Methodological problems in evolutionary biology VI. The force of evolutionary epistemology

Paul Thompson's new book,The Structure of Biological Theories, is about the formalization of evolutionary biology. He is primarily concerned, he says, with the logical, epistemological, and methodological aspects of biological theorizing. The main theme of the book is the opposition between what Thompson calls the syntactic and the semantic conceptions of theories. He wishes to establish that the semantic account is superior to the syntactic in at least three areas: first, it offers a more faithful account of population biology; second, it facilitates a conception of evolutionary biology as a family of interacting theories; finally, it offers us a richer framework for the resolution of methodological problems that have plagued sociobiology and evolutionary epistemology.

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Ecology

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-q030-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

John Beatty

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Biology ◽

Comparative Methods ◽

Evolutionary biology and epistemology

Theoria Beograd ◽

10.2298/theo0602011t ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 49 (1-2) ◽

pp. 11-19

Author(s):

Aleksej Tarasjev

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Molecular Biology ◽

Evolutionary Biology ◽

Evolutionary Epistemology ◽

The Other ◽

Modern Biology ◽

Other Hand ◽

Further Development ◽

Epistemological Basis

Foundation and further development of modern biology raised many epistemological questions and biology was often criticized on that ground. There has been attempts, especially after emergence of molecular biology, to reduce biology to physics and chemistry. Epistemological basis of modern biology were also under ideologically motivated attacks from various positions. On the other hand, there were also attempts to reduce psychology and social sciences to biology. Finally, there were attempts to biologize epistemology itself through so-called evolutionary epistemology. Concise presentation of all that aspects of relationship between epistemology and biology is given.

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The Social Turn in Moral Psychology

10.7551/mitpress/9780262035569.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mark Fedyk

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Moral Psychology ◽

Evolutionary Biology ◽

Ethical Theory ◽

Scientific Practice ◽

Human Life ◽

The Social ◽

Philosophical Ethics ◽

Methodological Problems ◽

The Relationship

In this book, Mark Fedyk offers a novel analysis of the relationship between moral psychology and allied fields in the social sciences. Fedyk shows how the social sciences can be integrated with moral philosophy, argues for the benefits of such an integration, and offers a new ethical theory that can be used to bridge research between the two. Fedyk argues that moral psychology should take a social turn, investigating the psychological processes that motivate patterns of social behavior defined as ethical using normative information extracted from the social sciences. He points out methodological problems in conventional moral psychology, particularly the increasing methodological and conceptual inconsilience with both philosophical ethics and evolutionary biology. Fedyk's "causal theory of ethics" is designed to provide moral psychology with an ethical theory that can be used without creating tension between its scientific practice and the conceptual vocabulary of philosophical ethics. His account aims both to redirect moral psychology toward more socially realistic questions about human life and to introduce philosophers to a new form of ethical naturalism—a way of thinking about how to use different fields of scientific research to answer some of the traditional questions that are at the heart of ethics.

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SOME CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES ON HAPPINESS: LESSONS FROM EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY

The Singapore Economic Review ◽

10.1142/s0217590815400019 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 60 (04) ◽

pp. 1540001 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

YEW-KWANG NG

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Biology ◽

Well Being ◽

Scientific Study ◽

Methodological Issues ◽

Methodological Problems ◽

Fitness Maximization ◽

Happiness Measurement

Despite recent intense interest, happiness studies have been impeded by some conceptual and methodological problems, including viewing happiness (well-being/welfare) as different over different persons, as relative, multi-dimensional, non-cardinally measurable, interpersonally non-comparable and using non-cardinal and interpersonally non-comparable methods of happiness measurement. Using the evolutionary biology of happiness, this paper argues that happiness is absolute, universal, and uni-dimensional and is also cardinally measurable and interpersonally comparable. This is needed to make choices motivated by reward (pleasure) and punishment (pain) consistent with fitness maximization. However, happiness indices obtained by virtually all existing methods of happiness measurement are largely non-cardinal and non-comparable, making the use of averaging in group happiness indices of dubious philosophical validity. A method of measuring happiness to give cardinal and interpersonally comparable indices is discussed. These may contribute towards the more scientific study of happiness that is based on sounder methodological grounds as well as yielding more useful results.

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