Nicholas Shea (KCL), Functions for Representation

LAK 2.06, The Lakatos Building London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom

Abstract: In the cognitive sciences, representations play a central role in explaining behaviour. Characteristically, representing correctly explains successful behaviour and misrepresentation explains failure. The standards of success and failure at play here are often tacit. What are they based on? Teleosemantics offers one answer: success is a matter of performing an evolutionary function. This paper […]

Jonathan Birch (LSE) “Kin selection, group selection and cultural change”

LAK 2.06, The Lakatos Building London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom

Abstract: The relationship between kin and group selection is a vexed issue in evolutionary theory, and matters are not helped by a tendency to conflate questions of methodology with questions of causal reality. Drawing inspiration from W. D. Hamilton, I suggest we conceptualise the distinction between kin and group selection in terms of differences of […]

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