Conceptual Challenges in Evolutionary Psychology

This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information, and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and to computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual, and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental, and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. Few areas of inquiry have generated as much interest and enthusiasm in recent times as has the discipline known as "evolutionary psychology", but its pretentions and its accomlishments have not always been properly understood. This collection brings together important work in psychology, anthropology, and the philosophy of science that contributes toward that goal, especially by emphasizing the role of natural selection and sexual selection as crucial factors in the evolution of cognitive mechanisms for information processing. The methodological studies that are presented here are bound to enhance appreciation for the scope and limits of this fascinating domain. The editor has produced a fascinating volume that should appeal to a broad and diverse audience.

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Klappentext

This book offers a multi-disciplinary approach by scientists and philosophers that reveals the stamp of evolution on everyday life: how kinship unravels nurture, how family life affects the personalities we acquire, how our minds develop to negotiate social hierarchies, whether we decide to eat or not, what qualities we prefer in our sexual and marriage patterns, how we name and raise our children, how our thoughts and emotions are framed to make adaptive decisions, and methods for identifying evolved adaptations of the human life-cycle. It serves as an advanced text for students and scholars that critiques the dominating work of Buss, Cosmides and Tooby, Dennett, and Pinker. Taking the field beyond the narrow and contentious innatist-adaptionist view of the mind, it supplies a much sought-after interactional, `biopsycho-sociocultural' paradigm using a variety of evidence to converge on carefully reasoned conclusions.

Inhalt
I. Naturally Selected Development of Behavior, Personality, and Cognition.- 1. Kinship: The Tie that Binds (Disciplines).- 2. Birth Order, Sibling Competition, and Human Behavior.- 3. The Impact of the Social Environment on the Evolution of Mind.- II. Sexually Selected Decision Making in Mating and Parenting.- 4. Sexual Selection, Good Genes, and Human Mating.- 5. Framing Our Thoughts: Ecological Rationality as Evolutionary Psychology's Answer to the Frame Problem.- 6. Food and Fitness: Are Eating Disorders About Self-Esteem, Mating Strategies or Both?.- 7. Paternal Investment or Maternal Investment? A Critique of the Parental Investment Hypothesis in an American Polygamous Community.- III. Adaptationist Research Strategies and Evolutionary History.- 8. From Adaptive Heuristic to Phylogenese Perspective: Some Lessons from the Evolutionary Psychology of Emotion.- 9. Evolution Without History: Critical Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology.- 10. Evaluating Evolutionary Psychology: Check Your Lens.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.