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What would imaginary ancestors do?

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:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Farrell, Margaretmargaret.farrell@uci.edu0000-0003-1281-889X
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: 25 May 2024 14:07
Last Modified: 25 May 2024 14:07
Item ID: 23477
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Biology
Specific Sciences > Psychology > Evolutionary Psychology
Specific Sciences > Biology > Evolutionary Theory
Date: 2023
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23477

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