To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations. Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works. These two types of explanation are complementary and the distinction is critical to evolutionary explanation. We are concerned that they have become conflated in some areas of the evolutionary literature on human behavior. This article brings attention to these issues. We focus on three specific areas: the evolution of (...) cooperation, transmitted culture, and epigenetics. We do this to avoid confusion and wasted effort—dangers that are particularly acute in interdisciplinary research. Throughout this article, we suggest ways in which misunderstanding may be avoided in the future. (shrink)

Scott shows that the gender equality invoked today as a fundamental principle was not originally associated with the term "secularism" when it first entered the nineteenth century. The inequality of the sexes was fundamental to the articulation of the separation of church and state that inaugurated Western modernity. Western nation-states imposed a new order of women's subordination, assigning them to a feminized familial sphere meant to complement the rational masculine realms of politics and economics. It was not until the (...) question of Islam arose in the late twentieth century that gender equality became a primary feature of the discourse of secularism. (shrink)

Introduction and initial thoughts -- Critical realism and empirical research methods in education -- Resolving the quantitative-qualitative divide -- Epistemic relativism, ontological realism, and the possibility of judgemental rationality -- Educational judgements : epistemic, parasitic and external criteria -- Judgemental rationality -- Empirical indicators and causal narratives -- Structure and agency : key ontological concepts -- Educational critique -- Arbitrary and non-arbitrary knowledge.

"F. A. Hayek and the Epistemology of Politics is an exploration of an important problem that has largely been ignored: the problem of policymaker ignorance, and the limits of political epistemology. Scott Scheall explores Hayek's attitude to the philosophy of science and political philosophy, arguing that Hayek defended a philosophy of science that implied certain potential dangers of politicized science, and that his political philosophy established the potential dangers of misapplying scientific methods and results to matters of public policy. (...) The book offers an explanation for why policymaking often fails and why constituents, whatever their political affiliations, are so often disappointed with political leaders. In this primarily philosophical examination of his work, Hayek's ideas are not merely discussed, analysed, and contextualized, but extended; the book both draws and defends previously unrecognized implications from the Hayekian canon. The book also explores the historical context within which these ideas flourished. The book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of the works of F.A. Hayek, policymakers, and to those of all political, philosophical, and social-scientific persuasions"--. (shrink)

This thesis addresses two enduring issues in legal theory-- rationality and its association with rule of law values--by offering detailed models of two patterns of legal reasoning. One is reasoning by analogy. The other is the inference process that legal reasoners use when they defer epistemically to scientific experts in the course of reaching legal decisions. Discussions in both chapters reveal that the inference pattern known as "abduction" is a deeply important element of many legal inferences, including analogy and epistemic (...) deference to experts--something that has been largely unrecognized in legal theory. After presenting a detailed model of analogy, Chapter 1 argues that legal reasoning by analogy, like analogical argument in logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences, possesses a great deal of rational force when properly executed. Chapter 2 investigates the reasoning process by which non-expert legal reasoners defer epistemically to the judgments of scientists. It presents five main conclusions or explanations. Every practical syllogism actually consists of two distinct chains of inference, and what is usually considered in writings on practical reasoning to be the minor premise of a practical syllogism is actually the conclusion of a separate chain of argument. When a practical reasoner defers epistemically to a theoretical expert, this separate chain of argument has a special structure, which is modeled in Chapter 2. The non-expert legal reasoner must always make a prescriptive practical judgment about the standard of epistemic appraisal and level of epistemic confidence that the reasoner requires of scientific evidence before it may be relied upon in reaching a legal decision. Legal systems should be committed to an emergent rule of law ideal identified and referred to as "intellectual due process" which condemns epistemically arbitrary reasoning processes insofar as they play a role in legal decisionmaking. Since non-arbitrariness is a necessary condition of both epistemic and legal legitimacy, we have compelling reason to doubt that the non-arbitrariness condition can be met when non-experts defer epistemically to scientific experts. (shrink)

In recent years, the notion of wilderness has been roundly criticized by several prominent environmental philosophers and historians. They argue that the “received wilderness idea” is dualistic, ethnocentric, and static. According to these critics, this idea of wilderness finds clear expression in the Wilderness Act of 1964. However, the idea of wilderness so ably deconstructed by its critics bears little resemblance to the understanding of wilderness presented in the Wilderness Act. The critics assume a backward-looking, purity-based definition of wilderness that (...) runs counter to the forward-looking, relativistic interpretation of the Wilderness Act that has guided and informed subsequent wilderness legislation, management, and visitation. Under the Wilderness Act, wilderness designation is less a matter of preserving remnants of “pristine” nature than establishing a covenant between humans and a particular place. Wilderness areas, so conceived, serve as potential sabbath places, whose ultimate significance is best understood in terms of their mutually informing relationship to the places where we live and work. Rather than detracting from our efforts to inhabit the Earth in more creative and sustainable ways, wilderness represents a vital part of larger landscapes of human inhabitation characterized by a diverse mixture of human-nature relational patterns. (shrink)

The story of the show, The Good Place, begins with a common picture of what happens to us after we die. One of the key philosophical issues in the story involves how to assess correctly the moral goodness or badness of a person's life on Earth, since this is the basis of the judgment concerning their eternal destiny. Thomas Nagel claims that there are four kinds of “moral luck”: luck in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, luck with respect (...) to our constitution or character, luck with respect to the results of our actions, and luck with respect to having free choices at all. Perhaps one moral of the story of The Good Place is that life is really complicated, morally speaking—people are not simply good or evil, and cannot be judged easily. (shrink)

This paper replies to Fred Ablondi’s discussion of Descartes’s treatment of madness in the Meditations. Against Ablondi’s interpretation that Descartes never seriously takes on board the skeptical hypothesis that he might be mad, because to do so would be for him to undermine the logical thought processes required to realize his agenda in the Meditations, I contend that Descartes does employ madness as a skeptical device, by assimilating its skeptical essentials into the dream argument. I maintain that while Descartes does (...) not use madness to undermine logical processes, he does adduce other considerations that reveal him to be prepared to see those processes undermined. On the question why Descartes abandons madness in the Meditations, I argue that, despite its attractiveness as a skeptical device, the madness hypothesis involves methodological shortcomings that render it unfit for service in the doubt. (shrink)

volume 1. The founding giants -- volume 2. A new vision -- volume 3. The struggle for modality.

Traditional Plato scholarship, in the English-speaking world, has assumed that Platonic dialogues are merely collections of arguments. Inevitably, the question arises: If Plato wanted to present collections of arguments, why did he write dialogues instead of treatises? Concerned about this question, some scholars have been experimenting with other, more contextualized ways of reading the dialogues. This anthology is among the first to present these new approaches as pursued by a variety of scholars. As such, it offers new perspectives on Plato (...) as well as a suggestive view of Plato scholarship as something of a laboratory for historians of philosophy generally. The essays gathered here each examine vital aspects of Plato’s many methods, considering his dialogues in relation to Thucydides and Homer, narrative strategies and medical practice, images and metaphors. They offer surprising new research into such much-studied works as _The Republic_ as well as revealing views of lesser-known dialogues like the _Cratylus_ and _Philebus_. With reference to thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Sartre, the authors place the Platonic dialogues in an illuminating historical context. Together, their essays should reinvigorate the scholarly examination of the way Plato’s dialogues “work”—and should prompt a reconsideration of how the form of Plato’s philosophical writing bears on the Platonic conception of philosophy. (shrink)

Preview: /Scott Shapiro interviewed by Eli Kramer / EK: Thanks for talking with me today. Your book, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World is not only kind of groundbreaking in the way it changes how we think about the role of international law in the history and philosophy of culture, and some of our progressive success of not having disastrous violence shape us each generation, but it has only become more relevant since the (...) war in Ukraine was launched. As a starting point for our conversation, can you summarize the main premise of the work? SS: It’s a story about the modern international order. Despite its imperfections, it needs to be defended now more than ever. The central argument of the book is that the origins of the modern international order can be traced to a specific date in history. Namely August 27th, 1928, when the great leaders of the world gathered in Paris to outlaw war. The treaty that was signed on that day is sometimes called the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Peace Pact, or the Paris Peace Pact. Its actual formal designation was “The General Treaty for the Renunciation of War,” basically saying it all was an attempt to outlaw war. Now, of course most people have never heard of it. It’s amazing that basically all the countries in the world decide to outlaw war, which in itself is initially a strange thing to do, but then nobody knows about it. (shrink)

The novels and plays of such writers an Camus, Sartre, and Beckett plunged us into the existentialist experience--of nostalgia and anguish, of alienation and extremity. Now Nathan A. Scott, Jr., a leading interpreter of the literature of existentialism, reveals the literary origins and the philosophical and theological roots of this important movement. In perceptive biographies of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, and Buber, he shows how their thoughts were shaped by the events of their lives and their relationships to others; (...) then he traces the development of the philosophy of existentialism by these revolutionary thinkers. Dr. Scott gives us a clear and even encouraging understanding of existentialism as that type of philosophic and poetic vision which insists on the dignity and uniqueness of the human presence, and which represents the most important contribution of the twentieth century to the humanistic tradition. So, too, the works of the existentialist writers are a major contribution to modern literature.--From publisher description. (shrink)