Evolvability and the Evolution of Complexity. Anyone engaging in a moment's reflection on the striking richness, diversity, and complexity of the biological world is faced with the question: how did it get here? Though natural selection is central to answering this question, important new work has identified various conditions that make some lineages of organisms "evolvable": capable of changing in ways that radically expand the range of further possible changes. This project will clarify and in ....Evolvability and the Evolution of Complexity. Anyone engaging in a moment's reflection on the striking richness, diversity, and complexity of the biological world is faced with the question: how did it get here? Though natural selection is central to answering this question, important new work has identified various conditions that make some lineages of organisms "evolvable": capable of changing in ways that radically expand the range of further possible changes. This project will clarify and integrate these various conditions using empirical examples and simple models. The resulting work from this project will provide a clearer general understanding of what biological complexity is, and how science has compelling candidates for understanding how it evolves.Read moreRead less
The Structure of Moral Reasoning: Hume, Kant and the Evidence from Psychopathology and Neuroscience. What can moral philosophers hope to learn from the sciences of the mind? Recent work on the disorders of autism and psychopathy, has promised to reshape a longstanding philosophical debate between Kantians and Humeans on the role of empathy (sympathy) in moral thinking. This project will draw out the implications of a range of neuroscientific findings for key questions in moral theory and also co ....The Structure of Moral Reasoning: Hume, Kant and the Evidence from Psychopathology and Neuroscience. What can moral philosophers hope to learn from the sciences of the mind? Recent work on the disorders of autism and psychopathy, has promised to reshape a longstanding philosophical debate between Kantians and Humeans on the role of empathy (sympathy) in moral thinking. This project will draw out the implications of a range of neuroscientific findings for key questions in moral theory and also consider how the normative and conceptual claims made by such theories, about what must be true of a moral judgment, are connected to descriptive claims about the psychology of the moral agents who make them.Read moreRead less
The Mathematical and Philosophical Foundations of Probability. We find probability wherever we find uncertainty: virtually everywhere in our lives. Probability is essential to almost every technology. High-stakes decisions are routinely made on the basis of probability judgments and risk assessment-for example, in engineering, medicine, agriculture, environmental management, urban planning, public policy, public health, the law, and in our national defence. And some of those decisions have been ....The Mathematical and Philosophical Foundations of Probability. We find probability wherever we find uncertainty: virtually everywhere in our lives. Probability is essential to almost every technology. High-stakes decisions are routinely made on the basis of probability judgments and risk assessment-for example, in engineering, medicine, agriculture, environmental management, urban planning, public policy, public health, the law, and in our national defence. And some of those decisions have been made badly because of poor probability estimates-witness the 1986 space shuttle disaster. Our current methodologies for using probability are inadequate. This project will make an important contribution to the collective enterprise of enhancing our understanding of probability and its myriad applications.Read moreRead less