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.

/pdf/stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy-1wqoykisq0.pdf

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Central to the idea of indeterminism is this: At a given moment in the history of the world there are a variety of ways in which affairs might carry on. Before the toss of the coin there are two things that could happen, either Heads up or Tails up. This possibility is not merely epistemic, but in re., In spite of this it seems clear that the outcomes Heads and Tails could not be temporally related. Although Heads, if it happened, would be subsequent to the coin toss, and Tails, if it happened, would be subsequent to the coin toss, surely neither of Heads or Tails precedes the other, nor are they simultaneous. One may hold that being present, past or future are intrinsic properties of moments, and thus be a champion of McTaggart's "A-series." We aim to avoid this question altogether. Instead in considering indeterminism we concentrate on a generalization of McTaggart's "B-series," which describes the before/after relations that moments bear to one another, with no reference to whether any of those moments are past, present or future. Both sides of the debate about the Aseries admit that the B-series captures some of the truth, and surely much of our thinking about our world derives from the presumption that it has the B-series

/pdf/indeterminism-and-the-thin-red-line-41j2a4d0l3.pdf

Indeterminism and the thin red line

In this paper, we review the various types of epistemic usages of the (simple and anterior) future tenses in French with the assumption that what actually licenses their occurrence is not a semantic feature such as aspect but pragmatic effects that give relevance to the utterance at the moment of speech. We review the main hypotheses proposed in the relevant literature and conclude that epistemic futures seem to fulfill the function of communicating – through a metarepresentation of a future verification – not only epistemic modality and evidentiality, but also, and perhaps especially, the inference that a particular course of action has to be undertaken from the perspective of a state of affairs that is true in the present.

/pdf/a-cognitive-pragmatic-view-of-the-french-epistemic-future-49etyhmdps.pdf

A cognitive-pragmatic view of the French epistemic future

The thin red line (TRL) is a theory about the semantics of future-contingents. The central idea is that there is such a thing as the ‘actual future’, even in the presence of indeterminism. It is inspired by a famous solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge associated with William of Ockham, in which the freedom of agents is argued to be compatible with God’s omniscience. In the modern branching time setting, the theory of the TRL is widely regarded to suffer from several fundamental problems. In this paper we propose several new TRL semantics, each with differing degrees of success. This leads up to our final semantics, which is a cross between the TRL and supervaluationism. We discuss the notions of truth, validity and semantic consequence which result from our final semantics, and demonstrate some of its pleasing results. This account, we believe, answers the main objection in the literature, and thus places the TRL on the same level as any other competing semantics for future contingents.

/pdf/a-future-for-the-thin-red-line-440y1ax4wk.pdf

A future for the thin red line

There is a familiar debate between Russell and Strawson concerning bivalence and ‘the present King of France’. According to the Strawsonian view, ‘The present King of France is bald’ is neither true nor false, whereas, on the Russellian view, that proposition is simply false. In this paper, I develop what I take to be a crucial (and unnoticed) connection between this debate and a different domain where bivalence has been at stake: future contingents. On the familiar ‘Aristotelian’ view, future contingent propositions are neither true nor false. However, I argue that, just as there is a Russellian alternative to the Strawsonian view concerning ‘the present King of France’, according to which the relevant class of propositions all turn out false, so there is a Russellian alternative to the Aristotelian view, according to which future contingents all turn out false, not neither true nor false. The result: contrary to millennia of philosophical tradition, we can be open futurists without denying bivalence.

/pdf/future-contingents-are-all-false-on-behalf-of-a-russellian-1on2smlnf1.pdf

Future Contingents are all False! On Behalf of a Russellian Open Future

In [l] Robert McArthur defends the challenging thesis that the apparent semantic distinction between the factual future tense, e.g., 'There will be a sea fight tomorrow', and the modal future tenses, e.g., 'There may/must be a sea fight tomorrow', is without foundation. His strategy involves attempting to show that a semantical distinction between factual and modal future tenses cannot be sustained in either deterministic or indeterministic worlds.

/pdf/temporal-modalities-and-the-future-1o1qyoosyz.pdf

Temporal modalities and the future

/pdf/erratum-an-investigation-concerning-the-hilbert-sierpinski-3fibgoznqv.pdf

Erratum: ``An investigation concerning the Hilbert-Sierpiński logical form of the axiom of choice''.

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Temporal modalities and the future

Erratum: ``An investigation concerning the Hilbert-Sierpiński logical form of the axiom of choice''.