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Re: Sociobiology and scientific illiteracy.

Cosmides and Tooby say:

Evolutionary psychology is not behavior genetics. Behavior geneticists are interested in the extent to which differences between people in a given environment can be accounted for by differences in their genes. EPs are interested in individual differences only insofar as these are the manifestation of an underlying architecture shared by all human beings. Because their genetic basis is universal and species-typical, the heritability of complex adaptations (of the eye, for example) is usually low, not high. Moreover, sexual recombination constrains the design of genetic systems, such that the genetic basis of any complex adaptation (such as a cognitive mechanism) must be universal and species-typical (Tooby and Cosmides, 1990b). This means the genetic basis for the human cognitive architecture is universal, creating what is sometimes called the psychic unity of humankind.

By that definition our criticism, and our mockery, are intended entirely for behaviour geneticists and not at all for 'evolutionary psychologists'. However, we doubt that the latter science, thus defined, can possibly discover anything of philosophical significance about human beings. It is on a par, in that respect, with the equally worthy sciences of, say, botany or entomology.

Moreover, Cosmides and Tooby hint that they doubt the claim of behaviour genetics to have a subject matter in the case of humans. Though it is not clear that they doubt it strongly enough, we are not inclined to quibble.

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