True beliefs are better guides to the world than false ones. This is the common-sense assumption that undergirds theorizing in evolutionary epistemology. According to Alvin Plantinga, however, evolution by natural selection does not care about truth: it cares only about fitness. If our cognitive faculties are the products of blind evolution, we have no reason to trust them, anytime or anywhere. Evolutionary naturalism, consequently, is a self-defeating position. Following up on earlier objections, we uncover three additional flaws in Plantinga's latest formulation of his argument: a failure to appreciate adaptive path dependency, an incoherent conception of content ascription, and a conflation of common-sense and scientific beliefs, which we diagnose as the 'foundationalist fallacy'. More fundamentally, Plantinga's reductive formalism with respect to the issue of cognitive reliability is inadequate to deal with relevant empirical details.

This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of 'ecological rationality' have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structure of the environment, many alleged biases and fallacies turn out to be artefacts of narrow norms and artificial set-ups. However, we argue that putative demonstrations of ecological rationality involve subtle locus shifts in attributions of rationality, conflating the adaptive rationale of heuristics with our own epistemic credentials. By contrast, other cases also involve an ecological reframing of human reason, but do not involve such problematic locus shifts. We discuss the difference between these cases, bringing clarity to the rationality debate.

In an important article published in this journal, Dryzek et al. (2011) champion the convocation of a deliberative global citizens' assembly (DGCA). In this article, I aim to further strengthen the case for a DGCA by addressing: (1) why a DGCA is likely to take a long-term perspective in the global interest; and (2) why it is so vital that a global institution should do so. I start by analyzing the nature of the issues requiring global policy. These issues, I will argue, are typically global cooperation problems. Cooperation problems pose two major challenges. The first is to prevent freeriding, that is, serving one's immediate interests at the expense of the global interest. The second is to align on an efficient global policy. In both respects, I will argue, a DGCA is a good candidate to yield desirable results (and is likely to do better than current supranational institutions). Policy Implications• The integration of a deliberative global citizens' assembly in the UN. • Solving global cooperation problems (such as climate change, poverty, mass migration, conflict and overpopulation) requires us to solve inherent free rider and coordination problems. Current supranational institutions are ill-equipped to do so.

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