文档介绍：1
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY'S GRAIN
PROBLEM AND THE COGNITIVE
NEUROSCIENCE OF REASONING
Anthony P. Atkinson Michael Wheeler
Psychology Department, Department of Philosophy,
King Alfred's College Winchester, University of Dundee,
Hampshire, SO22 4NR, UK Dundee, DD1 4HN, UK
Email: A.******@ Email: .******@
To appear in: D. Over (Ed.), Evolution and the psychology of thinking: The
debate. Hove: Psychology Press (Current Issues in Thinking and Reasoning,
K. Gilhooly Series Ed.).
Acknowledgements
was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship and a
grant from the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences
(rophilosophy/) while this chapter was written. Our
thanks to Ralph Adolphs and David Over ments.
© Anthony P. Atkinson & Michael Wheeler, 2002
Evolutionary psychology's grain problem 2
INTRODUCTION
In its most general form, evolutionary psychology is simply psychology that
is properly grounded in evolutionary biology. But most research that falls
under the banner of evolutionary psychology might be given a more specific
gloss, as the Darwinian adaptationist programme applied to the mind/brain.
How does this idea work?1
Viewed through the lens of Darwinian theory, organisms are (for the
most part) integrated collections of adaptations, where adaptations are
phenotypic traits that are evolved responses to adaptive problems, and
where adaptive problems are selection pressures — recurring environmental
conditions that influence reproductive ess, or fitness, of individual
organisms. Adaptations, then, contribute (or once contributed) to the
reproductive ess of anisms that have them. Fitness maximisation
per se is not a goal of anisms, however. Organisms cannot
seek directly to maximise their fitness, since what counts as fitness-
promoting behaviour in one situation or for one individual is not likely to be
so in another situation or for another individual (Cosmides & Tooby, 19