What has sometimes been called the "standard" argument for fatalism never achieved the critical popularity of Richard Taylor's (1962) infamous argument. But it has enjoyed far greater longevity. In De Fato Cicero (1960) tells us it was known in ancient Greece as the "idle argument", for it purports to show the futility of attempting to control one's fate and, hence, those persuaded by it could be led to a life of inaction and idleness. Even with such antiquated credentials, however, the (...) argument continues to exercise fine contemporary minds (e.g. Schlesinger 1993). (shrink)

In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "...

Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominant view in evolutionary psychology holds that it was -- that our psychological adaptations were designed tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionary psychology -- the paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in The Evolution of (...) Desire -- and rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionary theory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychology is misguided.Evolutionary psychology employs a kind of reverse engineering to explain the evolved design of the mind, figuring out the adaptive problems our ancestors faced and then inferring the psychological adaptations that evolved to solve them. In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "discoveries," including "discriminative parental solicitude". Drawing on a wide range of empirical research, including his own large-scale study of child abuse, he shows that none is actually supported by the evidence.Buller argues that our minds are not adapted to the Pleistocene, but, like the immune system, are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time and individual lifetimes. We must move beyond the reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology to reach an accurate understanding of how human psychology is influenced by evolution. When we do, Buller claims, we will abandon not only the quest for human nature but the very idea of human nature itself. (shrink)

A complete sourcebook for philosophical discussion of the nature of function in biology.

Formulations of the essential commitment of the etiological theory of functions have varied significantly, with some individual authors' formulations even varying from one place to another. The logical geography of these various formulations is different from what is standardly assumed; for they are not stylistic variants of the same essential commitment, but stylistic variants of two non-equivalent versions of the etiological theory. I distinguish these “strong” and “weak” versions of the etiological theory (which differ with respect to the role of (...) selection in their definitions of function), draw out their respective implications, and argue that the weak version is to be preferred to the strong. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists claim that the mind contains “hundreds or thousands” of “genetically specified” modules, which are evolutionary adaptations for their cognitive functions. We argue that, while the adult human mind/brain typically contains a degree of modularization, its “modules” are neither genetically specified nor evolutionary adaptations. Rather, they result from the brain’s developmental plasticity, which allows environmental task demands a large role in shaping the brain’s information-processing structures. The brain’s developmental plasticity is our fundamental psychological adaptation, and the “modules” that result (...) from it are adaptive responses to local conditions, not past evolutionary environments. If different individuals share common environ- ments, however, they may develop similar “modules,” and this process can mimic the development of genetically specified modules in the evolutionary psychologist’s sense. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to Function, Selection, and Design, consisting of the following sections: 1. Introduction 2. The Philosophical Problem 3. Recent Prehistory: The "State of the Art" in the 1960s 4. Wright and Cummins 5. Millikan 6. The Core Consensus and the Peripheral Disagreements 7. Unconclusion.

For some evolutionary psychology is merely a field of inquiry, but for others it is a robust paradigm involving specific theories about the nature and evolution of the human mind. Proponents of this paradigm claim to have made several important discoveries regarding the evolved architecture of the mind. Highly publicized discoveries include a cheater-detection module, a psychological sex difference in jealousy, and motivational mechanisms underlying parental love and its lapses, which purportedly result in child maltreatment. In this article, I argue (...) that the empirical evidence for these ‘discoveries’ is inconclusive, at best. I suggest that, as the reigning paradigm in evolutionary psychology has produced questionable results, the evolutionary study of human psychology is still in need of a guiding paradigm. (shrink)

Several analyses of biological function — for example, those of Williams, Millikan, and Kitcher — identify an item’s function with what natural selection designed it to do. Allen and Bekoff have disagreed, claiming that natural design is a special case of biological function. I argue that Allen and Bekoff’s account of natural design is unduly restrictive and that it fails to mark a principled distinction between function and design. I distinguish two approaches to the phenomenon of natural design — the (...) “trait-centered” approach of Allen and Bekoff and the “organism-centered” approach — and defend the latter. When design is understood according to the organism-centered approach, biological function and design are co-instantiated phenomena. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists sometimes suggest that "an evolutionary view of life can shed light on psyche" by revealing the "latent" psychology that underlies our "manifest" psychological image. At such moments, which become more frequent in popular works, explanations trade freely in subconscious motives whose goal is inclusive fitness. While some evolutionary psychologists explicitly deny that their aim is to uncover latent motivation, references to subconscious motives are nonetheless frequent in evolutionary psychology (and are even made by those explicitly denying postulation of (...) subconscious motives). These explanatory references to subconscious motives pose a dilemma. On the one hand, if they are literal, evolutionary psychology is vulnerable to a criticism frequently leveled against sociobiology: if subconscious motives toward inclusive fitness are the true determinants of human behavior, our behavior should more closely approximate full satisfaction of those motives (i.e. increased fitness) than it does. On the other hand, if references to subconscious motives are merely figurative -- like talk of "selfish" genes -- it must be explained how they are to be literally interpreted. Either way it is necessary to "deFreud" evolutionary psychology. I will thus provide an account of evolutionary psychological explanation, and how it functions, when purged of reference to subconscious motives. (shrink)

Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence.

Millikan and Wilson argue, for different reasons, that the essential reference to the environment in adaptationist explanations of behavior makes (psychological) individualism inconsistent with evolutionary psychology. I show that their arguments are based on misinterpretations of the role of reference to the environment in such explanations. By exploring these misinterpretations, I develop an account of explanation in evolutionary psychology that is fully consistent with individualism. This does not, however, constitute a full-fledged defense of individualism, since evolutionary psychology is only one (...) explanatory paradigm among many in psychology. (shrink)

McTaggart raised a famed paradox regarding the transientist conception of time, the idea that the present moves into the future to overtake future events (or, alternatively, that future events move into the present) and past events recede further and further into the past as time goes on. Schlesinger has recently attempted an ingenious transientist solution to McTaggart's paradox. We will argue that Schlesinger's solution to McTaggart's paradox itself gives rise to a new, yet perfectly parallel, paradox which can only be (...) resolved by abandoning the transientist view of time. (shrink)

Numerous studies have shown that men experience relatively greater levels of jealousy in response to the sexual aspects of an infidelity (relative to women), whereas women experience relatively greater levels of jealousy in response to the emotional aspects of an infidelity (relative to men). The traditional explanation for this relationship suggests that men experience this greater level of jealousy due to threats of a loss of paternal certainty. In this article, we present three studies that demonstrate that men’s differentially greater (...) jealousy occurs in response to situations that threaten paternity opportunities. These results suggest that a loss of perceived paternity opportunities is the ultimate origin of men’s increased jealousy in response to sexual infidelity. (shrink)

The idea that human cognitive capacities are explainable by computational models is often conjoined with the idea that, while the states postulated by such models are in fact realized by brain states, there are no type-type correlations between the states postulated by computational models and brain states (a corollary of token physicalism). I argue that these ideas are not jointly tenable. I discuss the kinds of empirical evidence available to cognitive scientists for (dis)confirming computational models of cognition and argue that (...) none of these kinds of evidence can be relevant to a choice among competing computational models unless there are in fact type-type correlations between the states postulated by computational models and brain states. Thus, I conclude, research into the computational procedures employed in human cognition must be conducted hand-in-hand with research into the brain processes which realize those procedures. (shrink)

Discussion of Fodor's doctrine of 'methodological solipsism' and Stich's principle of autonomy' has been concerned to show that these principles are incompatible with psychological theories which appeal to states with content (e.g. beliefs and desires). Concern with these issues, and the subsequent attempt to develop a notion of 'narrow' content which is solipsistic or autonomous, has, I believe, obscured a more fundamental issue: No theory which satisfies these principles would ever be able to explain behavior under descriptions which are in (...) fact important to psychology. But I do not simply argue that there are descriptions under which psychological theories will not in fact explain behavior; I argue that descriptions under which psychological theories do explain behavior are not compatible with solipsistic principles. I develop several thought experiments to demonstrate this. (shrink)

The idea that human cognitive capacities are explainable by computational models is often conjoined with the idea that, while the states postulated by such models are in fact realized by brain states, there are no type-type correlations between the states postulated by computational models and brain states (a corollary of token physicalism). I argue that these ideas are not jointly tenable. I discuss the kinds of empirical evidence available to cognitive scientists for (dis)confirming computational models of cognition and argue that (...) none of these kinds of evidence can be relevant to a choice among competing computational models unless there are in fact type-type correlations between the states postulated by computational models and brain states. Thus, I conclude, research into the computational procedures employed in human cognition must be conducted hand-in-hand with research into the brain processes which realize those procedures. (shrink)

Benthamite utilitarianism was influential in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. Bentham and his followers took a special interest in the British colonies. As a result, key Australian institutions were strongly influenced by Bentham’s ideas, including in relation to democracy, law, and punishment. Benthamite radicals in London, and their associates in the colonies, had a profound influence on the development of the colonies through their activities in parliament, the law, and as theorists and activists. This paper draws (...) attention to some of the areas of influence of Bentham’s ideas in Australia, and reaches towards an understanding of why Australia has been described as a Benthamite society. (shrink)

Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature DAVID BULLER Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005 564 pages, ISBN: 0262025795 (hbk); $37.00.

Popularisations of evolutionary psychology have had a truly remarkable success. Judging by the popular press one could be forgiven for think that contemporary psychology is essentially co-extensive with evolutionary psychology. In the academy evolutionary psychological has been subject to some extremely hard-hitting and destructive attacks, but to date no approachable, popular critique has been available. The present volume aims to fill this void. I am not completely convinced it succeeds in this, but I find it valuable nevertheless.

David Buller's recent book, Adapting Minds, is a philosophical critique of the field of evolutionary psychology. Buller argues that evolutionary psychology is utterly bankrupt from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Although Adapting Minds has been well received in both the academic press and the popular media, we argue that Buller's critique of evolutionary psychology fails.

In this paper, I critique arguments made by philosopher David Buller against central evolutionary-psychological explanations of human mating. Specifically, I aim to rebut his criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology regarding (1) women's long-term mating preferences for high-status men; (2) the evolutionary rationale behind men's provisioning of women; (3) men's mating preferences for young women; (4) women's adaptation for extra-pair sex; (5) the sex-differentiated evolutionary theory of human jealousy; and (6) the notion of mate value. In sum, I aim to (...) demonstrate that Buller's arguments contra Evolutionary Psychologists are left wanting. (shrink)

David Buller and Valerie Hardcastle have argued that various discoveries about the genetics and nature of brain development show that most ?central? psychological mechanisms cannot be adaptations because the nature of the contribution from the environment on which they are based shows they are not heritable. Some philosophers and scientists have argued that a strong role for the environment is compatible with high heritability as long as the environment is highly stable down lineages. In this paper I support (...) this view by arguing that the discoveries Buller and Hardcastle refer to either do not show as strong a role for the environment as they suggest, or these discoveries show that the brain's developmental process depends in many cases on input from the environment that is highly stable across generations. (shrink)

Neuroscience cannot and should not be allowed to replace normative questions with scientific onesOver the past few years considerable attention has been paid to a variety of issues that are now placed collectively under the heading of “Neuroethics”. In both the academic and the popular press there have been discussions about the possibilities and problems offered by cognitive enhancement and neuroimaging as well as debate about the implications of these emerging “neurotechnologies” for morality and the law. This issue of the (...) journal contains eight papers that discuss a broad range of important topics in neuroethics, from cognitive enhancement and the moral status of animals and cyborgs, to the challenges of neurological consults in end of life cases. As these papers demonstrate, advances in neuroscience raise a number of important ethical questions, but can neuroscience help provide any answers?FACT AND VALUEAccording to the received philosophical wisdom, there is a fundamental distinction between fact and value—between how things are and how they ought to be. On the basis of this distinction one cannot draw normative conclusions from descriptive premises because there is nothing in the premises that would warrant such conclusions: from the fact that happiness is desired it does not follow that it ought to be. This received wisdom applies to neuroethics in the following way: whereas neuroscience might be able to identify the neurophysical correlates for evaluative notions such as preferences and attitudes,1,2 lying,3 and the distinction between in control and out of control behaviour,4 neuroscience cannot, in and by itself, provide the basis for their evaluation. The reason for this is that, in the absence of factors external to these neurophysical states, one neurophysical state is no better or worse than another—internal neurophysical states are logically …. (shrink)

David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the "sophistry and illusion"of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or (...) indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded skepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the "superstition" of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and his edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

A leading political theorist’s groundbreaking defense of ideal conceptions of justice in political philosophy Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question (...) whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? Utopophobia argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. David Estlund does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does he assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. Estlund engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, he counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, Utopophobia stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal question" -- consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the "machine question": whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a (...) fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

By means of an example, shows the possibility of beliefs that are separately rational whilst together inconsistent.

How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.

The authors argue that the time is ripe for national and corporate leaders to move consciously towards the development of global ethics. This papers presents a model of global ethics, a rationale for the development of global ethics, and the implications of the model for research and practice.

I attempt to get as clear as possible on the chain of reasoning by which irreversible macrodynamics is derivable from time-reversible microphysics, and in particular to clarify just what kinds of assumptions about the initial state of the universe, and about the nature of the microdynamics, are needed in these derivations. I conclude that while a “Past Hypothesis” about the early Universe does seem necessary to carry out such derivations, that Hypothesis is not correctly understood as a constraint on the (...) early Universe’s entropy. (shrink)

According to a standard view, the physical boundary of the person—the skin-and-skull boundary—matters morally because this boundary delineates between where the person begins and the world ends. On the basis of this view we make a distinction between invasive interventions that penetrate this boundary and non-invasive interventions that do not. The development of neuroprosthetics, however, raises questions about the significance of this boundary and the relationship between person and body. In particular it has been argued by appeal to the Extended (...) Mind thesis that mind and person can extend beyond the body, and hence the skin-and-skull boundary is of questionable significance. In this paper I argue that the Extended Mind thesis is consistent with the ethical relevance of the skin-and-skull barrier. Although it can be argued that cognitive processes and aspect of mind can extend beyond the skin-and-skull boundary as EM claims, it does not follow that the person is also extended beyond this boundary. The moral sense of person is closely related to the notion of person as a subject of experiences and this, in turn, is related to the sensory and somatosensory aspects of the body. The development of neuroprosthetics provides us with reason to see that persons can be variously embodied, but this is consistent with the functional and ethical significance of the skin-and-skull boundary. (shrink)