Cambridge studies in probability, induction and decision theory

This is a state-of-the-art collection of essays on the relation between probabilities, especially conditional probabilities, and conditionals. It provides new negative results that sharply limit the ways conditionals can be related to conditional probabilities. There are also positive ideas and results that will open up new areas of research. The collection is intended to honor Ernest W. Adams, whose seminal work is largely responsible for creating this area of inquiry. In addition to describing, evaluating, and applying Adams's work, these contributions extend his ideas in directions he may or may not have anticipated, but that he certainly inspired. This volume should be of interest to a wide range of philosophers of science, as well as to computer scientists and linguists.

How can we identify events due to intelligent causes and distinguish them from events due to undirected natural causes? If we lack a causal theory how can we determine whether an intelligent cause acted? This book presents a reliable method for detecting intelligent causes: the design inference. The design inference uncovers intelligent causes by isolating the key trademark of intelligent causes: specified events of small probability. Design inferences can be found in a range of scientific pursuits from forensic science to research into the origins of life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This challenging and provocative book will be read with particular interest by philosophers of science and religion, other philosophers concerned with epistemology and logic, probability and complexity theorists, and statisticians.

In the social sciences norms are sometimes taken to play a key explanatory role. Yet norms differ from group to group, from society to society, and from species to species. How are norms formed and how do they change? This "state-of-the-art" collection of essays presents some of the best contemporary research into the dynamical processes underlying the formation, maintenance, metamorphosis, and dissolution of norms. The volume combines formal modeling with more traditional analysis, and considers biological and cultural evolution, individual learning, and rational deliberation. In filling a significant gap in the current literature this volume will be of particular interest to economists, political scientists, and sociologists, in addition to philosophers of the social sciences.