Adaptationism as an Integrating Meta-Theory in Psychology

In Gregg Henriquesh's response to Jesse Marczyk's reply to Gregg's critique of evolutionary psychology (EP), Gregg ignores many of Jesse's substantive replies—he simply repeats his own arguments.

To wit, Gregg makes the following comments:

" ...the founders (of EP) over-committed to an emphasis on evolved domain specificity in a way that was unnecessarily defined against traditional learning and cultural perspectives."

However, Jesse's reply to this objection is correct. Look more closely at something that appears "domain general" and you will find domain specificity. A computer looks pretty domain general, until you open the case and see the many components. "Traditional learning and cultural perspectives" did not appreciate this underlying specificity, or how/why it evolved, and the implications it has for understanding human behavior.

" ...(EP has) failed to offer an effective definition of psychology."

To the contrary, EP has offered the best definition of psychology so far: behavioral capacities are evolved adaptations that were designed by natural and sexual selection to generally increase an individual's inclusive fitness in ancestral environments. Why do organisms behave at all? Non-EP perspectives don't have a clue. There are virtually infinite ways that humans could possibly behave; yet natural and sexual selection have pared down this huge set to a vastly smaller subset of what is actually probable.

"...EP does very little for the profession."

EP is a significant paradigm shift, and these generally occur slowly in science ("one death at a time" per the famous quote by the physicist Neils Bohr). Modern EP is only about 40 years old. However, its contributions have been stunning, and, adaptationism has migrated to other disciplines as well. Adaptationism has already become the foundational meta-theory for the entire field of animal behavior and behavioral ecology.

Gregg's objections to EP were easily dispatched in Jesse's response. But what is surprising is that such misinformed or trivial objections to EP keep re-appearing, as if criticism of EP was something like a "whack a mole" game (see my post Playing The Anti-Evolutionary Psychology Game). One reason why this game continues is that most psychologists have never taken a course in evolutionary psychology, or read an evolutionary psychology textbook, in their entire academic career.

And, for even more discussion of some of these issues, see a couple of my previous posts:

Wrong Question: Is It Nature or Nurture?

How to Really "Get" Evolutionary Psychology