From a Biological Point of View
Essays in Evolutionary Philosophy

Professor Sober shows how the worlds of philosophical and biological inquiry are interrelated.

Elliott Sober (Author)

9780521477536, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 September 1994

268 pages, 11 b/w illus. 1 table
23.9 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

"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

Elliott Sober is one of the leading philosophers of science and is a former winner of the Lakatos Prize, the major award in the field. 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. Amongst the topics addressed are psychological egoism, solipsism, and the interpretation of belief and utterance, empiricism, Ockham's razor, causality, essentialism, and scientific laws. The collection will prove invaluable to a wide range of philosophers, primarily those working in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, and epistemology.

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.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA], Social & political philosophy [HPS]