Abstract
In this chapter we outline a research perspective which shares the basic goal of narrow evolutionary psychology1 that is, to develop a “psychology informed by the fact that the inherited architecture of the human mind is the product of the evolutionary process” (Cosmides, Tooby, & Barkow, 1992, p. 7), but approaches this goal using a theoretical and methodological framework very different from that of narrow evolutionary psychology. There are two main characteristics which distinguish our approach from narrow evolutionary psychology. First, narrow-school evolutionary psychologists tend to be cognitivists whereas the approach proposed here is connectionist. Cognitivism assumes that behavioral and mental processes can and should be studied at a functional or information-processing level without considering the physical structure of the brain. Cognitivists equate the mind with a computer’s software, which is analyzed and designed by computer scientists who ignore the physics of the machine. In contrast, connectionism is the idea that behavior and mental processes are best studied using theoretical models such as neural networks which are directly inspired by the physical structure of the nervous system.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In this book, the term ‘narrow evolutionary psychology’ signifies the approach to evolutionary psychology developed by Cosmides, Tooby, Buss, et al. This term was chosen not to imply that this approach has an inappropriately narrow point of view, but merely to suggest that the approach adopts a narrower range of assumptions than ‘broad evolutionary psychology’ (or, just ‘evolutionary psychology’). This latter term signifies evolutionary psychology generally, practiced with any of a very broad range of assumptions possible within the general framework of evolutionary approaches to psychology. For more detail on this terminology, see the editor’s introduction, p 1
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Parisi, D. (2003). Evolutionary Psychology and Artificial Life. In: Scher, S.J., Rauscher, F. (eds) Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0267-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0267-8_12
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