Since Darwin, the idea of psychological continuity between humans and other animals has dominated theory and research in investigating the minds of other species. Indeed, the field of comparative psychology was founded on two assumptions. First, it was assumed that introspection could provide humans with reliable knowledge about the causal connection between specific mental states and specific behaviors. Second, it was assumed that in those cases in which other species exhibited behaviors similar to our own, similar psychological causes were at (...) work. In this paper. we show how this argument by analogy is flowed with respect to the case of second-order mental states. As a test case, we focus on the question of how other species conceive of visual attention, and in particular whether chimpanzees interpret seeing as a mentalistic event involving internal states of perception, attention, and belief. We conclude that chimpanzees do not reason about seeing in this manner, and indeed, there is considerable reason to suppose that they do not harbor representations of mental states in general. We propose a reinterpretation model in which the majority of the rich social behaviors that humans and other primates share in common emerged long before the human lineage evolved the psychological means of interpreting those behaviors in mentalistic terms. Although humans, chimpanzees, and most other species may be said to possess mental states, humans alone may have evolved a cognitive specialization for reasoning about such states. (shrink)

I argue that uniquely human forms of ‘Theory of Mind’ are a product of cultural evolution. Specifically, propositional attitude psychology is a linguistically constructed folk model of the human mind, invented by our ancestors for a range of tasks and refined over successive generations of users. The construction of these folk models gave humans new tools for thinking and reasoning about mental states—and so imbued us with abilities not shared by non-linguistic species. I also argue that uniquely human forms (...) of ToM are not required for language development, such that an account of the cultural origins of ToM does not jeopardise the explanation of language development. Finally, I sketch a historical model of the cultural evolution of mental state talk. (shrink)

Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.- Quine (1969)We think that some facts - for example, the fact that someone is suffering, or the fact that all previously encountered tigers were carnivorous – supply us with normative reasons for action and belief. The former fact, we think, is a reason to help the suffering person; the latter fact is a reason to believe that the next tiger we see will (...) also be carnivorous. But how is the reason-giving status of such facts best understood? In particular, is it best understood as ultimately “conferred” upon these facts by our own evaluative attitudes, or do at least some facts possess normative reason-giving status in a way that is robustly independent of our attitudes? This is the modern, secular version of Plato's “Euthyphro question” - couched here in the philosophically useful, though not essential, language of normative reasons. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of work on human development in evolutionary anthropology from a Thomist perspective. I show that both fields view care for others as fundamental to human nature and interpret cooperative breeding as expression of the virtue of charity. I begin with an analysis of different approaches to the relationship between evolutionary anthropology and moral theory. I argue that ethical naturalism is the approach best suited to interdisciplinary dialogue, since it holds that natural facts are useful for (...) moral theory but do not encompass it. This forms the basis for a Thomist analysis of some key features of human evolution including bipedalism, higher encephalisation and extended childhood. In each case I explain how these parts of our nature contributed to the evolution of modern humans, and how each is reliant upon communal care. Finally, I offer three observations on these facts from a Thomist perspective. Firstly, that a good human life necessarily involves caring for others and being cared for ourselves. Secondly, that this is exemplified in the virtue of charity, which is the ground of all virtue. Finally, that the need for such care shows that human flourishing cannot be attained without divine aid. (shrink)

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human persons possessed of reflective consciousness.

Does an affirmation of theistic evolution make the task of theodicy impossible? In this article, I will review a number of ancient and contemporary responses to the problem of evil as it concerns animal suffering and suggest a possible way forward which employs the ancient Jewish insight that evil—as resistance to God's will that results in suffering and alienation from God's purposes—precedes the arrival of human beings and already has a firm foothold in the nonhuman animal world long before (...) humans are ever tempted to go astray. This theological intuition is conferred renewed relevance in light of the empirical reality of evolutionary gradualism and continuity and in view of the recent findings of cognitive ethology. Consequently, I suggest that taking biological evolution seriously entails understanding “moral evil” as a prehuman phenomenon that emerges gradually through the actions and intentions of “free creatures” which—as evolutionary history unfolded—increasingly possessed greater levels of freedom and degrees of moral culpability. (shrink)

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human persons possessed of reflective consciousness.

Philosophers, scientists, and other researchers have increasingly characterized humanity as having reached an epistemic and technical stage at which “we can control our own evolution.” Moral–philosophical analysis of this outlook reveals some problems, beginning with the vagueness of “we.” At least four glosses on “we” in the proposition “we, humanity, control our evolution” can be made: “we” is the bundle of all living humans, a leader guiding the combined species, each individual acting severally, or some mixture of these (...) three involving a market interpretation of future evolutionary processes. While all of these glosses have difficulties under philosophical analysis, how we as a species handle our fate via technical developments is all-important. I propose our role herein should be understood as other than controllers of our evolution. (shrink)

In the biological realm, a complete explanation of a trait seems to include an explanation in terms of function. It is natural to ask of some trait, "What is its function?" or "What purpose in the organism does the particular trait serve?" or "What is the goal of its activity?" There are several views concerning the appropriate definition of function for biological matters. Two popular views of function with respect to living things are Cummins' organizational account and the Griffiths/Godfrey-Smith modern (...) history account. Whereas Cummins argues that a trait functions so as to contribute to the general organization of some organism's present structure, Griffiths, and Godfrey-Smith argue that a trait functions because of its fitness with respect to the organism's recent evolutionary history. In this paper, I show how these accounts can be made compatible and compliment one another. Given that structure, organization, operational flexibility, function, and evolutionary history are all factors to be considered in an organism's makeup, we should expect that the traits of an organism function the way they do because such traits presently contribute to the overall organization of the organism (Cummins) as well as were selected for in the organism's species' recent ancestry (Griffiths/Godfrey-Smith). (shrink)

For thousands of years, many Western thinkers have assumed that emotions are, at best, harmless luxuries, and at worst outright obstacles to intelligent action. In the past decade, however, scientists and philosophers have begun to challenge this 'negative view of emotion'. Neuroscientists, psychologists and researchers in artificial intelligence now agree that emotions are vital to intelligent action. Evolutionary considerations have played a vital role in this shift to a more positive view of emotion. This book brings together some of the (...) leading thinkers about emotion from a variety of disciplines. In a series of fascinating and challenging essays, they examine the role that evolutionary considerations can play in helping us to understand the role of emotions in rational thought and decision-making. How should we understand the evolutionary role of emotions? And can this explain the relationship between emotions and rationality? (shrink)

Do our emotions stop us being rational? For thousands of years, emotions have been thought of as obstacles to intelligent thought. This view has been challenged in recent years by both philosophers and scientists. In this groundbreaking book, the first of its kind, leading thinkers from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience challenge this commonly held view of emotion in a series of fascinating and challenging essays.

This paper uses a number of examples of diverse types and functions of models in evolutionary biology to argue that the demarcation between theory and practice, or “theory model” and “data model,” is often difficult to make. It is shown how both mathematical and laboratory models function as plausibility arguments, existence proofs, and refutations in the investigation of questions about the pattern and process of evolutionary history. I consider the consequences of this for the semantic approach to theories and theory (...) confirmation. The paper attempts to reconcile the insights of both critics and advocates of the semantic approach to theories. (shrink)

A common contemporary claim is the conjunction of metaphysical naturalism—the idea, roughly, that there is no such person as God or anything at all like God—with the view that our cognitive faculties have come to be by way of the processes to which contemporary evolutionary theory direct our attention. Call this view ‘N&E’. I’ve argued elsewhere that this view is incoherent or self-defeating in that anyone who accepts it has a defeater for R, the proposition that her cognitive faculties are (...) reliable, which then gives her a defeater for any proposition she believes, including, of course, N&E itself. The argument for, in turn, depends essentially on the proposition that P is low or inscrutable. To support, I divided N&E into mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive subcases, arguing that in each subcase Si, P is low or inscrutable. I won’t repeat this argument here, but I do want to focus on a certain essential aspect of the argument for. (shrink)

For about 2500 years, from Plato’s time until the closing decades of the 20^th century, the dominant view was that the emotions are quite distinct from the processes of rational thinking and decision making, and are often a major impediment to those processes. But in recent years this orthodoxy has been challenged in a number of ways. Damasio (1994) has made a forceful case that the traditional view, which he has dubbed _Descartes’ Error_, is quite wrong, because emotions play a (...) fundamental role in rational decision making. When the systems underlying the emotions don’t function properly, Damasio maintains, rational decision-making breaks down. Other theorists, most notably Robert Frank (1988), have argued that if we view the emotions through the longer lens of evolutionary theory, we can see that much of what looked to be irrational in the emotions is actually part of an effective strategy for achieving agents’ goals and maximizing their reproductive success. In the wake of this and other recent work, the pendulum of received opinion has swung in the other direction. The emotions are now increasingly regarded as inherently rational, as Frank maintains, and as important components of other rational processes. (shrink)

The study of man on Earth is a historical science akin to forensic science and is best conducted with the truth of scripture in mind. Surely, this approach is quite consistent with Bussey’s argument since the presence of God is needed in our spacetime to create not only life and mind but also human beings in God’s image.

Though we humans are immensely more gifted than other animals, yet we are not the outcome of an inevitable selection of the ‘fittest’. Nor on the other hand is our importance diminished by our evolutionary inheritance. Besides, we are already here! Faith in inevitable progress is a ‘scientific’, not a Christian, delusion. We realise that the universe has its own rules and complications which intrude on our lives and often thwart our choices. It is therefore legitimate to talk of chance, (...) but we often fail to appreciate the real significance of this word. Chance is not a cause; in essence it refers to our own consciousness that we are immersed in circumstance, and it has no reality without our own purposiveness. Thus chance is not some blind and indifferent or even hostile cosmic mystery; it is the occasion of our own responses, and it even offers the opportunity of human growth. Just as we accept the laws (and dangers) of physics (e.g. gravitation), as the framework of our ordered existence, so also we may accept the surprises of chance without any despairing conclusion either from our latest researches in astronomy or from a fatal accident in the street. (shrink)

Traditional contractarian theories based upon the theory of rational choice suffer from a number of well-known problems. For example, in positing the initial choice problem, the outcome selected by rational agents depends upon the specification of the choice situation, the range of alternatives the agents may choose from, and the nature of the rational agents themselves. Modifying any one of these three parameters likely alters the choice outcome, creating difficulties for social contract theorists who attempt to base a theory of (...) normativity upon such a choice. I describe a new form of contractarian theories, which I call evolutionary contractarianism. Although evolutionary contractarianism still seeks to ground a theory of normativity in the individual choices of rational agents, it recognizes both that agents are, at best, only boundedly rational, and that the dynamics of interaction between rational agents cannot be ignored. I explicitly concentrate on developing an evolutionary contractarian theory for norms of fair division in two bargaining games, laying a general framework which may in principle be extended to norms of fair division in other contexts. (shrink)

It is well known that virtue ethics has become very popular among moral theorists. Even Aristotelian virtue ethics continues to have defenders. Bernard Williams (1983; 1995, p. xy), though, has claimed that this “neo-Aristotelian enterprise” might “require us tofeign amnesia about natural selection.” This paper looks at some recent work on virtueethics as seen from an evolutionary perspective (Michael Ruse, 1991; William Casebeer, 2003; Donald J. Munro, 2005; John Lemos, 2008; Jonathan Haidt & Craig Joseph, 2008) and explores whether Williams’ (...) evolutionary challenge can be met. Against Williams’ challenge, I argue that “the first and hardest lesson of Darwinism,” as Williams calls it, has indeed found “its way fully into ethical thought” (Williams, 1983, p. xy). And virtue ethics—in several varieties, not only Aristotelian—fits it rather well with anevolutionary perspective on human origins. (shrink)

Recent work in viral genomics has shown that bacteriophages exhibit a high degree of mosaicism, which is most likely due to a long history of prolific horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Given these findings, we argue that each of the most plausible attempts to properly classify bacteriophages into distinct species fail. Mayr's biological species concept fails because there is no useful viral analog to sexual reproduction. Phenetic species concepts fail because they obscure the mosaicism and the rich reticulated viral histories. Phylogenetic (...) species concepts, even when extended to take into account reticulation, fail because there is no non-arbitrary distinction between recombination events that create a new viral species and those that do not. There is good reason to think that bacteriophages, arguably the Earth's most abundant biological agent, evolve without forming species.1. Introduction2. The Biology of Viruses2.1. Bacteriophage life cycles2.2. Mechanisms of HGT3. The Species Problem and Species Concepts3.1. Phenetic species concepts3.2. The biological species concept3.3. Phylogenetic species concepts3.4. The ecological species concept3.5. Homeostatic property cluster species4. Viruses and Species Taxonomy5. Reticular Phylogenies6. Conclusion. (shrink)

Understanding the notion of innerness that we ascribe to mental items is central to understanding the problem of consciousness, and we can do so in evolutionary and physical terms.

Religious conflicts in Indonesia are prevalent, with endless debates, provocations, and strains among religious groups. Therefore, promoting moderation is crucial to alleviate, minimize, or even eradicate such tensions. Based on the country’s history related to the monarchy system, as well as the jumbled existence of political, religious, and social leaders in society, the role of a leader is significant. Unfortunately, Western, religious, and secular values of leadership have limited opportunities for implementation because of Indonesia’s heterogenous community. Therefore, this article argued (...) that the native leadership knowledge of tona’as from Minahasa is a promising area to explore for religious moderation. To achieve the desired result, descriptive, analytical, and argumentative methods were employed. In conclusion, the responsibility, requirements, and praxis of a tona’as offers alternative insights into leadership in relation to religious moderation in Indonesia.Contribution: This article contributes the values of leadership model in Minahasa that could be a constructive contribution to the religious moderation in Indonesia. The knowledge and insight of tona’as as an original culture and tradition offers leadership philosophy that could bring harmony and peace. (shrink)

A somewhat prominent view in the literature is that language provides opportunity to program the brain with ‘cognitive gadgets’, or ‘virtual machines’. Here, I explore the possibility that thinking itself – internal symbolic responses to stimuli that are either intrinsic or extrinsic, and computational procedures that operate on these internal symbolic representations – is such a software product rather than just an emergent phenomenon of the brain’s hardware being ‘complex enough’, or the brain processing information in a manner that is (...) ‘integrated enough’. I also present a testable hypothesis that would indicate the presence of such a thought-gadget, and briefly overview some evolutionary pre-requisites for its existence. Further, I explore some consequences the existence of such a gadget would entail for our understanding of consciousness. The nature of the gadget is left unspecified as the article is not a blueprint for the thinking gadget, but an argument in favor of its existence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Evolution and Creation—A Response to Michael Chaberek's Critique of Theistic EvolutionMariusz Tabaczek O.P.Translated by Monika Metlerska-ColerickIntroductionMichael Chaberek's critique of my "Afterword" to the Polish edition of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith is essentially focused on three points. First of all, Chaberek questions my thesis supporting the compatibility of evolutionary theory with the Christian faith in creation. Secondly he (...) discounts the possibility of reconciling evolution with the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical tradition. Finally he provides arguments undermining the theory of evolution as the best scientific explanation for the diversity of species observable in the world.1 Because I do not undertake an analysis [End Page 255] of strictly biological problems in the "Afterword," in the present response I will concentrate on the first two points only.2 I trust that engaging in a discussion with Chaberek's views in this respect provides an opportunity to broaden and clarify my position regarding the issue which is the subject of our dispute. To begin with, I would like to stress that, in exploring the topic from the perspective of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of philosophy and theology, I am moving in the sphere of possible interpretations and new approaches. Therefore, I do not treat the aforementioned tradition in an inflexible and dogmatic manner.3 [End Page 256]The Definition of CreationI should start my response to Chaberek's critique by invoking the definition of creation as elaborated by Aquinas. After all, it seems that the disagreement referred to in the present article focuses, to a large extent, on the comprehension of the divine act of creation. My views on this matter are not, in my estimation, a significant alteration of the teaching of St. Thomas. Rather, they are an attempt at drawing conclusions from some of his intuitions regarding creation, which appear in various sections of the body of his work.4According to St. Thomas, the word "creation" (creatio) has two crucial and inextricably linked meanings: (I) creation in an active sense (divine action) and (II) creation in a passive sense (receiving divine action). Within the scope of the first meaning, St. Thomas distinguishes between: (Ia) the primary act of creation, defined as bringing the entirety of being into existence out of nothing (ex nihilo), without any prior existing matter, and (Ib) maintaining contingent beings in their existence and essence. The consequence of (Ia) and (Ib) is contingent beings' full dependence on God regarding what they are and the fact that they are (exist), which determines the essence of creation in the passive sense (II).Regarding (Ia), St. Thomas—in a neo-Platonic vein, in support of the claim that nothingness cannot be the object of God's action in the act of creation—states that "we must consider not only the emanation of a particular being from a particular agent, but also the emanation of all being from the universal cause, which is God; and this emanation we designate by the name of creation" (ST I, q 45, a. 1, corp.). It is worth adding here that, according to St. Thomas, the matter, which is the result of the act of creation, is not indefinite, as is assumed by Chaberek when he refers to creation as the bringing out of nothing "of a certain primordial matter of an indefinite form."5 On the contrary, Aquinas states explicitly that "primary matter was not created altogether formless, nor under any one common form, but under [End Page 257] distinct forms" (ST I, q. 66, a. 1, corp., ad 2), enumerating, at this point, the forms of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire.In reference to (Ib), St. Thomas defines the divine act of maintaining contingent beings in existence and essence (in the fact that they are, as well as in what they are) as conservatio rerum. What is more, even though he emphasizes that "the preservation of things by God is a continuation of that action whereby He gives existence" (ST I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4), Aquinas does not employ the currently popular concept of continual creation (creatio continua). It seems that... (shrink)

Examines the notion of necessity and the special problems it poses for knowledge. The conventionalist response is to see necessary truth as the product of thinking and the decision to act in certain ways. Against this view, it is argued that the complex grammar of the notion of necessity can be appreciated without seeking a definition of it, let alone an explanation of its source. Even though contingent facts about the processes of human knowledge cannot hope to explain the necessary (...) truths, attention to those contingent facts might explain our acceptance of necessary truth and the role it plays in the ways we think about the world. (shrink)

The replicator dynamics have been used to study the evolution of a population of rational agents playing the Nash bargaining game, where an individual's "fitness" is determined by an individual's success in playing the game. In these models, a population whose initial conditions was randomly chosen from the space of population proportions converges to a state of fair division approximately 62% of the time. (Higher rates of convergence to final states of fair division can be obtained by introducing artificial (...) correlations into the models.) Spatial models of the Nash bargaining game exhibit considerably more robust convergence properties. These properties are considered at length, and a sufficient condition for convergence to fair division is proved. (shrink)

IntroductionBy ‘philosophy of consciousness’ we mean an assembly of different approaches such as philosophy of mind , perception, rational conclusions, information processing and contradictory conceptions such as holistic ‘all is mind’ perspectives and their atomistic counterparts.Since ancient Greeks philosophy has provided widespread debates on pneuma, nous, psyche, spiritus, mind, and Geist. In more recent times the philosophy of consciousness has become part of psychology, sociology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, communication science, information theory, cybernetic systems theory, synthetic biology, biolinguistics, bioinformatics and (...) biosemiotics.However, no matter what each of these approaches presents as a coherent explanation of the human mind, thinking, and consciousness, they remain alien to our self-awareness and self-reflection-based understanding because they do not offer a rational and at the same time .. (shrink)

Among many contemporary challenges faced by our society is the moral and ethical education of new generations. Young students bring to school a variety of cultural (including religious) backgrounds and worldviews, not rarely of very heterogeneous and conflicting nature. In spite of the secular nature of Brazilian public education system, Federal Constitution of 1988 and the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education (issued in 1996) allow religious education to be offered in public schools. Therefore, religious education is nowadays (...) offered in many schools, spreaded around a country marked by extensive social, economical, ethnical and cultural diversity. A number of researches point to emerging issues of religious nature that are now present in classrooms of many school disciplines -among them, Biology. Article number 205 of Brazilian Federal Constitution reads that education is a right that assists to all, no matter which race, social class or religious affiliation, so that citizens' full development is a primordial objective of education, followed by preparation for the practice of citizenship and work qualification. Schools must be formal spaces for teaching, according to strong and universal ethical principles such as: equality, freedom for learning, pluralism of ideas, and investigating and disseminating art and knowledge, among others. It is a State duty, therefore, to promote and stimulate education with the collaboration of society. As Federal Constitution also reads that each family has this responsibility with children too, it is a matter of concern that, in last years, social and economical factors are forcing families to transfer these duties to schools and teachers. In schools, a number of Biology contents may bring up students' beliefs and worldviews impregnated of common sense, and also feelings of religiosity. These emergent elements may have a significant value for enriching pedagogical interactions, either with discussions about social and cultural plurality, or with challenging or even disrupting educational situations, in which conflicts and oppositions will be brought up as a result of diversity of opinions and views. It is our position that these are two possible ways that can be followed by a teacher, depending on his/her methodological direction and ethical position. We also understand that each teacher, especially Biology teachers working in secondary education, should welcome these discussions in classroom, organizing opportunities for ethical debates, including issues of religious nature, this way presenting scientific concepts of biological phenomena, but also respecting students' cultural and religious values. In official documents that guide the Biology teaching in basic Brazilian education -the directives, the directions and the national parameters -contents such as Ecology and Evolution play a central role due to their integrational power. However, Biology teachers often face a number of difficulties when trying to follow these directives. Problems in their own education, the reductionist and highly content-based nature of Biology education, as well as severe material restrictions for teachers' work in schools are some of the difficulties that may account for this situation. In spite of these difficulties, issues such as abortion, euthanasia, drugs, sexuality, Biological Evolution (BE) and origin of living beings always bring, in classroom, controversial questions that must be part of every teacher's pedagogical practice. Teaching BE has always raised a number of polemical issues, followed by deep conceptual and ethical implications. Therefore, any contribution aimed at helping its approach as a necessary content in Biology teaching is welcomed. This paper aims at showing some of the conditions, attitudes and arguments that may be useful for the teaching of BE. Among them, we point to nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) principle, an ethical and methodological principle proposed in 1997 by palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould. We understand that Gould's principle offers conditions and opportunities to develop what Brazilian educator Paulo Freire calls a dialogical, libertarian and dialectic education, and this paper will follow his educational perspective. Basically, NOMA principle states that both religion and science have their own separate domain. These separate domains should be respected, avoiding their overlapping in issues concerned with each of them separately. However, there are themes, as mentioned above, in which it is possible to identify elements for each of those domains. Biology teachers must then have a very clear view of the differences between explanations offered by each of these domains, when working with their students about contentious issues such as BE. Freire, when describing the necessary elements for educational practice, points that the act of teaching demands both ethics and corporification of words through practice. Opposing his view to simple Puritanism principles, he states that educational practices should be rigorous evidences of decency and purity. Freire also states that, as an act of respect towards any human being, school contents shouldn't be taught without respect to students' moral education. Therefore, according to Freire, to think "right" means to act "right". For Freire, a teacher that is genuinely concerned with moral and ethical development of his/her students will act accordingly in classroom, bringing into discussion issues that benefit both from science knowledge and also from students' non-scientific worldviews. We propose that Gould's NOMA principle can be developed by teachers as a fruitful strategy for teaching Biology contents as BE. Learning from some examples taken from school contents, we aim to show that the application of such principle in school would help clarifying the nature and foundations of evolutionary theories, mainly neo-Darwinism, as well as the non-overlapping domains of scientific and religious worlds. Therefore, it would be possible to maintain the necessary distance (demanded for ethical reasons) from subjective issues, without any harm for the necessary, objective and deep appreciation of scientific knowledge. In this perspective, we understand that well-known incompatibilities between science and religion could be clarified and discussed with students, since each of these domains have an important role in pupils' personal development. (shrink)

Based on the understanding of aesthetics as the study of all processes and activities related to aesthesis in his original etymological sense as «sensibility», this paper argues that an evolutionary approach must follow the evolution of aesthesis from its inception. A degree of sensibility may perhaps be traced already at molecules sensing borders in DNA replication. The next stage, which may be defined as “cyto-aesthesis”, refers to evidence of cells’ actions to antigens, virus, enzymes or bacteria and other significant (...) elements in the intercellular fluid by their receptors’ sensibility to ligands. Darwin explored plants’ irritability specifically at their tendrils and petioles and there are studies on their sensibility to surface, nutrients, touch, water, temperature, seasonal cycles, color, gravity, and light. All animal species, including human beings, have evolved a keen sensitivity to predators and mates upon which their survival depends following evolutionary priorities and conditions. There is consequently no particular experience that we may call «aesthetic experience», a redundant term, since the whole spectrum of activities and effects of various species’ sensibility involves experiencing the world, namely, aesthesis. (shrink)

In the first section I present a disagreement between a number of scholars concerning the goodness, indifference, evil or even wickedness both of nature and of nonhuman creatures. Section 2 examines and rejects the response to these diverse judgements that values are generated by human valuers employing different perspectives. In Section 3, the thesis that nonhuman animals are commonly either wicked or immoral is considered. The next two sections address the value or disvalue of predation and parasitism, and then of (...) waste, selfishness and suffering. In the Section 6 I conclude that the evolutionary system of nature has vast overall value, and that although there are widespread evils within it, the only significant alternatives are a lifeless world, a world without sentient life, and a world of constant supernatural intervention, all probably worlds without such a positive balance of value as the actual world. (shrink)

In the first section I present a disagreement between a number of scholars (including T.H. Huxley, G.J. Romanes, George C. Williams and Holmes Rolston) concerning the goodness, indifference, evil or even wickedness both of nature and of nonhuman creatures. Section 2 examines and rejects the response to these diverse judgements that values are generated by human valuers employing different perspectives. In Section 3, the thesis that nonhuman animals are commonly either wicked or immoral is considered. The next two sections address (...) the value or disvalue of predation and parasitism, and then of waste, selfishness and suffering. In the Section 6 I conclude that the evolutionary system of nature has vast overall value, and that although there are widespread evils within it, the only significant alternatives are a lifeless world, a world without sentient life, and a world of constant supernatural intervention, all probably worlds without such a positive balance of value as the actual world. (shrink)