Abstracts 2006 Workshop
Kelly Roe
Australian National University
The Nature of Mental Disorder
In this talk I shall attempt to
draw a number of distinctions that might help us get clearer on the
different positions one can take on the nature and categories of mental
disorder. There is a literature that focuses on attempting to
offer an adequate conceptual analysis of our concept of mental
disorder. Here I shall be less focused on our concept of mental
disorder, however, and more on its nature. I shall thus attempt to
reformulate the debate as one that is over the different kinds of facts
that may be relevant to determine that an individual is mentally
disordered. I’ll consider the role of conceptual analysis,
different ways our concepts might map onto categories, different kinds
of categories, and different levels of facts that might be relevant for
dysfunction.
Stewart Saunders
Australian National University
Stability and Signaling Games
I will (a) define a class of games
called n-state signaling games, (b) prove that in an appropriate
evolutionary context (i) strategy s is an ESS iff s is an optimal
signaling strategy and (ii) population state S is stable iff S is the
whole population playing an optimal signaling strategy, and (c) say why
this matters.
Ben Jeffares
Australian National University
Consciousness and other Nonsense Explanations
The traditional strategy of studying
human evolution has been to look for discontinuities. Homo Sapiens were
perceived as radically different from other animals, and archaeologists
and paleoanthropologists looked for, and seemingly found,
archaeological markers of that difference. However, attempts to give
naturalised accounts of that difference came unstuck, with explanations
that looked increasingly out of step with cognitive science and
psychology. An alternative strategy, one that looked for continuity
with the natural world, proved better able to account for increasing
archaeological evidence, and fit in with a naturalised account of human
cognition.
Robert Ross
Auckland University
Evolutionary Psychology –by any other name would smell as sweet?
Evolutionary Psychologists have
boldly claimed that their paradigm has produced “an astonishing
array of empirical discoveries”. In this talk I argue that:
a) Two quite different senses of the term evolutionary psychology have frequently been conflated
b) This conflation has obscured the
fact that many of the purported discoveries of Evolutionary Psychology
were not actually motivated by its special theoretical and
methodological tenets
c) As such, many of these purported
discoveries do not count as evidence that Evolutionary Psychology is a
progressive research paradigm
I illustrate this argument with
examples from my preliminary investigations into the history of
evolutionary-minded research on: selective parental solicitude, sexual
jealousy and mate selection in humans.
Hatha McDivitt
Australian National University
Motivating a Baby Making Account of Morality: What’s Evolution Got to do With It?
From a biological point of view, it
makes good sense to examine the evolutionary foundations of morality.
(To begin with, the widespread continued existence of the prosocial,
(apparently) costly behaviour that morality requires seems to challenge
the basic evolutionary supposition that fitness diminishing behaviour
will fail to be selected for and will thus be eradicated.) From an
ethical point of view, however, there has been a great deal of
reticence associated with the suggestion that biology (or any of the
natural sciences) should be consulted for a better understanding of why
we might judge ourselves and others in moral terms. In this talk I will
attempt to motivate the biological exploration of morality by appealing
to a form of Naturalism due to Mark Colyvan and, having motivated an
evo examination of morality, I will ask the question ‘Does moral
error--the position that most or all of our judgements and claims about
morality are untrue--follow from morality being an evolved trait?’
Alan Poole
Victoria University of Wellington
The implications of neural plasticity on the modularity debate.
There seems to be good evidence that
the brain exhibits a high degree of neural plasticity. From this,
various writers have argued that we can posit cognitive plasticity, and
from that domain general mechanisms which are content neutral (they
don’t necessarily have innate representations). This move has
been critiqued by defenders of evolutionary psychology, and
representational nativism. I think that their counter arguments
don’t work, and this paper will outline why.
Sandy Boucher
University of Melbourne
Once again on the ontology of species
In the first part of the paper I
examine the relationship between punctuated equilibrium, species
selection and the species-as-individuals thesis. I argue that the
species-as-individuals thesis is neither necessary nor sufficient for
either species selection or punctuated equilibrium. Other people have
made this claim but my arguments are better. In the second part of the
paper I discuss a strong form of conventionalism about the ontology of
species.
Rachael Brown
University of Melbourne
Slippery-dips and Roundabouts: Evidence and the evolution of cognition
This presentation will
focus primarily upon my research regarding theory of mind although this
is really only a case study via which I have attempted to answer the
question “What can we know about the evolution of
cognition?” The first part of the presentation outlines some work
investigating methodological constraints. The second part of the
presentation will focus upon some philosophical and epistemic
constraints that I was able to identify in this work and some ways in
which I have gone about trying to address them.
Aidan Lyon
Australian National University
Populations and Particles
Evolutionary theory is up to its neck
in probability. Probabilities can be found in our understanding of
mutation events, drift, fitness, coalescence, macroevolution, and our
naturalistic explanations for cooperative and moral behaviour. Much of
the literature has focused on giving a grand unified interpretation of
these probabilities. Or when that hasn’t worked, some have
decided no interpretation at all is the way to go. I will argue that
monism is not necessary and, apart from its sex appeal, poorly
motivated. I will also argue that a plurality of interpretations is
(much!) better than no interpretation at all. I will gesture towards a
particular way that a plurality of objective interpretations can be
strung together—a major component of this pluralism taking its
lead from statistical mechanics. Along the way I will criticise various
arguments for and against popular interpretations.
Dennis Poole
Victoria University of Wellington
Evolutionary Perspectives on Landscape Aesthetics
Landscape evaluation can be broadly
divided into two types – evaluation of content, and evaluation of
spatial organization. The end result of these evaluations is an
aesthetic response. I shall compare two possible evolutionary
hypotheses to explain the evolution of our aesthetic responses to
landscapes.
Tony Scott
Victoria University of Wellington
Moral Emotions, Developmental Psychology and Natural Selection.
Our moral emotions such as guilt and
moral disgust don’t spring into life fully formed from birth
– they are produced from a combination of environmental inputs, a
developmentally flexible emotional psychology, and increasing levels of
cognitive sophistication. I want to look at how moral emotional
phenotypes fit with an evolutionary point of view – namely how
they are a product of gene-culture coevolution. With a focus on
developmental psychology, I will be looking at the mechanisms of
inheritance involved in the reliable, high-fidelity transmission of
moral emotional phenotypes from parent generation to offspring
generation.
Ben Fraser
Australian National University
Counting Costs in Costly Signaling
Costly signaling has been proposed as
an explanation for apparently costly prosocial behaviour (e.g. hunters
sharing large game). As the apparent costs of such behaviours are
revealed as merely apparent, though, an explanation in terms of costly
signaling seems less and less necessary and indeed undermined. I'll try
to defend the claim that costly signaling can have an explanatory role
to play even in cases where the behaviour in question turns out to be
beneficial to the supposed costly-signaler. There are a few different
understandings of 'cost' in play here, I think, and this generates
confusion. I'll stress the importance of being clear about who is
paying which costs in what currency.
Daniel Schweitzer
University of Queensland
Genetic Information
The term ‘information’ is
now used ubiquitously in many areas of biology and in particular,
molecular biology and genetics. But what does
‘information’ actually refer to? Is it simply a
useful heuristic or a notion in search of a theory? Different
accounts and approaches to issues around of information that will be
considered in this talk include: thermodynamic approaches, the
Shannon-Weaver account of information, Dretske’s semantic account
of information and teleosemantic accounts of information. A broad
overview of these theories will be discussed and critiqued with the
view of ascertaining whether any of these existing accounts of
information can be successfully applied to issues of
‘information’ as they pertain to biology. One
interesting possibility is that no existing theory of information will
be able to fulfil the tasks demanded by biology. Alternatively, a
completely different theory of information may need to be developed in
order to most effectively handle the range of issues appearing in
biology and in particular.
John Matthewson
Australian National University
Reporting Back
I will talk about what I felt were
the most important parts of the PSA regarding philosphy of biology.
There are some issues and tools that seem prominent in people's minds
at the moment. There will be editorializing.