In his recent book Warranted Christian Belief (2000), Alvin Plantinga argues that the defender of naturalistic evolution is faced with adefeater for his position: as products of naturalistic evolution, we have no way of knowing if our cognitive faculties are in fact reliably aimed at the truth. This defeater is successfully avoided by the theist in that, given theism, we can be reasonably secure that out cognitive faculties are indeed reliable. I argue that Plantinga’s argument is (...) ultimately based on a faulty comparison, that he is comparing naturalistic evolution generally to one particular model of theism. In light of this analysis, the two models either stand or fall together with respect to the defeater that Plantinga offers. (shrink)

Drawing on the contributions of logical positivism and the socio-historical perspective in the philosophy of science, I advocate the thesis of the empirical equivalence between metaphysical theistic and naturalistic interpretations of the evolutionary process. This process, defined by the variability of life forms on Earth, primarily occurs through natural selection and genetic mutations. Highlighting the shared aspects of the anti-naturalist arguments put forward by Clive S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga, I propose that these arguments support the view that a (...) theistic interpretation of evolution is more rational than a naturalistic one. This is because naturalistic evolutionism encounters the problem of its own credibility, as it calls into question the reliability of our cognitive faculties. In contrast, theistic interpretations of evolution are more compatible with the reliability of our cognitive faculties. ---------------------------------------- Zgłoszono: 23/07/2025. Zrecenzowano: 25/08/2025. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 9/10/2025. (shrink)

Biologists and historians often present natural history and molecular biology as distinct, perhaps conflicting, fields in biological research. Such accounts, although supported by abundant evidence, overlook important areas of overlap between these areas. Focusing upon examples drawn particularly from systematics and molecular evolution, I argue that naturalists and molecular biologists often share questions, methods, and forms of explanation. Acknowledging these interdisciplinary efforts provides a more balanced account of the development of biology during the post-World War II era.

After the theory of evolution was put forward by Charles Darwin, it has been interpreted in terms of different philosophical paradigms. The most important of these interpretations stand out as the intelligent designers and the naturalist school, which represent two separate poles. The intelligent design school claims that the process of existence of living things depends on very special and sensitive variables, and that this sensitive process is too complex to be explained by naturalistic reasons, and that the (...) theory of evolution was designed only by a supernatural, transcendent power. The naturalist school, on the other hand, claims that the evolution process can only be explained by natural causes and therefore there will be no need for a transcendental power. Biologist Richard Dawkins, one of the most important representatives of the naturalist school, tries to show how evolution can be explained by natural causes, based on the concept of natural selection introduced with the theory of evolution. In this research, we focused on how Dawkins explained the theory of evolution from a naturalistic perspective and examined the consistency of his conclusion on the axis of the naturalistic school paradigm that Dawkins followed. By presenting Dawkins' theory of evolution from a naturalist perspective, the position of the theory of evolution, which stands out as a scientific theory, on theological and metaphysical phenomena will be understood. At the same time, the way the naturalistic paradigm deals with scientific phenomena will be explained, based on the example of the theory of evolution. (shrink)

This book provides a fresh look at one of the most enduring, absorbing, and universal questions human beings face: What happens to us after we die? In secular thought, the standard answer is simple: we disappear into oblivion. David Harmon takes us in a different direction, by making the case that a nonconscious portion of our personality survives death-literally, not figuratively-and explains how this kind of naturalistic afterlife can be emotionally relevant to us while we are still living. Combining (...) insights from the arts, history, philosophy, and science, a compelling argument takes shape for an afterlife without God.. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr''s scientific career continues strongly 70 years after he published his first scientific paper in 1923. He is primarily a naturalist and ornithologist which has influenced his basic approach in science and later in philosophy and history of science. Mayr studied at the Natural History Museum in Berlin with Professor E. Stresemann, a leader in the most progressive school of avian systematics of the time. The contracts gained through Stresemann were central to Mayr''s participation in a three year expedition (...) to New Guinea and The Solomons, and the offer of a position in the Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, beginning in 1931. At the AMNH, Mayr was able to blend the best of the academic traditions of Europe with those of North America in developing a unified research program in biodiversity embracing systematics, biogeography and nomenclature. His tasks at the AMNH were to curate and study the huge collections amassed by the Whitney South Sea Expedition plus the just purchased Rothschild collection of birds. These studies provided Mayr with the empirical foundation essential for his 1942Systematics and the Origin of Species and his subsequent theoretical work in evolutionary biology as well as all his later work in the philosophy and history of science. Without a detailed understanding of Mayr''s empirical systematic and biogeographic work, one cannot possibly comprehend fully his immense contributions to evolutionary biology and his later analyses in the philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

What does a naturalistic epistemologist do? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9531-7 Authors William F. Harms, Humanities and Social Sciences, Seattle Central Community College, 1701 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122-9905, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This paper discusses a wide range of anti-naturalistic argument from reason due to Balfour, Haldane, Joad, Lewis, Taylor, Moreland, Plantinga, Reppert, and Hasker. I argue that none of these arguments poses a serious challenge to naturalists who are identity theorists. Further, I argue that some of these arguments do not even pose prima facie plausible challenges to naturalism. In the concluding part of my discussion, I draw attention to some distinctive differences between Hasker’s anti-naturalistic arguments and the other (...) anti-naturalistic arguments mentioned above. (shrink)

Cultural evolution, producing group‐level adaptations, is more problematic than the cultural evolution of individually confirmable skills, but it probably has occurred. The “conformist transmission,” described by Boyd and Richerson (1985), leads local social units to become homogeneous in anadaptive, as well as adaptive, beliefs. The resulting intragroup homogeneity and inter‐group heterogeneity makes possible a cultural selection of adaptive group ideologies.All archaic urban, division‐of‐labor social organizations had to overcome aspects of human nature produced by biological evolution, due to (...) the predicament of genetic competition among the cooperators. The universal norms found in archaic moral systems are seen as curbs to this human nature, reinforced by beliefs in invisible sanction systems and rewarding and punishing afterlives (as in heaven or reincarnation). Perhaps the ubiquity of lavishly wasteful royal funerals is to be explained as contributing to this function. (shrink)

Do the facts of evolution generate an epistemic challenge to moral realism? Some think so, and many “evolutionary debunking arguments” have been discussed in the recent literature. But they are all murky right where it counts most: exactly which epistemic principle is meant to take us from evolutionary considerations to the skeptical conclusion? Here, I will identify several distinct species of evolutionary debunking argument in the literature, each one of which relies on a distinct epistemic principle. Drawing on recent (...) work in epistemology, I will show that most of these initially plausible principles are false, spoiling the arguments that rely on them. And we will see that each argument threatens only one popular view of moral psychology: a “Representationalist” view on which our moral judgments rely crucially on a mental intermediary—e.g. a sentiment, gut reaction, or affect-laden intuition—delivered by our evolved moral faculty. In the end, only one evolutionary debunking argument remains a menace: an “ Argument from Symmetry ” that I will introduce to the literature. But we will see that it should worry only all naturalists, pressuring them into a trilemma: give up moral realism, accept a rationalism that is incongruous with naturalism, or give up naturalism. Non-naturalists are free and clear. (shrink)

I raise an epistemic objection to naturalistic metaphysics – the attempt to understand the nature and structure of reality in terms of natural entities, forces, and processes – arguing that we should not expect evolution to have crafted cognitive faculties reliable with respect to recondite metaphysical speculation, and that this gives practitioners of naturalistic metaphysics reason to doubt the deliverances of their work. I conclude by considering some main objections to this kind of skeptical argument.

Brings together traditional philosophy and modern sociobiology to examine evolutionary biology and its relation to the evolution of knowledge and ethics.

The concept of the Anthropocene draws attention to human activity's impact on the planet at the geological scale. It is tempting to reason that like evolution, a heliocentric solar system or quantum mechanics, climate science compels us to accept as real a radical new ontology, the ‘anthroposphere’, with far-reaching social and political consequences. I wish to argue that this temptation should be resisted. The Anthropocene cannot be understood entirely as a natural scientific phenomenon, although it can be treated as (...) such for certain purposes. It is also an irreducibly social phenomenon. This is not to say that it is a socially constructed concept like nationhood, but that it is constituted by natural causal processes that are irreducibly entangled with social causal processes. Adopting the Anthropocene as a working concept therefore requires that we understand the causal processes involved in bringing it about as social causal processes, while also viewing these processes as objectual, open to public scrutiny and capable of compelling public assent. Social causes are not, however, easily subjected to such a naturalistic treatment. I conclude that the Anthropocene is not currently a suitable candidate for inclusion in a naturalist ontology. (shrink)

Some ‘naturalist’ accounts of disease employ a biostatistical account of dysfunction, whilst others use a ‘selected effect’ account. Several recent authors have argued that the biostatistical account offers the best hope for a naturalist account of disease. We show that the selected effect account survives the criticisms levelled by these authors relatively unscathed, and has significant advantages over the BST. Moreover, unlike the BST, it has a strong theoretical rationale and can provide substantive reasons to decide difficult cases. This is (...) illustrated by showing how life-history theory clarifies the status of so-called diseases of old age. The selected effect account of function deserves a more prominent place in the philosophy of medicine than it currently occupies. _1_ Introduction _2_ Biostatistical and Selected Effect Accounts of Function _3_ Objections to the Selected Effect Account _3.1_ Boorse _3.2_ Kingma _3.3_ Hausman _3.4_ Murphy and Woolfolk _4_ Problems for the Biostatistical Account _4.1_ Schwartz _5_ Analysis versus Explication _6_ Explicating Dysfunction: Life History Theory and Senescence _7_ Conclusion. (shrink)

A naturalistic theory of intentionality is proposed that differs from previous evolutionary and tracking theories. Full-blown intentionality is constructed through a series of evolvable refinements. A first, minimal version of intentionality originates from a conjectured internal process that estimates an organism’s own fitness and that continually modifies the organism. This process produces the directedness of intentionality. The internal estimator can be parsed into intentional components that point to components of the process that produces fitness. It is argued that such (...) intentional components can point to mistaken or non-existing entities. Different Fregian senses of the same reference correspond to different components that have different roles in the estimator. Intentional components that point to intentional components in other organisms produce directedness towards semi-abstract entities. Finally, adding a general, population-wide means of communication enables intentional components that point to fully abstract entities. Intentionality thus naturalized has all of its expected properties: being directed; potentially making errors; possibly pointing to non-existent, abstract, or rigid entities; capable of pointing many-to-one and one-to-many; distinguishing sense and reference; having perspective and grain; and having determinate content. Several examples, such as ‘swampman’ and ‘brain-in-a-vat’, illustrate how the theory can be applied. (shrink)

The distinguished theologian, David Ray Griffin, has advanced a set of thirteen theses intended to characterize (what he calls) "Neo-Darwinism" and which he contrasts with "Intelligent Design". Griffin maintains that Neo-Darwinism is "atheistic" in forgoing a creator but suggests that, by adopting a more modest scientific naturalism and embracing a more naturalistic theology, it is possible to find "a third way" that reconciles religion and science. The considerations adduced here suggest that Griffin has promised more than he can deliver. (...) On his account, God is in laws of nature; therefore, any influence He exerts is natural rather than supernatural. But if the differences God makes are not empirically detectable, then Griffin's account is just as objectionable as a theory of supernatural intervention. And Griffin has not shown that evolution as distinct from his idiosyncratic sense of Neo-Darwinism is incompatible with theism. (shrink)

A sweeping new account of the role of power in the evolution of all life on Earth. Power has many dimensions, from individual attributes such as strength and speed to the collective advantages of groups. The Evolution of Power takes readers on a breathtaking journey across history and the natural world, revealing how the concept of power unifies a vast range of phenomena in the evolution of life - and how natural selection has placed humanity and the (...) planet itself on a trajectory of ever-increasing power. Drawing on evidence from fossils, living organisms, and contemporary society, Geerat Vermeij documents increases in power at all scales, from body size, locomotor performance, and the use of force in competition to efficiency in production and consumption within ecosystems. He shows how power - which he defines as the rate at which organisms acquire and apply energy - is tied to the emergence of cooperation, and how the modern economy, which for the first time has established a monopoly over the biosphere by a single species, is a continuation of evolutionary trends stretching back to the dawn of life. Vermeij persuasively argues that we can find solutions to the many problems arising from this extreme concentration of power by broadening our exclusively human-centered perspective. A masterful work by one of today's most innovative and forward-thinking naturalists, The Evolution of Power offers a new understanding of our place in the grand sweep of evolutionary history. (shrink)

Philosophical naturalists claim macroevolution shows order emerging by pure chance. This claim is incompatible with accepted physical and biological principles. The present state of the universe is implicit in its initial state and the laws ofnature. Logical principles essential to science require these laws to be maintained by a self-conserving reality identifiable as God. Further, the laws share a common dynamic with human committed intentions. Both are logical propagators seen to the intentional by theists and naturalists alike. Mechanism and teleology (...) project a single reality into different conceptual spaces. Statistically, evolution is only possible given predefined goals. For fitness to be explanatory, it must be prior to survival events, entailing immanent goals verified by convergent evolution, toolkit genes, and evolutionary stasis. Aristotle's falsifiable claims for teleology are confirmed by evolution. Evolution is not random, but fully intentional, evidencing mind in nature. (shrink)

Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are aligned, not competition (...) problems in which individual interests compete with group interests. In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems emerge from “within-group” dynamics, while solutions to competition problems result largely from “between-group” dynamics. (shrink)

Naturalist aestetics, strictly speaking, is a move to establish naturalist explanation of aesthetic phenomena. It was nearly forgotten, at least in the history of aesthetics, where, if mentioned, it was put aside as something dead and despised. Its reappearance in recent years, among other occasions at the XIVIVth International Congress of Aesthetics (Rio de Janeiro, 2004), came as a surprise and a challenge. Its second modernity has predecessors in the first modernity, and Darwin is only one of the many, and (...) its background in contemporary naturalist proposals in social and human sciences (biosociology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, etc.). Contemporary proposals to explain some basic aesthetic preferences of taste, and aesthetic pleasure itself in terms of evolution, may be illuminated by historical background. We can also understand them (in Ulrich Beck's vocabulary) as second modernity, as a move to deal with uncertainties of aesthetics. What still makes contemporary naturalist aesthetics a continuation of aesthetic modernity, however, is its inability to take (contemporary) art seriously. (shrink)

Embryos, cells, genes, and organisms : reflections on the history of evolutionary developmental biology / Manfred D. Laubichler and Jane Maienschein The organismic systems approach : streamlining the naturalistic agenda / Werner Callebaut, Gerd B. Müller, and Stuart A. Newman Complex traits : genetics, development, and evolution / H. Frederik Nijhout Functional and developmental constraints on life-cycle evolution : an attempt on the architecture of constraints / Gerhard Schlosser Legacies of adaptive development / Roger Sansom Evo-devo meets (...) the mind : toward a developmental evolutionary psychology / Paul E. Griffiths Reproducing entrenchments to scaffold culture : the central role of development in cultural evolution / William C. Wimsatt and James R. Griesemer. (shrink)

From Bacteria To Bach and Back is an ambitious book that attempts to integrate a theory about the evolution of the human mind with another theory about the evolution of human culture. It is advertised as a defense of memes, but conceptualizes memes more liberally than has been done before. It is also advertised as a defense of the proposal that natural selection operates on culture, but conceptualizes natural selection as a process in which nearly all interesting parameters (...) are free to vary. This liberal conception of key concepts creates space for philosophical innovation, but occasionally makes the empirical content of the theory difficult to pin down. Nevertheless, the book is full of scientific insight, wit, and humor. It will undoubtedly become a cause of both controversy and inspiration for those interested in naturalistic theories of human culture. (shrink)

This chapter connects studies in cultural evolution to the project of constructing a naturalized social ontology. Naturalized social ontologies provide accounts of what exists in the social world in a manner continuous with results in the social sciences. The chapter argues that when constructing an ontology, we should base our ontological commitments on social scientific results that rest on the most discerning methods available, that is, those methods that can best adjudicate possible answers to a social scientific question. Further, (...) it argues that those methods are empirical and quantitative. The chapter does this by discussing two types of inquiry in cultural evolution, pure modeling-based inquiries and empirical studies. It illustrates how the latter are more discerning than the former. Finally, it examines how my discerningness-based naturalized ontology addresses ontological individualism, the view that the social world is exhaustively determined by individual people. It compares that argument to similar treatments from non-naturalist social ontologists. (shrink)

Experimental taxonomy was a diverse area of research, and botanists who helped develop it were motivated by a variety of concerns. While experimental taxonomy was never totally a taxonomic enterprise, improvement in classification was certainly one major motivation behind the research. Hall's and Clements' belief that experimental methods added more objectivity to classification was almost universally accepted by experimental taxonomists. Such methods did add a new dimension to taxonomy — a dimension that field and herbarium studies, however rigorous, could not (...) duplicate. Nonetheless, experimental techniques were never completely divorced from traditional taxonomic methods. In practice, all experimental taxonomists employed a combination of descriptive and experimental methods. Most researchers freely acknowledged a debt to traditional taxonomy. Furthermore, the greater rigor of twentieth-century taxonomy was not due entirely to experimentalism. Both the experimental and descriptive aspects of taxonomy were improved by the increased use of quantitative methods, particularly statistics.52From the beginning, a number of experimental taxonomists were interested primarily in classification. But many approached their research from fields other than taxonomy. These botanists were concerned primarily with ecological and genetic problems rather than with classification. There is little indication that they drew a sharp distinction: for example, taxonomic and cytogenetic conclusions were interwoven in Babcock and Stebbins' 1938 study of Crepis 53 (this was even more true of Babcock's final mongraph on the genus, published in 1947). Similarly, the extensive series of monographs, “Experimental Studies on the Nature of Species,” initiated by the Carnegie Institution group in 1940 combined ecological, cytogenetic, and taxonomic conclusions. Indeed, the significance of the major projects completed by experimental taxonomists was largely due to the fact that they were comprehensive studies rather than strictly taxonomic or cytogenetic.In a general sense, the primary motivation behind much of experimental taxonomy was evolutionary. Beginning in the second decade of the century Hall and Clements exhorted taxonomists to take an explicitly evolutionary perspective on research. Hall undoubtedly spoke for the majority of experimental taxonomists when he stated, “If there be anything at all to organic evolution, then taxonomy is dealing with the products of evolution and it is this that gives to taxonomy both its highest mission and its greatest responsibility.”54Aside from a common interest in evolution, however, the theoretical orientations of experimental taxonomists were varied. This diversity is strikingly illustrated by the evolutionary views of members of the Carnegie Institution research group. Experimental taxonomy was initiated by Clements as one aspect of his Lamarckian study of adaptation and speciation. In contrast, Hall's research was inspired by a broad concern for evolutionary problems. Hall rarely referred to specific evolutionary mechanisms; rather, he applied a general conception of evolutionary processes to deduce phylogenetic relationships. His later associates at the Carnegie Institution explicitly dissociated themselves from Clements' theoretical framework. The neo-Darwinian interpretations of adaptation and speciation presented by Clausen, Keck, and Hiesey could hardly have been more different than those of Clements. However, this major shift in theoretical orientation should not obscure significant similarities between the research of Clements and later Carnegie workers. In terms of research problems and methodology, the first volume of “Experimental Studies on the Nature of Species” was an extension of the Clementsian research program. Clausen, Keck, and Hiesey's monograph was the mature discussion of transplant experimentation that Clements had very tentatively initiated during the first decades of the twentieth century. The bond that linked the members of the Carnegie Institution research group to experimental taxonomists in general was one of shared methodology rather than common theoretical orientation. While Clements' evolutionary views were eventually repudiated, his enthusiasm for innovative experimental methods was shared by later workers.The development of experimental taxonomy faced significant problems. During the period 1920–1950 this area of botanical research remained a hybrid discipline. The aims and scope of experimental taxonomy were never articulated in a completely unified manner. Consequently, even among experimental taxonomists, there were disagreements over the relation of their research to other botanical endeavors. Even though experimental taxonomy had close ties with general taxonomy, a number of experimental taxonomists questioned the “taxonomic” nature of their research55. Even to the extent that this hybrid discipline could be identified as a branch of taxonomy, problems arose. Taxonomists, as we have seen, were justifiably skeptical of what appeared to be a rapid influx of untested methods and ideas. Experimental taxonomists were not merely incorporating well-accepted methods from ecology and cytogenetics; during the period 1920–1950 the fields from which experimental taxonomists borrowed were themselves undergoing major theoretical and methodological changes. Despite problems and conflicts, experimental taxonomists did contribute improvements to classification. Furthermore, they made significant contributions to plant ecology and evolutionary genetics.The development of experimental taxonomy indicates that twentieth-century botanists were not necessarily isolated in naturalist and experimentalist camps. The joint session of taxonomists, cytologists, and geneticists at the 1926 International Congress of Plant Sciences indicates communication among specialists fairly early in the century. The papers and commentaries presented during this session do not reveal the hostility and intolerance that supposedly characterized encounters between experimentalists and naturalists. Nor do they suggest incompatible conceptual worlds separating geneticists and taxonomists.Discussions between taxonomists and other specialists were not limited to a single international congress. Particularly during the 1930s discussions among specialists appear to have been fairly widespread. Groups such as the Biosystematists and the Society for the Study of Systematics in Relation to General Biology served as forums for discussion among biologists from a variety of disciplines. The naturalist-experimentalist dichotomy tends to obscure the broad research interests of a number of prominent twentieth-century botanists. Most of the experimental taxonomists cannot be characterized adequately as either naturalists or experimentalists. Traditionally trained taxonomists such as Hall, Keck, and Turrill throughout their careers participated in both experimental and herbarium research. And a number of specialists in fields other than taxonomy took an active interest in taxonomic problems, not necessarily limited to experimental aspects. For example, Anderson suggested a number of innovations to make herbarium collections more amenable to statistical analysis.This historical study of experimental taxonomy indicates a different relationship between experimentalism and taxonomy than that portrayed by the naturalist-versus-experimentalist dichotomy. F. E. Clements originated experimental taxonomy as a revolt against descriptive botany. In retrospect, this revolution was not vigorously waged and was not successfully completed. Experimental taxonomy was never an entirely experimental approach to botanical research. Even the most ardent advocates of experimentalism relied heavily on methods inherited from traditional taxonomy. Moderate exponents of experimental taxonomy stressed the compatibility of experimental methods, field observation, and herbarium techniques. Attempts to fuse cytogenetics, ecology, and taxonomy during the period 1920–1950 resulted in an impressive body of research. However, this fusion constituted neither a repudiation of descriptive botany nor a complete revision of taxonomic theory of practice. (shrink)

Steven Pinker has said that one of the most important questions humans can ask of themselves is whether moral progress has occurred or is likely to occur. Buchanan and Powell here address that question, in order to provide the first naturalistic, empirically-informed and analytically sophisticated theory of moral progress--explaining the capacities in the human brain that allow for it, the role of the environment, and how contingent and fragile moral progress can be.

Ideas, Dan Sperber argues, may be contagious. They may invade whole populations. In the process, the people, their environment, and the ideas themselves are being transformed. To explain culture is to describe the causes and the effects of this contagion of ideas. This book will be read by all those with an interest in the impact of the cognitive revolution on our understanding of culture.

Recent interest in the evolution of the social contract is extended by providing a throughly naturalistic, evolutionary account of the biological underpinnings of a social contract theory of morality. This social contract theory of morality (contractevolism) provides an evolutionary justification of the primacy of a moral principle of maximisation of the opportunities for evolutionary reproductive success (ERS), where maximising opportunities does not entail an obligation on individuals to choose to maximise their ERS. From that primary principle, the moral (...) principles of inclusion, individual sovereignty (liberty) and equality can be derived. The implications of these principles, within contractevolism, are explored through an examination of patriarchy, individual sovereignty and copulatory choices, and overpopulation and extinction. Contractevolism is grounded in evolutionary dynamics that resulted in humans and human societies. The most important behavioural consequences of evolution to contractevolism are reciprocity, cooperation, empathy, and the most important cognitive consequences are reason and behavioural modification. (shrink)

According to the evolutionary sceptic, the fact that our cognitive faculties evolved radically undermines their reliability. A number of evolutionary epistemologists have sought to refute this kind of scepticism. This paper accepts the success of these attempts, yet argues that refuting the evolutionary sceptic is not enough to put any particular domain of beliefs – notably scientific beliefs, which include belief in Darwinian evolution – on a firm footing. The paper thus sets out to contribute to this positive justificatory (...) project, underdeveloped in the literature. In contrast to a ‘wholesale’ approach, attempting to secure justification for all of our beliefs on the grounds that our belief-forming mechanisms evolved to track truth, we propose a ‘piecemeal’ approach of assessing the reliability of particular belief-forming mechanisms in particular domains. This stands in contrast to the more familiar attempt to transfer warrant obtained for one domain to another by showing how one is somehow an extension of the other. We offer a naturalist reply to the charge of circularity by appealing to reliabilist work on the problem of induction, notably Peter Lipton's distinction between self-certifying and non-self-certifying inductive arguments. We show how, for scientific beliefs, a non-self-certifying argument might be made for the reliability of our cognitive faculties in that domain. We call this strategy Humean Bootstrapping. (shrink)

Most of the free will debate operates under the assumption that classic determinism and indeterminism are the only metaphysical options available. Through an analysis of Dennett’s view of free will as gradually evolving this article attempts to point to emergentist, interactivist and temporal metaphysical options, which have been left largely unexplored by contemporary theorists. Whereas, Dennett himself holds that “the kind of free will worth wanting” is compatible with classic determinism, I propose that his models of determinism fit poorly with (...) his evolutionary theory and naturalist commitments. In particular, his so-called “intuition pumps” seem to rely on the assumption that reality will have a compositional bottom layer where appearance and reality coincide. I argue that instead of positing this and other “unexplained explainers” we should allow for the heretical possibility that there might not be any absolute bottom, smallest substances or universal laws, but relational interactions all the way down. Through the details of Dennett’s own account of the importance of horizontal transmission in evolution and the causal efficacy of epistemically limited but complex layered “selves,” it is argued that our autonomy is linked to the ability to affect reality by controlling appearances. (shrink)

Published in 1998, the main aim of this book is to use a naturalistic, evolutionary approach to solve some of the most important problems in philosophy. The first two problems come from the philosophy of science: the problem of rationality of science and the problem of truth in science. In presenting the first problem, the author argues that the views of Kuhn and Feyerabend do create a very serious challenge to traditional epistemology, however, if the assumption of individual rationality (...) is abandoned in favour of the author's social concept of rationality, a committed naturalism can account for science as a rational activity. In tackling the second problem of truth, the author shows that a committed evolutionary philosophy does not support realism but leads instead to a thorough evolutionary relativism of scientific knowledge. It is nevertheless possible to use this evolutionary relativism to construct a theory of relative truth. The issue of whether science discovers truth has also been tied to absolutism, that a well formulated theory of relative truth is likely to bring about a profound transformation of the way we think about the field. The author explores the notion of relative truth in the philosophy of science, ethics and aesthetics. (shrink)

Evolution requires selection. Molecular/chemical/preDarwinian evolution is no exception. One molecule must be selected over another for molecular evolution to occur and advance. Evolution, however, has no goal. The laws of physics have no utilitarian desire, intent or proficiency. Laws and constraints are blind to “usefulness.” How then were potential multi-step processes anticipated, valued and pursued by inanimate nature? Can orchestration of formal systems be physico-chemically spontaneous? The purely physico-dynamic self-ordering of Chaos Theory and irreversible non-equilibrium thermodynamic (...) “engines of disequilibria conversion” achieve neither orchestration nor formal organization. Natural selection is a passive and after-the-fact-of-life selection. Darwinian selection reduces to the differential survival and reproduction of the fittest already-living organisms. In the case of abiogenesis, selection had to be 1) Active, 2) Pre-Function, and 3) Efficacious. Selection had to take place at the molecular level prior to the existence of non-trivial functional processes. It could not have been passive or secondary. What naturalistic mechanisms might have been at play? (shrink)

In the paper, I propose a project of social coordination as naturalistic social ontology (CNSO) based on the rules-in-equilibria theory of social institutions (Guala and Hindriks 2015; Hindriks and Guala 2015). It takes coordination as the main ontological unit of the social, a mechanism homological across animals and humans, for both can handle coordination problems: in the forms of “animal conventions” and social institutions, respectively. On this account, institutions are correlated equilibria with normative force. However, if both humans and (...) animals solve coordination problems in a similar way, and only humans have social institutions, how do the latter evolve? I suggest identifying possible causes of this evolution among cognitive capacities like mindreading and imitation by building dynamic models. Social ontology becomes constrained by the evolution of the forms of coordination and by the cognitive mechanisms involved in the emergence and persistence of social institutions. It means that it becomes bound to what might be derived from social institutions, i.e., social roles, structures and their derivatives. It shows how conceptual relations might emerge from causal. I conclude the paper with the discussion of the relationship between involved types of explanation, mechanistic and equilibrium ones. (shrink)

There is a current, ultra-Darwinian trend for finding in the process of evolution by natural selection the roots of our ethical behavior. In such a way that ethics may become a branch of biology. Nevertheless, this preposterous notion is supported on previous naive assumptions of contemporary biology that have already been falsified by recent results of research in genomics and molecular biology.

Recent debates over evolutionary ethics have often circled around T. H. Huxley's late claim that “Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step.” In writing “Evolution and Ethics” and its long Prolegomena, however, Huxley may instead be wrestling with the nature and origin of human agency. Early in his career he saw evolution and social progress as converging, but as he came to find cosmic process alien to human welfare, he found moral agency more (...) essential but more problematic. Within “Evolution and Ethics,” evolution retreats into a cyclical stasis while ethical challenges end up submitting to it. Huxley implies, however, that in acknowledging these cycles as “natural,” ancient sages begged the question of whether resistance to them were possible. And when evolutionary ethicists delimit humanity's potential by its simian origins, Huxley invokes Hume's “naturalistic fallacy,” asking them how factual evidence can support their prescriptive conclusions. Both his naturalist and idealist reviewers then drove him to turn his Prolegomena into a rebuttal to the original essay. Here, advocating a balance between altruism and selfishness, Huxley works to relegate agency to a question of degree. In both essays, Huxley's epigrammatic prose demarcates the dead ends of much Victorian thought and points toward alternate paths not explored until the twentieth century. (shrink)

This article investigates the question of why there is emotional resistance to research results such as the theory of evolution and to philosophical naturalism. A depiction of how this emotional resistance expresses itself is followed by a brief account of the core theses of philosophical naturalism. The emotional reactions to research results then are differentiated from reactions to philosophical naturalism and a first overview of the irritant positions of naturalism is given. Finally two misunderstandings about the aims of philosophical (...) naturalism are addressed. (shrink)

A decade ago I offered a defence of naturalistic moral realism against evolutionary debunking arguments. It had two elements. One was rejecting a dichotomy between evolutionary vindication and debunking in favour of a continuum. The second (a) proposed a metaethical principle on the basis of a hypothesis about the evolutionary drivers of moral thinking: a moral principle is true if it is part of a set of moral norms which, if acted upon, would optimise the cooperation profits of a (...) community, and (b) argued that by this criterion, folk moral opinion was quite often approximately true. I still reject the dichotomy, but the rest of the argument was too friendly to realist naturalism in ethics. It mischaracterised the selective history of moral thinking, over-estimating its role as a cooperation amplifier, and under-estimating the epistemic challenges facing individual agents as they develop their moral opinions. The upshot is a shift towards the debunking end of the vindication-debunking continuum. (shrink)

In promoting spontaneous orders – orders that evolve in a process of cultural evolution – as “efficient,” “beneficial,” and “advantageous,” Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992) has often been attributed the belief that there is something desirable about them. For this reason, he has been accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy, that is, of trying to derive an “ought” from an “is.” It appears that Hayek was..

This chapter presents the evolutionary core of a naturalistic theory that can account for the “inclusivist anomaly” discussed in the previous chapter. It draws upon a wide range of evidence suggesting that evolution has produced “adaptively plastic” moral psychological mechanisms that are configured to prevent inclusivist moral norms and dispositions from developing in certain environments, while allowing them to flourish in others. This evolutionary model of moral psychological development unifies a wide range of observations in disciplines as diverse (...) as anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, and economics. Crucially, the specific environmental cues that we hypothesize guide human moral psychological development—in particular, cues that are indicative of out-group threat—are within the powers of human beings to modify. (shrink)

Xunzi 荀子 provided naturalistic answers to questions regarding human sociality and our characteristic “groupishness” (qun 羣). Central to his theories were so-called “social divisions and righteousness” (fenyi 分義), which can be interpreted as a uniquely human package of “cultural technology” produced via cultural evolution to suppress intragroup conflict stemming from what Xunzi calls “the mind of covetous comparison” (liangyi zhi xin 兩疑之心). For Xunzi, fenyi is the uniquely human attribute which kickstarts a salutary causal chain which facilitates prosociality (...) and the upscaling of cooperation, and ultimately results in human ecological dominance. This essay will argue that an incipient form of cultural evolution is discoverable in the Xunzi, and moreover that a solution to the problem of the origin of the “ritual and righteousness” (liyi 禮義) cultural package derives neatly from the incipient cultural evolution of the Xunzi. That is to say, while this solution is not explicitly adduced in the Xunzi, it is nonetheless consistent with Xunzian ideas and is an improvement on the much-lambasted solution Xunzi actually gives, according to which “the former kings hated … chaos, and so they established rituals and righteousness.”. (shrink)

In 1895 sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel published a paper: ‘On a connection of selection theory to epistemology’. It was focussed on the question of how behavioural success and the evolution of the cognitive capacities that underlie it are to be related to knowing and truth. Subsequently, Simmel’s ideas were largely lost, but recently an English translation was published by Coleman in this journal. While Coleman’s contextual remarks are solely concerned with a preceding evolutionary epistemology, it will be argued (...) here that Simmel pursues a more unorthodox, more radically biologically based and pragmatist, approach to epistemology in which the presumption of a wholly interests-independent truth is abandoned, concepts are accepted as species-specific and truth tied intimately to practical success. Moreover, Simmel’s position, shorn of one too-radical commitment, shares its key commitments with the recently developed interactivist–constructivist framework for understanding biological cognition and naturalistic epistemology. There Simmel’s position can be given a natural, integrated, three-fold elaboration in interactivist re-analysis, unified evolutionary epistemology and learnable normativity. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the remarkable popularity of William Paley’s argument from design among contemporary naturalists in biology and the philosophy of science. In philosophy of science Elliott Sober has argued that creationism should be excluded from the schools not because it is not science but because it is ‘less likely’ than evolution according to fairly standard confirmation theory. Creationism is said to have been a plausible scientific option as presented by Paley but no longer to be acceptable according to (...) the same standards that once approved it. In biology C. G. Williams and Richard Dawkins have seen in Paley a proto-adaptationist. This paper shows that the historical assumptions of Sober’s arguments are wrong and that the philosophical arguments themselves take alternatives to science to be alternatives in science and conflate the null hypothesis, chance, with a competing explanatory hypothesis. It is also shown that the similarity of Paley’s adaptationism to that of contemporary biology is not what it is made out to be. (shrink)

In this small book, Ulrich Steinvorth describes the reasons why analytic philosophy, which started as an anti-metaphysical project, has become a strong advocate of metaphysics, and why it must become synthetic, normative, and naturalistic. Steinvorth argues that self-regulation is the common property of all being, that we can talk of an increase or escalation of self-regulation in the evolution of being, and that self-regulation becomes self-determination in man. Considering objections to this view related to questions of free will, (...) consciousness, the naturalistic fallacy, and teleology, he draws on cybernetics, dual process theory, physical cosmology, and Leibniz’s idea of measuring the goodness of a world by the number of possibilities opened up by the world. To test his approach and show its political relevance, he applies it to political liberalism. (shrink)

Though modern non-cognitivists in ethics characteristically believe that values are irreducible to facts, they nevertheless believe that values are determined by facts, viz., those specified in functionalist, explanatory theories of the evolutionary origin of morality. The present paper probes the consistency of this position. The conventionalist theories of Hume and Harman are examined, and are seen not to establish a tight determinative reduction of values to facts. This result is illustrated by reference to recent theories of the sociobiological mechanisms involved (...) in moral evolution. Though explanatory theories have linguistic implications,exaggerated in Harman's linguistic form of social relativism, there is also failure to establish the semantic reductionism which non-cognitivists reject under the rubric of ethical naturalism. It is concluded that explanatory forms of naturalism, the best of which is a functionalist-utilitarian account, are compatible with the fact/value distinction. (shrink)

Feminist critics of evolutionary psychology are often accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy, that is, of inferring certain normative conclusions from evolutionary psychology’s purely descriptive accounts. This article refutes the accusation of the naturalistic fallacy, by showing that evolutionary psychology’s accounts of human behavior are not purely descriptive, but rather grounded on biased value judgments. A paradigmatic example is Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s well-known book A Natural History of Rape. I argue that at least three biased judgments (...) are at work in Thornhill and Palmer’s evolutionary psychology account of rape: (1) adaptationist approaches to evolution, (2) willful ignorance of cultural and social context, and (3) binary understanding of gender and sex. In that Thornhill and Palmer’s account cannot hold without the three biased value judgments, it is not a purely factual description of rape. Therefore, feminist concerns over its normative implications do not commit the naturalistic fallacy, as it is not the case that they infer a normative conclusion from a pure description. (shrink)

The naturalistic fallacy is mentioned frequently by evolutionary psychologists as an erroneous way of thinking about the ethical implications of evolved behaviors. However, evolutionary psychologists are themselves confused about the naturalistic fallacy and use it inappropriately to forestall legitimate ethical discussion. We briefly review what the naturalistic fallacy is and why it is misused by evolutionary psychologists. Then we attempt to show how the ethical implications of evolved behaviors can be discussed constructively without impeding evolutionary psychological research. (...) A key is to show how ethical behaviors, in addition to unethical behaviors, can evolve by natural selection. (shrink)

Hoy seeks to establish a basis for a naturalistic political theory as a continuity from Aristotle through the Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment contributions ...

In my response to the comments of Charley Hardwick, Ann Pederson, and Greg Peterson, I continue the narrative, confessional mode of my writing in Dancing with the Sacred. First, I sketch some methodological decisions underlying my naturalistic, evolutionary, practical theology. I then respond to the encouraging suggestions of my commentators by further developing my ideas about naturalism, mystery, creativity as God, the place of ecological responsibility in my thinking, sin, and eschatology. I offer suggestions as to how I might (...) widen the practical applications of my theology beyond environmental and medical ethics to other areas of moral responsibility in relation to the creative process. I do all this with much appreciation for the care and careful critical reflection that my commentators have devoted to my thinking. (shrink)