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  1. Nine Levels of Explanation.Melvin Konner - 2021 - Human Nature 32 (4):748-793.
    Tinbergen’s classic “On Aims and Methods of Ethology” (_Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 20_, 1963) proposed four levels of explanation of behavior, which he thought would soon apply to humans. This paper discusses the need for multilevel explanation; Huxley and Mayr’s prior models, and others that followed; Tinbergen’s differences with Lorenz on “the innate”; and Mayr’s ultimate/proximate distinction. It synthesizes these approaches with nine levels of explanation in three categories: phylogeny, natural selection, and genomics (ultimate causes); maturation, sensitive period effects, and routine (...)
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  • Hierarchies, Networks, and Causality: The Applied Evolutionary Epistemological Approach.Nathalie Gontier - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (2):313-334.
    Applied Evolutionary Epistemology is a scientific-philosophical theory that defines evolution as the set of phenomena whereby units evolve at levels of ontological hierarchies by mechanisms and processes. This theory also provides a methodology to study evolution, namely, studying evolution involves identifying the units that evolve, the levels at which they evolve, and the mechanisms and processes whereby they evolve. Identifying units and levels of evolution in turn requires the development of ontological hierarchy theories, and examining mechanisms and processes necessitates theorizing (...)
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  • What the Baldwin Effect affects depends on the nature of plasticity.Thomas J. H. Morgan, Jordan W. Suchow & Thomas L. Griffiths - 2020 - Cognition 197 (C):104165.
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  • Human progress by human effort: neo-Darwinism, social heredity, and the professionalization of the American social sciences, 1889–1925.Emilie J. Raymer - 2018 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (4):63.
    Prior to August Weismann’s 1889 germ-plasm theory, social reformers believed that humans could inherit the effects of a salubrious environment and, by passing environmentally-induced modifications to their offspring, achieve continuous progress. Weismann’s theory disrupted this logic and caused many to fear that they had little control over human development. As numerous historians have observed, this contributed to the birth of the eugenics movement. However, through an examination of the work of social scientists Lester Frank Ward, Richard T. Ely, Amos Griswold (...)
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  • Assimiliating an Associative Trait: from Eco-Physiology to Epigenetics.Andres Kurismaa - 2018 - Biosemiotics 11 (2):199-229.
    The possible evolutionary significance of epigenetic memory and codes is a key problem for extended evolutionary synthesis and biosemiotics. In this paper, some less known original works are reviewed which highlight theoretical parallels between current evolutionary epigenetics, on the one hand, and its predecessors in the eco-physiology of higher nervous activity, on the other. Recently, these areas have begun to converge, with first evidence now indicating the possibility of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of conditional associations in the mammalian nervous system, and (...)
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  • Evolutionary Biosemiotics and Multilevel Construction Networks.Alexei A. Sharov - 2016 - Biosemiotics 9 (3):399-416.
    In contrast to the traditional relational semiotics, biosemiotics decisively deviates towards dynamical aspects of signs at the evolutionary and developmental time scales. The analysis of sign dynamics requires constructivism to explain how new components such as subagents, sensors, effectors, and interpretation networks are produced by developing and evolving organisms. Semiotic networks that include signs, tools, and subagents are multilevel, and this feature supports the plasticity, robustness, and evolvability of organisms. The origin of life is described here as the emergence of (...)
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  • Are Plants Rational?Elias L. Khalil - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (1):53-66.
    Organisms change their shape and behavior during ontogenesis in response to incentives—what biologists call “phenotypic plasticity” or what is called here more specifically “behavioral plasticity.” Such plasticity is usually in the direction of enhancing welfare or fitness. In light of basic concepts in economics, such behavioral plasticity is nothing but rationality. Such rationality is not limited to organisms with neural systems. It also characterizes brainless organisms such as plants, fungi, and unicellular organisms. The gist of the article is the distinction (...)
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  • Niche Construction and Cognitive Evolution.Benjamin Kerr - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (3):250-262.
    Despite the fact that animal behavior involves a particularly powerful form of niche construction, few researchers have considered how the environmental impact of behavior may feed back to influence the evolution of the cognitive underpinnings of behavior. I explore a model that explicitly incorporates niche construction while tracking cognitive evolution. Agents and their stimuli are modeled as coevolving populations. The agents are born with “weights” attached to behaviors in a repertoire. Further, these agents are able to change these weights based (...)
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  • Experimenting in relation to Piaget: Education is a chaperoned process of adaptation.Jeremy Trevelyan Burman - 2008 - Perspectives on Science 16 (2):pp. 160-195.
    This essay takes—as its point of departure—Cavicchi’s (2006) argument that knowledge develops through experimentation, both in science and in educational settings. In attempting to support and extend her conclusions, which are drawn in part from the replication of some early tasks in the history of developmental psychology, the late realist-constructivist theory of Jean Piaget is presented and summarized. This is then turned back on the subjects of Cavicchi’s larger enquiry (education and science) to offer a firmer foundation for future debate. (...)
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  • Organic selection: Proximate environmental effects on the evolution of morphology and behaviour. [REVIEW]Brian K. Hall - 2001 - Biology and Philosophy 16 (2):215-237.
    Organic selection (the Baldwin Effect) by which an environmentally elicitedphenotypic adaptation comes under genotypic control following selectionwas proposed independently in 1896 by the psychologists James Baldwinand Conwy Lloyd Morgan and by the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn.Modified forms of organic selection were proposed as autonomization bySchmalhausen in 1938, as genetic assimilation by Waddington in 1942, andas an explanation for evolution in changing environments or for speciationby Matsuda and West-Eberhard in the 1980s. Organic selection as amechanism mediating proximate environmental effects on the (...)
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  • Evolution of Natural Agents: Preservation, Advance, and Emergence of Functional Information.Alexei A. Sharov - 2016 - Biosemiotics 9 (1):103-120.
    Biological evolution is often viewed narrowly as a change of morphology or allele frequency in a sequence of generations. Here I pursue an alternative informational concept of evolution, as preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information in natural agents. Functional information is a network of signs that are used by agents to preserve and regulate their functions. Functional information is preserved in evolution via complex interplay of copying and construction processes: the digital components are copied, whereas interpreting subagents together with (...)
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  • The Adaptability Driver: Links between Behavior and Evolution.Patrick Bateson - 2006 - Biological Theory 1 (4):342-345.
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  • Pragmatism, enactivism, and ecological psychology: towards a unified approach to post-cognitivism.Manuel Heras-Escribano - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 1):337-363.
    This paper argues that it is possible to combine enactivism and ecological psychology in a single post-cognitivist research framework if we highlight the common pragmatist assumptions of both approaches. These pragmatist assumptions or starting points are shared by ecological psychology and the enactive approach independently of being historically related to pragmatism, and they are based on the idea of organic coordination, which states that the evolution and development of the cognitive abilities of an organism are explained by appealing to the (...)
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  • Niche Construction and Conceptual Change in Evolutionary Biology.Tobias Uller & Heikki Helanterä - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (2):351-375.
    The theoretical status of ‘niche construction’ in evolution is intensely debated. Here we substantiate the reasons for different interpretations. We consider two concepts of niche construction brought to bear on evolutionary theory; one that emphasizes how niche construction contributes to selection and another that emphasizes how it contributes to development and inheritance. We explain the rationale for claims that selective and developmental niche construction motivate conceptual change in evolutionary biology and the logic of those who reject these claims. Our analysis (...)
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  • Composite Agency: Semiotics of Modularity and Guiding Interactions.Alexei A. Sharov - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (2):157-178.
    Principles of constructivism are used here to explore how organisms develop tools, subagents, scaffolds, signs, and adaptations. Here I discuss reasons why organisms have composite nature and include diverse subagents that interact in partially cooperating and partially conflicting ways. Such modularity is necessary for efficient and robust functionality, including mutual construction and adaptability at various time scales. Subagents interact via material and semiotic relations, some of which force or prescribe actions of partners. Other interactions, which I call “guiding”, do not (...)
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  • The Metabolic Core of Environmental Education.Ramsey Affifi - 2016 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 36 (3):315-332.
    I consider the case of the “simplest” living beings—bacteria—and examine how their embodied activity constitutes an organism/environment interaction, out of which emerges the possibility of learning from an environment. I suggest that this mutual co-emergence of organism and environment implies a panbiotic educational interaction that is at once the condition for, and achievement of, all living beings. Learning and being learned from are entangled in varied ways throughout the biosphere. Education is not an exclusively human project, it is part of (...)
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  • The use and abuse of sir Karl Popper.David L. Hull - 1999 - Biology and Philosophy 14 (4):481-504.
    Karl Popper has been one of the few philosophers of sciences who has influenced scientists. I evaluate Popper's influence on our understanding of evolutionary theory from his earliest publications to the present. Popper concluded that three sorts of statements in evolutionary biology are not genuine laws of nature. I take him to be right on this score. Popper's later distinction between evolutionary theory as a metaphysical research program and as a scientific theory led more than one scientist to misunderstand his (...)
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  • DNA Dispose, but Subjects Decide. Learning and the Extended Synthesis.Markus Lindholm - 2015 - Biosemiotics 8 (3):443-461.
    Adaptation by means of natural selection depends on the ability of populations to maintain variation in heritable traits. According to the Modern Synthesis this variation is sustained by mutations and genetic drift. Epigenetics, evodevo, niche construction and cultural factors have more recently been shown to contribute to heritable variation, however, leading an increasing number of biologists to call for an extended view of speciation and evolution. An additional common feature across the animal kingdom is learning, defined as the ability to (...)
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  • Role of Utility and Inference in the Evolution of Functional Information.Alexei A. Sharov - 2009 - Biosemiotics 2 (1):101-115.
    Functional information means an encoded network of functions in living organisms from molecular signaling pathways to an organism’s behavior. It is represented by two components: code and an interpretation system, which together form a self-sustaining semantic closure. Semantic closure allows some freedom between components because small variations of the code are still interpretable. The interpretation system consists of inference rules that control the correspondence between the code and the function (phenotype) and determines the shape of the fitness landscape. The utility (...)
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  • Becoming a Sign: The Mimic’s Activity in Biological Mimicry.Timo Maran - 2011 - Biosemiotics 4 (2):243-257.
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  • A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Baldwin Effect.Graciela Kuechle & Diego Rios - 2012 - Erkenntnis 77 (1):31-49.
    The Baldwin effect is a process by which learnt traits become gradually incorporated into the genome through a Darwinian mechanism. From its inception, the Baldwin effect has been regarded with skepticism. The objective of this paper is to relativize this assessment. Our contribution is two-fold. To begin with, we provide a taxonomy of the different arguments that have been advocated in its defense, and distinguish between three justificatory dimensions—feasibility, explanatory relevance and likelihood—that have been unduly conflated. Second, we sharpen the (...)
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  • Between Social and Biological Heredity: Cope and Baldwin on Evolution, Inheritance, and Mind.David Ceccarelli - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (1):161-194.
    In the years of the post-Darwinian debate, many American naturalists invoked the name of Lamarck to signal their belief in a purposive and anti-Darwinian view of evolution. Yet Weismann’s theory of germ-plasm continuity undermined the shared tenet of the neo-Lamarckian theories as well as the idea of the interchangeability between biological and social heredity. Edward Drinker Cope, the leader of the so-called “American School,” defended his neo-Lamarckian philosophy against every attempt to redefine the relationship between behavior, development, and heredity beyond (...)
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  • Fact, Phenomenon, and Theory in the Darwinian Research Tradition.Bruce H. Weber - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (2):168-178.
    From its inception Darwinian evolutionary biology has been seen as having a problematic relationship of fact and theory. While the forging of the modern evolutionary synthesis resolved most of these issues for biologists, critics continue to argue that natural selection and common descent are “only theories.” Much of the confusion engendered by the “evolution wars” can be clarified by applying the concept of phenomena, inferred from fact, and explained by theories, thus locating where legitimate dissent may still exist. By setting (...)
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  • Language Acquisition Meets Language Evolution.Nick Chater & Morten H. Christiansen - 2010 - Cognitive Science 34 (7):1131-1157.
    Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of the (...)
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  • From the reaktionsNorm to the adaptive Norm: The Norm of reaction, 1909–1960. [REVIEW]Sahotra Sarkar - 1999 - Biology and Philosophy 14 (2):235-252.
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  • Language Reflects “Core” Cognition: A New Theory About the Origin of Cross-Linguistic Regularities.Brent Strickland - 2017 - Cognitive Science 41 (1):70-101.
    The underlying structures that are common to the world's languages bear an intriguing connection with early emerging forms of “core knowledge” (Spelke & Kinzler, 2007), which are frequently studied by infant researchers. In particular, grammatical systems often incorporate distinctions (e.g., the mass/count distinction) that reflect those made in core knowledge (e.g., the non-verbal distinction between an object and a substance). Here, I argue that this connection occurs because non-verbal core knowledge systematically biases processes of language evolution. This account potentially explains (...)
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  • Evolution by Meaning Attribution: Notes on Biosemiotic Interpretations of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.Jana Švorcová & Karel Kleisner - 2018 - Biosemiotics 11 (2):231-244.
    The aim of this contribution is to investigate certain selected parts of the extended evolutionary synthesis which all have a common denominator, namely evolution by meaning attribution. We start by arguing that living organisms can manipulate and interpret their genetic script via epigenetic modifications in a semiotic manner, that is, by meaning attribution. Genes do not build living beings to be transmitted to future generations. Genes have been shaped by evolution as a memory medium that is transmitted from one generation (...)
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  • Scaffolding and Mimicry: A Semiotic View of the Evolutionary Dynamics of Mimicry Systems.Timo Maran - 2015 - Biosemiotics 8 (2):211-222.
    The article discusses evolutionary aspects of mimicry from a semiotic viewpoint. The concept of semiotic scaffolding is used for this approach, and its relations with the concepts of exaptation and semiotic co-option are explained. Different dimensions of scaffolding are brought out as ontogenetic, evolutionary, physiological and cognitive. These dimensions allow for interpreting mimicry as a system that scaffolds itself. With the help of a number of mimicry cases, e.g. butterfly eyespots, brood parasitism, and plant mimesis, the evolutionary dynamics of mimicry (...)
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  • What is context for? Syntax in a non-abstract world.Tom Sgouros - 2005 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 14 (2):235-251.
    An explanation for the uncertain progress of formalist linguistics is sought in an examination of the concept of syntax. The idea of analyzing language formally was made possible by developments in 20th century logic. It has been pointed out by many that the analogy between natural language and a formal system may be imperfect, but the objection made here is that the very concept of syntax, when applied to any non-abstract system of communication, is flawed as it is commonly used. (...)
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  • The curious rise and fall of experimental psychology in Mind.Christopher D. Green - 2009 - History of the Human Sciences 22 (1):37-57.
    The journal Mind is now a wholly philosophical journal. At the time of its founding, in 1876, however, its mission was rather different in character. Its aim was to discover whether scientific psychology was a truly viable enterprise and, if so, what its boundaries with philosophy, with other scientific disciplines, and with the earlier generation of discredited attempts at `scientific' studies of the mind (e.g. phrenology, mesmerism) might be. Although at first Mind published mostly philosophical pieces and literature reviews, by (...)
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  • The Ecological Dimension of Natural Selection.Bendik Hellem Aaby - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):1199-1209.
    In this article I argue that we should pay extra attention to the ecological dimension of natural selection. By this I mean that we should view natural selection primarily as acting on the outcomes of the interactions organisms have with their environment, which influences their relative reproductive output. A consequence of this view is that natural selection is not sensitive to what system of inheritance ensures reoccurrences of organism-environment interactions over generations. I end by showing the consequences of this view (...)
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  • Developmental biology, natural selection, and the conceptual boundaries of the modern evolutionary synthesis.David J. Depew & Bruce H. Weber - 2017 - Zygon 52 (2):468-490.
    Using the evolution of the stickleback family of subarctic fish as a touchstone, we explore the effect of new discoveries about regulatory genetics, developmental plasticity, and epigenetic inheritance on the conceptual foundations of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Identifying the creativity of natural selection as the hallmark of the Modern Synthesis, we show that since its inception its adherents have pursued a variety of research projects that at first seemed to conflict with its principles, but were accommodated. We situate challenges coming (...)
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  • Understanding the Emergence of Modularity in Neural Systems.John A. Bullinaria - 2007 - Cognitive Science 31 (4):673-695.
    Modularity in the human brain remains a controversial issue, with disagreement over the nature of the modules that exist, and why, when, and how they emerge. It is a natural assumption that modularity offers some form of computational advantage, and hence evolution by natural selection has translated those advantages into the kind of modular neural structures familiar to cognitive scientists. However, simulations of the evolution of simplified neural systems have shown that, in many cases, it is actually non-modular architectures that (...)
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  • Environment and Genetic Accommodation.H. Frederik Nijhout & Yuichiro Suzuki - 2008 - Biological Theory 3 (3):204-212.
    Waddington’s experiments on genetic assimilation showed that selection on environmentally induced phenotypic variants can cause inherited evolutionary changes in the phenotype. We have recently extended this work by demonstrating that it is possible to select for a polyphenism in a monophenic species . We found that a mutation in the juvenile hormone regulatory pathway in Manduca sexta enabled heat stress to reveal a hidden reaction norm of larval coloration. Artificial selection for increased color change in response to heat-shock resulted in (...)
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  • (1 other version)James mark Baldwin with alfred north whitehead on organic selectivity: the “novel” factor in evolution.Adam Christian Scarfe - 2009 - Cosmos and History 5 (2):40-107.
    The aim of this paper is to show how James Mark Baldwin’s theory of Organic Selection can be fruitfully integrated with Alfred North Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, as part of the endeavor to develop a comprehensive process-relational evolutionary cosmology. In so doing, it provides an overview of the theory of Organic Selection and points to several concrete examples from the Galapagos Islands which elucidate Baldwin’s claim that organisms, through their selective activities and behavioral adjustments, play a causal role in directing evolutionary (...)
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  • Towards an Evolutionary Biosemiotics: Semiotic Selection and Semiotic Co-option. [REVIEW]Timo Maran & Karel Kleisner - 2010 - Biosemiotics 3 (2):189-200.
    In biosemiotics, living beings are not conceived of as the passive result of anonymous selection pressures acted upon through the course of evolution. Rather, organisms are considered active participants that influence, shape and re-shape other organisms, the surrounding environment, and eventually also their own constitutional and functional integrity. The traditional Darwinian division between natural and sexual selection seems insufficient to encompass the richness of these processes, particularly in light of recent knowledge on communicational processes in the realm of life. Here, (...)
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  • Hypercomplexity.Vic Norris, Armelle Cabin & Abdallah Zemirline - 2005 - Acta Biotheoretica 53 (4):313-330.
    What is biological complexity? How many sorts exist? Are there levels of complexity? How are they related to one another? How is complexity related to the emergence of new phenotypes? To try to get to grips with these questions, we consider the archetype of a complex biological system, Escherichia coli. We take the position that E. coli has been selected to survive adverse conditions and to grow in favourable ones and that many other complex systems undergo similar selection. We invoke (...)
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