Evolving ethics : the new science of good and evil / Steven Mascaro [and three others].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mascaro, Steven, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Artificial life.

Ethics, Evolutionary.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (293 p.)

Edition:

2nd ed.

Place of Publication:

Exeter : Imprint Academic, [2010]

Summary:

This book describes the application of Artificial Life simulation to evolutionary scenarios of wide ethical interest, including the evolution of altruism, rape and abortion, providing a new meaning to "experimental philosophy". The authors also apply evolutionary ALife techniques to explore contentious issues within evolutionary theory itself, such as the evolution of aging. They justify these uses of simulation in science and philosophy, both in general and in their specific applications here.Evolving Ethics will be of interest to researchers, enthusiasts, students and interested lay readers

Contents:

Cover ; Contents; Front matter ; Title page ; Publisher information ; Dedication ; About the Authors; List of Figures; List of Tables; Preface; Body matter ; 1 A Science of Ethics ; 1.1 Ethics; 1.2 Evolution; 1.2.1 The Received View; 1.2.2 The Gene's View; 1.3 Simulation; 1.3.1 Artificial Life Simulation; 1.4 Evolving Ethical Behavior; 1.4.1 The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma; 1.5 Experimental Philosophy; 1.5.1 Experimental Simulation; 1.5.2 Experimental Ethics; 1.6 Conclusion; 2 Ethics and Evolutionary Psychology ; 2.1 Varieties of Ethical Theory; 2.1.1 Virtue Ethics; 2.1.2 Deontological Ethics

2.1.3 Consequentialism2.2 The Value of Ethical Simulation; 2.3 Evolutionary Psychology; 2.3.1 Tenets of Evolutionary Psychology; 2.3.2 Sociobiology; 2.3.3 The Debate over Evolutionary Psychology; 2.4 Evolutionary Ethics; 2.5 Against and for Utilitarianism; 2.5.1 Utilitarian Caveats; 2.5.2 Metaethics as Unresolvable; 3 Simulation as Experimentation ; 3.1 The Scope and Limits of Computer Simulation; 3.1.1 What Computers Can't Do; 3.2 What Is Simulation?; 3.2.1 A Definition of Simulation; 3.2.2 Dynamic versus Static; 3.2.3 Artificial Life Simulations; 3.2.4 Another Definition of Simulation

3.3 Homomorphic Simulation3.3.1 Testing for Homomorphism (Validation); 3.4 Simulations as Experiments; 3.4.1 A Comparison with Real Experiments; 3.4.2 The Epistemology of Simulation; 3.4.3 Experiments as Simulations; 3.4.4 Special Epistemology; 3.5 Conclusion; 4 Evolutionary Artificial Life ; 4.1 Simulated Evolution; 4.1.1 Genetic Algorithms; 4.1.2 Simulating Evolution; 4.1.3 Evolving Psychology; 4.2 Individuals, Agents and their Societies; 4.3 Some Ancestral Simulations; 4.4 A Simulation Environment; 4.4.1 The SimulationWorld; 4.4.2 Time; 4.4.3 Food; 4.5 Agents; 4.5.1 Birth, Age and Death

4.5.2 Health and Utility4.5.3 Behavior; 4.6 Evolution and the Agent Genotypes; 4.6.1 Production Rules; 4.6.2 Decision Tree; 4.6.3 Mutation and Meta-mutation; 4.7 Statistics; 4.7.1 Demographics; 4.7.2 Action Rates; 4.7.3 Total Utility; 4.8 Conclusion; 4.8.1 Utilities in Agent-based Modeling; 4.8.2 Simulating Ethics; 5 Experiments in Evolution ; 5.1 Levels of Selection; 5.2 The Evolution of Aging; 5.2.1 Comparing Alternative Aging Hypotheses; 5.2.2 Species Selection; 5.2.3 Summary; 5.3 Suicide as an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy; 5.3.1 Simulation Design

5.3.2 Basic Demographics and Orientation5.3.3 Experiment: The Evolutionary Stability of Suicide; 5.3.4 Possible Causes of the Evolutionary Stability of Suicide; 5.3.5 Alternative Explanation: Mutation Accumulation; 5.3.6 Summary; 5.4 The Evolution of Parental Invest; 5.4.1 Simulation design; 5.4.2 Prior Investment Hypothesis; 5.4.3 Desertion Hypothesis; 5.4.4 Paternal Uncertainty Hypothesis; 5.4.5 Association Hypothesis; 5.4.6 Chance Dimorphism Hypothesis; 5.4.7 Summary; 5.5 The Evolution of Utility; 5.5.1 Utility and Fitness; 5.5.2 Design of an Experiment; 5.6 Conclusion

6 Experiments in Ethics

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed April 25, 2016).

ISBN:

1-84540-371-1