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Essay Review: Debunking Adapting Minds

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BullerDavid J., Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2005), 552 pp., $37.00 (cloth).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Edouard Machery  and
H. Clark Barrett
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Abstract

David Buller's recent book, Adapting Minds, is a philosophical critique of the field of evolutionary psychology. Buller argues that evolutionary psychology is utterly bankrupt from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Although Adapting Minds has been well received in both the academic press and the popular media, we argue that Buller's critique of evolutionary psychology fails.

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Type
Essay Review
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , April 2006 , pp. 232 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

We would like to thank Luc Faucher, Martie Haselton, Steve Stich, and the participants of the seminar Evolution and Cognition at the University of Pittsburgh in Fall 2005, particularly Peter Gildenhuys and Devan Goldstein, for their comments on previous versions of this critical review. Thanks also to Dale Purves and Gary Marcus for answering a few questions about brain development.

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