Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Bradford Books) [Hardcover]

David J. Buller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2005 | Series: Bradford Books

Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominant view in evolutionary psychology holds that it was—that our psychological adaptations were designed tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionary psychology—the paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in The Evolution of Desire—and rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionary theory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychology is misguided.

Evolutionary psychology employs a kind of reverse engineering to explain the evolved design of the mind, figuring out the adaptive problems our ancestors faced and then inferring the psychological adaptations that evolved to solve them. In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "discoveries," including "discriminative parental solicitude" (the idea that stepparents abuse their stepchildren at a higher rate than genetic parents abuse their biological children). Drawing on a wide range of empirical research, including his own large-scale study of child abuse, he shows that none is actually supported by the evidence.

Buller argues that our minds are not adapted to the Pleistocene, but, like the immune system, are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time and individual lifetimes. We must move beyond the reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology to reach an accurate understanding of how human psychology is influenced by evolution. When we do, Buller claims, we will abandon not only the quest for human nature but the very idea of human nature itself.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The author’s restraint and generous stance ensure that evolutionary psychologists have to take Adapting Minds seriously.... I highly commend [Buller] for having written an outstanding book. It sets the standard for the continuing debates on evolutionary psychology."
— Science

"His book, Adapting Minds from MIT Press, is the most persuasive critique of evo psych I have encountered... After Adapting Minds it is impossible to ever again think that human behavior is the Stone Age artifact that evolutionary psychology claims."
— Sharon Begley, Wall Street Journal

"Buller hopes that Adapting Minds can clear the way for some actual science about how evolution equips us to have psychologies. Anyone with a serious interest in evolution, psychology, or humanity should read it to free their mind for that task."
— The New Scientist

"Adapting Minds is destined to become required reading among evolutionary psychology’s detractors. But, despite its flaws, it will be read with interest by evolutionary psychologists too. Buller provides a useful overview of the filed and of the current debates... Buller enables evolutionary psychologist to get back to arguing about the science."
— Nature

"David Buller's searching critique of evolutionary psychology is intended to make the field stronger. He shows how much philosophy can contribute to an intense and ongoing scientific debate."
—David Sloan Wilson, Binghamton University, author of Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society

"Buller's critique of evolutionary psychology is measured, logical, and clearly developed. It is also devastating. Buller does not seek to refute the entirety of evolutionary psychology by finding a single magic bullet. Rather, he attends to the details, finding a variety of serious problems in the different arguments that evolutionary psychologists deploy. This is philosophy of science in the trenches, and it is excellent."
—Elliott Sober, Hans Reichenbach Professor and William Vilas Research Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"How do you tell the difference between evolutionary psychology as popular culture and as science? Buller solves the problem. He disentangles convictions born of everyday intuition from the thinking and evidence that are necessary for a scientific understanding of human cognition and behavior in an evolutionary perspective. In clear and accessible prose, he delivers a much-needed analysis of current theory and research claiming to unlock human nature. This book is essential for evolutionary psychologists, their critics, and hungry audiences."
—Linnda R. Caporael, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

"This is a superb book, wonderfully clear in thought and expression. The evolutionary psychology program represented by Pinker, Cosmides, and their allies has already been the target of impressive theoretical discussion, but this has focused mostly on the assumptions they make about evolutionary theory and human paleobiology. Buller covers this material with exemplary clarity, but the real strength of his work lies in his searching critique of the experimental case for evolutionary psychology. His is by far the best treatment of these issues I have ever read. In case after case, Buller shows that the experimental case for the existence of Darwinian algorithms is much weaker than even skeptics like me have supposed."
—Kim Sterelny, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Australian National University

From the Inside Flap

"David Buller's searching critique of evolutionary psychology is intended to make the field stronger. He shows how much philosophy can contribute to an intense and ongoing scientific debate."
--David Sloan Wilson, Binghamton University, author of Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society

"Buller's critique of evolutionary psychology is measured, logical, and clearly developed. It is also devastating. Buller does not seek to refute the entirety of evolutionary psychology by finding a single magic bullet. Rather, he attends to the details, finding a variety of serious problems in the different arguments that evolutionary psychologists deploy. This is philosophy of science in the trenches, and it is excellent."
--Elliott Sober, Hans Reichenbach Professor and William Vilas Research Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison

"How do you tell the difference between evolutionary psychology as popular culture and as science? Buller solves the problem. He disentangles convictions born of everyday intuition from the thinking and evidence that are necessary for a scientific understanding of human cognition and behavior in an evolutionary perspective. In clear and accessible prose, he delivers a much-needed analysis of current theory and research claiming to unlock human nature. This book is essential for evolutionary psychologists, their critics, and hungry audiences."
--Linnda R. Caporael, Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

"This is a superb book, wonderfully clear in thought and expression. The evolutionary psychology program represented by Pinker, Cosmides, and their allies has already been the target of impressive theoretical discussion, but this has focused mostly on the assumptions they make about evolutionary theory and human paleobiology. Buller covers this material with exemplary clarity, but the real strength of his work lies in his searching critique of the experimental case for evolutionary psychology. His is by far the best treatment of these issues I have ever read. In case after case, Buller shows that the experimental case for the existence of Darwinian algorithms is much weaker than even skeptics like me have supposed."
--Kim Sterelny, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Australian National University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 564 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First Edition edition (April 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262025795
• ISBN-13: 978-0262025799
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,904,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 127 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth a serious reading August 7, 2005

By Herbert Gintis

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

David Buller, a philosopher, has written a book critiquing the scientific work of a subgroup of evolutionary psychologists who adhere to a doctrine first clearly articulated in a series of brilliant articles and books by D. Symons, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby. Their work was immeasurably enhanced by its uptake by popular science writers R. Wright and S. Pinker.

I think the philosophy of science is quite important, but I cannot think of a case where philosophers, qua philosophers, have added anything substantive to the critique of a scientific theory. I read this book only because of the extravagant praise afforded it by prominent behavioral scientists, including David Sloan Wilson, Linnda Caporeal, and Kim Sterelny. While I think this book does have a lot to offer the interested lay reader, it certainly does not violate my generalization about the worthlessness of philosophers criticizing scientific theories.

The author is clear in stating that his contribution is not a critique of evolutionary psychology in general, but only of this particular subgroup, which he distinguishes by capitalizing the name. For a general description of evolutionary psychology and Evolutionary Psychology (which I call EvPsych), please see my review of Scher and Rauscher, Evolutionary Psychology.

Much of Buller's effort goes to criticizing a few prominent examples of the empirical research of EvPsychers, including D. Buss's analysis of mate preference, M. Daly and M. Wilson's analysis of parenting vs. step-parenting, and C. Cosmides and J. Tooby's analysis of cheater detection modules. I think this was an unfortunate choice because the general EvPsych approach does not stand or fall on these examples in any way. Despite Buller's strong critique of Daly and Wilson, I suspect that their data analysis will emerge superior to Buller's, if only because they are consummate professionals in the area and he is a rank amateur. But, either way, their predictions do not depend in any way on the particular doctrines of EvPsych, but are broadly based on the evolutionary psychology paradigm. Buss's analysis of mate choice is impressively broad-based and thorough, but he has not been able to show that his results are due to EEA adaptations as opposed to strong cultural uniformities across societies, based on male dominance of modern political and economic hierarchies. Cosmides and Tooby's analysis of cheater detection modules is directly related to a major EvPsych proposition (the modularity of mind), but the only people convinced by their cheater detection argument are themselves and their disciples.

In dealing with the theoretical basis of EvPsych, Buller is very successful only one point, albeit a major one: the existence and nature of mental modules. His success is based on a highly cogent critique of the EvPsych position that the human mind is composed of a set of distinct, complexly organized and independent modules, each of which evolved as a solution to a particular evolutionary challenge to our species. The critique, however, is not philosophical but scientific, based on the work of contemporary developmental neurobiologists. This is perhaps the best part of the book.

Buller also critiques somewhat effectively the notion that there has been little development in the human gene pool, vis-à-vis mental development, in the past 50,000 years, and hence that we possess "stone-age minds." The arguments Buller uses are plausible, and take the form of noting that genetic change is much faster in many cases than assumed by the EvPsychers. Nevertheless, this point has not been nailed down by population biologists or quantitative geneticists, as far as I know.

Buller also deploys the argument that there was no single EEA, and hence there is no basis for the notion that human nature is homogeneous. This is a correct, but well-known argument. Only the EvPsychers themselves stick adamantly to the Orthodoxy on this point.

Doubtless the least effect part of this book is Buller's extended attempt to deny that there is a such thing as "human nature." Borrowing an argument from Hull, he asserts that species are "individuals" rather than "natural kinds" and only "natural kinds" have the sort of being that allows us to discuss their "nature." This, to my mind, is exactly the type of philosophizing that renders the philosophical critique of science so bizarre and ineffective. Ducks have duck nature. It is what we learn when we study the character and behavior of ducks. Mosquitoes similarly have mosquito nature. Humans being are no different. The philosopher is not allowed to define the terms of science in his own bizarre way and then claim to have detected a synthetic a priori inconsistency in the scientific use of the term.

In short, I do not believe this book is an important contribution to the development of evolutionary psychology or to the critique of EvPsych, although it is a great introduction to the literature for an interested lay person, since Buller develops his themes carefully and lucidly, never leaving even the most uninstructed reader behind.

45 of 54 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile reading for those interested in Ev Psych April 16, 2005

By J.P. Franks

Format:Hardcover

This is not a book attempting to debunk evolutionary psychology, broadly speaking. It is a book that attempts to debunk a number of ev psych's specific theses about human psychology, for example, the existence of a cheater-detection module. Buller's critique of the latter is quite good, though the chapter on mate preferences I didn't find as convincing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the philosopher Buller relys more on empirical studies than airy philosophical argument to create doubts about the veracity of ev psych's claims. He is best when building cases for alternate explanations of the experimental results prominant evolutionary psychologists claim support theirs.

Buller does not deny that the evolutionary perspective is the correct one through which to view human psychology. He simply argues that the conclusions drawn by many prominent evolutionary psychologists have reached too far and are without sufficient evidentiary support. Those who, from a visceral feeling of repulsion at the thought that humans are evolved animals whose minds are products of natural processes, simply loathe the evolutionary perspective of human psychology, will not find this book comforting.

54 of 69 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and past due critique of evolutionary pscyhology May 3, 2005

By James Daniels

Format:Hardcover

Author David Buller was initially attracted to evolutionary psychology. The field attempts to explain the basic mechanisms of the human mind by extrapolating from the kinds of problems that our human ancestors faced. Unfortunately, the field is riven with conceptual and empirical problems, and Buller was ultimately forced to write this book as a critique.

Unlike most attacks on the field, this book is based on an examination of the theoretical principles and empirical data used to bolster the theory. He does not reject the idea that one might use evolutionary theory to understand human psychology, or worry at all about the possible ethical, moral, or political implications that such a theory would generate. Rather, he asks what evidence there is for the currently accepted hypotheses in the field. On this score, Buller finds numerous faults with the approach.

Evolutionarly psychologists use three lines of evidence: present adaptations, data on past environments, and data from other, related primates.

Present adaptations, however, are a product of recent selection, past selection, and individual differences in experience, and thus do not reliably tell us anything about our ancient past, even if we can find them.

With regard to past environments, Buller makes what is perhaps his strongest argument: there was no stable environment in human evolution to which the human organism could become progressively adapted. At every stage, the problems faced by animals changed. This was true when primitive hominids began to construct tools, use language, farm, and so on. For example, Buller shows that hunter man must kill or scavenge an animal to find food, but the specifics of this problem change when he makes tools like spears, and again when he domesticates animals. If there was no long period of stability in the past, then our minds are constantly changing to cope with ongoing problems.

Inferences from the lives of other primates are also of limited value, since the closest ones, chimps, diverged from us over 1 million years ago, and have lived in different environments ever since. If we could identify the environment in which we evolved, we could identify primates that currently inhabit similar niches, but such overlapping ecology is hard to find.

After dealing with these three conceptual problems with evolutionary psychology, Buller attacks the data for such things as massive mental modularity, cheater detection, and mate choice theory head on. At every point, the data are impressive, and can be interpreted as vaguely in support of some evolutionary psychological principles. However, as Buller shows, this is not the only possible interpretation of these data. Since both the theoretical arguments and the empirical data are only weakly in support of the theory, Buller argues that the theory ought to be much more limited in its scope and claims. It is refreshing to see such an honest appraisal of the primary theory and evidence, and see it discussed warts and all.

My only complaint about the book is that Buller too easily concedes the idea that language is modular and requires some kind of innate knowledge at birth. This idea was made popular by Chomsky, but modern linguists and neuroscientists have shown that these claims suffer from the same problems Buller finds for modularity, cheater detection, and so on. For example, very simple neural networks are capable of abstracting grammatical rules and word use heuristics, very rapidly, without any innate knowledge or pre-programmed modularity. Given that the bulk of evolutionary psychology is reasoned by analogy to language, I would have thought Buller would seek out and exploit these more recent findings that make Chomsky's claims obsolete. Perhaps in the sequel we will see this.

The book is well written and designed for the lay public and interested undergraduates. No background in genetics, evolutionary biology, psychology, or anthropology is necessary. Some knowledge of philosophy of science, notably Popper, Kuhn, and Laudan, would be helpful but not necessary. Those who have read and enjoyed Gould's salvos against evolutionary psychology will enjoy this book even more. Acolytes of Pinker, Tooby, Cosmides, et al. would do well to read and heed the advice in this book.