Re: the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

Posted by gepr on Feb 22, 2018; 10:12pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/the-pseudoscience-of-evolutionary-psychology-tp7591207p7591277.html

Well, since you're talking about sneezing, and because sneezing is a physiological process, whatever model of cause we use will have to involve the physiological process.  I'd claim that, if not identical, very close to the exact same physiological process occurs in the body when you sneeze because you have a cold vs. sneezing because you got some pepper up your nose.  So, the model would have lots of possible input stimuli, go through a narrowing (bottleneck) at the set of physiological behaviors that "mediates" -- to use your word -- the sneeze, then the *effect* is high velocity/pressure air coming out your nose/mouth.

We have to talk that way because we have common interventions like antihistamines that don't really block the stimulus, they block part of the physiology.  Or, if you prefer, I could refer to my method for blocking sneezes, which is to put pressure on the bridge of my nose, which seems to have something to do with blood flow.  The stimulant is (presumably) still there.  But the sneeze is blocked because I'm interfering with the physiology.

On 02/22/2018 01:22 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Can you give me a model of causality your happy with, or do you avoid causal talk, generally?


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