40 found
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  1. Culture and Cognitive Science.Andreas De Block & Daniel Kelly - 2022 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Human behavior and thought often exhibit a familiar pattern of within group similarity and between group difference. Many of these patterns are attributed to cultural differences. For much of the history of its investigation into behavior and thought, however, cognitive science has been disproportionately focused on uncovering and explaining the more universal features of human minds—or the universal features of minds in general. -/- This entry charts out the ways in which this has changed over recent decades. It sketches the (...)
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  2. Ideological diversity, hostility, and discrimination in philosophy.Uwe Peters, Nathan Honeycutt, Andreas De Block & Lee Jussim - 2020 - Philosophical Psychology 33 (4):511-548.
    Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to (...)
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  3.  63
    A plea for an experimental philosophy of medicine.Andreas De Block & Kristien Hens - 2021 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 42 (3):81-89.
    This special issue aims to explore and investigate a new subfield, namely experimental philosophy of medicine. Whereas experimental philosophy is relatively new on the philosophical block, some of its takes and findings have already shaped central debates in ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, and epistemology. Interestingly, the approach of this program was for a long time almost wholly ignored within bioethics and philosophy of medicine—although this seems to have changed somewhat recently. In this introduction, we briefly sketch the (...)
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  4. Is Cultural Fitness Hopelessly Confused?Grant Ramsey & Andreas De Block - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (2).
    Fitness is a central concept in evolutionary theory. Just as it is central to biological evolution, so, it seems, it should be central to cultural evolutionary theory. But importing the biological fitness concept to CET is no straightforward task—there are many features unique to cultural evolution that make this difficult. This has led some theorists to argue that there are fundamental problems with cultural fitness that render it hopelessly confused. In this essay, we defend the coherency of cultural fitness against (...)
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  5.  31
    Philosophy of Science Can Prevent Manslaughter.Andreas De Block, Pierre Delaere & Kristien Hens - 2022 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 19 (4):537-543.
    In September 2020, the surgeon Paulo Macchiarini, who used stem cell technology to enable the transplants of artificial and donor trachea, was charged with aggravated assault in Sweden. In this comment, we argue that the Ethics Council of the Karolinska Institute should have considered issues from philosophy of science when they were brought to their attention, rather than dismiss them as irrelevant to research ethics. We demonstrate how conceptual issues of a philosophy-of-science-kind about clinical research and medical practice should be (...)
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  6.  59
    'Nature and I are Two': A Critical Examination of the Biophilia Hypothesis.Yannick Joye & Andreas De Block - 2011 - Environmental Values 20 (2):189-215.
    In 1984, Edward O. Wilson proposed the idea that natural selection has resulted in an adaptive love of life-forms and life–like processes (‘biophilia') in humans. To date, the idea of biophilia has been viewed as an ultimate explanation of many conservation attitudes in humans. In this paper, we contend that environmental ethics has little to gain from the biophilia hypothesis. First, the notion is open to various and even conflicting interpretations. Second, the empirical findings that do seem to corroborate a (...)
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  7.  11
    Introduction: Whither (Experimental) Philosophy of Medicine?Kristien Hens & Andreas De Block - 2023 - In Kristien Hens & Andreas De Block (eds.), Advances in experimental philosophy of medicine. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 1-10.
    This chapter describes the field of philosophy of medicine and its methods. We discuss the history and potential of experimental approaches in philosophy of medicine. We give an overview of the chapters in the book.
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  8. Why We Essentialize Mental Disorders.Pieter R. Adriaens & Andreas De Block - 2013 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (2):107-127.
    Essentialism is one of the most pervasive problems in mental health research. Many psychiatrists still hold the view that their nosologies will enable them, sooner or later, to carve nature at its joints and to identify and chart the essence of mental disorders. Moreover, according to recent research in social psychology, some laypeople tend to think along similar essentialist lines. The main aim of this article is to highlight a number of processes that possibly explain the persistent presence and popularity (...)
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  9.  66
    Maladapting Minds: Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Evolutionary Theory.Pieter R. Adriaens & Andreas De Block (eds.) - 2011 - Oxford University Press.
    Maladapting Minds discusses a number of reasons why philosophers of psychiatry should take an interest in evolutionary explanations of mental disorders and, more generally, in evolutionary thinking. First of all, there is the nascent field of evolutionary psychiatry. Unlike other psychiatrists, evolutionary psychiatrists engage with ultimate, rather than proximate, questions about mental illnesses. Being a young and youthful new discipline, evolutionary psychiatry allows for a nice case study in the philosophy of science. Secondly, philosophers of psychiatry have engaged with evolutionary (...)
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  10.  42
    Would Relaxation of the Anti-doping Rule Lead to Red Queen Effects?Bengt Kayser & Andreas De Block - 2020 - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 15 (3):1-15.
    One of the claims sometimes advanced in favour of anti-doping is that allowing doping would lead to a uniform increase in performance in comparison to no doping. The idea is that if all athletes wo...
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  11.  75
    (1 other version)The history of the concept of pain: how the experts came to be out of touch with the folk.Benjamin Goldberg, Kevin Reuter, Justin Sytsma, Kristien Hens & Andreas De Block - 2019 - In Richard Samuels & Daniel A. Wilkenfeld (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science. London: Bloomsbury. pp. 173-190.
    In this chapter we consider the tension between how pain researchers today typically define pains and the dominant, ordinary conception of pain. While both philosophers and pain scientists define pains as experiences, taking this to correspond with the ordinary understanding, recent empirical evidence indicates that laypeople tend to think of pains as qualities of bodily states. How did this divide come about? To answer, we sketch the historical origins of the concept of pain in Western medicine, providing evidence that during (...)
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  12.  33
    Why Darwinians Should Not Be Afraid of Mary Douglas—And Vice Versa.Andreas De Block & Stefaan E. Cuypers - 2012 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 42 (4):459-488.
    Evolutionary psychology and human sociobiology often reject the mere possibility of symbolic causality. Conversely, theories in which symbolic causality plays a central role tend to be both anti-nativist and anti-evolutionary. This article sketches how these apparent scientific rivals can be reconciled in the study of disgust. First, we argue that there are no good philosophical or evolutionary reasons to assume that symbolic causality is impossible. Then, we examine to what extent symbolic causality can be part of the theoretical toolbox of (...)
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  13.  32
    Darwinism and the cultural evolution of sports.Andreas De Block & Siegfried Dewitte - 2008 - Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 52 (1):1-16.
    Evolutionary theory has gained some ground in the social sciences, but not without resistance. It must be said that at least some of the resistance on the part of social scientists is justified insofar as social and cultural phenomena such as sports are often much more complex than many evolutionary theorists seem to think. We propose in this paper an evolutionary approach to sports that takes into account its profoundly cultural character, thereby overcoming the traditional nature-culture dichotomies in the sociology (...)
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  14.  74
    Amusing ourselves to death? Superstimuli and the evolutionary social sciences.Bart du Laing & Andreas de Block - 2010 - Philosophical Psychology 23 (6):821-843.
    Some evolutionary psychologists claim that humans are good at creating superstimuli, and that many pleasure technologies are detrimental to our reproductive fitness. Most of the evolutionary psychological literature makes use of some version of Lorenz and Tinbergen’s largely embryonic conceptual framework to make sense of supernormal stimulation and bias exploitation in humans. However, the early ethological concept “superstimulus” was intimately connected to other erstwhile core ethological notions, such as the innate releasing mechanism, sign stimuli and the fixed action pattern, notions (...)
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  15.  41
    Pathologizing sexual deviance: a history.Andreas De Block & Pieter Adriaens - 2013 - Journal of Sex Research 50 (3):276 - 298.
    This article provides a historical perspective on how both American and European psychiatrists have conceptualized and categorized sexual deviance throughout the past 150 years. During this time, quite a number of sexual preferences, desires, and behaviors have been pathologized and depathologized at will, thus revealing psychiatry's constant struggle to distinguish mental disorder--in other words, the "perversions," "sexual deviations," or "paraphilias"--from immoral, unethical, or illegal behavior. This struggle is apparent in the works of 19th- and early-20th-century psychiatrists and sexologists, but it (...)
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  16.  60
    The Organism-Centered Approach to Cultural Evolution.Andreas De Block & Grant Ramsey - 2016 - Topoi 35 (1):283-290.
    In this paper, we distinguish two different approaches to cultural evolution. One approach is meme-centered, the other organism-centered. We argue that in situations in which the meme- and organism-centered approaches are competing alternatives, the organism-centered approach is in many ways superior. Furthermore, the organism-centered approach can go a long way toward understanding the evolution of institutions. Although the organism-centered approach is preferable for a broad class of situations, we do leave room for super-organismic or sub-organismic explanations of some cultural phenomena.
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  17.  73
    Mating games: cultural evolution and sexual selection.Andreas De Block & Siegfried8 Dewitte - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (4):475-491.
    In this paper, we argue that mating games, a concept that denotes cultural practices characterized by a competitive element and an ornamental character, are essential drivers behind the emergence and maintenance of human cultural practices. In order to substantiate this claim, we sketch out the essential role of the game’s players and audience, as well as the ways in which games can mature and turn into relatively stable cultural practices. After outlining the life phase of mating games – their emergence, (...)
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  18.  9
    The vices and virtues of medical models of obesity.Jonathan Sholl & Andreas De Block - forthcoming - Obesity Reviews.
    Despite numerous public health organizations supporting the pathologization of obesity and considering recent obesity rates a health crisis, many researchers in the humanities, social sciences, and even in the health sciences remain unconvinced. In this paper, we address a set of arguments coming from these academic fields that criticize medical models of obesity for their supposedly flawed diagnostic categories that shift focus onto individuals and support moralizing judgements. Clarifying some key claims in these models and explicating the view of obesity (...)
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  19. (2 other versions)Why mental disorders are just mental dysfunctions (and nothing more): Some Darwinian arguments.Andreas De Block - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (3):338-346.
    Mental disorders are often thought to be harmful dysfunctions. Jerome Wakefield has argued that such dysfunctions should be understood as failures of naturally selected functions. This suggests, implicitly, that evolutionary biology and other Darwinian disciplines hold important information for anyone working on answering the philosophical question, ‘what is a mental disorder?’. In this article, the author argues that Darwinian theory is not only relevant to the understanding of the disrupted functions, but it also sheds light on the disruption itself, as (...)
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  20.  90
    Paving the Way for an Evolutionary Social Constructivism.Andreas De Block & Bart Du Laing - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (4):337-348.
    The idea has recently taken root that evolutionary theory and social constructivism are less antagonistic than most theorists thought, and we have even seen attempts at integrating constructivist and evolutionary approaches to human thought and behaviour. We argue in this article that although the projected integration is possible, indeed valuable, the existing attempts have tended to be vague or overly simplistic about the claims of social constructivist. We proceed by examining how to give more precision and substance to the research (...)
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  21. Why philosophers of psychiatry should care about evolutionary theory.Andreas De Block & Pieter R. Adriaens - 2011 - In Pieter R. Adriaens & Andreas De Block (eds.), Maladapting Minds: Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Evolutionary Theory. Oxford University Press.
     
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  22. Is de filosofie te links?Andreas De Block & Olivier Lemeire - 2017 - Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 109 (1):105-122.
    Ideological diversity has been on the research agenda in the social sciences for a couple of years. Yet in philosophy, the topic has not attracted much interest. This article tries to start filling this gap. We discuss a number of possible causes for the underrepresentation of right-wing and conservative philosophers in the academic profession. We also argue why this should be an important concern, not only morally, but also and primarily epistemically. Lastly, we explore whether the situation in philosophy is (...)
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  23.  40
    Responsible Dissemination in Sexual Orientation Research: The Case of the AI “Gaydar”.Andreas De Block & Stijn Conix - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):1075-1084.
    A recent controversy about neural networks allegedly capable of detecting a person’s sexual orientation raises the question of whether all research on homosexuality should be permitted. This paper considers two arguments for limits to such research, and concludes that there are good reasons to limit at least the dissemination of applied research on the etiology of homosexuality. The paper then briefly sketches how this could work, and looks at three objections against these limitations.
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  24.  16
    Chapter 25. Harmless Dysfunctions and the Problem of Normal Variation.Andreas De Block & Jonathan Scholl - 2021 - In Luc Faucher & Denis Forest (eds.), Defining Mental Disorders: Jerome Wakefield and his Critics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 495-510.
    In one of his key publications on the harmful dysfunction analysis of mental disorder (HDA), Jerome Wakefield acknowledged that he has “explored the value element in disorder less thoroughly than the factual element. This is in part because the factual component poses more of a problem for inferences about disorder and in part because the nature of values is such that it requires separate consideration” (Wakefield 1992, 384). More than twenty years have passed since this remark, and yet a thorough (...)
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  25. Philosophy and the Biology of Male Homosexuality.Olivier Lemeire & Andreas De Block - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (7):479-488.
    This paper is a review of how biological as well as other scientific theories, concepts and findings have been used to answer philosophical questions regarding the nature of male homosexuality. We argue that while these sciences are certainly relevant for present philosophical debates, few of the different philosophical issues surrounding male homosexuality can be settled by science alone. In the first section, we introduce a number of various essentialist and constructivist views on (male) homosexuality. The second section focuses on the (...)
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  26. Darwinizing sexual ambivalence: A new evolutionary hypothesis of male homosexuality.Andreas De Block & Pieter Adriaens - 2004 - Philosophical Psychology 17 (1):59 – 76.
    At first sight, homosexuality has little to do with reproduction. Nevertheless, many neo-Darwinian theoreticians think that human homosexuality may have had a procreative value, since it enabled the close kin of homosexuals to have more viable offspring than individuals lacking the support of homosexual siblings. In this article, however, we will defend an alternative hypothesis - originally put forward by Freud in "A phylogenetic phantasy" - namely that homosexuality evolved as a means to strengthen social bonds. Consequently, from an evolutionary (...)
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  27.  21
    Resolving Conceptual Conflicts through Voting.Vincent Cuypers & Andreas De Block - 2024 - Foundations of Science 29 (3):773-788.
    Scientific activities strongly depend on concepts and classifications to represent the world in an orderly and workable manner. This creates a trade-off. On the one hand, it is important to leave space for conceptual and classificatory criticism. On the other hand, agreement on which concepts and classifications to use, is often crucial for communication and the integration of research and ideas. In this paper, we show that this trade-off can sometimes best be resolved through conceptual governance, in which scientific institutions (...)
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  28.  44
    Alle gekheid in een hokje.Pieter R. Adriaens & Andreas de Block - 2010 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 72 (1):7-39.
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  29.  17
    Creatief met seksualiteit: Over de onmogelijkheid Van een freudiaanse sublimeringstheorie.Andreas De Block - 2003 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 65 (3):415-437.
    Sublimation is usually defined as a defense-mechanism that desexualizes the sexual instincts. This desexualization then results in socio-cultural activities and psychic health. That means that sublimation is a crucial concept for psychoanalytic thinking, because it seems to connect the Freudian metapsychology with both applied psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. However, in this article I argue that within Freud's theory sublimation is an empty and redundant concept. It is a redundant concept as far as it 'explains' the socio-cultural tendencies of human beings, (...)
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  30.  19
    Doomed by nature: The inevitable failure of our naturally selected functions.Andreas De Block - 2005 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 12 (4):343-348.
  31.  21
    Drift en ziekte. Over het waarom Van freuds antropologische wending.Andreas De Block - 2002 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (2):325-352.
    Freud's anthropology is in fact little more than an amplified psychiatry. For Freud, the human being is in essence a sick animal. In this paper the author discusses why Freud made this so-called 'anthropological turn'. First it is shown that Freud wanted his psychoanalytic theory to be a 'Philosophy of Man'. Secondly it is argued that this can only be the case if the determinants of pathology, that psychoanalysis claimed to have discovered, are constitutive of human subjectivity. This means that (...)
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  32.  27
    En evolutionair geloof? Over 'intelligent design', darwinisme en theïsme.Andreas de Block - 2008 - Bijdragen 69 (1):3-17.
    Both the so-called high priests of atheism and the proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the Darwinian theory of evolution is more problematic for theism than any other scientific theory. Against the grain of most contemporary philosophers and theologians, I contend that their arguments are largely correct. Moreover, neo-Darwinism is especially threatening the soft theism or deism, defended by Darwin and several of the most prominent Darwinian theorists . For the proponents of ID, this implies that a more theistic science (...)
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  33.  14
    Freud as an'evolutionary psychiatrist'and the foundations of a Freudian philosophy.Andreas De Block - 2005 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 12 (4):315-324.
  34.  30
    Goodwin, Piaget, and the Evolving Evolutionary Synthesis.Andreas De Block & Bart Du Laing - 2009 - Biological Theory 4 (2):112-114.
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  35.  9
    Is the Cannibal a Good Sport?Andreas de Block & Yannick Joye - 2010-09-24 - In Fritz Allhoff, Jesús Ilundáin‐Agurruza & Michael W. Austin (eds.), Cycling ‐ Philosophy for Everyone. Wiley‐Blackwell. pp. 214–225.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Cannibal Culpable Cannibalism? Winning the Right Way In Control Even after a Blowout Last Pedal Strokes … Notes.
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  36.  47
    Advances in experimental philosophy of medicine.Kristien Hens & Andreas De Block (eds.) - 2023 - New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    This open access collection brings together a team of leading scholars and rising stars to consider what experimental philosophy of medicine is and can be. While experimental philosophy of science is an established field, attempts to tackle issues in philosophy of medicine from an experimental angle are still surprisingly scarce. A team of interdisciplinary scholars demonstrate how we can make progress by integrating a variety of methods from experimental philosophy, including experiments, sociological surveys, simulations, as well as history and philosophy (...)
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  37.  38
    Beware of the Philosophical Expert.Lode Lauwaert & Andreas De Block - 2020 - Philosophy Today 64 (4):871-876.
    Many philosophers and lay people believe that philosophy has an important role to play in times of societal crisis. In this contribution reasons are given to doubt the supposed societal relevance of philosophy.
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  38.  20
    The co-evolution of nativist beliefs and tolerant attitudes.Olivier Lemeire & Andreas De Block - 2016 - ASEBL Journal 12 (1):27-29.
    Commentary on Lesly Newson and Peter Richerson, Moral Beliefs about Homosexuality: Testing a Cultural Evolutionary Hypothesis.
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  39.  24
    The dynamics of science: computational frontiers in history and philosophy of science.Grant Ramsey & Andreas de Block (eds.) - 2022 - Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press.
    Millions of scientific articles are published each year, making it difficult to stay abreast of advances within even the smallest subdisciplines. Traditional approaches to the study of science, such as the history and philosophy of science, involve closely reading a relatively small set of journal articles. And yet many questions benefit from casting a wider net: Is most scientific change gradual or revolutionary? What are the key sources of scientific novelty? Over the past several decades, a massive effort to digitize (...)
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  40.  26
    Sports, ethics, integrity and spirituality.Jan Tolleneer, An De Kock, Andreas De Block & Paul Schotsmans - unknown
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