Search Results

Why people kill their fellow human beings is a question whose answer has thus far eluded a comprehensive scientific explanation. This chapter describes homicide adaptation theory, a recent theoretical contender that offers an evolutionary psychological explanation of the most common forms of homicide. It begins by reviewing some key statistics about homicide. It discusses examples of the unique selection pressures created by human cognitive adaptations for social exchange that are hypothesized to have selected for homicide. It explores the coevolutionary arms race between adaptations for homicide and defenses against being killed. Homicide adaptation theory is compared to nonadaptationist explanations for conspecific killings in humans. Finally, the chapter explores how an evolutionary perspective sheds light on why the law does not treat all forms and contexts of homicide the same.

This chapter argues that humans make use of insights and adaptations that humans do not understand. Humans learn very often not by figuring out how things work but by imitating others who have locally useful “know-how.” The chapter then describes the conditions under which selection favors “a psychology that causes most people to adopt beliefs just because others hold those beliefs.” Indeed, it contends that “even the simplest hunter-gatherer societies depend on tools and knowledge far too complex for individuals to acquire on their own.” Ultimately, culture is the storehouse of gradually accumulated, local, and typically tacit knowledge. Thus, “cumulative cultural evolution” is the great and unique advantage of humans.

Analyses of the major accidents during recent decades have concluded that human errors on the part of operators, designers, or managers have played a major role. There are, however, several basic problems in the analysis of accidents and the identification of human error. This chapter addresses the nature of causal explanations and the ambiguity of the rules applied for the identification of the events to be included in the analysis and for the termination of the search for ‘causes’. In addition, the concept of human error is analysed and its intimate relation with human adaptation and learning is discussed. It is concluded that the identification of errors as a separate class of behaviour is becoming increasingly difficult in modern work environments. The influence of this change on the control of the safety of large-scale industrial systems is discussed.

This chapter looks at how philosopher Kim Sterelny endorses the main contours of Robert Boyd's argument that humans are outliers in their capacity to adapt to many environments. However, Sterelny asks whether Boyd goes too far in reducing the role of “our distinctive human intelligence” in explaining humans' ecological adaptability. Sterelny at least partly defends the “library” or “Big Brain” model that Boyd argues against. Tacit, practical know-how is a form of knowledge. In addition, Sterelny contends that Boyd relies too heavily on a simple and “conformist” or “trusting social learning heuristic.” As a final point, Sterelny wonders whether and how social learning has changed across “domains and across time.”

This chapter reviews and elaborates key practice implications drawn from the theoretical assumptions discussed in previous chapters. Further, it places them within a framework that acknowledges the fundamental necessity for both stability and change in encounters in the world. The dialectic of continuity and change (assimilation and accommodation) emerges as a central principle throughout this and subsequent discussions of how one maintains a sense of a unified self and still grows in complexity and diversity. This is a dynamic that practitioners attend to in developing therapeutic relationships (acceptance and challenge) and in supporting change in a way that both acknowledges the validity of clients' experiences of themselves and their circumstances and also creates opportunities for difference. The chapter outlines approaches that practitioners can take to help clients decenter from old perspectives—to change their relationship to them—but not entirely abandon them.

This chapter approaches climate change through the quotidian response of herders in India to an invasive species, Lantana camara, whose proliferation some believe is linked to changing precipitation patterns. Puri uses this as a window into understanding human decision-making in the face of change. The chapter illustrates the value of a focus on everyday activities as a methodology for investigating adaptation to climate change impacts.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of professor Robert Boyd's approach to the study of human evolution that focuses on the population dynamics of culturally transmitted information. Putting aside the more familiar question of human uniqueness, Boyd asks why humans so exceed other species when it comes to broad indices of ecological success, such as humans' ability to adapt to and thrive in such a wide variety of habitats across the globe. Humans adapt to a vast variety of changing environments not mainly by applying individual intelligence to solve problems, but rather via “cumulative cultural adaptation” and, over the longer term, Darwinian selection among cultures with different social norms and moral values. Not only are humans part of the natural world, argues Boyd, but human culture is part of the natural world. Culture makes humans “a different kind of animal,” and “culture is as much a part of human biology as our peculiar pelvis or the thick enamel that covers our molars.” The chapter then outlines the lectures and discussions that follow, which originated as the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University in April of 2016, organized under the auspices of the University Center for Human Values.

Unlike other living creatures, humans can adapt to uncertainty. They can form hypotheses about situations marked by uncertainty and can anticipate their actions by planning. They can expect the unexpected and take precautions against it. In numerous experiments, the manner in which humans deal with these demands has been investigated. In these experiments, computer simulated scenarios are used representing, for example, a small town, or ecological or economic systems or political systems such as a Third World country. Within these computer-simulated scenarios, the subjects had to look for information, plan actions, form hypotheses, etc.