New thinking 4 Jul 20124 Jul 2012 Phil Trans has a special issue (‘New thinking: the evolution of human cognition’ compiled and edited by Cecilia Heyes and Uta Frith) on new ways of thinking about thinking, which is a recent response to evolutionary psychology and insistence upon there being modules. One of the essays, by Nicholas Shea, is open access and has links to some papers that allow you access indirectly. The issue is partially instigated by Kim Sterelny’s latest book, The evolved apprentice (London, UK: MIT Press). Sterelny argues that we evolved the ability to do culture by instruction, which changed our learning environment and led to the Olduwan technological revolution. This seems to be the vanguard of a new way to approach cognitive evolution, a kind of post-evopsych general approach. There are disputes of detail within the movement, if it can be called that, but all agree that massive modularity of mind is not a helpful way to deal with human cognition. It also therefore deals with the issue of cultural evolution (post-Dawkinsian, as it were, but also challenging the Boyd and Richerson dual inheritance theory. Cognition Evolution
Administrative A mild apology 29 Nov 2008 I haven’t done much philosophical blogging lately. There are Reasons. I’m preparing to move to Sydney over the next few months (and there may be a period in which I have no laptop too), and trying to catch up on a bunch of projects I have in play and which… Read More
Evolution Another stupid piece of DNA worship 9 Feb 2008 By Matt Ridley, in Time: … by the end of this century, if not sooner, biotechnology may have reached the point where it can take just about any DNA recipe and read off a passable 3-D interpretation of the animal it would create. So long as you also know the… Read More
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Arnhart on Hitler’s Ethic 9 Sep 2009 Larry Arnhart has a pretty solid review of Richard Weikert’s latest anti-Darwin guilt-by-association text linking Darwin to Hitler. However, I think he gives too much away. Read More
What a treasure trove of information. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’ll have to go away and read it all carefully.