Massive Modularity and Brain Evolution

Get Over: Massive Modularity

Simple heuristics meet massive modularity

This chapter investigates the extent to which claims of massive modular organization of the mind (espoused by some members of the evolutionary psychology research program) are consistent with the main elements of the simple heuristics research program. A number of potential sources of conflict between the two programs are investigated and defused. However, the simple heuristics program turns ou...

Evolutionary Psychology and the Massive Modularity Hypothesis

In recent years evolutionary psychologists have developed and defended the Massive Modularity Hypothesis, which maintains that our cognitive architecture—including the part that subserves 'central processing'—is largely or perhaps even entirely composed of innate, domain-specific computational mechanisms or 'modules'. In this paper I argue for two claims. First, I show that the two main argumen...

Evolution of Characters and Modularity

In a review of biological usage of the word "character", Colless [4] classi es three di erent types of usage. The rst kind, which he calls an attribute, denotes "a distinctive attribute, quality, or property of structure, form, material, or function". The second kind, which he calls feature, denotes "a part, often of a more or less physical nature, but generally . . .more abstract". The nal kin...

Social life, evolution of intelligence, behaviour and human brain size

Social life is one of the most critical factors of the evolution of the behavior of non-human primates and humans. Several factors, such as an increase in brain size, adaptive modules, and grooming, are related to the complexities of social groups. Although some scientists have mentioned foraging as a rival hypothesis for the evolution of behavior, in this research, we tried to investigate the ...