This paper discusses problems associated with the use of optimality models in human behavioral ecology. Optimality models are used in both human and non-human animal behavioral ecology to test hypotheses about the conditions generating and maintaining behavioral strategies in populations via natural selection. The way optimality models are currently used in behavioral ecology faces significant problems, which are exacerbated by employing the so-called ‘phenotypic gambit’: that is, the bet that the psychological and inheritance mechanisms responsible for behavioral strategies will be (...) straightforward. I argue that each of several different possible ways we might interpret how optimality models are being used for humans face similar and additional problems. I suggest some ways in which human behavioral ecologists might adjust how they employ optimality models; in particular, I urge the abandonment of the phenotypic gambit in the human case. (shrink)

Most attempts to define culture as used in the cultural evolution literature treat culture as a single phenomenon that can be given a single nondisjunctive definition. In this article I argue that, really, cultural evolutionists employ a variety of distinct but closely related concepts of culture. I show how the main prominent attempts to define a culture concept fail to properly capture all the uses of “culture” employed in cultural evolutionary work. I offer a description of some of the most (...) important culture concepts used by cultural evolutionists. (shrink)

Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths (Sterelny 1992, Sterelny and Griffiths 1999) have argued that sociobiology is unworkable because it requires that human behaviors can be adaptations; however, behaviors produced by a functionalist psychology do not meet Lewontin's quasi-independence criterion and therefore cannot be adaptations. Consequently, an evolutionary psychology which regards psychological mechanisms as adaptations should replace sociobiology. I address two interpretations of their argument. I argue that the strong interpretation fails because functionalist psychology need not prevent behaviors from evolving independently, (...) and it relies on too strong an interpretation of the quasi-independence criterion. The weaker interpretation does not undermine sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology would be vulnerable to the same criticism. Finally, I offer reasons to think that both mental mechanisms and behaviors can be adaptations. (shrink)

In order to explain why cultural traits remain stable despite the error-proneness of social learning, Dan Sperber has proposed that human psychology and ecology lead to cultural traits being transformed in the direction of attractors. This means that simple-minded Darwinian models of cultural evolution are not appropriate. Some scientists and philosophers have been concerned that Sperber’s notion of attractors might show more than this, that attractors destroy subtle cultural variation and prevent adaptive cultural evolutionary processes from occurring. I show that (...) Sperber’s view does not have this consequence—that even if there are attractors, cumulative cultural evolution can still occur. (shrink)

The collective Tiqqun’s 2001 tract, Raw Materials for a Theory of the YoungGirl, in which they stress the way modern girl culture represents the triumph of capitalism, has recently drawn fresh attention. Here I consider the argument about girls made in this text and its perhaps surprising relevance to contemporary feminist accounts of girlhood and girl culture.

This paper tries to explain how individuals manage adaptive individual choice (i.e., the decision to acquire a fitter than average behavior or idea rapidly and tractably) in cultural evolution, despite the fact that acquiring fitness information is very difficult. I argue that the means of solving this problem suggested in the cultural evolution literature largely are various types of decision rules employing representations of fitness correlated properties or states of affairs. I argue that the problem of adaptive individual choice is (...) best solved where some of these learning rule representations are socially transmitted and some are biologically transmitted. (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)

This paper addresses the question of how to understand the relationship between Cultural Evolutionary Science and the social sciences, given that they coexist and both study cultural change. I argue that CES is best understood as having a unificatory or integrative role between evolutionary biology and the social sciences, and that it is best characterized as a bridge field; I describe the concept of a bridge field and how it relates to other non-reductionist accounts of unification or integration used in (...) the philosophy of science literature. (shrink)

This dissertation is designed to discuss central issues raised by two of the evolutionary behavioral sciences, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Both sciences purport to be able to explain the origins of human behavioral and cognitive adaptations respectively and give us some insight into "human nature." My purpose is to go some way towards determining how well these two sciences do as means of determining human evolutionary origins, both by examining some of the central issues that they face, and by examining (...) several case studies in which their methods have been applied to specific human behaviors. ;Sociobiology in particular has had a bad reputation, at least in part because s few of its proponents have used the project as a forum for pushing conservative social values. It has attracted a lot of criticism: in particular for being unwarrantedly adaptationist, and for addressing its explanations at behavior, rather than at psychology. Evolutionary psychology, on the other hand, has been better received; there is some belief that it is a more appropriate, less "behaviorist" project than sociobiology. I spend the first part of the dissertation examining some of these criticisms; however, I believe the charge adaptationism to be founded on the practices of individuals rather than being a central commitment of the project; I also conclude that the claim that behaviors cannot be adaptations to be unfounded. Furthermore, far from being a better project than sociobiology, I conclude that evolutionary psychology relies on a flawed central commitment to universal domain-specificity to establish its psychological conclusions, and its models rely on an unanalyzed notion of good design. ;In the second part of the dissertation I evaluate three well known and controversial studies that use sociobiological or evolutionary psychological methods to try to account for some bard to understand elements of human behavior: namely infanticide, art and altruism, and rape. Although the quality of this work is rather mixed, I conclude there is reason to think that natural selection is implicated to some degree in the origins of some of these behaviors. (shrink)

This paper critiques the competing “Grandmother Hypothesis” and “Embodied Capital Theory” as evolutionary explanations of the peculiarities of human life history traits. Instead, I argue that the correct explanation for human life history probably involves elements of both hypotheses: long male developmental periods and lives probably evolved due to group selection for male hunting via increased female fertility, and female long lives due to the differential contribution women’s complex foraging skills made to their children and grandchildren’s nutritional status within groups (...) provisioned by male hunting. (shrink)

In “Out of Eden” David Barash argues that humans are naturally polygamous, in that they have innate polygamous preferences. In particular, Barash argues that human males have preferences and other psychological states designed to support aggressive polygynous sexual competition, and that the resulting behavior has driven the selection of various other psychological and behavioral traits in humans. This is controversial, since the prevailing view of the human mating system in our recent evolutionary history was that it was choice-based and only (...) mildly polygynous. In this review I evaluate Barash’s arguments and conclude that he has not made his case for the stronger view. (shrink)

In this paper I argue the best examples of the methods in the evolutionary social sciences don’t actually resemble either of the two methods called “Adaptive Thinking” or “Reverse Engineering” described by evolutionary psychologists. Both AT and RE have significant problems. Instead, the best adaptationist work in the ESSs seems to be based on and is aiming at a different method that avoids the problems of AT and RE: it is a behavioral level method that starts with information about both (...) the trait in question and knowledge of the EEA. I describe some examples from the literature, and suggest how a behavioral level ESS might still contribute to the discovery and understanding of human psychology. Finally, I describe some remaining problems for adaptationist reasoning of this kind. (shrink)

Geoffrey Miller argues that we can account for the evolution of human art and altruism via the action of sexual selection. He identifies five characteristics supposedly unique to sexual adaptations: fitness indicating cost; involvement in courtship; heritability; variability; and sexual differentiation. Miller claims that art and altruism possess these characteristics. I argue that not only does he not demonstrate that art and altruism possess these characteristics, one can also explain the origins of altruism via a form of group selection and (...) traits with the five characteristics in terms of a process I call "cultural sexual selection.". (shrink)

I belong to a generation of cultural studies researchers for whom Stuart Hall was not the primary voice defining the field as I first encountered it. He was not even among the first wave of writers that I read or heard discussed as doing ‘cultural studies’. Instead, I came to Hall’s work from a distance defined by the history of cultural studies as a discipline; first by the diffusion of some of its most important interventions through other fields, so that (...) it was not only people who said they were doing cultural studies who were taken up as key to the field, and second by the institutionalisation of a cultural studies canon in which Hall became only one voice, however influential. Nevertheless, by the time Hall died I had come not only to an enthusiastic appreciation of his work but to strongly feel my own indebtedness to it. I want to reflect here on how teaching cultural studies brought me to a close engagement with Hall’s work, and how teaching keeps Hall’s work and ideas alive when the exigencies of academic publishing might relegate him to citational history. (shrink)

Why is it that we watch _Mad Men_ and think it represents a period? Flashes of patterned wallpaper, whiskey neat, babies born that are never mentioned, contact lining for kitchen drawers, Ayn Rand, polaroids, skinny ties, Hilton hotels, Walter Cronkite, and a time when Don Draper can ask ‘What do women want?’ and dry old Roger Sterling can reply ‘Who Cares?’ This essay explores the embrace of period detail in _Mad Men_ finding it to be both loving and fetishistic, and (...) belonging, like all period film, to the politics of the present. (shrink)

Sarah Hrdy argues that women (1) possess a reproductive behavioral strategy including infanticide, (2) that this strategy is an adaptation and (3) arose as a response to stresses mothers faced with the agrarian revolution. I argue that while psychopathological and cultural evolutionary accounts for Hrdy's data fail, her suggested psychological architecture for the strategy suggests that the behavior she describes is really only the consequence of the operation of practical reasoning mechanism(s) – and consequently there is no reproductive strategy including (...) infanticide as such, nor could the alleged strategy be sufficiently mosaic to count as an adaptation. What might count as an adaptation is a ‘window’ before bonding that permits practical reasoning about the reproductive value of infants and hence variable maternal investment, and which, contra (3) arose early in hominid history due to a combination of increases in infant dependency and increased human abilities for conditional practical reasoning. (shrink)

Catherine Driscoll est professeure associée en études culturelles et de genre à l’Université de Sydney. Ses recherches portent sur trois domaines : la jeunesse et les filles (l’accent étant mis sur l’adolescence, les médias et la culture populaire), les théories culturelles (l’accent étant mis sur la modernité et le modernisme), les études culturelles en milieu rural (l’accent étant mis sur l’Australie et les recherches ethnographiques). Les ouvrages ici présentés s’inscrivent dans les deux p...

Meditation I -- Meditation II -- Meditation III -- Meditation IV.

Although pragmatism and phenomenology have both contributed significantly to the genealogy of so-called “4E” – embodied, embedded, enactive and extended – cognition, there is benefit to be had from a systematic comparative study of these roots. As existing 4E cognition literature has tended to emphasise one or the other tradition, issues remain to be addressed concerning their commonalities – and possible incompatibilities. We begin by exploring pragmatism and phenomenology’s shared focus on contesting intellectualism, and its key assumption of mindedness as (...) representation. We then outline distinctive insights from both traditions regarding the nature and role of habits, in order to put forward a habit-based epistemology as an alternative to the Cartesian idea-based epistemology that has dominated modern philosophy. We pay particular attention to the work of classical pragmatist C.S. Peirce, arguing that his semiotics, which analyses sign-use as habit, shows how theorists of embodied cognition can break a certain false dichotomy between embodiment and logical or intellectual structure which has prevented them from fully theorising propositional knowledge. In this way, our work both augments and challenges the Dewey/Merleau-Ponty connection that has been much more extensively explored by the field. (shrink)

This paper argues that we can acknowledge the existence of moral truths and moral progress without being committed to moral realism. Rather than defending this claim through the more familiar route of the attempted analysis of the ontological commitments of moral claims, I show how moral belief change for the better shares certain features with theoretical progress in the natural sciences. Proponents of the better theory are able to convince their peers that it is formally and empirically superior to its (...) rivals, and the better theory may be promoted to the status of the truth. Yet there is no 'decision-procedure' for ethics any more than there is for molecular biology. The betterness of true theories can be grasped through what I term 'undirectional narratives' of progress. And while there are true moral claims and perhaps numerous moral truths yet to be discovered, we should reject currently popular forms of moral realism with bivalence. Some moral claims lend themselves to the construction of fully reversible, bi-directional narratives and are likely neither true nor false. (shrink)

In this chapter, it is described and assessed how political scientists use rational choice theories to offer causal explanations. We observe that the ways in which rational choice theories are considered to be successful in political science differs, depending on the explanandum in question. Political scientists use empirical variants of rational choice theories to explain the political behavior of individual agents and analytical variants to explain the behavior of collective actors. Both variants are used for distinct explananda, which ask for (...) different modes of explanation that raise in turn different explanatory demands toward rational choice theories. We argue that when political scientists discuss the explanatory usefulness of rational choice theories, they should assess them in light of the demands they are supposed to meet. This would enable a more nuanced and problem-oriented appraisal of rational choice theories in political science. (shrink)

I argue that trustworthiness is an epistemic desideratum. It does not reduce to justified or reliable true belief, but figures in the reason why justified or reliable true beliefs are often valuable. Such beliefs can be precarious. If a belief's being justified requires that the evidence be just as we take it to be, then if we are off even by a little, the belief is unwarranted. Similarly for reliability. Although it satisfies the definition of knowledge, such a belief is (...) not trustworthy. We ought not use it as a basis for inference or action and ought not give others to believe it. The trustworthiness of a belief, I urge, depends on its being backed by reasons—considerations that other members of the appropriate epistemic community cannot reasonably reject. Trustworthiness is intersubjective. It both depends on and contributes to the evolving cognitive values of an epistemic community. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Catherine Malabou : “Unbind Me” Judith Butler : What Kind of Shape Is Hegel's Body in? Catherine Malabou : What Is Shaping the Body? Judith Butler : A Chiasm between Us, but No Chasm.

This paper contrasts the scholastic realisms of David Armstrong and Charles Peirce. It is argued that the so-called 'problem of universals' is not a problem in pure ontology (concerning whether universals exist) as Armstrong construes it. Rather, it pertains to which predicates should be applied where, issues which Armstrong sets aside under the label of 'semantics', and which from a Peircean perspective encompass even fundamentals of scientific methodology. It is argued that Peirce's scholastic realism not only presents a more nuanced (...) ontology (distinguishing existence and reality) but also illuminates why scholastic realism is a position worth fighting for. (shrink)

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Metathetics is less concerned with what practices are right or wrong than with what we mean by 'right' and 'wrong.' Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order to enhance their (...) understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices. Catherine Wilson innovatively employs a first-person narrator to report step-by-step an individual's reflections, beginning from a position of radical scepticism, on the possibility of objective moral knowledge. The reader is invited to follow along with this reasoning, and to challenge or agree with each major point. Incrementally, the narrator is led to certain definite conclusions about 'oughts' and norms in connection with self-interest, prudence, social norms, and finally morality. Scepticism is overcome, and the narrator arrives at a good understanding of how moral knowledge and moral progress are possible, though frequently long in coming. Accessibly written, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint presupposes no prior training in philosophy and is a must-read for philosophers, students and general readers interested in gaining a better understanding of morality as a personal philosophical quest."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

This paper addresses some apparent philosophical tensions between realism and enactivism by means of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. Enactivism’s Mind-Life Continuity thesis has been taken to commit it to some form of anti-realist ‘world-construction’ which has been considered controversial. Accordingly, a new realist enactivism is proposed by Zahidi (_Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences,_ _13_(3), 461–475, 2014 ), drawing on Ian Hacking’s ‘entity realism’, which places subjects in worlds comprised of the things that they can successfully manipulate. We review this attempt, and (...) argue that whilst Zahidi rightly urges enactivists towards ‘internal realism’, he cannot sustain a non-negotiable aspect of realism that is crucial for scientific progress – the claim that multiple subjects inhabit _the same world_. We explore Peirce’s pragmatism as an alternative solution, foregrounding his distinction between existence and reality, and his inquiry-based account of cognition. These theoretical innovations, we argue, fruitfully generalize Zahidi’s _manipulation-based_ enactivist realism to a richer, _inquiry-based_ enactivist realism. We explore how this realism’s pan-species monism about truth encourages and supports the investigation of non-human animal cognition, and conclude by considering some implications of our discussion for long-standing realism debates within pragmatism. (shrink)

Virtues and Virtue Education in Theory and Practice explores questions about the locality versus the universality of virtues from a number of theoretical and practical perspectives. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it considers the relevance of these debates for the practice of virtue and character education. This volume brings together experts from education, philosophy, and psychology to consider how different disciplines might learn from each other and how insights from theory and practice can be integrated. It shows (...) that questions about virtue relativity or universality have not only theoretical significance but also important practical ramifications. The chapters explore different complexities of virtue ethics and different approaches to nurturing virtue and beyond, questioning how well virtues travel across geographical and cultural borders. By examining the philosophical literature and making links between theory and practice in an original way, the book offers scholarly research-informed suggestions for practice. It will be of great interest to researchers and academics and students in educational philosophy, character education, ethics, and psychology. (shrink)

Théologiens et philosophes chrétiens ont souvent minimisé, voire occulté, la dimension d'amour du judaïsme en l'assimilant à un pur légalisme. Cette thèse imprègne encore les mentalités modernes, fussent-elles déchristianisées. Ce livre n'est toutefois pas apologétique ; il se propose d'aborder la gravité de l'amour dans la philosophie et la spiritualité juives sans s'adapter au cadre théorique chrétien. Les penseurs juifs ont en effet profondément médité eux-mêmes la complexité théologique, spirituelle, morale et émotionnelle de l'amour. Le choix des questions abordées relève (...) de leur caractère impérieux face aux simplifications outrancières qui s'imposent de nos jours en matière de religion. La référence à des philosophes de périodes historiques différentes et à de grands commentateurs spirituels permet de poursuivre le dialogue avec eux et non de le clore. Il ne s'agit pas d'élaborer une thèse définitive sur l'amour de Dieu et du prochain dans le judaïsme, mais de se demander ce que sa gravité – son poids, son centre – signifie pour ceux qui désirent en témoigner. (shrink)

"Articulating a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people, this how-to offers evidence-based insights and draws from the author's own rich experiences as a professor to provide practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom"-Provided by publisher.