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  3. Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes
  • Cited by 56
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      28 July 2009
      26 April 2004
      ISBN:
      9780511498473
      9780521815147
      9780521039215
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511498473
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.542kg, 282 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.428kg, 284 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Philosophy of Science, Philosophy
      Series:
      Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology
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    • Selected: Digital
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    Subjects:
    Philosophy of Science, Philosophy
    Series:
    Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology
    Information

    Book description

    This book is intended to help transform epistemology - the traditional study of knowledge - into a rigorous discipline by removing conceptual roadblocks and developing formal tools required for a fully naturalized epistemology. The evolutionary approach which Harms favours begins with the common observation that if our senses and reasoning were not reliable, then natural selection would have eliminated them long ago. The challenge for some time has been how to transform these informal musings about evolutionary epistemology into a rigorous theoretical discipline capable of complementing current scientific studies of the evolution of cognition with a philosophically defensible account of meaning and justification.

    Reviews

    ‘I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in pursuing the development of a biologically based naturalistic account of knowledge and the evolution of cognitive mechanisms. It is not an easy read but will more than repay the careful reader with suggestive insights and, I believe, a unique slant on the host of problems that we have inherited from the work of Donald Campbell.’

    Michael Bradie - Bowling Green State University

    ‘This book contains original insights about information transmission and the evolution of meaning. After you read Part III the is/ought question will never look the same.’

    Brian Skyrms - University of California, Irvine

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    Contents

    Contents
    References
    References
    Reference
    Reference
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