Subjects of the World

by Davies, Paul Sheldon

• ISBN13: 9780226137629
• ISBN10: 0226137627
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin inOn the Origin of Species. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is.

Author Biography

Paul Sheldon Davies is the author of Norms of Nature: Naturalism and the Nature of Functions. He teaches philosophy at the College of William and Mary.

Table of Contents

A Progressive Orientation: Naturalism as Exploration	p. 1
The Vividness of Truth: Darwin's Romantic Rhetoric and the Evolutionary Framework	p. 3
Our Most Vexing Problem: Conceptual Conservatism and Conceptual Imperialism	p. 19
Naturalism as Exploration: The Elements of Reform	p. 35
The Allure of Agency: 'Purpose' in Biology	p. 53
The Real Heart of Darwinian Evolutionary Biology	p. 55
A Formative Power of a Self-Propagating Kind: Natural Purposes and the Concept Location Project	p. 76
A Persistent Mode of Understanding: The Psychological Power of 'Purpose'	p. 104
The Illusions of Agency: 'Free Will' and 'Moral Responsibility'	p. 135
The Death of an Aphorism: The Psychology of Free Will	p. 137
The Bare Possibility of Our Opinion: Libertarian Imperialism	p. 170
Words Give Us a Special Ability: Compatibilist Conservatism	p. 193
Appendix	p. 227
Notes	p. 229
Appreciation and Acknowledgments	p. 239
References	p. 243
Index	p. 253
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