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 (...) lapses in scientific reasoning and justificatory warrant. By articulating this error type at a general level, we hope to raise awareness of this pervasive error type and to facilitate critiques of claims that appeal to what is “natural” as inevitable or unchangeable. (shrink)

One of the least explored areas of C.S. Peirce's wide range of work is his contributions to psychology and the philosophy of mind. This dissertation examines the corpus of this work, especially as it relates to the subjects of mind, habit, instinct, sentiment, emotion, perception, consciousness, cognition, and community. The argument is that Peirce's contributions to these areas of investigation were both highly original and heavily influenced by the main intellectual currents of his time. An effort has been made to (...) present Peirce's philosophy without apology, within the conceptual framework and idiom of its time, and without appeal to a comprehensive view that Peirce never articulated. Nevertheless, as several noted interpreters have argued, much of this work can be viewed through the lens of Peirce's innovative theory of signs and the notion of the semiotic triad as its central unifying feature, despite the fact that the general theory was itself under continuous refinement and remained incomplete at the time of his death. Another hermeneutical device employed is William James' better known and more accessible work which, when juxtaposed with Peirce's ideas, serves to bring them into sharper relief. While general and historical in the presentation of material, this study seeks, at the same time, to engage the criticism of contemporary Peirce scholars in an attempt to account for several of the conundrums inherent in Peirce's work. Among the problems with implications for his philosophy of mind and theory of inquiry are the limitations of his theory of continuity, his negative view of the self, his somewhat ambiguous position on the relation of psychology to logic, and the metaethical puzzle arising from application of his theory of probable inference to truly fateful decisions. These problems provide an interesting perspective and lend balance to the truly insightful contributions Peirce made to the discovery of the mind. (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)

In this dissertation, I address the question of how to construct scientific theories of emotions that are both conceptually sound and empirically fruitful. To do this, I offer an analysis of the main challenges scientific theories of emotions face, and I propose a meta-theoretical framework to construct scientific concepts of emotions as explications of folk emotion concepts. Part I discusses the main challenges theories of emotions in psychology and neuroscience encounter. The first states that a proper scientific theory of emotions (...) must explain all and only the phenomena under the vernacular term ‘emotion’ with a common set of conceptual resources and under an overarching generic concept of emotion. The second demands that each emotion category corresponds to well-coordinated sets of neural, physiological, and behavioral patterns of responses. I argue that none of the best contemporary theories of emotions in psychology and neuroscience overcomes these challenges. As a result, a new theory of emotions is required. In Part II, I develop the meta-theoretical framework to construct a theory of emotions that overcomes the challenges above. First, I propose a pluralistic account of scientific kinds based on different patterns of projection that various disciplines may take to justify inductive inferences. These are essentialist, historical, and social patterns. Each of these patterns provides a framework to construct different types of scientific concepts. I argue that among the frameworks for scientific kinds available, the one that is best suited to explicate emotion concepts is a functional framework. Consequently, I conclude by recommending scientists pursue functionalist theories of emotions over essentialist, historical, or social theories. (shrink)

Although the main focus of Hume’s career was in the humanities, his work also has an observable role in the historical development of natural sciences after his time. To show this, I shall center on the relation between Hume and two major figures in the history of the natural sciences: Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955). Both of these scientists read Hume. They also found parts of Hume’s work useful to their sciences. Inquiring into the relations between Hume and (...) the two scientists shows that his philosophical positions had a partial but constructive role in the formation of modern biology and physics. This is accordingly a clear indication of Hume’s impact on the scientific tradition. Before proceeding to analyze Hume’s contribution to the history of science, it is important to address his broader role in the history of philosophy of science. Hume’s discussions concerning the topics of causation, induction, the distinction between mathematical and empirical propositions, and laws of nature have been important for the philosophy of science of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)

In his book The descent of man , Charles Darwin paid tribute to a trio of writers who offered naturalistic explanations of the origin of language. Darwin’s concurrence with these figures was limited, however, because each of them denied some aspect of his thesis that the evolution of language had been coeval with and essential to the emergence of humanity’s characteristic mental traits. Darwin first sketched out this thesis in his theoretical notebooks of the 1830s and then clarified his position (...) in Descent, where he argued that mind–language coevolution had occurred prior to the rise of distinct racial groups. He thus opposed the view of August Schleicher and Ernst Haeckel, who taught that speech had originated subsequent to the geographical and racial dispersion of humanity’s ancestors. As Darwin argued in Descent, this quasi-polygenetic version of coevolution was unable to explain primeval man’s initial dominance over rival ape-like populations. Drawing inspiration from British anthropologists, Darwin made the early development of language, hence mental monogenesis, central to his account of human evolution. (shrink)

The playback experiment -- the playing back of recorded animal sounds to the animals in order to observe their responses -- has twice become central to celebrated researches on non-human primates. First, in the years around 1890, Richard Garner, an amateur scientist and evolutionary enthusiast, used the new wax cylinder phonograph to record and reproduce monkey utterances with the aim of translating them. Second, in the years around 1980, the ethologists Peter Marler, Robert Seyfarth, and Dorothy Cheney used tape recorders (...) in a broadly similar way to test whether the different predator calls of one monkey species, vervet monkeys, warn about different kinds of predator. This paper explores the circumstances leading to the ca. 1890 invention and the ca. 1980 reinvention of the primate playback experiment. In both instances, I show, the experiment served as a riposte to those arguing, on scientific grounds, that an unbridgeable gap divides human language from animal communication. I also consider how far progress in technology explains the timing of invention and reinvention. I conclude with some reflections on sifting contingent from inevitable aspects of the history of the primate playback experiment, and of scientific achievements more generally. (shrink)

Our paper aims at bringing to the fore the crucial role that habits play in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection. We have organized the paper in two steps: first, we analyse value and functions of the concept of habit in Darwin's early works, notably in his Notebooks, and compare these views to his mature understanding of the concept in the Origin of Species and later works; second, we discuss Darwin’s ideas on habits in the light (...) of today’s theories of epigenetic inheritance, which describe the way in which the functioning and expression of genes is modified by the environment, and how these modifications are transmitted over generations. We argue that Darwin’s lasting and multifaceted interest in the notion of habit, throughout his intellectual life, is both conceptually and methodologically relevant. From a conceptual point of view, intriguing similarities can be found between Darwin’s (early) conception of habit and contemporary views on epigenetic inheritance. From a methodological point of view, we suggest that Darwin’s plastic approach to habits, from his early writings up to the mature works, can provide today’s evolutionary scientists with a viable methodological model to address the challenging task of extending and expanding evolutionary theory, with particular reference to the integration of epigenetic mechanisms into existing models of evolutionary change. Over his entire life Darwin has modified and reassessed his views on habits as many times as required by evidence: his work on this notion may represent the paradigm of a habit of good scientific research methodology. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how James Mark Baldwin’s theory of Organic Selection can be fruitfully integrated with Alfred North Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, as part of the endeavor to develop a comprehensive process-relational evolutionary cosmology. In so doing, it provides an overview of the theory of Organic Selection and points to several concrete examples from the Galapagos Islands which elucidate Baldwin’s claim that organisms, through their selective activities and behavioral adjustments, play a causal role in directing evolutionary (...) processes. I emphasize some of the affinities between Baldwin’s theory of Organic Selection and Whitehead’s theory of prehensions, especially focusing on the latter’s notion of “prehensive selectivity.” Overall, while Baldwin’s theory of Organic Selection provides a biological ground for a comprehensive process-relational evolutionary cosmology to be developed, illuminating the importance of Whitehead’s theory of prehensions for evolutionary theory, Whitehead’s overall speculative scheme can, in turn, strengthen the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical foundations of Baldwin’s theory. In the course of merging the two views, I arrive at an enlarged conception of Organic Selection, placing it in context with Darwin’s principle of Natural Selection. At the end of the paper, I take up the resulting question of the ethics of selectivity in general, arguing that the merger of Baldwin’s and Whitehead’s ideas constitutes a “non-reductionistic critical pan-selectionism.” This position stands in contrast to the antagonistic standpoints of “Selectionism” and “Anti-Selectionism” in the ongoing debates over the ethical dimensions of Darwinian evolution. (shrink)

Regarding the epistemological borderlines between science and philosophy, this article approaches the human mind and ethics from biological and philosophical theories. For this purpose, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection provides a scientific foundation to understand the human mind and ethics. However, not only Charles Darwin has studied mental faculties and ethics, this is also a topic researched by eminent contemporary paleontologists and biologists. Prior to modern biology, going back to Greek philosophy, philosophers have traditionally studied the human (...) mind and ethics, separating human beings and the rest of nature ontologically. Following modern biology, the philosopher Hans Jonas has developed a philosophical biology from the perspective of hermeneutical phenomenology to understand life. With the help of his hermeneutical phenomenology, Jonas has presented an ontological theory of organism-metabolism to understand the phenomenon of life from simple living beings to the human mind in relation to nature, based on the body. Recently, the evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala has proposed a coherent scientific and philosophical theory about biological and cultural roots for ethics, considering the evolution of human mental and intellectual capacities and the three conditions for ethical behavior as a part of human intellectual capacity, which scientifically complements and informs Hans Jonas’s philosophical biology and ethics of responsibility. (shrink)

Este artículo testa la generalizada aceptación experta que detecta en _Journal of Researches _de Darwin una influencia estilístico-ideológica proveniente de las obras de Humboldt. Para ello, dado que las descripciones de la naturaleza Humboldt y Darwin deberían contener implícita la concepción de la naturaleza de cada autor, se han analizado comparativamente pasajes dedicados al análisis descriptivo del influjo del paso del tiempo sobre el paisaje geológico en _Journal _y en _Ansichten der Natur _de Humboldt. Se demuestra así que la descripción (...) de la percepción humboldtiana del tiempo deja entrever una concepción de la naturaleza romántico-naturalista que asume el tiempo y su influjo en la naturaleza como objeto estético. Por contra, a la descripción de la percepción darwiniana del tiempo subyace una concepción científico-naturalista que utiliza el concepto del tiempo como herramienta especulativa para el análisis científico del paisaje geológico. (shrink)