Complexity and the Function of Mind in NatureThis book is a further contribution to the series Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology. It is an ambitious attempt to explain the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing to link philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of "externalist" explanations. Two sets of questions drive the argument. First, is it possible to develop an informative philosophical theory about the mind by linking it to properties of environmental complexity? Second, what is the nature of externalist patterns of explanation? What is at stake in attempting to understand the internal in terms of the external? The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of the idea in the work of Dewey and Spencer is considered, as is the impact of recent evolutionary theory on our understanding of the place of mind in nature. This is a highly original philosophical project that will appeal to a broad range of philosophers, especially those working in the philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. It will also interest evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and historians of science. |
Contents
Naturalism and Teleology | 3 |
Spencer and Dewey | 5 |
Outline of the book | 9 |
Thought and act | 11 |
Two concepts of function | 14 |
Teleonomic and instrumental views of cognition | 21 |
A simple concept of complexity | 24 |
Externalism and Internalism | 30 |
The Question of Correspondence | 166 |
Some false dichotomies | 168 |
A fuel for success | 171 |
Explaining representation | 175 |
Successlinked theories | 178 |
Millikans maps | 184 |
A stocktake | 187 |
A flurry over fitness | 188 |
A fast tour | 31 |
Internalism | 37 |
The larger landscape | 42 |
Contesting the explanandum | 45 |
The location of the internalexternal divide | 48 |
Problems of adjudication | 50 |
Cexternalist explanations | 57 |
Cognition as organic complexity | 59 |
Spencers Version | 66 |
Life and mind | 69 |
Continuities | 72 |
Homeostasis and cognition | 76 |
Spencers explanatory program | 79 |
Directindirect instructiveselective | 86 |
James interests | 90 |
Deweys Version | 100 |
Dewey on life | 102 |
Dewey on continuity | 104 |
Indeterminacy and complexity | 106 |
Past and present | 108 |
Selection and the pattern of inquiry | 113 |
Pragmatism and reliabilism | 116 |
A simulation | 121 |
A summary of progress made so far | 124 |
On Construction | 131 |
Two lines of dissent | 135 |
Biological constructivism | 141 |
What environments contain | 148 |
Other views | 151 |
The status of complexity | 153 |
Construction and realism | 157 |
Constructivist philosophies of science | 161 |
Significance of the two trends | 192 |
Summary of Part I | 195 |
Models | 205 |
Adaptive Plasticity | 207 |
Biological background to the basic model | 208 |
The basic model | 209 |
The inducible defense case part I | 214 |
The precarious and stable revisited | 216 |
Comparison to a Bayesian model of experimentation | 217 |
Another model using regularity and change | 220 |
Extensions of the basic model geometric means | 221 |
Variation within and between trials | 224 |
The Signal Detection Model | 232 |
Optimal cues and acceptable cues | 237 |
The costs of plasticity | 238 |
Paying for perception | 244 |
On reliability | 247 |
Complex Individuals Complex Populations | 255 |
Polymorphism | 256 |
Individual homeostasis | 258 |
Homeostasis and the population | 262 |
Levenes theme | 264 |
The rhythm method | 268 |
Levins machinery | 271 |
The coarse and the fine | 277 |
A counterexample | 278 |
The groupselectionist structure of Levins model | 281 |
Quasihomeostasis | 284 |
Summary of Part II | 286 |
291 | |
309 | |
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Common terms and phrases
a₁ a₂ adaptation adaptationism adaptationist agent argument arithmetic mean associated basic behavior belief biology bryozoan C₁ C₂ causal chapter claim cognition concept consequence construction constructivist correspondence described Dewey's view discussion distinction Dretske empiricism empiricist environmental complexity thesis epistemic epistemology evolution evolutionary example expected payoff explanandum explanatory external externalist explanation externalist views factors flexibility function genetic genotype geometric mean heterogeneity heterosis heterozygote homeostasis homeostatic homozygotes idea important individual inner intelligence internal James Lamarck Levins Lewontin living systems mean fitness mechanisms mental Millikan mind natural selection naturalistic optimal organic complexity organic system organism and environment organism's pattern payoff matrix phenotype phenotypic plasticity philosophy plasticity polymorphism population population-level possible pragmatist problem produce relation relevant reliability reliability properties representation response role S₁ sense specific Spencer and Dewey stasis strategy structure success teleonomic theory things thought tion truth understood variability variation