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.

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Taking Rights Seriously.

1. Antecedents and alternatives 2. The development of Peirce's semeiotic 3. Phaneroscopy 4. A preface to final causation 5. Final causation 6. Significance 7. Objects and interpretants 8. A taxonomy of signs 9. More taxa 10. How symbols grow 11. Semeiosis and the mental 12. The structure of objectivity.

Peirce's Theory of Signs

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Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY This paper reviews research that examines professional skepticism (hereafter, PS) in auditing. Consistent with much research and with recent regulatory concerns, the paper defines PS as ‘‘indicated by auditor judgments and decisions that reflect a heightened assessment of the risk that an assertion is incorrect, conditional on the information available to the auditor.’’ In many circumstances the assertion in question will be a client’s assertion that the financial statements are free of material misstatement, but the definition could apply to other assertions as well (e.g., attesting to the effectiveness of a client’s internal controls). This definition reflects more of a ‘‘presumptive doubt’’ than a ‘‘neutral’’ view of PS, implying that auditors who exhibit high PS are auditors who need relatively more persuasive evidence (in terms of quality and/or quantity) to be convinced that an assertion is correct. Depending on how an auditor’s decisions are evaluated, it is possible under this definition for an auditor to exhibit too much PS, in that they could design overly inefficient and expensive audits. The paper provides a model that describes how audit evidence combines with auditor knowledge, traits, and incentives to produce judgments that reflect PS. The model also describes how, given a judgment that reflects some level of PS, the judgment combines with auditor knowledge, traits, and incentives to produce actions that reflect relatively more or less PS. The model highlights that auditors’ pre-existing knowledge, traits, and incentives all combine (and potentially trade off or interact) to affect the amount of PS in audit judgment and audit actions. This perspective also facilitates understanding how audit firms can influence PS in practice via hiring, training, performance appraisal, review, decision aids, incentives, and changes in tasks and institutions. For example, prior research suggests the following about particular elements of the model:

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A Model and Literature Review of Professional Skepticism in Auditing

Refutation de l'assertion de Berkeley posant les philosophes grecs antiques comme les precurseurs de son idealisme: en fait ni Platon, ni Aristote, ni les Neo-Platoniciens, ni les Sceptiques ne remettent en cause la realite du monde exterieur. Le premier a le faire est Descartes| cette nouveaute est liee chez lui a celle d'autres positions: l'acces a la verite dans le seul domaine de l'experience subjective| la prise en consideration de la connaissance par le sujet de ses etats subjectifs| la pensee du corps comme appartenant au monde exterieur| l'analyse des limites de la tradition sceptique.

Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed

This is a close scrutiny of De Anima II 5, led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from Physics III 1-3 and De Generatione et Corruptione I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it.

Myles Burnyeat

Papers

Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed

De anima ii 5

The Skeptical tradition

The Theaetetus of Plato

The Theaetetus of Plato.