The Clay of Evolution: Megalomania in (Evolutionary) Psychology

This article is an attempt to reply to a number of theoretical and epistemological issues frequently addressed in contemporary evolutionary psychology. We adopt a critical approach to both the empiricist conceit so often underlying the discipline and its core premises around the relationship between mind and biological evolution. As an alternative we take a constructivist view from which we propose to broach that relationship through the so-called Baldwin effect. That phenomenon, widely known among evolutionary biologists today, enables us to elude simplistic approaches to the problem of the relationship between psychology and evolution. It also affords a perspective for re-focusing the issues on the activity of organisms and the classic inter-connections among phylogenesis, historiogenesis and ontogenesis. The study concludes with a warning about the limitations to explanation that should be assumed by any psychological postulate with universally comprehensive pretensions, an issue evocative of the inevitable and structural crisis in which psychology should agree to transpire.

Egalitarianism: psychological and socio-ecological foundations

Individual differences in social and political attitudes have their roots in evolved motives for basic kinds of social relationships. Egalitarianism is the preference for the application of the one of these relational models-equality-over that of another-dominance-to the context of societal intergroup relations. We present recent research on the origins of egalitarianism in terms of universal social cognitive mechanisms (activated as early as infancy), systematic (partly heritable) individual differences, and the affordances and constraints of one's immediate and macro-structural context. Just as the psychological impact of socioeconomic conditions depends on the mind being equipped to perceive and navigate them, so the expression of the evolved underpinnings of inequality concerns depends critically on social and societal experiences.

What does agency afford the self?

We welcome Doris's dual systems, social account of agency and self. However, we suggest that a level of affordances regarding agency is interpolated between those dual systems. We also suggest a need to consider joint (“we”) agency in addition to individual (“I”) agency, and we suggest a more fundamental role for culture in configuring both the values entering the dialogue that generates the sense of agency and self, and the nature of the dialogue itself.

Evolution, activity and assembled mediation: A neo-Balwinian response to the universalism of evolutionary psychology

In this article, we suggest an alternative to the psycho-evolutionist positions that attempt to establish cultural universals to surmount the paradoxes of social constructionism. We review the proposals put forward by Franks (2014) on the biological factors that determine the human species’ basic sociality and the political consequences that can be drawn from them. We subject this conception to a critical review on two fronts. On one front, we turn to Baldwin’s organic selection as a possible alternative to the neo-Lamarckian and universalist principles that inspire Frank’s proposal. On the other front, we advance the idea of assembled mediation as a way of dismantling the reductionism, continuism and ontological hierarchy that underlie the explanation of human activity propounded by evolutionary psychology. Moving onwards from that basis, our proposal assumes that attempting to analyse the complexity of cultural phenomena always entails two-way journeys between the scientific explanation and the politico-ideological project.