Existentialism is compatible with a broadly biological vision of who we are. This thesis is grounded in an analysis of “concrete” or “individual” possibility, which differs from standard conception...

Existentialism as Biology

Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories

The explanation of behaviour

https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/282726/2/Peeters%282%29.pdf

Lack of Character. Personality and moral behavior

Cultural psychology and experimental existential psychology are two of the fastest-growing movements in social psychology. In this book, Daniel Sullivan combines both perspectives to present a groundbreaking analysis of culture's role in shaping the psychology of threat experience. The first part of the book presents a new theoretical framework guided by three central principles: that humans are in a unique existential situation because we possess symbolic consciousness and culture; that culture provides psychological protection against threatening experiences, but also helps to create them; and that interdisciplinary methods are vital to understanding the link between culture and threat. In the second part of the book, Sullivan presents a novel program of research guided by these principles. Focusing on a case study of a traditionalist group of Mennonites in the midwestern United States, Sullivan examines the relationship between religion, community, guilt, anxiety, and the experience of natural disaster.

Cultural-Existential Psychology: The Role of Culture in Suffering and Threat

In reworking a variety of biological concepts, Developmental Systems Theory (DST) has made frequent use of parity of reasoning. We have done this to show, for instance, that factors that have similar sorts of impact on a developing organism tend nevertheless to be invested with quite different causal importance. We have made similar arguments about evolutionary processes. Together, these analyses have allowed DST not only to cut through some age-old muddles about the nature of development, but also to effect a long-delayed reintegration of development into evolutionary theory. Our penchant for causal symmetry, however (or 'causal democracy', as it has recently been termed), has sometimes been misunderstood. This paper shows that causal symmetry is neither a platitude about multiple influences nor a denial of useful distinctions, but a powerful way of exposing hidden assumptions and opening up traditional formulations to fruitful change.

Existentialism as Biology

Citations

Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories

The explanation of behaviour

Lack of Character. Personality and moral behavior

Cultural-Existential Psychology: The Role of Culture in Suffering and Threat

Causal democracy and causal contributions in Developmental Systems Theory : Philosophy and Biology, Psychology, and Neuroscience

References

A case study of neuroethics: the nature of moral judgment

Feelings and Emotions: On the Passivity of the Passions

The God Genome

On the Passivity of the Passions (2001)

Emotion and choice

Related Papers (5)

Literature, Philosophy and the Social Sciences: Essays in Existentialism and Phenomenology

Existentialism as a philosophy

The Unfinished Project of Cognitive Existentialism

The idea of 'philosophy of biology before biology' : a methodological provocation

Philosophy of Biology: About the Fossilization of Disciplines and Other Embryonic Thoughts