The recalibrational theory: Anger as a bargaining emotion

This chapter uses the adaptationist program (Williams, 1966) - to predict and explain the major features of anger. According to this approach, anger evolved by natural selection to bargain for better treatment. Thus, the major triggers of anger (e.g. cost impositions, cues of disrespect) all indicate an increased willingness (on the part of the offender) to impose costs on the angry individual. Once triggered, the anger system bargains using the two primary incentives that humans have available to modify others’ behavior in favor of the focal individual: the imposition of costs and the denial of benefits. This simple functional sketch of anger is then supplemented with additional considerations needed to address the resultant selection pressures created by bargaining. This process offers functionally sound and theoretically justified explanations for: anger in aggressive and cooperative contexts, the role of apologies and their sincerity, the content of sex-specific insults, the computational structure of “intentionality” in the context of anger, and the origin of the implicit rules of combat.

A TEORIA DA MENTE ENTRE SEMÂNTICA E PRAGMÁTICA

In the past decade or so, a small but rapidly growing band of literary scholars, theorists, and critics has been working to integrate literary study with Darwinian social science. These scholars can be identified as the members of a distinct school in the sense that they share a certain broad set of basic ideas. They all take “the adapted mind” as an organizing principle, and their work is thus continuous with that of the “adaptationist program” in the social sciences. Adaptationist thinking is grounded in Darwinian conceptions of human nature (2004, p. 6).

The history, status and teaching of Darwinian medicine in Norway

<strong><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><p align="left"> </p></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT;">SUMMARY</span></span></strong><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><p align="left">This paper reviews how the application of the adaptationist program in medicine – Darwinian medicine –</p><p align="left">has been presented and received in Norway from the time George Williams presented his lecture in 1990,</p><p align="left">prior to the publishing of the seminal paper "The Dawn of Darwinian Medicine". These ideas found their</p><p align="left">way into textbooks in 1996, and are also evaluated for inclusion in the curricula at several Norwegian</p><p align="left">medical and nursing schools. This paper also presents how, in one of the textbooks, Darwinian medicine</p><p>is integrated into an ecological health theory within the framework of human-environment interaction.</p></span></span>

The Adaptationist-Byproduct Debate on the Evolution of Religion: Five Misunderstandings of the Adaptationist Program

The primary debate among scholars who study the evolution of religion concerns whether religion is an adaptation or a byproduct. The dominant position in the field is that religious beliefs and behaviors are byproducts of cognitive processes and behaviors that evolved for other purposes. A smaller group of scholars maintain that religion is an adaptation for extending human cooperation and coordination. Here I survey five critiques of the adapationist position and offer responses to these critiques. Much of the debate can be resolved by clearly defining important but ambiguous terms in the debate, such as religion, adaptation, adaptive, and trait, as well as clarifying several misunderstandings of evolutionary processes. I argue that adaptationist analyses must focus on the functional effects of the religious system, the coalescence of independent parts that constitute the fabric of religion.