Interdisciplinarity is one of the features of modern science, defined as blurring the boundaries of disciplines and overcoming their limitations or excessive specialization by borrowing methods from one discipline into another, integrating different theoretical assumptions, and using the same concepts and terms. Often, theoretical knowledge of one discipline and technological advances of another are combined within an interdisciplinary science, and new branches or disciplines may also emerge. Biosemiotics, a field that arose at the crossroads of biology, semiotics, linguistics, and philosophy, (...) enables scientists to borrow theoretical assumptions from semiotics and extend them to different biological theories. The latter applies especially to extended synthesis, wherein culture is viewed as one of the factors influencing evolution. In the present research, the semiotic system of Ukrainian folk ornament is analyzed through the theory of fractals, key features of which are recursion and self-similarity. As a result, an assumption is made about the fractal structure of culture and social life on a conceptual level. What follows is a discussion of how this assumption can contribute to the multilevel selection theory, one of the foundations of extended synthesis, which employs the concept of self-similarity at all levels of the biological hierarchy. (shrink)

James Rachels argued against the possibility of finding some moral capacity in humans that confers upon them a unique dignity. His argument contends that Darwinism challenges such attempts, because Darwinism predicts that any morally valuable capacity able to bestow a unique dignity is likely present to a degree within both humans and non-human animals alike. I make the case, however, that some of Darwin's own thoughts regarding the nature of conscience provide a springboard for criticising Rachels's claim here. Using Darwin's (...) thoughts regarding conscience, I begin the project of grounding a revised account of human dignity in the human tendency to enshrine products of conscience within institutions. Specifically, I argue that this new account of human dignity is partly contingent upon humans creating institutions morally respectful of the values present within non-human nature. (shrink)

In every known human society, some kind—usually many kinds—of art is practiced, frequently with much vigor and pleasure, so that one could at least hypothesize that “artifying” or “artification” is a characteristic behavior of our species. Yet human ethologists and sociobiologists have been conspicuously unforthcoming about this observably widespread and valued practice, for a number of stated and unstated reasons. The present essay is a position paper that offers an overview and analysis of conceptual issues and problems inherent in viewing (...) art and/or aesthetics as adaptive, and it presents a speculative account of a human behavior of art. (shrink)

Aesthetics, like other philosophical subjects, has historically made use of «top down» methods. Recent discoveries in genetics, evolutionary psychology, paleoarchaeology, and neuroscience call for a new «naturalistic» or «bottom up» perspective. Combining these fields with behavioral biology and ethnoarts studies, I offer seven premises that underlie a new understanding of evolved predispositions of the brain/mind that all artists use to attract attention, sustain interest, and create, mold, and shape emotion. I describe aesthetic «primitives» in somatic and behavioral modalities, suggesting that (...) these were present in early sapiens and continue to influence human art making and aesthetic response today. Keywords: Aesthetic Mind; Neuroaesthetics, evolutionary aesthetics, cognitive aesthetics, evolution of art. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is generally searching for the intrinsic value in natural beings. However, there are very few holistic models trying to reflect the various dimensions of the experience-to-be a natural being. We are searching for that intrinsic value, in order to determine which species are holders of rights. In this article, I suggest a set of moral and rational principles to be used for identifying the intrinsic value of a given species and for comparing it to that of other species.

Environmental ethics is generally searching for the intrinsic value in natural beings. However, there are very few holistic models trying to reflect the various dimensions of the experience‐to‐be a natural being. We are searching for that intrinsic value, in order to determine which species are holders of rights. In this article, I suggest a set of moral and rational principles to be used for identifying the intrinsic value of a given species and for comparing it to that of other species.

Three issues are addressed in this commentary. (1) Wilkins & Wakefield are commended for placing the complex behavior they discuss within an evolutionary matrix. (2) They err on a number of points in regard to their treatment of this complex behavior. These involve (a) their emphasis on the evolution of conceptual structure rather than language, (b) their equation of meaning with reference, (c) their minimalist view of learning theory, and (d) their separation of the evolution of speech from that of (...) language. (3) They adopt a framework for neural preconditions that has been clearly discredited on both behavioral and neuroanatomical grounds. Finally, recent research involving modern neuroimaging techniques casts further doubt on the authors' postulated functions for the neural areas they discuss. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend, contra Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (F&PP), that the theory of natural selection (NS) is a perfectly bona fide empirical unified explanatory theory. F&PP claim there is nothing non-truistic, counterfactual-supporting, of an “adaptive” character and common to different explanations of trait evolution. In his debate with Fodor, and in other works, Sober defends NS but claims that, compared with classical mechanics (CM) and other standard theories, NS is peculiar in that its explanatory models are (...) a priori (a trait shared with few other theories). We argue that NS provides perfectly bona fide adaptive explanations of phenotype evolution, unified by a common natural-selection guiding principle. First, we introduce the debate and reply to F&PP’s main argument against NS. Then, by reviewing different examples and analyzing Fisher’s model in detail, we show that NS explanations of phenotypic evolution share a General Natural Selection Principle. Third, by elaborating an analogy with CM, we argue against F&PP’s claim that such a principle would be a mere truism and thus explanatorily useless, and against Sober’s thesis that NS models/explanations have a priori components that are not present in CM and other common empirical theories. Irrespective of differences in other respects, the NS guiding principle has the same epistemic status as other guiding principles in other highly unified theories such as CM. We argue that only by pointing to the guiding principle-driven nature that it shares with CM and other highly unified theories, something no-one has done yet in this debate, one can definitively show that NS is not defective in F&PP’s sense: in the respects relevant to the debate, Natural Selection is as defective and as epistemically peculiar as Classical Mechanics and other never questioned theories. (shrink)

The nineteenth century saw the rise of Darwinism as a new paradigm for the study of nature and man mans an integral part thereof. Many scholars were intent on removing the abstract principles and universal truths of early modern philosophy in favour of understanding man's nature through more scientifically-based methods. Walter Bagehot (1826?1877) was one of the leading exponents of this view. Our focus is on one of Bagehot's famous books, Physics and Politics, or thoughts on the application of the (...) principles of `natural selection' and `inheritance' to political society. Physics and Politics can be seen as one of the most remarkable attempts to think the intertwining of politics and Darwinism. In our paper, we want to examine Bagehot's efforts to apply natural sciences to politics and philosophy and his focus on progress and the idea that such progress is inherited over generations. We want to examine in what way a Darwinian framework of thinking is actually used in Physics and Politics. Our conclusion is that perhaps Physics and Politics established a framework for the application of biological principles to political society, but it definitely did not do so for the application of Darwin's principle of natural selection. (shrink)

: This essay considers the important role attributed to education in the writings of nineteenth-century feminist Harriet Taylor Mill. Taylor Mill connected ignorance to inequality between the sexes. She called up the specter of regression into lowness and ignorance when she associated feminism with progress. As she stressed the importance of education, she constructed an 'other' to feminism, variously associated with lowness, poverty, and the primitive. She made a case for the advantages of civilization (education, enfranchisement, equality) to be opened (...) up to women. Yet Taylor Mill's position that the ignorant poor, like all humans, should be in a position of so-called "perfect equality" drifted intermittently into the view that the elevation of women to perfect equality would refine and elevate the lower classes. (shrink)

This essay considers the important role attributed to education in the writings of nineteenth-century feminist Harriet Taylor Mill. Taylor Mill connected ignorance to inequality between the sexes. She called up the specter of regression into lowness and ignorance when she associated feminism with progress. As she stressed the importance of education, she constructed an‘other’ to feminism, variously associated with lowness, poverty, and the primitive. She made a case for the advantages of civilization to be opened up to women. Yet Taylor (...) Mill's position that the ignorant poor, like all humans, should be in a position of so-called “perfect equality” drifted intermittently into the view that the elevation of women to perfect equality would refine and elevate the lower classes. (shrink)

This essay considers the important role attributed to education in the writings of nineteenth-century feminist Harriet Taylor Mill. Taylor Mill connected ignorance to inequality between the sexes. She called up the specter of regression into lowness and ignorance when she associated feminism with progress. As she stressed the importance of education, she constructed an‘other’ to feminism, variously associated with lowness, poverty, and the primitive. She made a case for the advantages of civilization to be opened up to women. Yet Taylor (...) Mill's position that the ignorant poor, like all humans, should be in a position of so-called “perfect equality” drifted intermittently into the view that the elevation of women to perfect equality would refine and elevate the lower classes. (shrink)

An avid reader of Nietzsche, the German radical feminist Helene Stöcker referred in 1893 to the Verfrühung of the modern woman, her prematurity. She used references to Mill, Bebel, Darwin, Galton, and Nietzsche among others to develop a concept of women's untimely modernity. This paper considers how a number of concepts of time, transformation, biological futurity, and putative agency over nature became, for Stöcker, the basis for a feminist claim to autonomy, agency, and reproductive rights. The paper goes on to (...) ask how some of these concepts and their context could also have provided the implicit resources to resist their conversion by Stöcker. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to accentuate those features that distinguish Levinasian ethics from the egoism that prevails in management thought. It focuses on differences in the constitution of the subject, how Levinas seeks an ethics that goes beyond the subjective point of view that structures the self as being self-present, self-interested, free and systematic and relates to others through this perspective. Levinas's concepts are critically discussed by reading these alongside Jacques Lacan and Adam Smith, which enable observations (...) to be made about Levinas's concept of the Same and about the difference he effects between human and the nonhuman. It is concluded that it can be easy to misread Levinas in key respects in ways that may act to assimilate his thought to egoism. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to accentuate those features that distinguish Levinasian ethics from the egoism that prevails in management thought. It focuses on differences in the constitution of the subject, how Levinas seeks an ethics that goes beyond the subjective point of view that structures the self as being self‐present, self‐interested, free and systematic and relates to others through this perspective. Levinas's concepts are critically discussed by reading these alongside Jacques Lacan and Adam Smith, which enable observations (...) to be made about Levinas's concept of the Same and about the difference he effects between human and the nonhuman. It is concluded that it can be easy to misread Levinas in key respects in ways that may act to assimilate his thought to egoism. (shrink)

Debunking arguments use empirical evidence about our moral beliefs - in particular, about their causal origins, or about how they depend on various causes - in order to reach an epistemic conclusion about the trustworthiness of such beliefs. In this thesis, I investigate the scope and limits of debunking arguments, and their implications for what we should believe about morality. I argue that debunking arguments can in principle work - they are based on plausible epistemic premises, and at least some (...) of them avoid putative problems concerning regress and redundancy. However, I also argue that some debunking arguments fall short because they are insufficiently supported by the empirical evidence. By considering different objections, analyses, and a case study, I explore the conditions for a successful debunking argument. (shrink)

I argue that a Kantian inspired investigation into animal morality is both a plausible and coherent research program. To show that such an investigation is possible, I argue that philosophers, such as Korsgaard, who argue that reason demarcates nonhuman animals from the domain of moral beings are equivocating in their use of the term ‘rationality’. Kant certainly regards rationality as necessary for moral responsibility from a practical standpoint, but his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal means that he can only (...) establish it as a marker for morality from a theoretical standpoint. This means that when it comes to evaluating the moral capabilities of others, rationality can be neither necessary nor sufficient for morality, leaving open the possibility of other empirical markers for moral responsibility. I argue that the higher faculties, character, implicit knowledge of universality, and antecedent practical pleasures (which provide a way to distinguish between morally motivated behaviour and other types of socially motivated behaviour) can all serve as empirical markers for morality. There is empirical evidence that at least some animals have conceptual capabilities and therefore the empirical marker of the higher faculties. In addition, there is suggestive evidence that merits further investigation for the other three markers. While this will not provide a definitive answer on whether animals are capable of acting morally, it will provide a Kantian outlook that can be used to evaluate empirical and philosophical work on animal morality. (shrink)

Algunos aspectos de La expresión de las emociones de Charles Darwin pueden resultar intrigantes, pues, en la explicación de cómo tales expresiones se originan, Darwin casi nunca apela a la selección natural. En cambio, apela principalmente a la idea de que movimientos voluntarios se asocian a emociones, volviéndose por hábito innatos e involuntarios al heredarse a la descendencia. Si bien Darwin da varias razones para defender esta explicación, en este trabajo trataré de mostrar que, si se entiende el libro sobre (...) las expresiones en relación con los objetivos explícitos e implícitos de El origen del hombre (libro del cual originalmente iba a ser un capítulo), el asunto se entiende mejor. En particular, resulta interesante la tesis que Desmond y Moore plantean respecto a la importancia de los ideales antiesclavistas de Darwin a la hora del tratamiento de las razas. Defenderé en este trabajo que el enfoque de Desmond y Moore puede extenderse al libro acerca de las expresiones. Específicamente, estableceré vínculos entre la explicación del origen de las razas y la explicación del origen del rubor. (shrink)

Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This entry first formulates ‘Darwin's Darwinism’ in terms of five philosophically distinctive themes: (i) probability and chance, (ii) the nature, power and scope of selection, (iii) adaptation and teleology, (iv) nominalism vs. essentialism about species and (v) the tempo and mode of evolutionary change. Both Darwin and (...) his critics recognized that his approach to evolution was distinctive on each of these topics, and it remains true that, though Darwinism has developed in many ways unforeseen by Darwin, its proponents and critics continue to differentiate it from other approaches in evolutionary biology by focusing on these themes. This point is illustrated in the second half of the entry by looking at current debates in the philosophy of evolutionary biology on these five themes, with a special focus on Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. (shrink)

The idea that some characteristics of an organism are explained by the organism's intrinsic nature, whilst others reflect the influence of the environment is an ancient one. It has even been argued that this distinction is itself part of the evolved psychology of the human species. The distinction played an important role in the history of philosophy as the locus of the dispute between Rationalism and Empiricism discussed in another entry in this encyclopedia. This entry, however, focuses on twentieth-century accounts (...) of the innate/acquired distinction. These accounts have for the most part been inspired by the sciences of mind and behaviour. (shrink)

Human behavior and thought often exhibit a familiar pattern of within group similarity and between group difference. Many of these patterns are attributed to cultural differences. For much of the history of its investigation into behavior and thought, however, cognitive science has been disproportionately focused on uncovering and explaining the more universal features of human minds—or the universal features of minds in general. -/- This entry charts out the ways in which this has changed over recent decades. It sketches the (...) motivation behind the cultural turn in cognitive science, and situates some of its central findings with respect to the questions that animate it and the debates that it has inspired. Woven throughout the entry are examples of how the cognitive science of culture, and especially its elevated concern with different forms of diversity and variation, continues to influence and be influenced by philosophers. -/- One cluster of philosophical work falls within the traditional subject matter of philosophy of science, in this case of the cognitive and social sciences. Philosophers have analyzed and assessed the methods and evidence central to the scientific study of cognition and culture, and have offered conceptual scrutiny, clarification, and synthesis. Research in a second vein sees philosophers themselves contributing more directly to cognitive scientific projects, (co)constructing theories, helping build computational models, even gathering empirical data. A third kind of work is naturalistic philosophy or philosophy of nature, wherein philosophers seek to use results from the cognitive science of culture to inform or transform debates over long-standing philosophical questions, including questions about the nature of philosophy and philosophical methodology itself. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of (...) transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of awe and wonder in scientific practice. Drawing on evidence from psychological research and the writings of scientists and science communicators, I argue that awe and wonder play a crucial role in scientific discovery. They focus our attention on the natural world, encourage open-mindedness, diminish the self (particularly feelings of self-importance), help to accord value to the objects that are being studied, and provide a mode of understanding in the absence of full knowledge. I will (...) flesh out implications of the role of awe and wonder in scientific discovery for debates on the relationship between science and religion. Abraham Heschel argued that awe and wonder are religious emotions because they reduce our feelings of self-importance, and thereby help to cultivate the proper reverent attitude towards God. Yet metaphysical naturalists such as Richard Dawkins insist that awe and wonder need not lead to any theistic commitments for scientists. The awe some scientists experience can be regarded as a form of non-theistic spirituality, which is neither a reductive naturalism nor theism. I will attempt to resolve the tension between these views by identifying some common ground. (shrink)

Human cooperation is a key driving force behind the evolutionary success of our hominin lineage. At the proximate level, biologists and social scientists have identified other-regarding preferences – such as fairness based on egalitarian motives, and altruism – as likely candidates for fostering large-scale cooperation. A critical question concerns the ontogenetic origins of these constituents of cooperative behavior, as well as whether they emerge independently or in an interrelated fashion. The answer to this question will shed light on the interdisciplinary (...) debate regarding the significance of such preferences for explaining how humans become such cooperative beings. We investigated 15-month-old infants' sensitivity to fairness, and their altruistic behavior, assessed via infants' reactions to a third-party resource distribution task, and via a sharing task. Our results challenge current models of the development of fairness and altruism in two ways. First, in contrast to past work suggesting that fairness and altruism may not emerge until early to mid-childhood, 15-month-old infants are sensitive to fairness and can engage in altruistic sharing. Second, infants' degree of sensitivity to fairness as a third-party observer was related to whether they shared toys altruistically or selfishly, indicating that moral evaluations and prosocial behavior are heavily interconnected from early in development. Our results present the first evidence that the roots of a basic sense of fairness and altruism can be found in infancy, and that these other-regarding preferences develop in a parallel and interwoven fashion. These findings support arguments for an evolutionary basis – most likely in dialectical manner including both biological and cultural mechanisms – of human egalitarianism given the rapidly developing nature of other-regarding preferences and their role in the evolution of human-specific forms of cooperation. Future work of this kind will help determine to what extent uniquely human sociality and morality depend on other-regarding preferences emerging early in life. (shrink)

One reason for the widespread resistance to evolutionary accounts of the origins of humanity is the fear that they undermine morality: if morality is based on nothing more than evolved dispositions, it would be shown to be illusory, many people suspect. This view is shared by some philosophers who take their work on the evolutionary origins of morality to undermine moral realism. If they are right, we are faced with an unpalatable choice: to reject morality on scientific grounds, or to (...) reject our best- confirmed scientific explanation of our origins in order to save morality. Fortunately, as I show, we have no reason to accept the deflationary claims of some evolutionary ethicists: morality, as we ordinarily understand it, is fully compatible with evolution. (shrink)

Altruism is a malleable notion that is understood differently in various disciplines. The common denominator of most definitions of altruism is the idea of unidirectional helping behaviour. However, a closer examination reveals that the term altruism sometimes refers to the outcomes of a helping behaviour for the agent and its neighbours – i.e. reproductive altruism – and sometimes to what motivates the agent to help others – i.e. psychological altruism. Since these perspectives on altruism are crucially different, it is important (...) to use a clear terminology to avoid confusion. In particular, we show that the notion of altruism used by biologists profoundly differs from the ones used by philosophers, psychologists and economists in cross-disciplinary debates about human altruism. (shrink)

ve r since the appearance of Ontogeny and Phylogeny a decade ago, Stephen Jay Gould has continued to delight and inform a wide spectrum of readers and, in doing so, to defy C.P. Snow's lament about the "two cultures" of the sciences and the humanities. Gould's monthly column in Natural History magazine, published under the heading "This View of Life," has led to a series of highly praised volumes of essays—Ever Since Darwin (1977), The Panda's Thumb (1980), Hen's Teeth and (...) Horse's Toes (1983), and most recently The Flamingo's Smile (1985). In addition, Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981), which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award, analyzed the questionable character of intelligence testing and emphasized the many personal and cultural biases that have led researchers astray in this field. Given the sheer amount of Gould's publications, which include numerous scientific publications as well, Gould's readers have been kept busy indeed absorbing his prodigious output. (shrink)

In this paper I will examine two responses to the argument from marginal cases; the argument from kinds and the similarity argument. I will argue that these arguments are insufficient to show that all humans have moral status but no animals do. This does not prove that animals have moral status but it does shift the burden of proof onto those who want to maintain that all humans are morally considerable, but no animals are.

Our aim in this chapter is to draw lessons from current theory on the evolution of human cooperation for the management of contemporary commons. Evolutionary theorists have long been interested in cooperation but social scientists have documented patterns of cooperation in humans that present unusual problems for conventional evolutionary theory (and for rational choice explanations as well). Humans often cooperate with nonrelatives and are prone to cooperate in one-shot games. Cooperation is quite dependent on social institutions. We believe that this (...) last fact is the critical clue to understanding human cooperation. Models of cultural evolution suggest that group selection is a more potent force on culture than on genes. Evolutionary theory is in essence a theory of preferences in terms of rational actor theory and is thus complementary to the bounded rational choice models that underpin so much theorizing in the social sciences. Thus, the theory suggests a source for prosocial impulses, and leads to predictions about the limits of human altruism and constraints likely to be imposed upon the evolution of social institutions. We also consider the dynamics of genes as they coevolved with increasingly sophisticated cultural institutions over the long course of human evolution in the Pleistocene. We hypothesize that the long exposure of human populations to group selected cultural norms and preferences is likely to have resulted in an innate psychology adapted to living in egalitarian, cooperative societies of a few hundred to a few thousand people. We call this the tribal social instincts hypothesis. The evolution of complex societies in the past few thousand years constitutes a series of natural experiments that test this hypothesis. If it is correct, the institutions of complex societies must somehow take advantage of the prosocial elements of the tribal instincts while finessing the problem that the tribal social instincts are ill adapted to life in large, hierarchical, inegalitarian societies with extensive dominance of subordinates by elites.. (shrink)

After the great enthusiasm about the moral potentialities of empathy of the last thirty years, this phenomenon has been recently called into question, if not openly criticized, by both philosophers and psychologists among whom we find Jesse Prinz or Paul Bloom. This paper aims to show why empathy should not too easily be regarded as useless or even deleterious for morality and to propose a special role for it. In order to reach this goal, I will briefly sketch what I (...) mean with the term empathy and how is this psychological mechanism different from other akin phenomena like compassion. I will then turn my attention to some criticisms that can be made about the role of empathy for morality which show that empathy seems not a necessary element of the three main dimensions of morality, that is moral judgment, moral development and moral conduct. After that, I will try to defend empathy thanks to the identification of some important roles it can play both at a moral and at an epistemological level, in the attempt to demonstrate that empathy is in fact part of the fundamental features of a moral person. (shrink)

The model of consciousness developed here is a cooperative venture between mind, brain, body, nature, culture, community, and family. The overall unity of consciousness is provided by the loop of engagement that conducts intentional action into the ambient. Each successive round of engagement between subject and world generates a gap of disparity between remembrance of purpose or intent and the effect achieved on the operative level of understanding within a larger taxonomic scheme in experience. That gap sends a delta signal (...) that arouses various parameters of motivation to form a configuration that constitutes a felt situation within subjective experience. That delta signal and felt situation are nothing other than our subjective experience of consciousness. Situated intelligence is the first-person awareness stimulated by a particular complement of motivational parameters. (shrink)