Larry > Recent Status Updates

Although Ed Hagen has a nice thread (2022) on why recent evolution is no threat to EP https://x.com/ed_hagen/status/1537566... (because recent evolution builds on necessarily prior complex and therefore universal adaptations—> Griffith’s point here re-applies, I think)

Against the monomorphic mind: within-population genetic differences, possible recent genetic evolution (Cochran et al’s 10,000 years explosion).

The consequence is that phenotypic variation must arise from the flipping on or off of “disjunctive” developmental programs, which requires evolution to have anticipated the relevant environmental variation. But no: Malaysian barn owls hunt individually in the UK and together in Malaysia, and “there is no reason to suppose that this is the expression of a disjunctive program selected in ancestral birds…”

Problems with EP: the monomorphic mind rests on the assumption that the transmission of complex traits like psychological modules requires a unique genetic architecture—because many genes are involved—, but this would make the transmission of ANY complex trait miraculous.

We are not just born into an environment: we are given one (education).

“… evolution achieves stable outcomes by exploiting reliable interactions between the developing organism and its environment to create reliable developmental outcomes. The fact that a trait has an evolutionary history has no implications about the nature of the process by which it develops, except that the outcome is sufficiently reliable to allow selection.” Dvt process <=> representational architecture?

Popper takes a beating. Great fun

It’s all very interesting but it’s 500 pages of facts and no theory so I’m getting a little impatient with this book

"Attention, agency, and mentality are personal level phenomena, in contrast with the sub-personal level." Should I keep reading?