What Moves Us? Unifying the biology of human behavior

stephen Downes，犹他大学“是什么打动了我们？”“人类是动物，他们的许多行为都可以用生物学来解释。这样的解释最终将成为自我理解的重要组成部分。研究人类行为生物学的不同方法的数量急剧增加，但统一方法是可能的这一假设仍然指导着研究人员。这种情况引出了科学哲学家对人类行为生物学进行详细研究的必要性。本建议就是要进行这样的检查。行为生态学家、行为遗传学家、进化心理学家和大量其他研究人员提出了各种各样的因果机制，他们认为这些机制是人类行为的基础。对这一范围广泛的因果机制进行仔细的阐述，是为人类行为提供一个可行的基于生物学的解释这一更大任务的重要组成部分。目前，还没有足够的全面的因果模型来涵盖人类行为生物学中各个学科的所有主张，这样一个全面的模型将为人类行为生物学中所有不同的研究传统都在进行统一的努力这一观点增加可信度。该提案有三个主要目的：1。提出并捍卫一个因果框架，该框架足以将人类行为的生物学方法统一起来。2. 提出详细的论据，表明民间心理学作为人类行为的包涵性解释框架的吸引力被生物学的工作破坏了。3. 提供一种内省的解释，承认生物学家提出的人类行为无意识机制的因果力量，同时解释我们缺乏对这些机制的内省访问。这个项目对科学哲学和心灵哲学都有贡献。因此，本书的目标读者是这些领域的哲学家，但也包括人类学家、生物学家、心理学家和社会生物学家，所有这些人都与理解其研究背后的因果框架有利害关系。该方法涉及认真对待各种生物学方法的细节，目的是吸引科学家参与哲学讨论。拟议的书将继续讨论由众多领域的研究人员开始的关于人类行为的各种生物学方法的潜在整合。对人类行为生物学的广泛批评瞄准了社会生物学，并认为社会生物学家接受了一种站不住脚的遗传决定论。拟建项目的目的之一是向这些批评者提供对研究人员在人类行为生物学方面的主张的准确评估。它将揭示，尽管对少数研究人员小心翼翼地指责基因决定论可能是公平的，但大多数研究人类行为的生物学家都不是基因决定论论者。此外，许多关于社会生物学和其他解释行为的生物学方法的批判性讨论都有伦理层面。虽然拟议的项目没有明确的伦理成分，但这项研究与伦理工作相关，因为对各种生物学家提出的广泛因果关系主张的清晰描述可能为这项研究的伦理考虑提供一个有用的起点。因此，该项目与生物学在人类理解中的作用的广泛跨学科讨论有关。

SES 0321875Stephen Downes, University of Utah"What Moves Us? Unifying the Biology of Human Behavior" Humans are animals and much of their behavior invites biological explanation. Such explanations will ultimately form an important part of self-understanding. The number of distinct approaches to the biology of human behavior has dramatically increased but the presupposition that a unified approach is possible still guides researchers. This situation introduces the need for a detailed examination of the biology of human behavior by philosophers of science. This proposal is to undertake such an examination. Behavioral ecologists, behavioral geneticists, evolutionary psychologists and a large range of other researchers propose a wide variety of causal mechanisms that they take to underlie human behavior. A careful articulation of this wide range of causal mechanisms is an important component of the bigger task of providing a viable biologically based account of human behavior. Currently, there is no adequate overarching causal model that captures all the claims in the various disciplines in the biology of human behavior and such an overarching model would add credibility to the idea that all the various research traditions in human behavioral biology are engaged in a unified endeavor. The proposal has three main aims: 1. To propose and defend a causal framework that is adequate to the task of unifying biological approaches to human behavior. 2. To present detailed arguments showing that appeals to folk psychology as an encompassing explanatory framework for human behavior are undermined by work in biology. 3. To provide an account of introspection that acknowledges the causal power of the unconscious mechanisms proposed by biologists of human behavior while explaining our lack of introspective access to these mechanisms. The project will contribute to both the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind. As a result, the intended audience is philosophers in these fields but also includes anthropologists, biologists, psychologists and sociobiologists, all of whom have a stake in understanding the causal framework underlying their research. The approach involves taking the details of various biological approaches seriously with the aim of drawing scientists into the philosophical discussion. The proposed book will continue the discussion about the potential integration of the various biological approaches to human behavior begun by researchers in numerous fields.A wide range of critics of the biology of human behavior target sociobiology and argue that sociobiologists embrace an untenable genetic determinism. One of the aims of the proposed project is to present such critics with an accurate assessment of the claims of researchers in the biology of human behavior. It will reveal that while it may be fair to level a carefully circumscribed charge of genetic determinism at a few researchers, most biologists of human behavior are not genetic determinists. Further, much critical discussion of sociobiology and other biological approaches to explaining behavior has an ethical dimension. Although the proposed project has no explicit ethical component, the research is relevant to work in ethics to the extent that a clear account of the wide range of causal claims made by various biologists of behavior may provide a useful starting point for ethical consideration of this research. As a result the project is relevant to broad based interdisciplinary discussions of the role of biology in human understanding.