Saturday, May 06, 2017

More critiques of evolutionary psychology

Coincidentally right after I wrote about Evan Marc Katz promoting evolutionary psychology and quoted PZ Myers to address the standard "critics of evo-psycho hate science" party line, Myers himself provides another useful critique of evolutionary psychology.

Myers begins:
I’ve criticized evolutionary psychology more than a few times, and usually my arguments rest on their appallingly bad understanding of the “evolutionary” part of their monicker — proponents all seem to be rank adaptationists with a cartoon understanding of evolution. But what about the “psychology” part? I’ve mentioned at least one dissection of EP by a psychologist in the past, but here’s another one, a paper by the same author, Brad Peters, that explains that evolutionary psychology is poor neurobiology and bad psychology.