Abstract
This chapter is concerned with the methodological foundations of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists have offered adaptation explanations for a wide range of human psychological characteristics. Critics, however, have argued that such endeavours are problematic because the appropriate evidence required to demonstrate adaptation is unlikely to be forthcoming. More specifically, doubts have been raised over both the methodology employed by evolutionary psychologists for studying adaptations and about the possibility of ever developing acceptably rigorous evolutionary explanations of human psychological phenomena. In this chapter, it is argued that by employing a wide range of methods for inferring adaptation and by adopting an inference to the best explanation strategy for evaluating adaptation explanations, these two doubts can be adequately addressed.
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Notes
- 1.
Although as we note later, some (e.g., Gould & Lewontin, 1979) have suggested that alternatives to natural selection are not given as much consideration as they should be in explaining phenotypic characteristics.
- 2.
We rehearse the received view of adaptation and biological function here, sometimes called the etiological account of function (Wright, 1973). However, alternative accounts have also been offered which focus instead on the dispositional features of traits as the appropriate method of identifying function (e.g., Reeve & Sherman, 1993).
- 3.
Although critics have pointed out, with some justification, that the detailed use of comparative methods and findings from the relevant paleosciences rarely figure prominently in the explanatory accounts offered by evolutionary psychologists. Moreover, the concept of the “environment of evolutionary adaptedness” has not gone without criticism (Foley, 1996).
- 4.
One important caveat to our discussion of the various methods of identifying adaptations is that some of these methods may be less relevant for identifying sexually selected traits. As Miller (2000) has vigorously and persuasively argued, many of the cognitive and behavioural traits possessed by humans and other animals may be the products of sexual selection. These traits may not be identifiable using the same set of criteria that we have outlined above. For example, we should expect a much greater degree of heritable variability in sexually selected traits and they will not obviously demonstrate design for survival.
- 5.
It should be noted here that for the theory of explanatory coherence explanatory breadth is the appropriate measure of empirical adequacy, not predictive success, as the hypothetico-deductive method would have it. We urge an expanded view of theory testing that recaptures the 19th century idea that a successful theory should, where appropriate, explain the relevant phenomena in its domain as well as being responsible for its entailments.
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Haig, B.D. (2018). How to Pursue the Adaptationist Program in Psychology. In: Method Matters in Psychology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01051-5_7
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