The Evolution of Cognition (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology) [Hardcover]

Cecilia Heyes (Editor), Ludwig Huber (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262082861 | ISBN-13: 978-0262082860 | Publication Date: August 11, 2000

In the last decade, "evolutionary psychology" has come to refer exclusively to research on human mentality and behavior, motivated by a nativist interpretation of how evolution operates. This book encompasses the behavior and mentality of nonhuman as well as human animals and a full range of evolutionary approaches. Rather than a collection by and for the like-minded, it is a debate about how evolutionary processes have shaped cognition.The debate is divided into five sections: Orientations, on the phylogenetic, ecological, and psychological/comparative approaches to the evolution of cognition; Categorization, on how various animals parse their environments, how they represent objects and events and the relations among them; Causality, on whether and in what ways nonhuman animals represent cause and effect relationships; Consciousness, on whether it makes sense to talk about the evolution of consciousness and whether the phenomenon can be investigated empirically in nonhuman animals; and Culture, on the cognitive requirements for nongenetic transmission of information and the evolutionary consequences of such cultural exchange.Contributors : Bernard Balleine, Patrick Bateson, Michael J. Beran, M. E. Bitterman, Robert Boyd, Nicola Clayton, Juan Delius, Anthony Dickinson, Robin Dunbar, D. P. Griffiths, Bernd Heinrich, Cecilia Heyes, William A. Hillix, Ludwig Huber, Nicholas Humphrey, Masako Jitsumori, Louis Lefebvre, Nicholas Mackintosh, Euan M. Macphail, Peter Richerson, Duane M. Rumbaugh, Sara Shettleworth, Martina Siemann, Kim Sterelny, Michael Tomasello, Laura Weiser, Alexandra Wells, Carolyn Wilczynski, David Sloan Wilson.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This important collection of essays represents most major currents ofpresent thought in animal cognition: from the modularity of the mind tocultural evolution, from the search for episodic memory in animals to theproperties of causal reasoning in humans, from honeybees to ravens. Acrucial reference in this dynamic and rapidly evolving field." Alex Kacelnik, Professor of Behavioural Ecology, Department of Zoology, Oxford University

About the Author

Cecilia Heyes is Reader in Psychology at University College London and Research Associate at the ESRC. Ludwig Huber is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theoretical Biology, Institute of Zoology, University of Vienna.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 396 pages
• Publisher: A Bradford Book (August 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262082861
• ISBN-13: 978-0262082860
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,033,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Real Evolutionary Psychology, November 20, 2005

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Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Evolution of Cognition (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology) (Hardcover)

The pioneers of evolutionary psychology have developed a small set of principles that they defend at all costs (modularity of mind, selfishness of humans, strongly distinct male and female behavior, the derivative character of culture, the irrelevance of game theory and mathematical model building, the nefariousness of behavioral genetics, and so on). I am, frankly, quite sick of the ideological intransigence of the supporters of this little coterie of researchers. It is time to reclaim evolutionary psychology in the large, which is simply the study of the evolution of mind and brain in animals (including humans), applying the usual standards of scientific practice. This edited collection does exactly that.

The volume is weak on organic evolution and neuroscience, a fact which perhaps flows from its focus on "cognition," but in the area of cognition, it is a valuable summary of current views, at least up to 1998 or so. The essays are of uniformly high quality with ample references, and there is considerable inter-chapter reference, so one gets the impression that one is assimilating a whole product, not just a random assortment of topics and authors. The topics include such low-level pheonomena as imprinting, abstraction, and discrimination, as well as much higher level topics, including consciousness and culture. It would be to the reader's advantage to have had a course or two in elementary psychology and perhaps one on animal behavior, because the level of discourse is pretty high (almost no equations, however).