[extropy-chat] Fwd: SURVIVAL: An impulse behind transhumanism?

[Keith Henson]

At 10:06 AM 6/30/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>At 08:16 PM 6/29/2006, Keith wrote:
>> > 
>> http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/abraham-maslow-theory-human-motivation
>> >.shtml
>>
>>While it isn't all wrong, this work is not rooted in science and is just
>>full of BS.
>>
>>Maslow was a pioneer in the area, but he died long before the biology folks
>>started shoving a science base under psychology.
>
>Please elaborate.

http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html

"The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to discover and 
understand the design of the human mind. Evolutionary psychology is an 
approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary 
biology are put to use in research on the structure of the human mind. It 
is not an area of study, like vision, reasoning, or social behavior. It is 
a way of thinking about psychology that can be applied to any topic within it.

"In this view, the mind is a set of information-processing machines that 
were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our 
hunter-gatherer ancestors."

Evolutionary psychology may not be the ultimate way to understanding 
humans, but in my view is superior to any other approach I know 
about.  Even if it is somewhat depressing.

Keith Henson