Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.
Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.
Evolutionary psychology is as scientific as phrenology.
That is rather unwarranted given its still an active field and is the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour.
This is not true. Ethology is the general study of animal behavior. Evolutionary Psychology is specific to human behavior and is not the only approach to studying it either. Sociobiology an example of a less criticized field studying human behavior based on evolution.
Most of the field focuses on primates because, unsurprisingly, that’s where we find most of psychology. It is wrong to say it has nothing to do with animals.
And botany is the study of plants? Every field in biology overlaps with evolution.
That’s not a challenge to the premise of evopsych. If anything it sort of supports it.
It was in response to your claim that Evolutionary Psychology is the “the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour.” If you want to make that claim you need to support it with some kind of reference.
Well it doesn’t refute that.
Well ok, perhaps “only accepted explanation” was claiming too much given that a large proportion of the population believe in souls or pure blank-slatism for human behavior.
For the non-human animals though, it certainly isn’t controversial to say evolution is the only explanation for the origin of behaviour. What else could it be?
there’s a lot to unpack here. firstly, there is more to human behavior than genetics/evolution, hence nature vs nurture. in other words our human experience determines our behavior in addition to genetics.
Secondly, that’s not the only claim or assumption of Evolutionary Psychology. There is lots of other stuff besides that statement that is controversial at best.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
Careful you almost misquoted me there
It’s a jolly good thing I was talking about non-human animals then.
It’s a common fallacy to suppose that because an behavioural adaption has a genetic basis that therefore having the genes determines the behaviour.
https://areomagazine.com/2019/08/20/seven-key-misconceptions-about-evolutionary-psychology/
Misconception #3 in the above.
Evolutionary Psychologists make claims, some of which yes are clearly lacking in explanatory power, evidence and predictions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
Yes I’m familiar with Wikipedia, if I’m just going to be talking to a search engine here I’m not terribly invested in continuing.