Toward an Epistemology of Evolutionary Psychiatry Insights from Evolutionary Psychology

The burgeoning field of evolutionary psychiatry seeks to apply an evolutionary perspective to the study of mental disorders. Although this approach has already shown promise, it is replete with philosophical complexity. There is currently only a limited literature broaching this. To this end, in this paper we clarify the main five academic disciplines which can contribute to epistemology of EP, before focusing specifically on delineating four key theoretical contributions from evolutionary psychology which EP can draw upon. These are a weak adaptationist approach to the mind; the concept of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness; a description of the mind on a functional level of analysis, in terms of evolved functional mechanisms; and how to use the hypothetico-deductive method to test evolutionary hypotheses about minds. Throughout, we highlight how appreciating these epistemic insights from the evolutionary psychology literature is instructive for EP researchers in improving their hypothesizing about psychiatric conditions. We conclude by suggesting future directions for EP, based upon our philosophical analysis.