Thought in a Hostile World The Evolution of Human Cognition

includes index and biblioraphy

1 Evolutionary Naturalism 3 1.1 Two Projects of Evolutionary Naturalism 3 1.2 The Simple Coordination Thesis 5 2 Detection Systems 11 2.1 The Environmental Complexity Hypothesis 11 2.2 Detection Systems 14 2.3 The Power of Detection Systems 17 2.4 Transparent and Translucent Worlds 20 2.5 Robust Tracking Systems 27 3 Fuels for Success 30 3.1 Decoupled Representation 30 3.2 Response Breadth 33 3.3 Fuels for Success: Space 40 3.4 Fuels for Success: Intervention in the Material World 45 3.5 Reprise 50 4 Fuels for Success: The Social Intelligence Hypothesis 51 4.1 The Cognitive Demands of Social Life 51 4.2 The Social Intelligence Hypothesis 55 4.3 The Cognitive World of the Great Apes: Imitation 58 4.4 The Cognitive World of Great Apes: Tracking Other Minds 5 The Descent of Preference 5.1 Internal Environments 5.2 The Forager`s Dilemma 5.3 Preference Eliminativism? 5.4 Preference-like States PART II NOT JUST ANOTHER SPECIES OF LARGE MAMMAL 6 Reconstructing Hominid Evolution 99 6.1 Testing Theories of Human Evolution 99 6.2 From Cognitive Device to Evolutionary History 101 6.3 Making Progress 105 6.4 An Example: Tomasello`s Conjecture 116 6.5 Conclusions 121 7 The Cooperation Explosion 123 7.1 The Cooperative Primate 123 7.2 Group Selection and Human Cooperation 125 7.3 The Ecological Trigger of Hominid Cooperation 128 7.4 Coalition and Enforcement 131 7.5 Commitment to Enforcement 138 7.6 Upshot 142 8 The Self-made Species 146 8.1 Ecological Engineers 146 8.2 Cumulative Niche Construction: The Cognitive Condition 149 8.3 Cumulative Niche Construction: The Social Condition 152 8.4 Hominid Epistemic Engineering 154 8.5 Downstream Epistemic Engineering 157 9 Heterogeneous Environments and Variable Response 162 9.1 Phenotypic Plasticity 162 9.2 Is Plasticity an Adaptation? 166 9.3 Reprise 171 PART III THE FATE OF THE FOLK 10 The Massive Modularity Hypothesis 10.1 Massive Modularity 10.2 Language: Paradigm or Outlier? 10.3 Communicative Intentions 10.4 Fodor`s Modules and their Limits 10.5 Inward Bound 10.6 Evolution and Encapsulation 10.7 The Poverty of the Stimulus 10.8 The Case of Folk Biology 10.9 Modularity and the Frame Problem 11 Interpreting Other Agents 11.1 A Theory of Mind Module? 11.2 Deconstructing the Folk Psychology Module 11.3 Interpretation, Perception, and Scaffolded Learning 11.4 Truth, Evidence, and Success 11.5 Coordination and Meaning 11.6 Something New under the Sun?