Ethology, Sociobiology, and Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology, Ethology, and Essentialism (Because What They Don't Know Can Hurt Us)

“…According to Tooby and Cosmides, “Domain‐specific programs [that is, modules] organize our experiences, create our inferences, inject certain recurrent concepts and motivations into our mental life, give us our passions, and provide cross‐culturally universal frames of meaning that allow us to understand the actions and intentions of others” (18). Unfortunately for NEP, this degree of cognitive modularity appears to be incompatible with current neuroscientific accounts of the development of the brain (Buller and Hardcastle ; Panksepp and Panksepp ; Griffiths , 406). The basic intuition is straightforward; it is difficult to see how mental modules can be fixed if the neural substrate in which they inhere is plastic and variable.…”

“…This brings us to the monomorphic mind thesis (Tooby and Cosmides , 82; Griffiths , 407–08), the idea that all humans share the same number and type of modules, and collectively these modules constitute a universal human nature. Strangely, though sexual reproduction is often characterized as creating variation in a population, Tooby and Cosmides credit it with not merely limiting variation but ruling it out altogether, creating a psychic unity for humankind (Tooby and Cosmides , 36–39).…”

“…In the 1970s and 80s many evolutionary psychologists abandoned ethology, pursuing what they saw as a more scientific approach that embraced the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology. These sociobiologists focused on mathematical models of inclusive fitness and population dynamics, assumed neo‐Darwinian adaptationism, and moved away from thinking of behavior in terms of Tinbergen's four interrelated causes (Burkhardt , 459–66; Griffiths , 398–99). Sociobiologists reduced questions of efficient causation to neurobiology, which was viewed as a separate field; questions of development were effectively ignored, and questions of evolution and survival value were often conflated.…”

“…Thus for a relatively small investment in time, scientists could achieve results that were highly significant by virtue of having wide explanatory scope. Moreover, because methodologically they could justify ignoring ontogeny and causation, their work was not hampered by the comparatively slow progress of these areas (Griffiths , 400).…”

“…My aim is not to deny that the evolutionary study of human and nonhuman psychology (hereafter, EP) is a serious area of scientific research. Rather, I hope to bring to the fore the limitations and unwarranted essentialism of a set of assumptions in a particular research program, sometimes identified with the moniker ‘narrow evolutionary psychology’ (hereafter NEP), that is currently influential and, though widely criticized, enjoys considerable uptake (Buller , 11–12; Griffiths , 408). My objective is (i) to understand the explanatory framework of NEP and its relation to sex essentialism; (ii) to explain why some of its results get the uptake that they do; and (iii) to identify a better approach to EP, thus showing that (iv) the continued existence of NEP in the face of criticism reflects an epistemology of ignorance.…”