Minds are obscure things. This is especially obvious and especially onerous to those interested in understanding the mind. One way to begin an investigation of mind, given its abstruseness, is to explore the implications of something we believe must be true of minds. This is the approach I take in this paper. Whatever uncertainties we have about the mind, it's a safe bet that the mind is an adaptation. So, I begin with this truth about minds: minds are the product of evolution by natural selection. In what follows, I trace some of the consequences of this fact. Doing so will take us some distance toward answering a variety of questions about the mind.

In exploring the consequences of the mind's origin I will speak of the mind generally. While I grant that this adds an element of vagueness to the project at hand, it does not in any way cast doubt on the conclusions I draw. This is so because the inferences I make about minds follow not from any assumptions about the nature of mind but are derived purely from the nature of adaptation.