Cases of institutions that make us smart
Evolutionary psychologists assert that our genetically driven cognitive endowment has evolved during the Pleistocene. As a consequence, our innate cognitive mechanisms are adapted to the environment of that period (the EEA) but not necessarily to our changed modern environment. One instance of ...
Abortion puzzles, part two
Last month, Nicola posted here on an apparent paradox in the doctrine of anti-choice activists. The paradox is the following: if embryos and foetuses are human beings in every relevant respect, so that killing them is murder, why is it that anti-choice activists typically refuse to punish aborting ...
Philosophy and Psychology: Special issue on number and language
The question of how language and conceptual thought are related is unresolved in both philosophy and psychology. Many recent tests of the so-called 'Whorfian hypothesis', the idea that the structure of a particular language influences the way its speakers conceptualize the world, have focused on ...