Sherlock Cumberbatch on Evolutionary Psychology 13 Jan 201214 Jan 2012 As always, click on the image to go see the entire Jonathon Rosenberg goodness Evolution Humor
Evolution Explaining religion 22 Oct 2007 I am attempting to classify the various explanations of the existence of religion, so chime in the comments. They are: Read More
Epistemology The Philosophers’ Menu 4 May 2010 The Philosophers’ Menu Presuppositions. Kantelope Assorted carnaps Pareto soup Hart-boyled eggs with a rescher of bacon Major Premises Jugged hare, with milled popper Skinnered peacocke, with nashed paretos Plato’ the Day Humeburger, with gibbard gravy Frankfurts and schauer kraut Bass van frassen [sic] Nagels and lockes Frege legs with russell… Read More
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.
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.
Thanks for your kind remarks about my book. Of course, I wasn’t blaming you for the error in the cartoon!