Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with (...) traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in _On the Origin of Species_. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world—an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is. (shrink)

This dissertation is concerned with two general issues. A theory of functional or teleological properties, as possessed by natural objects, grounded in the theory of evolution by natural selection. This I refer to as the evolutionary theory of functions. A cluster of theories in philosophy of mind which attempt to explicate intentionality--the representational powers of mental phenomena--in terms of evolutionary functions. ;The aim of this dissertation is threefold. To develop a version of the evolutionary theory of functions in which the (...) proper role of evolution by natural selection is made fully explicit. To defend two theses in philosophy of biology, namely that the evolutionary theory of functions, when properly articulated, cannot justify the attribution of malfunctions to any natural objects, and that the evolutionary theory of functions justifies the attribution of evolutionary functions only to those organismic traits that directly causally engage the relevant selective demands, and hence does not justify the attribution of any evolutionary functions to paradigmatically functional traits such as hearts, kidneys, etc. To defend two analogous these in philosophy of mind, namely that the evolutionary theory of functions, insofar as it cannot account for malfunctions, cannot account for misrepresentations , and that the evolutionary theory of functions warrants the attribution of evolutionary functions to just those effects of the mind which directly engage the organism with its environment, but not to those mechanisms or states of the mind concerned with representational contents. ;A secondary aim is to argue that the most developed view of evolutionary functions in the recent literature--a view presented in Millikan --is inadequate on internal grounds. ;The general conclusion of the dissertation is twofold. First, the evolutionary theory of functions is restricted in surprising ways; this is an important result in philosophy of biology. Second, and as a consequence of the first, the evolutionary theory of functions is of no avail in theories of intentionality; this is an important result in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy: Essays on the Philosophical Cast of Jefferson’s Writings is a collection of essays on topics that relate to philosophical aspects of Jefferson’s thinking over the years. Much historical insight is given to ground the various philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought and writing on topics such as political philosophy, moral philosophy, slavery, republicanism, wall of separation, liberty, educational philosophy, and architecture.

A persistent boast of the historical approach to functions is that functional properties are normative. The claim is that a token trait retains its functional status even when it is defective, diseased, or damaged and consequently unable to perform the relevant task. This is because historical functional categories are defined in terms of some sort of historical success -- success in natural selection, typically -- which imposes a norm upon the performance of descendent tokens. Descendents thus are supposed to perform (...) the associated task even when they cannot. The conceit, then, is that malfunctions are explicable in terms of historical success. The aim of this paper is to challenge this conceit. My thesis is that the historical approach to functions lacks the resources with which to account for the possibility of malfunctions. If functional types are defined in terms of historical success, then tokens that lack the defining property due to defect, and tokens that have lost the defining property due to disease or damage, are excluded from the functional category. Historically based malfunctions, in consequence, are impossible. The historical approach is no better than its non-historical competitors in accounting for the presumed normativity of functional properties. (shrink)

The social exchange theory of reasoning, which is championed by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, falls under the general rubric “evolutionary psychology” and asserts that human reasoning is governed by content-dependent, domain-specific, evolutionarily-derived algorithms. According to Cosmides and Tooby, the presumptive existence of what they call “cheater-detection” algorithms disconfirms the claim that we reason via general-purpose mechanisms or via inductively acquired principles. We contend that the Cosmides/Tooby arguments in favor of domain-specific algorithms or evolutionarily-derived mechanisms fail and that the notion (...) of a social exchange rule, which is central to their theory, is not correctly characterized. As a consequence, whether or not their conclusion is true cannot be established on the basis of the arguments they have presented. (shrink)

Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology ROBERT C. RICHARDSON Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007 248 pages, ISBN: 0-262-18260-2 (hbk); $30.00 “Just about anything is consistent with some evolut...

Teleosemantics asserts that mental content is determined by natural selection. The thesis is that content is fixed by the historical conditions under which certain cognitive mechanisms—those that produce and those that interpret representational states—were selectively successful. Content is fixed by conditions of selective success. The thesis of this paper is that teleosemantics is mistaken, that content cannot be fixed by conditions of selective success, because those conditions typically outnumber the intentional objects within a given representational state. To defend against this (...) excess, advocates of teleosemantics must attempt to privilege some conditions of success while ignoring others. This results in selective explanations that are ad hoc, thereby depriving teleosemantics of the virtues it hoped to inherit from the theory of evolution by natural selection, including its alleged naturalistic credentials. (shrink)

Andrews et al. subscribe to the view that distinguishing selectionist from nonselectionist hypotheses – or, distinguishing adaptations from mere spandrels or exaptations – is important to the study of psychology. I offer three reasons for thinking that this view is false; that considerations of past selective efficacy have little to contribute to inquiry in psychology.

To ‘Darwinize’ a debunking argument is to broaden and thereby strengthen it in ways inspired by Charles Darwin. It is to employ Darwinian strategies that converge on the conclusion that certain putative phenomena – the reality of stance‐independent moral properties, for instance – are illusory or epistemically problematic for animals like us. The aim of this essay is to defend one such strategy and illustrate its power relative to most evolutionary debunking arguments currently on offer.

Fred Dretske asserts that the conscious or phenomenal experiences associated with our perceptual states—e.g. the qualitative or subjective features involved in visual or auditory states—are identical to properties that things have according to our representations of them. This is Dretske's version of the currently popular representational theory of consciousness . After explicating the core of Dretske's representational thesis, I offer two criticisms. I suggest that Dretske's view fails to apply to a broad range of mental phenomena that have rather distinctive (...) subjective or qualitative features. I also suggest that Dretske's view, in identifying conscious experiences with features of our perceptual states, casts its aim too low. It deflates further than it should and, in consequence, fails to capture what are arguably some of the most important phenomena associated with our conscious lives. (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)

Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion.

A critical review of what I see as a controversial interpretation of the nature and aims of Darwin’s rhetorical strategy and a narrow and controversial naturalist manifesto.

With neuroscience and psychology making significant advances in contemporary brain research, fundamental questions concerning the nature of human life and activity will become evermore critical as we proceed further into the twenty-first century. Put simply, are we creatures who exercise some genuine degree of freedom and agency in the world or are we creatures whose actions are largely if not wholly determined by biological, neurological, and psychological factors far below the radar of our conscious awareness? This article explores this important (...) and timely question by examining the views of Paul Sheldon Davies, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Alfred North Whitehead. Drawing on contemporary science, Davies dismisses Niebuhr’s existential analysis of human existence and any meaningful conception of human agency. Succinctly stated, can one take both the results of contemporary neuroscience seriously, as Davies does, and the affirmation of human agency seriously, as Niebuhr does? The thesis of this essay is that Whitehead offers a constructive bridge between Davies’ affirmation of science and Niebuhr’s existential account of human existence. In sum, it is argued that Whitehead’s process philosophy enables us to affirm the genuine influence of nonconscious factors in experience as well as the authenticity of human agency and subjectivity in the world. (shrink)

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

Historical accounts of biological function are thought to have, as a point in their favour, their being able to accommodate malfunction. Recently, this has been brought into doubt by Paul Sheldon Davies’s argument for the claim that both selected malfunction (that of the selected functions account) and weak etiological malfunction (that of the weak etiological account), are impossible. In this paper I suggest that in light of Davies’s objection, historical accounts of biological function need to be adjusted to accommodate (...) malfunction. I propose a historical account which places two conditions on membership of a functional kind. My claim is that it is in virtue of a trait’s meeting these conditions that it is a member of a functional kind, and can thus malfunction. I suggest that a version of my proposal can be adopted by both the selected effects and weak etiological theorists, and so conclude that such a proposal meets Davies’s objection. (shrink)

Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, _Thing Knowledge _demands that (...) we take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more. (shrink)

_Ethics and the University_ brings together two closely related topics, the practice of ethics in the university and the teaching of practical or applied ethics in the university. This volume is divided into four parts: * A survey of practical ethics, offering an explanation of its recent emergence as a university subject, situating that subject into a wider social and historical context and identifying some problems that the subject generates for universities * An examination of research ethics, including the problem (...) of plagiarism * A discussion of the teaching of practical ethics. Michael Davis explores how ethics can be integrated into the university curriculum and what part particular cases should play in the teaching of ethics * An exploration of sexual ethics _Ethics and the University_ provides a stimulating and provocative analysis of academic ethics which will be useful to students, academics and practitioners. (shrink)

This article explores various analytical issues involved in conceptualizing the interrelationships of gender, class, race and ethnicity and other social divisions. It compares the debate on these issues that took place in Britain in the 1980s and around the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. It examines issues such as the relative helpfulness of additive or mutually constitutive models of intersectional social divisions; the different analytical levels at which social divisions need to be studied, their ontological base and their relations (...) to each other. The final section of the article attempts critically to assess a specific intersectional methodological approach for engaging in aid and human rights work in the South. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I provide the logical foundation for a solution to the mind-body problem, a solution which is directly based upon Wilfrid Sellars' analogical theory of thought and sensation. Chapters I-IV are devoted to an interpretation, analysis, and constructive criticism of Sellars' notions of the inner thought episode and the sensing state. My analysis is offered in support of three general contentions: I argue that the postulation of inner thought episodes and sensing states is necessary for adequate explanations of (...) agent behavior; I hope to show how the analogical theory of inner thought episodes and sensing states actually generates a legitimate problem concerning the relationship between the mental and the physical; and I demonstrate the importance of the notion of analogy in philosophical theory construction. I suggest that the role of analogy provides the key for the solution to the mind-body problem. ;Chapter One is essentially introductory in nature. I offer an interpretation and reconstruction of Sellars' illustrative story entitled "The Jonesean Myth" . The "Myth" provides a suitable representation of Sellars' overall philosophy of mind. But perhaps more importantly, the "Myth" is a paradigm example of what I shall call the analogical method of inquiry, a method employed for the introduction of the notions of inner thought episodes and sensing states. In brief, I want to show how the "Myth" provides the logical basis for a theory adequate for explanations of the mental activity of agents. ;Chapters II and III are closely related. In Chapter II, I present a theory of linguistic representation which will serve as the analogical base for the introduction and characterization of the inner thought episode. In Chapter III, I develop the notion of the inner thought episode , and I examine its nature and status as a theoretical construct. Chapters II and III are thus related by the Sellarsian thesis that the concept of mental representation is to be understood in terms which apply, primarily, to characterizations of the features of the linguistic framework presented in Chapter II. ;In Chapter IV, I argue, again following Sellars' lead, that the explication of the notion of the perceptual thought episode requires the introduction of a second distinct sort of inner episode, namely, that of the sense experience or sensing state. The argument offered in Chapter IV is designed to show that sensing states are theoretical constructs, the reference to which is essential for explanations concerning the occurrence and nature of perceptual representations. Sensing states are introduced and characterized by an analogical extension of families of predicates which are suitable for the identification and description of ordinary physical objects . ;In Chapter V, I propose a solution to the mind-body problem, as the latter is generated by the analysis given to the thought episode and the sensing state . In general terms, I argue that any purported solution to the mind-body problem must provide an explanatory basis for agent behavior, and it is for this reason that I reject "reductionistic" theories of mind of the kind represented by logical behaviorism, type-identity physicalism, and Turing Machine functionalism. My solution, instead, involves a commitment to what I shall call token physicalism, a thesis which is contingent upon the development of a theory of neurophysiology which is rich enough to capture, in an analogical sense, both the intentional features of the thought episode, and the occurrent-like qualities which are exemplified by the sensing state. (shrink)

Björn Goldstein maintains that mainstream political psychology is biased by a materialist ontology, a position he contrasts with radical constructivism. I argue that the emergent field of ….

A question that recent research on the global pandemic raises is: how do the assumptions underlying epidemiological models and economic models differ? Epidemiological models we now know have become quite sophisticated (see Avery et al., 2020). Debate among economic methodologists regarding the nature of modeling has generated a considerable literature as well (Reiss, 2012; Hands, 2013). Yet these two literatures are largely non-communicating. Perhaps this is because economics has produced relatively little research on pandemics (though see Boianovsky and Erreygers, 2021). (...) Yet it might still be asked, what might economic models be missing that epidemiological models capture? And might there be some sort of methodological bias in mainstream economics that plays a role in this? One way, then, one might begin to answer these questions is by identifying the main phenomenon in question, namely, in the case of the pandemic, a particular type of process, and ask what the nature of this type of process is. Then we may ask whether there is something about this type of phenomenon that places it out of bounds for current economic methodology. Thus, what sort of phenomenon is a pandemic? (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the agent/patient distinction against critics who argue that causal interactions are symmetrical. Specifically, I argue that there is a widespread type of causal interaction between distinct entities, resulting in a type of ontological asymmetry that provides principled grounds for distinguishing agents from patients. The type of interaction where the asymmetry is found is when one of the entities undergoes a change in kind, structure, powers, or intrinsic properties as a result of the interaction while the (...) other does not. Interactions of this type are widespread in molecular biology and chemistry. I focus specifically on (i) the actions of enzymes on substrates and (ii) water molecules breaking the bonds of polarized molecules. Finally, I respond to objections by laying out and to a limited extent defending three commitments of my account: emergent entities and powers, realism about chemical kinds or structures, and the assumption of the agent/patient distinction in functional attributions in biology. (shrink)