The Pleistocene Social Contract

The Pleistocene Social Contract PDF Author: Kim Sterelny
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197531407
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Kim Sterelny here builds on his original account of the evolutionary development and interaction of human culture and cooperation, which he first presented in The Evolved Apprentice (2012). Sterelny sees human evolution not as hinging on a single key innovation, but as emerging from a positive feedback loop caused by smaller divergences from other great apes, including bipedal locomotion, better causal and social reasoning, reproductive cooperation, and changes in diet and foraging style. He advances this argument in The Pleistocene Social Contract with four key claims about cooperation, culture, and their interaction in human evolution. First, he proposes a new model of the evolution of human cooperation. He suggests human cooperation began from a baseline that was probably similar to that of great apes, advancing about 1.8 million years ago to an initial phase of cooperative forging, in small mobile bands. Second, he then presents a novel account of the change in evolutionary dynamics of cooperation: from cooperation profits based on collective action and mutualism, to profits based on direct and indirect reciprocation over the course of the Pleistocene. Third, he addresses the question of normative regulation, or moral norms, for band-scale cooperation, and connects it to the stabilization of indirect reciprocation as a central aspect of forager cooperation. Fourth, he develops an account of the emergence of inequality that links inequality to intermediate levels of conflict and cooperation: a final phase of cooperation in largescale, hierarchical societies in the Holocene, beginning about 12,000 years ago. The Pleistocene Social Contract combines philosophy of biology with a reading of the archaeological and ethnographic record to present a new model of the evolution of human cooperation, cultural learning, and inequality.

The Pleistocene Social Contract

The Pleistocene Social Contract PDF Author: Kim Sterelny
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197531407
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Kim Sterelny here builds on his original account of the evolutionary development and interaction of human culture and cooperation, which he first presented in The Evolved Apprentice (2012). Sterelny sees human evolution not as hinging on a single key innovation, but as emerging from a positive feedback loop caused by smaller divergences from other great apes, including bipedal locomotion, better causal and social reasoning, reproductive cooperation, and changes in diet and foraging style. He advances this argument in The Pleistocene Social Contract with four key claims about cooperation, culture, and their interaction in human evolution. First, he proposes a new model of the evolution of human cooperation. He suggests human cooperation began from a baseline that was probably similar to that of great apes, advancing about 1.8 million years ago to an initial phase of cooperative forging, in small mobile bands. Second, he then presents a novel account of the change in evolutionary dynamics of cooperation: from cooperation profits based on collective action and mutualism, to profits based on direct and indirect reciprocation over the course of the Pleistocene. Third, he addresses the question of normative regulation, or moral norms, for band-scale cooperation, and connects it to the stabilization of indirect reciprocation as a central aspect of forager cooperation. Fourth, he develops an account of the emergence of inequality that links inequality to intermediate levels of conflict and cooperation: a final phase of cooperation in largescale, hierarchical societies in the Holocene, beginning about 12,000 years ago. The Pleistocene Social Contract combines philosophy of biology with a reading of the archaeological and ethnographic record to present a new model of the evolution of human cooperation, cultural learning, and inequality.

Social Contract

Social Contract PDF Author: Michael Harry Lessnoff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind

The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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The Social Contract

The Social Contract PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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The Social Contract

The Social Contract PDF Author: Robert Ardrey
Publisher: Storydesign Limited
ISBN: 9780988604377
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
"Violation of biological command has been the failure of social man. Vertebrates though we may be, we have ignored the law of equal opportunity since civilization's earliest hours. Sexually reproducing beings though we are, we pretend today that the law of inequality does not exist. And enlightened though we may be, while we pursue the unattainable we make impossible the realizable." In his two previous books, Robert Ardrey exploded a series of philosophical landmines. African Genesis (1961) introduced his new evolutionary approach to an understanding of men. Then came The Territorial Imperative (1966), whose title is now a common phrase in our language. The Social Contract is the third in the series, and it denies that men are created equal - but that they deserve absolute equality of opportunity. Robert Ardrey maintains that since the publication of Rousseau's Social Contract two centuries ago, men have wasted social resources, converted much of education into a process of brain-washing, committed themselves to one political insane asylum after another, all in pursuit of a goal that is a natural impossibility in any sexually reproducing species. Discarding the myth, Robert Ardrey combines his wealth of knowledge of animal ways with the new insights of modern biology and the newest revelations concerning human evolution to probe perplexing contemporary problems: the revolt of the young, the status struggle and the role of leadership, population control, urban overcrowding, violence in civilized life. This brilliant classic offers a powerful challenge to accustomed thought. Praise for the 1970 edition: "Robert Ardrey's The Social Contract is as imaginative and exciting as his African Genesis or The Territorial Imperative, but this new book is broader in scope, better balanced, and more philosophical than its predecessors. I disagree with some of Ardrey's opinions concerning human aggression, because I have greater faith than he has in the power of environmental conditioning. But this does not affect my conviction that The Social Contract will be of immense value in helping the public to probe into the dark and misty areas where zoology, anthropology, and prehistory join to account for the origins of man as a social animal." - Rene Dubos, Rockefeller University

The Social Contract

The Social Contract PDF Author: John Wiedhofft Gough
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
The book first discusses the various ideas which comprise the theory of the social contract, and then traces the history as it developed. The central theme of the social contract, the relationship of citizens and government, is also analyzed.

The Social Contract in America

The Social Contract in America PDF Author: Mark Hulliung
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The first comprehensive examination of the social contract's role in American political development. Traces the history of the contract--the closest thing we have to a common philosophy--from its role in the Founding up to current day debates, and charts its rise--and demise--in influence over American political thought.

The Social Contract and Discourses

The Social Contract and Discourses PDF Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: Everyman Paperback
ISBN: 9780460873574
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Inspired by ancient Greek city states, Rousseau searched for a way which states of his day could be equally representative Holding men in wretched subservience, feudalism–alongside religion–was a powerful force in the eighteenth century. Self-serving monarchic social systems, which collectively reduced common people to servitude, were now attacked by Enlightenment philosophers, of whom Rouseau was a leading light. His masterpiece, The Social Contract, profoundly influenced the subsequent development of society and remains provocative in a modern age of continuing widespread vested interest. This is the most comprehensive paperback edition available, with introduction, notes, index and chronology of Rousseau's life and times.

Modern Social Contract Theory

Modern Social Contract Theory PDF Author: Albert Weale
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192594990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
Modern Social Contract Theory provides an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present. It locates the central themes of that theory in the intellectual legacy of utilitarianism, particularly the problems of defining principles of justice and of showing the grounds of moral obligation. It demonstrates how theorists responded in a novel way to the dilemmas articulated in utilitarianism, developing in their different approaches a constructivist method in ethics, a method that aimed to vindicate a liberal, democratic and just political order. A distinctive feature of the book is its comparative approach. By placing the works of Barry, Buchanan and Tullock, Harsanyi, Gauthier, Grice, Rawls, and Scanlon alongside one another, similarities and differences are brought out, most notably in the way in which principles are derived by each author from the contractual construction as well as the extent to which the obligation to adopt those principles can be rationally grounded. Each theory is placed in its particular intellectual context. Special attention is paid to the contrasting theories of rationality adopted by the different authors, whether that be utility theory or a deliberative conception of rationality, with the intention of assessing how far the principles advanced can be justified by reference to the hypothetical choices of rational contracting agents. The book concludes with a discussion of some principal objections to the enterprise of contract theory, and offers its own programme for the future of that theory taking the form of the empirical method.

Rousseau's 'The Social Contract'

Rousseau's 'The Social Contract' PDF Author: Christopher D. Wraight
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826498604
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
A Reader's Guide to one of the most important and influential works of political thought in the history of philosophy.