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No evidence of a specific adaptation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2006

Ilkka Pyysiäinen
Ilkka Pyysiäinen*
Affiliation:
Academy of Finland/Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, FIN-00014Helsinki, Finlandwww.mv.helsinki.fi/home/ipyysiai/
*
[email protected]
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Abstract:

Bering's findings about the mental representation of dead agents are important, although his opposition between “endemic” and “cultural” concepts is misleading. Endemic and cultural are overlapping, not exclusive categories. It is also diffcult to see why reasoning about the dead would require a specific cognitive mechanism. Bering presents no clear evidence for the claim that the postulated mechanism is an adaptation.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 29 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 483 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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