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Adaptationism for Human Cognition: Strong, Spurious or Weak?
Author(s) -
Atran Scott
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.0268-1064.2005.00277.x
Subject(s) - spurious relationship , cognition , task (project management) , cognitive psychology , social cognition , universal grammar , cognitive science , function (biology) , psychology , adaptation (eye) , grammar , selection (genetic algorithm) , homology (biology) , computer science , linguistics , artificial intelligence , philosophy , biology , biochemistry , management , neuroscience , machine learning , evolutionary biology , gene , economics
Strong adaptationists explore complex organic design as task‐specific adaptations to ancestral environments. This strategy seems best when there is evidence of homology. Weak adaptationists don’t assume that complex organic (including cognitive and linguistic) functioning necessarily or primarily represents task‐specific adaptation. This approach to cognition resembles physicists’ attempts to deductively explain the most facts with fewest hypotheses. For certain domain‐specific competencies (folkbiology) strong adaptationism is useful but not necessary to research. With group‐level belief systems (religion) strong adaptationism degenerates into spurious notions of social function and cultural selection. In other cases (language, especially universal grammar) weak adaptationism's ‘minimalist’ approach seems productive.