Evolutionary Psychology

First published Fri Feb 8, 2008; substantive revision Tue Jan 30, 2024

Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informedapproaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitivepsychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if notall, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internalpsychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionarypsychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal thatthe relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products ofnatural selection—that helped our ancestors get around theworld, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims ofevolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some keyconcepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy ofscience and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested inevolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers ofscience —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionarypsychology provides a critical target. Although here is a broadconsensus among philosophers of biology that evolutionary psychologyis a deeply flawed enterprise, this does not entail that thesephilosophers completely reject the relevance of evolutionary theory tohuman psychology. For philosophers of mind and cognitive scienceevolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypothesesabout cognitive architecture and specific components of thatarchitecture. However, some philosophers of mind are also critical ofevolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not asall-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology.Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested inmoral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as acritical target.

In what follows I briefly explain evolutionary psychology’srelations to other work on the biology of human behavior and thecognitive sciences. Next I introduce the research tradition’skey theoretical concepts. In the following section I take updiscussions about evolutionary psychology in the philosophy of mind,specifically focusing on the debate about the massive modularitythesis. I go on to review some of the criticisms of evolutionarypsychology presented by philosophers of biology and assess someresponses to those criticisms. I then go on to introduce some ofevolutionary psychology’s contributions to moral psychology andhuman nature and, finally, briefly discuss the reach and impact ofevolutionary psychology.

1. Evolutionary Psychology: One research tradition among the various biological approaches to explaining human behavior

This entry focuses on the specific approach to evolutionary psychologythat is conventionally named by the capitalized phrase“Evolutionary Psychology”. This naming convention is DavidBuller’s (2000; 2005) idea. He introduces the convention todistinguish a particular research tradition (Laudan 1977) from otherapproaches to the biology of human behavior.^[1] This research tradition is the focus here but lower case is usedthroughout as no other types of evolutionary psychology are discussed.Evolutionary psychology rests upon specific theoretical principles(presented in section 2 below) not all of which are shared by othersworking in the biology of human behavior (Laland & Brown 2002;Brown et al. 2011). For example, human behavioral ecologists presentand defend explanatory hypotheses about human behavior that do notappeal to psychological mechanisms (e.g., Hawkes 1990; Hrdy 1999).Behavioral ecologists also believe that much of human behavior can beexplained by appealing to evolution while rejecting the idea held byevolutionary psychologists that one period of our evolutionary historyis the source of all our important psychological adaptations (Irons1998). Developmental psychobiologists take yet another approach: theyare anti-adaptationist. (Michel & Moore 1995; but see Bateson& Martin 1999; Bjorklund & Hernandez Blasi 2005 for examplesof developmentalist work in an adaptationist vein.) These theoristsbelieve that much of our behavior can be explained without appealingto a suite of specific psychological adaptations for that behavior.Instead they emphasize the role of development in the production ofvarious human behavioral traits. From here on, “evolutionarypsychology” refers to a specific research tradition among themany biological approaches to the study of human behavior.

Paul Griffiths argues that evolutionary psychology owes theoreticaldebt to both sociobiology and ethology (Griffiths 2006; Griffiths2008). Evolutionary psychologists acknowledge their debt tosociobiology but point out that they add a dimension to sociobiology:psychological mechanisms. Human behaviors are not a direct product ofnatural selection but rather the product of psychological mechanismsthat were selected for. The relation to ethology here is that in thenineteen fifties, ethologists proposed instincts or drives thatunderlie our behavior;^[2] evolutionary psychology’s psychological mechanisms are thecorrelates to instincts or drives. Evolutionary psychology is alsorelated to cognitive psychology and the cognitive sciences. Thepsychological mechanisms they invoke are computational, sometimesreferred to as “Darwinian algorithms” or as“computational modules”. This overt cognitivism setsevolutionary psychology apart from much work in the neurosciences andfrom behavioral neuroendocrinology. In these fields internalmechanisms are proposed in explanations of human behavior but they arenot construed in computational terms. David Marr’s (e.g., 1983)well known three part distinction is often invoked to distinguish thelevels at which researchers focus their attention in the cognitive andneurosciences. Many neuroscientists and behavioralneuroendocrinologists work at the implementation level while cognitivepsychologists work at the level of the computations that areimplemented at the neurobiological level (see Griffiths 2006).

Evolutionary psychologists sometimes present their approach aspotentially unifying, or providing a foundation for, all other workthat purports to explain human behavior (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides1992). This claim has been met with strong skepticism by many socialscientists who see a role for a myriad of types of explanation ofhuman behavior, some of which are not reducible to biologicalexplanations of any sort. This discussion hangs on issues ofreductionism in the social sciences. (Little 1991 has a niceintroduction to these issues.) There are also reasons to believe thatevolutionary psychology neither unifies nor provides foundations forclosely neighboring fields such as behavioral ecology or developmentalpsychobiology. (See the related discussion in Downes 2005.) In otherwork, evolutionary psychologists present their approach as beingconsistent with or compatible with neighboring approaches such asbehavioral ecology and developmental psychobiology. (See Buss’sintroduction to Buss 2005.) The truth of this claim hangs on a carefulexamination of the theoretical tenets of evolutionary psychology andits neighboring fields. We now turn to evolutionary psychology’stheoretical tenets and revisit this discussion in section 4 below.

2. Evolutionary Psychology’s Theory and Methods

Influential evolutionary psychologists, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby,provide the following list of the field’s theoretical tenets(Tooby & Cosmides 2005):

The brain is a computer designed by natural selection to extractinformation from the environment.
Individual human behavior is generated by this evolved computerin response to information it extracts from the environment.Understanding behavior requires articulating the cognitive programsthat generate the behavior.
The cognitive programs of the human brain are adaptations. Theyexist because they produced behavior in our ancestors that enabledthem to survive and reproduce.
The cognitive programs of the human brain may not be adaptivenow; they were adaptive in ancestral environments.
Natural selection ensures that the brain is composed of manydifferent special purpose programs and not a domain generalarchitecture.
Describing the evolved computational architecture of our brains“allows a systematic understanding of cultural and socialphenomena” (16–18).

Tenet 1 emphasizes the cognitivism that evolutionary psychologists arecommitted to. 1 in combination with 2 directs our attention asresearchers not to parts of the brain but to the programs run by thebrain. It is these programs—psychological mechanisms—thatare products of natural selection. While they are products of naturalselection, and hence adaptations, these programs need not be currentlyadaptive. Our behavior can be produced by underlying psychologicalmechanisms that arose to respond to particular circumstances in ourancestors’ environments. Tenet 5 presents what is often calledthe “massive modularity thesis” (see, e.g., Samuels 1998;Samuels 2000). There is a lot packed into this tenet and we willexamine this thesis in some detail below in section 3. In brief,evolutionary psychologists maintain that there is an analogy betweenorgans and psychological mechanisms or modules. Organs performspecific functions well and are products of natural selection. Thereare no general purpose organs, hearts pump blood and livers detoxifythe body. The same goes for psychological mechanisms; they arise asresponses to specific contingencies in the environment and areselected for to the extent that they contribute to the survival andreproduction of the organism. Just as there are no general purposeorgans, there are no general purpose psychological mechanisms.Finally, tenet 6 introduces the reductionist or foundational vision ofevolutionary psychology, discussed above.

There are numerous examples of the kinds of mechanisms that arehypothesized to underlie our behavior on the basis of research guidedby these theoretical tenets: the cheater-detection module; themind-reading module; the waist/hip ratio detection module; the snakefear module and so on. A closer look at the waist/hip ratio detectionmodule illustrates the above theoretical tenets at work. DevendraSingh (Singh 1993; Singh & Luis 1995) presents the waist/hip ratiodetection module as one of the suite of modules that underlies mateselection in humans. This one is a specifically male psychologicalmechanism. Men detect variations in waist/hip ratio in women.Men’s preferences are for women with waist/hip ratios closer to.7. Singh claims that the detection and preference suite areadaptations for choosing fertile mates. So our mate selection behavioris explained in part by the underlying psychological mechanism forwaist/hip ratio preference that was selected for in earlier humanenvironments.

What is important to note about the research guided by thesetheoretical tenets above is that all behavior is best explained interms of underlying psychological mechanisms that are adaptations forsolving a particular set of problems that humans faced at one time inour ancestry. Also, evolutionary psychologists stress that themechanisms they focus on are universally distributed in humans and arenot susceptible to much, if any, variation. They maintain that themechanisms are a product of adaptation but are no longer underselection (Tooby & Cosmides 2005, 39–40). ClarkBarrett’s (2015) accessible and wide ranging introduction toevolutionary psychology sustains this emphasis on evolved mechanismsas the main focus of evolutionary psychology research. Barrett alsoexpands the scope of evolutionary psychology and notes the addition ofresearch methods developed since Cosmides and Tooby first set out theparameters for research in the field. Some of Barrett’sproposals are discussed in sections 6 and 7 below. Todd Shacklefordand Viviana Weekes-Shackleford (2017) have just completed a hugecompendium of work in the evolutionarily based psychological sciences.In this volume a vast array of different research methods arepresented and defended and there are a number of entries comparing themerits of alternative approaches to evolutionary psychology.

The methods for testing hypotheses in evolutionary psychology comemostly from psychology. For example, in Singh’s work, malesubjects are presented with drawings of women with varying waist hipratios and ask to give their preference rankings. In Buss’s worksupporting several hypothesized mate selection mechanisms, heperformed similar experiments on subjects, asking for their responsesto various questions about features of desired mates (Buss 1990).Buss, Singh and other evolutionary psychologists emphasize the crosscultural validity of their results, claiming consistency in responsesacross a wide variety of human populations. (But see Yu & Shepard1998; Gray et al. 2003 for alternate conflicting results toSingh’s.) For the most part standard psychological experimentalmethods are used to test hypotheses in evolutionary psychology. Thishas raised questions about the extent to which the evolutionarycomponent of evolutionary psychologists’ hypotheses is beingtested (see, e.g., Shapiro & Epstein 1998; Lloyd 1999; Lloyd &Feldman 2002). A response profile may be prevalent in a wide varietyof subject populations but this says nothing about whether or not theresponse profile is a psychological mechanism that arose from aparticular selective regimen.

3. The Massive Modularity Hypothesis

Claims that the mind has a modular architecture, and even massivelymodular architecture, are widespread in cognitive science (see, e.g.,Hirshfield & Gelman 1994). The massive modularity thesis is firstand foremost a thesis about cognitive architecture. As defended byevolutionary psychologists, the thesis is also about the source of ourcognitive architecture: the massively modular architecture is theresult of natural selection acting to produce each of the many modules(see, e.g., Barrett & Kurzban 2006; Barrett 2012). Our cognitivearchitecture is composed of computational devices, that are innate andare adaptations (Samuels 1998; Samuels et al. 1999a; Samuels et al.1999b; Samuels 2000). This massively modular architecture accounts forall of our sophisticated behavior. Our successful navigation of theworld results from the action of one or more of our many modules.

Jerry Fodor was the first to mount a sustained philosophical defenseof modularity as a theory of cognitive architecture (Fodor 1983). Hismodularity thesis is distinct from the massive modularity thesis in anumber of important ways. Fodor argued that our “inputsystems” are modular—for example, components of our visualsystem, our speech detection system and so on—these parts of ourmind are dedicated information processors, whose internal make-up isinaccessible to other related processors. The modular detectionsystems feed output to a central system, which is a kind of inferenceengine. The central system, on Fodor’s view is not modular.Fodor presents a large number of arguments against the possibility ofmodular central systems. For example, he argues that central systems,to the extent that they engage in something like scientificconfirmation, are “Quinean” in that “the degree ofconfirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive toproperties of the entire belief system” (Fodor 1983, 107). Fodordraws a bleak conclusion about the status of cognitive science fromhis examination of the character of central systems: cognitive scienceis impossible. So on Fodor’s view, the mind is partly modularand the part of the mind that is modular provides some subject matterfor cognitive science.

A distinct thesis from Fodor’s, the massive modularity thesis,gets a sustained philosophical defense from Peter Carruthers (seeespecially Carruthers 2006). Carruthers is well aware that Fodor (seee.g. Fodor 2000) does not believe that central systems can be modularbut he presents arguments from evolutionary psychologists and othersthat support the modularity thesis for the whole mind. Perhaps one ofthe reasons that there is so much philosophical interest inevolutionary psychology is that discussions about the status of themassive modularity thesis are highly theoretical.^[3] Both evolutionary psychologists and philosophers present and considerarguments for and against the thesis rather than simply waiting untilthe empirical results come in. Richard Samuels (1998) speculates thatargument rather than empirical data is relied on, because the variouscompeting modularity theses about central systems are hard to pullapart empirically. Carruthers exemplifies this approach as he reliesheavily on arguments for massive modularity often at the expense ofspecific empirical results that tell in favor of the thesis.

There are many arguments for the massive modularity thesis. Some arebased upon considerations about how evolution must have acted; someare based on considerations about the nature of computation and someare versions of the poverty of the stimulus argument first presentedby Chomsky in support of the existence of an innate universal grammar.(See Cowie 1999 for a nice presentation of the structure of poverty ofthe stimulus arguments.) Myriad versions of each of these argumentsappear in the literature and many arguments for massive modularity mixand match components of each of the main strands of argumentation.Here we review a version of each type of argument.

Carruthers presents a clear outline of the first type of argument“the biological argument for massive modularity”:“(1) Biological systems are designed systems, constructedincrementally. (2) Such systems, when complex, need to have massivelymodular organization. (3) The human mind is a biological system and iscomplex. (4) So the human mind will be massively modularly in itsorganization” (Carruthers 2006, 25). An example of this argumentis to appeal to the functional decomposition of organisms into organs“designed” for specific tasks, e.g. hearts, livers,kidneys. Each of these organs arises as a result of natural selectionand the organs, acting together, contribute to the fitness of theorganism. The functional decomposition is driven by the response tospecific environmental stimuli. Rather than natural selection actingto produce general purpose organs, each specific environmentalchallenge is dealt with by a separate mechanism. All versions of thisargument are arguments from analogy, relying on the key transitionalpremise that minds are a kind of biological system upon which naturalselection acts.

The second type of argument makes no appeal to biologicalconsiderations whatsoever (although many evolutionary psychologistsgive these arguments a biological twist). Call this the computationalargument, which unfolds as follows: minds are computational problemsolving devices; there are specific types of solutions to specifictypes of problems; and so for minds to be (successful) general problemsolving devices, they must consist of collections of specific problemsolving devices, i.e. many computational modules. This type ofargument is structurally similar to the biological argument (asCarruthers points out). The key idea is that there is no sense to theidea of a general problem solver and that no headway can be made incognitive science without breaking down problems into their componentparts.

The third type of argument involves a generalization ofChomsky’s poverty of the stimulus argument for universalgrammar. Many evolutionary psychologists (see, e.g., Tooby &Cosmides 1992) appeal to the idea that there is neither enough time,nor enough available information, for any given human to learn fromscratch to successfully solve all of the problems that we face in theworld. This first consideration supports the conclusion that theunderlying mechanisms we use to solve the relevant problems are innate(for evolutionary psychologists “innate” is usuallyinterchangeable with “product of natural selection”^[4]). If we invoke this argument across the whole range of problem setsthat humans face and solve, we arrive at a huge set of innatemechanisms that subserve our problem solving abilities, which isanother way of saying that we have a massively modular mind.

There are numerous responses to the many versions of each of thesetypes of arguments and many take on the massive modularity thesis headon without considering a specific argument for it. I will deferconsideration of responses to the first argument type until section 4below, which focuses on issues of the nature of evolution and naturalselection – topics in philosophy of biology.

The second type of argument is one side of a perennial debate in thephilosophy of cognitive science. Fodor (2000, 68) takes this argumentto rest on the unwarranted assumption that there is nodomain-independent criterion of cognitive success, which he thinksrequires an argument that evolutionary psychologists do not provide.Samuels (see esp. Samuels 1998) responds to evolutionary psychologiststhat arguments of this type do not sufficiently discriminate between aconclusion about domain specific processing mechanisms and domainspecific knowledge or information. Samuels articulates what he callsthe “library model of cognition” in which there is domainspecific information or knowledge but domain general processing. Thelibrary model of cognition is not massively modular in the relevantsense but type two arguments support it. According to Samuels,evolutionary psychologists need something more than this type ofargument to warrant their specific kind of conclusion about massivemodularity. Buller (2005) introduces further worries for this type ofargument by tackling the assumption that there can be no such thing asa domain general problem solving mechanism. Buller worries that intheir attempt to support this claim, evolutionary psychologists failto adequately characterize a domain general problem solver. Forexample, they fail to distinguish between a domain general problemsolver and a domain specific problem solver that is over generalized.He offers the example of social learning as a domain general mechanismthat would produce domain specific solutions to problems. He uses anice biological analogy to drive this point home: the immune system isa domain general system in that it allows the body to respond to awide variety of pathogens. While it is true that the immune systemproduces domain specific responses to pathogens in the form ofspecific antibodies, the antibodies are produced by one domain generalsystem. These and many other respondents conclude that type twoarguments do not adequately support the massive modularity thesis.

Fodor (2000) and Kim Sterelny (2003) provide different responses totype three arguments. Fodor’s response is that poverty of thestimulus type arguments support conclusions about innateness but notmodularity and so these arguments can not be used to support themassive modularity thesis. He argues that the domain specificity andencapsulation of a mechanism and its innateness pull apart quiteclearly, allowing for “perfectly general learningmechanisms” that are innate and “fully encapsulatedmechanisms” that are single stimulus specific and everything inbetween. Sterelny responds to the generalizing move in type threearguments. He takes language to be the exception rather than the rulein the sense that while the postulation of an innate, domain specificmodule may be warranted to account for our language abilities, much ofour other problem solving behavior can be accounted for withoutpostulating such modules (Sterelny 2003, 200).^[5] Sterelny’s counter requires invoking alternate explanations forour behavioral repertoire. For example, he accounts for folkpsychology and folk biology by appealing to environmental factors,some of which are constructed by our forebears, that allow us toperform sophisticated cognitive tasks. If we can account for oursuccess at various complex problem solving tasks, without appealing tomodules, then the massive modularity thesis is undercut. Sterelnysharpens his response to massive modularity by adding more detail tohis accounts of how many of our uniquely human traits may have evolved(see, e.g., Sterelny 2012). Sterelny introduces his “evolvedapprentice” model to account for the evolution of many humantraits that many assume require explanation in terms of massivemodularity, for example, forming moral judgments. Cecilia Heyes adoptsa similar approach to Sterenly in attacking massive modularity. Ratherthan presenting arguments against massive modularity, she offersalternative explanations of the development of folk psychology that donot rely on the massive modularity thesis (Heyes 2014a; Heyes2014b).

Heyes and Sterelny not only reject massive modularity but also havelittle expectation that any modularity theses will bear fruit butthere are many critics of the massive modularity thesis who allow forthe possibility of some modularity of mind. Such critics ofevolutionary psychology do not reject the possibility of any kind ofmodularity, they just reject the massive modularity thesis. There isconsiderable debate about the status of the massive modularity thesisand some of this debate centers around the characterization ofmodules. If modules have all the characteristics that Fodor (1983)first presented, then he may be right that central systems are notmodular. Both Carruthers (2006) and Barrett and Kurzban (2006) presentmodified characterizations of modules, which they argue better servethe massive modularity thesis. There is no agreement on a workablecharacterization of modules for evolutionary psychology but there isagreement on the somewhat benign thesis that “the language ofmodularity affords useful conceptual groundwork in which productivedebates surrounding cognitive systems can be framed” (Barrettand Kurzban 2006, 644).

4. Philosophy of biology vs. Evolutionary Psychology

Many philosophers have criticized evolutionary psychology. Most ofthese critics are philosophers of biology who argue that the researchtradition suffers from an overly zealous form ofadaptationism (Griffiths 1996; Richardson 1996; Grantham & Nichols 1999; Lloyd1999; Richardson 2007), an untenable reductionism (Dupré 1999,2001), a “bad empirical bet” about modules (Sterelny 1995;Sterelny & Griffiths 1999; Sterelny 2003), a fast and looseconception of fitness (Lloyd 1999; Lloyd & Feldman 2002); and mostof the above and much more (Buller 2005). (See also Downes 2005.)^[6] All of these philosophers share one version or other ofBuller’s view: “I am unabashedly enthusiastic aboutefforts to apply evolutionary theory to human psychology” (2005, x).^[7] But if philosophers of biology are not skeptical of the fundamentalidea behind the project, as Buller’s quote indicates, what arethey so critical of? What is at stake are differing views about how tobest characterize evolution and hence how to generate evolutionaryhypotheses and how to test evolutionary hypotheses. For evolutionarypsychologists, the most interesting contribution that evolutionarytheory makes is the explanation of apparent design in nature or theexplanation of the production of complex organs by appeal to naturalselection. Evolutionary psychologists generate evolutionary hypothesesby first finding apparent design in the world, say in ourpsychological make up, and then presenting a selective scenario thatwould have led to the production of the trait that exhibits apparentdesign. The hypotheses evolutionary psychologists generate, given thatthey are usually hypotheses about our psychological capacities, aretested by standard psychological methods. Philosophers of biologychallenge evolutionary psychologists on both of these points. Iintroduce a few examples of criticisms in each of these two areasbelow and then look at some responses to philosophical criticisms ofevolutionary psychology.

Adaptation is the one biological concept that is central to mostdebates over evolutionary psychology. Every theoretical work onevolutionary psychology presents the research tradition as beingprimarily focused on psychological adaptations and goes on to give anaccount of what adaptations are (see, e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992;Buss et al. 1998; Simpson & Campbell 2005; Tooby & Cosmides2005). Much of the philosophical criticism of evolutionary psychologyaddresses its approach to adaptation or its form of adaptationism. Letus quickly review the basics from the perspective of philosophy ofbiology.

Here is how Elliott Sober defines an adaptation: “characteristicc is an adaptation for doing taskt in a populationif and only if members of the population now havec because,ancestrally, there was selection for havingc andcconferred a fitness advantage because it performed taskt” (Sober 2000, 85). Sober makes a few furtherclarifications of the notion of adaptation that are helpful. First, weshould distinguish between a trait that isadaptive and atrait that is anadaptation. Any number of traits can beadaptive without those traits being adaptations. A sea turtle’sforelegs are useful for digging in the sand to bury eggs but they arenot adaptations for nest building (Sober 2000, 85). Also, traits canbe adaptations without being currently adaptive for a given organism.Vestigial organs such as our appendix or vestigial eyes in cavedwelling organisms are examples of such traits (Sterelny and Griffiths1999). Second, we should distinguish between ontogenic andphylogenetic adaptations (Sober 2000, 86). The adaptations of interestto evolutionary biologists are phylogenetic adaptations, which ariseover evolutionary time and impact the fitness of the organism.Ontogenetic adaptations, including any behavior we learn in ourlifetimes, can be adaptive to the extent that an organism benefitsfrom them but they are not adaptations in the relevant sense. Finally,adaptation and function are closely related terms. On one of theprominent views of function—the etiological view offunctions—adaptation and function are more or less coextensive;to ask for the function of an organ is to ask why it is present. Onthe Cummins view of functions adaptation and function are notcoextensive, as on the Cummins view, to ask what an organ’sfunction is, is to ask what it does (Sober 2000, 86–87). (Seealso Sterelny & Griffiths 1999, 220–224.)

Evolutionary psychologists focus on psychological adaptations. Oneconsistent theme in the theoretical work of evolutionary psychologistsis that “adaptations, the functional components of organisms,are identified […] by […] evidence of their design: theexquisite match between organism structure and environment”(Hagen 2005, 148). The way in which psychological adaptations areidentified is by evolutionary functional analysis, which is a type ofreverse engineering.^[8] “Reverse engineering is a process of figuring out the design ofa mechanism on the basis of an analysis of the tasks it performs.Evolutionary functional analysis is a form of reverse engineering inthat it attempts to reconstruct the mind’s design from ananalysis of the problems the mind must have evolved to solve”(Buller 2005, 92). Many philosophers object to evolutionarypsychologists’ over attribution of adaptations on the basis ofapparent design. Here some are following Gould and Lewontin’s(1979) lead when they worry that accounting for apparent design innature in terms of adaptation amounts to telling just-so stories butthey could just as easily cite Williams (1966), who also cautionedagainst the over attribution of adaptation as an explanation forbiological traits. While it is true that evolutionary functionalanalysis can lend itself to just-so story telling, this is not themost interesting problem that confronts evolutionary psychology,several other interesting problems have been identified. For example,Elisabeth Lloyd (1999) derives a criticism of evolutionary psychologyfrom Gould and Lewontin’s criticism of sociobiology, emphasizingthe point that evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism leadsthem to ignore alternative evolutionary processes. Buller takes yetanother approach to evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism.What lies behind Buller’s criticisms of evolutionarypsychologists’ adaptationism is a different view than theirsabout what is important in evolutionary thinking (Buller 2005). Bullerthinks that evolutionary psychologists overemphasize design and thatthey make the contentious assumption that with respect to the traitsthey are interested in, evolution is finished, rather thanongoing.

Sober’s definition of adaptation is not constrained only toapply to organs or other traits that exhibit apparent design. Rather,clutch size (in birds), schooling (in fish), leaf arrangement,foraging strategies and all manner of traits can be adaptations (Seger& Stubblefield 1996). Buller argues the more general point thatphenotypic plasticity of various types can be an adaptation, becauseit arises in various organisms as a result of natural selection.^[9] The difference here between Buller (and other philosophers andbiologists) and evolutionary psychologists is a difference in theexplanatory scope that they attribute to natural selection. Forevolutionary psychologists, the hallmark of natural selection is awell functioning organ and for their critics, the results of naturalselection can be seen in an enormous range of traits ranging from thespecific apparent design features of organs to the most generalresponse profiles in behavior. According to Buller, this latterapproach opens up the range of possible evolutionary hypotheses thatcan account for human behavior. Rather than being restricted toaccounting for our behavior in terms of the joint output of manyspecific modular mechanisms, we can account for our behavior byappealing to selection acting upon many different levels of traits.This difference in emphasis on what is important in evolutionarytheory also is at the center of debates between evolutionarypsychologists and behavioral ecologists, who argue that behaviors,rather than just the mechanisms that underlie them, can be adaptations(Downes 2001). Further, this difference in emphasis is what leads tothe wide range of alternate evolutionary hypotheses that Sterelny(Sterelny 2003) presents to explain human behavior. Given thatphilosophers like Buller and Sterelny are adaptationists, they are notcritical of evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism. Rather,they are critical of the narrow explanatory scope of the type ofadaptationism evolutionary psychologists adopt (see also Downes2015).

Buller’s criticism that evolutionary psychologists assume thatevolution is finished for the traits that they are interested inconnects worries about the understanding of evolutionary theory withworries about the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Here is Tooby& Cosmides’ clear statement of the assumption that Buller isworried about: “evolutionary psychologists primarily explore thedesign of the universal, evolved psychological and neural architecturethat we all share by virtue of being human. Evolutionary psychologistsare usually less interested in human characteristics that vary due togenetic differences because they recognize that these differences areunlikely to be evolved adaptations central to human nature. Of thethree kinds of characteristics that are found in the design oforganisms – adaptations, by-products, and noise – traitscaused by genetic variants are predominantly evolutionary noise, withlittle adaptive significance, while complex adaptations are likely tobe universal in the species” (Tooby & Cosmides 2005, 39).This line of thinking also captures evolutionary psychologists’view of human nature: human nature is our collection of universallyshared adaptations. (See Downes & Machery 2013 for more discussionof this and other, contrasting biologically based accounts of humannature.) The problem here is that it is false to assume thatadaptations cannot be subject to variation. The underlying problem isthe constrained notion of adaptation. Adaptations are traits thatarise as a result of natural selection and not traits that exhibitdesign and are universal in a given species (Seger & Stubblefield1996). As a result, it is quite consistent to argue, as Buller does,that many human traits may still be under selection and yet reasonablybe called adaptations. Finally, philosophers of biology havearticulated several different types of adaptationism (see, e.g.,Godfrey-Smith 2001; Lewens 2009; Sober 2000). While some of thesetypes of adaptationism can be reasonably seen placing constraints onhow evolutionary research is carried out, Godfrey-Smith’s“explanatory adaptationism” is different in character(Godfrey-Smith 2001). Explanatory adaptationism is the view thatapparent design is one of the big questions we face in explaining ournatural world and natural selection is the big (and only supportable)answer to such a big question. Explanatory adaptationism is oftenadopted by those who want to distinguish evolutionary thinking fromcreationism or intelligent design and is the way evolutionarypsychologists often couch their work to distinguish it from theircolleagues in the broader social sciences. While explanatoryadaptationism does serve to distinguish evolutionary psychology fromsuch markedly different approaches to accounting for design in nature,it does not place many clear constraints on the way in whichevolutionary explanations should be sought (Downes 2015). So far theseare disagreements that are located in differing views about the natureand scope of evolutionary explanation but they have ramifications inthe discussion about hypothesis testing.

If the traits of interest to evolutionary psychologists areuniversally distributed, then we should expect to find them in allhumans. This partly explains the stock that evolutionary psychologistsput in cross cultural psychological tests (see, e.g., Buss 1990). Ifwe find evidence for the trait in a huge cross section of humans, thenthis supports our view that the trait is an adaptation —on theassumption that adaptations are organ-like traits that are products ofnatural selection but not subject to variation. But given the widerscope view of evolution defended by philosophers of biology, thismethod of testing seems wrong-headed as a test of an evolutionaryhypothesis. Certainly such testing can result in the very interestingresults that certain preference profiles are widely shared crossculturally but the test does not speak to the evolutionary hypothesisthat the preferences are adaptations (Lloyd 1999; Buller 2005).

Another worry that critics have about evolutionarypsychologists’ approach to hypothesis testing is that they giveinsufficient weight to serious alternate hypotheses that fit therelevant data. Buller dedicates several chapters of his book onevolutionary psychology to an examination of hypothesis testing andmany of his criticisms center around the introduction of alternatehypotheses that do as good a job, or a better job, of accounting forthe data. For example, he argues that the hypothesis of assortativemating by status does a better job of accounting for some ofevolutionary psychologists’ mate selection data than theirpreferred high status preference hypothesis. This debate hangs on howthe empirical tests come out. The previous debate is more closelyconnected to theoretical issues in philosophy of biology.

I said in my introduction that there is a broad consensus amongphilosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeplyflawed enterprise and some philosophers of biology continue to remindus of this sentiment (see, e.g., Dupré 2012). However therelevant consensus is not complete, there are some proponents ofevolutionary psychology among philosophers of science. One way ofdefending evolutionary psychology is to rebut criticism. EdouardMachery and Clark Barrett (2007) do just that in their sharplycritical review of Buller’s book. Another way to defendevolutionary psychology is to practice it (at least to the extent thatphilosophers can, i.e. theoretically). This is what Robert Arp (2006)does in a recent article. I briefly review both responses below.

Machery and Barrett (2007) argue that Buller has no clear criticaltarget as there is nothing to the idea that there is a researchtradition of evolutionary psychology that is distinct from the broaderenterprise of the evolutionary understanding of human behavior. Theyargue that theoretical tenets and methods are shared by many in thebiology of human behavior. For example, many are adaptationists. Butas we saw above, evolutionary psychologists and behavioral ecologistscan both call themselves adaptationist but their particular approachto adaptationism dictates the range of hypotheses that they cangenerate, the range of traits that can be counted as adaptations andimpacts upon the way in which hypotheses are tested. Researchtraditions can share some broad theoretical commitments and yet stillbe distinct research traditions. Secondly, they argue againstBuller’s view that past environments are not stable enough toproduce the kind of psychological adaptations that evolutionarypsychologists propose. They take this to be a claim that noadaptations can arise from an evolutionary arms race situation, forexample, between predators and prey. But again, I think that thedisagreement here is over what counts as an adaptation. Buller doesnot deny that adaptations— traits that arise as a product ofnatural selection—arise from all kinds of unstable environments.What he denies is that organ-like, special purpose adaptations are thelikely result of such evolutionary scenarios.

Arp (2006) defends a hypothesis about a kind of module—scenariovisualization—a psychological adaptation that arose in ourhominid history in response to the demands of tool making, such asconstructing spear throwing devices for hunting. Arp presents hishypothesis in the context of demonstrating the superiority of hisapproach to evolutionary psychology, which he calls “NarrowEvolutionary Psychology,” over “Broad EvolutionaryPsychology,” with respect to accounting for archaeologicalevidence and facts about our psychology. While Arp’s hypothesisis innovative and interesting, he by no means defends it conclusively.This is partly because his strategy is to compare his hypothesis witharchaeologist Steven Mithen’s (1996) non-modular“cognitive fluidity” hypothesis that is proposed toaccount for the same data. The problem here is that Mithen’sview is only one of the many alternative, evolutionary explanations ofhuman tool making behavior. While Arp’s modular thesis may besuperior to Mithen’s, he has not compared it to Sterelny’s(2003; 2012) account of tool making and tool use or to Boyd andRicherson’s (see, e.g., 2005) account and hence not ruled theseaccounts out as plausible alternatives. As neither of thesealternative accounts rely on the postulation of psychological modules,evolutionary psychology is not adequately defended.

5. Moral Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology

Many philosophers who work on moral psychology understand that theirtopic is empirically constrained. Philosophers take two mainapproaches to using empirical results in moral psychology. One is touse empirical results (and empirically based theories from psychology)to criticize philosophical accounts of moral psychology (see, e.g.,Doris 2002) and one is to generate (and, in the experimentalphilosophy tradition, to test) hypotheses about our moral psychology(see, e.g., Nichols 2004). For those who think that some (or all) ofour moral psychology is based in innate capacities, evolutionarypsychology is a good source of empirical results and empirically basedtheory. One account of the make-up of our moral psychology followsfrom the massive modularity account of the architecture of the mind.Our moral judgments are a product of domain specific psychologicalmodules that are adaptations and arose in our hominid forebears inresponse to contingencies in our (mostly) social environments. Thisposition is currently widely discussed by philosophers working inmoral psychology. An example of this discussion follows.

Cosmides (see, e.g., 1989) defends a hypothesis in evolutionarypsychology that we have a cheater-detection module.^[10] This module is hypothesized to underlie important components of ourbehavior in moral domains and fits with the massively modular view ofour psychology in general. Cosmides (along with Tooby) argues thatcheating is a violation of a particular kind of conditional rule thatgoes along with a social contract. Social exchange is a system ofcooperation for mutual benefit and cheaters violate the socialcontract that governs social exchange (Cosmides & Tooby 2005). Theselection pressure for a dedicated cheater-detection module is thepresence of cheaters in the social world. The cheater-detection moduleis an adaptation that arose in response to cheaters. Thecheater-detection hypothesis has been the focus of a huge amount ofcritical discussion. Cosmides and Tooby (2008) defend the idea thatcheat detection is modular over hypotheses that more general rules ofinference are involved in the kind of reasoning behind cheaterdetection against critics Ron Mallon (2008) and Fodor (2008). Somecriticism of the cheater-detection hypothesis involves rehashingcriticisms of massive modularity in general and some treats thehypothesis as a contribution to moral psychology and invokes differentconsiderations. For example, Mallon (2008) worries about the coherenceof abandoning a domain general conception of ought in our conceptionof our moral psychology. This discussion is also ongoing. (See, e.g.,Sterelny 2012 for a selection of alternate, non-modular explanationsof aspects of our moral psychology.)

6. Human Nature

Evolutionary psychology is well suited to providing an account ofhuman nature. As noted above (Section 1), evolutionary psychology owesa theoretical debt to human sociobiology. E.O. Wilson took humansociobiology to provide us with an account of human nature (1978). ForWilson human nature is the collection of universal human behavioralrepertoires and these behavioral repertoires are best understood asbeing products of natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists arguethat human nature is not a collection of universal human behavioralrepertoires but rather the universal psychological mechanismsunderlying these behaviors (Tooby & Cosmides 1990). Theseuniversal psychological mechanisms are products of natural selection,as we saw in Section 2. above. Tooby and Cosmides put this claim asfollows: “the concept of human nature is based on aspecies-typical collection of complex psychological adaptations”(1990, 17). So, for evolutionary psychologists, “human natureconsists of a set of psychological adaptations that are presumed to beuniversal among, and unique to, human beings” (Buller 2005,423). Machery’s (2008) nomological account of human nature isbased on, and very similar to, the evolutionary psychologists’account. Machery says that “human nature is the set ofproperties that humans tend to possess as a result of the evolution oftheir species” (2008, 323). While Machery’s accountappeals to traits that have evolved and are universal (common to allhumans), it is not limited to psychological mechanisms. For example,he thinks of bi-pedalism as part of the human nature trait cluster.Machery’s view captures elements of both the sociobiologicalview and the evolutionary psychology view of human nature. He sharesthe idea that a trait must be a product of evolution, rather than saysocial learning or enculturation, with both these accounts.

Some critical challenges to evolutionary psychological accounts ofhuman nature (and the nomological account) derive from similarconcerns as those driving criticism of evolutionary psychology ingeneral. In Section 4. we see that discussions of evolutionarypsychology are founded on disagreements about how adaptation should becharacterized and disagreements about the role of variation inevolution. Some critics charge evolutionary psychologists of assumingthat adaptation cannot sustain variation. Buller’s (2005)criticism of evolutionary psychologists’ account of human naturealso invokes variation (Here he follows Hull 1986 and Sober 1980). Theidea here is that humans, like all organisms, exhibit a great deal ofvariation, including morphological, physiological, behavioral andcultural variation (see also Amundson 2000). Buller argues that theevolutionary psychology account of human nature either ignores orfails to account for all of this variation (see also Lewens 2015 andRamsey 2013). Any account that restricts human nature to just thosetraits we have in common and which also are not subject to change,cannot account for human variation.

Buller’s (2005) criticism of evolutionary psychologists’notion of human nature (or the nomological account) is based on theidea that we vary across many dimensions and an account of humannature based on fixed, universal traits cannot account for any of thisvariation. The idea that to account for human nature, we must accountfor human variation is presented and defended by evolutionarypsychologists (see, e.g., Barrett 2015), anthropologists (see e.g.Cashdan 2013) and philosophers (see, e.g., Griffiths 2011 and Ramsey2013). Barrett agrees with Buller (and others) that evolutionarypsychologists have failed to account for human variation in theiraccount of human nature. Rather than seeing this challenge as a knockdown of the whole enterprise of accounting for human nature, Barrettsees this as a challenge for an account of human nature. Barrett says“Whatever human nature is, it’s a biological phenomenonwith all that implies” (2015, 321). So, human nature is “abig wobbly cloud that is different from the population clouds ofsquirrels and palm trees. To understand human minds and behaviors, weneed to understand the properties of our own cloud, as messy as itmight be” (2015, 232). Rather than human nature being acollection of shared fixed universal psychological traits, forBarrett, human nature is the whole human trait cluster, including allof the variation in all of our traits. This approach to human natureis sharply different than the approach defended by either Wilson,Tooby and Cosmides or Machery but is also subject to a number ofcriticisms. The main thrust of the criticisms is that such a viewcannot be explanatory and is instead merely a big list of all theproperties that humans have had and can have (see, e.g., Buller 2005;Downes 2016; Futuyma 1998; and Lewens 2015). Discussion over thetension between evolutionary psychologists’ views and themanifest variation in human traits continues in many areas thatevolutionary psychologists focus on. Another example of this broaderdiscussion is included in Section 7. below.

7. Applications of Evolutionary Psychology and Prospects for Further Debate

Evolutionary psychology is invoked in a wide range of areas of study,for example, in English Literature, Consumer Studies and Law. (SeeBuss 2005 for discussion of Literature and Law and Saad 2007 for adetailed presentation of evolutionary psychology and consumerstudies.) In these contexts, evolutionary psychology is usuallyintroduced as providing resources for practitioners, which willadvance the relevant field. Philosophers have responded critically tosome of these applications of evolutionary psychology. One concern isthat often evolutionary psychology is conflated with evolution orevolutionary theory in general (see, e.g., Leiter & Weisberg 2009and Downes 2013). The discussion reviewed in Section 4. above, revealsa good deal of disagreement between evolutionary theorists andevolutionary psychologists over the proper account of evolution.Evolutionary psychologists offer to enhance fields such as Law andConsumer Studies by introducing evolutionary ideas but what is in factoffered is a selection of theoretical resources championed only byproponents of a specific approach to evolutionary psychology. Forexample, Gad Saad (2007) argues that Consumer Studies will profitgreatly from the addition of adaptive thinking, i.e. looking forapparent design, and by introducing hypothetical evolved modules toaccount for consumer behavior. However, this does not appear to be aneffort to bring evolutionary theory, broadly construed, to bear onConsumer Studies (Downes 2013). Promoting disputed theoretical ideasis certainly problematic but bigger worries arise when thoroughlydiscredited work is promoted in the effort to apply evolutionarypsychology. Owen Jones (see, e.g., 2000; 2005), who believes that Lawwill benefit from the application of evolutionary psychology,champions Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s (2000) widelydiscredited view that rape is an adaptation as exemplary evolutionarywork (see de Waal 2000, Coyne & Berry 2000, Coyne 2003, Lloyd2003, Vickers & Kitcher 2003, and Kimmel 2003). Further, Jones(2000) claims that the critics of Thornhill and Palmer’s workhave no credibility as scientists and evolutionary theorists. Thisclaim indicates Jones’ serious disconnect with the widerscientific (and philosophical) literature on evolutionary theory(Leiter & Weisberg 2009).

Aside from monitoring the expansion efforts of evolutionarypsychology, there are a number of other areas in which furtherphilosophical work on evolutionary psychology will be fruitful. Theexamples given above of work in moral psychology barely scratch thesurface of this rapidly developing field. There are huge numbers ofempirical hypotheses that bear on our conception of our moralpsychology that demand philosophical scrutiny. (Hauser 2006 includes asurvey of a wide range of such hypotheses.) Also, work on moralpsychology and the emotions can be drawn together via work onevolutionary psychology and related fields. Griffiths (1997) directedphilosophical attention to evolution and the emotions and this kind ofwork has been brought into closer contact with moral psychology byNichols (see, e.g., his 2004). In philosophy of mind there is stillmuch that can be done on the topic of modules. Work on integratingbiological and psychological concepts of modules is one avenue that isbeing pursued and could be fruitfully pursued further (see, e.g.,Barrett & Kurzban 2006; Carruthers 2006) and work on connectingbiology to psychology via genetics is another promising area (see e.g.Marcus 2004). In philosophy of science, I have no doubt that many morecriticisms of evolutionary psychology will be presented but arelatively underdeveloped area of philosophical research is on therelations among all of the various, theoretically different,approaches to the biology of human behavior (but see Downes 2005;Griffiths 2008; and Brown et al. 2011). Evolutionary psychologistspresent their work alongside the work of behavioral ecologists,developmental psychobiologists and others (see, e.g., Buss 2005; Buss2007) but do not adequately confront the theoretical difficulties thatface an integrated enterprise in the biology of human behavior.Finally, while debate rages between biologically influenced and othersocial scientists, most philosophers have not paid much attention topotential integration of evolutionary psychology into the broaderinterdisciplinary study of society and culture (but see Mallon andStich 2000 on evolutionary psychology and constructivism). Incontrast, feminist philosophers have paid attention to thisintegration issue as well as offered feminist critiques ofevolutionary psychology (see Fehr 2012, Meynell 2012 and the entry onfeminist philosophy of biology). Gillian Barker (2015), shares some evolutionarily based criticisms ofevolutionary psychology with philosophers of biology discussed inSection 4. but also assesses evolutionary psychology in relation toother social sciences. She also adds a novel critical appraisal ofevolutionary psychology. She argues that, as currently practiced,evolutionary psychology is not a fruitful guide to social policyregarding human flourishing.

The publication of Shackleford and Weekes-Shackleford’s (2017)huge collection of articles on issues arising in the evolutionarypsychological sciences provides a great resource for philosopherslooking for material to fuel critical discussion. Many evolutionarypsychologists are aware of the difficulty variation presents for someestablished approaches in their field. This issue confronts thoseinterested in developing accounts of human nature, as noted above(Section 6.), but also arises when confronting many of the varyinghuman behaviors evolutionary psychologists seek to account for. Forexample, human aggression varies along many dimensions and confrontingand accounting for each of these types of variation is a challenge formany evolutionary psychologists (Downes & Tabery 2017). Given thatevolutionary psychology is just one, among many, evolutionarily basedapproaches to explaining human behavior, the most promising criticaldiscussions of evolutionary psychology should continue to come fromwork that compares hypotheses drawn from evolutionary psychology withhypotheses drawn from other evolutionary approaches and otherapproaches in the social sciences more broadly construed. StephanLinquist (2016) takes this approach to evolutionarypsychologists’ work on cultures of honor. Linquist introduceshypotheses from cultural evolution that appear to offer moreexplanatory bite than those from evolutionary psychology. The broaderissue of tension between evolutionary psychology and culturalevolution here will doubtless continue to attract the criticalattention of philosophers. (See Lewens 2015 for a nice clearintroduction to and discussion of alternative approaches to culturalevolution.)

Interest has re-emerged in the relation(s) between evolutionarypsychology and the other social sciences (Buss 2020). Some time ago,John Dupré (1994) diagnosed evolutionary psychology as anexercise in scientific imperialism. Dupré later characterizedscientific imperialism as “the tendency for a successfulscientific idea to be applied far beyond its original home, andgenerally with decreasing success the more its application isexpanded” (2001, 16). Dupré uses “scientificimperialism” in a pejorative sense and marshals this as acriticism of evolutionary psychology. (See Downes 2017 for furtherdiscussion of scientific imperialism and evolutionary psychology.)Buss (2020) does not cite Dupré but might well be responding tohim when he proposes that evolutionary psychology constitutes ascientific revolution in Kuhn’s sense. Buss argues thatevolutionary psychology is superior to other approaches in psychology,because it has supplanted them (or at least should supplant them) justas Einstein’s physics supplanted Newton’s or just ascognitive psychology supplanted behaviorism. (David Reich [2018] castsancient DNA research in similarly Kuhnian terms and offers it up assuperior to all previous approaches in archaeology.) Buss takesevolutionary psychology to be a meta-theoretical approach best fit forguiding all of psychology. This is one of the many ways in which hisappeal to Kuhn is strained, as Buss is not looking back on thesupplanting of one theoretical framework by another but rather arguingfor the superiority of his approach to others available in psychology.A further, and quite specific way that Buss sees evolutionarypsychology as superior to other approaches in psychology (and thesocial sciences in general, is that evolutionary psychology ignores(or should ignore) proximate explanations. For Buss, evolutionarypsychology offers ultimate explanations and these are enough. However,many areas of biology, for example, physiology, trade in proximateexplanations and are not likely to be cast aside because of thisfocus. This implies that there is still a place for proximateexplanations in psychology. This brief discussion indicates that therelations between evolutionary psychology and the rest of psychology,and the social sciences, more broadly is a topic well worth pursuingby philosophers of science and Buss’ and Dupré’saccounts present interesting alternate starting points in thisendeavor.

Finally, philosophers of science will doubtless continue to check thecredentials of evolutionary ideas imported into other areas ofphilosophy. Philosophers of biology in particular, still voicesuspicion if philosophers borrow their evolutionary ideas fromevolutionary psychology rather than evolutionary biology. PhilipKitcher (2017) voices this concern with regards to SharonStreet’s (2006) appeals to evolution. Kitcher worries thatStreet does not rely on “what is known about humanevolution” (2017, 187) to provide an account of how her traitsof interest may have emerged. As noted above, Machery’snomological notion of human nature (2008; 2017) is criticized on thegrounds that he takes his idea of an evolved trait from evolutionarypsychology as opposed to evolutionary biology. Barker (2015) alsoencourages philosophers, as well as social scientists, to draw fromthe huge range of theoretical resources evolutionary biologists haveto offer, rather than just from those provided by evolutionarypsychologists.

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Buller, D., 2000, “Evolutionary Psychology” (a guided tour), in M. Nani and M. Marraffa (eds.),A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Austin Booth, David Buller, Marc Ereshefsky, Matt Haber, RonMallon, Shaun Nichols and the Stanford Encyclopedia referees forhelpful comments on drafts of this entry.

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