Switch to: References

Citations of:

Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection

Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press (2009)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Signals are minimal causes.Marc Artiga - 2021 - Synthese 198 (9):8581-8599.
    Although the definition of ‘signal’ has been controversial for some time within the life sciences, current approaches seem to be converging toward a common analysis. This powerful framework can satisfactorily accommodate many cases of signaling and captures some of its main features. This paper argues, however, that there is a central feature of signals that so far has been largely overlooked: its special causal role. More precisely, I argue that a distinctive feature of signals is that they are minimal causes. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • The stability of traits conception of the hologenome: An evolutionary account of holobiont individuality.Javier Suárez - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (1):1-27.
    Bourrat and Griffiths :33, 2018) have recently argued that most of the evidence presented by holobiont defenders to support the thesis that holobionts are evolutionary individuals is not to the point and is not even adequate to discriminate multispecies evolutionary individuals from other multispecies assemblages that would not be considered evolutionary individuals by most holobiont defenders. They further argue that an adequate criterion to distinguish the two categories is fitness alignment, presenting the notion of fitness boundedness as a criterion that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • The Computational Boundary of a “Self”: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition.Michael Levin - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
    All epistemic agents physically consist of parts that must somehow comprise an integrated cognitive self. Biological individuals consist of subunits (organs, cells, molecular networks) that are themselves complex and competent in their own context. How do coherent biological Individuals result from the activity of smaller sub-agents? To understand the evolution and function of metazoan bodies and minds, it is essential to conceptually explore the origin of multicellularity and the scaling of the basal cognition of individual cells into a coherent larger (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Integrative pluralism for biological function.Beckett Sterner & Samuel Cusimano - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (6):1-21.
    We introduce a new type of pluralism about biological function that, in contrast to existing, demonstrates a practical integration among the term’s different meanings. In particular, we show how to generalize Sandra Mitchell’s notion of integrative pluralism to circumstances where multiple epistemic tools of the same type are jointly necessary to solve scientific problems. We argue that the multiple definitions of biological function operate jointly in this way based on how biologists explain the evolution of protein function. To clarify how (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • The hologenome concept of evolution: a philosophical and biological study.Javier Suárez - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Exeter
    The hologenome concept of evolution is a hypothesis about the evolution of animals and plants. It asserts that the evolution of animals and plants was partially triggered by their interactions with their symbiotic microbiomes. In that vein, the hologenome concept posits that the holobiont (animal host + symbionts of the microbiome) is a unit of selection. -/- The hologenome concept has been severely criticized on the basis that selection on holobionts would only be possible if there were a tight transgenerational (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Biological Individuals.Robert A. Wilson & Matthew J. Barker - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • (1 other version)Species in the Age of Discordance: Meeting Report and Introduction.Matthew H. Haber & Daniel J. Molter - 2019 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11.
    The papers included in this special issue were selected from a series of three interdisciplinary workshops titled Species in the Age of Discordance. Participants including philosophers, phylogeneticists, systematists, population geneticists, invasion biologists, historians, social scientists, botanists, herpetologists, ichthyologists, and microbiologists, among others, were asked to consider species in the context of discordance. The sense of “discordance” was left intentionally ambiguous in the call for abstracts, as our goal was to examine this question from many different perspectives, to seek out connections (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Metáforas de la selección natural.Román Vilas Peteiro - 2012 - Agora 31 (1).
    Buena parte de la elegancia del concepto de selección natural reside en una falsa aparienciade sencillez, y a menudo se expresa metafóricamente. En este artículo reviso diferentesmetáforas de la selección natural con el fin de revelar algunas complejidades ocultas. Enrealidad, el concepto de selección natural es un concepto difícil estrechamente relacionadocon otros conceptos complejos, tales como el concepto de eficacia biológica y de adaptación.Una discusión sobre las metáforas de la selección natural es pertinente porque la imagenque ellas evocan puede obstaculizar (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Cultural evolutionary theory as a theory of forces.Lorenzo Baravalle - 2019 - Synthese 198 (3):2801-2820.
    Cultural evolutionary theory has been alternatively compared to a theory of forces, such as Newtonian mechanics, or the kinetic theory of gases. In this article, I clarify the scope and significance of these metatheoretical characterisations. First, I discuss the kinetic analogy, which has been recently put forward by Tim Lewens. According to it, cultural evolutionary theory is grounded on a bottom-up methodology, which highlights the additive effects of social learning biases on the emergence of large-scale cultural phenomena. Lewens supports this (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Teleosemantics, selection and novel contents.Justin Garson & David Papineau - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (3):36.
    Mainstream teleosemantics is the view that mental representation should be understood in terms of biological functions, which, in turn, should be understood in terms of selection processes. One of the traditional criticisms of teleosemantics is the problem of novel contents: how can teleosemantics explain our ability to represent properties that are evolutionarily novel? In response, some have argued that by generalizing the notion of a selection process to include phenomena such as operant conditioning, and the neural selection that underlies it, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  • Evolution of multicellularity: cheating done right.Walter Veit - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (3):34.
    For decades Darwinian processes were framed in the form of the Lewontin conditions: reproduction, variation and differential reproductive success were taken to be sufficient and necessary. Since Buss and the work of Maynard Smith and Szathmary biologists were eager to explain the major transitions from individuals to groups forming new individuals subject to Darwinian mechanisms themselves. Explanations that seek to explain the emergence of a new level of selection, however, cannot employ properties that would already have to exist on that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Les plantes cultivées cachent-elles la forêt ?Sophie Gerber - 2018 - In Quentin Hiernaux & Benoît Timmermans (eds.), Philosophie du végétal. pp. 91-114.
    Le texte suivant s'appuie assez largement sur des informations scientifiques de la biologie végétale. Ce choix de philosopher à partir de la technicité et de l'historicité des objets botaniques correspond à un parti pris. La proximité de l’humain à ses objets d’étude, sa tendance à anthropomorphiser, voire anthropocentrer, les observations ou les problèmes qui se présentent à lui, a fait l’objet de multiples réflexions philosophiques et épistémologiques. Kant, pour qui « tout intérêt est finalement pratique [...] même celui de la (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The many meanings of “cost” and “benefit:” biological altruism, biological agency, and the identification of social behaviours.Peter J. Woodford - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (1):4.
    The puzzle of how altruism can evolve has been at the center of recent debates over Hamilton’s Rule, inclusive fitness, and kin-selection. In this paper, I use recent debates over altruism and Hamilton’s legacy as an example to illustrate a more general problem in evolutionary theory that has philosophical significance; I attempt to explain this significance and to draw a variety of conclusions about it. The problem is that specific behaviours and general concepts of organism agency and intentionality are defined (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ecological Hierarchy and Biodiversity.Christopher Lean & Kim Sterelny - 2016 - In Justin Garson, Anya Plutynski & Sahotra Sarkar (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. New York: Routledge. pp. 56 - 68.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Philosophy of Science and the Curse of the Case Study.Adrian Currie - 2015 - In Christopher Daly (ed.), Palgrave Handbook on Philosophical Methods. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 553-572.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • The strategy of endogenization in evolutionary biology.Samir Okasha - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 14):3413-3435.
    Evolutionary biology is striking for its ability to explain a large and diverse range of empirical phenomena on the basis of a few general theoretical principles. This article offers a philosophical perspective on the way that evolutionary biology has come to achieve such impressive generality, by focusing on “the strategy of endogenization”. This strategy involves devising evolutionary explanations for biological features that were originally part of the background conditions, or scaffolding, against which such explanations take place. Where successful, the strategy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Natural Selection and Drift as Individual-Level Causes of Evolution.Pierrick Bourrat - 2018 - Acta Biotheoretica 66 (3):159-176.
    In this paper I critically evaluate Reisman and Forber’s :1113–1123, 2005) arguments that drift and natural selection are population-level causes of evolution based on what they call the manipulation condition. Although I agree that this condition is an important step for identifying causes for evolutionary change, it is insufficient. Following Woodward, I argue that the invariance of a relationship is another crucial parameter to take into consideration for causal explanations. Starting from Reisman and Forber’s example on drift and after having (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Philosophy, Drama and Literature.Rick Benitez - 2010 - In Graham Robert Oppy, Nick Trakakis, Lynda Burns, Steven Gardner & Fiona Leigh (eds.), A companion to philosophy in Australia & New Zealand. Clayton, Victoria, Australia: Monash University Publishing. pp. 371-372.
    Philosophy and Literature is an internationally renowned refereed journal founded by Denis Dutton at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. It is now published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Since its inception in 1976, Philosophy and Literature has been concerned with the relation between literary and philosophical studies, publishing articles on the philosophical interpretation of literature as well as the literary treatment of philosophy. Philosophy and Literature has sometimes been regarded as iconoclastic, in the sense that it repudiates academic pretensions, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A pragmatic approach to the possibility of de-extinction.Matthew H. Slater & Hayley Clatterbuck - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (1-2):4.
    A number of influential biologists are currently pursuing efforts to restore previously extinct species. But for decades, philosophers of biology have regarded “de-extinction” as conceptually incoherent. Once a species is gone, it is gone forever. We argue that a range of metaphysical, biological, and ethical grounds for opposing de-extinction are at best inconclusive and that a pragmatic stance that allows for its possibility is more appealing.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Meet the new mammoth, same as the old? Resurrecting the Mammuthus primigenius.Monika Piotrowska - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (1-2):5.
    Media reporters often announce that we are on the verge of bringing back the woolly mammoth, even while there is growing consensus among scientists that resurrecting the mammoth is unlikely. In fact, current “de-extinction” efforts are not designed to bring back a mammoth, but rather adaptations of the mammoth using close relatives. For example, Harvard scientists are working on creating an Asian elephant with the thick coat of a mammoth by merging mammoth and elephant DNA. But how should such creatures (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The Current Status of the Philosophy of Biology.Peter Takacs & Michael Ruse - 2013 - Science & Education 22 (1):5-48.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • From Toys to Games: Overcoming the View of Natural Selection as a Filter.Víctor J. Luque - 2016 - Kairos 17 (1):1-24.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Holobionts as Units of Selection and a Model of Their Population Dynamics and Evolution.Joan Roughgarden, Scott F. Gilbert, Eugene Rosenberg, Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg & Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 2018 - Biological Theory 13 (1):44-65.
    Holobionts, consisting of a host and diverse microbial symbionts, function as distinct biological entities anatomically, metabolically, immunologically, and developmentally. Symbionts can be transmitted from parent to offspring by a variety of vertical and horizontal methods. Holobionts can be considered levels of selection in evolution because they are well-defined interactors, replicators/reproducers, and manifestors of adaptation. An initial mathematical model is presented to help understand how holobionts evolve. The model offered combines the processes of horizontal symbiont transfer, within-host symbiont proliferation, vertical symbiont (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Individuating population lineages: a new genealogical criterion.Beckett Sterner - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (5):683-703.
    Contemporary biology has inherited two key assumptions from the Modern Synthesis about the nature of population lineages: sexual reproduction is the exemplar for how individuals in population lineages inherit traits from their parents, and random mating is the exemplar for reproductive interaction. While these assumptions have been extremely fruitful for a number of fields, such as population genetics and phylogenetics, they are increasingly unviable for studying the full diversity and evolution of life. I introduce the “mixture” account of population lineages (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • How to Be a Function Pluralist.Justin Garson - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (4):1101-1122.
    I distinguish two forms of pluralism about biological functions, between-discipline pluralism and within-discipline pluralism. Between-discipline pluralism holds that different theories of function are appropriate for different subdisciplines of biology and psychology. I provide reasons for rejecting this view. Instead, I recommend within-discipline pluralism, which emphasizes the plurality of function concepts at play within any given subdiscipline of biology and psychology.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • Is ‘Assisted Reproduction’ Reproduction?Monika Piotrowska - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270):138-157.
    With an increasing number of ways to ‘assist’ reproduction, some bioethicists have started to wonder what it takes to become a genetic parent. It is widely agreed that sharing genes is not enough to substantiate the parent–offspring relation, but what is? Without a better understanding of the concept of reproduction, our thinking about parent–offspring relations and the ethical issues surrounding them risk being unprincipled. Here, I address that problem by offering a principled account of reproduction—the Overlap, Development and Persistence account—which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Schizophrenia and the Dysfunctional Brain.Justin Garson - 2010 - Journal of Cognitive Science 11:215-246.
    Scientists, philosophers, and even the lay public commonly accept that schizophrenia stems from a biological or internal ‘dysfunction.’ However, this assessment is typically accompanied neither by well-defined criteria for determining that something is dysfunctional nor empirical evidence that schizophrenia satisfies those criteria. In the following, a concept of biological function is developed and applied to a neurobiological model of schizophrenia. It concludes that current evidence does not warrant the claim that schizophrenia stems from a biological dysfunction, and, in fact, that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Kin Selection, Group Selection, and the Varieties of Population Structure.Jonathan Birch - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (1):259-286.
    Various results show the ‘formal equivalence’ of kin and group selectionist methodologies, but this does not preclude there being a real and useful distinction between kin and group selection processes. I distinguish individual- and population-centred approaches to drawing such a distinction, and I proceed to develop the latter. On the account I advance, the differences between kin and group selection are differences of degree in the structural properties of populations. A spatial metaphor provides a useful framework for thinking about these (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • On Mushroom Individuality.Dan Molter - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):1117-1127.
    This paper is an application of the principles of individuality found in Guay and Pradeu to illuminate biological individuality in mushrooms. I begin with the distinction between logico-cognitive individuals and ontological individuals, and then I argue for genidentity plus material continuity, as a minimum conception of ontological individuality in biology. Of the many materially-continuous genidenticals found in fungi, only those with functional roles in biological theory, either evolutionary or physiological, warrant consideration. Given numerous ways that theory picks out materially-continuous genidenticals (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • What do predictive coders want?Colin Klein - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6):2541-2557.
    The so-called “dark room problem” makes vivd the challenges that purely predictive models face in accounting for motivation. I argue that the problem is a serious one. Proposals for solving the dark room problem via predictive coding architectures are either empirically inadequate or computationally intractable. The Free Energy principle might avoid the problem, but only at the cost of setting itself up as a highly idealized model, which is then literally false to the world. I draw at least one optimistic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   38 citations  
  • The individuality thesis (3 ways).Matthew H. Haber - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (6):913-930.
    I spell out and update the individuality thesis, that species are individuals, and not classes, sets, or kinds. I offer three complementary presentations of this thesis. First, as a way of resolving an inconsistent triad about natural kinds; second, as a phylogenetic systematics theoretical perspective; and, finally, as a novel recursive account of an evolved character. These approaches do different sorts of work, serving different interests. Presenting them together produces a taxonomy of the debates over the thesis, and isolates ways (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Holobionts and the ecology of organisms: Multi-species communities or integrated individuals?Derek Skillings - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (6):875-892.
    It is now widely accepted that microorganisms play many important roles in the lives of plants and animals. Every macroorganism has been shaped in some way by microorganisms. The recognition of the ubiquity and importance of microorganisms has led some to argue for a revolution in how we understand biological individuality and the primary units of natural selection. The term “holobiont” was introduced as a name for the biological unit made up by a host and all of its associated microorganisms, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • It’s the song, not the singer: an exploration of holobiosis and evolutionary theory.W. Ford Doolittle & Austin Booth - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (1):5-24.
    That holobionts are units of selection squares poorly with the observation that microbes are often recruited from the environment, not passed down vertically from parent to offspring, as required for collective reproduction. The taxonomic makeup of a holobiont’s microbial community may vary over its lifetime and differ from that of conspecifics. In contrast, biochemical functions of the microbiota and contributions to host biology are more conserved, with taxonomically variable but functionally similar microbes recurring across generations and hosts. To save what (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   38 citations  
  • Science and the special composition question.Andrew Brenner - 2018 - Synthese 195 (2):657-678.
    Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs. Some philosophers have thought that science gives us compelling evidence against nihilism. In this article I respond to this concern. An initial challenge for nihilism stems from the fact that composition is such a ubiquitous feature of scientific theories. In response I motivate a restricted form of scientific anti-realism with respect to those components of scientific theories which make reference to composition. A second scientifically based worry for nihilism is that certain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Cultural group selection and holobiont evolution – a comparison of structures of evolution.Ehud Lamm - 2017 - In Snait Gissis, Ehud Lamm & Ayelet Shavit (eds.), Landscapes of Collectivity in the Life Sciences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
    The notion of structure of evolution is proposed to capture what it means to say that two situations exhibit the same or similar constellations of factors affecting evolution. The key features of holobiont evolution and the hologenome theory are used to define a holobiont structure of evolution. Finally, Cultural Group Selection, a set of hypotheses regarding the evolution of human cognition, is shown to match the holobiont structure closely though not perfectly.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Making the most of clade selection.W. Ford Doolittle - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (2):275-295.
    Clade selection is unpopular with philosophers who otherwise accept multilevel selection theory. Clades cannot reproduce, and reproduction is widely thought necessary for evolution by natural selection, especially of complex adaptations. Using microbial evolutionary processes as heuristics, I argue contrariwise, that (1) clade growth (proliferation of contained species) substitutes for clade reproduction in the evolution of complex adaptation, (2) clade-level properties favoring persistence – species richness, dispersal, divergence, and possibly intraclade cooperation – are not collapsible into species-level traits, (3) such properties (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • The Relation between Kin and Multilevel Selection: An Approach Using Causal Graphs.Samir Okasha - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (2):435-470.
    Kin selection and multilevel selection are alternative approaches for studying the evolution of social behaviour, the relation between which has long been a source of controversy. Many recent theorists regard the two approaches as ultimately equivalent, on the grounds that gene frequency change can be correctly expressed using either. However, this shows only that the two are formally equivalent, not that they offer equally good causal representations of the evolutionary process. This article articulates the notion of an ‘adequate causal representation’ (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Rethinking Cohesion and Species Individuality.Celso Neto - 2016 - Biological Theory 11 (3):01-12.
    According to the species-as-individuals thesis(hereafter S-A-I), species are cohesive entities. Barker and Wilson recently pointed out that the type of cohesion exhibited by species is fundamentally different from that of organisms (paradigmatic individuals), suggesting that species are homeostatic property cluster kinds. In this article, I propose a shift in how to approach cohesion in the context of S-A-I: instead of analyzing the different types of cohesion and questioning whether species have them, I focus on the role played by cohesion in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Understanding viruses: Philosophical investigations.Thomas Pradeu, Gladys Kostyrka & John Dupré - 2016 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 59:57-63.
    Viruses have been virtually absent from philosophy of biology. In this editorial introduction, we explain why we think viruses are philosophically important. We focus on six issues, and we show how they relate to classic questions of philosophy of biology and even general philosophy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Population Pluralism and Natural Selection.Jacob Stegenga - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-29.
    I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. I (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Human evolution and transitions in individuality.Paulo C. Abrantes - 2013 - Contrastes: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 18 (S1):203-220.
    This paper investigates whether it is fruitful to describe the role culture began to play at some point in the Hominin lineage as pointing to a transition in individuality, by reference to the works of Buss, Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry, Michod and Godfrey-Smith. The chief question addressed is whether a population of groups having different cultural phenotypes is either paradigmatically Darwinian or marginal, by using Godfrey-Smith's representation of such transitions in a multi-dimensional space. Richerson and Boyd's «dual inheritance» theory, and the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Shifting Attention From Theory to Practice in Philosophy of Biology.C. Kenneth Waters - unknown
    Traditional approaches in philosophy of biology focus attention on biological concepts, explanations, and theories, on evidential support and inter-theoretical relations. Newer approaches shift attention from concepts to conceptual practices, from theories to practices of theorizing, and from theoretical reduction to reductive retooling. In this article, I describe the shift from theory-focused to practice-centered philosophy of science and explain how it is leading philosophers to abandon fundamentalist assumptions associated with traditional approaches in philosophy of science and to embrace scientific pluralism. This (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • (1 other version)Levels, Time and Fitness in Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality.Pierrick Bourrat - 2015 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 7 (20150505).
    Yes, fitness is the central concept of evolutionary biology, but it is an elusive concept. Almost everyone who looks at it seriously comes out in a different place.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • (1 other version)Review: Peter Godfrey-Smith. Philosophy of Biology. [REVIEW]Cailin O’Connor - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (4):731-733.
    Review of Peter Godfrey-Smith's Philosophy of Biology.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Molecular organisms: John Archibald, One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Origin of Complex Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.Maureen A. O’Malley - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (4):571-589.
    Protistology, and evolutionary protistology in particular, is experiencing a golden research era. It is an extended one that can be dated back to the 1970s, which is when the molecular rebirth of microbial phylogeny began in earnest. John Archibald, a professor of evolutionary microbiology at Dalhousie University, focuses on the beautiful story of endosymbiosis in his book, John Archibald, One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Origin of Complex Life. However, this historical narrative could be treated as synecdochal of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The mind, the lab, and the field: Three kinds of populations in scientific practice.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Ryan Giordano, Michael D. Edge & Rasmus Nielsen - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52:12-21.
    Scientists use models to understand the natural world, and it is important not to conflate model and nature. As an illustration, we distinguish three different kinds of populations in studies of ecology and evolution: theoretical, laboratory, and natural populations, exemplified by the work of R.A. Fisher, Thomas Park, and David Lack, respectively. Biologists are rightly concerned with all three types of populations. We examine the interplay between these different kinds of populations, and their pertinent models, in three examples: the notion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • If materialism is true, the United States is probably conscious.Eric Schwitzgebel - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (7):1697-1721.
    If you’re a materialist, you probably think that rabbits are conscious. And you ought to think that. After all, rabbits are a lot like us, biologically and neurophysiologically. If you’re a materialist, you probably also think that conscious experience would be present in a wide range of naturally-evolved alien beings behaviorally very similar to us even if they are physiologically very different. And you ought to think that. After all, to deny it seems insupportable Earthly chauvinism. But a materialist who (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 citations  
  • How to Read ‘Heritability’ in the Recipe Approach to Natural Selection.Pierrick Bourrat - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (4):883-903.
    There are two ways evolution by natural selection is conceptualized in the literature. One provides a ‘recipe’ for ENS incorporating three ingredients: variation, differences in fitness, and heritability. The other provides formal equations of evolutionary change and partitions out selection from other causes of evolutionary changes such as transmission biases or drift. When comparing the two approaches there seems to be a tension around the concept of heritability. A recent claim has been made that the recipe approach is flawed and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Ecosystem Evolution is About Variation and Persistence, not Populations and Reproduction.Frédéric Bouchard - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (4):382-391.
    Building upon a non-standard understanding of evolutionary process focusing on variation and persistence, I will argue that communities and ecosystems can evolve by natural selection as emergent individuals. Evolutionary biology has relied ever increasingly on the modeling of population dynamics. Most have taken for granted that we all agree on what is a population. Recent work has reexamined this perceived consensus. I will argue that there are good reasons to restrict the term “population” to collections of monophyletically related replicators and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Levels of Selection Are Artefacts of Different Fitness Temporal Measures.Pierrick Bourrat - 2015 - Ratio 28 (1):40-50.
    In this paper I argue against the claim, recently put forward by some philosophers of biology and evolutionary biologists, that there can be two or more ontologically distinct levels of selection. I show by comparing the fitness of individuals with that of collectives of individuals in the same environment and over the same period of time – as required to decide if one or more levels of selection is acting in a population – that the selection of collectives is a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations