In his book “Human nature and the Limits of Science” John Dupré devoted several chapters to the discussion of Evolutionary Psychology (EP). In this book, he offers an overview of EP´s argument and a number of objections. He considers that EP intends to distinguish itself from sociobiology (its predecessor) by being more attentive to empirical information about human behaviour and by providing greater clarity as to what is actually involved in the evolution of behaviour.
In Chapter 2 of his book, Dupré offers an overview of EP. He believes that EP begins with some familiar and uncontroversial ideas, for example: 1.- The way to understand human behaviour is to understand the structure of human brains. 2.- The structure of human brains can be understood by considering the genes or the genetic programmes that guide the development of the brains. 3.- The explanation of humans having a particular genetic programme is to be sought in reflection on the process of evolution by natural selection.
Dupré also tells us that EP propounds a specific Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA). Since “recent history is far too short to produce significant changes in the human genome”, EP believes that “to explain why we have the genes we do we must resort to the long tracts of time during which humans were developing their distinctive genetic endowments, and more specifically, the characteristically hypertrophied cerebral cortices that distinguish them more strikingly from their nearest relatives”. This period would be “the million or so years preceding modern recorded history”, that is, the late Stone Age or Pleistocene.
The first critique from Dupré comes in relation to which kind of the evidence EP offers against its hypotheses:
EP proposes a vision of mind as compounded by a large number of psychological modules, each designed to address a particular adaptive problem posed by EEA. But, Dupré observes that the “the existence of such modules does not entail that organisms possessing them will produce the behaviour they were designed to generate” because there are specific circumstances that may affect the behaviour produced by the module or because the modules could interact with each other, suppressing certain outputs.
In conclusion, the argument does not require that any particular behaviour should be observed and so it is “unclear what would actually constitute evidence for the modules postulated by EP, and extremely unclear what could constitute evidence against them”.
Dupré also offers a number of other objections but we will discuss them later, in future posts. Meanwhile, what do you think of this objection from Dupré? Do you think that this critique could invalidate EP findings? What could be the philosophical implications of holding a theory of human mind and behaviour that does not offer any kind of “expected output” as way to corroborate its hypothetical explanations?
All comments are welcomed!
Cheers! EMS
