Philip Kitcher, Human Nature and Belief, Wed 8 July

Evolutionary Psychology and the Legacy of Sociobiology Professor Philip Kitcher (Columbia University, New York City, USA) Summary: The human sociobiology of the 1970s and 1980s was, I have argued, characterised by overly speculative hypotheses about human nature and the evolution of human tendencies to behaviour. Evolutionary psychology is often alleged to represent a significantly different, and significantly improved, application of evolutionary thinking to the human mind. In this talk I argue that the differences between the two programmes are largely cosmetic, and that evolutionary psychology remains as problematic as its predecessor.