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 Schadenfreude for AiG 7 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 Schadenfreude , n. Pleasure found in the misfortunes of Answers in Genesis, who employed a pornography actor to play Adam. Well, at least it makes sense – didn’t Adam and Eve fall because they had sex? I’m sure some Baptist told me that once… Read More
Humor Funny philosophers 18 Jan 2008 It is widely understood that philosophers aren’t as a rule, intentionally funny. Partly this is because we are often old fogies whose sense of humour was formed in the early Jurassic. Mostly it’s because when you deal with the absurd professionally, you tend not to find the funny side of… Read More
General Science Expertise and ignorance 21 Mar 2008 On the one hand you have Jake Young discussing the role of expertise in public debates, concluding that maybe experts shouldn’t expect that information from knowledgeable folk will automatically influence the uneducated. On the other hand, this… 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!