Online research in philosophy

Religious beliefs, including those about an afterlife and omniscient spiritual beings, vary across cultures. We theorize that such variations may be predictably linked to ecological variations, just as differences in mating strategies covary with resource distribution. Perhaps beliefs in a soul or afterlife are more common when resources are unpredictable, and life is brutal and short.

Diverse cultural norms governing economic behavior might emerge from a dynamic interaction of universal but flexible predispositions that get calibrated to biologically meaningful features of the local social and physical ecology. This impressive cross-cultural effort could better elucidate such gene-culture interactions by incorporating theory-driven experimental manipulations (e.g., comparing kin and non-kin exchanges), as well as analyses of mediating cognitive processes.

Consideration of the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors suggests functional reasons why people exhibit some biases in social judgment more than others. We present a taxonomy consisting of six domains of central social challenges. Each is associated with somewhat different motivations, and consequently different decision-rules. These decision-rules, in turn, make some biases inherently more likely to emerge than others.

Dynamical simulations of male and female mating strategies illustrate how traits such as restrictedness constrain, and are constrained by, local ecology. Such traits cannot be defined solely by genotype or by phenotype, but are better considered as decision rules gauged to ecological inputs. Gangestad & Simpson's work draws attention to the need for additional bridges between evolutionary psychology and dynamical systems theory.

In contrast to evidence for evolved sex differences, support for the argument that female aggression was suppressed by patriarchial ideologies is thin. One empirical test of the differential stigmatization hypothesis is proposed, utilizing the four standard criteria for judgments of abnormality.

Testosterone's connection to sex differences and key evolutionary processes arouses controversy. Effects on humans and other species, though, are not robotically deterministic but are parts of complex interactions. We discuss the societal implications of these findings and consider how the naturalistic fallacy and the person–situation dichotomy contribute to misunderstandings here.

The simultaneous possession of conflicting beliefs is both possible and logical within current models of human cognition. Specifically, evidence of lateral inhibition and state-dependent memory suggests a means by which conflicting beliefs can coexist without requiring “mental exotica.” We suggest that paradoxical self-deception enables the self-deceiver to store important information for use at a later time.

Einon's data support our original claims, although not a claim she seems to assume – of reciprocal attraction between elderly men and 20-year-old women. Implicit in her commentary is an assumption that genetic predispositions are omniscient fitness maximizers. Instead, evolutionary models assume selection-fashioned psychological mechanisms that, in the context of other mechanisms and pressures in past environments, had a positive effect on fitness relative to competing alternatives. The Over & Phillips data fit with our own data on homosexuals, and with (...) the assumption of independent modular mechanisms, rather than any existing sociocultural models. Einon also incorrectly assumes that evolutionary models have overemphasized male choice to the exclusion of female choice. (shrink)