Chris over at Mixing Memory has a pair of very interesting posts. The first discusses perceptual symbols systems theory in cognitive science. Yeah, that sounds complex but Chris does a great job explaining it so that even novices can understand. The overly simply view is that in considering the mind as a computing machine perceptions were perhaps somewhat excluded. Chris considers what effects the perceptualists have had on cognitive science. Were that all he did it would still be an interesting post. However he then uses this as an analogy to the situation with intelligent design in evolution. He raises a lot of good points and highlights rather well why intelligent design hasn't amounted to much in a scientific sense.
In addition to that excellent post, he has a second post taking evolutionary psychology to task. Evolutionary psychology is one of those sorts of "hand waving" disciplines where a good reasonable sounding explanation is taken as truth independent of much empirical evidence. However these explanations get promoted to and by the public in such a way that they take on a life as a kind of cultural dogma. Chris' post is very worth reading. I sometimes wonder if some of the claims of evolutionary psychology isn't the new version of social darwinism. Since these sorts of arguments pop up a lot - especially in political discussions - knowing how little science there is for them is something to keep in mind.
Evolutionary psychology is definetly more sophisiticated than Social Darwinism. That said, it is not definitly not as powerful as many people tend to think.
Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" has a good discussion the subject.
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Blogged by Clark Goble