- Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Michael Vlerick
Tilburg University, Philosophy/TiLPS, Faculty Member
- Extended Mind, Philosophy, Ethics, Cognitive Science, Epistemology, Evolutionary Psychology, and 10 moreEvolutionary Epistemology, Epistemic Justification, Cognitive Psychology, Evolutionary Biology, Developmental Psychology, Social Ontology, Game Theory, Analytic Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Deliberative Democracyedit
- Michael Vlerick is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy at Tilburg University. He obtained his PhD ... moreMichael Vlerick is an assistant professor in the department of philosophy at Tilburg University. He obtained his PhD at Stellenbosch University in 2012. His dissertation is situated in the area of evolutionary epistemology, gauging the scope, status and limits of human knowledge, given the fact that the human perceptual and cognitive apparatus are shaped by an evolutionary process. After completion of his PhD, he was employed as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Johannesburg. His postdoctoral research dealt with issues in evolutionary epistemology, evolutionary morality, and social ontology in particular, and the philosophical implications of the theory of evolution in general. Currently he is working on a book entitled ‘The global contract’. In the book – which is targeted at a wider audience – he argues for the need to cooperate on a global level in order to meet the pressing challenges that face us (such as global warming, immigration and overpopulation).edit
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Humans often behave altruistically towards strangers with no chance of reciprocation. From an evolutionary perspective, this is puzzling. The evolution of altruistic cooperative behavior—in which an organism’s action reduces its fitness... more
Humans often behave altruistically towards strangers with no chance of reciprocation. From an evolutionary perspective, this is puzzling. The evolution of altruistic cooperative behavior—in which an organism’s action reduces its fitness and increases the fitness of another organism (e.g. by sharing food)—only makes sense when it is directed at genetically related organisms (kin selection) or when one can expect the favor to be returned (reciprocal altruism). Therefore, evolutionary theorists such as Sober and Wilson have argued that we should revise Neo-Darwininian evolutionary theory. They argue that human altruism evolved through group selection in which groups of altruists were naturally selected because they had a comparative advantage over other groups. Wilson and Sober’s hypothesis attracted followers but is rejected by most of their peers. The heated debate between advocates and critics of group selection often suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. In response, I set out...
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Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern... more
Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are (relatively) aligned, not competition problems in which individual interests compete with group interests (and in which there are no group beneficial Nash equilibrium available). In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a (more) comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperati...
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Reasoning from a naturalistic perspective, viewing the mind as an evolved biological organ with a particular structure and function, a number of influential philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that science is constrained by human... more
Reasoning from a naturalistic perspective, viewing the mind as an evolved biological organ with a particular structure and function, a number of influential philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that science is constrained by human nature. How exactly our genetic constitution constrains scientific representations of the world remains unclear. This is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it often leads to the unwarranted conclusion that we are cognitively closed to certain aspects or properties of the world. Secondly, it stands in the way of a nuanced account of the relationship between our cognitive and perceptual wiring and scientific theory. In response, I propose a typology or classification of the different kinds of biological constraints and their sources on science. Using
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Putnam's internal realism attempts to overcome both radical subjectivism and metaphysical realism. While he agrees with subjectivists that we understand the world through conceptual schemes, Putnam rejects their ‘anything goes’... more
Putnam's internal realism attempts to overcome both radical subjectivism and metaphysical realism. While he agrees with subjectivists that we understand the world through conceptual schemes, Putnam rejects their ‘anything goes’ relativist conclusions, arguing that states and properties of the external world co-determine our understanding of the world, and that some theories are more rational to accept than others. Theories, in other words, while they can't be expected to correspond ‘absolutely’ to the external world, can nevertheless be objective-for-us. When theorising about rationality, however, Putnam runs into problems, claiming that the criteria of rational acceptability, determining the choice of conceptual schemes, are a set of historically evolving cultural norms. This causes a slide into subjectivism and relativism. In this paper, I argue that the main tenet of internal realism – the possibility of an objectivity-for-us – can be maintained. Taking a naturalistic approach, I defend the view that both the conceptual tools and the epistemic values making up our conceptual schemes are ultimately grounded in our genetically determined cognitive apparatus. The conceptual schemes mediating our understanding of the world, therefore, are not merely contingent cultural products but, to an important extent, necessary biological products. In this regard, although Putnam explicitly rejects any attempts to naturalise reason, I argue that it is precisely such a naturalistic approach that provides his internal realism with the necessary backing.
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Abstract Empirical evidence from developmental psychology and anthropology points out that the human mind is predisposed to conceptualize the world in particular, species-specific ways. These cognitive predispositions lead to universal... more
Abstract Empirical evidence from developmental psychology and anthropology points out that the human mind is predisposed to conceptualize the world in particular, species-specific ways. These cognitive predispositions lead to universal human commonsense views, often referred to as folk theories. Nevertheless, humans can transgress these views–i.e. they can contradict them with alternative descriptions, they perceive as more accurate–as exemplified in modern sciences. In this paper, I enquire about the cognitive faculties underlying such transgressions. I claim that there are three faculties enabling us to part with these universal commonsense views of the world imposed by our nature. The first is our ability to represent representations–i.e. to form metarepresentations. The second is our ability to produce alternative representations both by explaining a familiar subject matter in terms of the principles governing different conceptual domains than the one that we are predisposed to apply to the subject matter and by directing our mind to new subject matters (for which we have no predisposed conceptual grasp), understanding them in terms of familiar domains. The third, finally, is our ability to give these representations an epistemic orientation.
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Universal social institutions, such as marriage, commons management and property, have emerged independently in radically different cultures. This requires explanation. As Boyer and Petersen (J Inst Econ 8:125, 2012) point out ‘in a... more
Universal social institutions, such as marriage, commons management and property, have emerged independently in radically different cultures. This requires explanation. As Boyer and Petersen (J Inst Econ 8:125, 2012) point out ‘in a purely localist framework (these institutional commonalities) would have to constitute massively improbable coincidences’ (3–4). According to Boyer and Petersen, those institutions emerged naturally out of genetically wired behavioural dispositions, such as marriage out of mating strategies and borders out of territorial behaviour. While I agree with Boyer and Petersen that ‘unnatural’ institutions cannot thrive, this one-sided explanation of universal social institutions in terms of genetic human nature is unsatisfactory. Drawing on the literature on multi-level selection and gene-culture coevolution, I argue that universal social institutions are first and foremost the products of cultural selection. They occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of cultural possibilities, much in the same way that biological adaptations occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of biological possibilities. To show this, I use game-theory. By modelling the domains of social interaction in which marriage, commons management, and property emerged as Prisoner’s dilemma situations, it becomes clear how an institutional framework allows the group to move to an interactive equilibrium with a larger payoff. Institutions do so by incentivising (through punishment and/or reward) all parties to adopt a cooperative strategy. They are culturally selected ways of optimising genetically constrained domains of human social interaction.
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From the premise that our biology imposes cognitive constraints on our epistemic activities, a series of prominent authors--most notably Fodor, Chomsky and McGinn--have argued that we are cognitively closed to certain aspects and... more
From the premise that our biology imposes cognitive constraints on our epistemic activities, a series of prominent authors--most notably Fodor, Chomsky and McGinn--have argued that we are cognitively closed to certain aspects and properties of the world. Cognitive constraints, they argue, entail cognitive closure. I argue that this is not the case. More precisely, I detect two unwarranted conflations at the core of arguments deriving closure from constraints. The first is a conflation of what I will refer to as 'representation' and 'object of representation'. The second confuses the cognitive scope of the assisted mind for that of the unassisted mind. Cognitive closure, I conclude, cannot be established from pointing out the (uncontroversial) existence of cognitive constraints.
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This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of... more
This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of 'ecological rationality' have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structure of the environment, many alleged biases and fallacies turn out to be artefacts of narrow norms and artificial set-ups. However, we argue that putative demonstrations of ecological rationality involve subtle locus shifts in attributions of rationality, conflating the adaptive rationale of heuristics with our own epistemic credentials. By contrast, other cases also involve an ecological reframing of human reason, but do not involve such problematic locus shifts. We discuss the difference between these cases, bringing clarity to the rationality debate.
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Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people... more
Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people fall short of these traditional standards, as indeed they often do, they are biased or irrational. Recent work in the program of ecological rationality, however, aims to rehabilitate human reason, and to upturn our traditional conception of rationality in the process. Put bluntly, these researchers are turning the tables on the traditionalist, showing that human reasoning often outperforms complex algorithms based on the traditional canons of rationality. If human reason still appears paltry from the vantage point of capital-R Rationality, then so much the worse for Rationality. Maybe the norms themselves are in need of revision. Perhaps human reasoning is better than rational. Though we welcome the naturalization of human reason, we argue that this...
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In this dissertation I enquire into the status, scope and limits of human knowledge, given the fact that our perceptual and cognitive faculties are the product of evolution by natural selection. I argue that the commonsense... more
In this dissertation I enquire into the status, scope and limits of human knowledge, given the fact that our perceptual and cognitive faculties are the product of evolution by natural selection. I argue that the commonsense representations these faculties provide us with yield a particular, species-specific scope on the world that does not ‘correspond’ in any straightforward way to the external world. We are, however, not bound by these commonsense representations. This particular, species-specific view of the world can be transgressed. Nevertheless, our transgressing representations remain confined to the conceptual space defined by the combinatorial possibilities of the various representational tools we possess. Furthermore, the way in which we fit representations to the external world is by means of our biologically determined epistemic orientation. Based on the fact that we are endowed with a particular set of perceptual and cognitive resources and are guided by a particular epi...
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Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people... more
Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people fall short of these traditional standards, as indeed they often do, they are biased or irrational. Recent work in the program of ecological rationality, however, aims to rehabilitate human reason, and to upturn our traditional conception of rationality in the process. Put bluntly, these researchers are turning the tables on the traditionalist, showing that human reasoning often outperforms complex algorithms based on the traditional canons of rationality. If human reason still appears paltry from the vantage point of capital-R Rationality, then so much the worse for Rationality. Maybe the norms themselves are in need of revision. Perhaps human reasoning is better than rational. Though we welcome the naturalization of human reason, we argue that this...
The human brain is the only object in the universe, as far as we know, that has discovered its own origins. But what, if any, are the limits of our understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have... more
The human brain is the only object in the universe, as far as we know, that has discovered its own origins. But what, if any, are the limits of our understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some truths about the universe are perennial mysteries and will forever remain beyond our ken. Others have brushed this off as premature, a form of epistemic defeatism. In this paper we develop a conceptual toolbox for parsing different forms of cognitive limitation that are often conflated in the literature. We distinguish between representational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and intuitive understanding (the ability to comprehend those representations). We also distinguish different modalities of cognitive limitation. If the scientific endeavor ever comes to a halt, will this feel like slamming into a brick wall, or rather like slowly getting bogged down in a swamp? By distinguishing differe...
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Nanotechnology (henceforth NT) is a rapidly advancing field with the potential of revolutionizing diverse areas such as electronics, health care, transport, and energy production. NT products and applications come with (potential)... more
Nanotechnology (henceforth NT) is a rapidly advancing field with the potential of revolutionizing diverse areas such as electronics, health care, transport, and energy production. NT products and applications come with (potential) benefits and (potential) harms. The presence of potential harms calls for regulation. Both underregulation and overregulation-I argueare morally undesirable. In the case of underregulation, stakeholders fall victim to the harmful effects of the technology. In the case of overregulation, stakeholders are deprived of the benefits of the technology. In this chapter, I identify the biases and factors that lead to underregulation and overregulation and offer solutions in response. More precisely, I argue that a lack of specific regulation, the presence of conflicts of interest and short-term economic incentives could lead to the underregulation of NT products and applications. Conversely, I argue that a negativity bias, harm aversion, the fear of opening "Pandora's box," and the intuition that what is natural is good and what is artificial (human-made) is bad could lead to overregulation. To avoid these pitfalls and the woes of underregulation and overregulation following in their wake, we need to set up a processwhich I describein which policymakers and independent scientists closely collaborate.
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Humans often behave altruistically towards strangers with no chance of reciprocation. From an evolutionary perspective, this is puzzling. The evolution of altruistic cooperative behavior – in which an organism’s action reduces its fitness... more
Humans often behave altruistically towards strangers with no chance of reciprocation. From an evolutionary perspective, this is puzzling. The evolution of altruistic cooperative behavior – in which an organism’s action reduces its fitness and increases the fitness of another organism (e.g. by sharing food) – only makes sense when it is directed at genetically related organisms (kin selection) or when one can expect the favor to be returned (reciprocal altruism). Therefore, evolutionary theorists such as Sober and Wilson have argued that we should revise Neo-Darwininian evolutionary theory. They argue that human altruism evolved through group selection in which groups of altruists were naturally selected because they had a comparative advantage over other groups. Wilson and Sober’s hypothesis attracted followers but is rejected by most of their peers. The heated debate between advocates and critics of group selection often suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. In response, I set out to clearly distinguish ‘genetic’ from ‘cultural’ group selection (developed by Boyd, Richerson & Henrich) and argue that the latter does not face the potentially debilitating problems plaguing the former. I defend the claim that human altruistic dispositions evolved through cultural group selection and gene-culture coevolution and offer empirical evidence in support. I also argue that actual altruistic behavior often goes beyond the kind of behavior humans have evolved to display. Conscious and voluntary reasoning processes, I show, have an important role in altruistic behavior. This is often overlooked in the scientific literature on human altruism.
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In an important article published in this journal, Dryzek et al. (2011) champion the convocation of a deliberative global citi-zens' assembly (DGCA). In this article, I aim to further strengthen the case for a DGCA by addressing: (1) why... more
In an important article published in this journal, Dryzek et al. (2011) champion the convocation of a deliberative global citi-zens' assembly (DGCA). In this article, I aim to further strengthen the case for a DGCA by addressing: (1) why a DGCA is likely to take a long-term perspective in the global interest; and (2) why it is so vital that a global institution should do so. I start by analyzing the nature of the issues requiring global policy. These issues, I will argue, are typically global cooperation problems. Cooperation problems pose two major challenges. The first is to prevent freeriding, that is, serving one's immediate interests at the expense of the global interest. The second is to align on an efficient global policy. In both respects, I will argue, a DGCA is a good candidate to yield desirable results (and is likely to do better than current supranational institutions). Policy Implications • The integration of a deliberative global citizens' assembly in the UN. • Solving global cooperation problems (such as climate change, poverty, mass migration, conflict and overpopulation) requires us to solve inherent free rider and coordination problems. Current supranational institutions are ill-equipped to do so. • Citizens' deliberation is well-suited to solve free rider and coordination problems. • By acquiring legitimacy, a deliberative global citizens' assembly could pressure sovereign nations to follow its recommendations .
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Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern... more
Influential thinkers such as Young, Sugden, Binmore, and Skyrms have developed game-theoretic accounts of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. Social contracts are sets of commonly understood rules that govern cooperative social interaction within societies. These naturalistic accounts provide us with valuable and important insights into the foundations of human societies. However, current naturalistic theories focus mainly on how social contracts solve coordination problems in which the interests of the individual participants are (relatively) aligned, not competition problems in which individual interests compete with group interests (and in which there are no group beneficial Nash equilibrium available). In response, I set out to build on those theories and provide a (more) comprehensive naturalistic account of the emergence, persistence and evolution of social contracts. My central claim is that social contracts have culturally evolved to solve cooperation problems, which include both coordination and competition problems. I argue that solutions to coordination problems (which I spell out) emerge from "within-group" dynamics , while solutions to competition problems (which I also spell out) result largely from "between-group" dynamics.
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What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some parts of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say... more
What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some parts of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say that humans are 'cognitively closed' to some parts of the world, or that some problems will forever remain 'mysteries'? In this paper we develop a richer conceptual toolbox for thinking about different forms and varieties of cognitive limitation, which are often conflated by the so-called 'new mysterians'. We distinguish between repre-sentational access (the ability to develop accurate scientific representations of reality) and imaginative understanding (immediate, intuitive comprehension of those representations), as well as between different modalities (hard vs. soft) of cognitive limitation. Next, we look at tried-and-tested strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations, drawing from the literature on distributed cognition and cogni-tive scaffolding'. This allows us to distinguish between the limits of bare brains vs. scaffolded brains. Most importantly, we argue that this panoply of mind-extension devices is combinatorial and open-ended. In the end, this allows us to turn the table on the mysterians: for every alleged 'mystery', they should demonstrate that no possible combination of mind extension devices will bring us any closer to a solution.
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The debate about scientific realism is concerned with the relation between our scientific theories and the world. Scientific realists argue that our best theories or components of those theories correspond to the world. Anti-realists deny... more
The debate about scientific realism is concerned with the relation between our scientific theories and the world. Scientific realists argue that our best theories or components of those theories correspond to the world. Anti-realists deny such a correspondence. Traditionally, this central issue in the philosophy of science has been approached by focusing on the theories themselves (e.g., by looking at theory change or the underlying experimental context). I propose a relatively unexplored way to approach this old debate. In addition to focusing on the theory, we should focus on the theorizer. More precisely, in order to determine on which component of a theory we should hinge a realist commitment, we should analyze the cognitive processes underlying scientific theorizing. In this paper I do just that. Drawing from recent developments in the cognitive sciences and evolutionary epistemology, I formulate some tentative conclusions. The aim of this paper is not so much to defend a particular position in the debate on scientific realism but to showcase the value of taking a cognitive perspective in the debate.
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In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the ‘by-product’ accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group... more
In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the ‘by-product’ accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group selection driven by group competition has recruited our proclivity to adopt and spread religious beliefs and engage in religious practices to increase within group solidarity, harmony and cooperation. While their account has much merit, I believe it only tells us half the story of how institutional religions have evolved. Their cultural evolutionary account of religion only looks at the cultural dynamics arising from competition between groups, not at the dynamics arising from within the group. Drawing from game-theoretic analyses of the emergence and cultural evolution of social institutions, I outline two sets of important ‘within-group’ dynamics that shape institutional religions. The first follow from the necessity to keep the interaction of the participants in an equilibrium state in order to maintain the social institution. The second arise from the competition of institutional features for traction within the group. Bringing these dynamics into account enables us to explain prominent features of institutional religions that cannot be satisfactorily explained by the current model of the cultural evolution of religions.
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According to some philosophers, we are " cognitively closed " to the answers to certain problems. McGinn has taken the next step and offered a list of examples: the mind/body problem, the problem of the self and the problem of free will.... more
According to some philosophers, we are " cognitively closed " to the answers to certain problems. McGinn has taken the next step and offered a list of examples: the mind/body problem, the problem of the self and the problem of free will. There are naturalistic, scientific answers to these problems, he argues, but we cannot reach them because of our cognitive limitations. In this paper, we take issue with McGinn's thesis as the most well-developed and systematic one among the so-called " new mysterians ". McGinn aims to establish a strong, representational notion of cognitive closure: a principled inaccessibility of a true theory of certain properties of the world, but he offers arguments that only bear on difficulties with psychologically grasping the correct answers. The latter we label psychological closure. We argue that representational closure does not follow from psychological closure, and that McGinn's case therefore falters. We could very well be able to represent the correct answer to some question, even without being able to grasp that answer psychologically. McGinn's mistake in deriving representational closure from psychological closure rests on a fallacy of equivocation relating to the concept of 'understanding'. By making this distinction explicit, we hope to improve our thinking about the limits of science in particular and human knowledge in general.
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Reasoning from a naturalistic perspective, viewing the mind as an evolved biological organ with a particular structure and function, a number of influential philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that science is constrained by human... more
Reasoning from a naturalistic perspective, viewing the mind as an evolved biological organ with a particular structure and function, a number of influential philosophers and cognitive scientists claim that science is constrained by human nature. How exactly our genetic constitution constrains scientific representations of the world remains unclear. This is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it often leads to the unwarranted conclusion that we are cognitively closed to certain aspects or properties of the world. Secondly, it stands in the way of a nuanced account of the relationship between our cognitive and perceptual wiring and scientific theory. In response, I propose a typology or classification of the different kinds of biological constraints and their sources on science. Using Boden's (1990) notion of a conceptual space, I distinguish between constraints relating to the ease with which we can reach representations within our conceptual space (which I call 'biases') and constraints causing possible representations to fall outside of our conceptual space. This last kind of constraints does not entail that some aspects or properties of the world cannot be represented by us – as argued by advocates of 'cognitive closure' – merely that some ways of representing the world are inaccessible to us. It relates to what Clark (1986) and Rescher (1990) have framed as 'the alien scientist hypothesis' (the possibility that alien scientists, endowed with radically different cognitive abilities, could produce representations of the world that are unintelligible to us). The purpose of this typology is to provide some much needed clarity and structure to the debate about biological constraints on science.
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Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people... more
Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people fall short of these traditional standards, as indeed they often do, they are biased or irrational. Recent work in the program of ecological rationality, however, aims to rehabilitate human reason, and to upturn our traditional conception of rationality in the process. Put bluntly, these researchers are turning the tables on the traditionalist, showing that human reasoning often outperforms complex algorithms based on the traditional canons of rationality. If human reason still appears paltry from the vantage point of capital-R Rationality, then so much the worse for Rationality. Maybe the norms themselves are in need of revision. Perhaps human reasoning is better than rational. Though we welcome the naturalization of human reason, we argue that this backlash against the classical norms of rationality is uncalled for. Ecological rationality presents two apparent challenges to the traditional canons of rationality. In both cases, we contend, the norms emerge unscathed. In the first category, norms of rationality that appear violated by individual reasoners re-emerge at the level of evolutionary adaptation. In the second category, the norms under challenge simply turn out to be not applicable to the case at hand. Moreover, we should keep in mind that, when they are assessing the efficiency of human reasoning, advocates of ecological rationality still use the traditional norms of rationality as a benchmark. We conclude that, even if we accept all the fascinating findings garnered by the advocates of ecological rationality (and there is ample reason to do so), we need not be taken in by the rhetoric against classical rationality, or the false opposition between logical and ecological rationality. When the dust has settled, the norms are still standing.
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According to the evolutionary sceptic, the fact that our cognitive faculties evolved radically undermines their reliability. A number of evolutionary epistemologists have sought to refute this kind of scepticism. This paper accepts the... more
According to the evolutionary sceptic, the fact that our cognitive faculties evolved radically undermines their reliability. A number of evolutionary epistemologists have sought to refute this kind of scepticism. This paper accepts the success of these attempts, yet argues that refuting the evolutionary sceptic is not enough to put any particular domain of beliefs – notably scientific beliefs, which include belief in Darwinian evolution – on a firm footing. The paper thus sets out to contribute to this positive justificatory project, underdeveloped in the literature. In contrast to a ‘wholesale’ approach, attempting to secure justification for all of our beliefs on the grounds that our belief-forming mechanisms evolved to track truth, we propose a ‘piecemeal’ approach of assessing the reliability of particular belief-forming mechanisms in particular domains. This stands in contrast to the more familiar attempt to transfer warrant obtained for one domain (e.g., common-sense beliefs) to another (e.g., scientific beliefs) by showing how one is somehow an extension of the other. We offer a naturalist reply to the charge of circularity by appealing to reliabilist work on the problem of induction, notably Peter Lipton's distinction between self-certifying and non-self-certifying inductive arguments. We show how, for scientific beliefs, a non-self-certifying argument might be made for the reliability of our cognitive faculties in that domain. We call this strategy Humean Bootstrapping.
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Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people... more
Enlightenment thinkers viewed logic and mathematical probability as the hallmarks of rationality. In psychological research on human (ir)rationality, human subjects are typically held accountable to this arcane ideal of Reason. If people fall short of these traditional standards, as indeed they often do, they are biased or irrational. Recent work in the program of ecological rationality, however, aims to rehabilitate human reason, and to upturn our traditional conception of rationality in the process. Put bluntly, these researchers are turning the tables on the traditionalist, showing that human reasoning often outperforms complex algorithms based on the traditional canons of rationality. If human reason still appears paltry from the vantage point of capital-R Rationality, then so much the worse for Rationality. Maybe the norms themselves are in need of revision. Perhaps human reasoning is better than rational. Though we welcome the naturalization of human reason, we argue that this backlash against the classical norms of rationality is uncalled for. Ecological rationality presents two apparent challenges to the traditional canons of rationality. In both cases, we contend, the norms emerge unscathed. In the first category, norms of rationality that appear violated by individual reasoners, re-emerge at the level of evolutionary adaptation. In the second category, the norms under challenge simply turn out to be not applicable to the case at hand. Moreover, we should keep in mind that, when they are assessing the efficiency of human reasoning, advocates of ecological rationality still use the traditional norms of rationality as a benchmark. We conclude that, even if we accept all the fascinating findings garnered by the advocates of ecological rationality (and there is ample reason to do so), we need not be taken in by the rhetoric against classical rationality, or the false opposition between logical and ecological rationality. When the dust has settled, the norms are still standing.
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According to the evolutionary sceptic, the fact that our cognitive faculties evolved radically undermines their reliability. A number of evolutionary epistemologists have sought to refute this kind of scepticism. This paper accepts the... more
According to the evolutionary sceptic, the fact that our cognitive faculties evolved radically undermines their reliability. A number of evolutionary epistemologists have sought to refute this kind of scepticism. This paper accepts the success of these attempts, yet argues that refuting the evolutionary sceptic is not enough to put any particular domain of beliefs – notably scientific beliefs, which include belief in Darwinian evolution – on a firm footing. The paper thus sets out to contribute to this positive justificatory project, underdeveloped in the literature. In contrast to a “wholesale” approach, attempting to secure justification for all of our beliefs on the grounds that our belief-forming mechanisms evolved to track truth, we propose a “piecemeal” approach of assessing the reliability of particular belief-forming mechanisms in particular domains. This stands in contrast to the more familiar attempt to transfer warrant obtained for one domain (e.g. common sense beliefs) to another (e.g. scientific beliefs) by showing how one is somehow an extension of the other. We offer a naturalist reply to the charge of circularity by appealing to reliabilist work on the problem of induction, notably Peter Lipton’s distinction between self-certifying and non-self-certifying inductive arguments. We show how, for scientific beliefs, a non-self-certifying argument might be made for the reliability of our cognitive faculties in that domain. We call this strategy Humean Bootstrapping,
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Universal social institutions, such as marriage, commons management and property, have emerged independently in radically different cultures. This requires explanation. As Boyer and Petersen (2012) point out ‘in a purely localist... more
Universal social institutions, such as marriage, commons management and property, have emerged independently in radically different cultures. This requires explanation. As Boyer and Petersen (2012) point out ‘in a purely localist framework [these institutional commonalities] would have to constitute massively improbable coincidences’ (3-4). According to Boyer and Petersen, those institutions emerged naturally out of genetically wired behavioural dispositions, such as marriage out of mating strategies and borders out of territorial behaviour. While I agree with Boyer and Petersen that ‘unnatural’ institutions cannot thrive, this one-sided explanation of universal social institutions in terms of genetic human nature is unsatisfactory. Drawing on the literature on multi-level selection and gene-culture coevolution, I argue that universal social institutions are first and foremost the products of cultural selection. They occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of cultural possibilities, much in the same way that biological adaptations occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of biological possibilities. To show this, I use game-theory. By modelling the domains of social interaction in which marriage, commons management, and property emerged as Prisoner’s dilemma situations, it becomes clear how an institutional framework allows the group to move to an interactive equilibrium with a larger payoff. Institutions do so by incentivising (through punishment and/or reward) all parties to adopt a cooperative strategy. They are culturally selected ways of optimising genetically constrained domains of human social interaction.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Kritisch denken is een van de grootste lacunes in ons onderwijs. Zin van onzin leren scheiden is van enorm belang in het informatietijdperk waarin we leven. Dit boek helpt je op systematische wijze inzicht te krijgen in en komaf te maken... more
Kritisch denken is een van de grootste lacunes in ons onderwijs. Zin van onzin leren scheiden is van enorm belang in het informatietijdperk waarin we leven. Dit boek helpt je op systematische wijze inzicht te krijgen in en komaf te maken met de belangrijkste denkfouten die elke mens spontaan maakt. Het helpt je ook drogredenen en onbetrouwbare informatie te ontmaskeren.
Naast inzicht in wat kritisch en wetenschappelijk denken inhoudt, kom je ook meer te weten over wat wetenschap betrouwbaar maakt. In tijden van wetenschapsscepticisme, waar (soms gevaarlijke) pseudowetenschappelijke en complottheorieën welig tieren, is dat bijzonder belangrijk.
Kritisch denken is geen kwestie van intellectuele voorkeur, of zelfs van eigenbelang (alhoewel je er zeker voordeel uithaalt). Het is in de eerste plaats een kwestie van morele en maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid. Uit beter denken volgt een betere wereld. Met dit boek hoop ik daar een steentje aan bij te dragen en kan jij, beste student of lezer, dat ook doen!
Michael Vlerick
Naast inzicht in wat kritisch en wetenschappelijk denken inhoudt, kom je ook meer te weten over wat wetenschap betrouwbaar maakt. In tijden van wetenschapsscepticisme, waar (soms gevaarlijke) pseudowetenschappelijke en complottheorieën welig tieren, is dat bijzonder belangrijk.
Kritisch denken is geen kwestie van intellectuele voorkeur, of zelfs van eigenbelang (alhoewel je er zeker voordeel uithaalt). Het is in de eerste plaats een kwestie van morele en maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid. Uit beter denken volgt een betere wereld. Met dit boek hoop ik daar een steentje aan bij te dragen en kan jij, beste student of lezer, dat ook doen!
Michael Vlerick
Research Interests:
"Critical thinking is one of the biggest hiatuses in our education system. Learning to distinguish sense from nonsense is of great importance in the information age that we live in. In a systematic way, this book helps you to gain insight... more
"Critical thinking is one of the biggest hiatuses in our education system. Learning to distinguish sense from nonsense is of great importance in the information age that we live in. In a systematic way, this book helps you to gain insight into, and subsequently eliminate, the most important reasoning errors that we all tend to make. It also helps you to debunk weak and fallacious arguments and unreliable information.
In addition to understanding what critical and scientific thinking entails, you will learn more about what makes science reliable. In times of skepticism regarding science, where (sometimes dangerous) pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories run rampant, this is particularly important.
Critical thinking is not a matter of intellectual preference or even self-interest (although one certainly benefits from thinking critically). It is first and foremost a matter of moral and social responsibility. Better thinking leads to a better world. With this book I hope to contribute to that important goal and you, dear student or reader, can do the same!” - Michael Vlerick
In addition to understanding what critical and scientific thinking entails, you will learn more about what makes science reliable. In times of skepticism regarding science, where (sometimes dangerous) pseudoscientific and conspiracy theories run rampant, this is particularly important.
Critical thinking is not a matter of intellectual preference or even self-interest (although one certainly benefits from thinking critically). It is first and foremost a matter of moral and social responsibility. Better thinking leads to a better world. With this book I hope to contribute to that important goal and you, dear student or reader, can do the same!” - Michael Vlerick
Research Interests:
In this dissertation I enquire into the status, scope and limits of human knowledge, given the fact that our perceptual and cognitive faculties are the product of evolution by natural selection. I argue that the commonsense... more
In this dissertation I enquire into the status, scope and limits of human knowledge, given the fact that our perceptual and cognitive faculties are the product of evolution by natural selection. I argue that the commonsense representations these faculties provide us with yield a particular, species-specific scope on the world that does not ‘correspond’ in any straightforward way to the external world. We are, however, not bound by these commonsense representations. This particular, species-specific view of the world can be transgressed. Nevertheless, our transgressing representations remain confined to the conceptual space defined by the combinatorial possibilities of the various representational tools we possess. Furthermore, the way in which we fit representations to the external world is by means of our biologically determined epistemic orientation. Based on the fact that we are endowed with a particular set of perceptual and cognitive resources and are guided by a particular epistemic orientation, I conclude that we have a particular cognitive relation to the world. Therefore, an accurate representation for us is a particular fit (our epistemic orientation) with particular means (our perceptual and cognitive resources).