Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes

by William F. Harms

• ISBN13: 9780521815147
• ISBN10: 0521815142
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

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. Multi-level 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.