[FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Frank Wimberly]

Nick,

Is it possible that "behavioral patterns" is similar to what I called
"dominant themes of motivation" when Glen suggested that I was over
discretizing.

Frank

----
Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Feb 21, 2018 11:42 PM, "Nick Thompson" <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Glen and Steve,
>
> The reason that I am not answering is not that good points aren't being
> made, but that I am in the midst of a writing project and it's not going
> well, which means that I am carrying blocks of ill organized text around in
> my head like so many 747's just after the  air traffic control system went
> down.  If I stop to think about anything else, I am afraid they will all
> crash.
>
> I am inclined to share Steve's view that behavior is where the rubber
> meets the road, and so to agree that talk of the evolution of behavior
> makes sense.  Let me risk one thought.  Let's imagine that (as I believe)
> that testosterone is an aggression hormone.  It's effect on the nervous
> system is, other things being equal, to make a person a tad more assertive
> in all domains of action.  Let it be the case that a little more
> assertiveness in all domains leads to reproductive success.  The nature
> will be selecting not for the individual behaviors but for the "style" of
> behaving.  Now, I call a style of behaving, a behavior, or a behavior
> pattern, or a meta-behavior, or a behavioral design.  What have you.  So
> talk of selecting for behavior doesn't bother me.  I am not quite sure what
> "selecting for testosterone" would mean.  When it comes to evolution,
> behavior functions, physiology mediates.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 2:40 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?
>
> Glen -
> > OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these
> vague behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably
> well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory
> power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not
> have?
> A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so?
> >
> > One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales
> like Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing
> our rhetoric.
> while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to
> persuade others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it
> further.   On one end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably
> accurate, sometimes some people simply want to be "right" or "believed"
> (or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may
> simply want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of
> expanding a search space?
> >  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science
> popularizers walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something
> *more*?
> Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again, on
> the opposite end of the spectrum I think "guided speculation" has a value
> when combined/juxtaposed with more rigorous/formal methods for
> *validating* insights found during the wider ranging speculations? Where
> does intuition come from?  It would seem to find a good launching pad on
> the foundation of good formalized, quantifiable work, but it also would
> seem to be fed well by more qualitative and perhaps even verging on
> "whimsical" considerations?
> >
> > Re: thread pollution --
> > I don't think it's a big deal.  The forum is asynchronous.  Anyone can
> read or not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any time.  It was
> easier, I'll admit, when the archives worked.
> I wasn't necessarily thinking of this as pollution (or any kind of
> problem)... but rather speciation...  more on the exploration theme? It was
> a conjunction with my nod to Nick's original (early) appeal to those of us
> with higher bandwidths to somehow keep him in the loop as (even if?) we
> might explore (more) widely than he was seeking.
>
>
>
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