L'articolo si propone di esaminare le ricerche di Michael Tomasello nel campo della psicologia evoluzionistica dal punto di vista di una filosofia neocriticista. L'analisi metterà in luce, in una prospettiva generale ma anche a partire da un caso specifico tratto da Tomasello, la possibilità di interpretare la psicologia evoluzionistica, grazie all'apporto di un'analisi trascendentale dei suoi concetti, come una disciplina composita e dotata di differenti piani di sviluppo.

In recent decades it has become increasingly clear that a substantial amount of cognitive work goes on independent of consciousness. The research has been carried out largely under two rubrics, implicit learning and implicit memory. The former has been concerned primarily with the acquisition of knowledge independent of awareness and the latter with the manner in which memories not readily available to conscious recall or recognition play a role in behavior; collectively these operations comprise the essential functions of the cognitive (...) unconscious. This paper reviews the recent history of work on these issues, identifies some of the problems confronting researchers, and introduces a theoretical framework based on principles of evolutionary biology within which to view them. The argument is that the cognitive unconscious, despite its apparent sophistication, is of considerable evolutionary antiquity and antedates conscious cognitive systems by a considerable amount of time. Various entailments of this evolutionary perspective are explored including such issues as phylogeny and ontogeny of implicit processes, the robustness of the implicit functions as displayed by the capacity to resist disruptions from psychological and neurological disorders, the relationship between implicit cognition and intelligence, and individual differences in implicit cognitive abilities. (shrink)

This book outlines the rich array of work being done with evolution and ethics by biologists, zoologists, paleontologists, philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and political scientists. John Mizzoni argues that we can understand ethical elements more deeply through an evolutionary perspective and ten theories of ethics.

Among biologists and philosophers, there is an ongoing debate over the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Some argue that our current evolutionary biology is in need of (at least) some substantial revision or nontrivial extension, while others maintain that the Modern Synthesis remains the foundational framework for evolutionary biology. It has been widely debated whether the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis provides a more promising framework than the Modern Synthesis. The nature and methodological implications of the (...) Extended Evolutionary Synthesis were also examined. This paper offers an integrated historical and philosophical examination of the debate over the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. It reviews the development of evolutionary biology of the twentieth century. It argues that there are substantial conceptual and theoretical differences between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, but they are not incommensurable paradigms in the Kuhnian sense. It also argues for a functional approach to the debate over these two frameworks of evolutionary theory. (shrink)

In responding to this debate, Ananth both surveys the existing literature, with special focus on the work of Christopher Boorse, and argues that a naturalistic ...

The neurobiological systems that mediate the basic emotions are beginning to be understood. They appear to be constituted of genetically coded, but experientially refined executive circuits situated in subcortical areas of the brain which can coordinate the behavioral, physiological and psychological processes that need to be recruited to cope with a variety of primal survival needs (i.e., they signal evolutionary fitness issues). These birthrights allow newborn organisms to begin navigating the complexities of the world and to learn about the (...) values and contingencies of the environment. Some of these systems have been identified and characterized using modern neuroscientific and psychobiological tools. The fundamental emotional systems can now be defined by the functional psychobiological characteristics of the underlying circuitries ? characteristics which help coordinate behavioral, physiological and psychological aspects of emotionality, including the valenced affective feeling states that provide fundamental values for the guidance of behavior. The various emotional circuits are coordinated by different neuropeptides, and the arousal of each system may generate distinct affective/neurodynamic states and imbalances may lead to various psychiatric disorders. The aim of this essay is to discuss the underlying conceptual issues that must be addressed for additional progress in understanding the nature of primary process affective consciousness. (shrink)

Abstract.Scientific perspectives often are perceived to challenge biblically based cosmologies and theologies. Arthur Peacocke, biochemist and theologian, recognized that this challenge actually represents an opportunity for Christian theology to reenvision and reinterpret its traditions in ways that take into account scientific theories of evolution. In the course of his career, Peacocke offered a new paradigm for the dialogue between theology and science. This paper explores his proposals, in particular his theories of language, the God‐world relation, and the nature of God, (...) and exemplifies the impact these proposals had on his theological insights. (shrink)

Illustrates how the theory of evolution can be expanded into a source of social guidance.

Pain, suffering, death, and extinction have been intrinsic to the process of evolution by natural selection. This leads to a real problem of evolutionary theodicy, little addressed up to now in Christian theologies of creation. The problem has ontological, teleological, and soteriological aspects. The recent literature contains efforts to dismiss, disregard, or reframe the problem. The radical proposal that God has no long–term goals for creation, but merely keeps company with its unfolding, is one way forward. An alternative strategy (...) to tackle the problem of evolutionary theodicy is outlined, with an implication for environmental ethics and suggestions for further work. (shrink)

Since the dawn of time, humankind's singular ability to make decisions has allowed human beings to face innumerable environmental challenges and complex evolutionary dynamics. Environmental pressures are not so urgent anymore, comparing to our ancestors. Nonetheless, the number of decisions that contemporary humans are called to make is very high. During the last three centuries, the change from normative to descriptive theories, from formal to natural logic, from substantive to limited rationality has allowed us to explain how many of (...) the decisional strategies are coherent with the functioning of the cognitive economy of our species, even if they are limited and fallible. (shrink)

predators stalk their chosen prey, and so forth. The genius of “instinct†comes in abundant variety, and breeds true. “It must be in the genesâ€â€“that’s what we tend to conclude. But when we do, we may be jumping to conclusions, because there are other possibilities: the clever behavior we observe could be the do-it-yourself invention or discovery of the individual behaver or it could be a clever trick copied from an elder member of its species, most likely one of its (...) parents. This last possibility is an ancient doctrine, enshrined in folklore about animal parents sternly but lovingly training their young, and in countless anecdotes, but this appealing idea of animals benefitting from hand-me-down wisdom from earlier generations much the way we do has recently languished in the shadow of the genes, an oversight this book seeks to correct. The folklore is not all fanciful; some of it can be supported by good science, which moreover will open up surprising vistas on the role of individual behavior in evolution. The book is fascinating on at least three levels: first, it provides a vivid and insightful survey.. (shrink)

Freud's philosophical anthropology is in fact little more than an amplified psychiatry. For Freud, the human being is in essence a sick animal. In this paper, I discuss the possibility of founding this "anthropological turn" on evolutionary biology. On the one hand, it is shown that Freud's own attempted "evolutionary psychiatry" failed because of his very limited knowledge of Darwinism and his awe for Haeckel and Lamarck. On the other hand, I argue that more recent attempts to reconcile (...) psychoanalysis and evolutionary biology do not always provide a solid biological foundation for the Freudian philosophical project, despite the fact that they are—from a Darwinian point of view—tenable. This is so because, generally speaking, these theories consider psychopathologies either as adaptations or as accidental disorders, and not as inevitable but dysfunctional parts of human nature, like Freud did. (shrink)

achieved by the actions of a single animal. The concerted activity is coordinated by a multiplicity of cues and signals diffused between groups of ...

Sharon Street’s influential Darwinian Dilemma argues that moral realism is incompatible with moral knowledge. In this paper I argue that Street’s argument cannot give us reason to reject moral realism. This is because the debunker’s own arguments imply that our evidence for the claim that we have moral knowledge underdetermines its truth. Furthermore, the final part of the Street’s argument, where she infers that moral realism must be false because we have moral knowledge, commits her to the view that underdetermining (...) evidence cannot justify belief. This implies that the debunker is not justified in believing that we have moral knowledge. As a result, Street’s debunking argument does not give us reason to reject realism (or accept anti-realism), even if we grant that they successfully establish the incompatibility of moral realism with our having moral knowledge. (shrink)

The compatibility of scientific realism and evolutionary epistemology is a controversial issue in contemporary philosophy of science. Scientific realism is the view that scientific theories aim to describe the true nature of reality, while evolutionary epistemology is the view that scientific knowledge is the product of natural selection and adaptation. Some philosophers argue that evolutionary epistemology undermines the epistemic status of scientific theories and thus poses a serious challenge to scientific realism. This paper examines this problem and (...) explores whether scientific realism can be reconciled with evolutionary epistemology. The paper argues that critical rationalism (CR), a philosophical approach that rejects justificationism and emphasizes the role of criticism, rationality, and objectivity in science, can provide a viable framework for integrating scientific realism and evolutionary epistemology. The paper shows that by adopting a non-justificationist fallibilist stance toward scientific theories, CR can reconcile the realist and the evolutionary views on scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This article investigates the nature and appeal of morally ambiguous protagonists, or anti-heroes, through an evolutionary lens. It argues that morally ambiguous protagonists navigate conflicts between prosocial and antisocial motivational pulls. In so doing they present audiences with a window onto the conflicts inherent in human sociality. Working from this premise, the article analyzes the morally ambiguous protagonist Walter White from the TV series Breaking Bad, complementing the analysis with survey results. The article finally discusses critically the role of (...) moral disengagement in enjoyment of stories with morally ambiguous protagonists. (shrink)

The adaptationist and exaptationist programs overlap in their need for a pluralistic approach to understanding evolutionary change, and Andrews et al. effectively illustrate the methodological confounds of these approaches. However, the current critique of adaptationism, especially in the arena of human behavior, rests on the tendency to rapidly reify adaptationist hypotheses prior to broad evidentiary consensus across relevant disciplines.

For large-scale optimization, CMA-ES has the disadvantages of high complexity and premature stagnation. An improved CMA-ES algorithm called GI-ES was proposed in this paper. For the problem of high complexity, the method in this paper replaces the calculation of a covariance matrix with the modeling of expected fitting degrees for a given covariance matrix. At the same time, to solve the problem of premature stagnation, this paper replaces the historical information of elite individuals with the historical information of all individuals. (...) The information can be seen as approximate gradients. The parameters of the next generation of individuals are generated based on the approximate gradients. The experimental results were tested using CEC 2010 and CEC2013 LSGO benchmark test suite, and the experimental results verified the effectiveness of the algorithm on a number of different tasks. (shrink)

From their conception to the present, the social sciences have invoked a kind of explanation that looks suspect by the standards of the natural sciences. They explain why social practices exist by reference to the purpose or needs they serve. Yet the purposes invoked are generally not the explicit purposes or needs of any individual but of society or social groups. For example, Durkheim claimed that the division of labor in society exists in order to promote social solidarity and Marx (...) thought that the state served to promote the interests of the ruling class. Social scientists have found these explanations as irresistible as their critics have found them mysterious. This chapter traces the controversies over these explanations — generally called functional explanations — and argues that they are widespread in some of our best current social science and that they can provide compelling information in some cases, despite the many doubts about them. (shrink)