The third edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with extensive new material including new chapters and new contributors.

Creationists have acquired a more sophisticated intellectual arsenal. This book reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. Creationism is no longer the simple notion it once was taken to be. Its new advocates have become more sophisticated in how they present their views, speaking of "intelligent design" rather than "creation science" and aiming their arguments against the naturalistic philosophical method that underlies science, proposing to replace it with a "theistic science." The creationism controversy is not just about the status of Darwinian (...) evolution—it is a clash of religious and philosophical worldviews, for a common underlying fear among Creationists is that evolution undermines both the basis of morality as they understand it and the possibility of purpose in life. In Tower of Babel, philosopher Robert T. Pennock compares the views of the new creationists with those of the old and reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. One of Pennock's major innovations is to turn from biological evolution to the less charged subject of linguistic evolution, which has strong theoretical parallels with biological evolution, both in content and in the sort of evidence scientists use to draw conclusions about origins. Of course, an evolutionary view of language does conflict with the Bible, which says that God created the variety of languages at one time as punishment for the Tower of Babel. Several chapters deal with the work of Phillip Johnson, a highly influential leader of the new Creationists. Against his and other views, Pennock explains how science uses naturalism and discusses the relationship between factual and moral issues in the creationism-evolution controversy. The book also includes a discussion of Darwin's own shift from creationist to evolutionist and an extended argument for keeping private religious beliefs separate from public scientific knowledge. (shrink)

An anthology of writings by proponents and critics of intelligent design creationism.

Shoot an arrow at a wall, and then paint a target around it so that the arrow sticks squarely in the bull's eye. Alternatively, paint a fixed target on a wall, and then shoot an arrow so that it sticks squarely in the bull's eye. How do these situations differ? In both instances the precise place where the arrow lands is highly improbable. Yet in the one, one can do no better than attribute the arrow's landing to chance, whereas in (...) the other one rightly attributes the arrow's landing to the archer's skill. ;Highly improbable events occur all the time, and by themselves may legitimately be attributed to chance. Yet when an event also conforms to a pattern given independently of that event , one rightly refuses to attribute the event to chance. Patterns given independently of events are called specifications. This dissertation explicates the relation of independence between specification and event, and sets precise bounds on what may count as a probability small enough to eliminate chance. Although this dissertation connects with how statistics eliminates chance, it considerably extends and clarifies the range of application for chance-elimination arguments based on small probabilities. ;The dual notions of specification and small probability together help justify a regulative principle of probability called the Law of Small Probability, which asserts that specified events of small probability do not occur by chance. This principle engenders a form of inference called the design inference, and a mode of explanation called design. To infer design in explaining an event is to eliminate decisively explanations of that event which appeal to law-like regularities or chance. (shrink)

As every philosopher knows, “the design argument” concludes that God exists from premisses that cite the adaptive complexity of organisms or the lawfulness and orderliness of the whole universe. Since 1859, it has formed the intellectual heart of creationist opposition to the Darwinian hypothesis that organisms evolved their adaptive features by the mindless process of natural selection. Although the design argument developed as a defense of theism, the logic of the argument in fact encompasses a larger set of issues. William (...) Paley saw clearly that we sometimes have an excellent reason to postulate the existence of an intelligent designer. If we find a watch on the heath, we reasonably infer that it was produced by an intelligent watchmaker. This design argument makes perfect sense. Why is it any different to claim that the eye was produced by an intelligent designer? Both critics and defenders of the design argument need to understand what the ground rules are for inferring that an intelligent designer is the unseen cause of an observed effect. (shrink)

THE MORAL ANIMAL examines the significance of this extraordinary shift in our perception of morality and what it means to be human. Taking the life of Charles Darwin as his context, Robert Wright brilliantly demonstrates how Darwin's ideas have stood the test of time, drawing startling conclusions about the structure of some of our most basic preoccupations. Why do we commit adultery, express suicidal tendencies and have the capacity for self-deception? Wright not only provides the answers to such fundamental moral (...) questions from the perspective of evolutionary psychology but challenges us to see ourselves anew through the clarifying lens of this fledgling and exciting science. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology purports to explain human capacities as adaptations to an ancestral environment. A complete explanation of human language or human reasoning as adaptations depends on assessing an historical claim, that these capacities evolved under the pressure of natural selection and are prevalent because they provided systematic advantages to our ancestors. An outline of the character of the information needed in order to offer complete adaptation explanations is drawn from Robert Brandon (1990), and explanations offered for the evolution of language (...) and reasoning within evolutionary psychology are evaluated. Pinker and Bloom's (1992) defense of human language as an adaptation for verbal communication, Robert Nozick's (1993) account of the evolutionary origin of rationality, and Cosmides and Tooby's (1992) explanation of human reasoning as an adaptation for social exchange, are discussed in light of what is known, and what is not known, about the history of human evolution. In each case, though a plausible case is made that these capacities are adaptations, there is not enough known to offer even a semblance of an explanation of the origin of these capacities. These explanations of the origin of human thought and language are simply speculations lacking the kind of detailed historical information required for an evolutionary explanation of an adaptation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify and critically assess the methods of evolutionary psychology, and offer a sketch of an alternative methodology. My thesis is threefold. (1) The methods of inquiry unique to evolutionary psychology rest upon the claim that the discovery of theadaptive functions of ancestral psychological capacities leads to the discovery of thepsychological functions of those ancestral capacities. (2) But this claim is false; in fact, just the opposite is true. We first must discover the psychological (...) functions of our psychological capacities in order to discover their adaptive functions. Hence the methods distinctive of evolutionary psychology are idle in our search for the mechanisms of the mind. (3) There are good reasons for preferring an alternative to the methods of evolutionary psychology, an alternative that aims to discover the functions of our psychological capacities by appeal to the concept of awhole psychology. (shrink)