Individualism and evolutionary psychology (or: In defense of "narrow" functions)
Philosophy of Science 64 (1):74-95 (1997)
| Abstract | Millikan and Wilson argue, for different reasons, that the essential reference to the environment in adaptationist explanations of behavior makes (psychological) individualism inconsistent with evolutionary psychology. I show that their arguments are based on misinterpretations of the role of reference to the environment in such explanations. By exploring these misinterpretations, I develop an account of explanation in evolutionary psychology that is fully consistent with individualism. This does not, however, constitute a full-fledged defense of individualism, since evolutionary psychology is only one explanatory paradigm among many in psychology | |||||||||
| Keywords | Evolution Function Individualism Mechanism Psychology Science Millikan, R Wilson, E | |||||||||
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