Functional analysis, as proposed by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, is a six-step procedure for identifying adaptations: (1) use evolutionary considerations to model past adaptive problems, (2) generate hypotheses about how these problems manifested under ancestral selection pressures, (3) formulate a 'computational theory' specifying the information processing problems to be solved, (4) use the computational theory as a heuristic to generate testable hypotheses about the structure of cognitive programs, (5) rule out alternative explanations that do not involve natural selection, and (6) test the adaptationist hypotheses by checking if modern humans possess the postulated cognitive mechanisms.

Authors

• Person: Not available Organization: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  Evolutionary Psychology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Sources

• Evolutionary Psychology | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy iep.utm.edu Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy via serper

Referenced by nodes (5)

• natural selection concept
• Leda Cosmides entity
• adaptation concept
• John Tooby entity
• functional analysis concept