it's just as much evidence for a mental by-product as a mental adaptation
If you're just claiming that some traits emerge as by-products of others, of course. Cats probably fear cucumbers coz useful re: snakes.
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it’s because some traits emerge as by-products of others that appeals to natural selection are vacuous
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That's simplistic. We just have to say that we can't always be sure something is adaptive & not a by-product of something else
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See. Conversation works much better when you say what you mean clearly in whole sentences.
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The evidence that our brains have adapted is the evidence that our brains have evolved and evolution works by natural selection.
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But whether a specific cognitive ability or psychological trait is an adaptation or by-product of something else is less certain.
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it's unknowable
End of conversation
New conversation -
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But this is the same hypothesis that human cognitive abilities and psychological traits evolved. It doesn't come from anything outside it.
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the claim that human cognitive traits and abilities evolved as adaptations (not by-products) is ad-hoc unless there's independent evidence
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By-products of what? You accept that the brain evolved & that this is by natural selection so you accept that some of it is adaptive.
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by-products of any co-extensive trait - it doesn't follow from the fact that i accept the brain evolved that i accept some of it is adaptive
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It does if you accept that evolution works by what makes us survive & procreate & that many of those things are cognitive & psychological.
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Our ability to recognise the opposite sex. Our instinct to nurture our children. Our instinct to run from danger
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our ability to recognize the opposite sex is evidence that the mind is adapted?
End of conversation
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