Saturday, May 2, 2026

Evolutionary Psychology

The concept of evolutionary psychology holds that as the physical bodies of humanity have been shaped by natural selection, mental traits or habits have become ingrained in human perceptions and are then expressed behaviorally to aid the likelihood of survival.  For example, feeling repulsed by the sight of an insect like a roach supposedly occurs because our ancestors avoided them to keep safe from diseases or bites.  In turn, even modern people strive to avoid the sight of or contact with such creatures because of those who once did and then passed on their genes, or so holds evolutionary psychology.  It is of course possible that someone avoids insects because of personal experience with being stung or bitten, which has absolutely nothing to do with some mental reaction "inherited" from genetic forbears.  They alternatively could simply dislike the appearance of the organism on purely subjective grounds.

Evolutionary psychology is incompatible with such logical facts.  Another necessary truth it conflicts with is that, whatever the reason, some people might not share such a revulsion no matter who their ancestors were; this does not contradict logical axioms.  Not everyone even necessarily cares about survival or instincts that might appear to promote it anyway!  Someone could be apathetic or suicidal or could enjoy dangerous gambles.  Even so, since it is always irrational to assume anything, anyone who just assumes that survival is good or worth pursuing in some amoral sense is a fool, and evolutionary psychology itself must be assumed since it is not necessarily true, and so cannot be proven.  This brand of psychology treats evolution and physical survival advantages that it brought about as if there are or perhaps must be some corresponding mental beliefs or attitudes, when this is logically not so.

Even if evolution refined someone's starting instincts in a given situation, you cannot know from instinct that a certain animal has a high likelihood of transmitting pathogens that give you an infection.  What you can immediately know through logic and introspection regardless is if you have a personal revulsion to the creature, perhaps on an aesthetic level or because it genuinely seems menacing or dangerous—which is utterly, obviously unrelated to its potential for spreading disease-carrying microorganisms.  This perception is not about some underlying evolutionarily-enforced instinct whatsoever.  It a matter of subjectivity, a matter of individualistic psychology and the immediate experience of one's thoughts and feelings about the animal, which someone can properly distinguish from logical facts and in turn realize that they cannot possibly know which logically possible outcome will result from physical contact with the creature.

Someone naturally having a certain desire, instinct, or perception does not have any connection to what others did generations ago.  They were different individuals, so the person currently alive could have this mental inclination because it is natural to them.  And even so, it would be irrational to ignore reason by making assumptions or ignoring foundational necessary truths because of one's happenstance psychological characteristics.  Evolutionary psychology is neither logically correct (especially in its sexist or racist forms) nor scientific in nature one way or another, since psychology is a philosophical subcategory of phenomenology [1].  The concept and phenomenon of natural selection are not coupled with evolutionary psychology in any way except in that the latter is a fallacious add-on to the former.


[1].  One such post where I focus on this more specifically is this one: https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-car-itself-might-be-moving-forward.html

No comments:

Post a Comment