actually a "Flat Earth Society" -- would it violate NPOV to exclude them on the geology page? Of course, such criticisms are appropriately deleted immediately when they appear on these topic pages.
On a scientific topic, criticisms that are essentially non-scientific should be given little weight, or, link to a page that specifically deals with a controversy. Creationism and intelligent design have their own pages -- they are not even mentioned on the evolution page. POV violation?
I am all for deleting the Evolutionary psychology controversy page if only legitimate scientific conflicts (rather than religious, philosophical or political ones) are included on the main page. I think it is rather generous to include all sorts of criticisms on the Evolutionary psychology controversy page. Memills (talk) 19:24, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Memills: There are several debates about specific EP hypotheses that are driven by empirical results, e.g., about the best interpretation of content effects on the Wason task, sex differences in jealousy, and sex differences in mating psychology. All these are ongoing scientific debates and would certainly be appropriate for mention on the main page (assuming debate about specific EP hypotheses is deemed appropriate for the main EP page).--Ed Hagen (talk) 19:54, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I just skimmed the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on EP, and I thought that, in general, it's a pretty balanced overview of the criticisms of EP within philosophy. Yet it, too, makes some blatant errors. For example, it claimed that EP believes that humans are "no longer under selection". I just read the pages it cited in support of that assertion (Tooby and Cosmides 2005, 39-40), and the authors make no such claim. That fact that critics try to pin such absurd opinions on EP makes many of us believe that something other than logic or science is driving the criticism. In the past, when we tried to correct such criticism when it appeared on the WP page, we were admonished not to engage in debate on the page. In other words, EPs couldn't decide what EP actually claims! Instead, we were forced to allow incorrect interpretations of EP to remain. Frustrating. What is WP's policy about posting claims that, yes, do appear in peer-reviewed articles and books, yet blatantly mis-represent EP?--Ed Hagen (talk) 19:30, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. Some of the criticisms have been on the order of "As an evolutionary psychologist, when did you say you stopped beating your wife?" E.g., libelous claims that EP endorses racism, sexism, "white male privilege," etc. These should stay on the main page simply because someone made the claim, without supporting empirical evidence? Frequently re-appearing criticisms are often just egregious examples of the naturalistic fallacy, the moralistic fallacy, or straw man "wife beating" claims. Memills (talk) 22:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Ed Hagen, your question is a good one, and it is one that not only comes up again and again, but it is a question that I have tried to directly address by modifying policies and guidelines. I last attempted to confront this problem at 13:40, 19 December 2007 on WP:EVALUATE. However, as you can see in the difference between my last revision and the current version as of 02:53, 18 April 2008, significant attempts have been made to weaken, dilute and ignore solutions to the problem you describe. And if you look at the differences in the page history you will see that not only was the material removed, the proposed guideline was intentionally demoted to an "essay". So you can see that attempts to check for source bias and assessment of arguments used by sources have been actively opposed by several long-term contributors. These same editors have also managed to weaken the core policies that are supposed to prevent this problem from occurring in the first place. In short, you have hit upon a significant issue with accuracy on Wikipedia that needs to be addressed. Current policy dictates that these concerns should be covered by WP:V, but when one reads that policy, it becomes clear that the problem is ignored. So what we have is a documented effort to sweep the issue under the rug. The solution is to develop a policy/guideline at the project level of WikiProject Psychology, and move your way up, working with sister projects like WikiProject Evolutionary biology. I am willing to help you on this issue, as it is something that concerns me. Viriditas (talk) 22:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

This article is poorly written and barely covers the subject in any depth. I am recommending a complete rewrite. Viriditas (talk) 11:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The lead section is exceptionally poor. See WP:LEAD for suggestions on how to improve it. Viriditas (talk) 13:35, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

  • EP proposes that the human brain comprises many functional mechanisms,[2]
This reference is a personal website called "Psyche Games". While the information appears accurate, it would be nice to tighten up the sourcing. Viriditas (talk) 13:13, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
  • The term evolutionary psychology was probably coined by American biologist Michael Ghiselin in a 1973 article published in the journal Science.[3]
The reference goes to the primary source, not a secondary source making the claim. While this is ok for now, it's best to attribute claims to sources that make them and point to the primary source in the same note. Viriditas (talk) 13:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I am the one that claimed that this is probably where the term was coined. I don't know of any primary source for this assertion, and I don't know wikipedia's policy about making such claims without a published source. Ed Hagen (talk) 14:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
It's ok. I've already seen this claim in secondary sources, so it's no big deal. It's just a matter of time until I or someone else adds them. Viriditas (talk) 14:41, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm still looking for a source for this. Viriditas (talk) 01:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Its advocates suggest that “In the future, the study of human psychology will be completely transformed by the Darwinian approach…it won’t be called ‘Evolutionary Psychology’. It will just be called ‘psychology’".[1]
It's ironic, but this claim is attributed to a pro-EP tertiary source by philosopher Dylan Evans. The book itself is more of a tertiary source, and should probably be replaced (eventually) with secondary and primary sources. Viriditas (talk) 01:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I believe the original source is a book chapter by Tooby and Cosmides -- I don't have access to it at moment. Memills (talk) 03:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
If you think it is The Adapted Mind (1992), then we can just note that here and find it later. Viriditas (talk) 03:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite revisited

Yes, a complete rewrite. Why exclude the metapsychology and the philosophy of science a priori? ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by DRGunkle (talk • contribs) 14:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)