Paulo Abrantes

University of Brasília | UnB · Department of Philosophy

(Este artigo faz parte de um projeto da Trans/Form/Ação: revista de filosofia da Unesp. Trata-se do Dossiê Filosofia Autoral, a ser publicado em 2022.) O artigo parte de uma distinção entre tipos de descrição que podem ser propostas para uma dinâmica populacional, incluindo uma descrição ‘darwiniana’ em termos de variação, herança e aptidão diferen...

Abstract: This is the second part of an essay that targets the specificity and multifaceted character of the contemporary philosophical investigation about the biological sciences. The import of concepts and methods from the biological sciences to tackle affresh some philosophical problems is also addressed. We sum up the various subjects that have...

Abstract: This is the first part of an essay that targets the specificity and multifaceted character of the contemporary philosophical investigation about the biological sciences. Besides its metascientific character, this essay fosters metaphilosophical reflections on the kinds of tasks philosophers are concerned with in contemporary philosophy of...

Recibido: 1 de septiembre de 2020 Aceptado: 13 de octubre de 2020 Abstract. We reconstruct attempts since Darwin's to explain human cooperative and competitive behaviors and their evolution, by making explicit different kinds of 'images of nature' that were presuposed by the main contenders and implicated in the controversies that the topic engend...

O capítulo Método e Metodologia é introdutório e propõe que tais termos, contrariamente ao uso comum, sejam distinguidos. Defendo aí que a metodologia científica seja entendida como uma teoria (filosófica) do(s) método(s) científico(s). A espinha dorsal do livro é composta por capítulos em que relaciono, de forma detalhada, a metodologia científic...

This paper investigates whether it is fruitful to describe the role that culture begins to play at some point in the Hominin lineage, arguably that of the emergence of a new inheritance system on top of the genetic inheritance system and coevolving with it, as being a transition in individuality

En este texto rastreamos las imágenes implícitas en la explicación del comportamiento prosocial humano y su evolución, que han direccionado por más de un siglo y medio el pensamiento evolutivo y han generado una influencia dramática en la manera en que se estudia y evalúa el conocimiento de organismos unicelulares, multicelulares, colonias y socied...

Este artigo investiga o papel que a cultura desempenha em diferentes cenários para a evolução humana. A primeira parte expõe os elementos básicos de uma explicação da capacidade da mente humana para atingir ordens mais elevadas de intencionalidade, tomando como referência a tese da complexidade do ambiente social e a hipótese da inteligência social...

This paper scrutinizes two research programs that advocate respectively for the existence of a universal moral grammar and a predisposition to moralize behaviours with certain contents. It focuses on how the arguments commonly used to ground each program fare at relevant contemporary research in cognitive science and how well they meet constructivi...

The theory of evolution sparked a series of questions about the origins of moral judgments and the underpinning principles. In particular, it reinforced the debate about moral nativism. In this paper we scrutinize two research programs that advocate respectively the existence of an innate ability to judge morally and a predisposition to moralize be...

Verifica-se um fértil intercâmbio entre filósofos e biólogos, de modo especial nas investigações contemporâneas sobre a evolução humana. Avalio, inicialmente, o compatibilismo como postura filosófica, que coloca em evidência a possibilidade de que hábitos de interpretação, com base numa psicologia de senso comum, tenham desempenhado um papel na evo...

This paper investigates whether it is fruitful to describe the role culture began to play at some point in the hominin lineage as pointing to a transition in individuality, by reference to the works of Buss, Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry, Michod and Godfrey-Smith. The chief question addressed is whether a population of groups having different cultura...

A productive interchange is taking place between philosophers and biologists, especially in contemporary investigations on human evolution. I appraise, initially, compatibilism as a philosophical stance that highlights the role habits of interpretation, resting on a folk psychology, might have played in the evolution of our lineage. This hypothesis...

A darwinian evolutionary approach can contribute to reassess philosophical problems in different fields, including ethics and moral theory. Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology address these issues by presupposing mechanisms such as kin selection and reciprocal altruism. However, these mechanisms can’t account for cooperation in the human speci...

This paper discusses attempts to keep track of the evolution of the human mind which are commited to a commonsense image of ourselves as both agents and interpreters, following a compatibilist line. These attempts take also a bold stance concerning the role philosophy should play in looking for an integration of that commonsense image with an image...

Some "major" evolutionary transitions have been described as transitions in individuality. In this depiction, natural selection might bring about new kinds of individuals, whose evolutionary dynamics takes place in a novel way. Using a categorization proposed by Godfrey-Smith (2009), this transition is fully accomplished when a new "paradigmatic" D...

When is conceptual change so significant that we should talk about a new theory, not a new version of the same theory? We address this problem here, starting from Gould’s discussion of the individuation of the Darwinian theory. He locates his position between two extremes: ‘minimalist’—a theory should be individuated merely by its insertion in a hi...

This paper gives a historical overview of the ways various trends in the philosophy of science dealt with models and their relationship with the topics of heuristics and theoretical dynamics. First of all, N. Campbell’s account of analogies as components of scientific theories is presented. Next, the notion of ‘model’ in the reconstruction of the s...

La tentativa de articular un seleccionismo aplicable a la epistemología es motivada por una postura al mismo tiempo naturalista y mecanicista, además de rechazar explicaciones que cometan petición de principio. El conocimiento y los procesos que lo generan son consi derados, por tanto, fenómenos naturales, que deben ser explicados empleando los mis...

Este artigo tem por objetivo explicitar as motivações do programa de uma epistemologia evolutiva e discutir críticas que são tradicionalmente feitas a ele. Inicio apresentando as motivações históricas do darwinismo em biologia e indicando que essas mesmas motivações podem ser vistas orientando alguns programas em psicologia. Passo em seguida a cara...

This paper analyzes, from an epistemological perspective, the so called 'Precautionary Principle' - an environmental law principle broadly invoked in judicial and

This paper aims at integrating the work onanalogical reasoning in Cognitive Science into thelong trend of philosophical interest, in this century,in analogical reasoning as a basis for scientificmodeling. In the first part of the paper, threesimulations of analogical reasoning, proposed incognitive science, are presented: Gentner''s StructureMatchi...