> At the base of it, evo-psych rests on the premise that for a behavior to persist, it must have a purpose. Asking what that purpose is, without ascribing a value judgement, seems like a reasonable avenue of inquiry.
This conflicts with the broader understanding of evolution in general, which treats "selection" (changes that have a purpose) and "genetic drift" (changes that have no purpose) separately.
I think the idea that evolution has a purpose and a direction is more than common enough that when someone says something like that things that evolve never lack a purpose, they've gone wrong in their understanding of evolution, even if only in subtle ways they may not be aware of themselves.
Anyways, I think the juxtaposition is funny no matter how seriously they meant it. We all want to believe that consciousness is something that can be easily defined and yet our use of aspects of it is extremely fuzzy.
> it's perfectly acceptable language to say that a cause is the "reason" for an effect, even if it's not possible to assign intent
Sure, but that's not the case here. While existing traits are selected for based on fitness (which has absolutely no meaning outside of environment, another rant), new traits (whether wrinkly fingers in one leap or in several small ones) are evolved by chance.
Evolution has no intent, no direction. Each individual trait has no reason other than, "Hey, I'll try this out!"
In a society where a good chunk doesn't even believe evolution is an accurate model, I think it's helpful to be precise with the language to minimize misunderstanding which further inhibits the idea's acceptance.
Evolutionary psychology reminds me of religious sermons. The axiomatic assumption is that everything happens for a purpose and the cause is always evolution (or God) [1], and so, if something happens it must have a purpose. All that's needed is to interpret reality to uncover it. If something good happens it's because the purpose is to reward us, and if bad something happens, it's because the purpose is to teach us. Or something. Religion, of course, is far superior, because it doesn't pretend to be science.
[1]: Nothing we know about biology in general and evolution in particular entails that assumption (except in specific circumstances where the mechanism is understood, but if the mechanism is understood the interpretation is unnecessary), hence it's axiomatic.
The main stumbling block of evolutionary psychiatry (psychology?) is that one is always in danger of coming up with ever more clever just-so stories that can never be proven or rejected by experiment but rely on who has the most compelling argument.
The author also makes a grave but subtle misstep when he says “the eye evolved to see” - the eye most decidedly DID NOT evolve to see. The eye evolved and does see but importantly evolution has no intent, it has no goal and it has no purpose. I might sound pedantic but there is an important distinction between “the eye sees” and “the eye was meant to see”.
Not all evo-psych critics are blank slate fans. Some of us just like our science to be based on repeatable experiments. The truth in evo-psych, that humans are animals that evolved in various environments, sometimes has only a tenuous connection to the claims of evo-psych. (e.g. that any particular aspect of modern life has some sort of link to some particular aspect of life on the savanna -- how could we possibly know that?)
> A whole host of so-called 'evolved behavior' is really little more than cultural norms that people have adopted and now view as natural and normal.
That sounds plausible, but we really don’t know that it’s true. It’s obviously considerably more than just culture or genes, because, among other things, mating practices and thus gene flow are culturally determined. And then there’s epigenetics and confounds.
> The whole field is highly questionable and has little real value or scientific rigor.
This is true of all of mainstream evolutionary biology. Here is an article[1] touching on that.
> It seems silly for a higher being/entity to create a central point of failure and "poor design" principals.
Perhaps, but my thinking is that such a design choice could have a significant advantage we haven't noticed yet.
> Scientific Theory means that it was well tested via the Scientific Method that is established to cast doubt
This is a central issue I have with evolutionary science in general, and neo-Dawrinism in paricular. It has become somewhat of a "cult" within the scientific community. No single evolutionary biologist wants to risk his/her career attacking a particular aspect of evolution, which is partially why ID theorists are doing most of the attacking. Another problem is that evolutionists want you to present an alternative if you do end up attacking the theory. The argument I've seen is "don't attack if you can't come up with an alternative!". But if the theory is flawed in the first place and isn't able to explain a number of important issues, why should your theory be accepted as truth?
In a nutshell, evolutionary scientists don't want the scientific method to apply to areas where evolution is weak, to avoid discrediting the theory. Remember, if evolution theory is proven to be false, Darwinists (and naturalists) won't have an alternative.
This seems like an over-application of the (valid) claim that evolution doesn’t have any specific objective. The sentence you quote doesn’t describe an objective. It only describes a necessity.
It might be an ideology of apathy if, once finding a plausible evolutionary cause for psychological phenomenon, you cease the investigation. Which you shouldn't. Shutting down a line of inquiry with criticism like this does nothing to aid our understanding either - consider the idea on its merits, as (if you will..) a pure function of its premises.
The article really do say that evolutionary biologists (here evol psychologists) don't think evolution can build a function into the brain that modifies behavior after environment...
Which should either be a straw man argument or that the journalist has garbled some serious argument.
Edit: In the last evolution article from the author, she fell over her own feet... explains a bit.
I understand that, just as I understand that there is value in religion, but that doesn't make it science. Yet evolutionary psychology poses as science. All of evolutionary psychology is "can we come up with an interesting interpretation to present quality X as adaptive?" Interesting, maybe, but not science.
Evolution doesn't have a goal or purpose, and it just doesn't make sense to say that 'Humans evolved to...' for anything. You could on the other hand say something like 'human story telling is a consequence of evolution' (though I don't agree).
This conflicts with the broader understanding of evolution in general, which treats "selection" (changes that have a purpose) and "genetic drift" (changes that have no purpose) separately.
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