Once More into the Breach: Revisiting the Metaphor of Mechanism in Evolutionary Psychological Explanations
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Recent decades have witnessed increased interest in evolutionary psychological explanations of all manner of human behavior.An example of this increased interest can be seen in Durrant and Ward (2012), who call for a more appreciation and systematic integration of evolutionary explanations in criminology.A central platform of their proposal assumes that the key to any adequate evolutionary explanation of human behavior is the causal presence of evolved psychological mechanisms.We contend, however, that any account of human behavior -criminological or otherwise -that relies on "psychological mechanisms" to account for either the transmission of psychological entities across generations or the current existence of such entities cannot in principle succeed because such explanations reflect a fundamental confusion between metaphors and mechanisms.Recent decades have witnessed a veritable explosion of interest in evolutionary psychology and the attempt to explain all manner of human behavior in fundamentally evolutionary terms (see, e.g.,
Authors: E. Gantt Edwin, Laura Jeffrey
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2271558091