User talk:130.194.160.4

05:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Evo psych
Hey BON (you should register BTW, and get a free pony). I like the work you're doing on the evo psych page, but I think there are some things that might improve it, unless you want to leave this stuff for me to do (I'll be glad to if you don't want to). Most importantly, if we're going to have so many criticisms of evo psych in the article, it would be good to use something like Buller's distinction between lower-case ep and capital EP, or broad-sense and narrow-sense EP. A number of academics who consider themselves evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Atran, Sperber) have made some of the same criticisms, so I feel that it's disingenuous in some sense to level these charges against the vague notion of "evo psych." Though I can definitely understand why this is done, as the "Santa Barbara school" has crowded out more legitimate research in this field. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:53, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, I have no objection to Lewontin et al, but it's an anachronism to use a book that came out before the research program was formally instituted. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:55, 3 July 2012 (UTC)


 * hey feel free, I am happy to lay off it for a bit. I was just upset that there was so much that seemed to be straw-manning the critic's while claiming they used straw men (ironic), and it really looks like the sort of article that has suffered from wiki-edit wars in the past: for example, the way it's all back-and-forth-and-back-again, rather than set out rationally by topic. I tried to introduce more of a "Proponents say this, while critics say this" model, but i will inevitably be presenting critics in a better light just because i'm a palaeontologist and Gouldianism is my background. I am unfamiliar with Atran and Sperber, I think the article would benefit greatly if you include some discussion of them, i wouldn't be able to simply out of personal ignorance.
 * Re - Lewontin; i think many of their criticisms have held up over the years (especially for the upper-case EP, as you say, the more popular manifestations that you find through Steven Pinker et al.). I don't think it's anachronistic to use it to make a particular point (for example, to make the point that 'reification' has been raised as a problem), but really i thought of it as a kind of place-holder for including later stuff (Lewontin continues to write about it). It seems like you have some specific researchers in mind. 130.194.160.4 (talk) 06:01, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Registered. They tell me the pony is on it's way. Dissembly (talk) 06:15, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * (ec)Fair enough. I'm more sympathetic to the critics myself, though I think there are some fairly naff criticisms of capital EP as well (e.g. Rose and Rose 2000). These also annoy me because the EP partisans can cherry-pick them and then use them to dismiss all criticism. I have a cognitive science background and our guys (e.g., Chomsky, Fodor) aren't terribly fond of them either, but I think evolutionary approaches could be very useful to the field if they were done with some semblance of rigor. Atran and Sperber are coming from a cognitive anthropology perspective, and they seem to be positioning themselves as internal dissidents (any wonder they tend to be left out of the brand-name texts?). Do you know of any more recent Lewontin material on the topic? I agree with a lot of what Lewontin and Gould had to say in spirit, though I think they were prone to overplaying their hand and batting down straw men to some extent (which can be said of their opponents as well). Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:20, 3 July 2012 (UTC)