Together, these collected papers develop the idea that human thinking - from scientific creativity to simply understanding what a positive HIV test means - "happens" partly outside the mind.".

In this paper I argue the best examples of the methods in the evolutionary social sciences don’t actually resemble either of the two methods called “Adaptive Thinking” or “Reverse Engineering” described by evolutionary psychologists. Both AT and RE have significant problems. Instead, the best adaptationist work in the ESSs seems to be based on and is aiming at a different method that avoids the problems of AT and RE: it is a behavioral level method that starts with information (...) about both the trait in question and knowledge of the EEA. I describe some examples from the literature, and suggest how a behavioral level ESS might still contribute to the discovery and understanding of human psychology. Finally, I describe some remaining problems for adaptationist reasoning of this kind. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists attempt to infer our evolved psychology from the selection pressures present in our ancestral environments. Their use of this inference strategy—often called “adaptive thinking”—is thought to be justified by way of appeal to a rather modest form of adaptationism, according to which the mind's adaptive complexity reveals it to be a product of selection. I argue, on the contrary, that the mind's being an adaptation is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for the (...) validity of adaptive thinking, and that evolutionary psychology's predictive project is in fact committed to an extremely strong and highly implausible form of adaptationism. According to this “strong adaptationism,” the macroevolutionary trajectory of a population is determined by, and therefore predictable on the basis of, the selection pressures acting upon it. Not only is this form of adaptationism prima facie highly implausible, it requires making a number of naïve and likely false assumptions concerning the nature of heritable phenotypic variation in natural populations. In particular, it assumes that phenotypic variation is inevitably small in its extent, unbiased in its direction, and copious in its quantity. Because it is unlikely that these conditions obtain as a general rule, and even more unlikely that they obtained in early human populations, I conclude that there is little reason to believe that adaptive thinking can be used to infer the current structure of our minds from evidence of past selection pressures. (shrink)

In recent years, quite a few evolutionary psychologists have come to embrace a heuristic interpretation of the discipline. They claim that, no matter how methodologically incomplete, adaptive thinking works fine as a good heuristic that effectively reduces the hypothesis space by generating novel and promising hypotheses that can eventually be empirically tested. The purpose of this article is to elucidate the use of heuristics in evolutionary psychology, thereby clarifying the role adaptive thinking has to play. To (...) that end, two typical heuristic interpretations—Machery’s "bootstrap strategy" and Goldfinch’s heuristically streamlined evolutionary psychology—are examined, focusing on the relationship between adaptive thinking and heuristics. The article draws two primary conclusions. The first is that the reliability of the heuristic hypothesis generation procedure should count no less than the conclusiveness of the final testing procedure in establishing scientific facts; nature does not always get the last word. Philosophy also counts. The second is that adaptive thinking constitutes a core heuristic in evolutionary psychology that provides the discipline with its raison d'être, but this is only possible when adaptive thinking is substantiated with sufficient historical underpinnings. (shrink)

Intrigued by Robinson and Southgate's 2010 work on “entering a semiotic matrix,” we expand their model to include the juxtaposition of all signs, symbols, and mental categories, and to explore the underpinnings of creativity in science, religion, and art. We rely on an interdisciplinary review of human sentience in archaeology, evolutionary biology, the cognitive science of religion, and literature, and speculate on the development of sentience in response to strong selection pressure on the hominin evolutionary line, leaving us the “lone (...) survivors” of complex, multiple lines of physical and cultural evolution. What we call Matrix Thinking—the creative driver of human sentience—has important cognitive and intellectual features, but also equally important characteristics traced to our intense sociability and use of emotionality in vetting rational models. Scientist, theologian, and artist create new cultural knowledge within a social context even if alone. They are rewarded by emotional validation from group members, and guided by the ever present question, “Does it feel right?”. (shrink)

‘‘Adaptive radiation’’ is an evocative metaphor for explosive evolutionary divergence, which for over 100 years has given a powerful heuristic to countless scientists working on all types of organisms at all phylogenetic levels. However, success has come at the price of making ‘‘adaptive radiation’’ so vague that it can no longer reflect the detailed results yielded by powerful new phylogeny-based techniques that quantify continuous adaptive radiation variables such as speciation rate, phylogenetic tree shape, and morphological diversity. Attempts (...) to shoehorn the results of these techniques into categorical ‘‘adaptive radiation: yes/no’’ schemes lead to reification, in which arbitrary quantitative thresholds are regarded as real. Our account of the life cycle of metaphors in science suggests that it is time to exchange the spent metaphor for new concepts that better represent the full range of diversity, disparity, and speciation rate across all of life. (shrink)

Much of our thinking focuses on deciding what to do in situations where the space of possible options is too large to evaluate exhaustively. Previous work has found that people do this by learning the general value of different behaviors, and prioritizing thinking about high-value options in new situations. Is this good-action bias always the best strategy, or can thinking about low-value options sometimes become more beneficial? Can people adapt their thinking accordingly based on the situation? (...) And how do we know what to think about in novel events? Here, we developed a block-puzzle paradigm that enabled us to measure people's thinking plans and compare them to a computational model of rational thought. We used two distinct response methods to explore what people think about—a self-report method, in which we asked people explicitly to report what they thought about, and an implicit response time method, in which we used people's decision-making times to reveal what they thought about. Our results suggest that people can quickly estimate the apparent value of different options and use this to decide what to think about. Critically, we find that people can flexibly prioritize whether to think about high-value options (Experiments 1 and 2) or low-value options (Experiments 3, 4, and 5), depending on the problem. Through computational modeling, we show that these thinking strategies are broadly rational, enabling people to maximize the value of long-term decisions. Our results suggest that thinking plans are flexible: What we think about depends on the structure of the problems we are trying to solve. (shrink)

There is a puzzle about why self-deception, a process that obscures the truth, is so pervasive in human behavior given that tracking the truth seems important for our survival and reproduction. William von Hippel and Robert Trivers argue that, despite appearances, there is good reason to think that self-deception is an adaptation by arguing: self-deception leads to a positive self-perception and a positive self-perception increases an individual’s fitness. D.S. Neil Van Leeuwen, however, gives persuasive arguments against both steps. In response, (...) we will defend both propositions, thereby supporting the conclusion that self-deception indeed has adaptive value. The first premise will be bolstered by a survey of the philosophical literature and empirical work on self-deception, whereas the second will be strengthened by empirical research on a behavioral phenomenon known as the winner effect. (shrink)

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery, (...) number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

The finding of a correlation between normative responses to judgment and reasoning questions and cognitive capacity measures (SAT score) suggests that the cause of the non-normative responses is computational in nature. This actually is consistent with the rational competence view. The implications of this finding for the adaptation view of cognition are discussed.

According to Kanazawa (Psychol Rev 111:512–523, 2004), general intelligence, which he considers as a synonym of abstract thinking, evolved specifically to allow our ancestors to deal with evolutionary novel problems while conferring no advantage in solving evolutionary familiar ones. We present a study whereby the results contradict Kanazawa’s hypothesis by demonstrating that performance on an evolutionary novel problem (an abstract reasoning task) predicts performance on an evolutionary familiar problem (a social reasoning task).

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

The digital revolution has widened the array of curriculum materials available to history teachers. Given the variable quality of these new materials and the deeply contextual nature of teaching, educators need better tools for selecting among the vast options available. This study aimed to validate a device designed for that purpose, called the Curriculum Materials Evaluation Tool (CMET). Using a questionnaire and think-aloud interview, the study examined how four social studies teachers evaluated a novel material set for potential classroom use, (...) and how the CMET mediated their analysis. Findings showed that the teachers preferred when materials are readily accessible and adaptable for their specific teaching context, in contrast to “one-size-fits-all” resources that dominate the Web. The CMET appeared to foster a deeper and broader analysis of the given material set, especially regarding its political and cultural orientation. The study suggests that teachers’ role in vetting and adapting digital materials be recognized and embraced. The CMET can contribute to that end through its use in district adoption committees, teacher professional development, and collaborative curriculum research. (shrink)

People with disabilities often report enjoying a much higher quality of life than people without disabilities would expect. For instance, many people believe that their lives would be much worse if they were to become paraplegic. Indeed, some people believe that life with paraplegia would be barely worth living. Yet many paraplegics report being roughly as happy as able-bodied people. This conflict in attitudes has come to be known as “the disability paradox.” Many psychologists claim that the disability paradox is (...) at least partly explained by affective forecasting errors. Someone makes an affective forecasting error when she makes a mistaken prediction about the effect of some event on her experiential quality of life. Such affective forecasting errors raise moral problems that are especially pressing in the context of medical decision-making. For instance, when a recommended treatment would leave someone disabled, she may refuse on the grounds that she would rather live a shorter life without the disability than a longer life with the disability. Yet it may be that she would feel very differently after adapting to the condition in question. What should we say about such cases? On the one hand, some ethicists have argued that affective forecasting errors compromise autonomy, so that decision-makers should take account of the likelihood that they will adapt. On the other, it may appear that decision-makers should have no regard for adaptive preferences they may form in the future. My central goal in this paper is to argue that both of these views are mistaken. If sound, my arguments suggest that legitimate moral concerns about a subject’s well-being are sometimes misrepresented as concerns about her autonomy. (shrink)

Design thinking in general, and optimality modeling in particular, have traditionally been associated with adaptationism—a research agenda that gives pride of place to natural selection in shaping biological characters. Our goal is to evaluate the role of design thinking in non-evolutionary analyses. Specifically, we focus on research into abstract design principles that underpin the functional organization of extant organisms. Drawing on case studies from engineering-inspired approaches in biology we show how optimality analysis, and other design-related methods, play a (...) specific methodological role that is tangential to the study of adaptation. To account for the role of these reasoning strategies in contemporary biology, we therefore suggest a reevaluation of the connection between design thinking and adaptationism. (shrink)

In this essay we consider some of the characteristics of adaptive biological systems and how these might work as models in designing a robot intended for the exploration of complex environments. Trying to design a robot that has such properties forces one to think hard about the nature of those properties. Here we have one intersection between philosophy and computing. We consider the nature of adaptability and some properties of complex biological systems that are relevant to designing adaptive (...) robots, including direct perception, animacy, affordances, redundant degress of freedom, collective decisions, and emergent properties. We explain how these concepts were used in the development of a robotic arm. (shrink)

The concept of adaptation is pivotal to modern evolutionary thinking, but it has long been the subject of controversy, especially in respect of the relative roles of selection versus constraints in explaining the traits of organisms. This paper tackles a different problem for the concept of adaptation: its interpretation in light of multilevel selection theory. In particular, I arbitrate a dispute that has broken out between the proponents of rival perspectives on multilevel adaptations. Many experts now say that multilevel (...) and kin selection views are mathematically equivalent to one another—that the mathematical accounting of evolution can be carried out at any hierarchical level one chooses. But what does this formal equivalence imply - are they equivalent in other ways too? I show here that significant conceptual non-equivalence has survived: the two sides commit to different views regarding how much selection has to act at a level before we can call traits at that level adaptations; about whether policing mechanisms are adaptations, and about whether non-organisms can bear adaptations. (shrink)

This article explores how scientists adapt to a changing climate. To do this, we bring examples from a case study of salmon habitat restorationists in the Columbia River Basin into conversation with concepts from previous work on change and stability in knowledge infrastructures and scientific practice. In order to adapt, ecological restorationists are increasingly relying on predictive modeling tools, as well as initiating broader changes in the interdisciplinary nature of the field of ecological restoration itself. We explore how the field (...) of ecological restoration is shifting its conceptual gaze from restoring to past, historic baselines to anticipating a no-analog future and consider what this means in terms of understanding the adaptive capacity of knowledge infrastructures and epistemic communities more broadly. We argue that identifying how scientists themselves conceptualize drivers of change and respond to these changes is an important step in understanding what adaptive capacity in science might entail. We offer these examples as a provocation for thinking about “adaptive epistemologies” and how adaptation by scientists themselves can facilitate or hinder particular environmental or sociotechnical futures. (shrink)

Adaptive Actions initiated in London in 2007 by Jean-François Prost explores alterations in the workplace, the home, and public spaces in general. Identifying the variety of these personal and found alterations in the city as different forms of adaptation creates a vocabulary for the expression of the collective imagination, through the existing urban structures therein. These ‘actions’ modify and activate the intended use of architecture and enhance the character of urban environments. They create positive tensions that test the limits (...) of tolerated appropriation. Can these simple actions, images, and ideas, such as the hybridization of conventional and unusual urban realities, infiltrate our collective imagination to promote feelings of identity and a sense of cultural belonging? Adaptive Actions points to how urban phenomena impact on residents’ perception of the environment and their relation to it. By offering a space to share experiences, ideas, forms of actions, and specific accomplishments, Adaptive Actions creates an inventory of alterations rarely visible to the public. Printed documents and organized events are being planned to increase visibility of the selected actions to the public eye and build affiliations and communal thinking. (shrink)

Complex adaptive systems and nursingThere have been numerous references to complexity theory and complex systems in the recent healthcare literature, including nursing. However, exaggerated claims have (in my view) been made about how they can be applied to health service delivery, and there is a widespread tendency to misunderstand some of the concepts associated with complexity thinking (usually justified by describing the misconception as a metaphor). These conceptscanbe extended to systems and structures in healthcare organisations but, at this (...) stage in the development of complexity science, only in a modest and very cautious way. In this paper I first outline some of the key ideas in the theory of complex adaptive systems, and then suggest that they have been distorted by a series of influential articles in the medical literature. I go on to present a simple case study of my own and undertake a complexity analysis of it. In the conclusion I suggest that we should beware of some outdated ideas being trotted out in the guise of complexity — an exciting and diverse area of enquiry that those old ideas do not, in fact, resemble. (shrink)

Adaptive preference formation is the unconscious altering of our preferences in light of the options we have available. Jon Elster has argued that this is bad because it undermines our autonomy. I agree, but think that Elster's explanation of why is lacking. So, I draw on a richer account of autonomy to give the following answer. Preferences formed through adaptation are characterized by covert influence (that is, explanations of which an agent herself is necessarily unaware), and covert influence undermines (...) our autonomy because it undermines the extent to which an agent's preferences are ones that she has decided upon for herself. This answer fills the lacuna in Elster's argument. It also allows us to draw a principled distinction between adaptive preference formation and the closely related phenomenon of character planning. (shrink)

In 1590, after Norway’s most famous witch trial, Anne Pedersdotter was burned alive. Resource scarcity and religious competition transformed an old superstition into a witch craze to which Anne fell victim. Her story became a play in 1908 and a film in 1943. The two adaptations attempt to give Anne’s persecution more modern explanations. In the play Anne Pedersdotter, Anne has psychic powers that make her neighbors think she is a Satanic collaborator. In the film Day of Wrath, Anne embodies (...) humanistic aspirations that would have been delusional in her own era and that are perhaps also poorly adapted to human nature in general. The trial and the two fictional versions of the trial all illustrate how thought patterns that evolved for small groups of foragers can be overstimulated in post-agricultural environments. This article identifies cognitive dispositions that, in periods of crisis, can trigger persecution of outsiders, discusses how those universal mechanisms man­ifest themselves in different cultural contexts, and examines the historically specific beliefs and values that animate the two fictional versions of Anne’s story. The article concludes with reflections on how the evolved cognitive mechanisms that led to beliefs in witchcraft often manifest themselves, in the present, as conspiracy beliefs directed at minorities. (shrink)

Since more than hundred years the attempts to explain biological adaptations constitute the main current of evolutionary thinking. In 1901 C. LI. Morgan wrote: „The doctrine of evolution has rendered the study of adaptation of scientific importance. Before that doctrine was formulated, natural adaptations formed part of the mystery of special creation, and played a great role in natural theology through the use of the argument from 'design in nature’". The modem doctrine of biology stresses the importance of the (...) environment in „shaping" the inner properties of every living being. This means an obvious although tacit refusal to assume or recognize any single, integrated agent in the origin of main functional biological traits and in the genesis of new kinds of life. The role ascribed to random mutations, and to „pressures of the environment" is just one aspect of the neodarwinian theory. Another aspect of this doctrine is the widespread conviction that all phenomena of life are a natural, both random and necessary result of interactions between constantly changing material objects. (shrink)

The aim of the experiment was to evaluate the adaptive responses of biomechanical and electromyographic parameters to vertical unloading when walking during the 4-month isolation experiment SIRIUS-19 in the ground-based space station model. The study involved 6 healthy international crew members of the SIRIUS-19 project aged 34 ± 6.2 years. Body Weight Unloading conditions was created by the h/p/cosmos airwalk system. The locomotor test included walking with a sequential change of BWU modes: 5-min walking with 0% BWU, 5-min walking (...) with 65% BWU and 5-min walking with 85% BWU. Ground Reaction Force was recorded by the h/p/cosmos treadmill device. Muscle Lab Model 4000e device was used to record the electromyographic signals of the hip and shin muscles. The locomotor test was performed twice before GBI, monthly during GBI and 1 week after leaving isolation. The results obtained before GBI demonstrate that the changes of support and proprioceptive afferentation signals play significant role in reorganizing of the biomechanical structure of motor acts and the development of new movement patterns. The results of the study are consistent with the previously obtained results of other studies in this direction. Despite the fact that during the GBI the participants of the experiment performed regular physical training, a decrease in the performance indicators values was detected, especially pronounced after 100 days of GBI. This is probably due to limited space of a space station model, as well as the development of a special motor stereotype in it. Noteworthy are the results obtained after the 4th session of the experiment, indicating the effect of sensorimotor learning. We think that the data obtained in this study will be useful in research both in gravitational physiology and in clinical medicine. (shrink)

Digital transformation doesn't just raise ethical issues, it-in itself-is an ethical shift. Business leaders today are struggling to manage conflicting imperatives, those of the emerging digital world and those of the bureaucratic world of the past. The act of digital transformation requires a deep change in the moral outlook and ethical assumptions of a business. But how do we get there? Enterprise strategist and author Mark Schwartz shows how we need to learn to think differently about relationships with customers and (...) employees. That the ethics of digital transformation is a matter of cultivating and applying virtues rather than applying rules. Ethics is not just a matter of refraining from doing bad things. It's a matter of building the world we want, and it's the job of company executives. Featuring a chapter on bullshit, a handy chart of excuses for bad behavior, and Schwartz's typically paradoxical blend of deep insight and pasta jokes, this book guides business leaders as they struggle to adapt their bureaucratic framework of ethics to the emerging landscape of the digital world. By the end of the book, business leaders will rethink what it takes to be an ethical organization. (shrink)

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as “shared expectations,” the “selective patterning of attention and behaviour,” “cultural evolution,” “cultural inheritance,” and “implicit learning” are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater (...) specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process “thinking through other minds” (TTOM) – in effect, the process of inferring other agents’ expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism. (shrink)

The concept of “gradually adaptive frameworks” is introduced as a model with the potential to describe the evolution of belief evaluative systems through the consideration of reasonable arguments and evidence. This concept is demonstrated through an analysis of specific points of disagreement between David Elliott’s praxial philosophy and Bennett Reimer’s aesthetic philosophy. A parallel case of disagreement is introduced from the literature of contemporary epistemology. This case, comprised of a disagreement between Thomas Kelly and Richard Feldman, deals explicitly with (...) the subject of “peer disagreement”. The discussion of this conceptual analysis is used to establish an advocacy position for the central positioning of critical thinking skills in any educative endeavor. (shrink)

The question is about contextual adaptation of meaning, a matter of philosophy of language, occasioned here by a disagreement among philosophers of religion about whether words, like “knows,” “wills,” “loves,” “commands,” “does,” used for common attributes of humans and the divine, and even “exists” as applied to both, mean the same or acquire divergences of meaning from the discourse contexts. I call the first group “reformers” and the other “analogists.” Analogists think the reformers are anthropomorphic, contributing to popular naive imaginings (...) about God as “a person like us,” while the reformers think the analogists are grafting Hellenic ideas onto biblical faith. That is not a new dispute, of course. But there is a separable linguistic facet of it, examined here, that has wider applications to philosophy in general. (shrink)

I argue that Evolutionary Psychologists’ notion of adaptationism is closest to what Peter Godfrey-Smith (2001) calls explanatory adaptationism and as a result, is not a good organizing principle for research in the biology of human behavior. I also argue that adopting an alternate notion of adaptationism presents much more explanatory resources to the biology of human behavior. I proceed by introducing Evolutionary Psychology and giving some examples of alternative approaches to the biological explanation of human behavior. Next I characterize adaptation (...) and explain the range of biological phenomena that can count as adaptations. I go onto introduce the range of adaptationist views that have been distinguished by philosophers of biology and lay out explanatory adaptationism in detail. (shrink)

A familiar trope of cognitive science, linguistics, and the philosophy of psychology over the past forty or so years has been the idea of the mind as a modular system-that is, one consisting of functionally specialized subsystems responsible for processing different classes of input, or handling specific cognitive tasks like vision, language, logic, music, and so on. However, one of the major achievements of neuroscience has been the discovery that the brain has incredible powers of renewal and reorganization. This "neuroplasticity," (...) in its various forms, has challenged many of the orthodox conceptions of the mind which originally led cognitive scientists to postulate hardwired mental modules. -/- This book examines how such discoveries have changed the way we think about the structure of the mind. It contends that the mind is more supple than prevailing theories in cognitive science and artificial intelligence acknowledge. The book uses language as a test case. The claim that language is cognitively special has often been understood as the claim that it is underpinned by dedicated-and innate-cognitive mechanisms. Zerilli offers a fresh take on how our linguistic abilities could be domain-general: enabled by a composite of very small and redundant cognitive subsystems, few if any of which are likely to be specialized for language. In arguing for this position, however, the book takes seriously various cases suggesting that language dissociates from other cognitive faculties. -/- Accessibly written, The Adaptable Mind is a fascinating account of neuroplasticity, neural reuse, the modularity of mind, the evolution of language, and faculty psychology. (shrink)

With the rejection of group selectionist derivations of ecological phenomena so incisively given by George Williams in 1966,43 Nicholson's long-ignored messages met with acceptance. Species benefit became, explicitly, incidental. But the reorientation was not just about a point of ecological theory. It was more fundamentally about theoretical style, the element shared by Wynne-Edwards' work and the newer, evolutionary ecology. That current approach is well expressed in an already classic paper by the British plant ecologist John Harper: Ultimately all the discoveries (...) of descriptive, production or population ecology must find their meaning in evolutionary phenomena... Evolutionary thinking concentrates attention on the behaviour of the individual and his descendants. If nothing in biology has meaning except in the light of evolution and if evolution is about individuals and their descendants — i.e. fitness — we should not expect to reach any depth of understanding from studies that are based at the level of the superindividual... What we see as the organised behaviour of systems is the result of the fate of individuals.44The emphasis in this passage is on style of thinking more than on study matter. What is so different from earlier ecologists is the rejection of the superorganism and its associated baggage of selfimposed constraints in an end-oriented process, such as balance of nature or species-level adaptation.The hallmark of post-1959 evolutionary ecology is the recognition, the making explicit of the question that the selective, genetical process of fitness (fates of genes) has to be separated from the observations of different levels of adaptiveness. An easy conflation of cause and result is no longer satisfying; now attempts to disentangle the complex strands tying population phenomena to the different levels of selection are providing the excitement of a new research program. In this program evolutionary theory is used to define the appropriate questions, as exemplified by the organization of the textbook Evolutionary Ecology.45 Our discussion of the invention of a new approach, with a characteristic style and set of interests, must also be about how the practitioners of ecology have perceived themselves. The early attempts of Poulton and Nicholson were not taken up by the vigorously growing science of ecology, which developed first - and intentionally — along a narrower, hierarchically restrained set of questions about population. The depth of Poulton's and Nicholson's submergence is indicated by the fact that even Wynne-Edwards did not argue in the manner of one rescuing a minor tradition. Rather, he thought he had a new approach, that of placing evolution in the foundations of ecology. Although this approach was not exactly original, we should be cautious in grouping all evolutionary concerns within ecology in one intellectual tradition. The particular style of selectionist deduction invigorated by Wynne-Edwards was successful only in the volatile situation of a rapidly growing discipline, full of self-critical examination and new rigor. Whereas in 1930 evolutionary concerns did not provide that rigor, by 1960 they could - and did. (shrink)

Since more than hundred years the attempts to explain biological adaptations constitute the main current of evolutionary thinking. In 1901 C. LI. Morgan wrote: „The doctrine of evolution has rendered the study of adaptation of scientific importance. Before that doctrine was formulated, natural adaptations formed part of the mystery of special creation, and played a great role in natural theology through the use of the argument from 'design in nature’". The modem doctrine of biology stresses the importance of the (...) environment in „shaping" the inner properties of every living being. This means an obvious although tacit refusal to assume or recognize any single, integrated agent in the origin of main functional biological traits and in the genesis of new kinds of life. The role ascribed to random mutations, and to „pressures of the environment" is just one aspect of the neodarwinian theory. Another aspect of this doctrine is the widespread conviction that all phenomena of life are a natural, both random and necessary result of interactions between constantly changing material objects. (shrink)

It is a foundational prediction of evolutionary theory that human beliefs accurately approximate reality only insofar as accurate beliefs enhance fitness. Otherwise, adaptive misbeliefs will prevail. Unlike McKay & Dennett (M&D), we think that adaptive belief systems rely heavily upon misbeliefs. However, the case for positive illusions as an example of adaptive misbelief is weak.

Engineers today cannot meet their professional obligation to the welfare of society if they do not have a broad, multidisciplinary vision, and yet a multidisciplinary vision is becoming enormously difficult to obtain. A new curriculum must emerge that can integrate a focused, discipline-based scientific approach with an integrated approach. To do this, we must recognize that there is already a structure that is deeply embedded into the current pedagogy, which values performance ratios such as efficiency as paramount. Current trends indicate (...) a call for a broader, reflexive, and preventative curriculum, but like many other calls for change, these will fail if the focus continues to be on wrong values. A model for an adaptive engineering curriculum is developed that strives to maintain a scientific approach as well as a broad “culture-based approach.” A new way of thinking about engineering curriculum must involve a “resymbolization” in which experience, context, community, and certain nonmeasurable principles are valued. (shrink)

The time is ripe for innovation in global health governance if we are to achieve global health and development objectives in the face of formidable challenges. Integration of global health concerns into the law and governance of other, related disciplines should be given high priority. This article explores opportunities for health policymaking in the global response to climate change. Climate change and environmental degradation will affect weather disasters, food and water security, infectious disease patterns, and air pollution. Although scientific research (...) has pointed to the interdependence of the global environment and human health, policymakers have been slow to integrate their approaches to environmental and health concerns. A robust response to climate change will require improved integration on two fronts: health concerns must be given higher priority in the response to climate change and threats associated with climate change and environmental degradation must be more adequately addressed by global health law and governance. The mitigation/adaptation response paradigm developing within and beyond the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides a useful framework for thinking about global health law and governance with respect to climate change, environmental degradation, and possibly other upstream determinants of health as well. (shrink)

Diverse living systems possess the capacity for regeneration; that is, they can under some circumstances repair, re-produce, and maintain themselves in the face of disturbance or damage. Think of systems as diverse as forests, microbial biofilms, corals, salamanders, hydra, and human skin cells. This capacity is fundamental to life—without it, many biological systems would be too fragile to cope with stress and would frequently collapse—but because it is multiply realized in wildly different living systems at many scales, finding a common (...) understanding may seem futile, and in fact research has proceeded along independent lines. For example, the sciences of organismal regeneration and ecological regeneration appear to have little more than a nominal relationship. Progress towards unification can be made, we think, by turning to evolutionary theory, specifically by synthesizing recent discussions of the evolution of individuals versus collectives with older literature about replicators versus interactors. This allows us to provide a partial answer in response to MacCord and Maienschein’s call for “basic units and mechanisms” of regeneration, relevant when that process is “adaptive.” We argue that the basics of adaptive regeneration can be understood and generalized through a modification of David Hull’s replicator-interactor framework. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that we must adapt to climate change. But we sit on the edge of radical, unprecedented, and rapid anthropogenic environmental changes that are driven by many factors in addition to greenhouse gas emissions. In this way, we occupy a unique and precarious position in the history of our species. Many basic conditions of life on Earth are changing at an alarming rate and thus we should begin to transform and broaden our thinking about adaptation. The (...) conceptual history of climate adaptation intersects with conceptions of human development and sustainability, which provides a framework for adaptation in how we think about human flourishing and, subsequently, what it is to be human in the Anthropocene. If sustainability is about maintaining human welfare across generations but we acknowledge that climate change may undercut our ability to deliver as much and as good total or natural capital to subsequent generations, we have a residual duty to otherwise positively affect the welfare of future generations. A subjective, preference-based conception of human welfare is compared to an objective, capabilities-based approach and, while some adaptive preferences are unavoidable, embracing an objective theory of human flourishing provides a superior approach for meeting the residual duty we have to future generations by beginning the process of adapting our conception of human natural goodness, or what it is to be a good human being. (shrink)

The New Thinking contained in this volume rejects an Evolutionary Psychology that is committed to innate domain-specific psychological mechanisms: gene-based adaptations that are unlearnt, developmentally fixed and culturally universal. But the New Thinking does not simply deny the importance of innate psychological traits. The problem runs deeper: the concept of innateness is not suited to distinguishing between the two positions. That points to a more serious problem with the concept of innateness as it is applied to human psychological (...) phenotypes. This paper argues that the features of recent human evolution highlighted by the New Thinking imply that the concept of inherited representation, set out here, is a better tool for theorising about human cognitive evolution. (shrink)

Biologists often study living systems in light of their having evolved, of their being the products of various processes of heredity, adaptation, ancestry, and so on. In their investigations, then, biologists think comparatively: they situate lineages into models of those evolutionary processes, comparing their targets with ancestral relatives and with analogous evolutionary outcomes. This element characterizes this mode of investigation - 'comparative thinking' - and puts it to work in understanding why biological science takes the shape it does. Importantly, (...) comparative thinking is local: what we can do with knowledge of a lineage is limited by the evolutionary processes into which it fits. In light of this analysis, the Element examines the experimental study of animal cognition, and macroevolutionary investigation of the 'shape of life', demonstrating the importance of comparative thinking in understanding both the power and limitations of biological knowledge. (shrink)

Do we apply higher epistemic standards to subjects with high stakes? This paper argues that we expect different outward behavior from high-stakes subjects—for example, we expect them to collect more evidence than their low-stakes counterparts—but not because of any change in epistemic standards. Rather, we naturally expect subjects in any condition to think in a roughly adaptive manner, balancing the expected costs of additional evidence collection against the expected value of gains in accuracy. The paper reviews a body of (...) empirical work on the automatic regulation of cognitive effort in response to stakes, and argues that we naturally see high- and low-stakes subjects as experiencing different levels of ‘epistemic anxiety’, and anticipate different levels of cognitive effort from them for this reason. If unresolved epistemic anxiety always bars an ascription of knowledge, then we can explain our responses to cases involving shifting stakes without positing any variation in the standards of intuitive knowledge ascription. (shrink)

The two authors of this paper have diametrically opposed views of the prevalence and strength of adaptation in nature. Hendry believes that adaptation can be seen almost everywhere and that evidence for it is overwhelming and ubiquitous. Gonzalez believes that adaptation is uncommon and that evidence for it is ambiguous at best. Neither author is certifiable to the knowledge of the other, leaving each to wonder where the other has his head buried. Extensive argument has revealed that each author thinks (...) his own view is amply supported by both theory and empirical evidence. Further reflection has revealed that the differences in opinion may start with the different disciplines in which we work: evolutionary ecology for Hendry and community ecology for Gonzalez. In the present paper, we each present devastating evidence supporting our own position and thus refuting that of the other. We then identify the critical differences that led to such opposing views. We close by combining our two perspectives into a common framework based on the adaptive landscape, and thereby suggest means by which to assess the prevalence and strength of adaptation. (shrink)

The environmental crisis has challenged faith traditions to take a stand and act both globally and locally. Statements and action build on reinterpretations of tradition, which also produce a variety of ritual applications. Environmental rituals, for example, deal with the grief and anxiety caused by environmental crisis or seek to have a concrete impact on local environmental problems. The anthropologist Roy Rappaport (1926–97) examined religious environmental rituals, firstly as a way of regulating ecological balance. Secondly, he saw religiously motivated environmental (...) rituals as a way of changing human thinking and behaviour in an era of environmental crisis. These perspectives can be applied in at least three ways: firstly, by looking at how rituals are used in religious communities that are directly dependent on the natural environment; secondly, by examining how religious communities use rituals in various situations related to environmental issues; and thirdly, by focusing on how Rappaport’s ideas could be used to engage in environmental action. In this article, I focus on religiously motivated environmental rituals and the perspectives that Rappaportian ritual approach provides for examining them. As examples, I use the struggle of the Canadian Mi’kmaq indigenous community over the fate of their sacred mountain and the ordination ritual of Thai monks, who ordain trees under threat of felling in a Buddhist monastic community. (shrink)

An account of the virtues of limitation management: intellectual virtues of adapting to the fact that we cannot solve many of the problems that we can describe. I argue that the best response to many problems depends not on the most rationally promising solution, but on the most likely route to success. I argue against techniques that assume that one will fulfil ones intentions, and distinguish between failures of rationality and failures of intelligence. I describe the trap of supposing that (...) one will be capable of following the plan that would best exploit ones limited resources. (shrink)

Language comes so naturally to us that we are apt to forget what a strange and miraculous gift it is. Over the next hour you will sit in your chairs listening to a man make noise as he exhales. Why would you do such a thing? Not because the sounds are particularly melodious, but because the sounds convey information in the exact sequence of hisses and hums and squeaks and pops. As you recover the information, you think the thoughts that (...) I want you to think. Right now I am conveying ideas about language itself, but with a slightly different sequence of hisses and pops I could be talking about anything from theories of the origin of the universe to the latest plot twists in your favorite daytime drama. The fundamental scientific problem raised by language is to explain this vast expressive power. What is the trick behind our ability to fill each other’s heads with so many kinds of thoughts? (shrink)

With higher education around the world in a period of extreme flux, this volume explores its underlying philosophy, a core element of the ongoing debate. Offering a diverse range of perspectives from an international selection of renowned scholars of higher education, the book is full of imaginative insights that add up to a substantive contribution to the discussion. As universities attempt to adapt to a new environment characterized by stiff international competition, networked remote learning, burgeoning student numbers, and comparative performance (...) assessment, how we conceptualize the purpose and ethos of our higher learning institutions is more important than ever. This publication features a multitude of distinctive approaches that illuminate potential solutions to the complex issues universities must grapple with in these uncertain times. Rather than espousing a singular philosophical approach, the editors have assembled views from across the spectrum and from differing national contexts, representing a multidisciplinary response to the situation. This collection of papers aims thus to inspire fresh developments in the way we think about the complexities of, and options available to, higher education. (shrink)