That's a pretty good article, but not all that surprising. There are very few human universals. Our culture goes a long way to affect not only how we interpret the world around us, but also how we interact with each other. If in some parts of the world something as simple as touching someone on the top of the head or touching someone with your feet is considered extremely rude, I can see how kissing can be viewed differently as well.
Evolutionary Psychology (which is not a science, by the way) has made several such claims. Including the idea there is a universal standard for human attractiveness. None of these claims are actually supported by data. Yet somehow people believe them.
Huh. I don't think I've ever heard that term. After looking it up though on Wikipedia, the concept sounds plausible. Is there a reason why it's "not a science"? Because I've heard people say that about sociology and anthropology as well, yet I feel like both of those have their place.Evolutionary Psychology
Hmm. I can see only the most basic of social behaviors being genetically encoded, such as paying attention to the cry of a baby that is not yours. Maybe they're taking something that works on a very basic scale and are trying to cast too broad of a net with it.The basis of the field is that not only traits but certain social factors are also genetically encoded.
The big problem with evolutionary psychology is that it's basically made up of "just-so" stories. That is, most of evolutionary psychology's theories look plausible on the surface, but we have absolutely no evidence for them. Coming up with a plausible explanation for a phenomenon is like step 1 or science - you need to do extensive experimental research after that, but it's pretty hard to do experimental evolutionary psychology for obvious reasons. So all of these plausible sounding stories could be right or wrong but we have no real way to know. Here's a good blog post on the issue. There's a series of papers arguing for and against evo psych that I think appeared in Salon as well, I'll see if I can find them.
Found 'em!! Gottlieb's original article against evo psych, a review of a pop evo psych book Jabr's response, arguing for evo psych Gottlieb's response to the response, against evo psych EDIT: accidentally mislabeled the authors' positions, fixed now. Also added original article
Hmm. Okay. Those were interesting criticisms and a bit of a half hearted defense, I'll say that. They're good philosophical arguments on the subject. But they don't really answer what I'm wondering though. What about "Evolutionary Psychology" makes it fall short as a science? Do they not hold up to scientific rigor? Are the results from performed experiments difficult to reproduce? Is the collected data too vague and easily open to different interpretations? This isn't a criticism on you, caeli, but more of a wondering how exactly it's a bunch of quackery.
I'm putting this as a place holder. It might be a while for me to reply. I'm still reading the first article. I do have to say though, I do like this statement . . .In theory, if you did manage to trace how the brain was shaped by natural selection, you might shed some light on how the mind works. But you don’t have to know about the evolution of an organ in order to understand it. The heart is just as much a product of evolution as the brain, yet William Harvey figured out how it works two centuries before natural selection was discovered.