Subject: [extropy-chat] Calling all EvoPsych Jedi...

From: Jeff Medina <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 15:10:02 -0400

I keep coming across professors badmouthing evolutionary psychology as
a junk field. I've read some basics, mostly Cosmides and/or Tooby, but
fail to see why it has become such a popular whipping boy.

A review of a new book arguing against EP is here:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/files/wall_street_journal_review.pdf

Anti-EPers are saying this is more solid evidence that EP is junk.

I've read the review, and all I can see it arguing against are
*specific* claims made in the context of EP and some data... based on
new data or a more sound approach to data gathering. Claims like an EP
explanation of stepfathers beating their stepchildren more frequently
than biological fathers beating their children.

If I do some crap data-gathering while trying to deduce physical laws,
that only allows a rebuttal of a particular data-based claim (say, if
I alleged c = 3.14m/s based on crappy data analysis); it doesn't
warrant calling Physics junk science.

Am I missing something here based on an insufficiently deep knowledge
of EP? Can anyone shed some light on why so many professors seem to
think EP is crap?

Thanks, folks!

-- 
Jeff Medina

Research Fellow
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies
http://www.ieet.org/

Volunteer Coordinator
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/
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From: Jef Allbright <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 13:03:32 -0700

>fail to see why it has become such a popular whipping boy.
<snip>

>of EP? Can anyone shed some light on why so many professors seem to
Jeff -

I think a large part of this results from a movement that gathered 
momentum in the humanities departments of many universities during the 
middle decades of the last century in large part as a reaction to acts 
committed in the early twentieth century and justified in the name of 
science, e.g. eugenics, the holocaust.  They strongly bought into the 
premise that the human mind is a "blank slate" and all significant 
behavioral characteristics are learned from the social environment.  
This is overly simplified, of course, but the timing and societal 
background were conducive to this kind of thinking with the rise of 
science and industry and the effects of two world wars quite fresh in 
the popular mind. Developments in anthropology such as Margaret Mead's 
_Coming of Age in Samoa_, although methodologically flawed, also played 
to the idea of a "noble savage" untainted by modern culture, and much 
later, the hippie movement and the Vietnam war deepened these roots 
within academia.

It has only been during the last 10 to 15 years, I estimate, that 
developments in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology are now 
making an impact with their explanatory power, with the accompanying 
backlash from those who based their entire academic reputation on those 
strongly felt and righteous beliefs.

- Jef