Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-05T08:56:53.993Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adapted Minds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Larry Shapiro
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Minds are obscure things. This is especially obvious and especially onerous to those interested in understanding the mind. One way to begin an investigation of mind, given its abstruseness, is to explore the implications of something we believe must be true of minds. This is the approach I take in this paper. Whatever uncertainties we have about the mind, it's a safe bet that the mind is an adaptation. So, I begin with this truth about minds: minds are the product of evolution by natural selection. In what follows, I trace some of the consequences of this fact. Doing so will take us some distance toward answering a variety of questions about the mind.

In exploring the consequences of the mind's origin I will speak of the mind generally. While I grant that this adds an element of vagueness to the project at hand, it does not in any way cast doubt on the conclusions I draw. This is so because the inferences I make about minds follow not from any assumptions about the nature of mind but are derived purely from the nature of adaptation.

Type
I. Adaptation and the Mental
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 27: Naturalism, Evolution & Intentionality , 2001 , pp. 85 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cohan, F. 1984. “Can Uniform Selection Retard Random Genetic Divergence Between Isolated Conspecific Populations?” Evolution 38, 495–504.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawkins, R. 1982. “Universal Darwinism.” In Evolution from Molecules to Men. Bendall, D. ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 403–25.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. 1996. Climbing Mount Improbable. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Enç, B. Forthcoming. “The Indeterminacy of Function Attributions.” In Functions: New Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology, Ariew, A.Cummins, R. and Perlman, M. eds. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Futuyma, D. 1998. Evolutionary Biology, 3rd ed. Sunderland: Sinauer Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Land, M. 1991. “Optics of the Eyes of the Animal Kingdom.” In Evolution of the Eye and Visual System, Cronly-Dillon, J. and Gregory, R. eds. New York: Macmillan, pp. 118–35.Google Scholar
Nilsson, D. and Pelger, S. 1994. “A Pessimistic Estimate of the Time Required for an Eye to Evolve,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. Vol. 256, pp. 53–58.Google ScholarPubMed
Salvini-Plawen, L. and Mayr, E. 1977. “On the Evolution of Photoreceptors and Eyes,” Evolutionary Biology 10, 207–63.Google Scholar
Shapiro, L. 2000. “Multiple Realizations,” Journal of Philosophy 97, 635–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. 1993. Philosophy of Biology. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar