Thought in a Hostile World

How did the mind evolve under real adaptive pressure — in a world of predators, parasites, deception, and environmental unpredictability — rather than in the sanitised environment many cognitive models assume? Sterelny argues that the standard evolutionary psychology approach (fixed modules for a fixed ancestral environment) badly underestimates the flexibility and ecological sensitivity of human cognition. He proposes instead that minds evolved as tracking devices for a world that is actively hostile to accurate representation. The book bridges philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind in a way that neither discipline manages alone. Dense but rewarding, it provides the theoretical underpinning for the more accessible argument Sterelny develops later in The Evolved Apprentice.