Evolutionary game theoretic accounts of justice attempt to explain our willingness to follow certain principles of justice by appealing to robustness properties possessed by those principles. Skyrms (1996) offers one sketch of how such an account might go for divide-the-dollar, the simplest version of the Nash bargaining game, using the replicator dynamics of Taylor and Jonker (1978). In a recent article, D'Arms et al. (1998) criticize his account and describe a model which, they allege, undermines his theory. I sketch (...) a theory of evolutionary explanations of justice which avoids their methodological criticisms, and develop a spatial model of divide-the-dollar with more robust convergence properties than the models of Skyrms (1996) and D'Arms et al. (1998). (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine an evolutionary hypothesis about musical expressiveness first proposed by Peter Kivy. I will first present the hypothesis and explain why I take it to be different from ordinary evolutionary explanations of musical expressiveness. I will then argue that Kivy’s hypothesis is of crucial importance for most available resemblancebased accounts of musical expressiveness. For this reason, it is particularly important to assess its plausibility. After having reviewed the existing literature on the topic, I (...) will list five challenges the hypothesis is supposed to meet. Although my list of challenges does not aim at exhaustiveness, I believe that the hypothesis must meet all of the challenges I suggest if it is to work as a cornerstone for a theory of musical expressiveness. (shrink)

Emotions can be explained as specialized states, shaped by natural selection, that increase fitness in specific situations. The physiological, psychological, and behavioral characteristics of a specific emotion can be analyzed as possible design features that increase the ability to cope with the threats and opportunities present in the corresponding situation. This approach to understanding the evolutionary functions of emotions is illustrated by the correspondence between (a) the subtypes of fear and the different kinds of threat; (b) the attributes of (...) happiness and sadness and the changes that would be advantageous in propitious and unpropitious situations; and (c) the social emotions and the adaptive challenges of reciprocity relationships. In addition to addressing a core theoretical problem shared by evolutionary and cognitive psychology, explicit formulations of the evolutionary functions of specific emotions are of practical importance for understanding and treating emotional disorders. (shrink)

Recently there has been some interest in studying the explanation of meaning by using signaling games. I shall argue that the meaning of signals in signaling games remains sufficiently unclear to motivate further investigation. In particular, the possibility of distinguishing imperatives and indicatives at a fundamental level will be explored. Thereby I am trying to preserve the generality of the signaling games framework while bringing it closer to human languages. A number of convergence results for the evolutionary dynamics (...) of our models will be proved. (shrink)

A common approach in the Philosophy of Time, particularly in enquiry into the metaphysical nature of time, has been to examine various aspects of the nature of human temporal experience, and ask what, if anything, can be discerned from this about the nature of time itself. Many human traits have explanations that reside in facts about our evolutionary history. We ask whether features of human temporal experience might admit of such evolutionary explanations. We then consider the implications of (...) any proposed evolutionary explanations for the veridicality of these experiences, and for the truth-value of folk beliefs about time that are based on them. (shrink)

Traditional conservative arguments against the possibility of moral progress relied on underevidenced assumptions about the limitations of human nature. Contemporary thinkers have attempted to fill this empirical gap in the conservative argument by appealing to evolutionary science. Such “evoconservative” arguments fail because they overstate the explanatory reach of evolutionary theory. We maintain that no adequate evolutionary explanation has been given for important features of human morality, namely cosmopolitan and other “inclusivist” moral commitments. We attribute these evolutionarily (...) anomalous features to a capacity for open-ended normativity, which presents a serious obstacle to theorists who wish to draw substantive moral and political lessons from human evolutionary history. (shrink)

Psychopaths are brutal individuals, having no empathetic concern for others. Initially, the existence of psychopaths seems to be a mystery from an evolutionary point of view. On close examination, however, it can be accommodated by evolutionary theory. Brutal individuals excelled meek individuals in the desperate circumstances where they had to fight their competitors over natural resources for survival and reproduction. This evolutionary explanation of psychopaths receives support from Pinker's observation of the history of brutality. We have (...) good reasons for predicting that psychopaths are likely to die out in the future. (shrink)

Abstract: In Chapter 4 of his "Self-Deception Unmasked" (SDU), Al Mele considers several (attempted) empirical demonstrations of self-deception. These empirical demonstrations work under the conception of what Mele refers to as the 'dual-belief requirement', in which an agent simultaneously holds a belief p and a belief ~p. Toward the end of this chapter, Mele considers the argument of one biologist and anthropologist, Robert Trivers, who describes what he takes to be an evolutionary explanation for coming to form false (...) beliefs. Mele argues briefly that Trivers's account is no more explanatory than a similar one that does not include the dual-belief requirement. I present a case describing Trivers' analysis, show how Mele might reply to it. After briefly explaining Mele's sufficient conditions for entering self-deception from Chapter 3 of SDU, I'll consider what it means to hold the dual-belief. I'll then consider what I take to be a class of cases of self-deception which rely on genetic determinism, which I take to satisfy the dual-belief condition. (shrink)

Several philosophers of science have advanced an instrumentalist thesis about the use of probabilities in evolutionary biology. I investigate the consequences of instrumentalism on evolutionary explanations. I take issue with Barbara Horan's (1994) argument that probabilities are unnecessary to explain evolutionary change given the underlying deterministic character of evolutionary processes. First, I question Horan's deterministic assumption. Then, I attempt to undermine her Laplacian argument by demonstrating that whether probabilities are necessary depends upon the sort of questions (...) one is asking. (shrink)

This paper applies the theoretical criteria laid out by D’Arms et al. to various aspects of evolutionary models of signalling. The question that D’Arms et al. seek to answer can be formulated as follows: Are the models that we use to explain the phenomena in question conceptually adequate? The conceptual adequacy question relates the formal aspects of the model to those aspects of the natural world that the model is supposed to capture. Moreover, this paper extends the analysis of (...) D’Arms et al. by asking the following additional question: Are the models that we use sufficient to explain the phenomena in question? The sufficiency question asks what formal resources are minimally required for the model to get the right results most of the time. (shrink)

Evolutionary studies have provided several explanations about how pain and suffering can be fitted into that framework, which tries to make sense of every biological and human feature in terms of evolution, survival, and fitness. These explanations point usually to how such apparently negative aspects become useful and contribute to an evolution that after all has delivered good outcomes. Such an approach might eventually render the theodicy question less sharp and critical for believers who are trying to cope with (...) the scandal of so great suffering in our world and history. Theologically we can welcome such new insights, less noticed in former tradition, but at the same time we need to be cautious before a development which could render less clear the message of Christian salvation. In any case, the new data and knowledge clearly invite to revise and reformulate the Christian salvific message, to better answer before the mystery of evil and suffering. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena involve the assumption that the capacities to be explained are both innate and modular. This is understandable: independent selection of a trait requires that it be both heritable and largely decoupled from other `nearby' traits. Cognitive capacities realized as innate modules would certainly satisfy these contraints. A viable evolutionary cognitive psychology, however, requires neither extreme nativism nor modularity, though it is consistent with both. In this paper, we seek (...) to show that rather weak assumptions about innateness and modularity are consistent with evolutionary explanations of cognitive capacities. Evolutionary pressures can affect the degree to which the development of a capacity is canalized by biasing acquisition/ learning in ways that favor development of concepts and capacities that proved adaptive to an organism's ancestors. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena involve the assumption that the capacities to be explained are both innate and modular. This is understandable: independent selection of a trait requires that it be both heritable and largely decoupled from other ”nearby’ traits. Cognitive capacities realized as innate modules would certainly satisfy these contraints. A viable evolutionary cognitive psychology, however, requires neither extreme nativism nor modularity, though it is consistent with both. In this paper, we seek (...) to show that rather weak assumptions about innateness and modularity are consistent with evolutionary explanations of cognitive capacities. Evolutionary pressures can affect the degree to which the development of a capacity is canalized by biasing acquisition/learning in ways that favor development of concepts and capacities that proved adaptive to an organism’s ancestors. (shrink)

Chalmers and others have argued that physicalist microexplanation is incapable of solving the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. This article examines whether evolutionary accounts of the mind, such as those developed by Millikan, Dretske and Flanagan, can add anything to make up for the possible short falls of more reductionist accounts. I argue that they cannot, because evolutionary accounts explain by appeal to a selectional history that only comes into the picture if consciousness can first arise due to spontaneous (...) mutation in some individual organism, and explaining this emergence of consciousness from DNA and embryology calls for precisely the kind of structurally-based supervenience account that Chalmers et al. have objected to. Not only does an evolutionary account not succeed where a reductionist account fails; the evolutionary account presupposes the possibility of a reductionist account. (shrink)

Several theorists have defended that unpleasantness can be explained by appealing to (intrinsic, simultaneous, de re) desires for certain experiences not to be occurring. In a nutshell, experiences are unpleasant because we do not want them, and not vice versa. A common criticism for this approach takes the form of a Euthyphro dilemma. Even if there is a solution for this criticism, I argue that this type of approach is limited in two important ways. It cannot provide an explanation (...) for: i) the motivation, from a psychological conscious point of view, nor ii) a non-instrumental justification, for having the relevant desires. The lack of these explanations is relevant since these are precisely the type clarifications that we would expect from a theory about unpleasantness. (shrink)

This article seeks to explain the transformation of culture using the mechanism of evolutionary theory. Social biologists have been dealing with this issue for many years now. However, these scholars have not sufficiently allowed for the importance of factors independent of genes. They have primarily thought of culture as nothing more than the expansion of genes, as an increase in the rate of genetic adaptation. Namely, they have focused less on culture itself and more on its natural origins. Even (...) while accepting the dual inheritance model that the structure of biological genes and cultural transmission is different, this article seeksto take a step further. My aim is to show how culture that takes shape on the group level is explainable on the cultural genetic level. Seen from the point of view of culture genetics, the transformation of culture signifies the transformation in the frequency of a cultural gene. At this point, we are thus faced with the following questions: 1) Is it possible to concretize the units of culture genes? 2) What is the fundamental characteristic of a culture gene? and 3) What relationship is there between biological genes and cultural genes? This article will prove that it is indeed possible to concretize the units of culture genes, that the most substantialfundamental characteristic of a cultural gene is, as would be expected, to clone itself, and that cultural genes and biological genes exist within multiple relationships of cooperation, conflict, and reciprocity. Finally, this article will further concretize the dual inheritance model with a careful examination of its two patterns of evolutionary explanation, the reductionist on the one hand, and the non-reductionist on the other. This examination will conclude that, in terms of culture, the non-reductionist model is the most suitable. (shrink)

It can easily look like evolution is in a better position to explain the reliability of our perceptual beliefs than the reliability of our moral beliefs. This paper takes a closer look at the issue and argues that there’s no reason—no reason which armchair philosophers could uncover—to think evolution can better explain perceptual reliability than moral reliability. It also offers a diagnosis of why it seemed otherwise. The diagnosis concerns our need to use the truth predicate as a generalizing logical (...) device in the perceptual case but not in the moral case. (shrink)

Evolutionary explanations of behavior are special in that they involve both proximate and ultimate components. Proximately, evolutionary accounts posit mechanisms that generate observed patterns of behavior. At the ultimate level, evolutionary accounts explain the existence of these proximate mechanisms via evolutionary processes such as selection or drift acting in the past. Does positing or accepting such explanations carry any risks? Here I consider two kinds of risk, epistemic and ethical. Epistemic risk is the risk of being (...) wrong about a matter of fact, such as whether a posited empirical pattern actually exists, or that a particular set of causes explains it. Ethical risk is the risk of causing harm. If the acceptance of a particular explanation for an observed pattern of behavior entails real-world consequences that could lead to harm, then epistemic risk entails ethical risk. Here I consider these risks in cases of evolutionary explanation, and ask whether evolutionary explanations might carry special risks that we should consider when developing and testing evolutionary hypotheses. (shrink)

Several philosophers of science have advanced an instrumentalist thesis about the use of probabilities in evolutionary biology. I investigate the consequences of instrumentalism on evolutionary explanations. I take issue with Barbara Horan's (1994) argument that probabilities are unnecessary to explain evolutionary change given the underlying deterministic character of evolutionary processes. First, I question Horan's deterministic assumption. Then, I attempt to undermine her Laplacian argument by demonstrating that whether probabilities are necessary depends upon the sort of questions (...) one is asking. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made to explain the rise of religious phenomena based on evolutionary models, which attempt to account for the way in which religion can constitute a useful system to increase the fitness of both the individual and the group. These models implicitly mean that beliefs are simply effective adaptations to the environment and in this sense they cannot be truly accepted by those who adhere to the religions in question. In this paper, I use the evolution (...) of culture model elaborated by Cavalli Sforza to propose an approach that can explain the change of institutionalized religions over a more limited time frame than the long times of biological evolution. This model could be heuristically effective in the study of religious phenomena and could also be applicable in terms of theology and philosophy of religion. Given the limits of space, I will only try to take a few steps in this direction, trying to answer some of the major questions that arise about such an approach. In particular, one may ask whether, unlike others, the evolution of culture model applied to religions can make it possible to put into brackets - or to remain agnostic about - the value and the truth of the beliefs and precepts of the religion which is studied. (shrink)

Mating motivation likely plays a role in bias to attractive individuals, but there are other complementary theories drawn from the evolutionary literature related to competition, friendship, and leadership selection that also make relevant predictions concerning biases towards attractive individuals. The relative balance of these factors will be context dependent and so help explain why the pattern of bias is sometimes variable.

My contribution to this Symposium focuses on the links between sexuality and reproduction from the evolutionary point of view.' The relation between women's sexuality and reproduction is particularly importantb ecause of a vital intersectionb etweenp olitics and biology feminists have noticed, for more than a century, that women's identity is often defined in terms of her reproductive capacity. More recently, in the second wave of the feminist movement in the United States, debates about women'si dentityh ave explicitlyi ncludeds exuality;m (...) uch feminist argument in the late 1960's and early 1970's involved an attempt to separate out an autonomous female sexuality from women's reproductive functions. It is especially relevant, then, to examine biological arguments, particularlye volutionarya rgumentst, o see what they say about whether and how women's sexuality is related to reproduction. We shall find that many evolutionarya rgumentss eem to supportt he direct linkingo f female sexualitya nd reproductionY. et I will argue that this supporti s not well-groundedI. n fact, I think evolutionarye xplanationso f female sexuality exemplify how social beliefs and social agendas can influence very basic biological explanations of fundamental physiological processes. In this paper, I shall spend some time spelling out a few examples in which assumptions about the close link between reproduction and sexuality yield misleading results, then I shall conclude with a discussion of the consequences of this case study for issues in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Cognitive ethology is the comparative study of animal cognition from an evolutionary perspective. As a sub-discipline of biology it shares interest in questions concerning the immediate causes and development of behavior. As a part of ethology it is also concerned with questions about the function and evolution of behavior. I examine some recent work in cognitive ethology, and I argue that the notions of mental content and representation are important to enable researchers to answer questions and state generalizations about (...) the function and volution of behavior. (shrink)

Cultural variability in self-enhancement is far more pronounced than the authors suggest; the sum of the evidence does not show that East Asians self-enhance in different domains from Westerners. Incorporating this cultural variation suggests a different way of understanding the adaptiveness of self-enhancement: It is adaptive in contexts where positive self-feelings and confidence are valued over relationship harmony, but is maladaptive in contexts where relationship harmony is prioritized.

Explanation is a human activity. Teleological, causal, and evolutionary explanations are all valid forms of responding to particular puzzlements. Reductionism incorrectly assumes there is one absolute explanation. While causal explanation appeals primarily to necessity, evolutionary explanation is based largely on contingency.

In this article, I argue that distinguishing ‘evolutionary’ from ‘Darwinian’ medicine will help us assess the variety of roles that evolutionary explanations can play in a number of medical contexts. Because the boundaries of evolutionary and Darwinian medicine overlap to some extent, however, they are best described as distinct ‘research traditions’ rather than as competing paradigms. But while evolu- tionary medicine does not stand out as a new scientific field of its own, Darwinian medicine is united by (...) a number of distinctive theoretical and methodological claims. For example, evolutionary medicine and Darwinian medicine can be distinguished with respect to the styles of evolutionary explanations they employ. While the former primarily involves ‘forward looking’ explanations, the latter depends mostly on ‘backward looking’ explanations. A forward looking explanation tries to predict the effects of ongoing evolutionary processes on human health and disease in contem- porary environments (e.g., hospitals). In contrast, a backward looking explanation typically applies evolutionary principles from the vantage point of humans’ distant biological past in order to assess present states of health and disease. Both approaches, however, are concerned with the prevention and control of human diseases. In con- clusion, I raise some concerns about the claim that ‘nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of evolution’. (shrink)

Walter Bock was committed to developing a framework for evolutionary biology. Bock repeatedly discussed how evolutionary explanations should be considered within the realm of Hempel’s deductive-nomological model of scientific explanations. Explanation in evolution would then consist of functional and evolutionary explanations, and within the latter, an explanation can be of nomological-deductive and historical narrative explanations. Thus, a complete evolutionary explanation should include, first, a deductive functional analysis, and then proceed through nomological and historical (...) evolutionary explanations. However, I will argue that his views on the deductive proprieties of functional analysis and the deductive-nomological parts of evolution fail because of the nature of evolution, which contains a historical element that the logic of deduction and Hempel’s converting law model do not compass. Conversely, Bock’s historical approach gives a critical consideration of the historical narrative element of evolutionary explanation, which is fundamental to the methodology of the historical nature of evolutionary theory. Herein, I will expand and discuss a modern view of evolutionary explanations of traits that includes the currentacknowledgement of the differences between experimental and the historical sciences, including the token and type event dichotomy, that mutually illuminate each other in order to give us a well confirmed and coherent hypothesis for evolutionary explanations. Within this framework, I will argue that the duality of evolutionary explanations is related to two components of character evolution: origin, with its evolutionary pathways along with the history, and maintenance, the function (mainly a current function) for the character being selected. (shrink)

We present a logically detailed case-study of Darwinian evolutionary explanation. Special features of Darwin’s explanatory schema made it an unusual theoretical breakthrough, from the point of view of the philosophy of science. The schema employs no theoretical terms, and puts forward no theoretical hypotheses. Instead, it uses three observational generalizations—Variability, Heritability and Differential Reproduction—along with an innocuous assumption of Causal Efficacy, to derive Adaptive Evolution as a necessary consequence. Adaptive Evolution in turn, with one assumption of scale (‘Deep (...) Time’), implies the observational generalization of Adaptation. It is a fascinating methodological task to regiment the premises and make the reasoning both rigorous and clear. Doing so reveals how surprisingly small an amount of mathematics is needed in order to carry out the argument. The investigation also reveals the crucial role played by heritability, and how heritability itself admits of Darwinian explanation. (shrink)

Recent philosophical discussions have failed to clarify the roles of the concept fitness in evolutionary theory. Neither the propensity interpretation of fitness nor the construal of fitness as a primitive theoretical term succeed in explicating the empirical content and explanatory power of the theory of natural selection. By appealing to the structure of simple mathematical models of natural selection, we separate out different contrasts which have tended to confuse discussions of fitness: the distinction between what fitness is defined as (...) versus what fitness is a function of, the contrast between adaptedness as an overall property of organisms and specific adaptive capacities, the distinction between actual and potential reproductive success, the role of chance versus systematic causal relations, fitness as applied to organisms as opposed to fitness applied to genotype classes, heritable adaptive capacities of genotypes as opposed to relations between genotypes and the environment. We show how failure to distinguish and properly interrelate these different aspects of “fitness” adds confusion to a number of already complex issues concerning evolutionary theory. On the basis of our discussion of these different aspects of “fitness”, we propose a terminology which makes the necessary distinctions. A central result of our analysis is that the concept of fitness as the overall adaptedness of organisms does not enter into the causal structure of evolutionary explanation, at least to the extent that this structure is represented in the mathematical models of natural selection. (shrink)

Robustness analysis is widespread in science, but philosophers have struggled to justify its confirmatory power. We provide a positive account of robustness by analysing some explicit and implicit uses of within and across-model robustness in evolutionary theory. We argue that appeals to robustness are usually difficult to justify because they aim to increase the likeliness that a phenomenon obtains. However, we show that robust results are necessary for explanations of phenomena with specific properties. Across-model robustness is necessary for how-possibly (...) explanations of multiply instantiated phenomena, while within-model robustness is necessary for explanations of phenomena with multiple evolutionary starting points. In such cases, the appeal of robustness is explanatory rather than confirmatory. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Methodological Particulars Adaptation The Role of History in Adaptation Explanations Reverse Engineering in Evolutionary Psychology Case Study: Parental Investment Theory Rules that “Fit” vs. Rules that “Guide” Behavior Responsible Science Notes.

Recent evolutionary studies on cooperation devote specific attention to non-verbal expressions of emotions. In this paper, I examine Robert Frank’s popular attempt to explain emotions, non-verbal markers and social behaviours. Following this line of work, I focus on the green-beard explanation of social behaviours. In response to the criticisms raised against this controversial ultimate explanation, based on resources found in Frank’s work, I propose an alternative red-beard explanation of human sociality. The red-beard explanation explains the (...) emergence and evolution of emotions, a proximate cause, rather than patterns of behaviour. In contrast to simple evolutionary models that invoke a green-beard mechanism, I demonstrate that the red-beard explanation can be evolutionary stable. Social emotions are a common cause of a social behaviour and a phenotypic marker and therefore cooperative behaviour cannot be suppressed without also changing the marker. (shrink)

Evolutionary explanations are not only common in the biological sciences, but also widespread outside biology. But an account of how evolutionary explanations perform their explanatory work is still lacking. This paper develops such an account. I argue that available accounts of explanations in evolutionary science miss important parts of the role of history in evolutionary explanations. I argue that the historical part of evolutionary science should be taken as having genuine explanatory force, and that it (...) provides how‐possibly explanations sensu Dray. I propose an account of evolutionary explanations as comparative‐composite explanations consisting of two distinct kinds of explanations, one processual and one historical, that are connected via the explanandum's evolvability to show how the explanandum is the product of its evolutionary past. The account is both a reconstruction of how evolutionary explanations in biology work and a guideline specifying what kind of explanations evolutionary research programs should develop. (shrink)

The main thesis defended in this dissertation is that culture makes a difference. It is argued that this is so because culture evolves just as species do. It is maintained that if one views culture as an evolving system, then this has some fundamental conceptual, ontological, and explanatory implications. Specifically, construing culture as an evolving system leads one to explain cultural phenomena and behaviors differently from alternative theories. Hence, this thesis is devoted to laying the foundations for a satisfactory theory (...) of cultural evolution. Chapter 1 explains the conditions under which culture can be seen as evolving and attempts to clarify the structure of a theory of cultural evolution. Chapter 2 stresses the kind of explanatory work that a theory of cultural evolution is capable of doing by developing an approach to explanation called explanatory pluralism. Chapter 3 argues that a theory of cultural evolution must include an account of cultural fitness. A multidimensional approach to cultural fitness is put forth and the function and explanatory utility of this approach are stressed. Then chapter 4 addresses the question of whether there is such a thing as cultural selection. It is argued that though culture is no doubt selective, there is not one selection mechanism driving cultural evolution. Rather, it is claimed that the evolution of culture has been the evolution of a multitude of selection mechanisms. Chapter 5 concludes by pointing out another interesting consequence of culture, namely, that it may favor the evolution of altruism and maladaptive traits. (shrink)