Episode 8: Chris Haufe discusses evolutionary psychology
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What is natural selection and why is it the foundation for evolutionary psychology?
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm Mark Hopwood. With us today is Chris Halfa, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago. And he's here to talk to us about evolutionary psychology. Chris Halfa, welcome.
Thanks, Matt. It's great to be here.
So I thought we might begin just by way of background talking about natural selection. What is natural selection? What's the idea behind that?
Well, so at any given time in a population, members of the population will differ in a variety of ways. Some of these differences will cause certain members of the population to be more reproductively successful, that is, leave more descendants than other members of the population. Now, if those differences that allow certain members to be more reproductively successful are also inherited by their descendants... The idea is that those descendants will also, or at least some of them, will have better reproductive success in the way that their parents did, and eventually the members who have these certain properties that cause them to be more reproductively successful will spread throughout the population and become sort of the normal form that that organism takes in that population.
So this is the science that we've come to know as evolutionary biology, the science that studies this process of natural selection. And I guess a lot of us are familiar with the examples we were taught in school of giraffes with longer necks having a better chance of getting the higher leaves on the trees. You've written on a specific field within evolutionary biology, or some people might even call it a different field altogether. That's to say the field of evolutionary psychology. So I wonder if you could say something about that field. What specifically is studied by evolutionary psychology?
Okay, well, evolutionary psychologists look specifically at traits shaped by natural selection associated with human psychology, the human cognitive architecture. Well, I guess they can look at it in non-humans as well. But human evolutionary psychologists just focus on those psychological traits that have been shaped by natural selection. So with respect to distinction between evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, I don't see there as being any distinction at all, really.
How do evolutionary psychologists define the traits they study, such as jealousy?
Some evolutionary biologists work on morphology, how a population came to be shaped in a certain way, have a body that's shaped in a certain way. Evolutionary psychologists work on problems associated with how the human population came to have a mind that's shaped or works in a certain way. I guess I don't personally see any distinction. They're both working on evolutionary history. Some people work on bones. Other people work on psychological traits.
Okay, so there's no firm distinction then. You just simply have different things that can be studied from the point of view of evolutionary biology. You have the evolution of certain body parts and certain organs and certain functions that those body parts and organs perform. And on the other hand, you have the evolution of brains and minds and certain psychological capacities that
evolve.
And you see those two as continuous. So what would be an example of a psychological trait that an evolutionary psychologist would argue evolved by means of natural selection?
Okay, so one psychological trait that received a lot of attention recently is jealousy, the human capacity for jealousy. At least one evolutionary psychologist named David Buss, he's written a book specifically on jealousy and its evolutionary function and its manifestations in contemporary human culture and society. So that's an easily sort of identifiable, I mean, everybody sort of knows what that feeling is like. And he's exposed the trait itself to some pretty sustained analysis, evolutionary analysis. So that's one example. Another example, a lot of times it comes in the form of behaviors, right?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is natural selection and why is it the foundation for evolutionary psychology?
0:03–2:56
2
How do evolutionary psychologists define the traits they study, such as jealousy?
2:56–5:41
3
Why do critics label evolutionary psychology explanations as “just‑so stories”?
5:41–8:11
4
How can evolutionary psychologists test whether a trait like jealousy is an adaptation?
8:11–11:42
5
What methodological challenges arise when trying to prove a psychological trait’s adaptive function?
11:42–13:43
6
How does the debate over just‑so stories affect the credibility of evolutionary psychology in philosophy?
13:43–17:12
7
What are the implications of using evolutionary explanations for moral and political philosophy?
17:12–20:05
8
How does Chris Haufe summarize the main criticisms and possible ways forward for evolutionary psychology?
20:05–23:06
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