A Mind Selected by Needs: Explaining Logical Animals by Evolution
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A Mind Selected by Needs: Explaining Logical Animals by Evolution Fabian Seitz 1 Received: 29 April 2019 / Accepted: 7 January 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Explaining humans as rational creatures—capable of deductive reasoning—remains challenging for evolutionary naturalism. Schechter (Philosophical Perspectives, 24(1)437–464, 2011, 2013) proposes to link the evolution of this kind of reasoning with the ability to plan. His proposal, however, does neither include any elaborated theory on how logical abilities came into being within the hominin lineage nor is it sufficiently supported by empirical evidence. I present such a theory in broad outline and substantiate it with archeological findings. It is argued that the cognitive makeup of any animal is constituted by being embedded in a certain way of life. Changing ways of life thus foster appearances of new cognitive abilities. Finally, a new way of life of coordinated group behavior emerged within the hominins: anticipatory group planning involved in activities like making sophisticated spears for hunting. This gave rise to human logical cognition. It turned hominins into domain-general reasoner and adherents of intersubjective norms for reasoning. However, as I argue, it did not—and most likely could not—give rise to reason by deductive logic. More likely, deductive reasoning entered our world only a few thousand years ago: exclusively as a cultural artifact. Keywords Cognitive evolution . Reasoning . Niche construction . Cognitive archeology .
Deductive logic . Cultural evolution
1 Introduction Naturalizing human reasonable agency persists a central challenge for the current philosophy of mind. Examples of daily activities quickly turn into examples fraught with problems. Consider Maryam. She is contemplating whether to minor in anthropology or mathematics. Her major subject is philosophy, so she wants a reasonable
* Fabian Seitz [email protected]
1
Institut für Philosophie, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, D-60629 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
F. Seitz
complement for her affinity. She thinks about it thoroughly and eventually decides to go for anthropology. Mary does not know it, but she is a miracle. From the standpoint of the metaphysics of logic, that is. Why is that? First, she is a sentient living organism. She has an evolutionary history and, correspondingly, a distinct internal organization and specific needs. Like all animals, she possesses abilities for object-directed cognition and purposive behavior. Second, Mary did two things: she believed one thing and then another and finally combined these beliefs with one of her desires to form an intention on what to do. Reasoning did both: on the one side, to figure out what to believe and on the other, to deliberate and to reflect on what to do, henceforth being able to justify her doings in retrospect. Thereby, she can demarcate good lines of thoughts from flaws. She has some feeling for what counts as good justification. If she is right that philosophy sho
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