•  6
    Following Darwin, many comparative psychologists assume that the human mind is a kind of ape mind, differing only in degree from the extant apes – we call this the mental continuity assumption. However, the continuity principle in evolutionary theory does not posit continuity between extant closely related species, but between extant species and their extinct ancestors. Thus, it is possible that some human cognitive capacities have no parallels in extant apes, but that they emerged in extinct ho…Read more
  •  19
    Wonder and awe lie at the heart of life’s most profound questions. Wonderstruck shows how these emotions respond to our fundamental need to make sense of ourselves and everything around us, and how they enable us to engage with the world as if we are experiencing it for the first time. Drawing on the latest psychological insights on emotions, Helen De Cruz argues that wonder and awe are emotional drives that motivate us to inquire and discover new things, and that humanity has deliberately nurtu…Read more
  •  235
    This piece explores the origins of science fiction in philosophical speculation about the size of the universe, the existence of other solar systems and other galaxies, and the possibility of alien life. Science fiction helps us to grapple with the dizzying possibilities that a vast universe affords, by allowing our imagination to fill in the details.
  •  2
    Introduction
    In Helen De Cruz & Johan De Smedt (eds.), Avatar: The Last Airbender and Philosophy: Wisdom From Aang to Zuko, Wiley-blackwell. 2022.
  •  18
    In the light of the evidence we have, is atheism a justified position? This question has not received the same amount of attention as the justification of theism. This chapter considers evidential objections to atheism, specifically global atheism – the view that there are no gods. I will consider common consent and religious experience as two forms of evidence against global atheism.
  •  5
    This chapter examines how the cognitive science of religion (CSR) relates to naturalism, as both a methodological and a metaphysical principle. CSR is heir to a rich tradition of natural histories of religion that provide integrated causal accounts of religion, based on anthropological, historical, and psychological observations. Natural histories of religion traditionally had a strong antitheistic agenda. This in part explains why CSR is still regarded as a project that has mainly negative impl…Read more
  •  7
    In historical claims for nativism, mathematics is a paradigmatic example of innate knowledge. Claims by contemporary developmental psychologists of elementary mathematical skills in human infants are a legacy of this. However, the connection between these skills and more formal mathematical concepts and methods remains unclear. This paper assesses the current debates surrounding nativism and mathematical knowledge by teasing them apart into two distinct claims. First, in what way does the experi…Read more
  •  16
    Psychological evidence suggests that laypeople understand the world around them in terms of intuitive ontologies which describe broad categories of objects in the world, such as ‘person’, ‘artefact’ and ‘animal’. However, because intuitive ontologies are the result of natural selection, they only need to be adaptive; this does not guarantee that the knowledge they provide is a genuine reflection of causal mechanisms in the world. As a result, science has parted ways with intuitive ontologies. Ne…Read more
  •  2040
    The value of epistemic disagreement in scientific practice. The case of Homo floresiensis
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (2): 169-177. 2013.
    Epistemic peer disagreement raises interesting questions, both in epistemology and in philosophy of science. When is it reasonable to defer to the opinion of others, and when should we hold fast to our original beliefs? What can we learn from the fact that an epistemic peer disagrees with us? A question that has received relatively little attention in these debates is the value of epistemic peer disagreement—can it help us to further epistemic goals, and, if so, how? We investigate this through …Read more
  •  356
    In the Mood: Why Vibes Matter in Reading and Writing Philosophy
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 93 171-191. 2023.
    Philosophers often write in a particular mood; their work is playful, strident, strenuous, or nostalgic. On the face of it, these moods contribute little to a philosophical argument and are merely incidental. However, I will argue that the cognitive science of moods and emotions offers us reasons to suspect that mood is relevant for philosophical texts. I use examples from Friedrich Nietzsche and Rudolph Carnap to illustrate the role moods play in their arguments. As readers and writers of philo…Read more
  •  249
    Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies
    In Tiddy Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Springer Verlag. pp. 95-122. 2022.
    In this chapter, we focus on animism and how it is studied in the cognitive science of religion and cultural anthropology. We argue that philosophers of religion still use (outdated) normative notions from early scientific studies of religion that go back at least a century and that have since been abandoned in other disciplines. Our argument is programmatic: we call for an expansion of philosophy of religion in order to include traditions that are currently underrepresented. The failure of phil…Read more
  •  4
    Schleiermacher and the transmission of sin
    TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 7 (2). 2022.
    Understanding the pervasiveness of sin is central to Christian theology. The question of why humans are so sinful given an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God presents a challenge and a puzzle. Here, we investigate Friedrich Schleiermacher’s biocultural evolutionary account of sin. We look at empirical evidence to support it and use the cultural Price equation to provide a naturalistic model of the transmission of sin. This model can help us understand how sin can be ubiquitous and un…Read more
  •  259
    Excerpt (in lieu of abstract) My aim in this paper is to put the spotlight on the following questions: how do lay Christians understand the relation between science and religion, and what can this tell us about the relationship between science and Christianity in a more academic setting? My focus will be on lay Christians in the US, in particular White Evangelicals. I will argue that American lay Christians, as well as American laypeople more generally, view the relationship between science and …Read more
  •  299
    Melioristic genealogies and Indigenous philosophies
    Philosophical Forum (4): 1-18. 2022.
    According to Mary Midgley, philosophy is like plumbing: like the invisible entrails of an elaborate plumbing system, philosophical ideas respond to basic needs that are fundamental to human life. Melioristic projects in philosophy attempt to fix or reroute this plumbing. An obstacle to melioristic projects is that the sheer familiarity of the underlying philosophical ideas renders the plumbing invisible. Philosophical genealogies aim to overcome this by looking at the origins of our current conc…Read more
  •  464
    Understanding the pervasiveness of sin is central to Christian theology. The question of why humans are so sinful given an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God presents a challenge and a puzzle. Here, we investigate Friedrich Schleiermacher’s biocultural evolutionary account of sin. We look at empirical evidence to support it and use the cultural Price equation to provide a naturalistic model of the transmission of sin. This model can help us understand how sin can be ubiquitous and un…Read more
  •  31
    Evidence and Faith
    Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (1): 1-3. 2021.
  •  9
    Situating Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics
    In Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz (eds.), Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics. Synthese Library, Springer - Synthese Library. pp. 1-14. 2021.
    This introductory essay provides a historical and cross-cultural overview of evolutionary ethics, and how it can be situated within naturalized ethics. We also situate the contributions to this volume.
  •  126
    A table of contents, in lieu of abstract Foreword by Aaron Ehasz Introduction: “We are all one people, but we live as if divided” Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt Part I The Universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender 1 Native Philosophies and Relationality in ATLA: It’s (Lion) Turtles All the Way Down Miranda Belarde-Lewis and Clementine Bordeaux 2 Getting Elemental: How Many Elements Are There in Avatar: The Last Airbender? Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa 3 The Personalities of Martial Arts in Avatar:…Read more
  •  360
    According to Friedrich Schleiermacher, religiosity is rooted in feeling (Gefühl). As a result of our engagement with the world, on which we depend and which we can influence, we have both a sense of dependence and of freedom. Schleiermacher speculated that a sense of absolute dependence in reflective beings with self-consciousness (human beings) gave rise to religion. Using insights from contemporary philosophy of biology and cognitive science, I seek to naturalize Schleiermacher's ideas. I more…Read more
  •  521
    Perplexity and Philosophical Progress
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 45 209-221. 2021.
    Perplexity is an epistemic emotion with deep philosophical significance. In ancient Greek philosophy, it is identified as a catalyst for philosophical progress and personal philosophical transformation. In psychological terms, perplexity is the phenomenological sense of lacking immersion in the world, a state of puzzlement and alienation from one’s everyday surroundings. What could make such an emotion philosophically useful? To answer this question, I examine the role of perplexity in Jane Adda…Read more
  •  418
    Believing in Dawkins: The New Spiritual Atheism. By Eric Steinhart (review)
    Journal of the American Academy of Religion. forthcoming.
    (in lieu of abstract, first paragraphs here) For philosophers, reading Richard Dawkins is often a frustrating experience. Many of Dawkins’ writings treat important philosophical topics, such as the existence of God, the meaning of life, the relationship of randomness to order. Dawkins has original ideas, but he lacks the philosophical training and vocabulary to articulate these ideas properly and to develop them coherently. In Believing in Dawkins, Eric Steinhart sets himself an ambitious task:…Read more
  •  6
    The Imago Dei: Evolutionary and Theological Perspectives
    with Yves De Maeseneer
    Zygon 49 (1): 95-100. 2014.
    This short article provides an introduction to a special section, consisting of six papers on human evolution and the imago Dei. These papers are the result of dialogue between theologians and philosophers of religion at the University of Oxford and the Catholic University of Leuven. All contributors focus on the imago Dei, and consider how this theological notion can be understood from an evolutionary perspective, looking at a variety of disciplines, including the psychology of reasoning, cogni…Read more
  •  930
    This is an introduction to the Symposium on “Evolution, Original Sin, and the Fall,” which has been designed as a thematic section for Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. The Symposium investigates the enduring question of whether hamartiology (the theological study of sin) is compatible with evolutionary theory. We trace the origins of this question to the debate between Modernists and Traditionalists at the turn of the previous century. Our contributors make headway in these discussions by…Read more
  •  13
    Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics. Synthese Library (edited book)
    Springer - Synthese Library. 2021.
    A growing body of evidence from the sciences suggests that our moral beliefs have an evolutionary basis. To explain how human morality evolved, some philosophers have called for the study of morality to be naturalized, i.e., to explain it in terms of natural causes by looking at its historical and biological origins. The present literature has focused on the link between evolution and moral realism: if our moral beliefs enhance fitness, does this mean they track moral truths? In spite of the gro…Read more
  •  254
    Editorial: Replicability in Cognitive Science
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (1): 1-7. 2021.
    This special issue on what some regard as a crisis of replicability in cognitive science (i.e. the observation that a worryingly large proportion of experimental results across a number of areas cannot be reliably replicated) is informed by three recent developments. First, philosophers of mind and cognitive science rely increasingly on empirical research, mainly in the psychological sciences, to back up their claims. This trend has been noticeable since the 1960s (see Knobe, 2015). This develop…Read more
  •  1
    This paper provides an empirical study of how religious belief influences the views of philosophers about natural theological arguments. Philosophers rated eight arguments for and eight arguments against theism. We find a correlation between religious belief and the perceived strength of arguments: atheists tend to find arguments against theism stronger and arguments for theism weaker; theists evaluate arguments for theism as stronger than arguments against theism. The assessments of agnostics f…Read more
  •  621
    This letter addresses the editorial decision to publish the article, “Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry” (Cofnas, 2020). Our letter points out several critical problems with Cofnas's article, which we believe should have either disqualified the manuscript upon submission or been addressed during the review process and resulted in substantial revisions.
  •  88
    Philosophy Illustrated (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    Thought experiments are tools philosophers and scientists use to investigate how things are, without actually having to go out and experiment in the real world. This book presents forty-two philosophical thought experiments. Each thought experiment is illustrated by De Cruz, and is summarized in one or two paragraphs, which is followed by a brief exploration of its significance. Each thought experiment also includes a longer reflection, written by a philosopher who is a specialist in the field. …Read more
  •  3129
    We are addressing this letter to the editors of Philosophical Psychology after reading an article they decided to publish in the recent vol. 33, issue 1. The article is by Nathan Cofnas and is entitled “Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry” (2020). The purpose of our letter is not to invite Cofnas’s contribution into a broader dialogue, but to respectfully voice our concerns about the decision to publish the manuscript, which, in our opinion, fails to meet a r…Read more
  •  12
    The cognitive basis of arithmetic
    with Hansjörg Neth and Dirk Schlimm
    In Benedikt Löwe & Thomas Müller (eds.), PhiMSAMP. Philosophy of mathematics: Sociological aspects and mathematical practice, . pp. 59-106. 2010.
    status: published.