The Evolution of Cognition

In the last decade, "evolutionary psychology" has come to refer
exclusively to research on human mentality and behavior, motivated by a nativist
interpretation of how evolution operates. This book encompasses the behavior and
mentality of nonhuman as well as human animals and a full range of evolutionary
approaches. Rather than a collection by and for the like-minded, it is a debate
about how evolutionary processes have shaped cognition.

The debate
is divided into five sections: Orientations, on the phylogenetic, ecological, and
psychological/comparative approaches to the evolution of cognition; Categorization,
on how various animals parse their environments, how they represent objects and
events and the relations among them; Causality, on whether and in what ways nonhuman
animals represent cause and effect relationships; Consciousness, on whether it makes
sense to talk about the evolution of consciousness and whether the phenomenon can be
investigated empirically in nonhuman animals; and Culture, on the cognitive
requirements for nongenetic transmission of information and the evolutionary
consequences of such cultural
exchange.

ContributorsBernard Balleine, Patrick
Bateson, Michael J. Beran, M. E. Bitterman, Robert Boyd, Nicola Clayton, Juan
Delius, Anthony Dickinson, Robin Dunbar, D.P. Griffiths, Bernd Heinrich, Cecilia
Heyes, William A. Hillix, Ludwig Huber, Nicholas Humphrey, Masako Jitsumori, Louis
Lefebvre, Nicholas Mackintosh, Euan M. Macphail, Peter Richerson, Duane M. Rumbaugh,
Sara Shettleworth, Martina Siemann, Kim Sterelny, Michael Tomasello, Laura Weiser,
Alexandra Wells, Carolyn Wilczynski, David Sloan Wilson