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Author: Samir Okasha Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192546732 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
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.
Author: Samir Okasha Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192546732 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
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.
Author: Michael G. Cordingley Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674972082 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
While viruses—the world’s most abundant biological entities—are not technically alive, they invade, replicate, and evolve within living cells. Michael Cordingley goes beyond our familiarity with infections to show how viruses spur evolutionary change in their hosts and shape global ecosystems, from ocean photosynthesis to drug-resistant bacteria.
Author: Timothy Leary Publisher: Ronin Publishing ISBN: 9781579510435 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
An encore to Musings on Human Metamorphoses in which Leary delves deeper into his vision of "human future history." He likens human society to that of insect hives and shows how certain evolved evolutionary agents (mutants) are upsetting hive and causing it to evolve. Eventually we will become the aliens. The book describes the struggle between the forces moving into the future and those attempting to stop change. While most people associate Leary solely with LSD and debauchery, this fascinating discourse has little mention of drugs.
Author: Michael Tomasello Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262370212 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 174
Book Description
A leading developmental psychologist proposes an evolutionary pathway to human psychological agency. Nature cannot build organisms biologically prepared for every contingency they might possibly encounter. Instead, Nature builds some organisms to function as feedback control systems that pursue goals, make informed behavioral decisions about how best to pursue those goals in the current situation, and then monitor behavioral execution for effectiveness. Nature builds psychological agents. In a bold new theoretical proposal, Michael Tomasello advances a typology of the main forms of psychological agency that emerged on the evolutionary pathway to human beings. Tomasello outlines four main types of psychological agency and describes them in evolutionary order of emergence. First was the goal-directed agency of ancient vertebrates, then came the intentional agency of ancient mammals, followed by the rational agency of ancient great apes, ending finally in the socially normative agency of ancient humans. Each new form of psychological organization represented increased complexity in the planning, decision-making, and executive control of behavior. Each also led to new types of experience of the environment and, in some cases, of the organism’s own psychological functioning, leading ultimately to humans’ experience of an objective and normative world that governs all of their thoughts and actions. Together, these proposals constitute a new theoretical framework that both broadens and deepens current approaches in evolutionary psychology.
Author: Stefano Nolfi Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262140706 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
An overview of the basic concepts and methodologies of evolutionary robotics, which views robots as autonomous artificial organisms that develop their own skills in close interaction with the environment and without human intervention.
Author: Aleksander Byrski Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319513885 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
This book addresses agent-based computing, concentrating in particular on evolutionary multi-agent systems (EMAS), which have been developed since 1996 at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, Poland. It provides the relevant background information on and a detailed description of this computing paradigm, along with key experimental results. Readers will benefit from the insightful discussion, which primarily concerns the efficient implementation of computing frameworks for developing EMAS and similar computing systems, as well as a detailed formal model. Theoretical deliberations demonstrating that computing with EMAS always helps to find the optimal solution are also included, rounding out the coverage.
Author: American Mathematical Society. Short Course Publisher: American Mathematical Soc. ISBN: 0821853260 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 186
Book Description
This volume is based on lectures delivered at the 2011 AMS Short Course on Evolutionary Game Dynamics, held January 4-5, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Evolutionary game theory studies basic types of social interactions in populations of players. It combines the strategic viewpoint of classical game theory (independent rational players trying to outguess each other) with population dynamics (successful strategies increase their frequencies). A substantial part of the appeal of evolutionary game theory comes from its highly diverse applications such as social dilemmas, the evolution of language, or mating behaviour in animals. Moreover, its methods are becoming increasingly popular in computer science, engineering, and control theory. They help to design and control multi-agent systems, often with a large number of agents (for instance, when routing drivers over highway networks or data packets over the Internet). While these fields have traditionally used a top down approach by directly controlling the behaviour of each agent in the system, attention has recently turned to an indirect approach allowing the agents to function independently while providing incentives that lead them to behave in the desired way. Instead of the traditional assumption of equilibrium behaviour, researchers opt increasingly for the evolutionary paradigm and consider the dynamics of behaviour in populations of agents employing simple, myopic decision rules.
Author: Chen, Shu-Heng Publisher: IGI Global ISBN: 1605668990 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 383
Book Description
"This book compiles numerous ongoing projects and research efforts in the design of agents in light of recent development in neurocognitive science and quantum physics, providing readers with interdisciplinary applications of multi-agents systems, ranging from economics to engineering"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Samir Okasha
Author: Samir Okasha
Author: D. M. Walsh
Author: Michael G. Cordingley
Author: Timothy Leary
Author: Michael Tomasello
Author: Stefano Nolfi
Author: Aleksander Byrski
Author: American Mathematical Society. Short Course
Author: Volker Nannen
Author: Chen, Shu-Heng