Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes

This book develops the tools necessary to transform the philosophical study of knowledge into a proper scientific discipline.

William F. Harms (Author)

9780521039215, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 August 2007

284 pages, 34 b/w illus. 8 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.428 kg

'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

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.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Generalizing Evolutionary Theory: 1. Replicator theories
2. Ontologies of evolution and cultural transmission
Part II. Modeling Information Flow in Evolutionary Processes: 3. Population dynamics
4. Information theory
5. Selection as an information-transfer process
6. Multilevel information transfer
7. Information in internal states
Part III. Meaning Conventions and Normativity: 8. Primitive content
9. Is and ought
Epilogue: Paley's Watch and other stories
Notes
Appendix: proof of information gain under frequency-independent discrete replicator dynamics for population of n types
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK]