Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology
Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology Kim Sterelny and Robert A. Wilson, editors
Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray, editors, 2000 Coherence in Thought and Action, Paul Thagard, 2000 Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew, 2003 Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think, Zenon Pylyshyn, 2003 Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere, Tim Lewens, 2004 Molecular Models of Life: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar, 2004 Evolution in Four Dimensions, Eva Jablonska and Marion J. Lamb, 2005 The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce, 2006 Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert C. Richardson, 2007
Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology
Robert C. Richardson
A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
© 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail
[email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Times Roman and Syntax by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong, and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Richardson, Robert C., 1949–. Evolutionary psychology as maladapted psychology / by Robert C. Richardson. p. cm.—(Life and mind) “A Bradford book.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-18260-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Evolutionary psychology. I. Title. BF698.95.R44 155.7—dc22
2007
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
vii
Introduction: Man’s Place in Nature
1
1
The Ambitions of Evolutionary Psychology
2
Reverse Engineering and Adaptation
3
The Dynamics of Adaptation
4
Recovering Evolutionary History
5
Idle Darwinizing Notes 185 References 193 Index 209
173
89 141
41
13
Preface and Acknowledgments
Evolutionary psychology is by nature a hybrid discipline. The very name requires that it at least pay attention to evolutionary biology as one mistress, and to psychology as another. Philosophy might seem the odd one out. Locke thought of philosophy as a handmaiden to science. I think of philosophy as a facilitator. In this case, there is a discussion to be promoted. I am by inclination and by profession a philosopher of science, interested in doing philosophy of science from the inside, engaging the details of the science, rather than from the outside, pretending to impose some independent standard on the sciences. Thus practiced, philosophy of science is a hybrid discipline. I work both within philosophy of biology and within philosophy and cognitive science. An outsider’s philosophical perspective—which promotes a normative standard apart