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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3487 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Romantic or disgusting? Passionate kissing is not a human universal.

    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.

That'd be great actually. I'd appreciate it.





caeli  ·  3487 days ago  ·  link  ·  
user-inactivated  ·  3487 days ago  ·  link  ·  

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.

user-inactivated  ·  3487 days ago  ·  link  ·  

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.