Samir Okasha approaches evolutionary biology from a philosophical
perspective in Agents and Goals in Evolution, analysing a mode of
thinking in biology called agential thinking. He considers how the
paradigm case involves treating an evolved organism as if it were an
agent pursuing a goal, such as survival or reproduction, and seeing
its phenotypic traits as strategies for achieving that goal or
furthering its biological interests. As agential thinking deliberately
transposes a set of concepts--goals, interests, strategies--from
rational human agents and to the biological world more generally,
Okasha's enquiry firstly looks at the justification for this: is it
mere anthropomorphism, or does it play a genuine intellectual role in
the science? From this central question, key points are considered
such as: how do we identify the 'goal' that evolved organisms will
behave as if they are trying to achieve? Can agential thinking ever be
applied to groups rather than to individual organisms? And how does
agential thinking relate to the controversies over
fitness-maximization in evolutionary biology? In addition, Okasha
examines the relation between the adaptive and the rational by
considering whether organisms can validly be treated as agent-like.
Should we expect their evolved behaviour to correspond with that of
rational agents as codified in the theory of rational choice? If so,
does this mean that the fitness-maximizing paradigm of the
evolutionary biologist can be mapped directly to the
utility-maximizing paradigm of the rational choice theorist? All of
these important questions are engagingly raised and discussed at
length.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780192546739
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter