Evolutionary Psychology and Emotions: A Species-Typical Computational Design
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/ths.2019.002Keywords
evolutionary psychology, mind, emotions, natural selection, superordinate program, cognitionAbstract
Abstract. Evolutionary psychology is a major naturalistic approach to knowledge. It begins from a fundamental observation: the human brain is the product of natural selection trying to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this paper, I describe this approach and focus on the emotions, an important aspect of mental life. Emotions, I argue, are a superordinate program that evolved to coordinate the activity of other programs in the solution of typical adaptive problems.
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