Readings and Thought Paper

The primary readings are chapters 3 and 4 from Deacon, with 1 and 2 recommended as background.

Thought paper.

Are the Chimp studies presented in Deacon relevant to Human language?

Pinker for example would argue that nothing has ever been shown in Chimps that even remotely resembles human language.

thought paper for 22/9

Evolutionary Psychology makes some strong claims about differences between males and females in the human species. These cannot easily be seen as politiclly neutral. What role (if any) should the political implications have on the evaluation of their claims. Illustrate point by reference to a specific claim and the evidence presented.

Thought Paper

How do Tooby & Cosmides use the Wason Selection Task to make evolutionary claims about our reasoning?

Readings for Next Week

Readings for Seminar Paper 9
15 September 2009

Buss, David M. (1998) Sexual Strategies Theory: Historical Origins and Current Status. The Journal of Sex research. 35(1) 19-31 Download

Buss, David M. (1995) Psychological Sex Differences: Origins through sexual selection. The American Psychologist 50 (3) 164-168 Download

Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. (2005) Neuro-cognitive adaptions for social exchange. in Buss D. The handbook of evolutionary psychology Download