Volume 23, Issue 1, 2013
Culture, Communication and Cognition
Jan Sleutels
Pages 65-75
The Flinstones Fallacy
A leading idea in evolutionary psychology and philosophy of mind is that the basic architecture and dynamics of the mind are very old, presumably dating back to the Stone Age. Theories based on this idea are liable to paint a caricature of our ancestors by projecting our modern self-conception onto earlier minds. I argue that this ‘Flintstones Fallacy’ is an underrated risk, relieved neither by standard biological arguments nor by arguments from psychology and philosophy. Indeed, each of these fields has better arguments for the contrary view that the mind as we know it from present-day experience is not ancient at all.