Objections were raised to many of the ethnocentric assumptions of early sociobiology and to the sampling and mathematical methods used in forming conclusions. Many of the sloppier early conclusions were attacked. Sociobiologists were accused of being "super" adaptationists, believing that every aspect of morphology and behaviour must necessarily be an evolutionarily beneficial adaptation

In defense of either sociobiology or EP, writers such as Profs. Leda Cosmides & John Tooby argued that the alternative was the notion of the mind as a blank slate:

Both before and after Darwin, a common view among philosophers and scientists has been that the human mind resembles a blank slate, virtually free of content until written on by the hand of experience. [...]Over the years, the technological metaphor used to describe the structure of the human mind has been consistently updated, from blank slate to switchboard to general purpose computer, but the central tenet of these Empiricist views has remained the same. Indeed, it has become the reigning orthodoxy in mainstream anthropology, sociology, and most areas of psychology. According to this orthodoxy, all of the specific content of the human mind originally derives from the "outside" -- from the environment and the social world -- and the evolved architecture of the mind consists solely or predominantly of a small number of general purpose mechanisms [...]

According to this view, the same mechanisms are thought to govern how one acquires a language, how one learns to recognize emotional expressions, how one thinks about incest, or how one acquires ideas and attitudes about friends and reciprocity [...] The mechanisms that govern reasoning, learning, and memory are assumed to operate uniformly, according to unchanging principles [...] For this reason, they are described as content-independent or domain-general... Such mechanisms, by definition, have no pre-existing content built-in to their procedures, they are not designed to construct certain contents more readily than others, and they have no features specialized for processing particular kinds of content.
[Emphasis added-JRM]

According to Cosmides & Tooby, this is silly.

Three decades of progress and convergence in cognitive psychology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience have shown that this view of the human mind is radically defective. Evolutionary psychology provides an alternative framework that is beginning to replace it. On this view, all normal human minds reliably develop a standard collection of reasoning and regulatory circuits that are functionally specialized and, frequently, domain-specific. These circuits organize the way we interpret our experiences, inject certain recurrent concepts and motivations into our mental life, and provide universal frames of meaning that allow us to understand the actions and intentions of others. Beneath the level of surface variability, all humans share certain views and assumptions about the nature of the world and human action by virtue of these human universal reasoning circuits.

(Part 2)

SOME VERY ERRONEOUS CONCLUSIONS: As is frequently the case, opponents of mainstream biology-viz., creationists-have leaped on debates regarding evolutionary psychology (EP) in the hopes of finding evidence rejecting evolution. I just became aware, for example, of World Magazine, which published this article entitled "Darwin's Dirty Secret" (Nancy Pearcey). Ms. Pearcey writes about a book entitled A Natural History of Rape (Randy Thornhill & Craig Palmer), which claimed that rape had evolved as a natural survival strategy. My policy is to not discuss books I haven't read, but her objection to the book is that it implies that rape is natural, and therefore morally acceptable. This is a logical fallacy on her part: all criminal behavior must have originated from somewhere; Christians, for example, believe that humans are innately sinful (rather like EP does, actually!). Moreover, the mere fact that talk radio hosts and Ms. Pearcey herself draw counter-ethical inferences from a theory, does not mean the theory is untrue.

To illustrate: the notion that corruption is widespread in Nigerian society is counter-ethical. If it were widely accepted, Nigerians would presumably feel entitled to partake of opportunities to make a dishonest naira (using Ms. Pearcey's logic). Hence, Nigerian corruption is a myth. I believe Mr. Abiola Lapite would agree with me that this is flawed reasoning.

Another erroneous conclusion that I've seen bandied about lately is the one that evolutionary psychology is an integral part of the theory of evolution. It is not. Indeed, there are potentially many possible versions of EP, all of which could be rejected without doing violence to the theory of evolution. That's because the countertheory to EP is that the brain is mostly or entirely plastic. In this case, a "plastic" brain could evolve through natural selection just as a "promiscuously modular" brain would. Indeed, the plastic brain theory would imply that no behavior is hardwired, and hence that no inferences could be drawn about "natural" behavior.

Incidentally, the previous paragraph might be challenged by Profs. Leda Cosmides & John Tooby, who are commonly credited with founding the discipline of EP. In "Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer," they cite a surmise of Charles Darwin:

In the final pages of the Origin of Species, after he had presented the theory of evolution by natural selection, Darwin made a bold prediction: "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation."

SOURCES: David J Buller's homepage, including

• Amazon page for Adapting Minds (2005)
• "A Guided Tour of Evolutionary Psychology
"
• "Evolutionary Psychology, Meet Developmental Neurobiology: Against Promiscuous Modularity" (PDF; w/Valerie Gray Hardcastle). Brain and Mind, 1 (2000): 307-325.

For the mainstream EP view, see Evolutionary Psychology: an International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior.