There is a number of issues raised here. Let me make just two points. First, on the specific idea that "perhaps what we think is universally true is not, we’resimply programmed to think it is? ... that’d be a profoundlyeffective evolutionary tool for preservation of the species." But of course, if we were programmed to believe falsehoods , that would not in general promote survival. To get food, for example, we basically need true beliefs about where it is to be found. Of course, this isn't to say that we need always get things right: it might be that evolution has provided us with quick-and-dirty information processing capacities that deliver true beliefs often enough to promote survival. But the point remains that what promotes survival is a sufficient number of true beliefs. So the thought that our beliefs are generated by mechanisms provided by our evolutionary history cannot by itself be a reason for across-the-board distrust. Secondly and more generally, why should we...

An interesting question. Of course, our neuroscientist has learnt something about love, for she has learnt something about the neural causes of certain feelings bound up with love. But you might well feel that there is a sense in which her discoveries don't help us understand what really matters about love as part of human life (hasn't in the important sense learnt about the nature of love). That needs a quite different sort of enquiry, pursued by poets and playwrights and novelists down the ages. Compare: someone who tells us about the chemical composition of the pigments used in Botticelli's Primavera has told us something about the painting. But again such discoveries don't help us understand the painting in the way that matters, as a work of art, as part of the human world: understanding that requires something quite different from chemistry. We could stop there. But perhaps there is a bit more that needs to be said. For there can remain a nagging feeling that the neuroscientist...