22 found
Order:
Disambiguations
David J. Buller [23]David Joseph Buller [1]
  1. (1 other version)Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature.David J. Buller - 2005 - MIT Press.
    In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "...
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   161 citations  
  2.  69
    Function, Selection, and Design.David J. Buller (ed.) - 1999 - State University of New York Press.
    A complete sourcebook for philosophical discussion of the nature of function in biology.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 citations  
  3. Etiological theories of function: A geographical survey.David J. Buller - 1998 - Biology and Philosophy 13 (4):505-527.
    Formulations of the essential commitment of the etiological theory of functions have varied significantly, with some individual authors' formulations even varying from one place to another. The logical geography of these various formulations is different from what is standardly assumed; for they are not stylistic variants of the same essential commitment, but stylistic variants of two non-equivalent versions of the etiological theory. I distinguish these “strong” and “weak” versions of the etiological theory (which differ with respect to the role of (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   98 citations  
  4. Evolutionary psychology, meet developmental neurobiology: Against promiscuous modularity.David J. Buller & Valerie Gray Hardcastle - 2000 - Brain and Mind 1 (3):307-25.
    Evolutionary psychologists claim that the mind contains “hundreds or thousands” of “genetically specified” modules, which are evolutionary adaptations for their cognitive functions. We argue that, while the adult human mind/brain typically contains a degree of modularization, its “modules” are neither genetically specified nor evolutionary adaptations. Rather, they result from the brain’s developmental plasticity, which allows environmental task demands a large role in shaping the brain’s information-processing structures. The brain’s developmental plasticity is our fundamental psychological adaptation, and the “modules” that result (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   44 citations  
  5.  23
    Natural Teleology.David J. Buller - 1999 - In Function, Selection, and Design. State University of New York Press. pp. 1-27.
    This paper is the introduction to Function, Selection, and Design, consisting of the following sections: 1. Introduction 2. The Philosophical Problem 3. Recent Prehistory: The "State of the Art" in the 1960s 4. Wright and Cummins 5. Millikan 6. The Core Consensus and the Peripheral Disagreements 7. Unconclusion.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  6. Evolutionary psychology: The emperor's new paradigm.David J. Buller - 2005 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (6):277-283.
    For some evolutionary psychology is merely a field of inquiry, but for others it is a robust paradigm involving specific theories about the nature and evolution of the human mind. Proponents of this paradigm claim to have made several important discoveries regarding the evolved architecture of the mind. Highly publicized discoveries include a cheater-detection module, a psychological sex difference in jealousy, and motivational mechanisms underlying parental love and its lapses, which purportedly result in child maltreatment. In this article, I argue (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  7.  19
    Function and Design Revisited.David J. Buller - 2002 - In André Ariew, Robert Cummins & Mark Perlman (eds.), Functions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 222-243.
    Several analyses of biological function — for example, those of Williams, Millikan, and Kitcher — identify an item’s function with what natural selection designed it to do. Allen and Bekoff have disagreed, claiming that natural design is a special case of biological function. I argue that Allen and Bekoff’s account of natural design is unduly restrictive and that it fails to mark a principled distinction between function and design. I distinguish two approaches to the phenomenon of natural design — the (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  8. Defreuding evolutionary psychology: Adaptation and human motivation.David J. Buller - 1999 - In Valerie Gray Hardcastle (ed.), Where Biology Meets Philosophy. MIT Press. pp. 99--114.
    Evolutionary psychologists sometimes suggest that "an evolutionary view of life can shed light on psyche" by revealing the "latent" psychology that underlies our "manifest" psychological image. At such moments, which become more frequent in popular works, explanations trade freely in subconscious motives whose goal is inclusive fitness. While some evolutionary psychologists explicitly deny that their aim is to uncover latent motivation, references to subconscious motives are nonetheless frequent in evolutionary psychology (and are even made by those explicitly denying postulation of (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  9. Individualism and evolutionary psychology (or: In defense of "narrow" functions).David J. Buller - 1997 - Philosophy of Science 64 (1):74-95.
    Millikan and Wilson argue, for different reasons, that the essential reference to the environment in adaptationist explanations of behavior makes (psychological) individualism inconsistent with evolutionary psychology. I show that their arguments are based on misinterpretations of the role of reference to the environment in such explanations. By exploring these misinterpretations, I develop an account of explanation in evolutionary psychology that is fully consistent with individualism. This does not, however, constitute a full-fledged defense of individualism, since evolutionary psychology is only one (...)
    Direct download (12 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  10.  20
    Varieties of evolutionary psychology.David J. Buller - 2007 - In David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 255-274.
  11.  52
    Four Fallacies of Pop Evolutionary Psychology.David J. Buller - 2009 - Scientific American 300 (1):74-81.
    Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  12. A Guided Tour of Evolutionary Psychology.David J. Buller - 1999 - A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  13.  50
    Evolutionary Psychology: A Critique.David J. Buller - 2006 - In Elliott Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 3rd ed. MIT Press. pp. 197-214.
  14.  80
    The new paradox of temporal transience.David J. Buller & Thomas R. Foster - 1992 - Philosophical Quarterly 42 (168):357-366.
    McTaggart raised a famed paradox regarding the transientist conception of time, the idea that the present moves into the future to overtake future events (or, alternatively, that future events move into the present) and past events recede further and further into the past as time goes on. Schlesinger has recently attempted an ingenious transientist solution to McTaggart's paradox. We will argue that Schlesinger's solution to McTaggart's paradox itself gives rise to a new, yet perfectly parallel, paradox which can only be (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  15.  51
    Male Sexual Jealousy: Lost Paternity Opportunities?David J. Buller - 2019 - Psychological Reports 122 (2):575-592.
    Numerous studies have shown that men experience relatively greater levels of jealousy in response to the sexual aspects of an infidelity (relative to women), whereas women experience relatively greater levels of jealousy in response to the emotional aspects of an infidelity (relative to men). The traditional explanation for this relationship suggests that men experience this greater level of jealousy due to threats of a loss of paternal certainty. In this article, we present three studies that demonstrate that men’s differentially greater (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Evolutionary Psychology.David J. Buller - 2009 - In Michael Ruse & Joseph Travis (eds.), Evolution: The First Four Billion Years. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press. pp. 557-560.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17.  51
    "Narrow"-mindedness breeds inaction.David J. Buller - 1992 - Behavior and Philosophy 20 (1):59-70.
    Discussion of Fodor's doctrine of 'methodological solipsism' and Stich's principle of autonomy' has been concerned to show that these principles are incompatible with psychological theories which appeal to states with content (e.g. beliefs and desires). Concern with these issues, and the subsequent attempt to develop a notion of 'narrow' content which is solipsistic or autonomous, has, I believe, obscured a more fundamental issue: No theory which satisfies these principles would ever be able to explain behavior under descriptions which are in (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Review Symposium: Life After Evolutionary Psychology: Author's Response.David J. Buller - 2007 - Metascience 16:17-24.
  19.  47
    Confirmation and the computational paradigm (or: Why do you think they call itartificial intelligence?). [REVIEW]David J. Buller - 1993 - Minds and Machines 3 (2):155-181.
    The idea that human cognitive capacities are explainable by computational models is often conjoined with the idea that, while the states postulated by such models are in fact realized by brain states, there are no type-type correlations between the states postulated by computational models and brain states (a corollary of token physicalism). I argue that these ideas are not jointly tenable. I discuss the kinds of empirical evidence available to cognitive scientists for (dis)confirming computational models of cognition and argue that (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  20. Get Over: Massive modularity. [REVIEW]David J. Buller - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (4):881-891.
  21.  21
    Speculation Disguised as Results: Review of Robert Richardson's Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology. [REVIEW]David J. Buller - 2008 - Ethololgy 114:934-936.
  22.  34
    Truth, by Chase Wrenn. [REVIEW]David J. Buller - 2016 - Teaching Philosophy 39 (1):69-72.