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3 Comments

  1. Brian Garvey Brian Garvey

    Amusing, but it shows that Holmes doesn’t understand the difference between evolutionary altruism and psychological altruism. All Watson said was ‘maybe he was *feeling* generous’, and there’s no reason that natural selection couldn’t produce tendencies to have generous feelings as long as, on the whole, those feelings led to behaviour that turned out to benefit the individual in the long run in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Plus, Holmes has ignored the possibility of altruistic tendencies arising as a by-product. So there was nothing wrong with what Watson said. So there.

    27 Jan 2012
    • John S. Wilkins John S. Wilkins

      You are of course correct (and that’s the way I taught it around 2002), but the error is Sherlock’s not mine 🙂

      However, this is an error of equivocation that is often committed by those who propound the evolutionary psychological approach.

      Like your textbook, by the way. I have recommended it to a number of students.

      27 Jan 2012
  2. Brian Garvey Brian Garvey

    Thanks for your kind remarks about my book. Of course, I wasn’t blaming you for the error in the cartoon!

    28 Jan 2012

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