PHL357H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Niche Construction, Group Selection, Hunter-Gatherer
Document Summary
Evolutional psychology (ep) says that you have content specific knowledge: eg: emotion come from behavior from before, eg: if someone does not payback your kindness you feel bad, an emotion is not learned, it"s innate. Ep says there are certain mental procedures that are content specific and are reflexes (involuntary reactions) Idea is that humans differ from other animals because of mental capacity. Pre-existing machinery has to be able accept new add-ons: lineages are too highly integrated will either stay at low level of functionality or die out. A creator can design something from scratch but evolution has no redesign just improvements: no bottom-up redesign. Two sources of modularity: procedures that can be added on without disrupting pre-existing functionality, special purpose procedures specifically adapted to tasks. No general procedures cause its too slow (have to be learned) and difficult to design. Functional modules: brain circuits that perform specific functions.
