Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds by Louise Barrett

Book Description

                                     When a chimpanzee stockpiles rocks as weapons or when a frog sends out mating calls, we might easily assume these animals know their own motivations--that they use the same psychological mechanisms that we do. But as Beyond the Brain indicates, this is a dangerous assumption because animals have different evolutionary trajectories, ecological niches, and physical attributes. How do these differences influence animal thinking and behavior? Removing our human-centered spectacles, Louise Barrett investigates the mind and brain and offers an alternative approach for understanding animal and human cognition. Drawing on examples from animal behavior, comparative psychology, robotics, artificial life, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, Barrett provides remarkable new insights into how animals and humans depend on their bodies and environment--not just their brains--to behave intelligently.

Barrett begins with an overview of human cognitive adaptations and how these color our views of other species, brains, and minds. Considering when it is worth having a big brain--or indeed having a brain at all--she investigates exactly what brains are good at. Showing that the brain's evolutionary function guides action in the world, she looks at how physical structure contributes to cognitive processes, and she demonstrates how these processes employ materials and resources in specific environments.

Arguing that thinking and behavior constitute a property of the whole organism, not just the brain, Beyond the Brain illustrates how the body, brain, and cognition are tied to the wider world.

Louise Barrett is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Lethbridge. She is the author of Baboons and the coauthor of Cousins, Walking with Cavemen, Human Evolutionary Psychology, andEvolutionary Psychology.

Review:

"[W]e can see Barrett's brave new book as a beacon to future generations of scientists who wish to investigate the particularly human niche in cognitive evolution."--Daniel J. Povinelli, Human Ethology Bulletin

"Barrett's book is a superb and unique bit of thinking, and so eminently readable and enticing that it will appeal to the mainstream. . . . It is so rare to find a richly scientific and philosophical book that the reader will find hard to put down, as if it were a bestselling novel, and I hope this book actually reaches a bestseller list, it is that good, and has that wide an audience, from layman to cognitive scientist. I recommend it to any university under or post-graduate course, as one of the most intriguing and compelling works I have ever read or reviewed. This is not due alone to the startling facts, or her humor, or any other single facet, but owes much to her integration of so many aspects of argument, philosophy, science, anthropology, ecological psychology and others, that it teaches the student, in passing, to think outside of the umwelt. A great contribution."--Roy Sugarman, Metapsychology

"[T]his book provides an excellent synthesis of psychology, philosophy, robotics and biology on the topic of animal and human cognition. The prose is accessible and easy to read, and Barrett effectively uses everyday examples to make theoretical and technical points clear. . . . [T]his book . . . gave me a lot of new insights. I highly recommend it to scientists and students interested in understanding animal and human minds."--Sabine Tebbich, Animal Behaviour

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1: Removing Ourselves from the Picture 1
Chapter 2: The Anthropomorphic Animal 20
Chapter 3: Small Brains, Smart Behavior 39
Chapter 4: The Implausible Nature of Portia 57
Chapter 5: When Do You Need a Big Brain? 71
Chapter 6: The Ecology of Psychology 94
Chapter 7: Metaphorical Mind Fields 112
Chapter 8: There Is No Such Thing as a Naked Brain 135
Chapter 9: World in Action 152
Chapter 10: Babies and Bodies 175
Chapter 11: Wider than the Sky 197
Epilogue 223
Notes 225
References 251
Index 269

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