It seems that the ideal evolutionary psychology research paper would start with some well-known fact about human nature—a fact empirically verified by ordinary psychologists. From this fact, plus the fact of evolution under natural selection, plus the fact that none of our fellow apes exhibit this human idiosyncrasy, the paper would infer some hypothesis about our recent selective environment—a plausible hypothesis, given what we already know from physical anthropology. Then, assuming that our hypothesis about the past is true, the paper would reason forward to some new, previously unsuspected hypothetical fact about modern human nature. Finally, the paper would conclude with new empirical research showing that human nature really is like that. A hypothesis about the present generated by evolutionary psychology is found to be true by the methods of ordinary psychology.
That would be great. That would be science. Does anyone have a citation to such a paper?
What do you think of the experiment cited in this post of Eliezer’s?
What do you think of the experiment cited in this post of Eliezer’s?