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18Creationists argue that 'Darwinism' hardly deserves the label of science. By employing a whole range of tactics, they downplay its scientific merit. Firstly, they set up definitions of science and claim that evolutionary theory cannot live up to them. Science, they claim, is based on observation and experimentation. As no scientist ever witnessed one species evolving into another, evolutionary theory remains 'just a theory'. Secondly, they convert evolutionary theory into a concept no evolutiona…Read more
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162Evolved to be irrational?: evolutionary and cognitive foundations of pseudosciencesIn Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (eds.), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, University of Chicago Press. 2013.
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347Het 'universele zuur' van de evolutionaire psychologie?Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 73 (2): 287-305. 2011.In a previous issue of Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, Filip Buekens argues that evolutionary psychology (EP), or some interpretations thereof, have a corrosive impact on our ‘manifest self-image’. Buekens wants to defend and protect the global adequacy of this manifest self-image in the face of what he calls evolutionary revisionism. Although we largely agree with Buekens’ central argument, we criticize his analysis on several accounts, making some constructive proposals to strengthen his case. Fir…Read more
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35The Puzzle of Belief Requires an Evolutionary Key to be SolvedCognitive Science 47 (10). 2023.The puzzle of belief arises as currently no definition captures the various ways in which people believe. As a solution to this puzzle and to make the study of belief empirically tractable, Van Leeuwen and Lombrozo suggest acknowledging the plurality of beliefs and organizing beliefs according to their shared functions and traits. However, their proposal does not make yet the distinction between proper and derived functions of belief‐generating cognitive systems. For that, we need a theoretical …Read more
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8Puritanism as moral advertisement helps solve the puzzle of ineffective moralizationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.The moral disciplining theory proposes that people moralize excessive innocent behavior to discipline others to behave in ways that facilitate cooperation. However, such disciplining might not always be effective. To solve this puzzle of ineffective moralization we should think of puritanism in terms of moral advertisement aimed at reputation management rather than the manipulation of others.
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23Nothing about collective irrationalities makes sense except in the light of cooperationPhilosophical Psychology 36 (5): 990-1010. 2023.To secure cooperative opportunities people align their beliefs with the normative expectations of their social environment. These expectations are continuously managed by interactive reasoning, a process that results in dynamical pools of reasons. When people are more concerned about their social standing and reputation than truth, pools of reasons give rise to collective irrationalities. They determine what people should believe if they want to be known as a reliable group member. This account …Read more
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239Evolutionary Approaches to Epistemic JustificationDialectica 65 (4): 517-535. 2011.What are the consequences of evolutionary theory for the epistemic standing of our beliefs? Evolutionary considerations can be used to either justify or debunk a variety of beliefs. This paper argues that evolutionary approaches to human cognition must at least allow for approximately reliable cognitive capacities. Approaches that portray human cognition as so deeply biased and deficient that no knowledge is possible are internally incoherent and self-defeating. As evolutionary theory offers the…Read more
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348How not to attack intelligent design creationism: Philosophical misconceptions about methodological naturalism (review)Foundations of Science 15 (3): 227-244. 2010.In recent controversies about Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC), the principle of methodological naturalism (MN) has played an important role. In this paper, an often neglected distinction is made between two different conceptions of MN, each with its respective rationale and with a different view on the proper role of MN in science. According to one popular conception, MN is a self-imposed or intrinsic limitation of science, which means that science is simply not equipped to deal with claims…Read more
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23Grist to the Mill of Anti-evolutionism: The Failed Strategy of Ruling the Supernatural Out of Science by Philosophical FiatScience & Education 21 (8): 1151-1165. 2012.
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130Why Do Irrational Beliefs Mimic Science? The Cultural Evolution of PseudoscienceTheoria 83 (1): 78-97. 2016.Why do irrational beliefs adopt the trappings of science, to become what is known as “pseudoscience”? Here, we develop and extend an epidemiological framework to map the factors that explain the form and the popularity of irrational beliefs in scientific garb. These factors include the exploitation of epistemic vigilance, the misunderstanding of the authority of science, the use of the honorific title of “science” as an explicit argument for belief, and the phenomenon of epistemic negligence. We…Read more
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27Reasonable Irrationality: the Role of Reasons in the Diffusion of PseudoscienceJournal of Cognition and Culture 19 (5): 432-449. 2019.Pseudoscience spreads through communicative and inferential processes that make people vulnerable to weird beliefs. However, the fact that pseudoscientific beliefs are unsubstantiated and have no basis in reality does not mean that the people who hold them have no reasons for doing so. We propose that, reasons play a central role in the diffusion of pseudoscience. On the basis of cultural epidemiology and the interactionist theory of reasoning, we will here analyse the structure and the function…Read more
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49The Implications of the Cognitive Sciences for the Relation Between Religion and Science Education: The Case of Evolutionary TheoryScience & Education 21 (8): 1167-1184. 2012.
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29Islamic modernity and the challenges for secular liberalismZygon 53 (1): 274-287. 2018.In his recent book Islam Evolving: Radicalism, Reformation, and the Uneasy Relationship with the Secular West, Taner Edis discusses Islamic responses to the modern world and how the West deals and should deal with them. He argues convincingly that the biggest threat to secular liberalism is not fundamentalism but an Islamic form of modernity. He attributes some of the latter's success to Western neoliberalism and to the failure of secular liberals to come up with persuasive arguments. He thus pu…Read more
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117Simulation of biological evolution under attack, but not really: a response to MeesterBiology and Philosophy 26 (1): 113-118. 2011.The leading Intelligent Design theorist William Dembski (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham MD, 2002) argued that the first No Free Lunch theorem, first formulated by Wolpert and Macready (IEEE Trans Evol Comput 1: 67–82, 1997), renders Darwinian evolution impossible. In response, Dembski’s critics pointed out that the theorem is irrelevant to biological evolution. Meester (Biol Phil 24: 461–472, 2009) agrees with this conclusion, but still thinks that the theorem does apply to simulations of evolutio…Read more
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202Creationism in the netherlandsZygon 45 (4): 791-816. 2010.Recent events indicate that creationists are becoming increasingly active in the Netherlands. This article offers an overview of these events. First, I discuss the introduction of intelligent-design (ID) creationism into the Dutch public sphere by a renowned physicist, Cees Dekker. Later, Dekker himself shifted toward a more evolution-friendly position, theistic evolution. Second, we see how Dekker was followed in this shift by Andries Knevel, an important figure within the Dutch evangelical bro…Read more
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48Bringing Darwin into the social sciences and the humanities: cultural evolution and its philosophical implicationsHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (2): 29. 2018.In the field of cultural evolution it is generally assumed that the study of culture and cultural change would benefit enormously from being informed by evolutionary thinking. Recently, however, there has been much debate about what this “being informed” means. According to the standard view, an interesting analogy obtains between cultural and biological evolution. In the literature, however, the analogy is interpreted and used in at least three distinct, but interrelated ways. We provide a taxo…Read more
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30From Ends to Causes (and Back Again) by Metaphor: The Paradox of Natural SelectionScience & Education 23 (4): 793-808. 2014.
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88What’s wrong with the modern evolutionary synthesis? A critical reply to WelchBiology and Philosophy 33 (3-4): 23. 2018.Welch :263–279, 2017) has recently proposed two possible explanations for why the field of evolutionary biology is plagued by a steady stream of claims that it needs urgent reform. It is either seriously deficient and incapable of incorporating ideas that are new, relevant and plausible or it is not seriously deficient at all but is prone to attracting discontent and to the championing of ideas that are not very relevant, plausible and/or not really new. He argues for the second explanation. Thi…Read more
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18Science as a moral systemSynthese 200 (6): 1-18. 2022.Science is a collaborative effort to produce knowledge. Scientists thus must assess what information is trustworthy and who is a competent and honest source and partner. Facing the problem of trust, we can expect scientists to be vigilant. In response to their peers’ vigilance scientists will provide reasons, not only to convince their colleagues to adopt their practices or beliefs, but also to demonstrate that their beliefs and practices are justified. By justifying their beliefs and practices,…Read more
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62Pseudoscience as a Negative Outcome of Scientific Dialogue: A Pragmatic-Naturalistic Approach to the Demarcation ProblemInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 34 (3): 183-198. 2022.The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is a long-standing problem in philosophy of science. Although philosophers have been hesitant to engage in this project since Larry Laudan announce...