Armin W. Schulz

In their book Unto Others, Sober and Wilson argue that various evolutionary considerations (based on the logic of natural selection) lend support to the truth of psychological altruism. However, recently, Stephen Stich has raised a number of challenges to their reasoning: in particular, he claims that three out of the four evolutionary arguments they give are internally unconvincing, and that the one that is initially plausible fails to take into account recent findings from cognitive science and thus leaves open a number of egoistic responses. These challenges make it necessary to reassess the plausibility of Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary account—which is what I aim to do in this paper. In particular, I try to show that, as a matter of fact, Sober & Wilson’s case remains compelling, as some of Stich’s concerns rest on a confusion, and those that do not are not sufficiently strong to establish all the conclusions he is after. The upshot is that no reason has been given to abandon the view that evolutionary theory has advanced the debate surrounding psychological altruism.

I critically discuss a recent innovation in the debate surrounding the plausibility of rational choice theory (RCT): the appeal to evolutionary theory. Specifically, I assess Gigerenzer and colleagues’ claim that considerations based on natural selection show that, instead of making decisions in a RCT-like way, we rely on ‘simple heuristics’. As I try to make clearer here, though, Gigerenzer and colleagues’ arguments are unconvincing: we lack the needed information about our past to determine whether the premises on which they are built are true—and, hence, we cannot tell whether they, in fact, speak against RCT.

Finding out why we have beliefs and desires is important for a thorough understanding of the nature of our minds (and those of other animals). It is therefore unsurprising that several accounts have been presented that are meant to answer this question. At least in the philosophical literature, the most widely accepted of these are due to Kim Sterelny and Peter Godfrey-Smith, who argue that beliefs and desires evolved due to their enabling us to be behaviourally flexible in a way that reflexes do not—which, they claim, is beneficial in epistemically complex environments. However, as I try to make clear in this paper, upon closer consideration, this kind of account turns out to be theoretically implausible. In the main, this is because it fails to give due credit to the powers of reflex-driven organisms, which can in fact be just as flexible in their behaviour as ones that are belief/desire-driven. In order to improve on this account, I therefore propose that beliefs and desires evolved, not due to their enabling us to do something completely different from what reflexive organisms can do, but rather due to their enabling us to do the same things better. Specifically, I argue that beliefs and desires evolved for making the generation of behaviour more efficient, since they can simplify the necessary cognitive labour considerably. I end by considering various implications of this account.

Key Terms in Logic offers the ideal introduction to this core area in the study of philosophy, providing detailed summaries of the important concepts in the study of logic and the application of logic to the rest of philosophy. A brief introduction provides context and background, while the following chapters offer detailed definitions of key terms and concepts, introductions to the work of key thinkers and lists of key texts. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this is the ideal reference tool for those coming to Logic for the first time.

A key component of much current research in behavioral ecology, cognitive science, and economics is a model of the mind at least partly based on beliefs and desires. However, despite this prevalence, there are still many open questions concerning both the structure and the applicability of this model. This is especially so when it comes to its ‘desire’ part: in particular, it is not yet entirely clear when and why we should expect organisms to be desire-based—understood so as to imply that they consult explicit tokenings of what they ought to do—as opposed to being drive-based—understood so as to imply that they react to the world using behavioral reflexes. In this paper, I present the beginnings of an answer to this question. To do this, I start by showing that an influential recent attempt to address these issues—due to Kim Sterelny—fails to be fully successful, as it does not make sufficiently clear what the relative benefits and disadvantages of drive-based and desire-based cognitive architectures are. I then present an alternative account of this matter based on the idea that organisms that can follow explicit behavioral rules (i.e. which have desires) avoid having to memorize a large set of state of the world–action connections—which can (though need not) be adaptive. Finally, I apply this account to the question of what the cognitive value of mental representations should be seen to be; here, I conclude that—contrary to some recent claims—relying on mental representations can make decision making easier, not harder, but also that—in line with these recent claims—whether it does so depends on the details of the case.

I critically assess two widely cited evolutionary biological arguments for two versions of the ‘Extended Mind Thesis’ (EMT): namely, an argument appealing to Dawkins’s ‘Extended Phenotype Thesis’ (EPT) and an argument appealing to ‘Developmental Systems Theory’ (DST). Specifically, I argue that, firstly, appealing to the EPT is not useful for supporting the EMT (in either version), as it is structured and motivated too differently from the latter to be able to corroborate or elucidate it. Secondly, I extend and defend Rupert’s argument that DST also fails to support or elucidate the EMT (in either version) by showing that the considerations in favour of the former theory have no bearing on the truth of the latter. I conclude by noting that the relevance of this discussion goes beyond the debate surrounding the EMT, as it brings out some of the difficulties of introducing evolutionary biological considerations into debates in psychology and philosophy more generally.

The ‘argument from design’ plays a pivotal role in Carruthers’ recent defence of the massive modularity thesis. However, as this paper seeks to show, there are major flaws in its structure. If construed deductively, it is unsound: modular mental architecture is not necessarily the best architecture, and even if it were, this alone would not show that this architecture evolved. If construed inductively, it is not much more convincing, as it then appears to be too weak to support the kind of modularity Carruthers is concerned with. The upshot of this is that whatever reason we might have for believing that the mind is massively modular, it is not based on the argument from design.

This chapter presents the main existing ways of spelling out the function of social institutions: (a) historical social functionalism, (b) structural functionalism, (c) Pettit’s recent virtual social functionalism, and (d) intentionalist social functionalism. In each case, the chapter then presents, updates, and analyzes the most compelling objections to these traditional forms of social functionalism. The upshot of the chapter is the conclusion that a new approach to the topic of the function of social institutions is needed.

This chapter notes that assigning functions to artifacts and technologies is crucially important for a number of different reasons: in particular, it can explain how and why artifacts are used in the ways that they are, which artifacts are stable parts of society. In turn, this can help justify social policies and interventions. However, how to assign functions to artifacts is not yet fully clear. The most popular attempt to do so appeals to the intentions of the designer of the artifact—though others have tried to do so by appeal to the history of use of the artifact. However, in this chapter, we show that neither of these theories is fully compelling, and that a better account of artifact function can obtained by applying a variant of presentist social functionalism to this case. We lay out this presentist theory of artifact functions and apply it to two examples of controversial artifact functions: off-label uses of pharmaceuticals, and policy responses to ChatGPT and other large-language models.

This chapter considers the question of the function of corporations. As is well known, two main answers to the question of what corporations are for have been proposed in the literature: the shareholder-value theory and the stakeholder-value theory. The chapter lays out these two views, and then argues that an appeal to presentist social functionalism shows that the terms of this debate are too constrained. In particular, by applying presentist social functionalism to this debate, it becomes clear that there are further possible functions of corporations that have not even been considered in the literature, and that existing studies of this question have looked at the wrong data, and thus fail to be able to resolve it. This chapter thus shows the practical applicability and fruitfulness of presentist social functionalism—especially compared to its rivals.

This chapter develops a new account of social functionalism: presentist social functionalism. In particular, the chapter argues that social functionalism should be based on the actual bio-cultural selective or sorting pressures on the institution as it is now. The chapter shows how this idea can be deepened and underwritten with recent insights from evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology. It also considers a number of the key objections to this kind of view that have been or could be proposed, and shows why they fail to be compelling.

This chapter considers systemic corruption. Corruption is widely recognized to be a major social problem, but its characterization continues to be very controversial. Indeed, it is now commonly noted that what is being corrupted need not be an individual person at all but can be an entire social institution. This kind of institutional corruption has, especially in the last few years, come to be seen as ever more central and important. In this chapter, I advocate for a novel theory of this phenomenon, according to which it is the result of an individual or collective agent acting in ways that prevent a social institution from partially or fully fulfilling its function. In turn, the function of a social institution is spelled out in line with presentist social functionalism. The chapter shows that this new theory of institutional corruption is a useful addition to the literature, as it situates the study of this phenomenon in a wider functionalist approach toward the social sciences and does justice to the complexity of institutional corruption—both when it comes to its inherent nature and its moral evaluation.

This open access book presents and defends a new approach towards social functionalism: Presentist Social Functionalism. This approach draws on recent developments in evolutionary biology and philosophy of biology to provide a more compelling theoretical foundation for functionalist social analysis. Functionalist approaches to the social sciences—which aim at using facts about what social institutions are for to provide a fulcrum with which to understand, evaluate, and respond to social reality—are about as old as the subject itself, but have also been the subject of much criticism. In particular, a widespread concern for the functionalist tradition in the social sciences is that functional ascriptions often lack a plausible theoretical grounding, and that where such a theoretical grounding can be provided, the empirical presuppositions of this grounding often fail to be met. However, recent developments in evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology promise to change this situation: they show that functional ascription can be compellingly made in an ahistorical, non-reproduction-based, and non-normative manner, which makes it possible to develop a new account of social functionalism that can fulfil the latter’s theoretical and empirical desiderata. To show this, the book begins by laying out the major existing accounts of social functionalism and detailing their challenges. It then develops the new, alternative account of Presentist Social Functionalism. Given its interdisciplinary nature and application-focused approach, the book is of interest to researchers in a variety of fields, from evolutionary biology to the social sciences and philosophy.

Brosnan and Wilson recently defended a new kind of ‘comparative economics,’ which rests on studies of economic decision-making in non-human animals. What is not yet clear, though, is exactly what role this kind of ‘comparative economics’ can play in economics qua economics. This paper argues that this role consists in constraining economic model choice. ‘Comparative economics’ can point to significant causes that ought to be included in the relevant models, and thus aid the assessment of these models. While this assessment does not guarantee that the identified causes are (the only) significant ones, and while there are also many pragmatic factors that influence model choice, the appeal to insights derived from studies of economic decision-making in non-human animals can still inform the choice among economic models. This also brings to the fore a new role for evolutionary biological considerations in economics, and thus clarifies the methodological foundations of ‘evolutionary economics.’

Forms of racial cognition begin early: from about 3 months onwards, many human infants prefer to look at own-race faces over other-race faces. What is not yet fully clear is what the psychological mechanisms are that underlie racial thoughts at this early age, and why these mechanisms evolved. In this paper, we propose answers to these questions. Specifically, we use recent experimental data and evolutionary biological insights to argue that early racial cognition is simply the result of a “facial familiarity mechanism”: a mental structure that leads infants to attend to faces that look similar to familiar faces, and which probably has evolved to track potential caregivers. We further argue that this account can be combined with the major existing treatments of the evolution of racial cognition, which apply to (near-) adult humans. The result is a heterogeneous picture of racial thought, according to which early and later racial cognition result from very different psychological mechanisms.

Key Terms in Logic offers the ideal introduction to this core area in the study of philosophy, providing detailed summaries of the important concepts in the study of logic and the application of logic to the rest of philosophy. A brief introduction provides context and background, while the following chapters offer detailed definitions of key terms and concepts, introductions to the work of key thinkers and lists of key texts. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this is the ideal reference tool for those coming to Logic for the first time.

The pressures that led to the evolution of episodic memory have recently seen much discussion, but a fully satisfactory account of them is still lacking. We seek to make progress in this debate by taking a step backward, identifying four possible ways that episodic memory could evolve in relation to simulationist future planning—a similar and seemingly related ability. After distinguishing each of these possibilities, the paper critically discusses existing accounts of the evolution of episodic memory. It then presents a novel argument in favor of the view that episodic memory is a by-product of the evolution of simulationist future planning. The paper ends by showing that this position allows for the maintenance of the traditional view that episodic memory operates on stored memory traces, as well as explaining a number of key features of episodic memory: its being subject to frequent and systematic errors, its neural co-location with the capacity for simulationist future planning, and the potential existence of non-human episodic memory.

Several authors have recently argued that the excessive focus on equilibrium models in mainstream economic analysis prevents economists from providing accurate representations of the complex and dynamic nature of real economic systems. In response, this paper argues the following. Many economic systems are the products of deliberate and centralized human design. People can and do build and support structures, such as social institutions, aiming to enhance the predictability of economic systems, and thus to move them toward being equilibrium systems. This provides a reason to think that many economic systems can be represented by equilibrium models.

While corruption has long been recognized as a major social problem, only relatively recently has the importance of a specific institutional form of corruption been noted. However, despite the fact that institutional corruption has come to be seen as very important, it remains a challenge to specify exactly what makes something a case of institutional corruption. To overcome this challenge, this paper argues that institutional corruption is the result of an individual or collective agent acting in ways that prevent a social institution from partially or fully fulfilling its function. In turn, the function of a social institution is spelled out in line with what is shown to be the most compelling account of social functionalism in the literature: Presentist Social Functionalism. Presentist Social Functionalism sees the function of a social institution as those of its features that increase its expected reproductive or survival success in the current socio-cultural environment. This theory of institutional corruption is shown to have a number of highly desirable features: it is general, fully spelled out, situated in a wider functionalist approach towards the social sciences, and does justice to the complexity of institutional corruption.

In a number of very influential publications, Epstein and Hoover (among other authors) have recently argued that a thoroughly micro-foundationalist approach towards economics is unconvincing for metaphysical reasons. However, as we show in this article, this metaphysical/social ontological approach to the debate fails to resolve the status of micro-foundations in the practice of economic modelling. To overcome this, we argue that endogenizing a model—that is, providing micro-foundations for it—correlates with making that model more complex. Specifically, we show that models with more micro-foundations tend to have more parameters or variables. This matters, as there are well-established methodological reasons for preferring models with fewer parameters or variables—ceteris paribus. We therefore conclude that, from a practice-based point of view, micro-foundations are only defensible to the extent that they significantly improve the ability of the relevant model to fit the data of interest. In this way, we arrive at a practice-based, methodological reconceptualization of the debate surrounding the need for micro-foundations in economics.

While the existence of human cognitive and behavioral diversity is now widely recognized, it is not yet well established how to explain this diversity. In particular, it is still unclear how to determine whether any given instance of human cognitive and behavioral diversity is due to a common psychology that is merely “triggered” differently in different bio-cultural environments, or whether it is due to deeply and fundamentally different psychologies. This paper suggests that, to answer this question, we need to employ subtle theoretical considerations of theory choice—especially the consideration of the complexity-weighted differential predictive successes of the two accounts. To make this clearer, the paper develops a novel analysis of the observed differences in human sharing dispositions.

We argue that there are two different kinds of altruistic motivation: classical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms at least partly for those organisms’ sake, and nonclassical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms for the sake of the organism providing the help. We then argue that classical psychological altruism is adaptive if the desire to help others is intergenerationally reliable and, thus, need not be learned. Nonclassical psychological altruism is adaptive when the desire to help others is adaptively learnable. This theory opens new avenues for the interdisciplinary study of psychological altruism.

I develop a distinction between two types of psychological hedonism. Inferential hedonism (or “I-hedonism”) holds that each person only has ultimate desires regarding his or her own hedonic states (pleasure and pain). Reinforcement hedonism (or “R–hedonism”) holds that each person's ultimate desires, whatever their contents are, are differentially reinforced in that person’s cognitive system only by virtue of their association with hedonic states. I’ll argue that accepting R-hedonism and rejecting I-hedonism provides a conciliatory position on the traditional altruism debate, and that it coheres well with the neuroscientist Anthony Dickinson’s theory about the evolutionary function of hedonic states, the “hedonic interface theory.” Finally, I’ll defend R-hedonism from potential objections.

This book is the first systematic treatment of the philosophy of science underlying evolutionary economics. It does not advocate an evolutionary approach towards economics, but rather assesses the epistemic value of appealing to evolutionary biology in economics more generally. The author divides work in evolutionary economics into three distinct, albeit related, forms: a structural form, an evidential form, and a heuristic form. He then analyzes five examples of work in evolutionary economics falling under these three forms. For the structural form, he examines the parallelism between natural selection and economic decision making, and the parallelism between natural selection and market competition. For the evidential form, he looks at the relationship between animal and human economic decision making, and the evolutionary explanation of diversity in human economic decision making. Finally, for the heuristic form, he focuses on the plausibility of equilibrium modeling in evolutionary ecology and economics. In this way, he shows that linking evolutionary biology and economics can make for a powerful methodological tool that can enable progress in our understanding of various economics questions. Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, evolutionary biology, and economics.