Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Past behavior guides future responses through 2 processes. Well-practiced behaviors in constant contexts recur because the processing that initiates and controls their performance becomes automatic. Frequency of past behavior then reflects habit strength and has a direct effect on future performance. Alternately, when behaviors are not well learned or when they are performed in unstable or difficult contexts, conscious decision making is likely to be necessary to initiate and carry out the behavior. Under these conditions, past behavior (along with attitudes and subjective norms) may contribute to intentions, and behavior is guided by intentions. These relations between past behavior and future behavior are substantiated in a meta-analytic synthesis of prior research on behavior prediction and in a primary research investigation. In everyday explanations of behavior, habits denote one's customary ways of behaving. Claiming that one performed a behavior because of habit provides an understandable explanation for an act that otherwise might seem irrational or even harmful. Habits also are featured in the popular psychology literature in the form of self-help books designed to identify readers' existing habits, evaluate habits' effectiveness in meeting goals, and establish more desirable habits. Habits are not, however, important constructs in most contemporary social psychological models of human behavior. Early in their careers, most psychology graduate students learn that frequency of past behavior, a standard indicator of habit strength (Triandis, 1977, 1980), is the best predictor of

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Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior.

https://blogs.umass.edu/jkingstn/files/2013/12/liberman_mattingly_1985_cognition.pdf

The motor theory of speech perception revised

Knowledge-intensive firms are composed of multiple communities with specialized expertise, and are often characterized by lateral rather than hierarchical organizational forms. We argue that producing knowledge to create innovative products and processes in such firms requires the ability to make strong perspectives within a community, as well as the ability to take the perspective of another into account. We present models of language, communication and cognition that can assist in the design of electronic communication systems for perspective making and perspective taking. By appreciating how communication is both like a language game played in a local community and also like a transmission of messages through a conduit, and by appreciating how cognition includes a capacity to narrativize our experience as well as a capacity to process information, we identify some guidelines for designing electronic communication systems to support knowledge work. The communication systems we propose emphasize that narratives can help construct strong perspectives within a community of knowing, and that reflecting upon and representing that perspective can create boundary objects which allow for perspective taking between communities. We conclude by describing our vision of an idealized knowledge intensive firm with a strong culture of perspective making and perspective taking, and by identifying some elements of the electronic communication systems we would expect to see in such a firm.

Perspective Making and Perspective Taking in Communities of Knowing

In recent years, there has been much focus on the apparent heterogeneity of schizophrenic symptoms. By contrast, this article proposes a unifying account emphasizing basic abnormalities of consciousness that underlie and also antecede a disparate assortment of signs and symptoms. Schizophrenia, we argue, is fundamentally a self-disorder or ipseity disturbance (ipse is Latin for "self" or "itself") that is characterized by complementary distortions of the act of awareness: hyperreflexivity and diminished self-affection. Hyperreflexivity refers to forms of exaggerated self-consciousness in which aspects of oneself are experienced as akin to external objects. Diminished self-affection or self-presence refers to a weakened sense of existing as a vital and self-coinciding source of awareness and action. This article integrates recent psychiatric research and European phenomenological psychiatry with some current work in cognitive science and phenomenological philosophy. After introducing the phenomenological approach along with a theoretical account of normal consciousness and self-awareness, we turn to a variety of schizophrenic syndromes. We examine positive, then negative, and finally disorganization symptoms-attempting in each case to illuminate shared distortions of consciousness and the sense of self. We conclude by discussing the possible relevance of this approach for identifying early schizophrenic symptoms.

Schizophrenia, Consciousness, and the Self

13 EADERS of Mr. Bertrand Russell's philosophical £v works know that one of his pupils before the outbreak of the war, an Austrian, Mr. Ludwig Wittgenstein, caused him to change his views in some important particulars. Curiosity can now be satisfied. The “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus “which Mr. Ogden has included in his new library of philosophy is a remarkable and strikingly original work. It is published in German and English in parallel pages. It is difficult to appreciate the reason for this, seeing that the author is evidently familiar with our language and has himself carefully revised the proofs of the translation. Also we should have liked to have the Tractatus without Mr. Russell's Introduction, not, we hasten to add, on account of any fault or shortcoming in that introduction, which is highly appreciative and in part a defence of himself, in part explanatory of the author, but for the reason that good wine needs no bush and that Mr. Russell's bush has the unfortunate effect of dulling the palate instead of whetting the appetite. In his penultimate sentence Mr. Russell says; “To have constructed a theory of logic which is not at any point obviously wrong is to have achieved a work of extraordinary difficulty and importance.” We agree, but how uninspiring when compared with Mr. Wittgenstein's own statement of aim: “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. By Ludwig Wittgenstein. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. 189. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1922.) 10s. 6d. net.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

THERE has been a great deal of controversy, especially in the philosophical journals of America, concerning the theory of behaviourism. Prof. Watson is, we believe, the originator of the term and the recognised leader in its application as a method in psychology. The book before us is not an exposition of the theory; it takes it as accepted, and puts forward an. elementary, but nevertheless complete, schematic outline of the science of psychology, its scope and its method, regarded from this point of view. It therefore, better than any detailed exposition, sets before us the advantages and the disadvantages, the limitations and inclusions and exclusions, of psychology as the behaviourist conceives it. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. By Prof. John B. Watson. (Lippincott's College Texts.) Pp. xiii + 429. (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1919.) Price 10s. 6d. net.

Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist

THE translators of Prof. Ernst Cassirer's most important contributions to mathematico-Jogical theory have done well to issue his “Substanz-begriff und Fonktionsbegriff” and his “Zur Einstein-schen Relativitatstheorie” together in one volume, although a considerable time interval separates the two works. The first appeared in 1910, the second in 1921, and the interval covers the formulation by Einstein of the new theory of gravitation. By pre-senting the two together, the philosophical significance of the principle of relativity and the intimate connexion of its mathematico-physical form with the logico-epistemological form of the philosophical problem are clearly brought out. The translation has succeeded in reproducing the clear scientific expression of the German and reads like an original English work. For an American publication there are singularly few Americanisms in the text. It is very unfortunate, however, that the word “Begriff” is not retained in the English title. The book is not about substance and function but about the concept; substance and function are meant to be adjectival, not substantival terms. Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. By Ernst Cassirer. Authorised translation by Dr. William Curtis Swabey and Dr. Marie Collins Swabey. Pp. xii + 465. (Chicago and London: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1923.) 3.75 dollars.

Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity

THE present generation is witnessing a sustained and persistent effort to raise psychology to the status of a science. Hitherto it has been a part of philosophy, and it is felt by psychologists that success depends wholly on their being able to detach it. There is something curiously instructive in the fact that the task is avowedly difficult. It is curious because the data of psychology are more immediate than any other data of science, and for that reason alone we should expect them to be the most easily known and the most susceptible to treatment. But the instructive thing is that this very intimacy of our relationship with the data militates against scientific treatment. All the trouble in regard to the matter arises from the fact that the objects of a science of psychology are more difficult to abstract from the subject of experience, more difficult to reify or set up with an independent status of their own, than are the objects of any recognised science, mathematical, physical, or biological. The Psychology of Everyday Life. By Dr. James Drever. Pp. ix + 164. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1921.) 6s. net.

The Psychology of Everyday Life

PROF. BURTT has given us a study of the history of modern science from an unusual but very important point of view. He has sought to lay bare the principle underlying and directing scientific discovery rather than to chronicle the discoveries in their objective and practical aspect. He finds that the metaphysic of science when it is laid bare is neither self-evident nor consistent, but in fact highly paradoxical. In his concluding chapter he invites men of science and philosophers to study this metaphysic critically with a view to its fundamental reformation. It is the metaphysics of Newton: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: a Historical and Critical Essay. By Prof. Edwin Arthur Burtt. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. ix+349. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1925.) 14s. net.

H. Wildon Carr

Papers

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist

Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity

The Psychology of Everyday Life

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: a Historical and Critical Essay