•  14
    Darwinism and the cultural evolution of sports
    with Siegfried Dewitte
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 52 (1): 1-16. 2008.
    Evolutionary theory has gained some ground in the social sciences, but not without resistance. It must be said that at least some of the resistance on the part of social scientists is justified insofar as social and cultural phenomena such as sports are often much more complex than many evolutionary theorists seem to think. We propose in this paper an evolutionary approach to sports that takes into account its profoundly cultural character, thereby overcoming the traditional nature-culture dicho…Read more
  •  13
    Would Relaxation of the Anti-doping Rule Lead to Red Queen Effects?
    with Bengt Kayser
    Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 15 (3): 1-15. 2020.
    One of the claims sometimes advanced in favour of anti-doping is that allowing doping would lead to a uniform increase in performance in comparison to no doping. The idea is that if all athletes wo...
  •  13
    Mating games: cultural evolution and sexual selection
    with S. Dewitte
    Biology and Philosophy 22 (4): 475-491. 2007.
    In this paper, we argue that mating games, a concept that denotes cultural practices characterized by a competitive element and an ornamental character, are essential drivers behind the emergence and maintenance of human cultural practices. In order to substantiate this claim, we sketch out the essential role of the game’s players and audience, as well as the ways in which games can mature and turn into relatively stable cultural practices. After outlining the life phase of mating games – their …Read more
  •  13
    Both the so-called high priests of atheism and the proponents of Intelligent Design argue that the Darwinian theory of evolution is more problematic for theism than any other scientific theory. Against the grain of most contemporary philosophers and theologians, I contend that their arguments are largely correct. Moreover, neo-Darwinism is especially threatening the soft theism or deism, defended by Darwin and several of the most prominent Darwinian theorists . For the proponents of ID, this imp…Read more
  •  13
    Millions of scientific articles are published each year, making it difficult to stay abreast of advances within even the smallest subdisciplines. Traditional approaches to the study of science, such as the history and philosophy of science, involve closely reading a relatively small set of journal articles. And yet many questions benefit from casting a wider net: Is most scientific change gradual or revolutionary? What are the key sources of scientific novelty? Over the past several decades, a m…Read more
  •  9
    Scientific activities strongly depend on concepts and classifications to represent the world in an orderly and workable manner. This creates a trade-off. On the one hand, it is important to leave space for conceptual and classificatory criticism. On the other hand, agreement on which concepts and classifications to use, is often crucial for communication and the integration of research and ideas. In this paper, we show that this trade-off can sometimes be best resolved through conceptual governa…Read more
  •  9
    Commentary on Lesly Newson and Peter Richerson, Moral Beliefs about Homosexuality: Testing a Cultural Evolutionary Hypothesis
  •  9
    Philosophy of Science Can Prevent Manslaughter
    with Pierre Delaere and Kristien Hens
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 19 (4): 537-543. 2022.
    In September 2020, the surgeon Paulo Macchiarini, who used stem cell technology to enable the transplants of artificial and donor trachea, was charged with aggravated assault in Sweden. In this comment, we argue that the Ethics Council of the Karolinska Institute should have considered issues from philosophy of science when they were brought to their attention, rather than dismiss them as irrelevant to research ethics. We demonstrate how conceptual issues of a philosophy-of-science-kind about cl…Read more
  •  9
    In this paper, we distinguish two different approaches to cultural evolution. One approach is meme-centered, the other organism-centered. We argue that in situations in which the meme- and organism-centered approaches are competing alternatives, the organism-centered approach is in many ways superior. Furthermore, the organism-centered approach can go a long way toward understanding the evolution of institutions. Although the organism-centered approach is preferable for a broad class of situatio…Read more
  •  2
    Is the Cannibal a Good Sport?
    with Yannick Joye
    In Fritz Allhoff, Jesús Ilundáin‐Agurruza & Michael W. Austin (eds.), Cycling ‐ Philosophy for Everyone, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: The Cannibal Culpable Cannibalism? Winning the Right Way In Control Even after a Blowout Last Pedal Strokes … Notes.
  •  2
    Vijf essays over Freud en de evolutiepsychiatrie
    with P. Adriaens
    Philosophical Psychology 17 (1): 59-76. 2004.
  •  2
    Chapter 25. Harmless Dysfunctions and the Problem of Normal Variation
    with Jonathan Scholl
    In Luc Faucher & Denis Forest (eds.), Defining Mental Disorders: Jerome Wakefield and his Critics, Mit Press. pp. 495-510. 2021.
    In one of his key publications on the harmful dysfunction analysis of mental disorder (HDA), Jerome Wakefield acknowledged that he has “explored the value element in disorder less thoroughly than the factual element. This is in part because the factual component poses more of a problem for inferences about disorder and in part because the nature of values is such that it requires separate consideration” (Wakefield 1992, 384). More than twenty years have passed since this remark, and yet a thorou…Read more
  • Why philosophers of psychiatry should care about evolutionary theory
    with Pieter R. Adriaens
    In Pieter R. Adriaens & Andreas de Block (eds.), Maladapting Minds: Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Evolutionary Theory, Oxford University Press. 2011.