Farrell, Margaret (2023) What would imaginary ancestors do? [Preprint]

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Abstract

In this paper, I identify a novel challenge to reasoning about human cognitive evolution. Theorists engaged in producing a causal history of uniquely human psychology often implicitly or explicitly take the perspective of imaginary hominins to reason about a plausible evolutionary sequence. I argue that such speculations only appear plausible because we have employed our evolved cognitive capacities to decide what the imaginary hominin would think or do. Further, I argue that we are likely to continue making this kind of mistake, and so we must continuously contend with it, even in our best approaches to human cognitive evolution.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Farrell, Margaret margaret.farrell@uci.edu 0000-0003-1281-889X
Keywords:	Human evolution, evolution, biology
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Psychology > Evolutionary Psychology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory
Depositing User:	Margaret Farrell
Date Deposited:	11 Oct 2023 14:22
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2023 14:22
Item ID:	22649
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Psychology > Evolutionary Psychology Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory
Date:	2023
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22649

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