The Impact of the Social Environment on the Evolution of Mind

摘要: Reasoning about agents constitutes more of a challenge than reasoning objects. Agents move their own volition and are motivated by internal states that essentially private hidden from view. Social animals must also adhere to social norms rarely explicitly represented. Competing or cooperating successfully in such dynamic environment requires appreciating the define acceptable behavior intentional motivate others. For these reasons, constituted crucible forged our cognitive capacities during evolution, color constrain thoughts behaviors birth through adulthood. These include biological preparedness detect, acquire, reason effectively implicit rules specify what we permitted, obligated, forbidden do, capacity for constructing hierarchically embedded mental representations minds prefigured nonhuman primates way make certain aspects human cognition continuous with those other species.