The Darwinian cage: Evolutionary psychology as moral science
... and neurological structure is an extremely flexible one, with functions being assigned and re-assigned to different areas of the brain throughout one’s lifespan.2 Indeed, from an evolutionary perspective, it can be argued that such flexibility is itself the distinctively human adaptation. This does ...
... and neurological structure is an extremely flexible one, with functions being assigned and re-assigned to different areas of the brain throughout one’s lifespan.2 Indeed, from an evolutionary perspective, it can be argued that such flexibility is itself the distinctively human adaptation. This does ...
Against Literary Darwinism - Critical Inquiry
... gene theory of Richard Dawkins and the sociobiology of Wilson. For evolutionary theorists of this stripe, the goal was to describe human behavior in light of its biological origins and so to translate from our ordinary language of motivation to an ostensibly deeper language of survival, reproduction ...
... gene theory of Richard Dawkins and the sociobiology of Wilson. For evolutionary theorists of this stripe, the goal was to describe human behavior in light of its biological origins and so to translate from our ordinary language of motivation to an ostensibly deeper language of survival, reproduction ...
Against Literary Darwinism
... gene theory of Richard Dawkins and the sociobiology of Wilson. For evolutionary theorists of this stripe, the goal was to describe human behavior in light of its biological origins and so to translate from our ordinary language of motivation to an ostensibly deeper language of survival, reproduction ...
... gene theory of Richard Dawkins and the sociobiology of Wilson. For evolutionary theorists of this stripe, the goal was to describe human behavior in light of its biological origins and so to translate from our ordinary language of motivation to an ostensibly deeper language of survival, reproduction ...
The Evolution of Language - Utrecht University Repository
... (Hutton 2010, 343) but may be by-products of greater intellectual capacity (Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch 2002, 1574). To explain for the emergence of this greater capacity, Chomsky hypothesizes that “the simplest account of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in the evolution of humans would be that the brain wa ...
... (Hutton 2010, 343) but may be by-products of greater intellectual capacity (Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch 2002, 1574). To explain for the emergence of this greater capacity, Chomsky hypothesizes that “the simplest account of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ in the evolution of humans would be that the brain wa ...
The Adaptive Significance of Human Language
... argued, is best often thought of as a "tinkerer" typically designing traits that were just advantageous enough to the survival and reproduction of a particular species to be preserved in successive generations of that species. Evolution does not start from scratch and does not follow some rigidly co ...
... argued, is best often thought of as a "tinkerer" typically designing traits that were just advantageous enough to the survival and reproduction of a particular species to be preserved in successive generations of that species. Evolution does not start from scratch and does not follow some rigidly co ...
If Popper had never existed, would we need Lakatos to set us straight
... very well as an indicator of general bodily health. It remains an open question what proportion of the human mind’s adaptations have been shaped as sexually-selected fitness indicators rather than naturally-selected survival devices (Miller, 1998a,b). The Cosmides-Tooby criteria for recognizing psyc ...
... very well as an indicator of general bodily health. It remains an open question what proportion of the human mind’s adaptations have been shaped as sexually-selected fitness indicators rather than naturally-selected survival devices (Miller, 1998a,b). The Cosmides-Tooby criteria for recognizing psyc ...
Pinker - Bloom - NATURAL LANGUAGE AND NATURAL SELECTION
... purpose of seeing -- if for no other reason that the man-made tool for image formation, the camera, displays an uncanny resemblance to the eye. Before Darwin, theologians, notably William Paley, pointed to its exquisite design as evidence for the existence of a divine designer. Darwin showed how suc ...
... purpose of seeing -- if for no other reason that the man-made tool for image formation, the camera, displays an uncanny resemblance to the eye. Before Darwin, theologians, notably William Paley, pointed to its exquisite design as evidence for the existence of a divine designer. Darwin showed how suc ...
Cognitive Neuroscience and the English Past Tense
... phonological changes on verb stems when they appear with [past] suffixes. Thus, for instance, the rime of sing is converted by a phonological ablaut process which operates in the context of the zero past tense to produce sang (cf. Halle and Mohanan 1985 for discussion of this and related phonlogical ...
... phonological changes on verb stems when they appear with [past] suffixes. Thus, for instance, the rime of sing is converted by a phonological ablaut process which operates in the context of the zero past tense to produce sang (cf. Halle and Mohanan 1985 for discussion of this and related phonlogical ...
USC3002_References - Department of Mathematics
... Pinker, Steven Arthur, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker is a prominent American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and popular science writer known for his spirited and wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker’s academic spe ...
... Pinker, Steven Arthur, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker is a prominent American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and popular science writer known for his spirited and wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker’s academic spe ...
HTTP://SLATE
... Tooby, Leda Cosmides, Martin Daly, and Margo Wilson turns out to be vulnerable on evolutionary grounds. EP claims that our minds contain hundreds or thousands of "mental organs" or "modules," which come with innate information on how to solve particular problems—how to interpret nuanced facial expre ...
... Tooby, Leda Cosmides, Martin Daly, and Margo Wilson turns out to be vulnerable on evolutionary grounds. EP claims that our minds contain hundreds or thousands of "mental organs" or "modules," which come with innate information on how to solve particular problems—how to interpret nuanced facial expre ...
Linguistics 001, Fall 2004 - University of Pennsylvania
... Application to Cognition/Language • If, then, one is to provide an argument about how language evolved, several things have to be done – It must be shown that there is heritable variation in cognitive capacities – It must be shown that individuals with greater capacities leave more offspring ...
... Application to Cognition/Language • If, then, one is to provide an argument about how language evolved, several things have to be done – It must be shown that there is heritable variation in cognitive capacities – It must be shown that individuals with greater capacities leave more offspring ...
Document
... kill newborns when times are tough, saving resources for reproduction when times are better, will also spread. Weak armies may march suicidally into bat-tle because of natural selection. Evolution favors bluffing in confrontations (an opponent might, after all, back down) which in turn favors some s ...
... kill newborns when times are tough, saving resources for reproduction when times are better, will also spread. Weak armies may march suicidally into bat-tle because of natural selection. Evolution favors bluffing in confrontations (an opponent might, after all, back down) which in turn favors some s ...
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur ""Steve"" Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-born American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.Pinker's academic specializations are visual cognition and psycholinguistics. His experimental subjects include mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, children's language development, regular and irregular phenomena in language, the neural bases of words and grammar, and the psychology of cooperation and communication, including euphemism, innuendo, emotional expression, and common knowledge. He has written two technical books which proposed a general theory of language acquisition and applied it to children's learning of verbs. In particular, his work with Alan Prince published in 1989 critiqued the connectionist model of how children acquire the past tense of English verbs, arguing instead that children use default rules such as adding ""-ed"" to make regular forms, sometimes in error, but are obliged to learn irregular forms one by one.In his popular books, he has argued that the human faculty for language is an instinct, an innate behavior shaped by natural selection and adapted to our communication needs. He is the author of seven books for a general audience. Five of these, namely The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought (2007) describe aspects of the field of psycholinguistics or cognitive science, and include, among much else, accessible accounts of his own research. The sixth book, The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), makes the case that violence in human societies has in general steadily declined with time, and identifies six major causes of this decline. His seventh book, The Sense of Style (2014), is intended as a general style guide that is informed by modern scientific and psychologically arguments on why so much of today's academic and popular writing is difficult for readers to understand, and suggestions for how to achieve a more comprehensible and unambiguous writing style in nonfiction contexts.Pinker has been named as one of the world's most influential intellectuals by various magazines. He has won awards from the American Psychological Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society and the American Humanist Association. He has served on the editorial boards of a variety of journals, and on the advisory boards of several institutions. He has frequently participated in public debates on science and society.