From a Biological Point of View: Essays in Evolutionary Philosophy

by Elliott Sober

Overview

This new collection of essays will appeal to a readership that extends well beyond the frontiers of the philosophy of science. Sober shows how ideas in evolutionary biology bear in significant ways on traditional problems in philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and metaphysics. Among the topics addressed are psychological egoism, solipsism, and the interpretation of belief and utterance, empiricism, Ockham's razor, causality, essentialism, and scientific laws.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521477536
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/30/1994
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.41(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor of Philosophy and William F. Vilas Research Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison where he has taught since 1974. His research is in philosophy of science, especially in the philosophy of evolutionary biology. Sober's books include The Nature of Selection - Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus (1984), Reconstructing the Past - Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference (1988), Philosophy of Biology (1993), From a Biological Point of View - Essays in Evolutionary Philosophy (1994), and Unto Others - The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (1998), coauthored with David Sloan Wilson.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Did evolution make us psychological egoists?; 2. Why not solipsism?; 3. The adaptive advantage of learning and a priori prejudice; 4. The primacy of truth-telling and the evolution of lying; 5. Prospects for an evolutionary ethics; 6. Contrastive empiricism; 7. Let's razor Ockham's razor; 8. The principle of the common cause; 9. Explanatory presupposition; 10. Apportioning casual responsibility; 11. Evolution, population thinking, and essentialism; 12. Temporally oriented laws; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"The arguments in each essay are cogent and presented in a clear style....For those biologists interested in these basic issues (and that should be most of us!) and with an adequate background this book offers rich material." Patrick W. Colgan, The Canadian Field-Naturalist

From the Publisher