In this article the extent to which stories and personal narratives can and should be used to inform education policy is examined. A range of studies describable as story or personal narrative is investigated. They include life-studies, life-writing, life history, narrative analysis, and the representation of lives. We use ‘auto/biography’ as a convenient way of grouping this range under one term. It points to the many and varied ways that accounts of self interrelate and intertwine with accounts of others. That (...) is, auto/biography illuminates the social context of individual lives. At the same time it allows room for unique, personal stories to be told. We do not explicitly discuss all the different forms of auto/biography. Rather, we investigate the epistemology underlying the personal story in the context of social action. We discuss the circumstances in which a story may validly be used by educational policy makers and give some examples of how they have done so in the past. (shrink)

Hamilton’s Rule, named after the evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton, and the related concepts of inclusive fitness and kin selection, have been the bedrock of the study of social evolution for the past half century. In ’The Philosophy of Social Evolution’, Jonathan Birch provides a comprehensive introduction to the conceptual foundations of the Hamiltonian view of social evolution, and a passionate defence of its enduring value in face of the recent high profile criticism. In this review essay, I first outline the (...) version of Hamilton’s Rule defended by Birch, dubbed Hamilton’s Rule General, and its derivation. With this in place, I then navigate through the fierce disagreements that Hamilton’s Rule generates among social evolution researchers and evaluate Birch’s central argument of the book that HRG serves as an organizing framework for social evolution research under which we can compare and interpret more detailed causal models. I then spend the remainder of the review discussing what I take to be three of the most exciting implications of Hamilton’s thinking raised by Birch: the extension of Hamilton’s Rule to mobile genetic elements, maximization of inclusive fitness models and the idea of adaptation as organism design, and the relationship between Hamilton’s approaches to social behaviour and the gene’s-eye view of evolution. (shrink)

Due to the variation, contingency and complexity of living systems, biology is often taken to be a science without fundamental theories, laws or general principles. I revisit this question in light of the quest for design principles in systems biology and show that different views can be reconciled if we distinguish between different types of generality. The philosophical literature has primarily focused on generality of specific models or explanations, or on the heuristic role of abstraction. This paper takes a different (...) approach in emphasizing a theory-constituting role of general principles. Design principles signify general dependency-relations between structures and functions, given a set of formally defined constraints. I contend that design principles increase our understanding of living systems by relating specific models to general types. The categorization of types is based on a delineation of the scope of biological possibilities, which serves to identify and define the generic features of classes of systems. To characterize the basis for general principles through generic abstraction and reasoning about possibility spaces, I coin the term constraint-based generality. I show that constraint-based generality is distinct from other types of generality in biology, and argue that general principles play a unifying role that does not entail theory reduction. (shrink)

Design thinking in general, and optimality modeling in particular, have traditionally been associated with adaptationism—a research agenda that gives pride of place to natural selection in shaping biological characters. Our goal is to evaluate the role of design thinking in non-evolutionary analyses. Specifically, we focus on research into abstract design principles that underpin the functional organization of extant organisms. Drawing on case studies from engineering-inspired approaches in biology we show how optimality analysis, and other design-related methods, play a specific methodological (...) role that is tangential to the study of adaptation. To account for the role of these reasoning strategies in contemporary biology, we therefore suggest a reevaluation of the connection between design thinking and adaptationism. (shrink)

Adaptationism has for decades been the topic of sophisticated debates in philosophy of biology but methodological adaptationism has not received as much attention as the empirical and explanatory issues. In addition, adaptationism has mainly been discussed in the context of evolutionary biology and not in fields such as zoophysiology and systems biology where this heuristic is also used in design analyses of physiological traits and molecular structures. This paper draws on case studies from these fields to discuss the productive and (...) problematic aspects of this heuristic in different research practices, in functional as well as evolutionary studies on different levels of biological organization. Gould and Lewontin’s Spandrels-paper famously criticized adaptationist methodology for implying the risk of generating ‘blind spots’ with respect to non-selective effects on evolution. Some have claimed that this bias can be accommodated through the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Although this is an important aspect of overcoming naïve adaptationism, I argue that the issue of methodological biases is broader than the question of testability. I demonstrate the productivity of adaptationist heuristics but also discuss the deeper problematic aspects associated with the methodological imperialism that is part of the strong adaptationist position. (shrink)

The history and theoretical role of the concept of a ``replicator''is discussed, starting with Dawkins' and Hull's classic treatmentsand working forward. I argue that the replicator concept is still auseful one for evolutionary theory, but it should be revised insome ways. The most important revision is the recognition that notall processes of evolution by natural selection require thatsomething play the role of a replicator.

Image schemas are mental constructs central to human cognitive psychology. The neurobiological grounding of these structures has been suggested by experimental research both in non-human primates and lower animals . However, their applicability as concrete cognitive products has not been explored yet in zoosemiotics. This study shows that image schemas are highly instrumental to making sense of the impersonations of two animals featured in biology research studies and wildlife documentary films: the mimic octopus and the Gibb’s sea spider crab . (...) In analysing the movements and postures of these animals, it is argued that image schemas underlie recurring patterns of animal bodily experience and response, which ties image-schematic structures to non-human intersubjectivity. In line with the pluralistic view of zoosemiotics , this paper takes an intermediary position in the continuity–discontinuity debate regarding communication in humans and animals. In this regard, the complexity of the creative behavioural models of the animals examined leaves the door open for the existence of sophisticated mental life in non-human species. (shrink)

Grammar is now widely regarded as a substantially biological phenomenon, yet the problem of language evolution remains a matter of controversy among Linguists, Cognitive Scientists, and Evolutionary Theorists alike. In this paper, I present a new theoretical argument for one particular hypothesis—that a Language Acquisition Device of the sort first posited by Noam Chomsky might have evolved via the so-called Baldwin Effect . Close attention to the workings of that mechanism, I argue, helps to explain a previously mysterious feature of (...) the Language Acquisition Device—the sheer variety of languages it allows the child to learn—thereby revealing a far stronger case than adherents of the hypothesis have previously supposed. A further unheralded consequence of the hypothesis is a conceptual shift in the Chomskyan understanding of language, wherein the essentially public nature of language is freshly emphasised. This has the effect of bringing the Chomskyan view into closer accord with Saussurean accounts of language, as well as with recent trends in evolutionary theory. (shrink)

We propose another positive illusion that fits with McKay & Dennett's (M&D's) criteria for adaptive misbeliefs. This illusion is pervasive in adult reasoning but we focus on its prevalence in children's developing theories. It is a strongly held conviction arising from normal functioning of the doxastic system that confers adaptive advantage on the individual.

This review essay attempts to present a coherent and reasonably unitary picture of the contemporary ‘speculative turn’ in continental philosophy as charted in Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, eds, The Speculative Turn: Continental Realism and Materialism (2011). Avoiding a more objective yet more anodyne chapter by chapter summary, I paint an intentionally synoptic view by selecting some common concerns of the authors involved, and group them under five ‘core themes’. Throughout, I try to keep open the comparative channel (...) with the realist tenets of critical realism, and conclude vouching for the necessity for more bridge-building works to appear in the future. (shrink)

I argue for an intentional conception of representation in science that requires bringing scientific agents and their intentions into the picture. So the formula is: Agents (1) intend; (2) to use model, M; (3) to represent a part of the world, W; (4) for some purpose, P. This conception legitimates using similarity as the basic relationship between models and the world. Moreover, since just about anything can be used to represent anything else, there can be no unified ontology of models. (...) This whole approach is further supported by a brief exposition of some recent work in cognitive, or usage-based, linguistics. Finally, with all the above as background, I criticize the recently much discussed idea that claims involving scientific models are really fictions. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that lawmakers must abandon their previous reluctance to engage with questions of personal identity (PI). While frequently seen as an esoteric subject, of limited interest outside of academic philosophy departments, I attempt to show that, in fact, assumptions about PI—and its durability in the face of certain psychological or genetic changes—underpin many current legal rules. This is most perhaps obviously exemplified with regard to reproductive technologies. Yet the Parfitian challenge to identify a victim of ‘bad’ (...) reproductive choices has been largely overlooked in framing legislative responses to such technologies. Furthermore, I argue, it is not only with regard to emerging technologies that questionable assumptions about PI play a role; legal responses to questions about the attribution of criminal responsibility, and about the treatment of demented or brain-injured people, necessitate a frank engagement with such questions. It may be, however, that a multi-faceted approach to PI, which takes account of genetic, psychological and social factors—will prove a better fit for the myriad needs of the legal system than any sort of ‘unified theory of identity’. (shrink)

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 (...) contents and a critical assessment of his proposal. (shrink)

In both popular and technical discussion we often find the pairs of opposed terms ‘innate/acquired,’ ‘due to genes/due to environment,’ ‘nature/nurture,’ and so forth. They appear to be used as if they all captured a genuine distinction, and the same distinction at that. A related family of opposed pairs is held to describe the difference between those who attribute a certain trait to ‘nature’ and those who attribute it to ‘nurture’: ‘nativists’ versus ‘constructivists’ is one such pair. Chomsky and his (...) followers are often described as ‘nativists’ regarding certain features of language. On a cursory examination, many of the claims of Evolutionary Psychology bear the appearance of ‘nativism.’ That is, it looks as though Evolutionary Psychologists are making claims to the effect that many features of the mind which are often thought to be due to ‘nurture’ are in fact due to ‘nature.’ However, two of the genre's leading practitioners, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, vigorously deny that this is their position. (shrink)

In this work I characterize Darwinian approaches to human behavior and mind, especially evolutionary psychology, and analyze the main criticisms that these approaches have received. To this end I resort to Jean Marie Schaeffer’s criticism of the thesis of human exceptionality and the semantic perspective of scientific theories of Ronald Giere. I conclude that the main criticisms are not applicable to evolutionary psychology as a research program. I also conclude that it cannot be held a priori that the Darwinian approach (...) is not applicable to the human mind and behavior. Finally, I discuss some educational implications of these debates. (shrink)

This paper reviews and clarifies five misunderstandings about cultural evolution identified by Henrich et al.. First, cultural representations are neither discrete nor continuous; they are distributed across neurons that respond to microfeatures. This enables associations to be made, and cultural change to be generated. Second, ‘replicator dynamics’ do not ensure natural selection. The replicator notion does not capture the distinction between actively interpreted self-assembly code and passively copied self-description, which leads to a fundamental principle of natural selection: inherited information is (...) transmitted, whereas acquired information is not. Third, this principle is violated in culture by the ubiquity of acquired change. Moreover, biased transmission is less important to culture than the creative processes by which novelty is generated. Fourth, there is no objective basis for determining cultural fitness. Fifth, the necessity of randomness is discussed. It is concluded that natural selection inappropriate is an explanatory framework for culture. (shrink)

Like the information patterns that evolve through. biological processes, mental representations or memes evolve through adaptive exploration and transformation of an information space through variation, selection, and transmission. However since memes do not contain instructions for their replication our brains do it for them, strategically, guided by a fitness landscape that reflects both internal drives and a worldview that forms through meme assimilation. This paper presents a tentative model for how an individual becomes a meme evolving agent via the emergence (...) of an autocatalytic network of sparse, distributed memories, and discusses implications for complex creative thought processes and why they are unique to humans. A hypothetical scenario for the evolutionary dynamics of a given meme in a society of interacting individuals is presented. (shrink)

Abstract:The purpose of this paper is to suggest that at least one strain of what has come to be called “stakeholder theory” has roots that are deeply libertarian. We begin by explicating both “stakeholder theory” and “libertarian arguments.” We show how there are libertarian arguments for both instrumental and normative stakeholder theory, and we construct a version of capitalism, called “stakeholder capitalism,” that builds on these libertarian ideas. We argue throughout that strong notions of “freedom” and “voluntary action” are the (...) best possible underpinnings for stakeholder theory, and in doing so, seek to return “stakeholder theory” to its managerial and libertarian roots found in Freeman (1984). (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology is widely understood as involving an integration of evolutionary theory and cognitive psychology, in which the former promises to revolutionise the latter. In this paper, I suggest some reasons to doubt that the assumptions of evolutionary theory and of cognitive psychology are as directly compatible as is widely assumed. These reasons relate to three different problems of specifying adaptive functions as the basis for characterising cognitive mechanisms: the disjunction problem, the grain problem and the environment problem. Each of (...) these problems can be understood as arising from incommensurate characterisations of the nature and role of 'the environment' in the two approaches. Purported solutions to the problems appear to require detailed information concerning the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptedness), with the disjunction problem placing the lowest requirement, the environment problem placing the highest requirement, and the grain problem placing an intermediate one. In each case, such information is not likely to be forthcoming, because it may require iterating through successively more distant EEA's with no principled stopping point. This produces a dilemma for evolutionary psychology - either to solve these apparently insoluble problems, or to attempt to avoid them but in doing so forego detailed evolutionary constraints on cognition. (shrink)

For the larger part of modern western intellectual history, it has been assumed that the study of morality and religion requires special methodology, insulated from, and in some important aspects incongruent with, the scientific method commonly used in the realm of natural sciences. Furthermore, even if it would be granted that moral and religious behavior is amendable to scientific analysis, the prospects of using evolutionary theory in particular to do the heavy lifting in explanation of these phenomena have been bleak, (...) since many scholars doubted that a biological theory could possibly offer any valuable contribution. Recent advances in the fields of Evolutionary Ethics and Cognitive Science of Religion disprove both claims, emphasizing empirically founded explanations, demonstrating extraordinarily high degree of methodological consilience, and revealing utmost importance of the application of evolutionary theory in fields of study once deemed to be exclusive domains of social sciences and philosophy. (shrink)

The contention that cognitive psychology and radical behaviorism yield equivalent accounts of decision making and problem solving is examined by contrasting a framework of cognitive interpretation, Dennett's intentional stance, with a corresponding interpretive stance derived from contextualism. The insistence of radical behaviorists that private events such as thoughts and feelings belong in a science of human behavior is indicted in view of their failure to provide a credible interpretation of complex human behavior. Dennett's interpretation of intentional systems is an exemplar (...) of the interpretive stance radical behaviorism requires; a corresponding interpretive position can be based initially on a radical behaviorist view of human behavior and its determinants. This "contextual stance" is ontologically and methodologically distinct from the intentional stance over the range of explanations for which scientific psychology, cognitive or behaviorist, is responsible. (shrink)

A dogma of contemporary normative theorizing holds that some reasons are distinctively moral while others are not. Call this view Reasons Pluralism. This essay looks at four approaches to vindicating the apparent distinction between moral and non-moral reasons. In the end, however, all are found wanting. Though not dispositive, the failure of these approaches supplies strong evidence that the dogma of Reasons Pluralism is ill-founded.

Cognitive science has been dominated by the computational conception that cognition is computation across representations. To the extent to which cognition as computation across representations is supposed to be a purposive, meaningful, algorithmic, problem-solving activity, however, computers appear to be incapable of cognition. They are devices that can facilitate computations on the basis of semantic grounding relations as special kinds of signs. Even their algorithmic, problem-solving character arises from their interpretation by human users. Strictly speaking, computers as such — apart (...) from human users — are not only incapable of cognition, but even incapable of computation, properly construed. If we want to understand the nature of thought, then we have to study thinking, not computing, because they are not the same thing. (shrink)

The evolution of sexual reproduction is a striking case of explanatory pluralism, meaning that one needs to refer to more than one explanation in order to adequately account for it. I develop the concept a domain of phenomena in order to analysis this pluralism. Pluralism exists when a phenomenon can be included in more that one homogeneous domain or in a heterogeneous domain. I argue that in some cases domain partitioning can be used to decrease pluralism, but that in the (...) case of sex domains are overlapping and interconnecting, or in other words bear an orthogonal relationship to one another, and hence cannot be partitioned in such a way as to eliminate pluralism. (shrink)

The idiom referred to in the title, “don't throw out the baby with the bath water,” instructs us to keep what is essential and to only throw away what is inessential. Bathing babies has the well-being of the child in mind, the end result of which is cleanliness. Efficiency in the task of cleaning is secondary. No one would throw away a baby when draining the baby's bathwater. Somewhat analogously, science and philosophy each have the goal of the attainment of (...) truth in mind. Part and parcel of this search for truth has been the attachment of being parsimonious, especially since William of Ockham. If the goal is truth, then one cannot get lost in the pursuit of parsimony, therefore losing the truth. The goal of finding the truth must remain intact; the method of parsimony at best remains subservient to the attainment of truth. Hans Jonas believed this regarding truth and pursued the criticism of reductive materialism as part and parcel of his research program in philosophy of biology and philosophical anthropology beginning in 1950. In his mind, reductive materialism, as it was practiced, involved the pursuit of parsimony at the cost of the truth through neglect of the purpose-driven conscious life of the subject. In this article, I expose and defend the recovery of certain elements of Aristotelian biology by Professor Hans Jonas. In the process, I show how Jonas was among the early authors writing on the philosophy of biology and defending ontological essentialism and purposefulness in organisms against reductive materialism and the relentless pursuit of the unity of the sciences. Along this line, I position Jonas among the arguments made regarding teleological explanations current in the philosophy of biology. First, I explain and defend Jonas's thesis that a full understanding of organisms requires recognizing an ontological essentialism regarding organisms. Secondly, I explain and defend Jonas's forward looking and backward looking teleological conceptions of activity insofar as it concurs directly with the conscious experience of life for humans, while situating it within the mainstream of philosophy of biology. Last, the importance of this recovery of Aristotelian concepts highlights Jonas's position as an early proponent of non-reductive materialism. More importantly, his thought forces us to recognize that in the pursuit of truth we must use parsimony well. We should take extreme care to preserve the truth; we should not throw out the baby with the bath water. (shrink)

So far, the sciences of complexity have received less attention from philosophers than from scientists. Responding to Salthe’s (Found Sci 15, 4(6):357–367, 2010a ) model of evolution, I focus on its metaphysical implications, asking whether the implications of his canonical developmental trajectory (CDT) must be materialistic as his reading proposes.

In one conception of cultural evolution, the evolutionary success of cultural units that are transmitted from individual to individual is determined by forces of cultural selection. Here we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between several distinct phases of the transmission process in which cultural selection can operate, such as a choose-to-receive phase, an encode-and-retrieve phase, and a choose-to-transmit phase. Here we focus on emotional selection in cultural transmission of urban legends, which has previously been shown to operate in (...) the choose-to-transmit phase. In a series of experiments we studied serial transmission of stories based on urban legends manipulated to be either high or low on disgusting content. Results supported emotional selection operating in all three phases of cultural transmission. Thus, the prevalence of disgusting urban legends in North America may be explained by emotional selection through a multitude of pathways. (shrink)

Following the development of the selectionist theory of the immune system, there was an attempt to characterise many biological mechanisms as being ‘selectionist’ as juxtaposed with ‘instructionist’. However, this broad definition would group Darwinian evolution, the immune system, embryonic development, and Chomsky’s principles-and-parameters language-acquisition mechanism together under the ‘selectionist’ umbrella, even though Chomsky’s mechanism and embryonic development are significantly different from the selectionist mechanisms of biological evolution and the immune system. Surprisingly, there is an abstract way using two dual mathematical (...) logics to make the distinction between genuinely selectionist mechanisms and what are better called ‘generative’ or symmetry-breaking mechanisms. This distinction is outlined in this note. (shrink)

Abstract This article identifies the tropes of “maturity” and “immaturity” in the dialogue between religion and science. On both sides of the aisle, authors charge, either directly or indirectly, that their dissenting interlocutors are not mature enough to see the value of their respective positions. Such accusations have recently emerged in discussions pertaining to Hindu theology, Indology, and science. Those who dismiss the substance dualism of Hindu yoga, according to Jonathan B. Edelmann, evince immaturity. Appeals to Hindu yoga are yet (...) one more appeal to religious experience. Indeed, what we find in Edelmann's text is an appeal to appreciate the private, unverifiable—or falsifiable, for that matter—“insights” of Hindu yogis. Yogic experience is interminably steeped in motivated perception and confirmation bias. There is simply no good evidence or rational argument to take yogic claims seriously. Insofar as that is the case, Indology must achieve consilience with the natural and human sciences, remaining thereby reductive of such supernatural claims. (shrink)

Since its formal definition over sixty years ago, category theory has been increasingly recognized as having a foundational role in mathematics. It provides the conceptual lens to isolate and characterize the structures with importance and universality in mathematics. The notion of an adjunction (a pair of adjoint functors) has moved to center-stage as the principal lens. The central feature of an adjunction is what might be called “determination through universals” based on universal mapping properties. A recently developed “heteromorphic” theory about (...) adjoints suggests a conceptual structure, albeit abstract and atemporal, for how new relatively autonomous behavior can emerge within a system obeying certain laws. The focus here is on applications in the life sciences (e.g., selectionist mechanisms) and human sciences (e.g., the generative grammar view of language). (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the concept of complexity. I show that the principle of natural selection as acting on complexity gives a solution to the problem of reconciling the seemingly contradictory notion of generally increasing complexity and the observation that most species don’t follow such a trend. I suggest the process of evolution to be illustrated by means of a schematic diagram of complexity versus time, interpreted as a form of the Tree of Life. The suggested model implies that (...) complexity is cumulatively increasing, giving evolution a direction, an arrow of time, thus also implying that the latest emerging species will be the one with the highest level of complexity. Since the human species is the last species evolved in the evolutionary process seen at large, this means that we are the species with the highest complexity. The model implies that the human species constitutes an integral part of organic evolution, yet rendering us the exclusive status as the species of the highest complexity. (shrink)

In this article I suggest a view of evolution characterized as a progressive process toward successively higher levels of complexity. In this approach, complexity is defined by means of an operational definition giving the possibility of its measurement by means of a procedure in which development has a crucial role. Furthermore, the concept of competition applied in the complexity space explains the cumulative emergence of new species as well as the presence of stagnant species. In this process, species are formed (...) in a hierarchical order in which the human species is situated on the highest level. This view of evolution, thus also embracing human cultural evolution, is depicted in a diagram of complexity versus time, thus forming a new kind of a Tree of Life. The purpose of the suggested interpretation of evolution is to make it more readily acceptable for common people. (shrink)

Gödel's Theorem is often used in arguments against machine intelligence, suggesting humans are not bound by the rules of any formal system. However, Gödelian arguments can be used to support AI, provided we extend our notion of computation to include devices incorporating random number generators. A complete description scheme can be given for integer functions, by which nonalgorithmic functions are shown to be partly random. Not being restricted to algorithms can be accounted for by the availability of an arbitrary random (...) function. Humans, then, might not be rule-bound, but Gödelian arguments also suggest how the relevant sort of nonalgorithmicity may be trivially made available to machines. (shrink)

Certain enterprises at the fringes of science, such as intelligent design creationism, claim to identify phenomena that go beyond not just our present physics but any possible physical explanation. Asking what it would take for such a claim to succeed, we introduce a version of physicalism that formulates the proposition that all available data sets are best explained by combinations of “chance and necessity”—algorithmic rules and randomness. Physicalism would then be violated by the existence of oracles that produce certain kinds (...) of noncomputable functions. Examining how a candidate for such an oracle would be evaluated leads to questions that do not admit an easy resolution. Since we lack any plausible candidate for any such oracle, however, chance-and-necessity physicalism appears very likely to be correct. (shrink)

In recent times evolutionary psychologists have offered adaptation explanations for a wide range of human psychological characteristics. Critics, however, have argued that such endeavors are problematic because the appropriate evidence required to demonstrate adaptation is unlikely to be forthcoming, therefore severely limiting the role of the adaptationist program in psychology. More specifically, doubts have been raised over both the methodology employed by evolutionary psychologists for studying adaptations and about the possibility of ever developing acceptably rigorous evolutionary explanations of human psychological (...) phenomena. We argue that by employing a wide range of methods for inferring adaptation and by adopting an inference to the best explanation strategy for evaluating adaptation explanations, these two doubts can be adequately addressed. We illustrate how this approach can be fruitfully employed in evaluating claims about the evolutionary origins of language, and conclude with a brief discussion of the future of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

The resilience of utilitarian ethics in the face of unremitting criticism can be explained in part by its use of various strategies of indirect utilitarianism. The success of these strategies throws up a distinctive problem: how can one measure the utility of moral rules, large-scale social institutions or character traits distinctive of virtues? Reading Hume as a utilitarian of sorts in his treatment of justice, I explain his conservative endorsement of entrenched social practices as a consequence of his broadly functionalist (...) approach. I claim that this account has enough merit to ground conservativism in ethics as a satisfactory default position. Projects for reform rather than established institutions are the proper object of utilitarian assessment, thus finessing the problem of measurement I opened up initially. (shrink)

In this paper I argue the best examples of the methods in the evolutionary social sciences don’t actually resemble either of the two methods called “Adaptive Thinking” or “Reverse Engineering” described by evolutionary psychologists. Both AT and RE have significant problems. Instead, the best adaptationist work in the ESSs seems to be based on and is aiming at a different method that avoids the problems of AT and RE: it is a behavioral level method that starts with information about both (...) the trait in question and knowledge of the EEA. I describe some examples from the literature, and suggest how a behavioral level ESS might still contribute to the discovery and understanding of human psychology. Finally, I describe some remaining problems for adaptationist reasoning of this kind. (shrink)

In this paper I examine various ways in whichphilosophers have made connections between truth andnatural selection. I introduce several versions ofthe view that mechanisms of true belief generationarise as a result of natural selection and argue thatthey fail to establish a connection between truth andnatural selection. I then turn to scientific truthsand argue that evolutionary accounts of the origin ofscientific truth generation mechanisms also fail. Iintroduce David Hull's selectionist model ofscientific development and argue that his account ofscientific success does not (...) rely on connecting truthand natural selection. I argue that Hull's model,which severs the connection between truth andselection, can account for some aspects of scientificchange, but it still leaves us plenty of questionsabout what aspects of our individual cognitive make-upcontribute to scientific change and how they do so. I introduce an evolutionary approach to scientificcognition that shows how some of these questions canbe answered without making an explanatory appeal toselection for true belief generating mechanisms. (shrink)