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Harmon R. Holcomb [13]Harmon Holcomb [5]Harmon Robert Holcomb [1]
  1. Just so stories and inference to the best explanation in evolutionary psychology.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1996 - Minds and Machines 6 (4):525-540.
    Evolutionary psychology is a science in the making, working toward the goal of showing how psychological adaptation underlies much human behavior. The knee-jerk reaction that sociobiology is unscientific because it tells just-so stories has become a common charge against evolutionary psychology as well. My main positive thesis is that inference to the best explanation is a proper method for evolutionary analyses, and it supplies a new perspective on the issues raised in Schlinger's (1996) just-so story critique. My main negative thesis (...)
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  2.  21
    Interpreting Kuhn: Paradigm‐Choice as Objective Value Judgement.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1989 - Metaphilosophy 20 (1):51-67.
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  3.  15
    Evolved Psychological Mechanisms and Content‐Specificity.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1994 - Anthropology of Consciousness 5 (4):19-23.
    In The Adapted Mind (1992), Cosmides and Tooby argue for the thesis that biological evolution endowed the human mind with a system of content‐specific computational mechanisms designed to solve long‐standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter‐gatherers, and not just a generalized "capacity for culture" or all‐purpose "learning capacity". I analyze three types of arguments they offer: historical arguments for the rise of content‐Specific psychology; programmatic arguments for the aims, theory, concepts, and methods of their evolutionary approach; and experimental arguments for (...)
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  4. Hacking's Experimental Argument for Realism.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1988 - Journal of Critical Analysis 9 (1):1-12.
  5. (1 other version)Sociobiology.Harmon Holcomb & Jason M. Byron - 2005 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The term 'sociobiology' was introduced in E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) as the application of evolutionary theory to social behavior. Sociobiologists claim that many social behaviors have been shaped by natural selection for reproductive success, and they attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary histories of particular behaviors or behavioral strategies. This survey attempts to clarify and evaluate the aim of sociobiology. Given that a neutral account is impossible, this entry does the next best thing. It takes sociobiology as (...)
     
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  6.  28
    Sociobiology.Paul Gross & Harmon Holcomb - unknown
    The term ‘sociobiology’ was introduced in E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) as the application of evolutionary theory to social behavior. Sociobiologists claim that many social behaviors have been shaped by natural selection for reproductive success, and they attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary histories of particular behaviors or behavioral strategies.
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  7.  36
    Are rigorous evolutionary histories of human mating possible?Harmon R. Holcomb - 2000 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (4):606-607.
    Critics of evolutionary psychology object that it is not rigorous science compared to other evolutionary science. Advocates reply that it is rigorous science, and that the critics are uninformed. Still, informed people having opposing preconceptions of what counts as rigor may reach opposing evaluative conclusions. I shall clarify the very idea of rigorous evolutionary histories in relation to the basic objection that “evolution without history” is not rigorous.
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  8.  56
    Criticism, commitment, and the growth of human sociobiology.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (1):43-63.
    The fundamental unit of assessment in the sociobiology debate is neither a field nor a theory, but a framework of group commitments. Recourse to the framework concept is motivated, in general, by post-Kuhnian philosophy of scientific change and, in particular, by the dispute between E. O. Wilson and R. C. Lewontin. The framework concept is explicated in terms of commitments about problems, domain, disciplinary relations, exemplars, and performance evaluations. One upshot is that debate over such charges as genetic determinism, reductionism, (...)
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  9. Constraints on Defining the 'Level' and 'Unit' of Selection.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1989 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 4 (2).
  10.  30
    Empirically equivalent theories.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):625-626.
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  11.  48
    Explaining world history: Marxism, evolutionism, and sociobiology.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1998 - Biology and Philosophy 13 (4):597-618.
  12.  30
    Implications of an evolutionary biopsychosocial model.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (3):559-560.
    Mealey's work has several interesting implications: It refutes the charge that sociobiology paints a cynical portrait of human nature and adopts a one-sided reductionism; it exemplifies a general theoretical scheme for constructing evolutionary biopsychosocial models of human behavior; and it has the practical effect of promoting and informing early intervention in children at risk for psychopathic disorder.
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  13.  26
    Logicism and Achinstein's pragmatic theory of scientific explanation.Harmon Holcomb - 1987 - Dialectica 41 (3):239-248.
  14.  53
    Latency versus Complementarity: Margenau and Bohr on Quantum Mechanics.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1986 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 37 (2):193-206.
  15.  27
    Readings in the Philosophy of Science, Second Edition.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1991 - Teaching Philosophy 14 (4):487-493.
  16.  46
    To bet the impossible bet.Harmon Holcomb - 1994 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 36 (2):65 - 79.
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  17.  33
    The Philosophy of Science.Harmon R. Holcomb - 1994 - Teaching Philosophy 17 (3):275-277.