Social evolution theory conventionally takes an externalist explanatory stance, treating observed cooperation as explanandum and the positive assortment of cooperative behaviour as explanans. We ask how the circumstances bringing about this positive assortment arose in the first place. Rather than merely push the explanatory problem back a step, we move from an externalist to an interactionist explanatory stance, in the spirit of Lewontin and the Niche Construction theorists. We develop a theory of ‘social niche construction’ in which we consider biological (...) entities to be both the subject and object of their own social evolution. Some important cases of the evolution of cooperation have the side-effect of causing changes in the hierarchical level at which the evolutionary process acts. This is because the traits that act to align the fitness interests of particles in a collective can also act to diminish the extent to which those particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance, while augmenting the extent to which collectives of such particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance. In this way, we can explain upward transitions in the hierarchical level at which the Darwinian machine operates in terms of particle-level selection, even though the outcome of the process is a collective-level selection regime. Our theory avoids the logical and metaphysical paradoxes faced by other attempts to explain evolutionary transitions. (shrink)

He then proceeds with an examination of the picture theory developed by Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Goodman, and concludes with an examination of Patricia Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Robert Cummins, and Mark Rollins. The use of the historical development of representationalism to pose a central problem in contemporary cognitive science is unique.

Certainly the most elaborate single extant monument of Renaissance French prose literature, Michel de Montaigne's "Essais" presents a subject matter that often discusses and analyzes concepts of language in general as well as language as a vehicle of its own expression. This study addresses the author's exploration of the dedalus of language as he ambles and rambles its roads, streets, and alleys; draws the portrait of his philosophy of language or philology; and concludes his affirmative and positivistic attitude toward language (...) and its literary application or the art and artistry of literature. The great Renaissance humanist's depiction of language in the "Essais" is analyzed in this book on the basis of its division among intellectual, moral, and aesthetic aspects. This threefold reduction, finding its derivation in the critical work of Aristotle, Auerbach, and Bowen, is also related to the few particular and the important general critical studies of Montaigne and his vision and use, creation and re-creation of language. (shrink)