ALBERT

All Library Books, journals and Electronic Records Telegrafenberg

Your email was sent successfully. Check your inbox.

An error occurred while sending the email. Please try again.

Proceed reservation?

Export
  • 1
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 13 (1998), S. 413-426 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: insect taboos ; Westermarck ; natural selection ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract My aim in this paper is to take a closer look at an influential argument that purports to prove that the existence of cultural prohibitions could never be explained by biological inhibitions. The argument is two-pronged. The first prong reduces to the claim: inhibitions cannot cause prohibitions simply because inhibitions undermine the raison dêtre of prohibitions. The second strategy consists in arguing that inhibitions cannot cause prohibitions because the two differ importantly in their contents. I try to show that both claims fail.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 2
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 13 (1998), S. 341-357 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: theory reception ; Darwinism ; sociobiology ; cultural studies ; evolutionary biology in Japan
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract This paper discusses the reception of Darwinian evolutionary theory and sociobiology in Japan. Darwinism was introduced into Japan in the late 19th century and Japanese people readily accepted the concept of evolution because, lacking Christianity, there was no religious opposition. However, the theory of evolution was treated as a kind of social scientific tool, i.e., social Spencerism and eugenics. Although evolutionary biology was developed during the late 19th and the early 20th century, orthodox Darwinian theory was neglected for a long time. In the mid 1980s, sociobiology was introduced but it was ignored and criticized by a large part of the ecologist-evolutionist community in Japan. This hostile attitude was due to the absence of Darwinism among these scientists. Compared with the reception of sociobiology in English-speaking countries, there were both similarities and differences in Japan.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 3
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 13 (1998), S. 263-288 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Darwinism ; aggression ; instinct ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Almost all of the themes contained in E.O.Wilson's sociobiological writing on war and human aggression were prefigured in Anglo-American bio-social discourse, c. 1880–1919. Instinct theory – stemming from animal psychology and the genetics revolution – encouraged the belief that pugnacity had been programmed into the ancient part of the human brain as a result of evolutionary pressures dating from prehistory. War was seen to be instinct-driven, and genocidal fighting postulated as a eugenic force in early human evolution. War was explained in distinctly modern sociobiological terms as adaptive behaviour springing from territorial urges, crowding, competition for resources and reproductive advantage, ethnocentrism and pseudo-speciation.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 4
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 12 (1997), S. 341-356 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: care ethics ; evolutionary ethics ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Philosophical tradition demands rational reflection as a condition for genuine moral acts. But the grounds for that requirement are untenable, and when the requirement is dropped morality comes into clearer view as a naturally developing phenomenon that is not confined to human beings and does not require higher-level rational reflective processes. Rational consideration of rules and duties can enhance and extend moral behavior, but rationality is not necessary for morality and (contrary to the Kantian tradition represented by Thomas Nagel) morality cannot transcend its biological roots. Recognizing this helps forge a complementary rather than competitive relation between feminist care-based ethics and rationalistic duty-based ethics.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 5
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 10 (1997), S. 249-267 
    ISSN: 1573-322X
    Keywords: Animals ; Asia ; consciousness ; Australia ; Hong Kong ; India ; Israel ; Japan ; New Zealand ; The Philippines ; Russia ; Singapore ; Thailand
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract The interactions between humans, animals and the environment have shaped human values and ethics, not only the genes that we are made of. The animal rights movement challenges human beings to reconsider interactions between humans and other animals, and maybe connected to the environmental movement that begs us to recognize the fact that there are symbiotic relationships between humans and all other organisms. The first part of this paper looks at types of bioethics, the implications of autonomy and the value of being alive. Then the level of consciousness of these relationships are explored in survey results from Asia and the Pacific, especially in the 1993 International Bioethics Survey conducted in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, The Philippines, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. Very few mentioned animal consciousness in the survey, but there were more biocentric comments in Australia and Japan; and more comments with the idea of harmony including humans in Thailand. Comparisons between questions and surveys will also be made, in an attempt to describe what people imagine animal consciousness to be, and whether this relates to human ethics of the relationships.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 6
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 9 (1994), S. 75-84 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Altruism ; ethics ; ethology ; evolution ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Altruistic behavior is often regarded as sociobiology's most central theoretical problem, but is it? Altruism in biology, bioaltruism, has many meanings, which can be grouped into two categories. The first I will callcommon bioaltruism. It is primarily of ethological relevance. The second,evolutionary bioaltruism, is a special category in evolutionary respects in that it may indeed pose a problem for evolutionary theory. These categories are logically independent. Moreover, both of them are logically different from altruism in its everyday psychological or moral sense. Sociobiological examples of bioaltruistic behavior concern bioaltruism in the first sense only, so the theoretical problem ‘altruism’ is supposed to pose, is indeed nothing but a theoretical problem and the bioaltruism that actually occurs has no evolutionary relevance. Nevertheless, evolutionary theory is relevant to our understanding of the possibility of common bioaltruism, and that possibility — even though bioaltruism is conceptually different from ethical altruism — is relevant for ethicists: it sheds light on what we can ask people to do or not to do.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 7
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 8 (1993), S. 47-60 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Ethics ; morality ; naturalism ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract We propose an objective and justifiable ethics that is contingent on the truth of evolutionary theory. We do not argue for the truth of this position, which depends on the empirical question of whether moral functions form a natural class, but for its cogency and possibility. The position we propose combines the advantages of Kantian objectivity with the explanatory and motivational advantages of moral naturalism. It avoids problems with the epistemological inaccessibility of transcendent values, while avoiding the relativism or subjectivism often associated with moral naturalism. Our position emerges out of criticisms of the contemporary sociobiological views of morality found in the writings of Richard Alexander, Michael Ruse, and Robert Richards.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 8
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 8 (1993), S. 399-407 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: German anthropology ; Lysenko ; Marx ; sociobiology ; Stalin
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Sociobiology has not been well received in Eastern Europe. Reasons for this are listed and discussed. It is suggested that times are changing and that sociobiology will have more success in the future.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 9
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 7 (1992), S. 77-88 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Morality ; Arthur Peacocke ; reductionism ; Michael Ruse ; science and religion ; sociobiology ; theology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Michael Ruse's writings explore what sociobiology says about morality. Further, he claims that sociobiology undermines the base for Christian morality. After responding to criticisms of Ruse, especially those of Arthur Peacocke, I lay a base for meeting his challenge.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 10
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 7 (1992), S. 161-175 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Altruism ; evolution ; Prisoner's Dilemma ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract I first argue against Peter Singer's exciting thesis that the Prisoner's Dilemma explains why there could be an evolutionary advantage in making reciprocal exchanges that are ultimately motivated by genuine altruism over making such exchanges on the basis of enlightened long-term self-interest. I then show that an alternative to Singer's thesis — one that is also meant to corroborate the view that natural selection favors genuine altruism, recently defended by Gregory Kavka, fails as well. Finally, I show that even granting Singer's and Kavka's claim about the selective advantage of altruism proper, it is doubtful whether that type of claim can be used in a particular sort of sociobiological argument against psychological egoism.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 11
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 7 (1992), S. 189-202 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Epigenetic rule ; ethics ; human behavioral ecology ; innate constraint ; morality ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Charles J. Lumsden and E.O. Wilson, in their writings together and individually, have proposed that human behaviors, whether moral or nonmoral, are governed by innate constraints (which they have termed “epigenetic rules”). I propose that if a genetic component of moral behavior is to be discovered, some sorting out of specifically moral from nonmoral innate constraints will be necessary. That some specifically moral innate constraits exist is evidenced by virtuous behaviors exhibited in nonhuman mammals, whose behavior is usually granted to be importantly governed by genetic factors. Propensities for such virtuous behaviors may have been passed to humans as highly conserved mammalian genes and continue to influence us. I propose that these constitute at least a “rudimentary morality” and may account in part for the moral intuitions. But other innate constraints which are nonmoral in nature interact with the specifically moral innate constraints and with culture to yield human moral decisions and actions. Any model which aims to identify the genetic component of moral behaviors or behaviors with moral import must provide not only a delineation of cultural causes but must also distinguish between those genetic causes which may have their origin in innate moral constraints from others which are fundamentally nonmoral because the critical faculty necessary to higher level human morality itself arises in part from innate constraints of a nonmoral type; i.e., the processes of inductive reasoning common to both ethics and science. Finally, humans who could bring the nonmoral evaluative capacities to bear upon whatever moral intuitions might be genetically conserved in mammalian heritage would have an advantage over similar beings who could not.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 12
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 6 (1991), S. 401-412 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Ants ; behavior ; culture ; Holism ; human ; meaning ; reduction ; sociobiology ; symbol
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Most research in the natural sciences passes through repeated cycles of a analytic reduction to the next lower level of organization, then resynthesis to the original level, then new analyticareduction, and so on. A residue of unexplained phenomena at the original level appears at first to require a “holistic” description independent of the lower level, but the residue shrinks as knowledge increases. This principle is well illustrated by recent studies from the social organization of insects, several examples of which are cited here. In theory it should also apply to human social organization. Culture is biological: meaning in culture can be approached as the outcome of mechanism-based causation, because culture stems from individual cognition, which has a biological basis. It would seem to follow that the most effective way to study culture is across all levels of organization from gene to society, passing repetitively through a cycle of reduction and synthesis in the manner of the natural sciences. Reductionistic analysis is favored by the tendency of semantic memory and culture to occur in discrete units that are arranged hierarchically.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 13
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 5 (1990), S. 149-173 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Darwinian ethics ; ethics ; evolution ; evolutionary ethics ; M. Ruse ; naturalistic fallacy ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Michael Ruse has proposed in his recent book Taking Darwin Seriously and elsewhere a new Darwinian ethics distinct from traditional evolutionary ethics, one that avoids the latter's inadequate accounts of the nature of morality and its failed attempts to provide a naturalistic justification of morality. Ruse argues for a sociobiologically based account of moral sentiments, and an evolutionary based casual explanation of their function, rejecting the possibility of ultimate ethical justification. We find that Ruse's proposal distorts, overextends and weakens both Darwinism and naturalism. So we propose an alternative Darwinian metaethics that both remedies the problems in Ruse's proposal and shows how a Darwinian naturalistic account of the moral good in terms of human fitness avoids the naturalistic fallacy and can provide genuine, even if limited, justifications for substantive ethical claims. Thus, we propose to really take Darwin seriously.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 14
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 5 (1990), S. 401-415 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Proximate cause ; ultimate cause ; function ; functionalism ; structuralism ; adaptation ; sociobiology ; behavioral ecology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Within evolutionary biology a distinction is frequently made between proximate and ultimate causes. One apparently plausible interpretation of this dichotomy is that proximate causes concern processes occurring during the life of an organism while ultimate causes refer to those processes (particularly natural selection) that shaped its genome. But “ultimate causes” are not sought through historical investigations of an organisms lineage. Rather, explanations referring to ultimate causes typically emerge from functional analyses. But these functional analyses do not identify causes of any kind, much less ultimate ones. So-called “ultimate explanations” are not about causes in any sense resembling those of proximate explanations. The attitude, implicit in the term “ultimate cause”, that these functional analyses are somehow superordinate to those involving “proximate causes” is unfounded. “Ultimate causes” are neither ultimate nor causes.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 15
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 3 (1988), S. 317-348 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Ethics ; sociobiology ; Hume ; ethical naturalism ; reductionism ; naturalistic fallacy
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Though modern non-cognitivists in ethics characteristically believe that values are irreducible to facts, they nevertheless believe that values are determined by facts, viz., those specified in functionalist, explanatory theories of the evolutionary origin of morality. The present paper probes the consistency of this position. The conventionalist theories of Hume and Harman are examined, and are seen not to establish a tight determinative reduction of values to facts. This result is illustrated by reference to recent theories of the sociobiological mechanisms involved in moral evolution. Though explanatory theories have linguistic implications,exaggerated in Harman's linguistic form of social relativism, there is also failure to establish the semantic reductionism which non-cognitivists reject under the rubric of ethical naturalism. It is concluded that explanatory forms of naturalism, the best of which is a functionalist-utilitarian account, are compatible with the fact/value distinction.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 16
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 2 (1987), S. 65-91 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Nietzsche ; Darwin ; evolution ; epistemology ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Nietzsche was a philosopher, not a biologist, Nevertheless his philosophical thought was deeply influenced by ideas emerging from the evolutionary biology of the nineteenth century. His relationship to the Darwinism of his time is difficult to disentangle. It is argued that he was in a sense an unwitting Darwinist. It follows that his philosophical thought is of considerable interest to those concerned to develop an evolutionary biology of mankind. His approach can be likened to that of an extraterrestrial sociobiologist studying “clever beasts... in some out of the way corner of the universe ...” It is shown how be uses this viewpoint to account for the origin of the central psychobiology of humankind: for dualistic philosophies, such as that of Descartes (which Ryle famously called ‘the official doctrine’), for human notions of ‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’, ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, and for other fundamental concepts of Western philosophy and science. All these, he argues, are no more and no less than the necessary adaptations of a zoological species, Homo sapiens, in its ‘struggle for life’ in a Darwinian world. It is concluded that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to accept and use in their full depth the philosophical implications of nineteeth-century evolutionism, implications which are still resisted to this day. It is also argued that this interpretation of Nietzsche's aphoristic writings provides them with an organic consistency.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 17
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 2 (1987), S. 253-270 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Ethics ; evolution ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Many think that evolutionary biology has relevance to ethics, but how far that relevance extends is a matter of debate. It is easy to show that “pop” sociobiological approaches to ethics all commit some type of naturalistic fallacy. More sophisticated attempts, like Donald Campbell's, or, more recently, Robert Richards', are not so easily refuted, but I will show that they too reason fallaciously from facts to values. What remains is the possibility of an evolutionary search for human nature. Unfortunately, evolutionary theory itself seems to imply that the quest for human nature will not be very promising. As far as there is such a thing as human nature, we will have to know it before we can meaningfully talk about its evolution. Anthropological data suggest that we differ widely in our normative judgments. And even where we seem to agree, there is good reason to doubt that we really do so.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 18
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 1 (1986), S. 53-87 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: E. O. Wilson ; R. C. Lewontin ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Edward O. Wilson's forays into human sociobiology have been the target of persistent, vehement attack by his Harvard colleague in evolutionary biology, Richard C. Lewontin. Through examination of existing “documents in the case”, together with in-depth personal interviews of Wilson, Lewontin, and other biologists, the reasons for Wilson's stance and Lewontin's criticisms are uncovered. It is argued that the dispute is not primarily personally or politically motivated, but involves a conflict between long-term scientific-cum-moral agendas, with the “reductionist program” as a key issue. It is concluded that it is in the interest of both disputants to keep the controversy alive.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
  • 19
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 1 (1986), S. 89-107 
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Marx ; E. O. Wilson ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Intense interest has long been shown in the nature of humankind. Are we the products of genes? Are we the products of culture? Or are we something in between? The Marxist position, stressing the dominant significance of social methods for studying humans, is sketched. Then, a number of Western, biologically influenced views are discussed and criticised. Although there are important insights in the writings of the holders of these views, ultimately they produce only a “semiscience”.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    Location Call Number Expected Availability
    BibTip Others were also interested in ...
Close ⊗
This website uses cookies and the analysis tool Matomo. More information can be found here...