Handbook of Paleoanthropology

Handbook of Paleoanthropology
Author: Winfried Henke
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 2057
Release: 2007-05-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3540324747

This 3-volume handbook brings together contributions by the world ́s leading specialists that reflect the broad spectrum of modern palaeoanthropology, thus presenting an indispensable resource for professionals and students alike. Vol. 1 reviews principles, methods, and approaches, recounting recent advances and state-of-the-art knowledge in phylogenetic analysis, palaeoecology and evolutionary theory and philosophy. Vol. 2 examines primate origins, evolution, behaviour, and adaptive variety, emphasizing integration of fossil data with contemporary knowledge of the behaviour and ecology of living primates in natural environments. Vol. 3 deals with fossil and molecular evidence for the evolution of Homo sapiens and its fossil relatives.

Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy

Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy
Author: Stavros Ioannidis
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2022-06-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030994252

This book offers a unique perspective on one of the deepest questions about the world we live in: is reality multi-leveled, or can everything be reduced to some fundamental ‘flat’ level? This deep philosophical issue has widespread implications in philosophy, since it is fundamental to how we understand the world and the basic entities in it. Both the notion of ‘levels’ within science and their ontological implications are issues that are underexplored in the philosophical literature. The volume reconsiders the view that reality contains many levels and opens new ways to understand the ontological status of the special sciences. The book focuses on major open questions that arise at the foundations of cognitive science, cognitive psychology, brain science and other special sciences, in particular with respect to the physical foundations of these sciences. For example: Is the mental computational? Do brains compute? How can the special sciences be autonomous from physics, grounded in, or based on, physics and at the same time irreducible to physics? The book is an important read for scientists and philosophers alike. It is of interest to philosophers of science, philosophers of mind and biology interested in the notion of levels, but also to psychologists, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists investigating such issues as the precise relation of the mental to the underlying neural structures and the appropriate approach to study it.

Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic

Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic
Author: Armin W. Schulz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-04-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1000067238

This book is the first systematic treatment of the philosophy of science underlying evolutionary economics. It does not advocate an evolutionary approach towards economics, but rather assesses the epistemic value of appealing to evolutionary biology in economics more generally. The author divides work in evolutionary economics into three distinct, albeit related, forms: a structural form, an evidential form, and a heuristic form. He then analyzes five examples of work in evolutionary economics falling under these three forms. For the structural form, he examines the parallelism between natural selection and economic decision making, and the parallelism between natural selection and market competition. For the evidential form, he looks at the relationship between animal and human economic decision making, and the evolutionary explanation of diversity in human economic decision making. Finally, for the heuristic form, he focuses on the plausibility of equilibrium modeling in evolutionary ecology and economics. In this way, he shows that linking evolutionary biology and economics can make for a powerful methodological tool that can enable progress in our understanding of various economics questions. Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, evolutionary biology, and economics.

The Place of Probability in Science

The Place of Probability in Science
Author: Ellery Eells
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2010-06-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9048136156

Science aims at the discovery of general principles of special kinds that are applicable for the explanation and prediction of the phenomena of the world in the form of theories and laws. When the phenomena themselves happen to be general, the principlesinvolved assume the form of theories; and when they are p- ticular, they assume the form of general laws. Theories themselves are sets of laws and de nitions that apply to a common domain, which makes laws indispensable to science. Understanding science thus depends upon understanding the nature of theories and laws, the logical structure of explanations and predictions based upon them, and the principles of inference and decision that apply to theories and laws. Laws and theories can differ in their form as well as in their content. The laws of quantum mechanics are indeterministic (or probabilistic), for example, while those of classical mechanics are deterministic (or universal) instead. The history of science re ects an increasing role for probabilities as properties of the world but also as measures of evidential support and as degrees of subjective belief. Our purpose is to clarify and illuminate the place of probability in science.

The Evolution of Mind

The Evolution of Mind
Author: Denise D. Cummins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1998
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780195110531

In The Evolution of Mind, outstanding figures on the cutting edge of evolutionary psychology follow clues provided by current neuroscientific evidence to illuminate many puzzling questions of human cognitive evolution. With contributions from psychologists, ethologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, the book offers a broad range of approaches to explore the mysteries of the mind's evolution - from investigating the biological functions of human cognition to drawing comparisons between human and animal cognitive abilities.

Sober Men and True

Sober Men and True
Author: Christopher McKee
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674007369

McKee scours sailors' diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral interviews to uncover the lives and secret thoughts of British men of the lower deck. From working-class childhoods to the hardships of finding civilian employment after leaving the navy, the former sailors speak with candor about the naval life. Illustrations.

Efficient Cognition

Efficient Cognition
Author: Armin W. Schulz
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2022-11-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0262546736

An argument that representational decision making is more cognitively efficient, allowing an organism to adjust more easily to changes in the environment. Many organisms (including humans) make decisions by relying on mental representations. Not simply a reaction triggered by perception, representational decision making employs high-level, non-perceptual mental states with content to manage interactions with the environment. A person making a decision based on mental representations, for example, takes a step back from her perceptions at the time to assess the nature of the world she lives in. But why would organisms rely on representational decision making, and what evolutionary benefits does this reliance provide to the decision maker? In Efficient Cognition, Armin Schulz argues that representational decision making can be more cognitively efficient than non-representational decision making. Specifically, he shows that a key driver in the evolution of representational decision making is that mental representations can enable an organism to save cognitive resources and adjust more efficiently to changed environments. After laying out the foundations of his argument—clarifying the central questions, the characterization of representational decision making, and the relevance of an evidential form of evolutionary psychology—Schulz presents his account of the evolution of representational decision making and critically considers some of the existing accounts of the subject. He then applies his account to three open questions concerning the nature of representational decision making: the extendedness of decision making, and when we should expect cognition to extend into the environment; the specialization of decision making and the use of simple heuristics; and the psychological sources of altruistic behaviors.

The Sober Revolution

The Sober Revolution
Author: Joseph Bohling
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Wine and wine making
ISBN: 9781501716041

Under the influence -- The imperative of intervention -- Quantity or quality? -- Drinking and driving -- Europeanizing the revolution -- Conclusion : terroir vs. McWorld

Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Author: Kenneth Williford
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2023-10-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 135161682X

David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical and literary classic of the highest order. It is also an extremely relevant work because of its engagement with issues as alive today as in Hume’s time: the Design Argument for a deity, the Problem of Evil, the dangers of superstition and fanaticism, the psychological roots and social consequences of religion. In this outstanding and unorthodox collection, an international team of scholars engage with Hume’s classic work. The chapters include state-of-the-art contributions on the central interpretive questions posed by the Dialogues as well as major contributions relating the work to contemporary issues in Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Moral Psychology, and Social Philosophy. Additional contributions tackle the historical and philosophical background of the Dialogues, relating it to Hume’s own systematic philosophy, to the work of other key seventeenth and eighteenth-century figures – Locke, Clarke, Bayle, Cudworth, Malebranche, Spinoza, Lord Bolingbroke, and Voltaire, among others – to early modern neo-Epicureanism in the life sciences, and, notably, to what Darwin missed by thinking too much like William Paley and not enough like Hume’s Philo. Overall, this volume provides fresh and even groundbreaking perspectives on Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. It is essential reading for students and scholars of Hume, the History of Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and the History and Philosophy of Science.