Is evolutionary psychology another form of genetic determinism?
Yes and no. Definitely no if one is referring to behavioral genetics. All organisms, including humans, can be conceived as an integrated set of functional parts. Hearts, lungs, eyes, blood, bones, muscles, veins, kidneys, livers, skin, intestines, gonads, and the immune system all perform specific functions. Modern medicine is founded on this functional view of the body. In the parlance of evolutionary biology, these functional parts are called adaptations. Adaptations arise through a process of evolution by natural selection. Evolutionary psychology argues that natural selection acts on nerve tissue (or, if you prefer, on the genes that code for nerve tissue) the same way it does on every other type of tissue. Therefore the brain should be organized just like the rest of the body, as an integrated set of interacting adaptations. In fact, there is no fundamental distinction between physiological adaptations and psychological adaptations. Although the process whereby genetic information
