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 Sarkar slams Stein, while Kimbo kicks arse… 20 Apr 2008 Biologist and philosopher Sahotra Sarkar is combative, to say the least. When he says what he means, it can hurt physically if you are the target. I almost feel sympathy for Ben Stein… And knowing one of the principals in this comment, I had to laugh. When Kimbo says he… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design God acts in mischieveous ways 21 Apr 2010 Hot on the heels of Rush Blowhard declaring that the Iceland volcano is God’s apocalyptic response to the healthcare bill (God, it seems, is Maxwell Smart, missing the target by this much, and hitting Europe instead of the US) comes an Iranian cleric who declares that the cause of earthquakes… Read More
Epistemology Do atheists “relapse”? 31 May 2010 Carol Everhart Roper at OpEdNews has an interesting essay “Is there such a thing as an ex-atheist?” and asnwers, anecdotally, no. I tend to agree. While it is a common trope by Christians in particular that they were atheists and converted, in every case with which I am familiar, and… 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!