Revisiting Evolutionary Naturalism: Challenging Misconceptions and Embracing Interactionism

Abstract

The study aims to illuminate the fallacious misconceptions regarding evolutionary naturalism, which often reduce it to strict fatalist naturalism, while also defending an interactionist perspective between nature and nurture in explaining social and individual traits. To achieve this goal, the study is divided into two sections. The first section offers a brief overview of evolutionary naturalism and nurturism, illustrating their biased interpretations as well as the erroneous philosophical, ethical, and political implications they allegedly entail. By clarifying the fundamental tenets of evolutionary naturalism and distinguishing it from sociobiology, the second section argues that evolutionary naturalism, as an interactionist approach, offers incomplete yet superior explanations for highly complex traits such as cultural, legislative, and ethical ones. To support this argument, the second section exposes several fallacies and misconceptions surrounding evolutionary naturalism, which often lead to overlooking its interactionist dimension. These fallacies include the fallacy of genetic causation, the fallacy of genetic sufficiency, and the fallacy of genetic necessity. It is concluded that, rather than adhering to creationist naturalism, sociobiology, strict naturalism, or nurturism, embracing evolutionary and interactionist naturalism provides better insights into investigating the origins of such complex traits.