The Puzzle of Belief Requires an Evolutionary Key to be Solved.

The puzzle of belief arises as currently no definition captures the various ways in which people believe. As a solution to this puzzle and to make the study of belief empirically tractable, Van Leeuwen and Lombrozo suggest acknowledging the plurality of beliefs and organizing beliefs according to their shared functions and traits. However, their proposal does not make yet the distinction between proper and derived functions of belief-generating cognitive systems. For that, we need a theoretical perspective anchored in evolutionary thinking. Such a perspective allows us to recognize the adaptive problems belief-generating cognitive systems solve and what sorts of beliefs they will tend to produce. By analyzing beliefs based on evolutionary considerations, we not only make the puzzle of belief empirically tractable, but also take an important step toward solving it.

Puritanism as moral advertisement helps solve the puzzle of ineffective moralization.

The moral disciplining theory proposes that people moralize excessive innocent behavior to discipline others to behave in ways that facilitate cooperation. However, such disciplining might not always be effective. To solve this puzzle of ineffective moralization we should think of puritanism in terms of moral advertisement aimed at reputation management rather than the manipulation of others.

Remote Consultations for Mental Health: Patient Experiences.

OBJECTIVE: An exponential implementation of remote mental health care has been observed, but little data is available on experiences and barriers of remote health from a patient's perspective. This study investigated experiences associated with several forms of remote consultations (both telephone and online video) for mental health care during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic with a particular focus on patients' experiences. METHODS: This study includes results of an online web-based survey filled in by 512 patients on the use and experiences of remote mental health consultations and circulating between March and October 2021. RESULTS: Psychiatric consultations were initiated by the health care provider in 47.0% of cases, while psychological consultations were most often initiated in shared decision with the patient (54.9%). Only 28.8% of participants mentioned advantages regarding teleconsultations over face-to-face, compared to 39.3% for online video consultations. Moreover, 49.3% saw clear disadvantages for teleconsultations and 32.7% for video consultations. Positive factors associated with remote mental health care included when faced with transportation problems, followed by consultations primarily focusing on medication (for telephone consultations) or on more practical aspects (for video consultations). 25.0% of patients deemed conversations when being angry or sad to be feasible by telephone, and 33.0% considered these feasibly using video consultations. CONCLUSION: Remote consultations were deemed feasible, but the positive factors did not seem to outweigh the face-to-face contacts from a patient's perspective. Remote consultations will probably remain present in the following decades, although care must be taken when providing the possibility of remote mental health care.

"Trust Me, I'm a Scientist": How Philosophy of Science Can Help Explain Why Science Deserves Primacy in Dealing with Societal Problems.

Modern democratic societies tend to appeal to the authority of science when dealing with important challenges and solving their problems. Nevertheless, distrust in science remains widespread among the public, and, as a result, scientific voices are often ignored or discarded in favour of other perspectives. Though superficially "democratic", such a demotion of science in fact hinders democratic societies in effectively tackling their problems. Worryingly, some philosophers have provided ammunition to this distrust and scepticism of science. They either portray science as an institution that has unrightfully seized political power, or they claim that science constitutes only one voice among many and that scientists should know their proper place in our societies. As philosophers of science, we believe that it is potentially dangerous to undermine trust in science in this way. Instead, we believe that philosophers should help people to understand why science, even though it is far from perfect, deserves our trust and its special standing in modern societies. In this paper, we outline what such an explanation may look like from a naturalistic and pragmatic perspective, and we discuss the implications for the role of philosophy of science in science education.

Scaling up interactive argumentation by providing counterarguments with a chatbot.

Discussion is more convincing than standard, unidirectional messaging, but its interactive nature makes it difficult to scale up. We created a chatbot to emulate the most important traits of discussion. A simple argument pointing out the existence of a scientific consensus on the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) already led to more positive attitudes towards GMOs, compared with a control message. Providing participants with good arguments rebutting the most common counterarguments against GMOs led to much more positive attitudes towards GMOs, whether the participants could immediately see all the arguments or could select the most relevant arguments in a chatbot. Participants holding the most negative attitudes displayed more attitude change in favour of GMOs. Participants updated their beliefs when presented with good arguments, but we found no evidence that an interactive chatbot proves more persuasive than a list of arguments and counterarguments.

Methods for studying cultural attraction.

Cultural attraction theory (CAT) describes a general evolutionary process, cultural attraction, by which the spread and stability of cultural items (beliefs, practices, artifacts, etc.) result not just from differential reproduction, but also from transformations that systematically favor the reconstruction of cultural items of specific types. In this way, CAT aims to provide a general framework for the study of cultural evolution. In a thoughtful critical analysis, Buskell questions the ability of CAT to provide methodological guidance for research in cultural evolution. Can CAT be used to develop the sort of mid-range theories and models that often drive empirical work? Here we argue that CAT can indeed be used in this way, and we outline the methodological practices that students of cultural attraction have used and are currently developing.

Four misunderstandings about cultural attraction.

Cultural attraction theory (CAT) is a research agenda the purpose of which is to develop causal explanations of cultural phenomena. CAT is also an evolutionary approach to culture, in the sense that it treats culture as a population of items of different types, with the frequency of tokens of those types changing over time. Now more than 20 years old, CAT has made many positive contributions, theoretical and empirical, to the naturalization of the social sciences. In consequence of this growing impact, CAT has, in recent years, been the subject of critical discussion. Here, we review and respond to these critiques. In so doing, we also provide a clear and concise introduction to CAT. We give clear characterizations of CAT's key theoretical notions, and we outline how these notions are derived from consideration of the natural character of cultural phenomena (Box ). This naturalistic quality distinguishes CAT from other evolutionary approaches to culture.

Bringing Darwin into the social sciences and the humanities: cultural evolution and its philosophical implications.

In the field of cultural evolution it is generally assumed that the study of culture and cultural change would benefit enormously from being informed by evolutionary thinking. Recently, however, there has been much debate about what this "being informed" means. According to the standard view, an interesting analogy obtains between cultural and biological evolution. In the literature, however, the analogy is interpreted and used in at least three distinct, but interrelated ways. We provide a taxonomy in order to clarify these different meanings. Subsequently, we discuss the alternatives model of cultural attraction theory and memetics, which both challenge basic assumptions of the standard view. Finally, we briefly summarize the contributions to the special issue on Darwin in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which is the result of a collaborative project between scholars and scientists from the universities of Lille and Ghent. Furthermore, we explain how they add to the discussions about the integration of evolutionary thinking and the study of culture.

De-Problematizing 'GMOs': Suggestions for Communicating about Genetic Engineering.

The public debates concerning genetic engineering (GE) involve many non-scientific issues. The ensuing complexity is one reason why biotechnologists are reluctant to become involved. By sharing our personal experiences in science communication and suggesting ways to de-problematize GE, we aim to inspire our colleagues to engage with the public.

Fatal attraction: the intuitive appeal of GMO opposition.

Public opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) remains strong. By contrast, studies demonstrate again and again that GM crops make a valuable contribution to the development of a sustainable type of agriculture. The discrepancy between public opinion and the scientific evidence requires an explanation. We argue that intuitive expectations about the world render the human mind vulnerable to particular misrepresentations of GMOs. We explain how the involvement of particular intuitions accounts for the popularity, persistence, and typical features of GM opposition and tackle possible objections to our approach. To conclude, we discuss the implications for science education, science communication, and the environmental movement.

Irreducible incoherence and intelligent design: a look into the conceptual toolbox of a pseudoscience.

The concept of Irreducible Complexity (IC) has played a pivotal role in the resurgence of the creationist movement over the past two decades. Evolutionary biologists and philosophers have unambiguously rejected the purported demonstration of "intelligent design" in nature, but there have been several, apparently contradictory, lines of criticism. We argue that this is in fact due to Michael Behe's own incoherent definition and use of IC. This paper offers an analysis of several equivocations inherent in the concept of Irreducible Complexity and discusses the way in which advocates of the Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) have conveniently turned IC into a moving target. An analysis of these rhetorical strategies helps us to understand why IC has gained such prominence in the IDC movement, and why, despite its complete lack of scientific merits, it has even convinced some knowledgeable persons of the impending demise of evolutionary theory.