creators_name: Krellenstein, Marc type: preprint datestamp: 2001-12-02 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:51 metadata_visibility: show title: What have we learned from evolutionary psychology? subjects: evol-psy subjects: phil-ethics subjects: phil-mind full_text_status: public keywords: evolutionary pscyhology, origin of ethics, consciousness, free will, origin of the universe, gender differences, existentialism abstract: Evolutionary psychology claims biological inclinations for certain behaviors (e.g., a desire for more frequent sex and more sexual partners by males as compared to females), and the origin of these inclinations in natural selection. Jerry Fodor’s recent book, The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way (2000), grants the nativist case for such biological grounding but disputes the presumed certainty of its origin in natural selection. Nevertheless, there is today a consensus that at least some of the claims of evolutionary psychology are true, and their broad appeal suggests that many see them as easy insights into and possible license for some controversial behaviors. Evolutionary psychologists, on the other hand, caution that an origin in natural selection implies only an inclination for certain behaviors, and not that the behaviors will be true of all people, will lead to happiness or are morally correct. But such cautions can be as facile as the simplistic positions they are intended to counter. A biological basis implies tendencies to behaviors that will be pleasurable when engaged in, and that can be modified to an extent and at a psychic cost that is, at best, not fully understood. Also, while it is true that naturally selected behaviors are not necessarily moral, the implications of current evolutionary psychology cast doubt on any absolute foundation for morality at all, as well as suggesting limits on our ability to fully understand both ourselves and the universe around us. However, this does not mean that our (relative) values or apparent free will are any less real or important for us. date: 2001-04 date_type: published refereed: FALSE referencetext: Barth, J. (1988). The Floating Opera and The End of the Road . New York: Doubleday. (Original work published 1956) Chalmers, D. (1995). Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200-219. Dennett, D. (1984). Elbow Room. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Farrelly, B. & Farrelly, P. (Directors). (1998). There's Something About Mary [Film]. 20th Century Fox. Fodor, J. (1983), The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Fodor, J. (1998, January 15). The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism. London Review of Books, 20(2). http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20n02/fodo2002.html (visited 2001, 22 April) Fodor, J. (2000). The Mind Doesn't Work That Way. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Gould, S.J. (1997, June 12). Darwinian Fundamentalism. The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?19970612034F (visited 2001, 22 April) Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books. Jones, S. (1997, November 6). The Set Within the Skull. The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?19971106013R (visited 2001, 22 April) Katz, L. (Editor). (2000). Evolutionary Origins of Morality [Special issue]. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7(1-2). Krellenstein, M. (1995). Unsolvable Problems, Visual Imagery and Explanatory Satisfaction. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 16, 235-253. Libet, B., Freeman A. & Sutherland, K. (Editors). (1999). The Volitional Brain: Toward a Neuroscience of Free Will [Special issue]. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(8-9). McGinn, C. (1989). Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem? Mind, 391, 349-366. Miller, G.F. (1998). How Mate Choice Shaped Human Nature: A Review of Sexual Selection and Human Evolution. In C. Crawford and D. Krebs (Editors), Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 87-129. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nozick, R. (1981). Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Wilson, E. (1998). Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations [G.E.M. Anscombe, Trans.]. New York: Macmillan. Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness, Trans.]. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1921) Wright, R. (1994). The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Random House. citation: Krellenstein, Marc (2001) What have we learned from evolutionary psychology? [Preprint] document_url: http://cogprints.org/1954/1/cogprints.txt