How do you transcribe "cultural artifact" into "evolved trait"? Aren't they conceptually opposing ideas?

I don't think so. Culture evolves, doesn't it? Evolutionary psychology and related disciplines make use of an evolutionary perspective. And more to the point, one of the consequences of evolutionary theory, generally, is that everything about h. sapiens is ultimately a product of evolution. Isn't it? If not, why?

Desires are natural inclinations — Harry Hindu

I won't ask how you came to this conclusion.

I don't think so. Culture evolves, doesn't it? Evolutionary psychology and related disciplines make use of an evolutionary perspective. And more to the point, one of the consequences of evolutionary theory, generally, is that everything about h. sapiens is ultimately a product of evolution. Isn't it? If not, why? — Wayfarer

So it is your position that as soon as I say that the theory of evolution by natural selection is a good descriptive theory, everything else I ever say means "according to evolution...(add what I said)"? I also believe in the explanatory power of Quantum Mechanics. Why aren't you busting on me for saying that the search for meaning is a result of QM? Because in a normal discussion, people understand that these are theoretical frameworks, proposed to be usefully descriptive about a specific subject matter, not overarching ideologies (even if they have broad implications). You want to criticize evolutionary psychology? Sounds good to me. I'm skeptical that the field isn't much more than unfalsifiable conjecture. But for the love of whatever you find holy, surely you can see a difference between the conceptual framework of biological evolution through natural selection and cultural history? They're two distinct and exclusive ways of framing an issue.

surely you can see a difference between the conceptual framework of biological evolution through natural selection and cultural history? They're two distinct and exclusive ways of framing an issue. — Reformed Nihilist

Sure! Then it's no longer an implication of evolution.

Sure! Then it's no longer an implication of evolution. — Wayfarer

Right. That's what I said. I feel as though you mean that ironically for some reason, as if thinking everything should be "an implication of evolution", because I think evolution is a good theory for the explanation of biological diversity.

Irony, like jokes, doesn't survive explanation. Strange that it evolved, really.

Right. That's what I said. I feel as though you mean that ironically for some reason, as if thinking everything should be "an implication of evolution", because I think evolution is a good theory for the explanation of biological diversity. — Reformed Nihilist

...which includes the diverse ways in which minds work and adapt (learn) to the environment, hence evolutionary psychology's new and powerful explanatory power. I don't see how someone can go on about the explanatory power of biological diversity, which includes how the brain evolved, yet say evolutionary psychology is just a bunch of conjecture.

yet say evolutionary psychology is just a bunch of conjecture. — Harry Hindu

I haven't concluded it just a bunch of conjecture, it's just an impression I have (admittedly an underinformed impression). I'm just not sure how evolutionary psychology is falsifiable. If it's not, then doesn't that make calling it conjecture fair?

Evolution is a truth. Truth doesn't imply good/bad. I think that's the gist of all philosophy. Seeking wisdom, things good and true, is futile for that very reason.

Evolution is a truth — TheMadFool

Evolution consists of numerous claims not just one truth. The truth might be "some form of evolution has happened". A lot of claims recieve validity because they come under the banner of evolution. That is a problem because it has led to some pernicious claims.

Truths can be good or bad.

Cancer is a bad truth. Winning the lottery is a good truth.

I have said elsewhere that discovering evolution would be like a cow discovering she was heading for the slaughterhouse. I don't see why any new piece of information or theory should have no implications but rather the reverse. Evolution narratives certainly undermine some religious claims especially in Christianity.
For instance when I was growing up I seemed to have an underlying sense of hope. God was supposed to be watching over me and had a plan for me etc. Cruelty in nature and human cruelty was attributed (incoherently) to the fall of man. I was badly bullied in school and Bad behavior towards me confirmed this picture somewhat. I could cope with human fallibility etc.

Now your left with the terrible behaviour and no purpose or divine protection or hope. It is harder to explain what happened to me without the excuse of this tale of fallen nature. Also things that seemed benevolent like creating a family now seem futile and purposeless and not a pinnacle of Gods plans. It's like religion is just anther narrative justifying human conduct.

Evolution is a truth. — TheMadFool

I would put it slightly differently.

I would say (as the Daoists believe) that everything seems to be constantly changing (evolving) because we (our intelligence and memory) is constantly experimenting and learning. But, I leave open the possibility that somewhere in the life/death cycle there is a pause (rest).

So there seems to be duality and cycles.

Genes don't even care about their survival. They don't even possess knowledge. Genes just do what they do. We can have many reasons for doing the things we do, but it all narrows down to survival in the natural and social environment. We can either possess the knowledge for the reasons we do the things we do, or delude ourselves into thinking that the things we do and what we are are really "special" to the point that scientific theories can never explain them. — Harry Hindu

Here's what Dawkins says in "The Selfish Gene"

"What is the selfish gene? It is not just one single physical bit of DNA Just as in the primeval soup, it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world. If we allow ourselves the licence of talking about genes as if they had conscious aims, always reassuring ourselves that we could translate our sloppy language back into respectable terms if we wanted to, we can ask the question, what is a single selfish gene trying to do? It is trying to get more numerous in the gene pool."

I don't think you can translate purposeful language back to mechnical language in the way he wants to.

Also I don't think evolution is at all sufficient to explain being human because our fundamental feature is we have a rich consciousness that has not being explained by science and any theory of our psychology is defunct in my opinion unless we explain consciousness.

Psychological Theories are already confounded because of the private nature of consciousness and mental states making them inaccessible. Also even without consciousness the mind is the most complex thing to explain because humans have a wide range of mental faculties whose definition is controversial and a huge range of causal influences and competing psychological models and perspectives etc

That is a problem because it has led to some pernicious claims — Andrew4Handel

Which truth has escaped from this predicament. Even religion, the pinnacle of goodness, has pernicious consequences. Look at the news. That said, I agree that evolution is demoralizing, to say the least.

Truths can be good or bad. — Andrew4Handel

Agreed but truth is not obliged to make us happy. That's what I mean and perhaps better expressed in true phrases like ''bitter truth'', ''sweet lies'', etc.

Now your left with the terrible behaviour and no purpose or divine protection or hope. — Andrew4Handel

Please read above.

Also, it'd help to understand that science is just a POV. It tends to transform our worldview, giving it a materialistic flavor and there's no room for spirituality or religion. However, science has, say, a 500 year history and despite ''progress'' I think it still has a blindspot where possibilities multiply. I think scientific knowledge is filtered through peer review and we have access to only knowledge that has been confirmed. There's a sort of confirmation bias in this because journals only publish hits and not the misses. If we take the trouble to do some research it's not long before we find a lot of imperfections in science. At its best, science is an approximation.

It is difficult to test any theory of evolution by natural selection. The process can take thousands of years (conservatively) to play out, but this isn't a limit on the science, but by our own finite lives and in trying to understand a process that takes thousands to millions of years to play out.

It just seems to me that it would be contradictory to say that natural forces that have a hand in molding the biological shapes and behaviors don't have a hand in shaping our brains and therefore our mental functions. The brain, after all, is intimately integrated with the body through it's massive network of nerves. The shapes and sizes of brains should account for the diversity of behaviors that we see in animals.

There are many videos on Youtube and books on the subject that are enlightening. You should inform yourself.
You can start here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

"What is the selfish gene? It is not just one single physical bit of DNA Just as in the primeval soup, it is all replicas of a particular bit of DNA, distributed throughout the world. If we allow ourselves the licence of talking about genes as if they had conscious aims, always reassuring ourselves that we could translate our sloppy language back into respectable terms if we wanted to, we can ask the question, what is a single selfish gene trying to do? It is trying to get more numerous in the gene pool."

I don't think you can translate purposeful language back to mechnical language in the way he wants to. — Andrew4Handel

Genes don't try to do anything. They don't have a mind with a goal that they then try to achieve. They simply function as a result of causal forces driving them forward.

Also I don't think evolution is at all sufficient to explain being human because our fundamental feature is we have a rich consciousness that has not being explained by science and any theory of our psychology is defunct in my opinion unless we explain consciousness.

Psychological Theories are already confounded because of the private nature of consciousness and mental states making them inaccessible. Also even without consciousness the mind is the most complex thing to explain because humans have a wide range of mental faculties whose definition is controversial and a huge range of causal influences and competing psychological models and perspectives etc — Andrew4Handel

I think evolution by natural selection is the best theory we have. Sure the mind is a difficult thing to explain, but it seems to me that science has a much better track record in it's short history compared to religious and philosophical explanations. Give it time and don't be afraid to read books and watch videos on the subject, as I posted above in my response to Reformed Nihilist.

I think evolution by natural selection is the best theory we have. Sure the mind is a difficult thing to explain, but it seems to me that science has a much better track record in it's short history compared to religious and philosophical explanations. Give it time and don't be afraid to read books and watch videos on the subject, as I posted above in my response to Reformed Nihilist. — Harry Hindu

I have a degree in philosophy and psychology and I have had to read a lot of on the Philosophy of mind. I had to read Dennett's "Consciousness explained" I am well versed in the major issues in consciousness. The problems for explaining mental states are not comparable to other problems science has solved. (including the privacy of mental states making them only first person accessible/ semantics et al)

Dennett is a consciousness eliminativist (which frankly is a ridiculous position) symptomatic of materialist trends that rather than trying to explain mental states honestly are keen to deflate the threat they pose to the materialist perspective. Studying philosophy of mind had a big impact on my opinions. It is not a minor topic and it is clear our only access to reality is through consciousness so it is a fundamental issue to understanding reality and not a trivial fact.

I believe explaing things in their own terms and not subsuming them under an ideology.

You are aware that there are more options than just Dennett's, right? Ever heard of the attention schema theory of consciousness?

It should be obvious that the body influences the mind and the mind influences the body. How is it that natural selection only influences the body and not the mind as well?

You are aware that there are more options than just Dennett's, right? Ever heard of the attention schema theory of consciousness? — Harry Hindu

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Graziano

"Since 2010 Graziano's lab has studied the brain basis of consciousness. Graziano[42][43] proposed that specialized machinery in the brain computes the feature of awareness and attributes it to other people in a social context. The same machinery, in that hypothesis, also attributes the feature of awareness to oneself. Damage to that machinery disrupts one's own awareness.

The attention schema theory (AST) seeks to explain how an information-processing machine could act the way people do, insisting it has consciousness, describing consciousness in the ways that we do, and claiming that it has an inner magic that transcends mere information-processing, even though it does not."

All that is being done here is assigning all human qualities to the brain and making the brain anthropomorphic. It explains nothing about how quantum magically becomes human. Ditto for assigning all human qualities to some quantum matter and calling it "natural". To paraphrase Evolution theory, everything happens because it it's natural and if doesn't happen it is because it is unnatural. In this regard, I believe religion is way ahead of science in at least coming up with a decent story. All they do is create sn anthropomorphic God but to all possible limits. They are at least up front about it.

I'm not suggesting that evolution wouldn't, in principle, apply to psychology. I'm under the impression that in practice, the field of evolutionary psychology is largely conjectural, and there's little to be had between two alternate explanations of a given psychological trait. Is that not the case?

Regarding keeping myself educated, it's all about prioritizing, right? Apart from educating myself for direct personal or professional gain, the rest is just following my nose. I pretty much look into whatever seems interesting to me at the time. At the moment, evolutionary psychology doesn't make that cut. Maybe that'll change.

I'm not suggesting that evolution wouldn't, in principle, apply to psychology. I'm under the impression that in practice, the field of evolutionary psychology is largely conjectural, and there's little to be had between two alternate explanations of a given psychological trait. Is that not the case? — Reformed Nihilist

The field explores the problems our ancestors had to solve and the mental processes and functions that would solve them and how that explains our current condition.

If you're asking the questions, then it seems that you ate interested and would probably garner more information if you didn't take my word for it, but rather get it straight from the scientists in the field.

Regarding keeping myself educated, it's all about prioritizing, right? Apart from educating myself for direct personal or professional gain, the rest is just following my nose. I pretty much look into whatever seems interesting to me at the time. At the moment, evolutionary psychology doesn't make that cut. Maybe that'll change. — Reformed Nihilist

Well, I consider explaining the reasons we think the way we do and behave the way we do quite important. The unexamined life isn't worth living.

An underlying issue in all this, is the degree to which the theory of evolution can be said to account for human attributes and capabilities, including language and and rational thought, and all the many things that arise from that, including art, drama, philosophy, religion, and many other fields.

The theory of natural selection is first and foremost a biological theory which was intended to account for the origin of species. I don't think it's feasible to doubt the basic facts of evolutionary history, which have been so thoroughly documented with reference to the fossil record, geology, paleontology, and so on.

But many of the conflicts over the implications of evolution, revolve around questions of what these facts mean. I think the issues of biological reductionism arise when it is declared that this means that the above human attributes can be understood solely through the perspective of the biological sciences. It has been declared, for example, by one of the founders of that discipline, that 'sooner or later, political science, law, economics, psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology will all be branches of sociobiology.' Daniel Dennett, as has been discussed, believes that everything about human nature can be understood in terms of organic chemistry, and that thought, agency, and indeed the mind itself, is basically an illusion. This is why Dennett is quite happy to admit that humans are 'moist robots' (from a Dilbert cartoon) and that minds and computers are not essentially different.

There's a cultural blind spot around this issue, and the debates coming out of it, which is far more subtle and far-reaching than simply 'creationism vs science'. Basically to question the Darwinian/biological/reductionist model is to be categorised as some form of creationist, even if you think creationism is completely bogus. So if you're a 'scientific thinker', then you are supposed to accept the 'biologism' of the day, which is just as much a form of fundamentalism as it's opposite.

The field explores the problems our ancestors had to solve and the mental processes and functions that would solve them and how that explains our current condition. — Harry Hindu

Yes I understand what the field covers. That doesn't really answer my question.

If you're asking the questions, then it seems that you ate interested and would probably garner more information if you didn't take my word for it, but rather get it straight from the scientists in the field. — Harry Hindu

Only if you assume that the answer is that the field is more than conjecture. My impression is based on the opinion of a science communicator that I generally find to be well balanced and sensible.That doesn't mean he's right, but it does give me an indication that maybe it's not worth putting at the top of my list, unless I see other reasons to do so.

Well, I consider explaining the reasons we think the way we do and behave the way we do quite important. The unexamined life isn't worth living. — Harry Hindu

I am actually more interested in what the ways we think (and specifically decide) are, rather than the historical causes for these ways of thinking. If I thought that there was a reliable method for determining the causal history of our thinking and decision making processes, I might be interested. I'm just skeptical that such a thing exists.

I am actually more interested in what the ways we think (and specifically decide) are, rather than the historical causes for these ways of thinking. — Reformed Nihilist

The ways we think are a result of the environmental (natural and social) problems our ancestors faced and needed to solve. We haven't changed much since, which is part of the problems we have in the environment we find ourselves in now.

If you aren't willing to expand your knowledge, then your loss, not mine.

The ways we think are a result of the environmental (natural and social) problems our ancestors faced and needed to solve. We haven't changed much since, which is part of the problems we have in the environment we find ourselves in now.

Acutally they're not. Firstly, problems faced are not passed down genetically; knowledge can't be isolated or transferred that simply. And Punctuated Equilibrium would break down that connection anyway since we don't evolve in a progressive timeline.

Secondly, much of our way we think is irrationally and rationally derived from our socio-cultural surroundings, of which the transfer cannot be isolated or traced.

It should be obvious that the body influences the mind and the mind influences the body. How is it that natural selection only influences the body and not the mind as well? — Harry Hindu

The problem is not the mind body relationship but how mind comes to exist at all. Our minds are full of a huge range of things including awareness of bodies but also a large vocabulary and a wide range of memories and knowledge and much more.

The thing is we have have a wide knowledge of the brain,neurons and neurotransmitters and of physics and biology but none of that predicts the emergence of consciousness so there is a large explanatory gap.Defining consciousness is controversial as well.

It has been a classic trick to manipulate people with ideas and paradigms that are semi plausible so that large groups of people conform to the latest ideas. People Followed Victorian ideas, religious ideas, social darwinist ideas and fascist ideas and so on. So telling people "this is what you are" or this is what society is a way of prompting behaviour. How are we supposed to act on evolutionary and evolutionary psychology claims?

I am a gay antinatalist so is that going to be reduced to some natural selection tale? I am always skeptical and I don't see myself being coerced to believe anything (as an adult) as if driving by unconscious natural forces.

Huge numbers of species go extinct so it is not as though there is a natural force that demands life must go on at all costs. There is a huge range of species with different behaviours you can select for your model of man. People select species whose behaviour they want us to "ape". Religious people cite animals when its in their interest (such as for models of relationships and childrearing hitting children).

It is all a bit arbitrary.

Acutally they're not. Firstly, problems faced are not passed down genetically; knowledge can't be isolated or transferred that simply. And Punctuated Equilibrium would break down that connection anyway since we don't evolve in a progressive timeline. — Thanatos Sand

No. Problems aren't passed down, but their solutions are.

Secondly, much of our way we think is irrationally and rationally derived from our socio-cultural surroundings, of which the transfer cannot be isolated or traced. — Thanatos Sand

The socio-cultural surroundings is basically our environment that we find ourselves in. A concrete jungle filled with thousands of other human beings is just another type of natural environment. We are products of natural causes, just like every other species. Other species have different social environments. To say that theirs is natural and ours isn't is to reject the basic tenet of evolution by natural selection - that we are natural animals that fill our own environmental niche.

Only if you assume that the answer is that the field is more than conjecture. — Reformed Nihilist

Yet you participate in a philosophy forum which is nothing but conjecture, yet I don't see you making that argument.

Acutally they're not. Firstly, problems faced are not passed down genetically; knowledge can't be isolated or transferred that simply. And Punctuated Equilibrium would break down that connection anyway since we don't evolve in a progressive timeline.
— Thanatos Sand
No. Problems aren't passed down, but their solutions are.

No, solutions aren't passed down genetically. Not only are actual final solutions immensely rare, they are not passed down through our genes.

Secondly, much of our way we think is irrationally and rationally derived from our socio-cultural surroundings, of which the transfer cannot be isolated or traced.
— Thanatos Sand
The socio-cultural surroundings is basically our environment that we find ourselves in. A concrete jungle filled with thousands of other human beings is just another type of natural environment. We are products of natural causes, just like every other species. Other species have different social environments. To say that theirs is natural and ours isn't is to reject the basic tenet of evolution by natural selection - that we are natural animals that fill our own environmental niche.

No, we are more than the product of natural causes. We are also the products of ideologies that have no direct correspondent to natural causes. And I never said it wasn't natural; you incorrectly said I did. And either way, those causes and ideologies give us information our genes do not.