Pouwel Slurink

I am a Dutch philosopher. As a bird lover I grew up with ethology and the evolutionary approach to behavior. As a philosophy student, I was initially enthusiastic about phenomonology, but I gradually discovered that it takes too little account of advances in ethology, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. From 1985 I started writing about evolutionary naturalism, Roy Wood Sellars, evolutionary epistemology, and the evolutionary approach to consciousness and morality. I wrote a MA thesis on the evolution of morality. My PhD thesis 'Why some apes became humans; competition, consciousness, and culture' appeared in 2002. An important milestone was the publication of my Dutch book 'Aap zoekt zin; waarom we bewustzijn, vrije wil, moraal en religie hebben' or 'Ape looking for meaning; why we have consciousness, free will, morality and religion' (2014). These days I am still working on evolutionary naturalism, and in particular on the question of how an upstart techno-addicted ape could cause so many ecological problems, and whether and how s/he/it can and should solve them.