PROGRAMMING DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS:

Evolutionary Models in the Normative Disciplines

Seminar, Spring 1997, Tues. 6-9:00, Shatzel 301

Philosophy 480/580

Harms

[wfharms@bgnet. 372-7219]

The focus of the course will be an examination of applications of evolutionary models in traditionally normative disciplines such as epistemology, decision theory, social theory, and ethics. This will begin with an examination of the classic literature on the "evolution of cooperation" and recent contributions to the same literature, with emphasis on the kinds of mechanisms which can establish and stabilize cooperative regimes. Following: the underlying nature of evolutionary processes per se; genetic algorithms; evolutionary deliberative dynamics; the notion of hierarchical selection processes (in two senses); epistemological applications of hierarchical selection models; prospects of applying hierarchical selection models to social and ethical systems; and the consideration of teleofunctional normativity as real normativity.

Along with this focus on the literature and conceptual issues will be a short course in Pascal programming, intended to provide the rather rudimentary skills necessary to model the kinds of discrete dynamical systems we will be studying. No particular mathematical or programming background is required, though a general sympathy to mathematical/logical modeling seems essential. Course requirements will be a report on the results of simulations written during the semester, or a conventional term paper for those so inclined. *It is also possible to enroll for 684/784 credit.

Tentative Reading List:

• Maynard Smith and Price: "The Logic of Animal Conflict".
• Axelrod and Hamilton: "The Evolution of Cooperation".
• Schuster and Sigmund: "Replicator Dynamics".
• Dawkins: Excerpts from The Selfish Gene .
• Harms: "Cultural Evolution and the Variable Phenotype"; "Reliability and Novelty".
• Trivers: "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism".
• Hamilton: "The Genetical Theory of Social Behavior".
• Brian Skyrms: Evolution of the Social Contract; Cambridge, 1996.
• Kitcher: "The Evolution of Human Altruism".
• Campbell: "Evolutionary Epistemology".
• Quine: " Epistemology Naturalized", "Natural Kinds".
• Popper: "Of Clouds and Clocks".
• Millikan: "Biosemantics".
• Wilson and Sober: "Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences".
• Holland: Excerpts from Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems.