Abstract
Darwinian functionalism integrates psychology’s past with the present to create an interdisciplinary research paradigm that promotes hypothetico-deductive theory construction which is computational in nature and constrained by a völkerpsychologie knowledge base encompassing the evolutionary history of the organism. This paper summarizes ideas abstracted from evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and paleoanthropology in an attempt to describe such a paradigm.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AMSEL, A. (1989). Behaviorism, neobehaviorism, and cognitivism in learning theory: Historical and contemporary perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
ALEXANDER, R. (1989). The evolution of the human psyche. In P. Mellars & C. Stringer (Eds.), The human revolution (pp. 456–512). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ANDERSON, J. R. (1990). The adaptive character of thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
AUSUBEL, D. (1963). Educational psychology: A cognitive view. New York: Holt, Reinhart, & Winston.
BOHR, N. (1950). On the notions of causality and complementarity. Science, 111, 51–54.
BUSS, A. H. (1973). Psychology: Man in perspective. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
CHOMSKY, N. (1980). Rules and representations. New York: Columbia University Press.
COSMIDES, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition, 30, 187–276.
COSMIDES, L., & TOOBY, J. (1987). From evolution to behavior: Evolutionary psychology as the missing link. In J. Dupre (Ed.), The latest on the best: Essays on evolution and optimality (pp. 277–306). Cambridge: MIT Press.
COSMIDES, L., & TOOBY, J. (1989a). Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, Part I: Theoretical considerations. Ethology and Sociobiology, 10, 29–50.
COSMIDES, TOOBY, J. (1989b). Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, Part II: Theoretical considerations. Ethology and Sociobiology, 10, 29–50.
DAWKINS, R. (1990). The selfish gene: New edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
DELL, P. F. (1985). Understanding Bateson and Maturana: Toward a biological foundation for the social sciences. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 11(1), 1–20.
DENNETT, D. C. (1992). Consciousness explained. New York: Little Brown.
EIBL-EIBESFELDT, I. (1989). Human ethology. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
GAZZANIGA, M. S. (1985). The social brain: Discovering the networks of the mind. New York: Basic Books.
GIBSON, J. J. (1985). Conclusions from a century of research on sense perception. In S. Koch & D. E. Leary (Eds.), A century of psychology as science (pp. 783–802). New York: McGraw-Hill.
GREGORY, R. (1983). Visual perception and illusions. In G. A. Miller (Ed.), States of mind (pp. 42–65). New York: Pantheon Books.
GREEN, D. M., & SWETS, J. A. (1966). Signal detection theory and psychophysics. Los Altos, CA: Peninsula Publishing.
HERGENHAHN, B. R. (1986). An introduction to the history of psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
HILGARD, E. R. (1987). Psychology in America. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
HUMPHREY, N. K. (1976). The social function of intellect. In P. P. G. Bateson & R. A. Hinde (Eds.), Growing points in ethology (pp. 303–317). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
HUMPHREY, N. K. (1986). The inner eye. London: Faberand Faber.
JAMES, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
JUDSON, H. F. (1980). The search for solutions. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
KNIGHT, J. M. (1983, November). Evolutionary behaviorism: A meta-theory of variation and selection. Paper presented at the meeting of the Oklahoma Psychological Association, Tulsa, OK.
KNIGHT, J. M. (1990). On beyond structuralism. The Tower Review, 7(1), 17–19.
KNIGHT, J. M., FREDERICKSON, W. A., & MARTIN, S. A. (1987). Q-Methodology and the measurement of self-perception. Operant Subjectivity, 10, 114–124.
KUHN, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
LETTVIN, J. Y., MATURANA, H. R., MCCULLOCH, W. S., & PITTS, W. H. (1959). What the frog’s eye tells the frog’s brain. Proceedings of the IRE, 1940–1951.
MACKINTOSH, N. J. (1977). Stimulus control and attentional factors. In W. K. Honig & J. E. R. Staddon (Eds.), Handbook of operant behavior (pp. 481–513). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
MARGOLIS, H. (1987). Patterns, thinking, and cognition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
MARX, M. H., & CRONAN-HILLIX, W. A. (1987). Systems and theories in psychology (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.
MATURANA, H. R. (1975). The organization of the living. A theory of the living organization. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 7, 313–332.
MINSKY, M. (1986). The society of mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.
POPPER, K. (1974). The rationality of scientific revolutions. In R. Harre (Ed.), Problems of scientific revolution (pp. 73–93). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
RUMELHART, D. E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In D. G. Borrow & A. Collins (Eds.), Representation and understanding. New York: Academic Press.
SKINNER, B. F. (1956). A case study in scientific method. American Psychologist, 11(5), 221–233.
SKINNER, B. F. (1966). The phylogeny and ontogeny of behavior. In B. F. Skinner (Ed.), Contingencies of reinforcement: A theoretical analysis. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
SKINNER, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
SKINNER, B. F. (1976). The particulars of my life. New York: Alfred Knopf.
SKINNER, B. F. (1981). Selection by consequences. Science, 213, 501–504.
SKINNER, B. F. (1983). A matter of consequences. New York: Alfred Knopf.
STEPHENSON, W. (1953). The study of behavior: Q technique and its methodology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
STEPHENSON, W. (1980). Newton’s fifth rule and Q-Methodology. American Psychologist, 35(10), 882–889.
STEPHENSON, W. (1986). William James, Niels Bohr, and complementarity. The Psychological Record, 36, 519–527.
STEPHENSON, W. (1987). Measurement of self perception: Some reflections on the article by Knight et al. Operant Subjectivity, 10, 125–135.
WOODWARD, W. R. (1982). The discovery of social behaviorism and social learning theory, 1870–1980. American Psychologist, 37(4), 396–410.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Knight, M. Darwinian Functionalism: A Cognitive Science Paradigm. Psychol Rec 44, 271–287 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395134
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395134