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  1. The freedom we mean: A causal independence account of creativity and academic freedom.Maria Kronfeldner - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-23.
    Academic freedom has often been defended in a progressivist manner: without academic freedom, creativity would be in peril, and with it the advancement of knowledge, i.e. the epistemic progress in science. In this paper, I want to critically discuss the limits of such a progressivist defense of academic freedom, also known under the label ‘argument from truth.’ The critique is offered, however, with a constructive goal in mind, namely to offer an alternative account that connects creativity and academic freedom in (...)
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  • A soul of truth in things erroneous: Popper’s “amateurish” evolutionary philosophy in light of contemporary biology.Davide Vecchi & Lorenzo Baravalle - 2015 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 36 (4):525-545.
    This paper will critically assess Popper’s evolutionary philosophy. There exists a rich literature on the topic with which we have many reservations. We believe that Popper’s evolutionary philosophy should be assessed in light of the intriguing theoretical insights offered, during the last 10 years or so, by the philosophy of biology, evolutionary biology and molecular biology. We will argue that, when analysed in this manner, Popper’s ideas concerning the nature of selection, Lamarckism and the theoretical limits of neo-Darwinism can be (...)
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  • When will a Darwinian approach be useful for the study of society?Samuel Bagg - 2017 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (3):259-281.
    In recent years, some have claimed that a Darwinian perspective will revolutionize the study of human society and culture. This project is viewed with disdain and suspicion, on the other hand, by many practicing social scientists. This article seeks to clear the air in this heated debate by dissociating two claims that are too often assumed to be inseparable. The first is the ‘ontological’ claim that Darwinian principles apply, at some level of abstraction, to human society and culture. The second (...)
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  • (1 other version)Investigating how cultural transmission leads to the appearance of design without a designer in human communication systems.Hannah Cornish - 2010 - Interaction Studies 11 (1):112-137.
    Recent work on the emergence and evolution of human communication has focused on getting novel systems to evolve from scratch in the laboratory. Many of these studies have adopted an interactive construction approach, whereby pairs of participants repeatedly interact with one another to gradually develop their own communication system whilst engaged in some shared task. This paper describes four recent studies that take a different approach, showing how adaptive structure can emerge purely as a result of cultural transmission through single (...)
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  • (1 other version)Darwinism and Meaning.Lonnie W. Aarssen - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (4):296-311.
    Darwinism presents a paradox. It discredits the notion that one’s life has any intrinsic meaning, yet it predicts that we are designed by Darwinian natural selection to generally insist that it must—and so necessarily designed to misunderstand and doubt Darwinism. The implications of this paradox are explored here, including the question of where then does the Darwinist find meaning in life? The main source, it is proposed, is from cognitive domains for meaning inherited from sentient ancestors—domains that reveal our evolved (...)
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  • A Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can promote an evolutionary synthesis for the social sciences.Alex Mesoudi - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (3):263-275.
    The evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s integrated the study of biological microevolution and biological macroevolution into the theoretically consistent and hugely productive field of evolutionary biology. A similar synthesis has yet to occur for the study of culture, and the social sciences remain fragmented and theoretically incompatible. Here, it is suggested that a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can promote such a synthesis. Earlier non-Darwinian theories of cultural evolution, such as progress theories, lacked key elements of a Darwinian (...)
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  • Darwinian 'blind' hypothesis formation revisited.Maria E. Kronfeldner - 2010 - Synthese 175 (2):193--218.
    Over the last four decades arguments for and against the claim that creative hypothesis formation is based on Darwinian ‘blind’ variation have been put forward. This paper offers a new and systematic route through this long-lasting debate. It distinguishes between undirected, random, and unjustified variation, to prevent widespread confusions regarding the meaning of undirected variation. These misunderstandings concern Lamarckism, equiprobability, developmental constraints, and creative hypothesis formation. The paper then introduces and develops the standard critique that creative hypothesis formation is guided (...)
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  • Human domestication and the roles of human agency in human evolution.Lorenzo Del Savio & Matteo Mameli - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (2):1-25.
    Are humans a domesticated species? How is this issue related to debates on the roles of human agency in human evolution? This article discusses four views on human domestication: Darwin’s view; the view of those who link human domestication to anthropogenic niche construction and, more specifically, to sedentism; the view of those who link human domestication to selection against aggression and the domestication syndrome; and a novel view according to which human domestication can be conceived of in terms of a (...)
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  • (1 other version)Darwinism and Meaning.Lonnie W. Aarssen - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (4):296-311.
    Darwinism presents a paradox. It discredits the notion that one’s life has any intrinsic meaning, yet it predicts that we are designed by Darwinian natural selection to generally insist that it must—and so necessarily designed to misunderstand and doubt Darwinism. The implications of this paradox are explored here, including the question of where then does the Darwinist find meaning in life? The main source, it is proposed, is from cognitive domains for meaning inherited from sentient ancestors—domains that reveal our evolved (...)
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  • Convergent cultural evolution may explain linguistic universals.Christine A. Caldwell - 2008 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5):515-516.
    Christiansen & Chater's (C&C's) argument rests on an assumption that convergent cultural evolution can produce similar (complex) behaviours in isolated populations. In this commentary, I describe how experiments recently carried out by Caldwell and colleagues can contribute to the understanding of such phenomena.
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  • Is Cultural Fitness Hopelessly Confused?Grant Ramsey & Andreas De Block - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (2).
    Fitness is a central concept in evolutionary theory. Just as it is central to biological evolution, so, it seems, it should be central to cultural evolutionary theory. But importing the biological fitness concept to CET is no straightforward task—there are many features unique to cultural evolution that make this difficult. This has led some theorists to argue that there are fundamental problems with cultural fitness that render it hopelessly confused. In this essay, we defend the coherency of cultural fitness against (...)
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  • Darwinism Extended: A Survey of How the Idea of Cultural Evolution Evolved.Chris Buskes - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (3):661-691.
    In the past 150 years there have been many attempts to draw parallels between cultural and biological evolution. Most of these attempts were flawed due to lack of knowledge and false ideas about evolution. In recent decades these shortcomings have been cleared away, thus triggering a renewed interest in the subject. This paper offers a critical survey of the main issues and arguments in that discussion. The paper starts with an explication of the Darwinian algorithm of evolution. It is argued (...)
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  • Contingency, novelty and choice. Cultural evolution as internal selection.Bernd Baldus - 2015 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 45 (2):214-237.
    Sociological, economic and evolutionary paradigms of human agency have often seen social agents either as the rational controllers of their fate or as marionettes on the strings of historical, functional or adaptive necessity. They found it therefore difficult to account for the variability, intentionality and creativity of human behaviour and for its frequently redundant or harmful results. This paper argues that human agency is a product of evolution, but that genetic variation and inheritance can only provide a limited explanation of (...)
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