Selectionism: Towards a synthesis of the biological and the psychological

Abstract

In the present work, I describe my own version of selectionism as a founding philosophy for attempts to synthesize the biological and the psychological, Selectionism constitutes a metanarrative that is conventionalist (for it rejects an essentialist theory of definition), experimentalist (for it considers experimentation as the most reliable way of knowledge of basic principles) and hierarchist (for it characterizes reality in terms of hierarchical systems of interacting levels of organization). Such a metanarrative allows us to legitimate computer simulations in 'Artificial Life' as a basic research tool and adequate context for at least one realization of said synthesis.