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lukeprog comments on Your Evolved Intuitions - Less Wrong
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Much of the commentary here has turned into yet another debate about just how useless and unscientific evolutionary psychology is. (Notice how I cleverly signaled my own viewpoint about the debate. :) But do we really need to have this debate?
It occurs to me that Luke's argument (about the misuse of intuitions by philosophers) really is independent of whether present-day evolutionary psychologists know what they are talking about. All Luke's arguments, if I understand them, really need is that some intuitions are innate and derived from our evolutionary history, some are learned, and that some are generated on the spot by fallible cognitive processes. It really doesn't matter whether an innate intuition arises as an evolutionary adaptation or an evolutionary accident - it still doesn't provide a philosopher what he needs to ground his arguments.
If I am right here, and the validity of evolutionary psychology is irrelevant to Luke's arguments, then lets move on. We can debate whether the validity of evolutionary psychology is irrelevant more generally at some other time.
I endorse all of this.
As for your comment below about how I "seemed to suggest [evpsych] was the best thing since slided bread," I'm not sure where you got such an idea. Evpsych is, as others have pointed out, full of holes. I pointed to some of those holes in my first footnote.
Other people who talk about evo psych think it is the best thing since sliced bread. You talk about evo psych. Therefore, you think evo psych is the best thing since sliced bread.
It is approximately the same intuition at play as that which you describe as 'essentialism' - and nearly ubiquitous when speaking with humans. If you say something about a topic or theory you can assume that you will be judged according to whatever other people who talk about the same topic, position or theory have said.
It's also a perfectly valid piece of Bayesian reasoning.
It isn't if it is made as a logical deduction - as it was presented in the quote and also how it is frequently implemented in practice. The valid Bayesian reasoning would be a well calibrated calculation of the probability that the speaker happens to think those same thoughts given the remembered behaviours of other individuals of the same species. If only that was how humans behaved!