Additional Source texts

 

Additional Source Texts

 

• Anything But Human By RICHARD POLT. New York Times, August 5, 2012. Written by a philosopher, this is an interesting critique of the foundational assumptions and approach taken by people like Pinker.
• NPR story about study of humor from evolutionary perspective that claims humor evolved to signal group membership
  and help humans make mating preferences, etc. Could be seen as reduction ad absurdum of the Pinker line of reasoning.The article mentioned in the NPR piece is "It's funny because we think it's true: laughter is augmented by implicit preferences"  Robert Lynch. Evolution & Human Behavior. Volume 31, Issue 2 , Pages 141-148, March 2010. ABSTRACT: "This study tests the folk psychological belief that we find things funny because we think they are true. Specifically, it addresses the relationship between implicit preferences and laughter... Results show that participants laughed more in response to jokes that matched their implicit preferences (e.g., those with stronger implicit preferences for whites laughed more at racially charged material). Implications for the evolution of humor, and laughter as a hard-to-fake signal of preferences, are discussed.