Hi Colin, thanks for the comment. Basically my criticism here is against the entire field of evolutionary psychology. I’m certainly no expert in the sciences, but when we use the word ‘evolution,’ typically what we mean is biological evolution or evolutionary biology. In these terms, the theory of evolution is very successful in explaining biological change and function and descent and there are mountains of observable evidence to test against predictions and produce repeatable results. It’s not a perfect theory, as no scientific theory is, and there are many forms of biological evolution that conflict with each other, but we should expect nothing less. In physics you have string theory, super string theory, M theory, etc., and all of these are also imperfect, contradictory theories attempting to explain the same facts. This is how science is done and it’s a good thing.
However, evolutionary psychology, as I mentioned, has several problems. For one, I feel that it assumes a metaphysical position (materialism) and then proceeds to justify that position with the physical sciences. Once this mistaken principle of methodology is allowed, it then uses what appears to be little more than pseudoscience akin to Creation Science or Intelligent Design to cultivate theories around the observable data. For instance, an Intelligent Design advocate has already presumed that certain biological systems were created by a metaphysical, supernatural entity at some point in time within the natural order. He then attempts to use observable data to back this claim. So what he’ll do is use the fact that the eyeball is extremely advanced and appears to have some form of ‘irreducible complexity’ and then create some story the way a detective would about when and where the Creator formed the eyeball. If you present new data that conflicts with this theory then he’ll just concoct another theory that moves the goal posts back.
I think evolutionary psychologists are guilty of similar ‘just-so’ stories that they invent in an attempt to explain any and all human behavior as merely adaptive or selfish or what have you for the purpose of reducing our consciousness to their materialist ideology.
The problem is that their “theories” are unfalsifiable. They can always tell a new story to fit the data. There seems to be an explanation for everything and how could you disprove it? For example, the reason we fear snakes and spiders more than big animals like lions and tigers is because our ancestors noticed that snakes and spiders are more difficult to see and, therefore, we need to be more wary of them. However, couldn’t I also say just as easily that the reason is because snakes and spiders often carry venom and our ancestors associated these creatures with disease? How could you prove my second story is wrong and the first one is right? And what’s stopping me from creating new plausible stories to explain our phobia if new historical/observable data is discovered? Where’s the deductive science? It’s like Freudian psychoanalysis but even worse because you can’t interview the subjects since they’ve been dead for hundreds of thousand of years.
I’m sure an actual evolutionary psychologist would say that they are in fact incorporating biology and neuroscience and many other disciplines into forming their theories and that my oversimplification is ridiculous. That’s fine and I will admit that many, if not most, of our behaviors can be reduced, in part, to evolutionary adaptions. My real problem is when this discipline is used to extrapolate up to human consciousness and our behavior toward metaphysical aspects present in the mind, such as morality and truth and so on. They’re already set on the ideology that these metaphysical concepts are reducible to neurobiology or psychology and then use the broad basis of general biological evolution to assist in confirming this materialist presupposition.
Does that make sense?
