Description: Mental Darwinism, one of the most important recent developments in psychology and related fields, is a new approach to the study of mental phenomena which applies selectionist ideas to problems of mind and behavior. This volume helps develop this approach and challenges the instructivist view that memories occur when information from the environment is transferred into the mind. The author shows how current experimental evidence confirms the insights of two turn-of-the-century philosophers, William James and Henri Bergson, who originally proposed applying Darwinian principles to mental processes. The view of the mind that emerges from this approach helps us understand why memory evolves as it does, why memories are not always accurate, or veridical, how memory is related to personal identity, and how a large number of neuropsychological disorders develop.

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