Thought in a Hostile World The Evolution of

WINNER OF THE 2004 LAKATOS AWARD!Thought in a Hostile World is an exploration of the evolution of cognition, especially human cognition, by one of today's foremost philosophers of biology and of mind. Featuresan exploration of the evolution of human cognition. Written by one of today's foremost philosophers of mind and language. Presents a set of analytic tools for thinking about cognition and its evolution. Offers a critique of nativist, modular versions of evolutionary psychology, rejecting the example of language as a model for thinking about human cognitive capacities. Applies to the areas of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and evolutionary psychology.

Kim Sterelny is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington and at the Research School of Social Science at the Australian National University. He is the author of The Representational Theory of Mind (Blackwell, 1990) and the co-author, with Michael Devitt, of Language and Reality (second edition, 1999) and, with Paul Griffiths, Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology (1999).

Preface

viii

PART I ASSEMBLING INTENTIDNALITY

1

(96)

1 Evolutionary Naturalism

3

(8)

1.1 Two Projects of Evolutionary Naturalism

3

(2)

1.2 The Simple Coordination Thesis

5

(6)

2 Detection Systems

11

(19)

2.1 The Environmental Complexity Hypothesis

11

(3)

2.2 Detection Systems

14

(3)

2.3 The Power of Detection Systems

17

(3)

2.4 Transparent and Translucent Worlds

20

(7)

2.5 Robust Tracking Systems

27

(3)

3 Fuels for Success

30

(21)

3.1 Decoupled Representation

30

(3)

3.2 Response Breadth

33

(7)

3.3 Fuels for Success: Space

40

(5)

3.4 Fuels for Success: Intervention in the Material World

45

(5)

3.5 Reprise

50

(1)

4 Fuels for Success: The Social Intelligence Hypothesis

51

(27)

4.1 The Cognitive Demands of Social Life

51

(4)

4.2 The Social Intelligence Hypothesis

55

(3)

4.3 The Cognitive World of the Great Apes: Imitation

58

(9)

4.4 The Cognitive World of Great Apes: Tracking Other Minds

67

(11)

5 The Descent of Preference

78

(19)

5.1 Internal Environments

78

(3)

5.2 The Forager's Dilemma

81

(6)

5.3 Preference Eliminativism?

87

(5)

5.4 Preference-like States

92

(5)

PART II NOT JUST ANOTHER SPECIES OF LARGE MAMMAL

97

(78)

6 Reconstructing Hominid Evolution

99

(24)

6.1 Testing Theories of Human Evolution

99

(2)

6.2 From Cognitive Device to Evolutionary History

101

(4)

6.3 Making Progress

105

(11)

6.4 An Example: Tomasello's Conjecture

116

(5)

6.5 Conclusions

121

(2)

7 The Cooperation Explosion

123

(23)

7.1 The Cooperative Primate

123

(2)

7.2 Group Selection and Human Cooperation

125

(3)

7.3 The Ecological Trigger of Hominid Cooperation

128

(3)

7.4 Coalition and Enforcement

131

(7)

7.5 Commitment to Enforcement

138

(4)

7.6 Upshot

142

(4)

8 The Self-made Species

146

(16)

8.1 Ecological Engineers

146

(3)

8.2 Cumulative Niche Construction: The Cognitive Condition

149

(3)

8.3 Cumulative Niche Construction: The Social Condition

152

(2)

8.4 Hominid Epistemic Engineering

154

(3)

8.5 Downstream Epistemic Engineering

157

(5)

9 Heterogeneous Environments and Variable Response

162

(13)

9.1 Phenotypic Plasticity

162

(4)

9.2 Is Plasticity an Adaptation?

166

(5)

9.3 Reprise

171

(4)

PART III THE FATE DF THE FOLK

175

(66)

10 The Massive Modularity Hypothesis

177

(34)

10.1 Massive Modularity

177

(1)

10.2 Language: Paradigm or Outlier?

178

(3)

10.3 Communicative Intentions

181

(4)

10.4 Fodor's Modules and their Limits

185

(4)

10.5 Inward Bound

189

(3)

10.6 Evolution and Encapsulation

192

(3)

10.7 The Poverty of the Stimulus

195

(5)

10.8 The Case of Folk Biology

200

(5)

10.9 Modularity and the Frame Problem

205

(6)

11 Interpreting Other Agents

211

(30)

11.1 A Theory of Mind Module?

211

(1)

11.2 Deconstructing the Folk Psychology Module

212

(9)

11.3 Interpretation, Perception, and Scaffolded Learning

221

(4)

11.4 Truth, Evidence, and Success

225

(5)

11.5 Coordination and Meaning

230

(4)

11.6 Something New under the Sun?

234

(7)

References

241

(17)

Index

258

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

FREE SHIPPING

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Thought in a Hostile World The Evolution of Human Cognition

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials