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Aug 1999
ISBN 0262581744
384 pp.
12 illus.
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Where Biology Meets Psychology
Valerie Gray Hardcastle

"Where Biology Meets Psychology is a welcome addition to the growing literature linking biology -- especially neuroscience and evolution -- to psychology and the philosophy of mind. This volume has the further advantage of not being another gathering of the usual suspects."
-- Robert Cummins, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Davis

A great deal of interest and excitement surround the interface between the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of psychology, yet the area is neither well defined nor well represented in mainstream philosophical publications. This book is perhaps the first to open a dialogue between the two disciplines. Its aim is to broaden the traditional subject matter of the philosophy of biology while informing the philosophy of psychology of relevant biological constraints and insights.

The book is organized around six themes: functions and teleology, evolutionary psychology, innateness, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and parallels between philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind. Throughout, one finds overlapping areas of study, larger philosophical implications, and even larger conceptual ties. Woven through these connections are shared concerns about the status of semantics, scientific law, evolution and adaptation, and cognition in general.

Table of Contents
 Contributors
 Introduction
by Valerie Gray Hardcastle
I Functions and Teleology
1 Fitness and the Fate of Unicorns
by Karen Neander
2 Understanding Functions: A Pragmatic Approach
by Valerie Gray Hardcastle
II Evolutionary Psychology
3 Evolutionary Psychology: Ultimate Explanations and Panglossian Predictions
by Todd Grantham and Shaun Nichols
4 The Conflict of Evolutionary Psychology
by Paul Sheldon Davies
5 Presence of Mind
by Lawrence A. Shapiro
6 DeFreuding Evolutionary Psychology: Adaptation and Human Motivation
by David J. Buller
III Innateness
7 Innateness Is Canalization: In Defense of a Developmental Account of Innateness
by André Ariew
8 Generativity, Entrenchment, Evolution, and Innateness: Philosophy, Evolutionary Biology, and Conceptual Foundations of Science
by William C. Wimsatt
9 Feelings as the Proximate Cause of Behavior
by Daniel W. McShea
IV Philosophy of Mind
10 Situated Agency and the Descent of Desire
by Kim Sterelny
11 Natural Answers to Natural Questions
by Thomas Polger and Owen Flanagan
V Philosophy of Science
12 Mental Functions as Constraints on Neurophysiology: Biology and Psychology of Vision
by Gary Hatfield
13 Ontogeny, Phylogeny, and Scientific Development
by Stephen M. Downes
14 Supple Laws in Psychology and Biology
by Mark A. Bedau
VI Parallels between Philosphy of Biology and Philosophy of Psychology
15 Genes and Codes: Lessons from the Philosophy of Mind?
by Peter Godfrey-Smith
16 Understanding Biological Causation
by Charbel Niñno El-Hani and Antonio Marcos Pereira
17 The Individual in Biology and Psychology
by Robert A. Wilson
 Index
 
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