What do they study
- Study of traits shaped by natural selection
- No formal distinction from evolutionary biology
- Example psychological traits/behaviors: jealousy, homicide, male promiscuity
- What was its evolutionary function of jealousy? (studied by Bus)
- Mate-guarding behavior. If you spend lots of resources/time on offspring, you want to make sure they’re yours.
- Observed in primates standing in front of their mates and chasing off all other suitors
- How to validate this hypothesis?
- There are two claims to be tested empircally :
- The existance of jealous mental states caused people to leave more offspring
- Those offspring inherited the tendency to have jealous mental states
- There are two claims to be tested empircally :
Criticism
Couldn’t you just make up a narrative for any trait?
- It is fair to accuse EP of making ‘just so’ plausible stories.
- Though unfair to say there is anything wrong with that, even if it can be used to justify any conclusion.
- Hypotheses (in general) have this feature as well.
- We could’ve come up with a hypothesis for why the sky is black.
- EP has been unfairly criticized for ‘just so’ stories when they are widespread in science.
- However need to be careful to resist seduction of hearing a ‘just so’ story and think that the hypothesis is confirmed.
- Admits that EP are more likely to succumb to this seduction over other fields
- The narrative ought just the beginning of a research programme to verify it.
Difficulties of research
- Can’t do tests on humans (ethical reasons, lifespan too long to measure reproductive success)
- Mental states do not leave fossils
- Need to make claims about proto-humans.
Relevance to philosophy
- There is tendancy of (moral/political/mind) philosphers to bring in evolution as a skyhook for their theories
- It’s not usually a core argument, but it’s used as support
- They usually not good support because EP is almost never empirical
- Furthermore, lots of evidence of evolutionary selected features that are
selected for ‘arbitrary’ reasons, unrelated to flourishing
- E.g. female preferring mate to have a particular spot pattern/chirp just
due to ‘how they’re wired’ / randomness - So evolutionary fitness of a moral trait is not a good supporting argument by itself
- E.g. female preferring mate to have a particular spot pattern/chirp just