Lecture 20
This Week
Getting Starting on the Book Review Project
Caorael Chapter
Dunbar on the Evolution of Language
Read Chapters 7 and 8
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Lecture 20
Getting Started on the Book Review
Project
A Track – Read Another Book on Evolution of Cognition and
Write a Book Review
B Track – Write a Book Review of Dunbar or Summary of
Another Book
C Track – Summarize Dunbar
Part 1. A summary of what your book said about the topic.
Do not just passively summarize your book.
What is right and wrong about the authors claims
Part 2. Develop your own "take" on a theory of what
language and mind are and how they evolved.
Be sure to support your views with arguments that
seem to make sense to you and are consistent
with what you have read.
If you think that there are open, unresolved issues,
that the question in general or parts thereof just
can't be answered, say so, and why you think
so.
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Lecture 20
Buss, D.M. (1998) Evolutionary Psychology: The New
Science of the Mind. Allyn & Bacon
Deacon, T. W. (1996) The symbolic species: The coevolution of language and the brain. New York: Norton.
Dennett, D.C. (1995) Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution
and the Meanings of Life. Touchstone Books
Donald, M. (1991) Origins of the modern mind: Three stages
in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press
Donald, M. (2001) A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human
Consciousness. W.W. Norton & Company
Lieberman, P. (1991) Uniquely human: The evolution of
speech, thought, and selfless behavior. Cambridge, MA;
Harvard University Press
Mithen, S. (1996). The prehistory of the mind: The cognitive
origins of art, religion and science. London: Thames &
Hudson.
Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York, NY:
W.W. Norton.
Plotkin, H. (1997) Evolution in mind: An introduction to
evolutionary psychology. Cambridge, MA; Harvard
University Press
Tattersall, I. (1998) Becoming human: Evolution and human
uniqueness. Orlando, FL: Harcourt-Brace & Co.
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Lecture 20
Examples of Empirical Results Supporting
Evolutionary Psychology
Facial Expressions
Language
Chomsky: Universal Grammer
“Poverty of the simulus”
Human languages have such a complex structure that
they cannot be learned just from the information
available to a child
Detecting Violations of Rules
Probabilistic Reasoning
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Lecture 20
Detecting Violations of Rules
Logic and Reasoning
General Content Free Mechanisms
People are very bad at …
Wason Selection Task
IF a person goes into Boston,
then that person takes the subway
Boston Arlington subway cab
If P, then Q
Test for P(Q?) and ~Q(~P?)
Huge Number of Other Examples
Social Exchange (Reciprocal Altruism)
Cheater detection
If you take benefit B,
then you must satisfy requirement R
Can detect violations of If-Then rules if task is cheater
detection
If you are drinking beer, you must be 21 or older
Beer Coke
21 or over
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younger that 21
Lecture 20
Probabilistic Reasoning
Company suspects 2% of its employees use illicit drugs.
Company institutes random drug tests
Drug test is 95% accurate; that is,
P[positive test| drug use] = .95
P[negative test| no drug use] = .95
Mary Jane is selected at random; her test is positive. What
is probability that Mary Jane uses illicit drugs?
Gerd Gigerenzer
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & the ABC Group (1999).
Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Probabilities verses Frequencies
Fast and frugal heuristics fill part of our mind's "adaptive
toolbox" of decision strategies. Together, these
heuristics produce a rationality which is ecological,
rather than merely logical - decision making that is welladapted to specific environmental settings or domains
and specific classes of problems, rather than being
universally applicable to all situations and problems.
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Lecture 20
Mary Jane's Probability
Test Says:
"Positive"
"Negative"
Total
Truth
Clean
Drug User
Total
49
19
68
(5% of Col)
(95% of Col)
931
1
(95% of Col)
(5% of Col)
980
20
932
1000
(98% of Total) (2% of Total)
For 1000 employees there would be 68 "positive" test
results.
But 49 of these "positive" tests would be false alarms and
only 19 would be hits.
P[Mary Jane is drug user | "positive" test] = 19/68 = .28
If company fired all employees with "positive" test results, for
every 1000 employees they would fire 49 innocent people
and only 19 guilty people.
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Lecture 20
Alternative Models of Human Evolution
Linnda R. Caporael
Inclusive Fitness (Evolutionary Psychology)
Cosmides and Tooby
Gene’s eye view of evolution (selfish genes)
General Selection Theories
Based on Darwinian Principles
Focal Trait and adaptive advantage of this trait
Donald (1991)
Calvin and Brickerton (2000)
Lots of others
Sociality Theories
Dunbar (1993)
Machiavellian intelligence (Byrne & Whiten 1988)
Complexities of group living and social exchange
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Lecture 20
Multilevel Evolutionary Theories
Other levels where selection can occur
(e.g. chromosomes, individuals, groups).
Dual inheritance (Culture and genes)
Boyd and Richardson
Tomasello
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Lecture 20
Inclusive Fitness (Evolutionary
Psychology)
The “Hardliners”
Sociobiology
Dawkins, Dennett, Cosmides and Tooby, Pinker, …
Genes and their transmission from generation to
generation,
i.e. helping kin can increase fitness of a gene at
the expense of the idenividual (Hamilton, 1964)
Environment and development are secondary factors
Very controversial
See review of Dennett’s ‘Darwin’s dangerous idea
Steven J. Gould
Gene’s eye view of evolution (selfish genes)
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Lecture 20
Inclusive Fitness (Cont)
Many Evolutionary Psychology Hypotheses Have Been
Reevaluated and Questioned or Rejected
Mating preferences
Women as gold diggers and Men sowing their
wild oats (Buss 1987)
Role of culture, gender equality
Scientific Explanation Verses Retelling of Well Known
Cultural Stereotypes
Very narrow view of genetic causation
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