Talk:Criticism of evolutionary psychology

Science vs Philosophy, and Natural vs Human Sciences, discrepancies.
Science vs Philosophy, and Natural vs Human Sciences, discrepancies.

Ethics as science and ethics as moral philosophy discern. Only the latter is prescriptive.

Evolutionary psychology is a subfield of biology, a hard science, and also consequently makes no prescription of right or wrong, as well as any axiological hipotetization.

"My" argument only ruminates on Pinker as a source, deconstructing in detail the matter and his statements.

Statements about natural phenomena have no relationship at all with moral conclusions.

The discussion on the entry fell into infinite regress due to fallacy fallacy fallacy based on this erroneous interpretation that biological fitness has anything to do with "rightness" from exclusive human science perspectives.

We are not dealing with humans as subjects, but with humans as animals, as any other animal, in the topic.

Also, psychology in general is not limited to human mind, nor evolutionary psychology.

Why are you mixing things up? They do no mix.

This is a natural science, not philosophy of science. ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 05:32, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Your statements above are not relevant. Read WP:No original research. I had to revert your last string of edits because it was full of stuff that was not cited to any source. All material must be cited to a source. Read WP:V and WP:Cite your sources. Also, do not add material in front of an existing source that does not come from that source, thus making it look like it is supported when it is not. A bit of your material did have sources, so only that may be re-added if every point in it is supported by those sources. Also, when it comes to conflicting viewpoints from sources, keep WP:NPOV in mind. We as editors do not decide which side is right and which wrong. Crossroads -talk- 17:10, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You also need to write more simply and clearly. Stuff like "only the latter axiological/value prescriptive, and in concepts and arguments absolutely nontangent due to the indiscretion in between natural and human sciences" is not plain English as required by WP:MOS. Crossroads -talk- 17:17, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Pinker is the source. All of them posit the same argument.

The supposed "critics" are using is-ough problem to attack the idea on moral grounds in place of attacking the rationale behind the idea, which would be the correct atitude in dealing with a natural science.

There is no axiology proper on a biological approach. If they want to discuss ethics they can discuss ethics, but is has nothing to do with the validity of EP Claims. ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 21:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

It seems you are the ones decidiny to talk politics in place of english proper.

The current state of this topic is misleading. ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 21:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Your statements above are not relevant. Read WP:No original research. I had to revert your last string of edits because it was full of stuff that was not cited to any source. All material must be cited to a source. Read WP:V and WP:Cite your sources. Also, do not add material in front of an existing source that does not come from that source, thus making it look like it is supported when it is not. A bit of your material did have sources, so only that may be re-added if every point in it is supported by those sources. Also, when it comes to conflicting viewpoints from sources, keep WP:NPOV in mind. We as editors do not decide which side is right and which wrong. Crossroads -talk- 17:10, 9 December 2020 (UTC) You also need to write more simply and clearly. Stuff like "only the latter axiological/value prescriptive, and in concepts and arguments absolutely nontangent due to the indiscretion in between natural and human sciences" is not plain English as required by WP:MOS. Crossroads -talk- 17:17, 9 December 2020 (UTC) Pinker is the source. All of them posit the same argument.

The supposed "critics" are using is-ough problem to attack the idea on moral grounds in place of attacking the rationale behind the idea, which would be the correct atitude in dealing with a natural science.

There is no axiology proper on a biological approach. If they want to discuss ethics they can discuss ethics, but is has nothing to do with the validity of EP Claims. ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 21:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

It seems you are the ones decidiny to talk politics in place of english proper.

The current state of this topic is misleading. ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 21:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC) ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 21:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't copy and paste the comments that are already on the page. It's clutter. See WP:Citing sources. Doesn't matter if sources have the same ideas as you. You need to cite your sources. Crossroads -talk- 23:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

NPOV
This topic is misleading.

The "ethics" discussion revolves around political positions and concerns belonging to pure philosophy and to human sciences but not to natural sciences.

The discussion on ethics uses a fallacy fallacy to attack EP, and naturally since it is fallacious also the whole matter falls into infinite regression.

Editors are pushing views under the allegation a reliable source has not been presented to necessary edits, when it was, however initially mischaracterized.

Prescriptive, not descriptive, ethical positions do not concern natural sciences. EP doesn't make or promote prescriptive ethics or values.

If third parties make prescriptive claims utilizing EP the third parties themselves should be addressed, an not EP on malicious, unrelated and incompatible philosophical grounds. ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 21:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_fallacy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 22:16, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Instead of continually making vague complaints like this, both here and at Talk:Evolutionary psychology, you need to get specific. Either add reliably sourced material - and only such material - or else make a case that existing material is WP:UNDUE or misrepresents the source. I am by no means anti-evolutionary psychology; but you need to stick to what sources say. Editors' personal opinions are not relevant. Crossroads -talk- 22:52, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

It was pinker position, not mine. ApoliticalFactChecker (talk) 23:22, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

A page about criticisms that does not seem to do a good job showcasing much of the criticism
Whether this is more a matter of formatting or not, this page could seem to use some big improvements in the way information is being presented, and with respect to the nature of the information discussed.

In the second paragraph from the first section on modularity, we have a paragraph that is clearly dedicated to criticism of massive modularity. Interestingly we see a reference to a response tacked on in a few words at the end. In contact, the third paragraph from this same section looks quite like a back and forth commentary between the debates or arguments of specific researchers. By the time we proceed through the section on EEA and hypothesis testing, the majority of the text becomes dedicated to showcasing incredibly specific responses to extremely short summaries of the EP's criticisms.

We find some of the paragraphs are dedicated to explaining a criticism, but it is always written to be about the views and arguments of a specific scholar. For people who are not used to reading about the works of specific people, this is not going to be helpful to orient naive readers to the issues around evolutionary Psychology. The issues need to be written in a more general fashion, like other wiki pages, spending less time explicitly mentioning the names of specific authors and more time spent clearly communicating the concepts and ideas. The only exception to this, for readability, should be when examples are warranted for the sake of illustrating something complicated to the reader.

I do not know my way around wikipedia, but I think these issues significantly compromise the quality of this page. At the very least, there needs to be some major formatting changes - like the introduction of more sub-headings, and a more principled way of writing the responses to these criticism (particularly as it bears on the amount of words spent on these responses).

As it stands, a skim read gives the impression that there is just as much, and possible more words spent on responses to criticisms as there are explaining the criticisms themselves. What's worse is that the criticisms and the responses are not clearly delineated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.96.87.101 (talk) 07:33, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

At least one of the responses to criticisms here seems to be really, really bad.
The article says

"Steve Stewart-Williams argues, in response to claims that evolutionary psychology hypotheses are unfalsifiable, that such claims are logically incoherent. Stewart-Williams argues that if evolutionary psychology hypotheses can't be falsified, then neither could competing explanations, because if alternative explanations (e.g. sociocultural hypotheses) were proven true, this would automatically falsify the competing evolutionary psychology hypothesis, so for competing explanations to be true, then evolutionary psychology hypothesis must be false and thus falsifiable."

The problem is that this assertion is that it doesn't really mesh with the way science is done. Alternative explanations will never be "proven true" in the sense that Mr. Stewart-Williams is describing-generally, an idea in science (other than math) is accepted when people try to prove it false a bunch of times but can't. Also, by his logic, "unfalsifiablity" can never be a real concern since if any other idea is "proven true," it would falsify every other idea. There's probably more really bad logic that doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the article, but that was what really jumped out at me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.189.168.53 (talk) 12:15, 15 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree, the whole section on falsifiability strikes me as overlong and giving excessive attention to amateurish arguments. I'm reluctant to radically change it but would appreciate insight about how to handle it or determine if my impression is shared or not. CasualUser10 (talk) 23:15, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This entire article reads like a "Response to criticism of evolutionary psychology" and not an article on the actual criticism. 76.144.81.249 (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a lot here and I haven't examined it closely, but in general it is NPOV that we would also have responses to criticisms if they are in academic sources. Crossroads -talk- 21:11, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Replication Crisis in Psychology
While most evolutionary psychology theories themselves haven't been affected (due to being untestable), some portions have become scientifically unjustified due to the psychology research they were based on failing replication. Would a link to the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psychology be useful, or even a small paragraph on what it was together with the testability criticism? The page is pretty confusing so I'm not too sure more should be added. Hihyphilia (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2024 (UTC)