The Shape of Thought: How Mental Adaptations Evolve

417 Pages·2015·2.35 MB·English

by  H. Clark Barrett

The Shape of Thought
Evolution and Cognition
General Editor: Stephen Stich, Rutgers University
Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart
Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, and ABC Research Group
Adaptive Thinking
Rationality in the Real World
Gerd Gigerenzer
Natural Selection and Social Theory
Selected Papers of Robert Trivers
Robert Trivers
In Gods We Trust
The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion
Scott Atran
The Origin and Evolution of Cultures
Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson
The Innate Mind
Volume 2: Culture and Cognition
Edited by Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen Stich
Why Humans Cooperate
A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation
Joseph Henrich and Natalie Henrich
The Innate Mind
Volume 3: Foundations and the Future
Edited by Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, and Stephen Stich
Rationality for Mortals
How People Cope with Uncertainty
Gerd Gigerenzer
Simple Heuristics in a Social World
Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group
The Shape of Thought
How Mental Adaptations Evolve
H. Clark Barrett
The Shape of Thought
How Mental Adaptations Evolve
H. Clark Barrett
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barrett, H. Clark.
The shape of thought : how mental adaptations evolve / H. Clark Barrett.
pages cm.—(Evolution and cognition series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–934831–2 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–19–934830–5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Thought and thinking. I. Title.
BF441.B2963 2014
153.4ʹ2—dc23
2014007239
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Problem 1
Part I: Evolution
1. Additivism 17
2. Hill-Climbing 50
Part II: Information
3. Adding Value 85
4. Social Ontology 104
5. Minds 128
Part III: Development
6. Development 155
7. Open Ends 182
Part IV: Culture
8. Moving Targets 209
9. Culture 224
10. Accumulation 243
Part V: Architecture
11. Parts 261
12. Wholes 289
13. Us 320
Conclusion: Possibilities 333
References 339
Index 379
v

Acknowledgments
Thanks to all those whose ideas, conversations, comments, and support made this a
better book, sometimes in ways unbeknownst to them. There are far too many to name,
but I’d especially like to thank Renée Baillargeon, Nikki Bazar, Rob Boyd, Pascal Boyer,
Gary Brase and his evolution and cognition seminar, Greg Bryant, Peter Carruthers,
Leda Cosmides, Gergo Csibra, Mirella Dapretto, Tom Dickins, Dan Fessler, Alan Fiske,
Tom Flamson, Willem Frankenhuis, Gyuri Gergely, Tamsin German, Matt Gervais, Ray
Gibbs, Gerd Gigerenzer, Martie Haselton, Joe Henrich, Michelle Kline, Rob Kurzban,
Steve Laurence, Deb Lieberman, Philip Lord, Joe Manson, Sarah Mathew, Cristina
Moya, Siamak Naficy, Karthik Panchanathan, Susan Perry, Elizabeth Pillsworth,
Annemie Ploeger, Roberto Schonmann, Brooke Scelza, Joan Silk, Jeff Snyder, Steve
Stich, Dan Sperber, Don Symons, Lisa Thorne, Jason Throop, Peter Todd, John Tooby,
Andreas Wilke, participants in the fall 2013 evolutionary psychology seminar at Central
European University, and all my colleagues and students at UCLA. Thanks to James
Turrell for permission to use his work Afrum (White), 1966, on the cover (Photograph
by Florian Holzherr). And finally, I’d like to thank my family: Mom, Dad, Joyce, Chris,
and Katie.
vii

Introduction
The problem
There are few things more obvious than the fact that we are the products of evolution.
Like everything else alive on this planet, we are the result of descent with modifi-
cation over evolutionary time. This goes for our bodies, of course—our hands, our
livers, our hearts, our skin—but it’s also true of our minds. Of course they evolved;
what else could explain them? How else could we hope to understand them except
in the same way that we understand everything else on earth that is the product of
evolution?
This much, it seems, is something with which virtually every modern-day scien-
tist would agree. And yet, while scientists all agree that evolution shaped the mind,
those same scientists can’t seem to agree how it did. That is to say, while scientists
agree that the mind (and the brain, which I will use largely synonymously with mind
in this book) is a kind of machine made of neurons that takes in information, causes
us to think, and makes our bodies move around, they can’t agree on just how evolu-
tion has shaped what’s inside the machine that causes it do those things.
You might be surprised to hear this, but it is true. In the present-day sciences
of the mind—including psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, and other sci-
ences of human behavior—there are few things a scientist can do to generate more
controversy than to make a claim that this or that feature of human thought or
behavior is the product of evolution. Nowhere is this more clear than in the bar-
rage of criticism that continues to be directed at the field of evolutionary psychol-
ogy—my own field of study and the subject of this book—which attempts to ask
just how evolution has shaped what’s inside the mind. As research in evolutionary
psychology has increased in stature and visibility over the past two decades, so
has the controversy and criticism swirling around it. So great is the skepticism
regarding evolutionary psychology that one critic, philosopher David Buller, has
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