The Evolution of Mind

By Denise D. Cummins

Our understanding of the human mind has radically changed in recent years--from the unified mind once envisioned by Ren Descartes over three hundred years ago to a new understanding of mind as a set of specialized cognitive components gradually accumulated in our evolutionary past. As a result, many scientists and philosophers now believe that our minds emerged out of the same type of evolutionary processes that have shaped our bodies.
In The Evolution of Mind, outstanding figures on the cutting edge of evolutionary psychology follow clues provided by current neuroscientific evidence to illuminate many puzzling questions of human cognitive evolution. With contributions from psychologists, ethologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, the book offers a broad range of approaches to explore the mysteries of the minds evolution--from investigating the biological functions of human cognition to drawing comparisons between human and animal cognitive abilities. This interdisciplinary work presents a comparative and evolutionary perspective on a wide variety of topics, including mental algorithms for reasoning about contingencies, quantities, social norms, and the minds of others; social play and communicative abilities; thought and language, and the role of Darwin's theory of natural selection in evolutionary psychology. Written in a highly readable style, The Evolution of Mind will appeal to a broad range of researchers and students and help set the agenda for the field for years to come.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195110536
• ISBN13: 9780195110531
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Mind matters and some possible evolutionary pathways.

Offering an eclectic interdisciplinary review of thoughts on the evolution of mind, this volume provides ten provocative and well referenced essays from a range of perspectives. Most of the contributors provide discussions of species-comparative data and are sympathetic to some form of Darwinian evolutionary framework. However, although not always explicitly stated, only four of them allude to the importance of ontogenetic development (of individuals) as well as to the phylogenetic evolution of species adapting to the constraints imposed by their respective environments. Many writers on this topic give up when reaching the seemingly great continuity impasse -thereafter holding the advent of language or linguistically-mediated behaviour to account for the differences found between human mental life and that of other animals. However, this is to account for little with regards the evolution of comparative animal cognition (Dickinson, 1997). Even if such linguistic tools as object and event referents may be ripe for their scaffolding subsequent categorizations leading to the production of our particular brand of human thought, it remains open to empirical analysis whether, and to what extent, other species might be capable of experiencing reflective levels of ideational abstraction. Bloom (in Ch.8 of this volume) addresses this issue directly when he argues that language and the non-linguistic aspects of mental life have distinct evolutionary histories. His is a very welcome contribution to a field often dominated by authors blind to drawing the important distinction "...that language is an excellent tool for information transfer.. [but also for making].. the much stronger claim that language explains people's ability to understand or generate this information in the first place".Somewhat refreshingly, this volume includes a number of such contributions which, although not mutually exclusive of the above position, provoke discussion of the issue of mind's evolution from an unexpected focus. For example, Gigerenzer (Ch.1) starts the book with a short lesson in Bayesian mathematics. However, the message here is not that a better understanding of math leads inevitably to better minds and logical ability per se. Ecological (situated) intelligence derives from the need to deal with uncertainty - and one should therefore expect an evolving system to best cope with tasks represented in a way comparable to those successfully encountered in the past. To cite Gigerenzer's own example, the use of natural frequencies (i.e., numerical counts of actual objects or events) should be 'easier' to process/evaluate than percentages, odds or the single-event probability of occurrence. Evidence from novice Vs expert practitioner problem-solving experiments are given and lend support to this argument. These findings might be of as much relevance to the planning of education programs in my view (for developing the individual mind), as might they be for our understanding