What Moves Us? Unifying the biology of human behavior

是什么让我们感动？

• 批准号: 0321875
• 负责人: Stephen Downes
• 金额: $ 7.42万
• 依托单位: University of Utah
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-01-01 至 2004-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0321875&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: What; Moves; Us; Unifying; biology

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.

犹他大学的斯蒂芬·唐斯：《什么能打动我们？统一人类行为的生物学》人类是动物，他们的很多行为都需要生物学的解释。这样的解释最终将形成自我理解的重要部分。研究人类行为生物学的不同方法的数量已经大幅增加，但统一方法是可能的这一前提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。这项建议就是为了进行这样的审查。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。仔细阐述这一广泛的因果机制是为人类行为提供可行的生物学基础这一更大任务的重要组成部分。目前，还没有一个足够全面的因果模型来涵盖人类行为生物学中不同学科的所有主张，这样一个总体模型将增加人类行为生物学中所有各种研究传统都在进行统一努力的想法的可信度。该提案有三个主要目标：1.提出并捍卫一个因果框架，该框架足以完成统一人类行为的生物学方法的任务。2.提出详细的论点，表明民间心理学作为对人类行为的包罗万象的解释框架的吸引力被生物学的工作破坏了。3.提供一种自省的描述，承认生物学家提出的人类行为的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。该项目将对科学哲学和心灵哲学作出贡献。因此，目标受众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关。这种方法涉及到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。这本拟议的书将继续由众多领域的研究人员开始的关于各种生物学方法与人类行为的潜在整合的讨论。对人类行为生物学的广泛批评针对社会生物学，并认为社会生物学家接受站不住脚的基因决定论。拟议项目的目的之一是向这些批评者呈现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提出谨慎限制的遗传决定论指控可能是公平的，但大多数研究人类行为的生物学家并不是遗传决定论者。此外，关于社会生物学和其他生物学方法来解释行为的许多批判性讨论都有伦理方面的问题。尽管拟议的项目没有明确的伦理内容，但该研究与伦理学的工作相关，因为清楚地说明各种行为生物学家提出的广泛的因果关系主张，可能为本研究的伦理考虑提供一个有用的起点。因此，该项目与关于生物学在人类理解中的作用的广泛的跨学科讨论有关。