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

One of the strengths of scientific inquiry is that it can progress with any mixture of empiricism, intuition, and formal theory that suits the convenience of the investigator. Many sciences develop for a time as exercises in description and empirical generalization. Only later do they acquire reasoned connections within themselves and with other branches of knowledge. Many things were scientifically known of human anatomy and the motions of the planets before they were scientifically explained.

The psychological foundations of culture.

In this article we focus on educational ideas and enabling technology for knowledge-building discourse. The conceptual bases of computer-supported intentional learning environments (CSILE) come from research on intentional learning, process aspects of expertise, and discourse in knowledge-building communities. These bases combine to support the following propositions: Schools need to be restructured as communities in which the construction of knowledge is supported as a collective goal, and the role of educational technology should be to replace classroom discourse patterns with those having more immediate and natural extensions to knowledge-building communities outside school walls. CSILE is described as a means for refraining classroom discourse to support knowledge building in ways extensible to out-of-school knowledgeadvancing enterprises. Some of the most fundamental problems are logistic, and it is in solving these logistic problems that we see the greatest potential for educational technology.

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Computer Support for Knowledge-Building Communities

Null models in ecology

Naming and necessity

Objective knowledge: an evolutionary approach

Introduction 1. Inductive Arguments 2. The Nature of Explanation 3. The Justification of Explanation 4. Complete Explanation 5. The Intrinsic Probability of Theism 6. The Explanatory Power of Theism: General Considerations 7. The Cosmological Argument 8. Teleological Arguments 9. Arguments from Consciousness and Morality 10. The Argument from Providence 11. The Problem of Evil 12. Arguments from History and Miracles 13. The Argument from Religious Experience 14. The Balance of Probability Additional Note 1: The Trinity Additional Note 2: Recent Arguments to Design from Biology Additional Note 3: Plantinga's Argument Against Evolutionary Naturalism

The existence of God

Part 1 Religious language: conditions for coherence (1) conditions for coherence (2) the words of theology (1) words with old and new senses the words of theology (2) medieval and modern accounts attitude theories. Part 2 A contingent God: an omnipresent spirit free and creator of the universe omnipotent omniscient perfectly good and a source of moral obligation eternal and immutable. Part 3 A necessary God: kinds of necessity a necessary being holy and worthy of worship.

The Coherence of Theism (revised edition)

This book investigates what it means, and whether it is coherent to say that there is a God. The author concludes that, despite philosophical objections, many of the claims religious believers make are coherent; and that although some important claims are coherent only if the words by which they are expressed are being used in a stretched or analogical sense, this is in fact the way in which theologians have always claimed they are being used.

The coherence of theism

The object of this paper is to show that there are no valid formal objections to the argument from design, so long as the argument is articulated with sufficient care. In particular I wish to analyse Hume's attack on the argument in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and to show that none of the formal objections made therein by Philo have any validity against a carefully articulated version of the argument.

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Richard Swinburne

Papers

Objective knowledge: an evolutionary approach

The existence of God

The Coherence of Theism (revised edition)

The coherence of theism

The Argument from Design