Evolved Psychological Mechanisms and Content-Specificity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3005357 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Harmon R Holcomb (University of Kentucky, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 19-23 |
| Publication date | 1994-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropology of Consciousness (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1053-4202 • E-ISSN: 1556-3537 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1525/ac.1994.5.4.19 |
| OpenAlex | W2161864517 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
In The Adapted Mind (1992), Cosmides and Tooby argue for the thesis that biological evolution endowed the human mind with a system of content-specific computational mechanisms designed to solve long-standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter-gatherers, and not just a generalized "capacity for culture" or all-purpose "learning capacity". I analyze three types of arguments they offer: historical arguments for the rise of content-Specific psychology; programmatic arguments for the aims, theory, concepts, and methods of their evolutionary approach; and experimental arguments for the content-dependence of reasoning. Their arguments stand or fall on the claim that functionally specialized adaptations must be richly structured in a content-specific way
Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Content (measure theory · Epistemology · Evolutionary psychology · Child and Animal Learning Development · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Language and cultural evolution · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|