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Harnad, S. (2003b) Categorical Perception . Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science . Nature Publishing Group. Macmillan. http://www.youtube.com...
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(10a. Comment Overflow) (50+)
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Psychology PSYC 538, Winter 2018: Categorization, Communication and Consciousness Time : Tuesdays 2:35-5:25 Place : STBIO S3/3 ...
Psychological adaptations are defined by Confer et al. as, “information processing circuits that take in delimited units of information and transform this information into functional outputs, designed to solve a particular adaptive problem.” This definition appears to fit nicely with the necessity of selective forgetting and ignoring in recognizing and naming categories, which is described in Cognition is Categorization. This necessity is highlighted in relation to Funes’s infinite rote memory, which handicapped his ability for selective forgetting or ignoring. The apparent link with the definition of psychological adaptations provided by Confer et al., arises from the fact that this ability to selectively forget and essentially pick out categories based on abstraction has solved a particular adaptive problem. This problem is that every instance in the real world is infinitely unique, as was evidenced by Funes and requires the ability to grasp abstractions. Importantly, Harnad notes that this capacity underlies a number of our abilities such as speech and arithmetic. Though categorization itself involves learning mechanisms, the underlying capacity to grasp abstractions may be a more general adaptive feature.
ReplyDeleteI like the fact that evolutionary psychology is answering the question “why” and not only “how” when referring to the human behavior and cognition. It shows how complex and brilliant is the human mind. It adapts for its survival and for reaching its true potential. It allows not only to better understand the human but also to better help him by taking in consideration the roots and reasons of his behavior. There is no other branch of psychology that offer an explication of why culture and education influence not only an individual, but the whole population.
ReplyDeleteThe limitations of evolutionary psychology are also very interesting. For example, are homosexual and suicidal persons not evolved the way they should have in order to respect the human evolution and its survival or is it only this branch of psychology that did not find an answer for these cases yet? Or maybe that evolutionary psychology is setting the grounds for what should be normal according to evolution, so all cases that didn’t follow the “correct” path to evolution are the limitations of this branch.
I certainly do not agree with any statement that suggests evolutionary psychology has the power to predict all or even most behaviors and cognition, essentially because evolutionary studies are based on parsimony, which only suggests that the answer with the fewest gain and loss gene events is likely to be the right one, often that may be the case but in times that it is not, it becomes almost beyond the capacity of evolutionary studies to make a convincing argument for anything (because with new data, theories are thrown out all the time). However, I still appreciate the view that evolutionary psychology has of how variants are transmitted and produce one of three products: adaptation, by-products and noise. There is especially weight to being able to explain behavior and cognition as a by-product or noise because those are much more implicit and require strong foundation arguments and evidence, before making a claim. Also, due to evolutionary psychologies ability to be falsified it remains a legitimate science, the example of the kin altruism theory was good because as an idea it is plausible but after testing it was refuted and has allowed us now to actually look to other science divisions to explain homosexuality (for example genetics) and in this way it makes me appreciate evolutionary psychology more (because even when it doesn't explain a theory, it tells us what it is not).
ReplyDelete"it does not make sense to ask whether calluses or mating decisions are "evolved" or "learned" or due to "nature" or "nurture." All evolved mechanisms require some environmental input for their activation"
ReplyDeleteThis section, and a lot of the article, reminding me of some of the questions being asked in the previous skywritings about whether innate CP can be modified. One person used genetic adaptation as an example of CP adapting over time. I believe this section of the article is getting at what they meant, the fact that somewhere down the line the environmental factors started to shift the favoring of certain kinds of CP resulting in evolutionary adaptations. Then Stevan said that innate CPs are not modifiable…so I'm thinking that he means the specific innate CP of a specific individual is not. So, for example, the innate ability of a frog to more quickly recognize flies (or to have flies "pop out" to them, thus allow them to become conditioned to them more readily) could change over time. Say all flies suddenly died, it then wouldn't be adaptive for frogs to be more readily able to recognize flies. The specifics of the mechanisms changed.
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ReplyDeleteI find this statement from the article kind of ironic, in light of the class discussions and previous material: "invoking "learning" in this sense, without further specification, provides no additional explanatory value for the observed phenomenon". It would seem the authors are calling out "learning" in this context as a weasel word, one which does not explain "the observed phenomenon". This idea of explaining the observed phenomenon sounds a lot like the easy question to me: how and why we do all that we can do? The irony being that the authors then argue "learning requires evolved psychological adaptations, housed in the brain, that enable learning to occur". Given our discussions around the easy problem, it seems like even evolved psychological adaptations are somewhat weasel word-esque in the grand scheme of understanding how and why we do all that we do (including in explaining learned behaviours) - reminds me of Russian nesting dolls (learning -> psychological adaptations -> what mechanisms explain those?).
ReplyDeleteI find the mismatches between modern and ancestral environments very interesting. This mismatch is a good indicator that adaptation in the organisms occurs under two conditions: stable changes in the environment input, and a relatively long period of time enabling the changes to be reflected physically on the organisms. When massive changes are occurring rapidly in the human habitat, the growing complexity of environmental stimuli affects our existing adapted psychological mechanisms and how these mechanisms would respond to different external cues. The psychological mechanisms are activated by both ancestral and modern cues, but the functionality varies since many mechanisms could be serving more functions than they were originally evolved for. As we live in an era of enormous changes and technical progress, I am interested to see how accelerating change in environment would impact the theory of natural selection.
ReplyDelete“Effective contraception is a very recent invention on the timescale of human history. Consequently, there has not been enough time for natural selection to forge or modify complex psychological adaptations to effectively utilize the evolutionarily novel inputs associated with birth control.”
In the case of contraception, since it is not always obvious to link birth control with sexual infidelity, I am wondering if the knowledge of contraception is a strong and visible cue to induce jealousy adaptation? Could it also be the case that our motivation of maximizing reproductive success has also decreased over time?
“Because paternity uncertainty has been a recurrent adaptive problem for men, evolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men’s jealousy would be especially triggered by cues to sexual infidelity, whereas women’s jealousy would center on emotional infidelity”
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary psychology attempts to explain the adaptive behavioural strategies humans have. I really liked the comparison between women and men’s jealousy and trying to see if jealousy is an adaptive behavior for reproduction competition. If a man finds his wife in bed with another man and feels threatened and jealous is it really because of the competition for sexual reproduction. Furthermore the article talks more about adaptive behavior as forms of psychological evolution but the fails to talk about the cognitive evolution of cognition and the mind. The question between psychological evolution and socialization as explanations for cognition evolution still remains. This can also tie in with the evolution of language and has language evolved because of natural selection and adaptation or has it evolved because of socialization of human beings?