Sexual Selection and Mind
O
Zahavi and the Handicap Principle
The Sexy Son Hypothesis
RA Fisher and Runaway Sexual Selection
Extras:
Sexual Selection and the Deweyian Aesthetic of Language
Other Reflections on Babel
The Ornamental Mind
Michael Persinger and the God Helmet
Ragnarok
On the Afterworldly
LESSON I
LESSON II
"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
|
Evolutionary Psychology: Theoretical Foundations:
 EP - Cosmides and Tooby.pdf
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.
|
|
"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
I go everywhere in my student coat, now and then slap someone on the back, and say: siamo contenti? son dio, ho fatto questa caricatura
("Is everything okay? I am god, this farce is my creation")
- Nietzsche, margin note in 1889 letter
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
|
Links
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
http://www.life.umd.edu/emeritus/reveal/pbio/darwin/darwindex.html
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.