It's the old idea that the process of evolution is some push in the direction of greater complexity--in particular greater intellectual complexity. In one twig of the tree of life, namely ours, having a big brain happened to have advantages. But that's just what worked for a particular species of primate 5 to 7 million years ago.
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The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.Steven Pinker
Parents provide their children with genes as well as an environment, so the fact that talkative parents have kids with good language skills could simply mean that and that the same genes that make parents talkative make children articulate.
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Evolutionary psychology is taking that mindset and applying it to more emotionally charged aspects of behavior, such as sexuality, violence, beauty, and family feelings.
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But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.
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Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?
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Personality and socialization aren't the same thing.
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Based on Topics: Evolution Quotes, Life Quotes, Nature QuotesBased on Keywords: primate
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