Taylor Thiel Davis
Department of Philosophy
University of British Columbia
1866 Main Mall
Buchanan E370
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6T 1Z1
Email: taylorthiel@yahoo.com
Phone: (778) 388-0460
Web: www.taylordavisphilosophy.com
AOS: Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind
AOC: Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Social Science, Ethics (moral psychology),
Philosophy of Religion
DISSERTATION: Cultural Evolution and the Evolution of Religion
Supervisor: Eric Margolis
Committee: Christopher Stephens, John Beatty
The emerging science of cultural evolution and the emerging science of religious evolution (the
evolution of traits distinguishing religious individuals from non-religious ones) have recently
entered into a reciprocal relationship, each having something to offer the other. The theory of
cultural evolution offers the field of religious evolution a powerful set of concepts for explaining
important traits and facts that are not explained by genetic evolution. But the theory of cultural
evolution itself faces important challenges, and is often misunderstood, and focusing on religion
makes some abstract and difficult questions more concrete and tractable. Thus, the field of
religious evolution also offers the theory of cultural evolution a way of clarifying its commitments,
and of demonstrating its ability to respond to important challenges. My dissertation addresses
both sides of this reciprocal relationship, taking advantage of the opportunity to develop at the
same time both a better understanding of the nature of religion and a better understanding of the
nature of cultural phenomena in general.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Expected: June 2014
M.A. in Philosophy, Tufts University
B.S. in Psychology, University of Georgia
With High Honors
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TAYLOR T. DAVIS
GRADUATE COURSEWORK
The University of British Columbia
Eric Margolis
Christopher Stephens
Margaret Schabas
Paul Russell
Paul Russell
Sylvia Berryman
Matt Bedke
Derek Matravers
Roberta Ballarin
Modularity in Cognitive Science
Evolution and Rationality
History of Science
Hobbes’ Leviathan
Bernard Williams’ Moral Theory
Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mind (directed reading)
Intuitionist Theories of Moral Epistemology
Objectivity in Aesthetics
Proseminar in Philosophy of Language
Tufts University
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Ray Jackendoff
Patrick Forber
Mark Richard
Mark Richard
Jody Azzouni
Stephen White
David Denby
Cultural Evolution
Consciousness Explained
Cognition of Society and Culture
Philosophy of Biology
Truth and Objectivity
Logic
Observation
Epistemology
Metaphysics
PUBLICATIONS
Peer Reviewed
In press
Davis, T. & Margolis, E. “The Priority of the Individual in Cultural
Inheritance.” Comment on P. E. Smaldino, The Cultural Evolution of
Emergent Group-Level Traits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
2002
Marsh, R. L., Hicks, J. L., & Davis, T. “Source Monitoring Does Not Alleviate
(and May Exacerbate) the Occurrence of Memory Conjunction Errors.” Journal of
Memory and Language 47, 315-326.
Book Review
2003
Fragaszy, D. M., Williams, C., Landau, K., Parthasarathy, V., & Davis, T. Rev.
of Origins of Intelligence, by S. Parker and M. McKinney. “An Architecture for
Comparative Cognitive Development.” American Journal of Primatology 59,
133-137.
Under Review
Davis, T. “The Goldberg Exaptation Model: Unifying Adaptationist and Byproduct Theories of Religion.”
Davis, T. “Group Selection in the Evolution of Religion: Genetic Evolution or
Cultural Evolution?” (Revise & Resubmit, August 2013 at Journal of Cognition
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TAYLOR T. DAVIS
and Culture).
Deery, O., Davis, T., & Carey, J. “The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the
Question of Natural Compatibilism.” (Revise & Resubmit, June 2013 at
Philosophical Psychology).
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
2009-13
2012-13
2011-12
2009-11
2009-10
2008-9
2008-9
2008-9
Four Year Doctoral Fellowship, $16,000 + tuition, UBC. Tenable for four years.
International Partial Tuition Scholarship, $3,100, UBC. Tenable for one year.
International Partial Tuition Scholarship, $3,100, UBC. Tenable for one year.
International Partial Tuition Scholarship, $3,100, UBC. Tenable for two years.
Faculty of Arts Graduate Award, $5,000, UBC. Tenable for one year.
International Partial Tuition Scholarship, $2,100, UBC. Tenable for one year.
Faculty of Arts Graduate Award, $10,000, UBC. Tenable for one year.
Graduate Entrance Scholarship, $11,000, UBC. Tenable for one year.
PRESENTATIONS
2013
“The Free-Will Intuitions Scale and the Question of Natural Compatibilism,”
co-authored paper with Oisin Deery and Jasmine Carey, Philosophy Department
Spring Colloquium on Agents and Persons, University of British Columbia,
March 15 (invited)
2012
“Intuitions in a New Light: Expanding the Methods of Experimental Philosophy,”
co-authored paper with Oisin Deery & Jasmine Carey, Annual Meeting of the
Society for Philosophy and Psychology, June 21-24, the University of Colorado at
Boulder (poster, refereed)
2012
Comment on Jason Simus, “Aesthetic and Other Theoretical Virtues in
Science," Pacific Division Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, Pacific
Grove, California, April 11-13 (invited)
2011
“Out Standing in the Field: Intellectual Foraging for Truths that Matter,”
Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Universite du
Quebec a Montreal, Montreal, July 7-9 (poster, refereed)
2010
“Genuinely Aesthetic Judgment of Theories,” Spring Aesthetics Workshop,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, June 16 (invited)
2010
“The Cognitive Science of Science: Hypothetical Reasoning and Inference to the
Best Explanation,” Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology,
Lewis and Clark College, Portland, June 10-11 (poster, refereed)
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Graduate Instructor (Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia)
Full responsibility for all aspects of course design, instruction, grading and administration.
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TAYLOR T. DAVIS
2011
Introduction to Philosophy
Teaching Assistant (Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia)
Led discussion sections; graded exams and essays.
2013
2012
2011
2010-11
2010
2009
Philosophy of Religion
Introduction to Philosophy
Introduction to Philosophy
Introduction to Philosophy (two terms)
Introduction to Moral Theory
Philosophy of Aristotle
Teaching Assistant (Department of Philosophy, Tufts University)
Led discussion sections; graded exams and essays.
2008
2007
2007
2006
Phenomenology & Existentialism
Political Philosophy
Reasoning & Critical Thinking
Computational Models of Consciousness
RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS
2013-current Under Eric Margolis, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Editing manuscripts for a 27-chapter volume forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
Laboratory Experience
2009-10
Under Joseph Henrich
Departments of Psychology and Economics, University of British Columbia
Managed a data collection team for the Canadian sample of a cross-cultural study
on epistemic norms, as part of the AHRC Culture and the Mind Project.
2009
Under Stephen Stich
Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University
Developed testing materials and conducted pilot research for an ongoing experimental
philosophy project examining the folk concept of morality.
1998-99
Under Richard L. Marsh
Department of Psychology, University of Georgia
Collected data for a series of four experiments investigating the effects of source
monitoring on memory conjunction errors.
Workshop Participation
2011
Experimental Philosophy of Free Will Boot Camp, Yale University, August 12–13
Instructors: S. Nichols, J. Knobe, F. Cushman, D. Pereboom
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TAYLOR T. DAVIS
Participants were selected to present a research proposal for critique by the instructors
and fellow participants. Instruction in experimental methods and in the philosophy of free
will was also provided, along with funding for data collection.
AHRC Culture and the Mind Project (invited):
This project established a global network of field sites to support data collection on a
large number of cross-cultural studies. In a series of workshops, participating researchers
selected and developed the experiments that would make use of this network.
2011
2009
2009
University of California, January 6-9
University of Sheffield, May 15-17
University of British Columbia, January 9-11
DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE
2011-12
Graduate Student Representative, University of British Columbia
Represented graduate students at departmental meetings; coordinated graduate student
events, collective decisions and desk and office assignments.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Philosophical Association
Society for Philosophy and Psychology
REFERENCES
John Beatty - Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Email: john.beatty@ubc.ca.
Joseph Henrich - Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Evolution, Departments
of Psychology and Economics, University of British Columbia
Email: henrich@psych.ubc.ca.
Eric Margolis - Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Email: eric.margolis@ubc.ca.
Ara Norenzayan - Professor, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
Email: ara@psych.ubc.ca.
Paul Russell - Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Email: paul.russell@ubc.ca.
Christopher Stephens - Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of British
Columbia
Email: cstephen@mail.ubc.ca.
Stephen Stich - Professor, Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Science,
Rutgers University
Email: sstich@ruccs.rutgers.edu.
TAYLOR T. DAVIS
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DISSERTATION SUMMARY:
Cultural Evolution and the Evolution of Religion
While theories treating religion as a natural phenomenon have been on offer for centuries, a
genuine science of religion has taken root only in the last two decades, as researchers from across
the social sciences have begun to approach the subject from the shared perspective of
evolutionary theory. As this field has begun to bloom, however, and as the observations have
begun to pour in, some difficult theoretical questions have become more pressing. Which
psychological traits count as the religious ones? What does it mean to say that religion is an
adaptation? One goal of my dissertation, which I address in two independent papers comprising
the first two chapters, is to address philosophical questions such as these that arise from the
scientific study of religion. In the third chapter, however, I pursue a different goal. The theory of
cultural evolution figures prominently in the literature on religion, and this theory has the
potential to make crucial, fundamental contributions in this area. Yet the theory itself faces
general challenges, and is often misunderstood. By focusing on how cultural evolutionary theory
explains religion in particular, I identify ways of clarifying the theory’s more general
commitments, and of demonstrating how it can respond to challenges that are not specific to its
claims about religion.
In Chapter 1 I address a debate concerning the role of group selection in explaining one trait
that is particularly important for understanding the relationship between religious psychology
and moral psychology: altruism. Accounts of altruism based on group selection have received a
great deal of attention in recent years, and one of the most prominent defenders of this theory,
biologist David Sloan Wilson, has argued that religious altruism reveals the influence of group
selection on human populations. Still more recently, the influential psychologist Jonathan Haidt
has adopted Wilson’s account, developing it further, and incorporating it into his own theory of
moral psychology. But Haidt and Wilson appeal to cultural evolution and genetic evolution
together in the same theory, and this means their account faces a crucial question: is group
selection supposed to explain culturally inherited religious traits, or genetically inherited religious
traits? They answer “both,” but this answer is based on a misunderstanding of the relationship
between genetic evolution and cultural evolution. I argue that when this misunderstanding is
addressed, it becomes clear that group selection is significant only in cultural evolution, and not
in genetic evolution.
In Chapter 2, I address a more general question, which some take to be the fundamental
question in the field: is religion an adaptation? The earliest theories answered “no,” arguing that
religious beliefs are adaptive by-products, or products of cognitive systems whose adaptive value
is based on other, non-religious functions. More recently, however, evidence has accumulated for
the view that religion is an adaptation, because of its role in promoting cooperation. This created
the now venerable debate between adaptationists and by-product theorists, which every major
theorist in the field has eventually been forced to address. I argue, however, that adaptationist
and by-product theories are not only mutually consistent, but actually complimentary parts of a
single, unified theory. I extract from the existing literature a model of the religious phenotype
that has been offered independently (and in very different terms) by theorists from both sides of
the adaptation/by-product debate. I then argue that shared assumptions embodied in this model
are already sufficient for unifying adaptationist and by-product accounts of religion, and for
moving beyond the debate.
TAYLOR T. DAVIS
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In the third chapter I consider what the study of religion in particular can teach us about
human evolution in general. In Chapter 2 I identify a methodological distinction between
“broad” and “narrow” forms of adaptationist framework—a division that underlies the debate
between adaptationists and by-product theorists. The narrow framework is defined by rejection
of appeals to cultural evolution and group selection, and all by-product theories of religion are
based on this approach. In contrast, the broad framework, on which virtually all adaptationist
theories of religion are based, includes appeals to cultural evolution and group selection in
addition to appeals to individual-level genetic selection. In Chapter 3 I argue against the narrow
framework in general—not just for religion, but for any kind of psychological trait. Once we see
how adaptationist and by-product theories of religion can be integrated, it becomes apparent that
appeals to cultural evolution and group selection in general may be integrated with appeals to
individual-level genetic selection. There is thus no motivation for imposing the constraints that
the narrow framework imposes on adaptationist theorizing.
The emerging science of culture and the emerging science of religion each have something to
offer the other. The theory of cultural evolution appears to explain a lot about the origin and
function of religion. If it does, then by examining how it does we stand to learn almost as much
about cultural evolution as we do about religion. During the same recent decades in which the
evolutionary perspective has become the foundation of the interdisciplinary science of religion,
the evolutionary perspective itself has begun to change, at least with regard to traits of human
psychology. Twenty years ago adaptationist theories in psychology appealed almost exclusively to
genetic selection at the individual level, but developments since then have caused a growing
number of scientists to suspect that this is too narrow a view of human evolution. I argue that the
study of religion confirms these suspicions. By examining religion from the evolutionary
perspective, we learn about more than just the nature of religion. We also learn important lessons
about the evolutionary perspective itself.