Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology

[ugly_boy]

Scientific American has an interesting article up, Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies [Evolutionary] of Psychology by David Buller. He discusses what he sees as some of the basic problems with the trendy field. The four fallacies, briefly, are:

1. Analysis of Pleistocene Adaptive Problems Yields Clues to the Mind’s Design
   
2. We Know, or Can Discover,

Comments

[tormod]

Psychology was founded as a pseudoscience, based mostly on philosophy (e.g. idle speculation). Animal behavior is a scientific discipline encompassing most of the science upon which modern psychology is based

[ugly_boy]

yet scientists largely assume we are unique in every way, only to prove themselves wrong time after time

I disagree; I don't think that most modern biologists assume we are unique in every day. As someone who consumes a large amount of information on new research in science this is not my experience. The scientists I read and listen to seem to continually emphasize the similarities and where there are differences they attempt to rigorously, accurately and completely describe them. For example there are brain structures that are unique to humans. I think the scientific community recognizes the similarities between humans and animals much more than the general public. I would include psychologists, much of whose work is based on animal models.

[il_mio_gufo]

My comment comes quite tardy, still I wanted to thank you for providing a link to this article. I often would like to participate in this community, but have no clues on where to begin. So thanks for the direction.

Still, it is alot to digest there in that Scientific American article. Sorry, no well developed questions as of yet :S Though, I will be sure to get back and scribble something here :D promise.

[ugly_boy]

One thing that's nice about this community is that it's full of people with different backgrounds, beliefs, and levels of expertise in biology and psychology. It's great that people are joining in the discussion in any way they feel comfortable and willing!

That article has a lot of information and if you're not already familiar with some of the basic arguments and hypotheses of evolutionary psychology it's sort of a lot to take. I generally agree with the author but it's not an area I've really studied or read much about. I have absolutely no objection to the basic premise that human psychology evolved much the same way every other human trait did, but the problem is that it's difficult if not impossible to subject many of EP's hypotheses to the same types of studies that are common in modern psychology or biology. In this week's Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci discusses some of the problems with EP. He says that in many cases the evolutionary scenarios proposed by EP are