Is adaptationist reasoning reliable in evolutionary psychology?

[Cyborg31]

Is Epistemology a science?

Seems kinda similar... took an Intro Philosophy course before and a lot of it is about AIs, Turing Test, etc. and whether they can think or not. Lots of mentions of Computer Scientists, Cognitive Scientists, Neurologists, Behaviourists/Psychologists.

 

[Dale]

Is Epistemology a science?

Seems kinda similar... took an Intro Philosophy course before and a lot of it is about AIs, Turing Test, etc. and whether they can think or not. Lots of mentions of Computer Scientists, Cognitive Scientists, Neurologists, Behaviourists/Psychologists.

Epistemology is not a science, it is a philosophy. The tenents of epistemology are not derived tested or validated empirically using the scientific method. However, epistemology can give you great insight into the value and limitations of the scientific method as a method of obtaining knowledge.

 

[Cincinnatus]

Sociobiology, and its offspring of evolutionary psychology would seem to classify as science, unless you are part of the Marxist establishment of radical scientists.

I don't think Gould/Lewontin etc argue that evolutionary psychology is not science in the sense of attempting to make use of the scientific method, produce falsifiable hypotheses etc.

Rather, they argue that it isn't good science. Perhaps, "rigorous" is a better word. I don't know of any work in evolutionary psychology that doesn't amount to a priori reasoning about a few post hoc selected empirical facts. Of the sort: "Men sometimes rape women", --> "they must have a powerful reason for doing so or they would not so often risk their livelihoods to do so" --> "this must be an inborn urge toward rape" --> "rape must have been somehow adaptive in human history" --> etc. cf. Thornhill and Palmer's Natural History of Rape.

Actually Gould's point involves more than just skepticism of particular evolutionary psychology theses. He generally distrusted the use of adaptationist reasoning in reconstructing the evolutionary timeline. The thought is that since we cannot tell by looking at any particular trait whether it is a spandrel or not, then we should never make the assumption that any particular trait was adaptive as evolutionary psychologists do.

Actually, Moridin and I discussed this issue in another thread a while ago. Since then I've done some more reading about the topic. I think that the fundamental difference between the adaptationist position and Gould's position is a question of what they think the theory of evolution is supposed to explain.

For a proponent of evolutionary psychology, the theory of evolution explains the fact that the organisms we see alive in the world today are extraordinarily well adapted to their environments. So it makes sense to look at a trait today and explain how it is or was adaptive and thereby reconstruct the evolutionary timeline.

Whereas for someone of Gould's school of thought, the theory of evolution primarily explains the extraordinary diversity of life. Gould accepts that a large part of evolution happens for reasons other than natural selection of the most adapted organism. The best example being the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs certainly didn't die because they were unadapted to their environment, they died because they happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong moment in history. When emphasizing selection events that do not follow "survival of the fittest" like the meteor, it makes little sense to look at an adaptation present today and reason backwards to it's origin as evolutionary psychologists do.