PSYC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Daniel Dennett, Tabula Rasa
17 May 2018
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PSYC 1010 Lecture 8 Notes
Introduction
Evolutionary Psychology and Behavior Genetics
• Are our human traits present at birth, or do they develop through experience?
• This has ee psholog’s iggest ad ost persistet issue.
• But the debate over the nature– nurture issue is ancient.
• The Greek philosopher Plato (428–348 b.c.e.) assumed that we inherit character and
intelligence and that certain ideas are inborn.
• Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.) countered that there is nothing in the mind that does not first
come in from the external world through the senses.
• In the 1600s, European philosophers rekindled the debate.
• John Locke argued that the mind is a blank slate on which experience writes.
• René Descartes disagreed, believing that some ideas are innate.
• Desartes’ ies gaied support fro a urious aturalist to eturies later.
• In 1831, an indifferent student but ardent collector of beetles, mollusks, and shells set
sail on a historic round-the-world journey.
• The 22-year-old voyager, Charles Darwin, pondered the incredible species variation he
encountered, including tortoises on one island that differed from those on nearby
islands.
• Dari’s 15 O the Origi of “peies eplaied this diersit proposig the
evolutionary process of natural selection
• From among chance variations, nature selects traits that best enable an organism to
survive and reproduce in a particular environment.
• Dari’s priiple of atural seletio—what philosopher Daniel Dennett (1996) has
alled the sigle est idea aoe has eer had—is still with us 150+ years later as
iolog’s orgaizig priiple.
• Evolution also has become an important principle for twenty-first century psychology.
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