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Rethinking Evolutionary Psychology This page intentionally left blank Rethinking Evolutionary Psychology Andrew Goldfinch London School of Economics, UK © Andrew Goldfinch 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–44290–1 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Evolutionary Psychology as a Paradigm 9 1.0 Introduction 9 1.1 Natural Selection and Adaptation 11 1.2 The Possibility of Psychological Adaptations 14 1.3 Empirical Adaptationism 17 1.4 Inference from Empirical Adaptationism to Massive Modularity 18 1.5 Methodological Adaptationism 19 1.6 Metatheory for Psychology 24 1.7 Public Policy Agenda 25 1.8 Conclusion 26 2 Subverting the Paradigm 29 2.0 Introduction 29 2.1 Levels of Selection 32 2.2 Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness 38 2.3 Behavioural Flexibility 48 2.4 Developmental Complexity and Robustness 52 2.5 Psychological Adaptations as Modules 56 2.6 The Failure to Infer Massive Modularity from Empirical Adaptationism 60 2.7 Methodological Objections 62 2.8 Metatheory or Marketing? 72 2.9 Policy and Popularisation Dangers 75 2.10 Conclusion 78 3 Evolutionary Psychology and Novel Predictions 81 3.0 Introduction 81 3.1 Heuristics in Science 83 3.2 Heuristics in Evolutionary Psychology 87 3.3 The Two Research Strategies in Tandem 99 3.4 Heuristics for Identifying Adaptive Problems 103 3.5 Heuristics for Identifying Adaptive Solutions 109 v vi Contents 3.6 Testing Predictions 113 3.7 Methodological Challenges Revisited 115 3.8 Conclusion 130 4 Reframing Evolutionary Psychology as a Heuristic Programme 132 4.0 Introduction 132 4.1 Streamlining Evolutionary Psychology 133 4.2 The Challenge of Adaptationist Explanation Revisited 143 4.3 Evolutionary Psychology in the Evolutionary and Behavioural Sciences 147 4.4 Conclusion 163 5 Restructuring the Debate 166 5.0 Introduction 166 5.1 Focusing on Explanation: The Fundamental Interpretative Mistake 167 5.2 Towards a Streamlined Evolutionary Psychology 178 5.3 A New Subversion 185 5.4 The Need for Evolutionary Psychology as a Heuristic Project 192 5.5 Conclusion 196 Conclusions 198 References 203 Index 217 Acknowledgements Roman Frigg is owed a great debt of gratitude. As Director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, Roman was the first to suggest that I write a book on my conceptualisation of evolutionary psychology. He kindly looked at multiple drafts, providing much encouragement during the writing process. Without his initial suggestion and unfailing support, this book might not have been written. My thanks also to the commissioning and editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan, especially to Brendan George, Senior Commissioning Editor (Philosophy), and Esme Chapman, Assistant Editor (Philosophy), who have been thoroughly supportive of this project right from the start. Finally, my deepest thanks to my family, for their patience, their encouragement and their support throughout this endeavour. vii This page intentionally left blank Introduction What today we call ‘evolutionary psychology’ was pioneered by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides in the early 1990s and was subsequently devel- oped and popularised by Steven Pinker, David Buss and Jerome Barkow among others. To its champions, evolutionary psychology is not just another research programme in the behavioural sciences: it is a revolu- tionary paradigm of the behavioural sciences. Evolutionary psychology is typically understood in terms of strong commitments: to particular views about evolution, to a particular view about the mind, as being an explana- tory project, as being a metatheory for psychology in particular and for the behavioural sciences more broadly. Evolutionary psychologists claim to have shed new light on our psychology and to be working towards making visible the hidden processes of the mind. Evolutionary psychologists have also claimed that those insights have important public policy implications. Great claims make for great controversy. And this has not been in short supply. Evolutionary psychology is unceasingly subject to a fire- storm of criticism and controversy from both philosophers and social scientists. Articles and books carry the titles ‘Pop Sociobiology Reborn’ (Kitcher and Vickers, 2003), ‘Perverse Engineering’ (Haufe, 2008), Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won’t Work (Wallace, 2010), and ‘The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology’ (Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000). If these titles are insufficient to convey the flavour of the sceptical viewpoint, one might cite the closing of Richardson (2007: 183): evolutionary psychology is to be dismissed as ‘idle Darwinizing’. Buller (2005: 481) dismisses evolutionary psychology as being ‘wrong in almost every detail’. And Hamilton (2008: 105; not to be confused with W. D. Hamilton) is on particularly dramatic form: ‘evolutionary psychology is empirically unwarranted and conceptually incoherent to such an extent that it is a matter of professional sociological concern why it 1