I'm not sure that was a critique of evolutionary psychology rather than of a critique of the idea of human nature, and maybe even of psychology tout court.

Cultural practices and beliefs can simply be universal because it is the most stable form that "works". — schopenhauer1

And that would be a ...what...theory?

Nothing in humans is that automatic. There is an element of learning everywhere and throughout all human behaviors. — schopenhauer1

Interesting. This theory of yours about the human psyche...it's like there might be some field dedicated to exactly these sorts of theories... about the psyche....what elements are cultural, which evolved...

They see what they want to see in it, and provide "just so" conclusions to justify their hunches. — schopenhauer1

Do they? Is that how people think a lot of time? You're really churning them out. You could get funding for this, possibly a whole university department if you play your cards right. Just need to think of a name for it...

these conclusions gain popularity and are broadcasted widely, leading people to act upon them as if they were natural — schopenhauer1

We're going to need a journal for these. Perhaps we should put some effort into testing them, or formalising the methodology a bit... But the name...the name

Got it! Thinkology.

Naturalness Thinkology. I think it might catch on.

I take it seriously, on the basis of looking at a lot of the relevant science. I've also made many empirical observations of my own. I've been testing my intuitions on the subject for a long time. Furthermore, I make use of my understanding that we are social primates - including here on TPF. Sometimes subtly and other times not so subtly.

I'm not sure that was a critique of evolutionary psychology rather than of a critique of the idea of human nature, and maybe even of psychology tout court. — Srap Tasmaner

Psychology is too broad.. Freudian Psychology or Cognitive Psychology? A bit different. Evolutionary Psychology just seems to be something that is especially egregious of not being able to really delineate and, might never have a definitive criteria to do so. Whereas genetics and artifacts can tell us about evolutionary development to some degree of accuracy, using ourselves to tell us about ourselves, is fraught with assuming the consequent.

We're going to need a journal for these. Perhaps we should put some effort into testing them, or formalising the methodology a bit... But the name...the name — Isaac

Yeah, "formal".

I wonder if anyone has ever written on this before..oh wait:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
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Further reading
Books and book chapters
Alcock, John (2001). The Triumph of Sociobiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516335-3
Barkow, Jerome (Ed.). (2006) Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513002-7
Buller, David. (2005) Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature.
Buss, David, ed. (2005) The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. ISBN 0-471-26403-2.
Degler, C. N. (1991). In search of human nature: The decline and revival of Darwinism in American social thought. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507707-0
Ehrlich, P. & Ehrlich, A. (2008). The dominant animal: Human evolution and the environment. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Fodor, J. (2000). The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology
Fodor, J. & Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (2011). What Darwin got wrong.
Gillette, Aaron. (2007) Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230108455
Gould, S.J. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
Joseph, J. (2004). The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope. New York: Algora. (2003 United Kingdom Edition by PCCS Books)
Joseph, J. (2006). The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes. New York: Algora.
Kitcher, Philip. (1985). Vaulting Ambitions: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature. London:Cambridge.
Kohn, A. (1990) The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life
Leger, D. W., Kamil, A. C., & French, J. A. (2001). Introduction: Fear and loathing of evolutionary psychology in the social sciences. In J. A. French, A. C. Kamil, & D. W. Leger (Eds.), The Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol. 47: Evolutionary psychology and motivation, (pp. ix-xxiii). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Lewis, Jeff (2015) Media, Culture and Human Violence: From Savage Lovers to Violent Complexity, Rowman and Littlefield, London/Lanham.
Lewontin, R.C., Rose, S. & Kamin, L. (1984) Biology, Ideology and Human Nature: Not In Our Genes
Malik, K. (2002). Man, beast, and zombie: What science can and cannot tell us about human nature
McKinnon, S. (2006) Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology
Rose, H. and Rose, S. (eds.)(2000) Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology New York: Harmony Books
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.
Richards, Janet Radcliffe (2000). Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-21244-1
Sahlins, Marshall. (1976) The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology
Scher, Stephen J.; Rauscher, Frederick, eds. (2003). Evolutionary Psychology: Alternative Approaches. Kluwer.
Segerstrale, Ullica (2000). Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-286215-0
Wallace, B. (2010). Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work
Articles
Buller, D.; et al. (2000). "Evolutionary psychology, meet developmental neurobiology: Against promiscuous modularity". Brain and Mind. 1 (3): 307–25. doi:10.1023/A:1011573226794. S2CID 5664009.
Buller, D. (2005). "Evolutionary psychology: the emperor's new paradigm". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9 (6): 277–283. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.003. hdl:10843/13182. PMID 15925806. S2CID 6901180.
Confer, J. C.; Easton, J. A.; Fleischman, D. S.; Goetz, C. D.; Lewis, D. M.; Perilloux, C.; Buss, D. M. (2010). "Evolutionary Psychology: Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations" (PDF). American Psychologist. 65 (2): 110–126. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.601.8691. doi:10.1037/a0018413. PMID 20141266.
Crane-Seeber, J.; Crane, B. (2010). "Contesting essentialist theories of patriarchal relations: Evolutionary psychology and the denial of history". Journal of Men's Studies. 18 (3): 218–37. doi:10.3149/jms.1803.218. S2CID 145723615.
Davies, P. (2009). "Some evolutionary model or other: Aspirations and evidence in evolutionary psychology". Philosophical Psychology. 22 (1): 83–97. doi:10.1080/09515080802703745. S2CID 144879264.
Derksen, M. (2010). "Realism, relativism, and evolutionary psychology". Theory & Psychology. 20 (4): 467–487. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.321.8061. doi:10.1177/0959354309350245. S2CID 145505935.
Derksen, M. (2005). "Against integration: Why evolution cannot unify the social sciences". Theory and Psychology. 15 (2): 139–162. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.1027.3828. doi:10.1177/0959354305051360. S2CID 144467388.
Ehrlich, P.; Feldman, Marcus (2003). "Genes and cultures: What creates our behavioral phenome?". Current Anthropology. 44 (1): 87–107. doi:10.1086/344470. S2CID 149676604.
Fox, E.; Griggs, L.; Mouchlianitis, E. (2007). "The Detection of Fear-Relevant Stimuli: Are Guns Noticed as Quickly as Snakes?". Emotion. 7 (4): 691–696. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.691. PMC 2757724. PMID 18039035.
Franks, B. (2005). "The role of 'the environment' in cognitive and evolutionary psychology" (PDF). Philosophical Psychology. 18 (1): 59–82. doi:10.1080/09515080500085387. S2CID 144931740.
Gerrans, P. (2002). "The Theory of Mind Module in Evolutionary Psychology". Biology and Philosophy. 17 (3): 305–321. doi:10.1023/A:1020183525825. S2CID 82007006.
Looren H, de Jong H, Van der Steen W (1998). "Biological thinking in evolutionary psychology: rockbottom or quicksand?". Philosophical Psychology. 11 (2): 183–205. doi:10.1080/09515089808573255.
Lewontin, R.C. (1998) ‘The evolution of cognition: questions we will never answer’, in D. Scarborough and S. Sternberg (eds), An Invitation to Cognitive Science. Vol. 4: Methods, Models and Conceptual Issues. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 107–32.
Lipp, O.; Waters, A.; Derakshan, N.; Logies, S. (2004). "Snakes and Cats in the Flower Bed: Fast Detection Is Not Specific to Pictures of Fear-Relevant Animals". Emotion. 4 (3): 233–250. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.4.3.233. PMID 15456393.
Lloyd, E.A. (1999). "Evolutionary psychology: the burdens of proof" (PDF). Biology and Philosophy. 14 (2): 211–33. doi:10.1023/A:1006638501739. S2CID 1929648.
Machery, E. (2007). "Massive modularity and brain evolution". Philosophy of Science. 74 (5): 825–838. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.215.1961. doi:10.1086/525624. S2CID 117037111.
McKinnon, S. (2005). On Kinship and Marriage: A Critique of the Genetic and Gender Calculus of Evolutionary Psychology. In: Complexities: Beyond Nature & Nurture, McKinnon, S. & Silverman, S. (Eds); pp. 106–131.
Panksepp, J.; Moskal, J.; Panksepp, J.B.; Kroes, R. (2002). "Comparative approaches in evolutionary psychology: Molecular neuroscience meets the mind". Neuroendocrinology Letters. 23 (4): 105–115. PMID 12496741.
Panksepp, J. (2000). "The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology". Evolution and Cognition. 6 (2): 108–131.
Smith, E.A.; Borgerhoff Mulder, M.; Hill, K. (2001). "Controversies in the evolutionary social sciences: A guide to the perplexed". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 16 (3): 128–135. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(00)02077-2. PMID 11179576.
Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. & Hill, K. (2000). Evolutionary analyses of human behaviour: a commentary on Daly & Wilson. Animal Behaviour, 60, F21-F26.
Verweij, K.; et al. (2010). "A genome-wide association study of Cloninger's temperament scales: Implications for the evolutionary genetics of personality". Biological Psychology. 85 (2): 306–317. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.07.018. PMC 2963646. PMID 20691247.
Samuels, R. (1998). "Evolutionary psychology and the Massive Modularity hypothesis" (PDF). British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 49 (4): 575–602. doi:10.1093/bjps/49.4.575.
Wilson, D.S.; Dietrich, E.; et al. (2003). "On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychology". Biology and Philosophy. 18 (5): 669–682. doi:10.1023/A:1026380825208. S2CID 30891026.
Weber, Bruce H.; Scher, Steven J.; Rauscher, Frederick (2006). "Review: Re-Visioning Evolutionary Psychology". The American Journal of Psychology. 119 (1): 148–156. doi:10.2307/20445326. JSTOR 20445326.
Wood, W.; Eagly, A. H. (2002). "A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Behavior of Women and Men: Implications for the Origins of Sex Differences". Psychological Bulletin. 128 (5): 699–727. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.699. PMID 12206191.
Other documents
Stephen Jay Gould."Darwinian Fundamentalism", New York Review of Books, Volume 44, Number 10 · June 12, 1997
David Buller. "Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology" Scientific American. December 19, 2008.
David Buller. "Sex, Jealousy & Violence. A Skeptical Look at Evolutionary Psychology". Skeptic.
"Paul Ehrlich challenges Evolutionary Psychology"
John Klasios. "The evolutionary psychology of human mating: A response to Buller's critique".
Malik, Kenan. 1998. "Darwinian Fallacies". Prospects.
Schlinger Jr, Henry (1996). "Full text "How the human got his spots. A Critical Analysis of the Just So Stories of Evolutionary Psychology" (PDF). Skeptic. 4 (1): 1996. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-11-07. Retrieved 2009-06-12.
Alas Poor Evolutionary Psychology: Unfairly Accused, Unjustly Condemned. Robert Kurzban's review of the book Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology.
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2005). Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Full text
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L. & Barrett, H. C. (2005). Resolving the debate on innate ideas: Learnability constraints and the evolved interpenetration of motivational and conceptual functions. In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S. (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Content. NY: Oxford University Press.
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. (See also: his Evolutionary Psychology FAQ which responds to criticisms of evolutionary psychology.)
Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! ... and here's why ... Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181–202. [2]
Liddle, J. R.; Shackelford, T. K. (2009). "Why Evolutionary Psychology is "True." A review of Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True" (PDF). Evolutionary Psychology. 7 (2): 288–294. doi:10.1177/147470490900700211. Archived from the original on June 20, 2010.
The Never-Ending Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology: Persistent Falsehoods About Evolutionary Psychology by Gad Saad
Evolutionary Psychology Under Attack by Dan Sperber
Bryant, G. A. (2006). "On Hasty Generalization about Evolutionary Psychology". American Journal of Psychology. 19 (3): 481–487. doi:10.2307/20445354. JSTOR 20445354.
Tybur, J.M.; Miller, G.F.; Gangestad, S.W. (2007). "Testing the controversy: An empirical examination of adaptationists' attitudes toward politics and science" (PDF). Human Nature. 18 (4): 313–328. doi:10.1007/s12110-007-9024-y. PMID 26181309. S2CID 17260685.
Online videos
TED talk by Steven Pinker about his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Margaret Mead and Samoa. Review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by Mead's book "Coming of Age in Samoa."
Secrets of the Tribe Documents the conflicts between cultural and evolutionary anthropologists who have studied the Yanomamo tribes.

I've also made many empirical observations of my own. — wonderer1

Eek, that doesn't seem like good science.

Eek, that doesn't seem like good science. — schopenhauer1

No, it's not science. It's just living in the world and paying attention.

No, it's not science. It's just living in the world and paying attention. — wonderer1

Understandable, I think understanding human motivation and the human condition is valid. I do it all the time. Evo-psych basis for things is harder to prove. I can say, "We (mankind) is an insatiable creature that always is dissatisfied." That's one thing. Then I might say, "And that is due to the fact that in our past we needed this..." Probably true, but vague enough to be so general as to not be too problematic. The more specific though, the more evidence becomes necessary I would think.

@plaque flag!
@BC
@apokrisis
@Jamal
@Paine
@Janus

So what did you think of all those books and papers? --- Or, wait, was your OP a summary of your position after reading all that stuff?

Understandable, I think understanding human motivation and the human condition is valid. I do it all the time. Evo-psych basis for things is harder to prove. — schopenhauer1

Science doesn't prove things. In many cases science can provide pretty overwhelming evidence in support of a theory, but that isn't sufficient to consider a theory proven. Psych theories are certainly less accurate than theories about things which are much less complex than human beings, but that's not surprising.

I personally use psychology to tune up my intuitions about myself and other people, while taking it all with a grain of salt.

My two bobs is that it's a fascinating and fruitful field of study, alongside (paleo)anthropology, linguistics, and other disciplines. But due to the role of evolutionary biology in current culture, it's easy to read too much into it or draw conclusions from it on dubious grounds. A couple of articles in the popular media talking about that theme:

It Ain't Necessarily So, Antony Gottlieb, The New Yorker

Anything but Human, Richard Polt, NY Times

Not sure if trolling? My point is that my point isn’t some crazy outlier.

my point isn’t some crazy outlier — schopenhauer1

No of course not, but why should you care if it's an outlier? You're an anti-natalist, for chrissakes. Outlier is where you live.

Of course people have critiqued evolutionary psychology. Of course there are examples, especially I think from earlyish days when people were a little over-excited about the prospects for it, and some of that stuff is a bit cringe.

But so what? It's obviously not a stupid idea. We are what we are, and the principle science of what we are is biology, and biology is completely steeped in evolutionary theory at this point. Of course there will be insights about human beings that are shaped by our understanding of evolution. How could there not be?

(I was ever so slightly teasing you about the list because it's obviously a real mixed-bag, even to someone as ill-informed as I am. Some of what's on there is clearly going to be a defense of the ideas you were attacking. Some of it is notoriously, let's say, "motivated" attacks, not taken seriously by anyone, I think, rather like the drubbing sociobiology took mainly from stuffy humanities types. It's nothing like evidence that evopsych is a disreputable field or a field in crisis or something. Might be, but that list would have nothing to do with it.)

No of course not, but why should you care if it's an outlier? You're an anti-natalist, for chrissakes. Outlier is where you live. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes I am, and you're right, I don't care about being an outlier. However, when someone implies that something I am presenting is an outlier when it isn't, I will make that fact known. That was a specific answer to an attempt at snark by another poster.

(I was ever so slightly teasing you about the list because it's obviously a real mixed-bag, even to someone as ill-informed as I am. Some of what's on there is clearly going to be a defense of the ideas you were attacking. Some of it is notoriously, let's say, "motivated" attacks, not taken seriously by anyone, I think, rather like the drubbing sociobiology took mainly from stuffy humanities types. It's nothing like evidence that evopsych is a disreputable field or a field in crisis or something. Might be, but that list would have nothing to do with it.) — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know, that last sentence kind of contradicts what you're saying. Wikipedia isn't academic journals, but it often references them (as there are plenty in there). Anyways, I think it's fine as a discipline. However, I see it really straddling the line. It's not just a field of study. It's underlying premise is that various behaviors, some very specific ones, can be traced back to processes that are hard to prove.

It's easier to do animal evolutionary psychology. There are much easier ways to point to programming. Obviously as you move to complex social animals such as ourselves with language and strong sense of self-awareness, and conceptual cultural transmission, that becomes rapidly difficult to discern as to what is evolutionarily selected (if that is even the case), or what is cultural. There used to be an idea towards the beginning, as you were alluding to, like humans evolved a swiss-army knife module system. That seems to be out of favor.

that last sentence kind of contradicts what you're saying — schopenhauer1

I meant the list as a whole -- some of the stuff on the list might be cogent critiques that are crucial to the future development of the field or even its collapse. I wouldn't know. But some of what's on there is definitely not that, so the list as a whole is not, say, evidence that the field is disreputable or something. That's all I meant.

Anyways, I think it's fine as a discipline. However, I see it really straddling the line. It's not just a field of study. It's underlying premise is that various behaviors, some very specific ones, can be traced back to processes that are hard to prove. — schopenhauer1

Proof isn't exactly on the table anyway. I think what you're saying is that evolutionary explanations of behavior are inherently more speculative than other sorts of explanations, and I'm not sure that's true, because we have some pretty solid ideas about how evolution works, so at least the foundation is solid, even though shifting all the time. Cultures and languages also evolve, and the mechanisms are quite similar, but I think there's not much prospect of science of culture that would look much like biology. Maybe someday, but for now that appears to me at least to be beyond us.

I think the big takeaway from the last hundred and fifty years of biology and psychology is that we are not nearly so different from other animals as we used to think. We're still trying to figure out just what is and what isn't different about us, and evolutionary psychology is the obvious terrain for whatever fights we have about it.

I meant the list as a whole -- some of the stuff on the list might be cogent critiques that are crucial to the future development of the field or even its collapse. I wouldn't know. But some of what's on there is definitely not that, so the list as a whole is not, say, evidence that the field is disreputable or something. That's all I meant. — Srap Tasmaner

:ok:

we have some pretty solid ideas about how evolution works — Srap Tasmaner

Eh, evolution related to physical artifacts, and biological systems, even perhaps cognitive systems. But more complex behavior? Much more of a grey area.

Cultures and languages also evolve, and the mechanisms are quite similar — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, but that wouldn't be my argument (that culture plays a major part in behavioral phenomena).

I think the big takeaway from the last hundred and fifty years of biology and psychology is that we are not nearly so different from other animals as we used to think. We're still trying to figure out just what is and what isn't different about us, and evolutionary psychology is the obvious terrain for whatever fights we have about it. — Srap Tasmaner

Even just @Wayfarer's article makes the argument clear:

Today’s biologists tend to be cautious about labelling any trait an evolutionary adaptation—that is, one that spread through a population because it provided a reproductive advantage. It’s a concept that is easily abused, and often “invoked to resolve problems that do not exist,” the late George Williams, an influential evolutionary biologist, warned. — Anthony Gottlieb- It Ain't Necessarily So

This was no straw man. The previous year, Robert Trivers, a founder of the discipline, told Time that, “sooner or later, political science, law, economics, psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology will all be branches of sociobiology.” The sociobiologists believed that the concept of natural selection was a key that would unlock all the sciences of man, by revealing the evolutionary origins of behavior.

The dream has not died. “Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature” (Oxford), a new book by David Barash, a professor of psychology and biology at the University of Washington, Seattle, inadvertently illustrates how just-so stories about humanity remain strikingly oversold. As Barash works through the common evolutionary speculations about our sexual behavior, mental abilities, religion, and art, he shows how far we still are from knowing how to talk about the evolution of the mind. — Anthony Gottlieb- It Ain't Necessarily So

My assumption is that brains have been evolving as part of all animal bodies. Animal brains are initially shaped by genetics and the pre-natal environment of the developing fetuses, and then by experience interacting with brain tissue and more genetics.

Behavior is a product of brains. Bird brains manage the kind of singing each species (and each individual) performs. Bird brains also manage mating, nest building, egg laying, egg incubation, chick feeding, chick fledging, and so on. I don't know how birds do it all, exactly, but they do.

Animals that are closer to us than crows, like dogs, have bigger brains and have evolved to learn and do more things. You've heard of the border collie that has learned the names of about a thousand objects and can connect each object to its name. This collie also has grasped some rudiments of grammar. Dogs are uniquely able to look at us and identify what we are looking at. They can follow our gaze. Very few other animals can do that. They are good at manipulating us.

Most people don't have a problem attributing crow and dog psychology (their behavioral abilities) to evolution, What else would it be?

But then we come to our own case and suddenly the thought that our behavior might have evolved ranges from "Of course it evolved!" on over to "Evolutionary psychology is anathema!"

I'm of the former, rather than latter, view. But what does that mean?

We didn't evolve the ability to read and write. What we evolved was the ability to deploy language. Presumably we began talking early on. We talked for a long time among our small simple hunter-gatherer groups. Writing and reading came about (you know, 5K years ago) when the complexity of society developed enough that it became advantageous to capture abstract spoken concepts in abstract written symbols (like, in clay).

Learning to speak (Chinese, Arabic, Danish...) is very easy for children--all three at once, if the environment allows. That's an evolved ability. Learning to read and write the language we speak (or any other language) is difficult. Reading and writing are not evolved abilities.

We didn't evolve a preference for French Roast coffee (or some other inferior slop). What we evolved was the capacity to metabolize caffeine and feel slightly stimulated. The same goes for quite a few psychoactive chemicals.

One could go on for hours citing examples of what capacities we did not and did evolve.

The thing to avoid in thinking about evolved psychology is that we didn't evolve specific preferences -- houndstooth over plaid; vanilla over strawberry; antinatalism over pronatalism. What we evolved was the ability to prefer, and manage preferences. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Eh, evolution related to physical artifacts, and biological systems, even perhaps cognitive systems. But more complex behavior? Much more of a grey area. — schopenhauer1

Sure, but what do you take away from that?

Are we just going to do another round of the endless consciousness debate in this thread? "Science still hasn't explained it, so it's not biology." That's a crap argument. Science is hard, and it takes a long time, and people need to deal. Why is everyone so intent on second-guessing science? Why all the armchair quarterbacking? Just say thank you and let them do their work.

Everyone knows behavior is both nature and nurture; we're just working out the details. I think it's both natural and salutary for biology to push the envelope a bit because that's how you can find the limit, the point where you say, past here it must be something other than biology. If that means evolutionary psychology and sociobiology are still in the 'over promising' phase then the 'under delivering' will pull things back, probably too far, and the pendulum will keep swinging but with a shorter and shorter period. We hope. But if no one ever tests the biology-first approach, we're not going to learn much.

Are we just going to do another round of the endless consciousness debate in this thread? — Srap Tasmaner

No.

"Science still hasn't explained it, so it's not biology." That's a crap argument. Science is hard, and it takes a long time, and people need to deal. Why is everyone so intent on second-guessing science? Why all the armchair quarterbacking? Just say thank you and let them do their work. — Srap Tasmaner

But is it amenable to science is the question. That article actually covers the general problems I am presenting.

But if no one ever tests the biology-first approach, we're not going to learn much. — Srap Tasmaner

I think @BC kind of gets at it:

We didn't evolve a preference for French Roast coffee (or some other inferior slop). What we evolved was the capacity to metabolize caffeine and feel slightly stimulated. The same goes for quite a few psychoactive chemicals.

One could go on for hours citing examples of what capacities we did not and did evolve.

The thing to avoid in thinking about evolved psychology is that we didn't evolve specific preferences -- houndstooth over plaid; vanilla over strawberry; antinatalism over pronatalism. What we evolved was the ability to prefer, and manage preferences. Etc. Etc. Etc. — BC

If the scope is not delineated properly, it becomes absurd. The article again brings up the point:

A study of attitudes toward casual sex, based on surveys in forty-eight countries, by David Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois, found that the differences between the sexes varied widely, and shrank in places where women had more freedom. The sexes never quite converged, though: Schmitt found persistent differences, and thinks those are best explained as evolutionary adaptations. But he admits that his findings have limited value, because they rely entirely on self-reports, which are notoriously unreliable about sex, and did not examine a true cross-section of humanity. All of his respondents were from modern nation-states—there were no hunter-gatherers, or people from other small-scale societies—and most were college students.

Indeed, the guilty secret of psychology and of behavioral economics is that their experiments and surveys are conducted almost entirely with people from Western, industrialized countries, mostly of college age, and very often students of psychology at colleges in the United States. This is particularly unfortunate for evolutionary psychologists, who are trying to find universal features of our species. American college kids, whatever their charms, are a laughable proxy for Homo sapiens. The relatively few experiments conducted in non-Western cultures suggest that the minds of American students are highly unusual in many respects, including their spatial cognition, responses to optical illusions, styles of reasoning, coöperative behavior, ideas of fairness, and risk-taking strategies. Joseph Henrich and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia concluded recently that U.S. college kids are “one of the worst subpopulations one could study” when it comes to generalizing about human psychology. Their main appeal to evolutionary psychologists is that they’re readily available. Man’s closest relatives are all long extinct; breeding experiments on humans aren’t allowed (they would take far too long, anyway); and the mental life of our ancestors left few fossils. — Gottlieb

Most people don't have a problem attributing crow and dog psychology (their behavioral abilities) to evolution, What else would it be? — BC

I think it goes back to what I said in the here:

It's easier to do animal evolutionary psychology. There are much easier ways to point to programming. Obviously as you move to complex social animals such as ourselves with language and strong sense of self-awareness, and conceptual cultural transmission, that becomes rapidly difficult to discern as to what is evolutionarily selected (if that is even the case), or what is cultural. There used to be an idea towards the beginning, as you were alluding to, like humans evolved a swiss-army knife module system. That seems to be out of favor. — schopenhauer1

But yes, I agree with your points about language. That is certainly something in our hardwiring. How and why it is selected for is a mystery, but there are many theories- everything from Chomsky's "all at once for internal dialogue" to better tool-use and social coordination, etc. It's hard to know the causes versus the effects. But if we can't even figure out language, the more modular behaviors would be near impossible, and even so, how would it be attributed to biology versus culture?

The biggest pitfalls is that humans simply live out the tropes that the evopych puts out. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

strong sense of self-awareness — schopenhauer1

conceptual cultural transmission — schopenhauer1

Probably evolved capacities.

Are we just going to do another round of the endless consciousness debate in this thread? — Srap Tasmaner

No. — schopenhauer1

But is it [ human behavior? ] amenable to science is the question. — schopenhauer1

But that is exactly the endless debate about consciousness here.

Probably evolved capacities. — BC

Sure, possibly exaptations that were then coopted as adaptations. But this is so general that it really doesn't touch the realm of evopsych.

Neurobiological research does not support the assumption by evolutionary psychologists that higher-level systems in the neocortex responsible for complex functions are massively modular.[23][24] Peters (2013) cites neurological research showing that higher-order neocortical areas can become functionally specialized by way of synaptic plasticity and the experience-dependent changes that take place at the synapse during learning and memory. As a result of experience and learning processes the developed brain can look modular although it is not necessarily innately modular.[23] However, Klasios (2014) responds to Peters' critique.[25] — Criticism of Evolutionary Psychology Wiki

Noam Chomsky argued:

"You find that people cooperate, you say, 'Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.' You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that's obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."[43][44] — Chomsky

Steve Stewart-Williams argues, in response to claims that evolutionary psychology hypotheses are unfalsifiable, that such claims are logically incoherent. Stewart-Williams argues that if evolutionary psychology hypotheses can't be falsified, then neither could competing explanations, because if alternative explanations (e.g. sociocultural hypotheses) were proven true, this would automatically falsify the competing evolutionary psychology hypothesis, so for competing explanations to be true, then evolutionary psychology hypothesis must be false and thus falsifiable.[48] — Wiki

But is it [ human behavior? ] amenable to science is the question.
— schopenhauer1

But that is exactly the endless debate about consciousness here. — Srap Tasmaner

The exact nature of the evolved traits (what its origins are), and its attributions. See my post above:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/823047

As @Srap Tasmaner has already said, the vast majority of those sources are from within evolutionary psychology - the first citation is Henry Plotkin, for Christ's sake!

I don't even like evolutionary psychology that much, but I like less lazy hack jobs that purport to take down an entire field of investigation because you've had a bit of think about it and reached your own conclusions (in that exact field no less) without having done a shred of research beyond a misunderstanding of a Wikipedia article.

It seems your beef with evolutionary psychology amounts to little more than that it reaches conclusions that "don't seem right" to you. Well put your big boy boots on, read the material and engage with the criticism.

Noam Chomsky argued:

"You find that people cooperate, you say, 'Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.' You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that's obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."[43][44]
— Chomsky — schopenhauer1

So you look deeper and learn about how our closest living relatives live in relatively small cooperative bands in territories bordering on the territories of other small bands of chimps, and while there is cooperation within a band there is 'murderous' hostility towards chimps from neighboring bands. Then you look at the way humans behave.

Us and Them

I don't even like evolutionary psychology that much, but I like less lazy hack jobs that purport to take down an entire field of investigation because you've had a bit of think about it and reached your own conclusions (in that exact field no less) without having done a shred of research beyond a misunderstanding of a Wikipedia article.

It seems your beef with evolutionary psychology amounts to little more than that it reaches conclusions that "don't seem right" to you. Well put your big boy boots on, read the material and engage with the criticism. — Isaac

I am you trolling nitwit. Read my other posts. If you want to make an argument instead of troll me then do so. Otherwise, you’re a hack of a hack. An internet troll who knows how to be condescending. Congrats, you passed “Internet 101”.

Sorry if I'm treading old ground, just wanted to share my view:

Evolutionary psychology conceptually is perfectly fine. The general idea that we have psychological features that were developed in response to environmental pressures, like any other features we have, makes perfect intuitive sense.

But beyond the general idea of it, it seems very speculative, and it seems inherently so - I don't see a path out of the speculation for most hypotheses in the evo-psych realm.

I think that pretty much sums up what I think of evo psych - the basic tenet of it is pretty much obviously true, but any specific hypothesis is probably untestable, unverifiable, unsatisfiable.