View more on Dr Graham Wood in WARP

Expertise

Graham's research concerns the relationship between human values and a scientific understanding of the human condition. He examines this relationship within three realms: environmental philosophy, cognitive science of religion, and moral psychology. In his research environmental, religious, and moral values are examined using insights from philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology.

Research Themes

Graham's research is relevant to two of the University's research theme areas. His work in Moral Psychology and Cognitive Science of Religion is relevant to the theme Creativity, Culture and Society, and his work in Environmental Philosophy is relevant to the theme Environment, Resources and Sustainability.

Current projects

The Patchwork Mind. This research project develops an account of ‘belief’, based on the assumption that distinct evolutionary pressures have produced several distinct cognitive systems that each generate distinct types of ‘belief’. The account uses the function of beliefs to demarcate distinct categories of belief within the larger folk psychological category ‘belief’. It assumes that categories of belief, such as ‘predictive belief’ (including scientific belief), ‘co-operative belief’ (including moral and religious beliefs) and ‘communicative belief’ (including linguistic beliefs) can be understood ‘third personally’ in this way (even though this is not obvious from a ‘first personal’ perspective). This account does not preclude the existence of other categories, but these three categories are examined because they are likely to exist due to the evolutionary importance of prediction, cooperation, and communication. This project assumes, and builds on, Sellars’ distinction between the manifest and scientific images and takes Quine’s web of belief (as he applies it to prediction) and applies it to cooperation and communication. For a paper on this see ‘Do religious beliefs have a place within an ‘epistemically naturalized’ cognitive system?’Sophia 56 (4) 2017, pp. 539–556.

Belief in Objective Value: a modular account. This research develops an account of belief in objective moral values using the concept of mental modularity in the context of dual process theories of cognition. Introspection often seems to reveal that the prescriptive force of one's own moral judgements comes from the underlying 'objectivity' of values relevant to those judgements. This research examines the cognitive architecture of the human mind that may be responsible for generating such beliefs about the objectivity of moral values. For a paper on this see 'On the perceived objectivity of some moral beliefs', Philosophical Psychology, 33, (1) 2020 pp. 23-41.

Representations recorded in ancient religious narratives of the evolution of human self-consciousness. This research develops an account of the cultural and biological evolution of the concept of the 'self' and/or the evolution of self-consciousness (with particular reference to moral consciousness) within the human species. The research applies insights from evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory to 'origin narratives' within ancient religious texts (e.g., the biblical account of the fall in Genesis 2-3). For a presentation on this see – ‘The ‘Fall’ and the rise of ‘self-consciousness’.

Environmental Philosophy. I am involved in a number of research projects that examine philosophical questions in the context of human – environment interactions, for example, in relation to human interaction with the ocean.

Publications

Grants & Funding

Projects

Research Supervision

Graham welcomes expressions of interest from individuals considering undertaking an MA or PhD in Moral Psychology, Cognitive Science of Religion, or Environmental Philosophy.

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