A01=Paul Sheldon Davies
agency
Author_Paul Sheldon Davies
bias
Category=PDA
Category=PDX
Category=PS
cognition
concept location project
conservatism
darwin
environment
environmentalism
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
evolution
evolutionary biology
exploration
free will
freedom
human mind
imperialism
independence
individualism
libertarianism
moral responsibility
natural world
naturalism
nature
neuroscience
nonfiction
philosophy
psychology
purpose
reform
science
self
superiority
teleology
Product details
- ISBN 9780226137636
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jun 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases.
The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world - an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is.
Paul Sheldon Davies is professor of philosophy at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of Norms of Nature.
