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  1. Origins of the Qualitative Aspects of Consciousness: Evolutionary Answers to Chalmers' Hard Problem.Jonathan Y. Tsou - 2012 - In Liz Stillwaggon Swan (ed.), Origins of mind. New York: Springer. pp. 259--269.
    According to David Chalmers, the hard problem of consciousness consists of explaining how and why qualitative experience arises from physical states. Moreover, Chalmers argues that materialist and reductive explanations of mentality are incapable of addressing the hard problem. In this chapter, I suggest that Chalmers’ hard problem can be usefully distinguished into a ‘how question’ and ‘why question,’ and I argue that evolutionary biology has the resources to address the question of why qualitative experience arises from brain states. From this (...)
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  • Religion as an Evolutionary Byproduct: A Critique of the Standard Model.Russell Powell & Steve Clarke - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (3):457-486.
    The dominant view in the cognitive science of religion (the ‘Standard Model’) is that religious belief and behaviour are not adaptive traits but rather incidental byproducts of the cognitive architecture of mind. Because evidence for the Standard Model is inconclusive, the case for it depends crucially on its alleged methodological superiority to selectionist alternatives. However, we show that the Standard Model has both methodological and evidential disadvantages when compared with selectionist alternatives. We also consider a pluralistic approach, which holds that (...)
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  • Feminist Engagement with Evolutionary Psychology.Carla Fehr - 2012 - Hypatia 27 (1):50-72.
    In this paper, I ask feminist philosophers and science studies scholars to consider the goals of developing critical analyses of evolutionary psychology. These goals can include development of scholarship in feminist philosophy and science studies, mediation of the uptake of evolutionary psychology by other academic and lay communities, and improvement of the practices and products of evolutionary psychology itself. I evaluate ways that some practices of feminist philosophy and science studies facilitate or hinder meeting these goals, and consider the merits (...)
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  • The Homeopathy of Kin Selection: An Evaluation of van den Berghe’s Sociobiological Approach to Ethnic Nepotism.Ingo Brigandt - 2001 - Politics and the Life Sciences 20:203-215.
    The present discussion of sociobiological approaches to ethnic nepotism takes Pierre van den Berghe ʼs theory as a starting point. Two points, which have not been addressed in former analyses, are considered to be of particular importance. It is argued that the behavioral mechanism of ethnic nepotism—as understood by van den Berghe—cannot explain ethnic boundaries and attitudes. In addition, I show that van den Bergheʼs central premise concerning ethnic nepotism is in contradiction to Hamiltonʼs formula, the essential principle of kin (...)
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  • Evolutionary psychology, adaptation and design.Stephen M. Downes - 2014 - In Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre & Marc Silberstein (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer. pp. 659-673.
    I argue that Evolutionary Psychologists’ notion of adaptationism is closest to what Peter Godfrey-Smith (2001) calls explanatory adaptationism and as a result, is not a good organizing principle for research in the biology of human behavior. I also argue that adopting an alternate notion of adaptationism presents much more explanatory resources to the biology of human behavior. I proceed by introducing Evolutionary Psychology and giving some examples of alternative approaches to the biological explanation of human behavior. Next I characterize adaptation (...)
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  • Some recent developments in evolutionary approaches to the study of human cognition and behavior.Stephen M. Downes - 2001 - Biology and Philosophy 16 (5):575-94.
    In this paper I review some theoretical exchanges and empiricalresults from recent work on human behavior and cognition in thehope of indicating some productive avenues for critical engagement.I focus particular attention on methodological debates between Evolutionary Psychologists and behavioral ecologists. I argue for a broader and more encompassing approach to the evolutionarily based study of human behavior and cognition than either of these two rivals present.
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  • How to pursue the adaptationist program in psychology.Russil Durrant & Brian D. Haig - 2001 - Philosophical Psychology 14 (4):357 – 380.
    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 (...)
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  • Feminist Philosophy of Biology.Carla Fehr & Letitia Meynell - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Feminist philosophers of biology bring the tools of feminist theory, and in particular the tools of feminist philosophy of science, to investigations of the life sciences. While the critical examination of the categories of sex and gender (which will be explained below) takes a central place, the methods, ontological assumptions, and foundational concepts of biology more generally have also enjoyed considerable feminist scrutiny. Through such investigations, feminist philosophers of biology reveal the extent to which the theory and practice of particular (...)
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  • Visual adaptation and the purpose of perception.Ian Phillips & Chaz Firestone - 2023 - Analysis 83 (3):555-575.
    What is the purpose of perception? And how might the answer to this question help distinguish perception from other mental processes? Block’s landmark book, The.
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  • La deriva genética como fuerza evolutiva.Ariel Jonathan Roffé - 2015 - In J. Ahumada, N. Venturelli & S. Seno Chibeni (eds.), Selección de Trabajos del IX Encuentro AFHIC y las XXV Jornadas de Epistemología e Historia de la ciencia. pp. 615-626.
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  • (1 other version)Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?Subrena E. Smith - 2019 - Biological Theory 15 (1):39-49.
    In this article I argue that evolutionary psychological strategies for making inferences about present-day human psychology are methodologically unsound. Evolutionary psychology is committed to the view that the mind has an architecture that has been conserved since the Pleistocene, and that our psychology can be fruitfully understood in terms of the original, fitness-enhancing functions of these conserved psychological mechanisms. But for evolutionary psychological explanations to succeed, practitioners must be able to show that contemporary cognitive mechanisms correspond to those that were (...)
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  • (1 other version)How can Feminist Theories of Evidence Assist Clinical Reasoning and Decision-making?Maya J. Goldenberg - 2015 - Social Epistemology 29 (1):3-30.
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  • Sometimes an Orgasm is Just an Orgasm.Erika Lorraine Milam, Gillian R. Brown, Stefan Linquist, Steve Fuller & Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 2006 - Metascience 15 (3):399-435.
    I should like to offer my greatest thanks to Paul Griffiths for providing the opportunity for this exchange, and to commentators Gillian Brown, Steven Fuller, Stefan Linquist, and Erika Milam for their generous and thought-provoking comments. I shall do my best in this space to respond to some of their concerns.
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  • Prove it! The Burden of Proof Game in Science vs. Pseudoscience Disputes.Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (2):487-502.
    The concept of burden of proof is used in a wide range of discourses, from philosophy to law, science, skepticism, and even in everyday reasoning. This paper provides an analysis of the proper deployment of burden of proof, focusing in particular on skeptical discussions of pseudoscience and the paranormal, where burden of proof assignments are most poignant and relatively clear-cut. We argue that burden of proof is often misapplied or used as a mere rhetorical gambit, with little appreciation of the (...)
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  • (1 other version)How can Feminist Theories of Evidence Assist Clinical Reasoning and Decision-Making?Maya J. Goldenberg - 2013 - Social Epistemology (TBA):1-28.
    While most of healthcare research and practice fully endorses evidence-based healthcare, a minority view borrows popular themes from philosophy of science like underdetermination and value-ladenness to question the legitimacy of the evidence-based movement’s philosophical underpinnings. While the feminist origins go unacknowledged, those critics adopt a feminist reading of the “gap argument” to challenge the perceived objectivism of evidence-based practice. From there, the critics seem to despair over the “subjective elements” that values introduce to clinical reasoning, demonstrating that they do not (...)
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  • An Evidence-Based Study of the Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences.Edouard Machery & Kara Cohen - 2012 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (1):177-226.
    The disagreement between philosophers about the scientific worth of the evolutionary behavioral sciences (evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, etc.) is in part due to the fact that critics and advocates of these sciences characterize them very differently. In this article, by analyzing quantitatively the citations made in the articles published in Evolution & Human Behavior between January 2000 and December 2002, we provide some evidence that undermines the characterization of the evolutionary behavioral sciences put forward by their critics.
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  • Function and functionalism: A synthetic perspective.Martin Mahner & Mario Bunge - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (1):75-94.
    In this paper we examine the following problems: How many concepts of function are there in biology, social science, and technology? Are they logically related and if so, how? Which of these function concepts effect a functional explanation as opposed to a mere functional account? What are the consequences of a pluralist view of functions for functionalism? We submit that there are five concepts of function in biology, which are logically related in a particular way, and six function concepts in (...)
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  • More Thumbs Than Rules: Is Rationality an Exaptation?Antonio Mastrogiorgio, Teppo Felin, Stuart Kauffman & Mariano Mastrogiorgio - 2022 - Frontiers in Psychology 13.
    The literatures on bounded and ecological rationality are built on adaptationism—and its associated modular, cognitivist and computational paradigm—that does not address or explain the evolutionary origins of rationality. We argue that the adaptive mechanisms of evolution are not sufficient for explaining human rationality, and we posit that human rationality presents exaptive origins, where exaptations are traits evolved for other functions or no function at all, and later co-opted for new uses. We propose an embodied reconceptualization of rationality—embodied rationality—based on the (...)
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  • Philosophy of Psychiatry.Jonathan Y. Tsou - 2021 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the DSM's (...)
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  • Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences.Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre & Marc Silberstein (eds.) - 2014 - Springer.
    The Darwinian theory of evolution is itself evolving and this book presents the details of the core of modern Darwinism and its latest developmental directions. The authors present current scientific work addressing theoretical problems and challenges in four sections, beginning with the concepts of evolution theory, its processes of variation, heredity, selection, adaptation and function, and its patterns of character, species, descent and life. The second part of this book scrutinizes Darwinism in the philosophy of science and its usefulness in (...)
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  • Making Sense of the Relationship Between Adaptive Thinking and Heuristics in Evolutionary Psychology.Shunkichi Matsumoto - 2021 - Biological Theory 16 (1):16-29.
    In recent years, quite a few evolutionary psychologists have come to embrace a heuristic interpretation of the discipline. They claim that, no matter how methodologically incomplete, adaptive thinking works fine as a good heuristic that effectively reduces the hypothesis space by generating novel and promising hypotheses that can eventually be empirically tested. The purpose of this article is to elucidate the use of heuristics in evolutionary psychology, thereby clarifying the role adaptive thinking has to play. To that end, two typical (...)
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  • New religious movements and quasi-religion: Cognitive science of religion at the margins.Alastair Lockhart - 2020 - Archive for the Psychology of Religion 42 (1):101-122.
    The article offers a critical analysis of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) as applied to new and quasi-religious movements, and uncovers implicit conceptual and theoretical commitments of the approach. A discussion of CSR’s application to new religious movement (NRM) case studies (charismatic leadership, paradise representations, Aḥmadiyya, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) identifies concerns about the theorized relationship between CSR and wider socio-cultural factors, and proposals for CSR’s implication in wider processes are discussed. The main discussion analyses three (...)
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  • (1 other version)Evolutionary Psychology.Stephen M. Downes - 2014 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This is an updated version of my Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Evolutionary Psychology. The 2018 version contains a new section on Human Nature as well as some new material on recent developments in Evolutionary Psychology.
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  • Knowledge: Genuine and Bogus.Mario Bunge - 2011 - Science & Education 20 (5-6):411-438.
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  • Genes, interactions, and the development of behavior.Timothy D. Johnston & Laura Edwards - 2002 - Psychological Review 109 (1):26-34.
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  • Cultural Evolutionary Psychology as Generalization by Recursion.Karim Baraghith & Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla - forthcoming - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie:1-20.
    Cultural evolutionary psychology (CEP) accounts for the cultural evolution of cognition. It is based on evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory and aims at a synthetic attempt which is achieved by what we want to call ‘generalization by recursion’. We argue in this paper that the evolutionary psychology program as a whole could greatly benefit from CEP’s generalization. As we will show, there is one theoretical element in particular, that CEP relevantly generalizes in contrast to its predecessors. It comes from (...)
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  • (1 other version)Evolutionary Psychology.Stephen M. Downes - 2016 - In Lee C. McIntyre & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 330-339.
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  • Rational adaptation under task and processing constraints: Implications for testing theories of cognition and action.Andrew Howes, Richard L. Lewis & Alonso Vera - 2009 - Psychological Review 116 (4):717-751.
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  • Adaptationism.Steven Hecht Orzack - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • The Functional Perspective of Organismal Biology.Arno Wouters - 2005 - In Thomas A. C. Reydon & Lia Hemerik (eds.), Current Themes in Theoretical Biology : A Dutch Perspective. Springer. pp. 33--69.
    Following Mayr (1961) evolutionary biologists often maintain that the hallmark of biology is its evolutionary perspective. In this view, biologists distinguish themselves from other natural scientists by their emphasis on why-questions. Why-questions are legitimate in biology but not in other natural sciences because of the selective character of the process by means of which living objects acquire their characteristics. For that reason, why-questions should be answered in terms of natural selection. Functional biology is seen as a reductionist science that applies (...)
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  • (1 other version)Historical evidence and human adaptations.Jonathan Kaplan - 2002 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 69:S294-S304.
    Phylogenetic information is often necessary to distinguish between evolutionary scenarios. Recently, some prominent proponents of evolutionary psychology have acknowledged this, and have claimed that such evidence has in fact been brought to bear on adaptive hypotheses involving complex human psychological traits. Were this possible, it would be a valuable source of evidence regarding hypothesized adaptive traits in humans. However, the structure of the Hominidae family makes this difficult or impossible. For many traits of interest, the closest extant relatives to the (...)
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  • Integrating the multiple biological causes of human behavior.Stephen M. Downes - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (1):177-190.
    I introduce a range of examples of different causal hypotheses about human mate selection. The hypotheses I focus on come from evolutionary psychology, fluctuating asymmetry research and chemical signaling research. I argue that a major obstacle facing an integrated biology of human behavior is the lack of a causal framework that shows how multiple proximate causal mechanisms can act together to produce components of our behavior.
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  • The end of the world as we know it: an analysis of evolutionary and cultural factors which may reduce future human survival.A. Saniotis & M. Henneberg - 2014 - Global Bioethics 25 (2):95-102.
    At present, various national populations are now at different stages of the demographic transition. This transition may have far-ranging consequences for future humans. With the envisaged artificial support for human life, the significance of these non-metabolic processes may increase. Though the Earth is a thermodynamically open system receiving energy from the universe, the amount of energy flow is limited and the way its flow is structured on the globe restricts human development. Therefore, the future relationship between human population and the (...)
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  • (1 other version)Historical Evidence and Human Adaptations.Jonathan Michael Kaplan - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S294-S304.
    Phylogenetic information is often necessary to distinguish between evolutionary scenarios. Recently, some prominent proponents of evolutionary psychology have acknowledged this, and have claimed that such evidence has in fact been brought to bear on adaptive hypotheses involving complex human psychological traits. Were this possible, it would be a valuable source of evidence regarding hypothesized adaptive traits in humans. However, the structure of the Hominidae family makes this difficult or impossible. For many traits of interest, the closest extant relatives to the (...)
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  • Adaptationism and adaptive thinking in evolutionary psychology.Matthew Rellihan - 2012 - Philosophical Psychology 25 (2):245-277.
    Evolutionary psychologists attempt to infer our evolved psychology from the selection pressures present in our ancestral environments. Their use of this inference strategy—often called “adaptive thinking”—is thought to be justified by way of appeal to a rather modest form of adaptationism, according to which the mind's adaptive complexity reveals it to be a product of selection. I argue, on the contrary, that the mind's being an adaptation is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for the validity of adaptive (...)
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  • Evolutionary Psychology: 'New Science of the Mind' or 'Darwinian Fundamentalism'?Viren Swami - 2007 - Historical Materialism 15 (4):105-136.
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  • A Practical and Practice-Sensitive Account of Science as Problem-Solving.Frédéric-Ismaël Banville - unknown
    Philosophers of science have recently begun to pay more attention to scientific practice, moving away from the discipline’s focus on theories. The creation of the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice in 2006, as well as the emergence of scholarship on experimental practice (e.g. Sullivan 2009; 2010; 2016) as well as on the tools scientists use to construct explanations and theories (e.g. Feest 2011) all point to a disciplinary shift towards a more practice-conscious philosophy of science. In addition, scholars (...)
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  • Constant factors and hedgeless Hedges: On heuristics and biases developmental biology.Jason Scott Robert - unknown
    How does a complex organism develop from a relatively simple, homogeneous mass? The usual answer is: through the execution of species-specific genetic instructions specifying the development of that organism. Commentators are sometimes sceptical of this usual answer, but of course not all commentators. Some biologists refer to master control genes responsible for the activation of all the genes responsible for every aspect of organismal development; and some philosophers, most notoriously Rosenberg, buy this claim hook, line, and sinker. Here I explore (...)
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