Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.

/pdf/stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy-1wqoykisq0.pdf

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/download/794/1436

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

Nesta versao condensada de seu livro homonimo, Sedgwick esboca uma reflexao sobre o "armario" como um dispositivo de regulacao da vida de gays e lesbicas que concerne, tambem, aos heterossexuais e seus privilegios de visibilidade e hegemonia de valores. A pesquisadora norte-americana afirma que "o armario", ou o "segredo aberto", marcou a vida gay/lesbica no ultimo seculo e nao deixou de faze-lo mesmo apos o marco de Stonewall em 1969. Sedgwick argumenta ainda que esse regime, com suas regras contraditorias e limitantes sobre privacidade e revelacoes, publico e privado, conhecimento e ignorância, serviu para dar forma ao modo como muitas questoes de valores e epistemologia foram concebidas e abordadas na moderna sociedade ocidental como um todo.

Epistemology of the Closet

I want to say a little about the way ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality’ was originally conceived
and the context in which we are now living. It was written in part to challenge the erasure of
lesbian existence from so much of scholarly feminist literature, an erasure which I felt (and
feel) to be not just anti-lesbian, but anti-feminist in its consequences, and to distort the experience of heterosexual women as well. It was not written to widen divisions but to encourage
heterosexual feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution which disempowers
women – and to change it. I also hoped that other lesbians would feel the depth and breadth of
woman identification and woman bonding that has run like a continuous though stifled theme
through the heterosexual experience, and that this would become increasingly a politically
activating impulse, not simply a validation of personal lives. I wanted the essay to suggest
new kinds of criticism, to incite new questions in classrooms and academic journals, and to
sketch, at least, some bridge over the gap between lesbian and feminist. I wanted, at the very
least, for feminists to find it less possible to read, write, or teach from a perspective of unexamined heterocentricity.

http://users.uoa.gr/~cdokou/RichCompulsoryHeterosexuality.pdf

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

The time has come to think about sex To some, sexuality may seem to be an unimportant
topic, a frivolous diversion from the more critical problems of poverty, war, disease, racism,
famine, or nuclear annihilation But it is precisely at times such as these, when we live with
the possibility of unthinkable destruction, that people are likely to become dangerously crazy
about sexuality Contemporary conflicts over sexual values and erotic conduct have much in
common with the religious disputes of earlier centuries They acquire immense symbolic
weight Disputes over sexual behaviour often become the vehicles for displacing social anxieties, and discharging their attendant emotional intensity Consequently, sexuality should be
treated with special respect in times of great social stress

/pdf/thinking-sex-notes-for-a-radical-theory-of-the-politics-of-16zw3vryax.pdf

Thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality

The experience is her own-as a woman, a poet, a feminist, and a mother-but it is an experience determined by the institution, imposed on all women everywhere. She draws on personal materials, history, research, and literature to create a document of universal importance.

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision

Through a wide range of poetic pieces, Adrienne Rich explores in this collection the intricacies of being white, female, lesbian, Jewish, and a U.S. citizen, both at this time of her life and through the lens of her past.

Adrienne Rich

Papers

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision

Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985