Presentist Social Functionalism: Bringing Contemporary Evolutionary Biology to the Social Sciences

Armin Schulz is an interdisciplinary researcher investigating what we can learn from linking evolutionary biology and the cognitive and social sciences. His particular focus is on the evolutionary pressures on representational decision-making, both with a view towards cognitive psychology and economics.He earned a BSc and MPhil in economics and philosophy from the London School of Economics, and received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (under the supervision of Elliott Sober). After that, he returned to the LSE as an assistant professor, where he spent a further three and a half years before joining the philosophy department at the University of Kansas, where is currently a professor. He is the author of two books (“Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic: Evolutionary Biology, Economics, and the Philosophy of Their Relationship,” Routledge, 2020, and "Efficient Cognition: The Evolution of Representational Decision Making," MIT Press, 2018) as well as over30 papers in the leading journals in the field. He has presented his research in many parts of the world and has experience in engaging with non-professional audiences through interviews at National Public Radio and articles in Aeon magazine (among others). He regularly teaches classes in cognitive science, philosophy of social science, and philosophy of science.

• Chapter 1. The Theoretical Backbone—Social Institutions, Functionalism, and Social Science.- Chapter 2. Missing Mechanisms, Arbitrary Assignments, and Counterfactual Conundrums—Existing Accounts of Social Functionalism and Their Problems.- Chapter 3. Presentist Social Functionalism—The Foundations.- Chapter 4. Presentist Social Functionalism and the Function of Corporations.- Chapter 5. Institutional Corruption—The Presentist Social Functionalist Account.- Chapter 6. Artifacts—A Presentist Social Functionalist Account (co-written with Clint Hurshman).- Chapter 7. Conclusion.