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The Human Nature of the Economic Mind

  • Thematic Issue Article: How Evolutionary is Evolutionary Economics?
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Abstract

This paper provides a historical overview of cognitive psychology and computational theories in cognitive science. Critiques of the computational model are discussed. The perspective of the evolution of mind and brain provides an alternative model such as that presented by Merlin Donald in terms of the “Hybrid Mind.” This “naturalist” model is also consistent with what we know of cognitive development in childhood. It provides a better understanding of cognition in situated context than the computational alternatives and is a better fit as a model of mind for the social sciences, including for economic decision making.

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Notes

  1. Some would put its death closer to 1960 in response to the devastating review of Skinner’s (1957) work by Chomsky (1959), but established fields of theory and experiment do not die so easily or quickly. Many departments of psychology were dominated by learning and only ceded dominance as they began to fragment into different sub-disciplines such as social, personality, developmental, as well as cognitive, all of which had been subsumed within the field of experimental psychology and dominated by learning before 1970.

  2. Extending the model from the Turing machine to artificial intelligence (AI) and then to the symbolic computations of the brain is implicit in the general model, but some recent commentators have denied that this is or ever was the goal (see Oaksford and Chater 2009 for extensive discussion).

  3. The quotation is taken from an early chapter in this work. Edelman’s long postscript lays out the assumptions of the computer model, their reliance on the objectivist view of science, and their inadequacy to explain human cognition in great detail. It is the best clear summary description of the computational model of mind and its fallacies that I know of.

  4. There are many excellent critiques of the EP approach (see especially Buller 2005; Richardson 2007) as well as defenses (see Confer et al. 2010).

  5. Blind infants must attain knowledge of facial configuration through the touch rather than the visual modality, while profoundly deaf infants are shut off from the patterns of oral language but readily tune to the patterns of sign language when these are used by parents or other caregivers. Neither disability restricts the development of normal intelligence.

  6. Whether other animals have episodic memories (in Tulving’s 1983 sense) is not the issue here. That some have memory, both general and specific “one-time” seems indisputable. Donald’s theory states that at Level 1 memory is not recallable voluntarily, only under appropriate environmental conditions.

  7. In this connection much speculation surrounds the discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys later observed in apes and humans, some scholars suggesting that these neurons constitute a mechanism for understanding others’ intentions. Mirror neurons are activated when an animal carries out an action and also when the animal observes such an action carried out by another actor. For example, when an observer monkey watches a man lift a cup to drink, the exact neurons in the monkey’s brain are activated as are active when he lifts his own cup. In a sense this is “backward imitation,” suggesting a mechanism for understanding or predicting the behavior of another. At this point, however, there is no evidence for the utility of such neurons in imitating the other; nor for learning a novel action from observation of the other. That is, they may be used primarily in interpreting the actions of the other.

  8. A dramatic example of this is the common gene for the construction of eyes, which in different species from fruit flies to humans directs “make eye here” even though what an eye is exactly is vastly different in the different species, and where the eye is placed may depend on when the gene is called on (for relatively accessible accounts see Carroll 2005; Blumberg 2009).

  9. Although a strong genetic attachment inheritance may come with that as well, specifically the genetic disposition of mother and child to form an emotional bond as proposed by Bowlby (1982).

  10. On the other hand, oral communication (think of all the cell-phone conversations going on around the world at present) seems to be increasing in its influence rather than withering away.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Richard Nelson for helpful suggestions on this manuscript.

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  1. City University of New York Graduate School and University Center, New York, NY, USA

    Katherine Nelson

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  1. Katherine Nelson
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Correspondence to Katherine Nelson.

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Dr. Nelson is Distinguished Professor of Psychology Emerita.

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Nelson, K. The Human Nature of the Economic Mind. Biol Theory 6, 377–387 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0037-3

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