Fryxell and Lundberg (1998) take this unificatory strategy even further to include some evolutionary considerations.
So although evolutionary considerations can help us understand some human behaviours, they must be applied judiciously.
So what lessons can we take from these evolutionary considerations of cancer?
Such approaches, in general, are called naturalistic epistemologies, whether they are directly motivated by evolutionary considerations or not.
Some philosophical theories of rationality are based on an initial acceptance of rationality across species, given evolutionary considerations.
Those which are directly motivated by evolutionary considerations and which argue that the growth of knowledge follows the pattern of evolution in biology are called "evolutionary epistemologies".
Though most arguments in this area try to show that evolutionary considerations make psychological altruism unlikely, Sober and Wilson (1998, Ch. 10) have offered an evolutionary argument in favor of psychological altruism.
Even when bolstered by evolutionary considerations of continuity between the species, the arguments are vulnerable, for the mere fact that humans have a trait does not entail that our closest relatives must have that trait too.
Leaving aside any such evolutionary considerations, however, still leaves us with the fact that the intuitive pull of special obligations competes with the intuitive pull of the consequentialist stance.
The key notion here is the proper function of, for example, the mechanisms underlying a particular stage in visual information processing (construed normatively in terms of what those mechanisms should do, and usually underwritten by evolutionary considerations).
"If evolutionary considerations became an essential component of medical best practice, we'd get immense gains—even bigger than those that will come from rapid diagnostics and less agricultural use".
