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
Administrative Adaptationism for and against 30 Sep 2009 My passing comment on San Marco has triggered a really interesting debate at Larry’s place. Larry thinks I think nothing can be selectively neutral, however. This is wrong. I think that things can be at the same time, selectively neutral (in that there is no real selective difference between an… Read More
Biology The relation between physics and biology 23 Jun 2009 … or, The Real Anthropic Principle… I was musing, as one does, about the relation between physics and biology. Usually we think of biology as some domain that can (or, depending on your personal position, cannot) be reduced to physics. I, on the other hand think of biology, like chemistry,… Read More
Administrative Off to the wilds of Oxfordshire 14 May 2010 So, tomorrow I fly to Oxford (well, to Heathrow, and bus to Oxford) to this conference on religion and toleration. It looks to be an interesting conference, and I am commenting on a paper by one of my favourite anthropologist/psychologists, Ara Norenzayan from UBC. It includes such luminaries as Amartya… 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!