At the core of anthropomorphism lies a false-positive cognitive bias to over-attribute the pattern of the human body and/or mind. Anthropomorphism is independently discussed in various disciplines, is presumed to have deep biological roots, but its cognitive bases are rarely explored in an integrative way. I present an inclusive, multifaceted interdisciplinary approach to refine the psychological bases of mental anthropomorphism. I have integrated 13 conceptual dissections of folk finalistic reasoning into four psychological inference systems (physical, design, basic-goal and belief stances); (...) the latter three are truly teleological and thus prone to anthropomorphisms. I then have empirically integrated the cross-disciplinary genetic, neural, cognitive, psychiatric, developmental, comparative and evolutionary/adaptive evidence that converge supporting the nature of the distinct stances. The over-reactive calibration of the three teleological systems is framed as an evolved design feature to avoid harmful ancestral contexts. Nowadays, these stances easily engage with scientific reasoning about bio-evolutionary matters with negative and positive consequences. Design, basic-goal, and belief stances benefit biology by providing cognitive foundations, expressing a high-powered explanatory system, promoting functional generalization, fostering new research questions and discoveries, enabling metaphorical/analogical thinking and explaining didactically with brevity. Hence, it is neither feasible nor advantageous to completely eliminate teleology from biology. Instead, we should engage with the eight classes of problems in bio-philosophy and bio-education that relate to the three stances: types of anthropomorphism, variety of misunderstandings, misleading appeal, legitimacy controversy, gateway to mysticism, total prohibition and its backfire effect. Recognizing the distinction among design, basic-goal, and belief stances helps to elucidate much of the logic underlying these issues, so that it enables a much more detailed taxonomy of anthropomorphisms, and organizes the various misunderstandings about evolution by natural selection. It also offers a solid psychological grounding for anchoring definitions and terminology. This tripartite framework also shed some light on how to better deal with the over-reactive stances in bio-education, by organizing previous pedagogical strategies and by suggesting new possibilities to be tested. Therefore, this framework constitutes a promising approach to advance the debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of anthropomorphisms and to further support regulating and clarifying teleology and anthropomorphism in biology. (shrink)

Two of the most influential works of the Western nineteenth century were completed in 1859: Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. Although created within very different cultural traditions, these works show some striking similarities: both brought about a critical, long-lasting debate and caused conflicting reactions after their publications, and both had fundamental and compelling impact on their disciplines. The perspective discussed in this paper, however, is that both works address the notion of evolutionary (...) thought. In 2009 we could have thus celebrated a double anniversary: it was 150 years since the manifestation of the evolutionary idea in such different .. (shrink)

This paper critically reviews and characterizes the student's causal-explanatory understanding; this is done as a step toward explicating the problematic of evolution education as it concerns the cognitive difficulties in understanding Darwin's theory of natural selection. The review concludes that the student's understanding is fundamentally different from Darwin's, for the student understands evolutionary change as necessary individual transformation caused by the transformative action of various physical and behavioral factors. This is in complete contrast to Darwin's (and even the Darwinian's, for (...) that matter) understanding of evolutionary change as a change caused by accumulative selection. Hence, to understand natural selection, the student has to learn to “see” how the accumulative selection causes evolutionary change. (shrink)

Neste trabalho, avaliamos as implicações que o debate filosófico acerca das explicações em termos de função e objetivo podem ter no contexto educacional, particularmente no ensino e aprendizagem de biologia. Para alcançar este objetivo, investigamos como três obras didáticas de biologia do Brasil utilizam a linguagem teleológica na formulação de explicações para os assuntos que são objeto de estudo dessa ciência. Na análise das obras, exploramos os enunciados teleológicos e funcionais a partir de dois projetos explanatórios discutidos na filosofia da (...) biologia contemporânea, a saber: (i) etiológico, que fornece uma abordagem essencialmente histórica de explicação biológica; e (ii) organizacional, que orienta o estudo acerca das capacidades de sistemas complexos mediante o apelo às funções de seus componentes, ou seja, a contribuição das partes para a realização de uma capacidade global. Nossos resultados mostram que poucas explicações podem ser qualificadas como etiológicas, em razão de que os autores preterem a discussão de temas segundo um tratamento evolutivo. Associado a esse resultado, a maioria dos enunciados foi localizada no contexto do projeto organizacional de explicação científica. Na análise das explicações, destacamos os principais problemas que elas apresentam, como a falta de clareza na identificação do explanandum e explanans, situação que pode prejudicar a compreensão dos assuntos pelos estudantes. Por fim, colocamos que a recontextualização das duas abordagens centrais sobre as explicações funcionais na filosofia da biologia, a perspectiva etiológica e a organizacional, podem fornecer um embasamento epistemológico consistente para as explicações biológicas no ensino médio. (shrink)