Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.
Steven Pinker explains the cognitive biases we all suffer from and how they can short-circuit rational thinking and lead us into believing stupid things. Skip to 12:15 to bypass the preamble.
Well it doesn’t refute that.
Well ok, perhaps “only accepted explanation” was claiming too much given that a large proportion of the population believe in souls or pure blank-slatism for human behavior.
For the non-human animals though, it certainly isn’t controversial to say evolution is the only explanation for the origin of behaviour. What else could it be?
there’s a lot to unpack here. firstly, there is more to human behavior than genetics/evolution, hence nature vs nurture. in other words our human experience determines our behavior in addition to genetics.
Secondly, that’s not the only claim or assumption of Evolutionary Psychology. There is lots of other stuff besides that statement that is controversial at best.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
Careful you almost misquoted me there
It’s a jolly good thing I was talking about non-human animals then.
It’s a common fallacy to suppose that because an behavioural adaption has a genetic basis that therefore having the genes determines the behaviour.
https://areomagazine.com/2019/08/20/seven-key-misconceptions-about-evolutionary-psychology/
Misconception #3 in the above.
Evolutionary Psychologists make claims, some of which yes are clearly lacking in explanatory power, evidence and predictions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
Yes I’m familiar with Wikipedia, if I’m just going to be talking to a search engine here I’m not terribly invested in continuing.