Download or read book Evolutionary Psychology and the Propositional attitudes written by Alex Walter and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two essays provide a critical examination of theory and research in the field of evolutionary psychology. The view advanced here is that philosophical materialism and minimalist assumptions about adaptation serve Darwinian psychology better than the more popular alternative view that relies on cognitive dualism and propositional-attitude psychology to formulate evolutionary psychology theory. A commitment to cognitive dualism is destined to undermine the physical basis of behavior upon which evolutionary theory depends. Many evolutionary psychologists do not see this but are seduced by the easy way in which hypotheses can be formulated using the ‘propositional-attitude’ model. The challenge is to develop a materialistic and mechanistic approach to understanding human cognition and behavior, including linguistic and social behavior.
Download or read book Evolutionary Psychology and the Propositional attitudes written by Alex Walter and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-16 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two essays provide a critical examination of theory and research in the field of evolutionary psychology. The view advanced here is that philosophical materialism and minimalist assumptions about adaptation serve Darwinian psychology better than the more popular alternative view that relies on cognitive dualism and propositional-attitude psychology to formulate evolutionary psychology theory. A commitment to cognitive dualism is destined to undermine the physical basis of behavior upon which evolutionary theory depends. Many evolutionary psychologists do not see this but are seduced by the easy way in which hypotheses can be formulated using the ‘propositional-attitude’ model. The challenge is to develop a materialistic and mechanistic approach to understanding human cognition and behavior, including linguistic and social behavior.
Download or read book Mindshaping written by Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal that human social cognition would not have evolved without mechanisms and practices that shape minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. In this novel account of distinctively human social cognition, Tadeusz Zawidzki argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse, and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. Zawidzki proposes that such "mindshaping"—which takes the form of capacities and practices such as sophisticated imitation, pedagogy, conformity to norms, and narrative self-constitution—is the most important component of human social cognition. Without it, he argues, none of the other components of what he terms the "human sociocognitive syndrome," including sophisticated language, cooperation, and sophisticated "mindreading," would be possible. Challenging the dominant view that sophisticated mindreading—especially propositional attitude attribution—is the key evolutionary innovation behind distinctively human social cognition, Zawidzki contends that the capacity to attribute such mental states depends on the evolution of mindshaping practices. Propositional attitude attribution, he argues, is likely to be unreliable unless most of us are shaped to have similar kinds of propositional attitudes in similar circumstances. Motivations to mindshape, selected to make sophisticated cooperation possible, combine with low-level mindreading abilities that we share with nonhuman species to make it easier for humans to interpret and anticipate each other's behavior. Eventually, this led, in human prehistory, to the capacity to attribute full-blown propositional attitudes accurately—a capacity that is parasitic, in phylogeny and today, on prior capacities to shape minds. Bringing together findings from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy of psychology, Zawidzki offers a strikingly original framework for understanding human social cognition.
Download or read book Mindshaping written by Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal that human social cognition would not have evolved without mechanisms and practices that shape minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. In this novel account of distinctively human social cognition, Tadeusz Zawidzki argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse, and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret. Zawidzki proposes that such "mindshaping"—which takes the form of capacities and practices such as sophisticated imitation, pedagogy, conformity to norms, and narrative self-constitution—is the most important component of human social cognition. Without it, he argues, none of the other components of what he terms the "human sociocognitive syndrome," including sophisticated language, cooperation, and sophisticated "mindreading," would be possible. Challenging the dominant view that sophisticated mindreading—especially propositional attitude attribution—is the key evolutionary innovation behind distinctively human social cognition, Zawidzki contends that the capacity to attribute such mental states depends on the evolution of mindshaping practices. Propositional attitude attribution, he argues, is likely to be unreliable unless most of us are shaped to have similar kinds of propositional attitudes in similar circumstances. Motivations to mindshape, selected to make sophisticated cooperation possible, combine with low-level mindreading abilities that we share with nonhuman species to make it easier for humans to interpret and anticipate each other's behavior. Eventually, this led, in human prehistory, to the capacity to attribute full-blown propositional attitudes accurately—a capacity that is parasitic, in phylogeny and today, on prior capacities to shape minds. Bringing together findings from developmental psychology, comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy of psychology, Zawidzki offers a strikingly original framework for understanding human social cognition.
Download or read book Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology written by Robert C. Richardson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-01-22 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosopher subjects the claims of evolutionary psychology to the evidential and methodological requirements of evolutionary biology, concluding that evolutionary psychology's explanations amount to speculation disguised as results. Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits—including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason—can be understood as specific adaptations to ancestral Pleistocene conditions. In Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert Richardson takes a critical look at evolutionary psychology by subjecting its ambitious and controversial claims to the same sorts of methodological and evidential constraints that are broadly accepted within evolutionary biology. The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science—and we should treat its claims with skepticism.
Download or read book Adapting Minds written by David J. Buller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominant view in evolutionary psychology holds that it was—that our psychological adaptations were designed tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionary psychology—the paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in The Evolution of Desire—and rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionary theory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychology is misguided. Evolutionary psychology employs a kind of reverse engineering to explain the evolved design of the mind, figuring out the adaptive problems our ancestors faced and then inferring the psychological adaptations that evolved to solve them. In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "discoveries," including "discriminative parental solicitude" (the idea that stepparents abuse their stepchildren at a higher rate than genetic parents abuse their biological children). Drawing on a wide range of empirical research, including his own large-scale study of child abuse, he shows that none is actually supported by the evidence. Buller argues that our minds are not adapted to the Pleistocene, but, like the immune system, are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time and individual lifetimes. We must move beyond the reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology to reach an accurate understanding of how human psychology is influenced by evolution. When we do, Buller claims, we will abandon not only the quest for human nature but the very idea of human nature itself.
Download or read book Do Apes Read Minds written by Kristin Andrews and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-07-20 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrews argues for a pluralistic folk psychology that employs different kinds of practices and different kinds of cognitive tools (including personality trait attribution, stereotype activation, inductive reasoning about past behavior, and generalization from self) that are involved in our folk psychological practices.
Download or read book Collected Papers Volume 1 written by Stephen Stich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects the best and most influential essays that Stephen Stich has published in the last 40 years on topics in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. They discuss a wide range of topics including grammar, innateness, reference, folk psychology, eliminativism, connectionism, evolutionary psychology, simulation theory, social construction, and psychopathology. However, they are unified by two central concerns. The first is the viability of the commonsense conception of the mind in the face of challenges posed by both philosophical arguments and empirical findings. The second is the philosophical implications of research in the cognitive sciences which, in the last half century, has transformed both our understanding of the mind and the ways in which the mind is studied. The volume includes a new introductory essay that elaborates on these themes and offers an overview of the papers that follow.
Download or read book What Emotions Really Are written by Paul E. Griffiths and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative contribution to the philosophy of science and mind, Paul E. Griffiths criticizes contemporary philosophy and psychology of emotion for failing to take in an evolutionary perspective and address current work in neurobiology and cognitive science. Reviewing the three current models of emotion, Griffiths points out their deficiencies and constructs a basis for future models that pay equal attention to biological fact and conceptual rigor. "Griffiths has written a work of depth and clarity in an area of murky ambiguity, producing a much-needed standard at the border of science, philosophy, and psychology. . . . As he presents his case, offering a forthright critique of past and present theories, Griffiths touches on such issues as evolution, social construction, natural kinds (categories corresponding with real distinctions in nature), cognition, and moods. While addressing specialists, the book will reward general readers who apply themselves to its remarkably accessible style."—Library Journal "What Emotions Really Are makes a strong claim to be one of the best books to have emerged on the subject of human emotion."—Ray Dolan, Nature
Download or read book Efficient Cognition written by Armin W. Schulz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that representational decision making is more cognitively efficient, allowing an organism to adjust more easily to changes in the environment. Many organisms (including humans) make decisions by relying on mental representations. Not simply a reaction triggered by perception, representational decision making employs high-level, non-perceptual mental states with content to manage interactions with the environment. A person making a decision based on mental representations, for example, takes a step back from her perceptions at the time to assess the nature of the world she lives in. But why would organisms rely on representational decision making, and what evolutionary benefits does this reliance provide to the decision maker? In Efficient Cognition, Armin Schulz argues that representational decision making can be more cognitively efficient than non-representational decision making. Specifically, he shows that a key driver in the evolution of representational decision making is that mental representations can enable an organism to save cognitive resources and adjust more efficiently to changed environments. After laying out the foundations of his argument—clarifying the central questions, the characterization of representational decision making, and the relevance of an evidential form of evolutionary psychology—Schulz presents his account of the evolution of representational decision making and critically considers some of the existing accounts of the subject. He then applies his account to three open questions concerning the nature of representational decision making: the extendedness of decision making, and when we should expect cognition to extend into the environment; the specialization of decision making and the use of simple heuristics; and the psychological sources of altruistic behaviors.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy written by Dermot Moran and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-10-27 with total page 1041 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring twenty-two chapters written by leading international scholars, this major publication covers all the key figures and movements from Frege to Derrida and philosophy of language to feminist philosophy.
Download or read book Minds and Persons written by Anthony O'Hear and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-25 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nature of the mind and of consciousness; the reality of freedom; the concept of agency and the relation of language to the mental are all basic perennial philosophical issues. They are some of the topics pursued in these original essays by leading thinkers in the field of the contemporary philosophy of mind and action. The essays are based on the lectures given in The Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2001-2002.
Download or read book The World in the Head written by Robert Cummins and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World in the Head collects the best of Robert Cummins' papers on mental representation and psychological explanation. Running through these papers are a pair of themes: that explaining the mind requires functional analysis, not subsumption under "psychological laws", and that the propositional attitudes—belief, desire, intention—and their interactions, while real, are not the key to understanding the mind at a fundamental level. Taking these ideas seriously puts considerable strain on standard conceptions of rationality and reasoning, on truth-conditional semantics, and on our interpretation of experimental evidence concerning cognitive development, learning and the evolution of mental traits and processes. The temptation to read the structure of mental states and their interactions off the structure of human language is powerful and seductive, but has created a widening gap between what most philosophers and social scientists take for granted about the mind, and the framework we need to make sense what an accelerating biology and neuroscience are telling us about brains. The challenge for the philosophy of mind is to devise a framework that accommodates these developments. This is the underlying motivation for the papers in this collection.
Download or read book Economic Theory and Cognitive Science written by Don Ross and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilariously funny cookbook–cum–how–I–did–it memoir by the chef/restaurateur who created New York's dazzling Ápizz restaurant. At the age of thirty–seven, John LaFemina left a lucrative career as a jeweler to become a chef. Instead of going back to school, or getting on–the–job training, he did it the hard way: he bought the restaurant and then taught himself to cook. Today he owns two of New York's great Italian restaurants–Ápizz and Peasant–and is one of the city's most–talked–about chefs, earning rave reviews from fans and critics. In this gorgeous cookbook, he not only shares scores of recipes, but describes his life as a Canarsie boy learning about meatballs and macaroni in his mother's kitchen–and reveals how he drew on a lifetime of Italian cooking, and his own hard work and exquisite taste to create his dream restaurant from scratch. LaFemina takes us step–by–step through the process of finding the perfect location (and figuring out how many meatballs you have to sell to pay the rent), designing a restaurant, procuring all the necessary permits and licenses, and creating the menu. And this is just the first part of running a restaurant. He shares his experiences in dealing with the public and the press, unexpected disasters, and finally, basking in the glory of a popular restaurant. Along with his inspiring story, John LaFemina also shares 100 mouthwatering recipes, including: Lasagna with Braised Wild Boar Mushroom Risotto Veal, Beef, and Pork Meatballs with Ricotta Filling Open Ravioli with Roasted Butternut Squash Creamsicle Panna Cotta Chocolate Banana Bread Pudding
Download or read book The Passing of the Phantoms written by Charles Joseph Patten and published by London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company, Limited; New York, E. P. Dutton & Company. This book was released on 1924 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology written by Jennifer Vonk and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together leading experts in comparative and evolutionary psychology. Top scholars summarize the histories and possible futures of their disciplines, and the contribution of each to illuminating the evolutionary forces that give rise to unique abilities in distantly and closely related species.
Download or read book Essential Evolutionary Psychology written by Simon Hampton and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2010-01-20 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential Evolutionary Psychology introduces students to the core theories, approaches, and findings that are the necessary foundations for developing an understanding of evolutionary psychology. It offers a sound, brief, and student friendly explication of how evolutionary theory has been and is applied in psychology. The book unpicks the very essence of human evolution, and how this knowledge is used to give evolutionary accounts of four of the central pillars of human behavior - cooperation, attraction, aggression, and family formation. It also covers evolutionary accounts of abnormal behavior, language and culture.
