Ed Clint recently wrote about Rebecca Watson’s rotten Skepticon talk on Evolutionary Psychology. To sum up, evolutionary psychology is a research program in which scientists study why behaviors and different aspects of human psychology were selected for. Rebecca, and a great number of feminists in general, don’t like evolutionary psychology, because they claim it is not a real science.Is evolutionary psychology science or not? I honestly don’t know. I have not studied it in enough depth to form an opinion yet. Based on what I have read, I think there is a good chance that it is a true science, or that it could become a science with enough development. We can’t rule out the possibility of understanding human psychology in terms of evolution by natural selection.
Does Rebecca Watson have a good case to make against it? No.
Why does she attack it?
My speculation: She’s offended by the idea that there are innate differences between male and female brains. Self-proclaimed feminists are committed to the belief that men and women are equal (that’s what feminism is, according to most of its adherents). That belief is uncontroversial and obviously correct; I don’t dispute it. However, I get the feeling that some feminists equate this belief (equality of the sexes) with the belief that men and women are fundamentally the same (as in: they have no brain differences). The view that men and women are basically the same and the differences are created by culture is a valid possibility, I think, but so is the alternative: that there are real, genetically-based differences between the sexes that affect the mind.
If we find out that there are such differences, it shouldn’t affect our choice to treat people of each gender fairly. To give an example: one of my personal weaknesses is that I don’t have the best social skills in the world. I happen to know that the most likely reason I don’t probably has a genetic basis. None of this justifies other people to see me as an inferior human being or treat me poorly. Likewise, if it were ever discovered that men or women had genetic differences that created different skill sets, different strengths or weaknesses from one another, that would not justify seeing either sex as inferior or any such nonsense. I need to emphasize again the big if: all of this is hypothetical, I’m not really sure that there are any such sexual differences. Further, I’m not entirely sure that this is the reason Watson is against evolutionary psychology.
So, I have a few questions for Watson and her supporters:
1. Are you offended by evolutionary psychology for the reason I mentioned?
2. If not, then what is the reason you do not like EP?
3. If so, then do you acknowledge that we might scientifically prove that there are genetically-based differences between male and female minds? In other words, do you believe it is possible that such differences exist and can be discovered?
4. If you do not believe such differences could exist and be discovered, then it necessarily follows that we cannot scientifically determine that the alternative viewpoint of sexual sameness is correct (by “sexual sameness” I mean the view that men and women are born with the same psychological predisposition and that differences in behavior are totally filled in by culture and not at all by genetics). From that it necessarily follows that “sexual sameness” and “sexual difference” are both unscientific ideologies. Do you agree or disagree?
