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A debate in Nature on Darwin and the mind
Last April, Johan J. Bolhuis and Clive D. L. Wynne published in Nature (458(7240), 832-833) a paper entitled "Can evolution explain how minds work?" doubting the use and usefulness of evolutionary analysis in understanding cognitive mechanisms. In response, Lewis Wolpert ("Cognition: evolution does help to explain how minds work" in Nature, 459(7246), 506-50), Sara J. Shettleworth ("Cognition: theories of mind in animals and humans." in Nature, 459(7246), 506-506) and Frans B. M. de Waal ("Darwin's last laugh." in Nature 460, 175 (9 July 2009) freely available here) separately defended the use of evolutionary theory, and in particular comparative analysis, in the study of cognition.
In Defense of Evolutionary Psychology : Scientific American Podcast
Lisa DeBruine of the University of Aberdeen proposes that the value of evolutionary psychology lies in its ability to inspire new questions about human behavior.
Evolutionary Psychology Under Fire
Recently the doubts and questions plaguing the theory of evolutionary psychology have boiled up to the mainstream press. Christie Nicholson reports. (Scientific American Podcast)
Evolutionary Psychology Primer by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.
In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This way of thinking about the brain, mind, and behavior is changing how scientists approach old topics, and opening up new ones. This chapter is a primer on the concepts and arguments that animate it.
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the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This way of thinking about the brain, mind, and behavior is changing how scientists approach old topics, and opening up new ones.
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the mind is a heterogeneous collection of these competences
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Evolutionary Psychology and the Public Media: Rekindling the Romance
David Sloan Wilson
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Sociobiology is the study of social behavior from an evolutionary perspective.
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Evolutionary psychology is the study of psychology from an evolutionary perspective.
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Alas Poor Evolutionary Psychology: Unfairly Accused, Unjustly Condemned by Robert Kurzban
The Human Nature Review 2002 Volume 2: 99-109 ( 14 March )
The Never-Ending Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology.
The anti-EP dragon is slain repeatedly and yet it always resurfaces, emboldened by its blind and prideful ignorance of the facts. Unfortunately, it would take several posts for me to provide a point-by-point retort to the endless number of falsehoods that appear in her article. Instead, I will focus on a few key ones that were central to her critique. (Psychology Today)
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the interactionist perspective. Epigenetic rules by definition recognize the importance of the environment in shaping the manner by which biological blueprints will be instantiated.
Can We Blame Our Bad Behavior on Stone-Age Genes? | Newsweek Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com
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Back in the late Pleistocene epoch 100,000 years ago, the 2000 book contended, men who carried rape genes had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who did not: they sired children not only with willing mates, but also with unwilling ones, allowing them to leave more offspring (also carrying rape genes) who were similarly more likely to survive and reproduce, unto the nth generation.
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behaviors that conferred a fitness advantage during the era when modern humans were evolving are the result of hundreds of genetically based cognitive "modules" preprogrammed in the brain. Since they are genetic, these modules and the behaviors they encode are heritable—passed down to future generations—and, together, constitute a universal human nature that describes how people think, feel and act
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Evolution, gender, and rape
Theory and Data on Rape and Evolution - Google Books
Responses to Buller
Cultivating a persona of fairness and impartiality, David Buller has written a critique of theory and results from evolutionary psychology. To those unfamiliar with the primary literature, some of his claims may seem plausible. That has not, however, been the reaction of those who know this literature intimately.
Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology
Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence (Scientific American)
Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around?
Founded in the late 1980s in the ashes of sociobiology, this field asserts that behaviors that conferred a fitness advantage during the era when modern humans were evolving are the result of hundreds of genetically based cognitive "modules" preprogrammed in the brain. Since they are genetic, these modules and the behaviors they encode are heritable—passed down to future generations—and, together, constitute a universal human nature that describes how people think, feel and act (Newsweek.com)
Into the ancient mind
The article claims to question the whole field of evolutionary psychology but really only deals with specific studies, largely because has quite a limited view of the approach and is strangely wed to biological determinism. (Mind Hacks)
Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology
The author and several other scholars suggest that some assumptions of Pop EP are flawed: that we can know the psychology of our Stone Age ancestors, that we can thereby figure out how distinctively human traits evolved, that our minds have not evolved much since the Stone Age, and that standard psychological questionnaires yield clear evidence of the adaptations. (Scientific American)
The New Science of the Brain: Yuck! More Evidence that Disgust Influences Our Moral Judgments
Although the emotion of disgust has evolved to protect us from the consumption of harmful toxins, it is also intimately involved in our moral decision-making. (Evolutionary Psychology)
Battle of Ideas 2008 | The dubious science of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology’s failure to explain, describe, or predict human behavior was noted a century ago by the famous anthropologist Kroeber. He said, ‘Darwinism is often spoken as allied to anthropological thought. There is no specific connection. The one deals with biological phenomena and processes; the other begins where these leave off. The common element is the wholly generic concept of evolution, equally applicable in astronomy and geology. Organic evolution is essentially modificatory [the organism is modified into a new species], cultural evolution is cumulative [within the same species of homo sapiens sapiens]. The one is bound up with heredity, the other in principle is free from it. The similarity is merely a loose analogy, and the Darwinian point of view has retarded and confused the understanding of culture’.
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