Sexual Selection and Mind
Why Sex? Wiki outlining the costs/benefits to Sexual Reproduction
Zahavi and the Handicap Principle
RA Fisher and Runaway Sexual Selection
Self-Deception, Trivers, and Sexual Selection
- FULL TEXT of Theory of the Leisure Class
PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA vs PHYLETIC GRADUALISM
DAWKINS and SELFISH GENES
MEMETICS / SEMIOTICS
KOINOPHILIA
SEXUAL DIMORPHISM
Major Contributors to Evolutionary Theory
Extras:
Sexual Selection and the Deweyian Aesthetic of Language
"Historically, the proscription of speculation in science has been unproductive, justified only by the strange illusion that no knowledge is better than some. Broad integrative theories of origin have traditionally predicted, synthesized, and inspired experimental work. Such theories have often preceded the strong confirmatory data upon which they would stand or fall; their function has been heuristic and imaginative, and their virtue has resided less in their correctness than in their ability to provide direction. Cognitive science needs more such theories, and more of that speculative wonder and respect for the whole that has raised other fields to such spectacular heights."
- Merlin Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind
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Evolutionary Psychology: Theoretical Foundations:
Comment on initial browse of Cosmides and tooby, to be supplemented with an actual reading:
ok, thanks, the computational model seems to beg the question - that living systems are best mapped as \"computational\" or \"cognitive\" processes seems to be what EP should prove, not what it should assume - but let's put this next to the early formulations of sexual selection and the evolutionary study of mind so we can get a sense of the drift and the differences. Since this was a major issue of disagreement between Wallace and Darwin, we should follow that closely. The goal will be to comprehend the full scope of sexual selection ideas and seek to begin integrating them more fully into an analysis of the evolution of human consciousness. Miller's text will be our point of departure, then backwards to history. Just for the sake of the \"Recapitulation" fetish often found in biological discourse, let's recapitualate the history of sexual selection and mind and see what happens. |
EP - Cosmides and Tooby.pdf
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"A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, obtensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of 'spirit' over 'matter'" - Susan Sontag
Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. - Douglas Adams
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Links
http://www.life.umd.edu/emeritus/reveal/pbio/darwin/darwindex.html
