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The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin Paperback – Illustrated, 15 Oct. 2005

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"Stanovich offers readers a sweeping tour of theory and research, advancing a programme of 'cognitive reform' that puts human interests first.... By making the point that cognition is optimized at the level of genes, not of individuals, Stanovich puts a fresh spin on the familiar claim that people are sometimes woefully irrational.... With The Robot's Rebellion, he sets himself apart from unreflective thinkers on both sides of the divide by taking evolutionary accounts of cognition seriously, even as he urges us to improve on what evolution has wrought." - Valerie M. Chase, Nature "According to Stanovich, we're only just beginning to grapple with the deep consequences of Darwin's theory of natural selection. One such consequence, Richard Dawkins's theory of the 'selfish gene,' implies that living creatures are mere vehicles constructed to facilitate the survival and replication of genes. While Stanovich...agrees with the basic idea of the selfish gene, he finds fault with the conclusion that we are simply at its mercy....A deep exploration of the philosophical and scientific ramifications of Darwinian evolution." - Publishers Weekly"

From the Inside Flap

The idea that we might be robots is no longer the stuff of science fiction; decades of research in evolutionary biology and cognitive science have led many esteemed scientists to the conclusion that, according to the precepts of universal Darwinism, humans are merely the hosts for two replicators (genes and memes) that have no interest in us except as conduits for replication. Richard Dawkins, for example, jolted us into realizing that we are just survival mechanisms for our own genes, sophisticated robots in service of huge colonies of replicators to whom concepts of rationality, intelligence, agency, and even the human soul are irrelevant.

Accepting and now forcefully responding to this decentering and disturbing idea, Keith Stanovich here provides the tools for the "robot's rebellion," a program of cognitive reform necessary to advance human interests over the limited interest of the replicators and define our own autonomous goals as individual human beings. He shows how concepts of rational thinking from cognitive science interact with the logic of evolution to create opportunities for humans to structure their behavior to serve their own ends. These evaluative activities of the brain, he argues, fulfill the need that we have to ascribe significance to human life.

We may well be robots, but we are the only robots who have discovered that fact. Only by recognizing ourselves as such, argues Stanovich, can we begin to construct a concept of self based on what is truly singular about humans: that they gain control of their lives in a way unique among life forms on Earth—through rational self-determination.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; New edition (15 Oct. 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 374 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0226771253
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226771250
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 3.05 x 22.86 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 30 ratings

About the author

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Keith E. Stanovich is currently Professor of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto. His book, What Intelligence Tests Miss, won the 2010 Grawemeyer Award in Education.

Stanovich is the author of over 200 scientific articles. In a three-year survey of citation rates during the mid-1990s (see Byrnes, J. P. (1997). Explaining citation counts of senior developmental psychologists. Developmental Review, 17, 62-77), Stanovich was listed as one of the 50 most-cited developmental psychologists, and one of the 25 most productive educational psychologists (see Smith, M. C., et al., Productivity of educational psychologists in educational psychology journals, 1997-2001. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 28, 422-430). In a citation survey of the period 1982-1992, he was designated the most cited reading disability researcher in the world (Nicolson, R. I. Developmental dyslexia: Past, present and future. Dyslexia, 1996, 2, 190-207).

Stanovich is the only two-time winner of the Albert J. Harris Award from the International Reading Association for influential articles on reading. In 1995 he was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame as the youngest member of that honorary society. In 1997 he was given the Sylvia Scribner Award from the American Educational Research Association, and in 2000 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. Stanovich is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 3, 7, 8, & 15), the American Psychological Society, the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities, and is a Charter Member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. He was a member of the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children of National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences.

From 1986-2000 Stanovich was the Associate Editor of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, a leading journal of human development. His introductory textbook, How to Think Straight About Psychology, published by Allyn & Bacon, is in its Ninth Edition and has been adopted by over 300 institutions of higher education. He is the author of five other books, including What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought (Yale University Press), The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin (University of Chicago Press), Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World (Oxford University Press), and Progress in Understanding Reading (Guilford Press).

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