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Elliott Sober is one of the leading philosophers of science and is a former winner of the Lakatos Prize, the major award in the field. This new collection of essays will appeal to a readership that extends well beyond the frontiers of the philosophy of science. Sober shows how ideas in evolutionary biology bear in significant ways on traditional problems in philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and metaphysics. Amongst the topics addressed are psychological egoism, solipsism, and the interpretation of belief and utterance, empiricism, Ockham's razor, causality, essentialism, and scientific laws. The collection will prove invaluable to a wide range of philosophers, primarily those working in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, and epistemology

International audience ; Until recently, little attention has been paid to the consequences of Hume's theory of action upon intertemporal decision. Nonetheless, some of their specicities have been emphasized by G. Davis 2003, A. Lapidus 2000, 2010, and I. Palacios-Huerta 2003. Through recurring discussions, concerning situations of conicting choice between a close and a remote objective, which run from the Treatise, Book 2 (Hume 1739-40), to the second Enquiry (Hume 1751) to the Dissertation (Hume 1757), intertemporal decision appears, at least for a part of it, as an outcome of the role of the natural relation of contiguity in the formation of a structure of desires, dierent from the structure of pleasure. This paper shows, and expresses formally, that Hume's approach provides alternative conditions explaining on the one hand time-consistency and, on the other hand, time-inconsistency when the link between contiguity and the violence of the passions is taken into account. The possibility of time-inconsistency is acknowledged by Hume as giving rise to general aversion, therefore constituting a key argument for explaining the origin of government.

International audience ; Until recently, little attention has been paid to the consequences of Hume's theory of action upon intertemporal decision. Nonetheless, some of their specicities have been emphasized by G. Davis 2003, A. Lapidus 2000, 2010, and I. Palacios-Huerta 2003. Through recurring discussions, concerning situations of conicting choice between a close and a remote objective, which run from the Treatise, Book 2 (Hume 1739-40), to the second Enquiry (Hume 1751) to the Dissertation (Hume 1757), intertemporal decision appears, at least for a part of it, as an outcome of the role of the natural relation of contiguity in the formation of a structure of desires, dierent from the structure of pleasure. This paper shows, and expresses formally, that Hume's approach provides alternative conditions explaining on the one hand time-consistency and, on the other hand, time-inconsistency when the link between contiguity and the violence of the passions is taken into account. The possibility of time-inconsistency is acknowledged by Hume as giving rise to general aversion, therefore constituting a key argument for explaining the origin of government.