In vice epistemology, bad epistemic outcomes, such as maintaining false beliefs, are interpreted as indicators of blameworthy irrationality. Conversely, a growing trend in philosophical psychology advocates for environmentalist explanations, suggesting these outcomes emerge because rational cognitive processes of faultless individuals falter due to polluted environmental inputs. Building on concrete examples, I first offer a systematic analysis of the relative explanatory merits of that environmentalist project. I then use this analysis to advance the rationality debate, which has recently been identified as (...) stagnating due to an observational equivalence between environmentalist and vice accounts. Although the conceptual imprecision of vice epistemology has frequently been critiqued, the framework developed here reveals that environmentalism is (also) unable to meet various theoretical desiderata. I show why this is so and argue that, to make progress, environmentalism needs a more substantive conception of epistemic rationality. To this end, I propose that a closer engagement with questions of cognitive agency – how rational creatures can “make up” their minds about what to believe – could enable the necessary progress. (shrink)

The puzzle of belief arises as currently no definition captures the various ways in which people believe. As a solution to this puzzle and to make the study of belief empirically tractable, Van Leeuwen and Lombrozo suggest acknowledging the plurality of beliefs and organizing beliefs according to their shared functions and traits. However, their proposal does not make yet the distinction between proper and derived functions of belief‐generating cognitive systems. For that, we need a theoretical perspective anchored in evolutionary thinking. (...) Such a perspective allows us to recognize the adaptive problems belief‐generating cognitive systems solve and what sorts of beliefs they will tend to produce. By analyzing beliefs based on evolutionary considerations, we not only make the puzzle of belief empirically tractable, but also take an important step toward solving it. (shrink)

Sijilmassi et al. claim that historical myths are technologies of recruitment that mimic cues of fitness interdependence. Paradoxically, they also claim that people are vigilant and that these myths might not and do not have to convince others, which raises questions about how these myths become culturally successful. Thinking about historical myths as commitment devices helps overcome this paradox.