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  1. Human Organisms from an Evolutionary Perspective: Its Significance for Medicine.Mahesh Ananth - 2016 - Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine.
    Defenders of evolutionary medicine claim that medical professionals and public health officials would do well to consider the role of evolutionary biology with respect to the teaching, research, and judgments pertaining to medical theory and practice. An integral part of their argument is that the human body should be understood as a bundle of evolutionary compromises. Such an appreciation, which includes a proper understanding of biological function and physiological homeostasis, would provide a crucial perspective regarding the understanding and securing of (...)
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  • An Evaluation of Universal Grammar and the Phonological Mind1.Daniel L. Everett - 2016 - Frontiers in Psychology 7.
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  • Three Approaches to Human Cognitive Development: Neo-nativism, Neuroconstructivism, and Dynamic Enskillment.Mirko Farina - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (2):617-641.
    In Section 1, I introduce three views that explain human cognitive development from different standpoints: Marcus’s neo-nativism, standard neuroconstructivism, and neo-neuroconstructivism. In Section 2, I assess Marcus’s attempt to reconcile nativism with developmental flexibility. In Section 3, I argue that in structurally reconfiguring nativism, Marcus ends up transforming it into an unrecognizable form, and I claim that his view could be accommodated within the more general framework provided by standard neuroconstructivism. In Section 4, I focus on recent empirical findings in (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Perceptual Integration, Modularity, and Cognitive Penetration.Daniel C. Burnston & Jonathan Cohen - 2015 - In John Zeimbekis & Athanassios Raftopoulos (eds.), The Cognitive Penetrability of Perception: New Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  • Emotion, utility maximization, and ecological rationality.Yakir Levin & Itzhak Aharon - 2014 - Mind and Society 13 (2):227-245.
    This paper examines the adequacy of an evolutionary-oriented notion of rationality—ecological rationality—that has recently been proposed in economics. Ecological rationality is concerned with what it is rational to do, and in this sense is a version of what philosophers call ‘practical rationality’. Indeed, the question of the adequacy of ecological rationality as it is understood in the paper, is the question of whether ecological rationality is a genuine notion of practical rationality. The paper first explicates and motivates the notion of (...)
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  • Is depressive rumination rational?Timothy Lane & Georg Northoff - 2016 - In Timothy Joseph Lane & Tzu-Wei Hung (eds.), Rationality: Constraints and Contexts. London, U.K.: Elsevier Academic Press. pp. 121-145.
    Most mental disorders affect only a small segment of the population. On the reasonable assumption that minds or brains are prone to occasional malfunction, these disorders do not seem to pose distinctive explanatory problems. Depression, however, because it is so prevalent and costly, poses a conundrum that some try to explain by characterizing it as an adaptation—a trait that exists because it performed fitness-enhancing functions in ancestral populations. Heretofore, proposed evolutionary explanations of depression did not focus on thought processes; instead, (...)
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  • The evolutionary psychology of human mating: A response to Buller's critique.John Klasios - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47:1-11.
    In this paper, I critique arguments made by philosopher David Buller against central evolutionary-psychological explanations of human mating. Specifically, I aim to rebut his criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology regarding (1) women's long-term mating preferences for high-status men; (2) the evolutionary rationale behind men's provisioning of women; (3) men's mating preferences for young women; (4) women's adaptation for extra-pair sex; (5) the sex-differentiated evolutionary theory of human jealousy; and (6) the notion of mate value. In sum, I aim to demonstrate that (...)
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  • The concept of health: beyond normativism and naturalism.Richard P. Hamilton - 2010 - Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 16 (2):323-329.
    Philosophical discussions of health and disease have traditionally been dominated by a debate between normativists, who hold that health is an inescapably value-laded concept and naturalists, such as Christopher Boorse, who believe that it is possible to derive a purely descriptive or theoretical definition of health based upon biological function. In this paper I defend a distinctive view which traces its origins in Aristotle's naturalistic ethics. An Arisotelian would agree with Boorse that health and disease are ubiquitous features of the (...)
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  • Sometimes an Orgasm is Just an Orgasm.Erika Lorraine Milam, Gillian R. Brown, Stefan Linquist, Steve Fuller & Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 2006 - Metascience 15 (3):399-435.
    I should like to offer my greatest thanks to Paul Griffiths for providing the opportunity for this exchange, and to commentators Gillian Brown, Steven Fuller, Stefan Linquist, and Erika Milam for their generous and thought-provoking comments. I shall do my best in this space to respond to some of their concerns.
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  • (1 other version)Moralizing biology: The appeal and limits of the new compassionate view of nature.Maurizio Meloni - 2013 - History of the Human Sciences 26 (3):82-106.
    In recent years, a proliferation of books about empathy, cooperation and pro-social behaviours (Brooks, 2011a) has significantly influenced the discourse of the life-sciences and reversed consolidated views of nature as a place only for competition and aggression. In this article I describe the recent contribution of three disciplines – moral psychology (Jonathan Haidt), primatology (Frans de Waal) and the neuroscience of morality – to the present transformation of biology and evolution into direct sources of moral phenomena, a process here named (...)
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  • In defense of nativism.Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (2):693-718.
    This paper takes a fresh look at the nativism–empiricism debate, presenting and defending a nativist perspective on the mind. Empiricism is often taken to be the default view both in philosophy and in cognitive science. This paper argues, on the contrary, that there should be no presumption in favor of empiricism (or nativism), but that the existing evidence suggests that nativism is the most promising framework for the scientific study of the mind. Our case on behalf of nativism has four (...)
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  • Function, selection, and construction in the brain.Justin Garson - 2012 - Synthese 189 (3):451-481.
    A common misunderstanding of the selected effects theory of function is that natural selection operating over an evolutionary time scale is the only functionbestowing process in the natural world. This construal of the selected effects theory conflicts with the existence and ubiquity of neurobiological functions that are evolutionary novel, such as structures underlying reading ability. This conflict has suggested to some that, while the selected effects theory may be relevant to some areas of evolutionary biology, its relevance to neuroscience is (...)
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  • Why the (gene) counting argument fails in the massive modularity debate: The need for understanding gene concepts and genotype-phenotype relationships.Kathryn S. Plaisance, Thomas A. C. Reydon & Mehmet Elgin - 2012 - Philosophical Psychology 25 (6):873-892.
    A number of debates in philosophy of biology and psychology, as well as in their respective sciences, hinge on particular views about the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes. One such view is that the genotype-phenotype relationship is relatively straightforward, in the sense that a genome contains the ?genes for? the various traits that an organism exhibits. This leads to the assumption that if a particular set of traits is posited to be present in an organism, there must be a corresponding (...)
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  • Evolutionary Models in Psychology.Michael Wheeler - unknown
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  • The Ethics of False Belief.Timothy Lane - 2010 - EurAmerica 40 (3):591-633.
    According to Allen Wood’s “procedural principle” we should believe only that which can be justified by evidence, and nothing more. He argues that holding beliefs which are not justified by evidence diminishes our self-respect and corrupts us, both individually and collectively. Wood’s normative and descriptive views as regards belief are of a piece with the received view which holds that beliefs aim at the truth. This view I refer to as the Truth-Tracking View (TTV). I first present a modest version (...)
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  • Time is of the essence: Explanatory pluralism and accommodating theories about long-term processes.Robert N. McCauley - 2009 - Philosophical Psychology 22 (5):611-635.
    Unified, all-purpose, philosophical models of reduction in science lack resources for capturing varieties of cross-scientific relations that have proven critical to understanding some scientific achievements. Not only do those models obscure the distinction between successional and cross-scientific relations, their preoccupations with the structures of both theories and things provide no means for accommodating the contributions to various sciences of theories and research about long-term diachronic processes involving large-scale, distributed systems. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the parade case. (...)
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  • Three conceptions of explaining how possibly—and one reductive account.Johannes Persson - 2011 - In Henk W. De Regt, Stephan Hartmann & Samir Okasha (eds.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009. Springer. pp. 275--286.
    Philosophers of science have often favoured reductive approaches to how-possibly explanation. This article identifies three alternative conceptions making how-possibly explanation an interesting phenomenon in its own right. The first variety approaches “how possibly X?” by showing that X is not epistemically impossible. This can sometimes be achieved by removing misunderstandings concerning the implications of one’s current belief system but involves characteristically a modification of this belief system so that acceptance of X does not result in contradiction. The second variety offers (...)
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  • From constitutional necessities to causal necessities.Jessica Wilson - 2010 - In Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. New York: Routledge.
    Humeans and non-Humeans reasonably agree that there may be necessary connections between entities that are identical or merely partly distinct—between, e.g., sets and their individual members, fusions and their individual parts, instances of determinates and determinables, members of certain natural kinds and certain of their intrinsic properties, and (especially among physicalists) certain physical and mental states. Humeans maintain, however, that as per “Hume’s Dictum”, there are no necessary connections between entities that are wholly distinct;1 and in particular, no necessary causal (...)
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  • The rise of empiricism: William James, Thomas hill green, and the struggle over psychology.Alexander Klein - 2007 - Dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington
    The concept of empiricism evokes both a historical tradition and a set of philosophical theses. The theses are usually understood to have been developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But these figures did not use the term “empiricism,” and they did not see themselves as united by a shared epistemology into one school of thought. My dissertation analyzes the debate that elevated the concept of empiricism (and of an empiricist tradition) to prominence in English-language philosophy. -/- In the 1870s and (...)
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  • Ethology, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.Paul Edmund Griffiths - 2008 - In Sahorta Sarkar & Anya Plutynski (eds.), Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. pp. 393-414.
    In the years leading up to the Second World War the ethologists Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, created the tradition of rigorous, Darwinian research on animal behavior that developed into modern behavioral ecology. At first glance, research on specifically human behavior seems to exhibit greater discontinuity that research on animal behavior in general. The 'human ethology' of the 1960s appears to have been replaced in the early 1970s by a new approach called ‘sociobiology’. Sociobiology in its turn appears to have (...)
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  • Is “evolutionary psychology” even possible? A review of adapting minds , by David Buller.Sally Ferguson - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (2):307-312.
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  • Massive Modularity and Brain Evolution.Edouard Machery - 2007 - Philosophy of Science 74 (5):825-838.
    Quartz (2002) argues that some recent findings about the evolution of the brain (Finlay & Darlington, 1995) are inconsistent with evolutionary psychologists’ massive modularity hypothesis. In substance, Quartz contends that since the volume of the neocortex evolved in a concerted manner, natural selection did not act on neocortical systems independently of each other, which is a necessary condition for the massive modularity of our cognition to be true. I argue however that Quartz’s argument fails to undermine the massive modularity hypothesis.
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  • Massive Modularity: An Ontological Hypothesis or an Adaptationist Discovery Heuristic?David Villena - 2023 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 36 (4):317-334.
    Cognitive modules are internal mental structures. Some theorists and empirical researchers hypothesise that the human mind is either partially or massively comprised of structures that are modular in nature. Is the massive modularity of mind hypothesis a cogent view about the ontological nature of human mind or is it, rather, an effective/ineffective adaptationist discovery heuristic for generating predictively successful hypotheses about both heretofore unknown psychological traits and unknown properties of already identified psychological traits? Considering the inadequacies of the case in (...)
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  • Reconceptualizar los trastornos de personalidad.Diego Becerra - 2022 - Culturas Cientificas 3 (2):36-65.
    El concepto de trastorno mental permite justificar intervenciones médicas, psicológicas y judiciales. Además, facilita a la/el consultante acceder a tratamientos mediante reembolsos o programas de salud pública, y por otro lado, podría conllevar estereotipos sociales. No obstante, el significado de dicho concepto no ha dejado de suscitar debate. En el presente artículo argumentaré que los trastornos de personalidad, tal como son definidos en el DSM-5, no cumplen con los criterios de patología de las propuestas principales (i.e. teoría bio-estadística de la (...)
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  • Evolutionary Psychology and Normal Science: In Search of a Unifying Research Program.Jonathan Egeland - forthcoming - Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science.
    Why are there so many controversies in evolutionary psychology? Using a couple of concepts from philosophy of science, this paper argues that evolutionary psychology has not reached the stage of mature, normal science, since it does not currently have a unifying research program that guides individual scientists working in the discipline. The argument goes against claims made by certain proponents and opponents of evolutionary psychology, and it is supported by discussion of several examples. The paper notes that just because evolutionary (...)
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  • Massive modularity : an ontological hypothesis or an adaptationist discovery heuristic?Joseph David de Jesús Villena Saldaña - 2021 - Dissertation, Lingnan University
    Cognitive modules are internal mental structures. Some theorists and empirical researchers hypothesize that the human mind is either partially or massively comprised of structures that are modular in nature. Modules are also invoked to explain cognitive capacities associated with the performance of specific functional tasks. Jerry Fodor (1983) considered that modules are useful only for explaining relatively low-level systems (input systems). These are the systems involved in capacities like perception and language. For Fodor, the central (high-level) systems of mind — (...)
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  • Analyzing the etiological functions of consciousness.Dylan Black - 2020 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (1):191-216.
    Scientists disagree about which capacities a functional analysis of consciousness should target. To address this disagreement, I propose that a good functional analysis should target the etiological functions of consciousness. The trouble is that most hypotheses about the etiological origins of consciousness presuppose particular functional analyses. In recent years, however, a small number of scientists have begun to offer evolutionary hypotheses that are relatively theory neutral. I argue that their hypotheses can serve an independent standard for evaluating among theories of (...)
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  • A Defence of Sexual Inclusion.John Danaher - 2020 - Social Theory and Practice 46 (3):467-496.
    This article argues that access to meaningful sexual experience should be included within the set of the goods that are subject to principles of distributive justice. It argues that some people are currently unjustly excluded from meaningful sexual experience and it is not implausible to suggest that they might thereby have certain claim rights to sexual inclusion. This does not entail that anyone has a right to sex with another person, but it does entail that duties may be imposed on (...)
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  • Review of Efficient cognition: the evolution of representational decision making. [REVIEW]Justin Garson - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (3):38.
    Why do some organisms rely on mental representations for making decisions? Why don’t we rely merely on direct mappings from perception to behavior? Armin W. Schulz’ book, Efficient Cognition: The Evolution of Representational Decision Making, offers a novel and empirically-informed perspective on a problem that has not received the amount of philosophical attention it deserves. In his view, representational decision making evolved because creatures that use it have enhanced cognitive and neurological efficiency. Here I provide an overview of the book’s (...)
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  • Philosophy of Behavioral Biology (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science).Kathryn S. Plaisance & Thomas A. C. Reydon (eds.) - 2012 - Springer.
    This volume provides a broad overview of issues in the philosophy of behavioral biology, covering four main themes: genetic, developmental, evolutionary, and neurobiological explanations of behavior. It is both interdisciplinary and empirically informed in its approach, addressing philosophical issues that arise from recent scientific findings in biological research on human and non-human animal behavior. Accordingly, it includes papers by professional philosophers and philosophers of science, as well as practicing scientists. Much of the work in this volume builds on presentations given (...)
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  • (1 other version)Evolutionary Psychology.Stephen M. Downes - 2016 - In Lee C. McIntyre & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 330-339.
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  • Challenging the Dichotomy of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Values: Feminist Values and Evolutionary Psychology.Silvia Ivani & Jan Sprenger - unknown
    Philosophy of science has seen a passionate debate over the influence of non-cognitive values on theory choice. In this paper, we argue against a dichotomous divide between cognitive and non-cognitive values and for the possibility of a dual role for feminist values. By analyzing the influence of feminist values on evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology, we show how they have cognitive and non-cognitive functions at the same time.
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  • Higher Order Thought and the Problem of Radical Confabulation.Timothy Lane & Caleb Liang - 2008 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (1):69-98.
    Currently, one of the most influential theories of consciousness is Rosenthal's version of higher-order-thought (HOT). We argue that the HOT theory allows for two distinct interpretations: a one-component and a two-component view. We further argue that the two-component view is more consistent with his effort to promote HOT as an explanatory theory suitable for application to the empirical sciences. Unfortunately, the two-component view seems incapable of handling a group of counterexamples that we refer to as cases of radical confabulation. We (...)
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  • Foundational Paradigms of Social Sciences.Shiping Tang - 2011 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 41 (2):211-249.
    When stripped to the bare bone, there are only 11 foundational paradigms in social sciences. These foundational paradigms are like flashlights that can be utilized to shed light on different aspects of human society, but each of them can only shed light on a limited area of human society. Different schools in social science result from different but often incomplete combinations of these foundational paradigms. To adequately understand human society and its history, we need to deploy all 11 foundational paradigms, (...)
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  • Are Moral Judgements Adaptations? Three Reasons Why It Is so Difficult to Tell.Thomas Pölzler - 2017 - South African Journal of Philosophy 36 (3):425-439.
    An increasing number of scholars argue that moral judgements are adaptations, i.e., that they have been shaped by natural selection. Is this hypothesis true? In this paper I shall not attempt to answer this important question. Rather, I pursue the more modest aim of pointing out three difficulties that anybody who sets out to determine the adaptedness of moral judgments should be aware of (though some so far have not been aware of). First, the hypothesis that moral judgements are adaptations (...)
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  • The Naturalizing Error.Douglas Allchin & Alexander J. Werth - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (1):3-18.
    We describe an error type that we call the naturalizing error: an appeal to nature as a self-justified description dictating or limiting our choices in moral, economic, political, and other social contexts. Normative cultural perspectives may be subtly and subconsciously inscribed into purportedly objective descriptions of nature, often with the apparent warrant and authority of science, yet not be fully warranted by a systematic or complete consideration of the evidence. Cognitive processes may contribute further to a failure to notice the (...)
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  • The rich detail of cultural symbol systems.Dwight W. Read - 2014 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (4):434-435.
    The goal of forming a science of intentional behavior requires a more richly detailed account of symbolic systems than is assumed by the authors. Cultural systems are not simply the equivalent in the ideational domain of culture of the purported Baldwin Effect in the genetic domain. © 2014 Cambridge University Press.
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  • Notice critique : Reconstructing Reason and Representation — Murray Clarke. [REVIEW]Michael Bishop - 2007 - Philosophiques 34 (2):367-374.
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  • Environmental Ethics.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Kostas Kampourakis (ed.), The Philosophy of Biology: a Companion for Educators. Dordrecht: Springer.
    A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...)
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  • Naturalising Austin.Renia Gasparatou - 2013 - Acta Analytica 28 (3):329-343.
    In this paper I will try to defend a quasi-naturalistic interpretation of J.L. Austin’s work. I will rely on P. Kitcher’s 1992 paper “The Naturalists Return” to compile four general criteria by which a philosopher can be called a naturalist. Then I will turn to Austin’s work and examine whether he meets these criteria. I will try to claim that versions of such naturalistic elements can be found in his work.
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  • A genealogy of early confucian moral psychology.Ryan Nichols - 2011 - Philosophy East and West 61 (4):609-629.
    The project is to traverse with quite novel questions, and as though with new eyes, the enormous, distant, and so well hidden land of morality—of morality that has actually existed, actually been lived.This essay offers a contribution to the consilience of the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences in accord with naturalism (in a spirit closer to Slingerland 2008 than Wilson 1998). Human beings have a shared nature produced by evolutionary history and modified by culture, where 'culture' refers to "information (...)
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  • Evoluutiopsykologia ja sen ongelmat.Panu Raatikainen - 2007 - Tiede and Edistys (1/2007):1-15.
    Viime vuosina ihmistieteiden kentässä on saanut osakseen paljon huomiota uusi lähestymistapa, jota kutsutaan ”evoluutiopsykologiaksi”. Sen piiristä on esimerkiksi väitetty, että evoluutio on muokannut meidän parinvalintamieltymyksiämme niin, että miehillä on taipumus tuntea vetoa lisääntymiskykyisiltä näyttäviin nuoriin naisiin, pyrkiä parittelemaan aina tilaisuuden tullen mahdollisimman monien naisten kanssa ja olla mustasukkaisia, kun taas naiset ovat taipuvaisia mieltymään iäkkäämpiin miehiin, joilla on valtaa ja resursseja. Luonnonvalinnalla on pyritty myös selittämään mm. raiskauksia.
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  • Charles Darwin’s O n the Origin of Species.Michael Ruse - 2007 - Topoi 26 (1):159-165.
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  • Feminist Philosophy of Biology.Carla Fehr & Letitia Meynell - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Feminist philosophers of biology bring the tools of feminist theory, and in particular the tools of feminist philosophy of science, to investigations of the life sciences. While the critical examination of the categories of sex and gender (which will be explained below) takes a central place, the methods, ontological assumptions, and foundational concepts of biology more generally have also enjoyed considerable feminist scrutiny. Through such investigations, feminist philosophers of biology reveal the extent to which the theory and practice of particular (...)
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  • How we Think About Human Nature: Cognitive Errors and Concrete Remedies.Alexander J. Werth & Douglas Allchin - 2021 - Foundations of Science 26 (4):825-846.
    Appeals to human nature are ubiquitous, yet historically many have proven ill-founded. Why? How might frequent errors be remedied towards building a more robust and reliable scientific study of human nature? Our aim is neither to advance specific scientific or philosophical claims about human nature, nor to proscribe or eliminate such claims. Rather, we articulate through examples the types of errors that frequently arise in this field, towards improving the rigor of the scientific and social studies. We seek to analyze (...)
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  • A Brief (Hi)Story of Just-So Stories in Evolutionary Science.Michal Hubálek - 2020 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 51 (5):447-468.
    In this essay, I examine the usage of the term “just-so story.” I attempt to show that just-so storytelling can be seen as an epistemic concept that, in various ways, tackles the epistemological an...
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  • Constructivism, intersubjectivity, provability, and triviality.Andrea Guardo - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (4):515-527.
    Sharon Street defines her constructivism about practical reasons as the view that whether something is a reason to do a certain thing for a given agent depends on that agent’s normative point of view. However, Street has also maintained that there is a judgment about practical reasons which is true relative to every possible normative point of view, namely constructivism itself. I show that the latter thesis is inconsistent with Street’s own constructivism about epistemic reasons and discuss some consequences of (...)
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  • Astrobiology as Hybrid Science: Introduction to the Thematic Issue.Linnda R. Caporael - 2018 - Biological Theory 13 (2):69-75.
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  • Psychopathy: Morally Incapacitated Persons.Heidi Maibom - 2017 - In Thomas Schramme & Steven Edwards (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine. Springer. pp. 1109-1129.
    After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...)
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  • Developmental objections to evolutionary modularity.John Sarnecki - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (4):529-546.
    Evolutionary psychologists argue that selective pressures in our ancestral environment yield a highly specialized set of modular cognitive capacities. However, recent papers in developmental psychology and neuroscience claim that evolutionary accounts of modularity are incompatible with the flexibility and plasticity of the developing brain. Instead, they propose cortical and neuronal brain structures are fixed through interactions with our developmental environment. Buller and Gray Hardcastle contend that evolutionary accounts of cognitive development are unacceptably rigid in light of evidence of cortical plasticity. (...)
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