Subjects of the World – Arwin′s Rhetoric and the Study of Agency in Nature (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith) - Hardcover

Davies, Paul Sheldon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226137627 ISBN 13: 9780226137629

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2009

Synopsis

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 more 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psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases.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 acknowledgment that may free us to see the world the way it actually is.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Sheldon Davies is the author of Norms of Nature: Naturalism and the Nature of Functions. He teaches philosophy at the College of William and Mary.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226137627
• ISBN 13: 9780226137629
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256