MindPapers: 7.2c. Evolution of Cognition

Ariew, Andre (2003). Natural selection doesn't work that way: Jerry Fodor vs. evolutionary psychology on gradualism and saltationism. Mind and Language 18 (5):478-483. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: In Chapter Five of The Mind Doesnât Work That Way, Jerry Fodor argues that since it is likely that human minds evolved quickly as saltations rather than gradually as the product of an accumulation of small mutations, evolutionary psychologists are wrong to think that human minds are adaptations. I argue that Fodorâs requirement that adaptationism entails gradualism is wrongheaded. So, while evolutionary psychologists may be wrong to endorse gradualismâand I argue that they are wrongâit does not follow that they are wrong to endorse an adaptationist explanation for how the human mind evolved

Atkinson, Anthony P. & Wheeler, M. (2003). Evolutionary psychology's grain problem and the cognitive neuroscience of reasoning. In David E. Over (ed.), Evolution and the Psychology of Thinking: The Debate. Psychology Press. (Cited by 6 | Google | More links | Edit)

Atkinson, Anthony P. & Wheeler, M. (2004). The grain of domains: The evolutionary-psychological case against domain-general cognition. Mind and Language 19 (2):147-76. (Cited by 11 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Prominent evolutionary psychologists have argued that our innate psychological endowment consists of numerous domainspecific cognitive resources, rather than a few domaingeneral ones. In the light of some conceptual clarification, we examine the central inprinciple arguments that evolutionary psychologists mount against domaingeneral cognition. We conclude (a) that the fundamental logic of Darwinism, as advanced within evolutionary psychology, does not entail that the innate mind consists exclusively, or even massively, of domainspecific features, and (b) that a mixed innate cognitive economy of domainspecific and domaingeneral resources remains a genuine conceptual possibility. However, an examination of evolutionary psychology's 'grain problem' reveals that there is no way of establishing a principled and robust distinction between domainspecific and domaingeneral features. Nevertheless, we show that evolutionary psychologists can and do live with this grain problem without their whole enterprise being undermined

Atran, Scott (2005). Adaptationism for human cognition: Strong, spurious, or weak? Mind and Language 20 (1):39-67. (Cited by 4 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Strong adaptationists explore complex organic design as taskspecific adaptations to ancestral environments. This strategy seems best when there is evidence of homology. Weak adaptationists don't assume that complex organic (including cognitive and linguistic) functioning necessarily or primarily represents taskspecific adaptation. This approach to cognition resembles physicists' attempts to deductively explain the most facts with fewest hypotheses. For certain domainspecific competencies (folkbiology) strong adaptationism is useful but not necessary to research. With grouplevel belief systems (religion) strong adaptationism degenerates into spurious notions of social function and cultural selection. In other cases (language, especially universal grammar) weak adaptationism's 'minimalist' approach seems productive

Atran, Scott (2005). Strong versus weak adaptationism in cognition and language. In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Contents. New York: Oxford University Press New York. (Google | Edit)

Barendregt, Marko & Van Hezewijk, René (2005). Adaptive and genomic explanations of human behaviour: Might evolutionary psychology contribute to behavioural genomics? Biology and Philosophy 20 (1):57-78. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: . Evolutionary psychology and behavioural genomics are both approaches to explain human behaviour from a genetic point of view. Nonetheless, thus far the development of these disciplines is anything but interdependent. This paper examines the question whether evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomics. Firstly, a possible inconsistency between the two approaches is reviewed, viz. that evolutionary psychology focuses on the universal human nature and disregards the genetic variation studied by behavioural genomics. Secondly, we will discuss the structure of biological explanations. Some philosophers rightly acknowledge that explanations do not involve laws which are exceptionless and universal. Instead, generalisations that are invariant suffice for successful explanation as long as two other stipulations are recognised: the domain within which the generalisation has no exceptions as well as the distribution of the mechanism described by the generalisation should both be specified. It is argued that evolutionary psychology can contribute to behavioural genomic explanations by accounting for these two specifications

Barkow, Jerome; Cosmides, Leda & Tooby, John (eds.) (1992). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford University Press. (Cited by 1369 | Google | More links | Edit)

Bergstrom, Carl T. & Godfrey-Smith, Peter (1998). On the evolution of behavioral complexity in individuals and populations. Biology and Philosophy 13 (2):205-31. (Cited by 11 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: A wide range of ecological and evolutionary models predict variety in phenotype or behavior when a population is at equilibrium. This heterogeneity can be realized in different ways. For example, it can be realized through a complex population of individuals exhibiting different simple behaviors, or through a simple population of individuals exhibiting complex, varying behaviors. In some theoretical frameworks these different realizations are treated as equivalent, but natural selection distinguishes between these two alternatives in subtle ways. By investigating an increasingly complex series of models, from a simple fluctuating selection model up to a finite population hawk/dove game, we explore the selective pressures which discriminate between pure strategists, mixed at the population level, and individual mixed strategists. Our analysis reveals some important limitations to the ESS framework often employed to investigate the evolution of complex behavior

Bogdan, Radu J. (2000). Minding Minds: Evolving a Reflexive Mind by Interpreting Others. MIT Press/Bradford Books. (Cited by 42 | Google | More links | Edit)

Buller, David J. (online). A Guided Tour of Evolutionary Psychology. A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. (Cited by 3 | Google | Edit)

Buller, David J. (2005). Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. MIT Press. (Cited by 59 | Google | More links | Edit)

Buller, David J. (1999). Defreuding evolutionary psychology: Adaptation and human motivation. In Valerie Gray Hardcastle (ed.), Where Biology Meets Philosophy. MIT Press. (Cited by 10 | Google | More links | Edit)

Buller, David J. & Hardcastle, Valerie Gray (2000). Evolutionary psychology, meet developmental neurobiology: Against promiscuous modularity. Brain and Mind 1 (3):307-25. (Cited by 28 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Evolutionary psychologists claim that the mind contains “hundreds or thousands” of “genetically speciﬁed” modules, which are evolutionary adaptations for their cognitive functions. We argue that, while the adult human mind/brain typically contains a degree of modularization, its “modules” are neither genetically speciﬁed nor evolutionary adaptations. Rather, they result from the brain’s developmental plasticity, which allows environmental task demands a large role in shaping the brain’s information-processing structures. The brain’s developmental plasticity is our fundamental psychological adaptation, and the “modules” that result from it are adaptive responses to local conditions, not past evolutionary environments. If different individuals share common environ- ments, however, they may develop similar “modules,” and this process can mimic the development of genetically speciﬁed modules in the evolutionary psychologist’s sense

Buller, David J. (2005). Evolutionary psychology: The emperor's new paradigm. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (6):277-283. (Cited by 12 | Google | More links | Edit)

Buss, David M. (1999). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Allyn and Bacon. (Cited by 876 | Google | Edit)

Calvin, William H. (2004). A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond. Oxford University Press. (Cited by 14 | Google | Edit)

Cangelosi, Angelo; Greco, Alberto & Harnad, Stevan (2002). Symbol grounding and the symbolic theft hypothesis. In A. Cangelosi & D. Parisi (eds.), Simulating the Evolution of Language. Springer-Verlag. (Cited by 16 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Scholars studying the origins and evolution of language are also interested in the general issue of the evolution of cognition. Language is not an isolated capability of the individual, but has intrinsic relationships with many other behavioral, cognitive, and social abilities. By understanding the mechanisms underlying the evolution of linguistic abilities, it is possible to understand the evolution of cognitive abilities. Cognitivism, one of the current approaches in psychology and cognitive science, proposes that symbol systems capture mental phenomena, and attributes cognitive validity to them. Therefore, in the same way that language is considered the prototype of cognitive abilities, a symbol system has become the prototype for studying language and cognitive systems. Symbol systems are advantageous as they are easily studied through computer simulation (a computer program is a symbol system itself), and this is why language is often studied using computational models

Coates, Paul (2003). Review of Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion?. Human Nature Review 3:176-182. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: A cluster of experiments on “Change Blindness”, “Inattentional Blindness” and associated phenomena appear to demonstrate extremely counter intuitive results. According to one plausible characterisation, these results show that we consciously take in far less of the visual world than it seems we are aware of. It is worth briefly summarising the results of two recent sets of experiments, in order to give a flavour of this work. In ‘Gorillas in our Midst’ (Simons, D. and Chabris, C., Perception, 1999, 28), subjects were asked to perform a task that involved watching a video of a casual basketball game that lasts for about a minute. The task involves counting the number of consecutive passes between members of the one of the teams. While the basketball is being thrown from player to player, something unexpected takes place: a person dressed in a black gorilla-suit walks through the play, stops briefly in the centre of the picture, thumps his chest, and then walks off. Although most subjects correctly record the number of passes made by the team, at least half of these subjects fail to notice the gorilla-suited interloper, who is visible for about nine seconds. When shown the video sequence a second time they are amazed to observe what they had previously overlooked

Cosmides, Leda & Tooby, John (1994). Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: Toward an evolutionary rigorous cognitive science. Cognition 50:41-77. (Cited by 145 | Google | Edit)

Cosmides, Leda & Tooby, John (online). Evolutionary psychology: A Primer. (Cited by 78 | Google | More links | Edit)

Cosmides, Leda & Tooby, John (1987). From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link. In John Dupre (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality. MIT Press. (Cited by 197 | Google | Edit)

Cummins, Denise D. & Cummins, Robert E. (1999). Biological preparedness and evolutionary explanation. Cognition 73 (3):B37-B53. (Cited by 57 | Google | Edit)

Abstract: It is commonly supposed that evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena involve the assumption that the capacities to be explained are both innate and modular. This is understandable: independent selection of a trait requires that it be both heritable and largely decoupled from other `nearby' traits. Cognitive capacities realized as innate modules would certainly satisfy these contraints. A viable evolutionary cognitive psychology, however, requires neither extreme nativism nor modularity, though it is consistent with both. In this paper, we seek to show that rather weak assumptions about innateness and modularity are consistent with evolutionary explanations of cognitive capacities. Evolutionary pressures can affect the degree to which the development of a capacity is canalized by biasing acquisition/ learning in ways that favor development of concepts and capacities that proved adaptive to an organism's ancestors. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Cummins, Denise D.; Cummins, Robert E. & Poirier, Pierre (2003). Cognitive evolutionary psychology without representational nativism. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 15 (2):143-159. (Cited by 6 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: A viable evolutionary cognitive psychology requires that speciﬁc cognitive capacities be (a) heritable and (b) ‘quasi-independent’ from other heritable traits. They must be heritable because there can be no selection for traits that are not. They must be quasi-independent from other heritable traits, since adaptive variations in a speciﬁc cognitive capacity could have no distinctive consequences for ﬁtness if eﬀecting those variations required widespread changes in other unrelated traits and capacities as well. These requirements would be satisﬁed by innate cognitive modules, as the dominant paradigm in evolutionary cognitive psychology assumes. However, those requirements would also be satisﬁed by heritable learning biases, perhaps in the form of architec- tural or chronotopic constraints, that operated to increase the canalization of speciﬁc cognitive capacities in the ancestral environment (Cummins and Cummins 1999). As an organism develops, cognitive capacities that are highly canalized as the result of heritable learning biases might result in an organism that is behaviourally quite similar to an organism whose innate modules come on line as the result of various environ- mental triggers. Taking this possibility seriously is increasingly important as the case against innate cognitive modules becomes increasingly strong

Cummins, Denise D. & Cummins, Robert E. (2005). Innate modules vs innate learning biases. Cognitive Processing. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Proponents of the dominant paradigm in evolutionary psychology argue that a viable evolutionary cognitive psychology requires that specific cognitive capacities be heritable and “quasi-independent” from other heritable traits, and that these requirements are best satisfied by innate cognitive modules. We argue here that neither of these are required in order to describe and explain how evolution shaped the mind

Davies, Paul Sheldon (1996). Discovering the functional mesh: On the methods of evolutionary psychology. Minds and Machines 6 (4):559-585. (Cited by 43 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to clarify and critically assess the methods of evolutionary psychology, and offer a sketch of an alternative methodology. My thesis is threefold. (1) The methods of inquiry unique to evolutionary psychology rest upon the claim that the discovery of theadaptive functions of ancestral psychological capacities leads to the discovery of thepsychological functions of those ancestral capacities. (2) But this claim is false; in fact, just the opposite is true. We first must discover the psychological functions of our psychological capacities in order to discover their adaptive functions. Hence the methods distinctive of evolutionary psychology are idle in our search for the mechanisms of the mind. (3) There are good reasons for preferring an alternative to the methods of evolutionary psychology, an alternative that aims to discover the functions of our psychological capacities by appeal to the concept of awhole psychology

Davies, Paul Sheldon (1996). Preface: Evolutionary theory in cognitive psychology. Minds and Machines 6 (4). (Cited by 18 | Google | More links | Edit)

Davies, Paul Sheldon (1999). The conflict of evolutionary psychology. In Valerie Gray Hardcastle (ed.), Where Biology Meets Psychology. MIT Press. (Cited by 8 | Google | Edit)

de JongLooren, Huib & van der Steen, Wim J. (1998). Biological thinking in evolutionary psychology: Rockbottom or quicksand? Philosophical Psychology 11 (2):183-205. (Google | Edit)

Downes, Stephen M. (2002). Some recent developments in evolutionary approaches to the study of human cognition and behavior. Biology and Philosophy 16 (5):575-94. (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)

Driscoll, Catherine (2004). Can behaviors be adaptations? Philosophy of Science 71 (1):16-35. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths (Sterelny 1992, Sterelny and Griffiths 1999) have argued that sociobiology is unworkable because it requires that human behaviors can be adaptations; however, behaviors produced by a functionalist psychology do not meet Lewontin's quasi-independence criterion and therefore cannot be adaptations. Consequently, an evolutionary psychologywhich regards psychological mechanisms as adaptationsshould replace sociobiology. I address two interpretations of their argument. I argue that the strong interpretation fails because functionalist psychology need not prevent behaviors from evolving independently, and it relies on too strong an interpretation of the quasi-independence criterion. The weaker interpretation does not undermine sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology would be vulnerable to the same criticism. Finally, I offer reasons to think that both mental mechanisms and behaviors can be adaptations

Durrant, Russil & Haig, Brian D. (2001). How to pursue the adaptationist program in psychology. Philosophical Psychology 14 (4):357 – 380. (Cited by 33 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: In recent times evolutionary psychologists have offered adaptation explanations for a wide range of human psychological characteristics. Critics, however, have argued that such endeavors are problematic because the appropriate evidence required to demonstrate adaptation is unlikely to be forthcoming, therefore severely limiting the role of the adaptationist program in psychology. More specifically, doubts have been raised over both the methodology employed by evolutionary psychologists for studying adaptations and about the possibility of ever developing acceptably rigorous evolutionary explanations of human psychological phenomena. We argue that by employing a wide range of methods for inferring adaptation and by adopting an inference to the best explanation strategy for evaluating adaptation explanations, these two doubts can be adequately addressed. We illustrate how this approach can be fruitfully employed in evaluating claims about the evolutionary origins of language, and conclude with a brief discussion of the future of evolutionary psychology

Ferguson, S. (2002). Methodology in evolutionary psychology. Biology and Philosophy 17 (5):635-50. (Cited by 6 | Google | More links | Edit)

Fessler, Daniel (2006). Steps toward an evolutionary psychology of a culture dependent species. In Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Forster, M. & Shapiro, Lawrence A. (2000). Prediction and accommodation in evolutionary psychology. Psychological Inquiry 11:31-33. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Ketelaar and Ellis have provided a remarkably clear and succinct statement of Lakatosian philosophy of science and have also argued compellingly that the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution fills the Lakatosian criteria of progressivity. We find ourselves in agreement with much of what Ketelaar and Ellis say about Lakatosian philosophy of science, but have some questions about (1) the place of evolutionary psychology in a Lakatosian framework, and (2) the extent to which evolutionary psychology truly predicts new findings

Franks, Bradley (2005). The role of "the environment" in cognitive and evolutionary psychology. Philosophical Psychology 18 (1):59-82. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Evolutionary psychology is widely understood as involving an integration of evolutionary theory and cognitive psychology, in which the former promises to revolutionise the latter. In this paper, I suggest some reasons to doubt that the assumptions of evolutionary theory and of cognitive psychology are as directly compatible as is widely assumed. These reasons relate to three different problems of specifying adaptive functions as the basis for characterising cognitive mechanisms: the disjunction problem, the grain problem and the environment problem. Each of these problems can be understood as arising from incommensurate characterisations of the nature and role of 'the environment' in the two approaches. Purported solutions to the problems appear to require detailed information concerning the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptedness), with the disjunction problem placing the lowest requirement, the environment problem placing the highest requirement, and the grain problem placing an intermediate one. In each case, such information is not likely to be forthcoming, because it may require iterating through successively more distant EEA's with no principled stopping point. This produces a dilemma for evolutionary psychology - either to solve these apparently insoluble problems, or to attempt to avoid them but in doing so forego detailed evolutionary constraints on cognition

Gardenfors, Peter (2004). Does evolution provide a key to the scientific study of mind? The detachment of thought. In Christina E. Erneling & David Martel Johnson (eds.), Mind As a Scientific Object. Oxford University Press. (Google | Edit)

Gerrans, Philip (2007). Mechanisms of madness: Evolutionary psychiatry without evolutionary psychology. Biology and Philosophy 22 (1). (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Delusions are currently characterised as false beliefs produced by incorrect inference about external reality (DSM IV). This inferential conception has proved hard to link to explanations pitched at the level of neurobiology and neuroanatomy. This paper provides that link via a neurocomputational theory, based on evolutionary considerations, of the role of the prefrontal cortex in regulating offline cognition. When pathologically neuromodulated the prefrontal cortex produces hypersalient experiences which monopolise offline cognition. The result is characteristic psychotic experiences and patterns of thought. This bottom-up account uses neural network theory to integrate recent theories of the role of dopamine in delusion with the insights of inferential accounts. It also provides a general model for evolutionary psychiatry which avoids theoretical problems imported from evolutionary psychology

Gerrans, Philip (2002). The theory of mind module in evolutionary psychology. Biology and Philosophy 17 (3):305-21. (

7.2a	Nativism [112]

7.2b	Modularity [64]

7.2c	Evolution of Cognition [98]

7.2d	Rationality [78]

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