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  1. The rich detail of cultural symbol systems.Dwight W. Read - 2014 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37 (4):434-435.
    The goal of forming a science of intentional behavior requires a more richly detailed account of symbolic systems than is assumed by the authors. Cultural systems are not simply the equivalent in the ideational domain of culture of the purported Baldwin Effect in the genetic domain. © 2014 Cambridge University Press.
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  • Physical basis for the emergence of autopoiesis, cognition and knowledge.W. P. Hall - 2011 - Kororoit Institute Working Papers (2):1-63.
    Paper type: Conceptual perspective. Background(s): Physics, biology, epistemology Perspectives: Theory of autopoietic systems, Popperian evolutionary epistemology and the biology of cognition. Context: This paper is a contribution to developing the theories of hierarchically complex living systems and the natures of knowledge in such systems. Problem: Dissonance between the literatures of knowledge management and organization theory and my observations of the living organization led to consideration of foundation questions: What does it mean to be alive? What is knowledge? How are life (...)
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  • How (not) to bring psychology and biology together.Mark Fedyk - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (4):949-967.
    Evolutionary psychologists often try to “bring together” biology and psychology by making predictions about what specific psychological mechanisms exist from theories about what patterns of behaviour would have been adaptive in the EEA for humans. This paper shows that one of the deepest methodological generalities in evolutionary biology—that proximate explanations and ultimate explanations stand in a many-to-many relation—entails that this inferential strategy is unsound. Ultimate explanations almost never entail the truth of any particular proximate hypothesis. But of course it does (...)
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  • Mental Evolution and the Universal Meaning of Life.Gregor Flock - manuscript
    Is a universal meaning of life (MoL) possible? In this paper I argue for an affirmative answer: Starting out from the MoL's initial definition as "the active and successful pursuit of the ultimate end in life (UEiL)" and another initial definition of the UEiL, I first introduce four UEiL and MoL categories. In the context of their discussion, I add the elements of non-physical relation and universal scope to the definitions of UEiL and MoL (sect. 2). After those more general (...)
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  • Explaining the Gap: On Humans and Other Animals – Essay Review: Thomas Suddendorf: The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals. [REVIEW]Oren Harman - 2013 - Journal of the History of Biology 46 (4):739-755.
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  • (1 other version)The Role of Self-Organization in Developmental Systems Theory and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution.Anouk Barberousse - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):202-205.
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  • Anticipatory Functions, Digital-Analog Forms and Biosemiotics: Integrating the Tools to Model Information and Normativity in Autonomous Biological Agents.Argyris Arnellos, Luis Emilio Bruni, Charbel Niño El-Hani & John Collier - 2012 - Biosemiotics 5 (3):331-367.
    We argue that living systems process information such that functionality emerges in them on a continuous basis. We then provide a framework that can explain and model the normativity of biological functionality. In addition we offer an explanation of the anticipatory nature of functionality within our overall approach. We adopt a Peircean approach to Biosemiotics, and a dynamical approach to Digital-Analog relations and to the interplay between different levels of functionality in autonomous systems, taking an integrative approach. We then apply (...)
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  • Towards a Multidimensional Metaconception of Species.Catherine Kendig - 2013 - Ratio 27 (2):155-172.
    Species concepts aim to define the species category. Many of these rely on defining species in terms of natural lineages and groupings. A dominant gene-centred metaconception has shaped notions of what constitutes both a natural lineage and a natural grouping. I suggest that relying on this metaconception provides an incomplete understanding of what constitute natural lineages and groupings. If we take seriously the role of epigenetic, behavioural, cultural, and ecological inheritance systems, rather than exclusively genetic inheritance, a broader notion of (...)
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  • From DNA- to NA-centrism and the conditions for gene-centrism revisited.Alexis De Tiège, Koen Tanghe, Johan Braeckman & Yves Van de Peer - 2014 - Biology and Philosophy 29 (1):55-69.
    First the ‘Weismann barrier’ and later on Francis Crick’s ‘central dogma’ of molecular biology nourished the gene-centric paradigm of life, i.e., the conception of the gene/genome as a ‘central source’ from which hereditary specificity unidirectionally flows or radiates into cellular biochemistry and development. Today, due to advances in molecular genetics and epigenetics, such as the discovery of complex post-genomic and epigenetic processes in which genes are causally integrated, many theorists argue that a gene-centric conception of the organism has become problematic. (...)
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  • What range of future scenarios should climate policy be based on? Modal falsificationism and its limitations.Gregor Betz - 2009 - Philosophia Naturalis 46 (1):133-158.
    Climate policy decisions are decisions under uncertainty and are, therefore, based on a range of future climate scenarios, describing possible consequences of alternative policies. Accordingly, the methodology for setting up such a scenario range becomes pivotal in climate policy advice. The preferred methodology of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be characterised as ,,modal verificationism"; it suffers from severe shortcomings which disqualify it for scientific policy advice. Modal falsificationism, as a more sound alternative, would radically alter the way the (...)
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  • Minimal memetics and the Evolution of Patented Technology.Mark A. Bedau - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (4):791-807.
    The nature and status of cultural evolution and its connection with biological evolution are controversial in part because of Richard Dawkin’s suggestion that the scientific study of culture should include “memetics,” an analog of genetics in which genes are replaced by “memes”—the hypothetical units of cultural evolution. Memetics takes different forms; I focus on its minimal form, which claims merely that natural selection shapes to some extent the evolution of some aspects of culture. Advocates and critics of memetics disagree about (...)
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  • Culture in humans and other animals.Grant Ramsey - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (3):457-479.
    The study of animal culture is a flourishing field, with culture being recorded in a wide range of taxa, including non-human primates, birds, cetaceans, and rodents. In spite of this research, however, the concept of culture itself remains elusive. There is no universally assented to concept of culture, and there is debate over the connection between culture and related concepts like tradition and social learning. Furthermore, it is not clear whether culture in humans and culture in non-human animals is really (...)
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  • Evolution, Development, and Human Social Cognition.Tyler J. Wereha & Timothy P. Racine - 2012 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3 (4):559-579.
    Explaining the causal origins of what are taken to be uniquely human capacities for understanding the mind in the first years of life is a primary goal of social cognitive development research, which concerns so called “theory of mind” or “mindreading” skills. We review and discuss particular examples of this research in the context of its underlying evolutionary conceptual framework known as the neo-Darwinian modern synthesis. It is increasingly recognized that the modern synthesis is limited in its neglect of developmental (...)
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  • Plant individuality: a solution to the demographer’s dilemma.Ellen Clarke - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (3):321-361.
    The problem of plant individuality is something which has vexed botanists throughout the ages, with fashion swinging back and forth from treating plants as communities of individuals (Darwin 1800 ; Braun and Stone 1853 ; Münch 1938 ) to treating them as organisms in their own right, and although the latter view has dominated mainstream thought most recently (Harper 1977 ; Cook 1985 ; Ariew and Lewontin 2004 ), a lively debate conducted mostly in Scandinavian journals proves that the issues (...)
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  • Do we need an extended evolutionary synthesis?Massimo Pigliucci - 2007 - Evolution 61 (12):2743-2749.
    The Modern Synthesis (MS) is the current paradigm in evolutionary biology. It was actually built by expanding on the conceptual foundations laid out by its predecessors, Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. For sometime now there has been talk of a new Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES), and this article begins to outline why we may need such an extension, and how it may come about. As philosopher Karl Popper has noticed, the current evolutionary theory is a theory of genes, and we still lack (...)
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  • Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Critique of Darwin.Charles H. Pence - 2011 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 33 (2):165-190.
    Despite his position as one of the first philosophers to write in the “post- Darwinian” world, the critique of Darwin by Friedrich Nietzsche is often ignored for a host of unsatisfactory reasons. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of Darwin is important to the study of both Nietzsche’s and Darwin’s impact on philosophy. Further, I show that the central claims of Nietzsche’s critique have been broadly misunderstood. I then present a new reading of Nietzsche’s core criticism of Darwin. An important part (...)
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  • Selection without replicators: the origin of genes, and the replicator/interactor distinction in etiobiology.John S. Wilkins, Ian Musgrave & Clem Stanyon - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (2):215-239.
    Genes are thought to have evolved from long-lived and multiply-interactive molecules in the early stages of the origins of life. However, at that stage there were no replicators, and the distinction between interactors and replicators did not yet apply. Nevertheless, the process of evolution that proceeded from initial autocatalytic hypercycles to full organisms was a Darwinian process of selection of favourable variants. We distinguish therefore between Neo-Darwinian evolution and the related Weismannian and Central Dogma divisions, on the one hand, and (...)
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  • Evo-Devo as a Trading Zone.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2014 - In Alan C. Love (ed.), Conceptual Change in Biology: Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives on Evolution and Development. Berlin: Springer Verlag, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science.
    Evo-Devo exhibits a plurality of scientific “cultures” of practice and theory. When are the cultures acting—individually or collectively—in ways that actually move research forward, empirically, theoretically, and ethically? When do they become imperialistic, in the sense of excluding and subordinating other cultures? This chapter identifies six cultures – three /styles/ (mathematical modeling, mechanism, and history) and three /paradigms/ (adaptationism, structuralism, and cladism). The key assumptions standing behind, under, or within each of these cultures are explored. Characterizing the internal structure of (...)
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  • Why Machine-Information Metaphors are Bad for Science and Science Education.Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry - 2011 - Science & Education 20 (5-6):471.
    Genes are often described by biologists using metaphors derived from computa- tional science: they are thought of as carriers of information, as being the equivalent of ‘‘blueprints’’ for the construction of organisms. Likewise, cells are often characterized as ‘‘factories’’ and organisms themselves become analogous to machines. Accordingly, when the human genome project was initially announced, the promise was that we would soon know how a human being is made, just as we know how to make airplanes and buildings. Impor- tantly, (...)
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  • Complexity and Extended Phenomenological‐Cognitive Systems.Michael Silberstein & Anthony Chemero - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (1):35-50.
    The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of extended cognitive systems. According to this understanding, extended cognitive systems are heterogenous, composed of brain, body, and niche, non-linearly coupled to one another. This view of cognitive systems, as non-linearly coupled brain–body–niche systems, promises conceptual and methodological advances. In this article we focus on two of these. First, the fundamental interdependence among brain, body, and niche makes it possible to explain extended cognition without invoking representations or computation. Second, (...)
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  • New Forms of Complementarity in Science.Andrea Bonaccorsi - 2010 - Minerva 48 (4):355-387.
    New sciences born or developed in the 20th century (information, materials, life science) are based on forms of complementarity that differ from the past. The paper discusses cognitive, or disciplinary, institutional, and technical complementarity. It argues that new sciences apply a reductionist explanatory strategy to complex multi-layered systems. In doing so the reductionist promise is falsified, generating the need for multi-level kinds of explanation (e.g. in post-genomic molecular biology), new forms of complementarity between scientific and non-scientific organizations, and new forms (...)
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  • Evolutionary Chance Mutation: A Defense of the Modern Synthesis' Consensus View.Francesca Merlin - 2010 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 2 (20130604).
    One central tenet of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis , and the consensus view among biologists until now, is that all genetic mutations occur by “chance” or at “random” with respect to adaptation. However, the discovery of some molecular mechanisms enhancing mutation rate in response to environmental conditions has given rise to discussions among biologists, historians and philosophers of biology about the “chance” vs “directed” character of mutations . In fact, some argue that mutations due to a particular kind of mutator (...)
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  • Varieties of Living Things: Life at the Intersection of Lineage and Metabolism.John Dupré & Maureen A. O'Malley - 2009 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 1 (20130604).
    We address three fundamental questions: What does it mean for an entity to be living? What is the role of inter-organismic collaboration in evolution? What is a biological individual? Our central argument is that life arises when lineage-forming entities collaborate in metabolism. By conceiving of metabolism as a collaborative process performed by functional wholes, which are associations of a variety of lineage-forming entities, we avoid the standard tension between reproduction and metabolism in discussions of life – a tension particularly evident (...)
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  • Universal grammar and the Baldwin effect: a hypothesis and some philosophical consequences.Shane Nicholas Glackin - 2011 - Biology and Philosophy 26 (2):201-222.
    Grammar is now widely regarded as a substantially biological phenomenon, yet the problem of language evolution remains a matter of controversy among Linguists, Cognitive Scientists, and Evolutionary Theorists alike. In this paper, I present a new theoretical argument for one particular hypothesis—that a Language Acquisition Device of the sort first posited by Noam Chomsky might have evolved via the so-called Baldwin Effect . Close attention to the workings of that mechanism, I argue, helps to explain a previously mysterious feature of (...)
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  • What, if anything, is an evolutionary novelty?Massimo Pigliucci - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):887-898.
    The idea of phenotypic novelty appears throughout the evolutionary literature. Novelties have been defined so broadly as to make the term meaningless and so narrowly as to apply only to a limited number of spectacular structures. Here I examine some of the available definitions of phenotypic novelty and argue that the modern synthesis is ill equipped at explaining novelties. I then discuss three frameworks that may help biologists get a better insight of how novelties arise during evolution but warn that (...)
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  • Gene–culture coevolution and the evolution of social institutions.Robert Boyd & Peter J. Richerson - unknown
    Social institutions are the laws, informal rules, and conventions that give durable structure to social interactions within a population. Such institutions are typically not designed consciously, are heritable at the population level, are frequently but not always group benefi cial, and are often symbolically marked. Conceptualizing social institutions as one of multiple possible stable cultural equilibrium allows a straightforward explanation of their properties. The evolution of institutions is partly driven by both the deliberate and intuitive decisions of individuals and collectivities. (...)
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  • Interaction and bio-cognitive order.C. A. Hooker - 2009 - Synthese 166 (3):513-546.
    The role of interaction in learning is essential and profound: it must provide the means to solve open problems (those only vaguely specified in advance), but cannot be captured using our familiar formal cognitive tools. This presents an impasse to those confined to present formalisms; but interaction is fundamentally dynamical, not formal, and with its importance thus underlined it invites the development of a distinctively interactivist account of life and mind. This account is provided, from its roots in the interactivist (...)
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  • The nurture of nature: Hereditary plasticity in evolution.Ehud Lamm & Eva Jablonka - 2008 - Philosophical Psychology 21 (3):305 – 319.
    The dichotomy between Nature and Nurture, which has been dismantled within the framework of development, remains embodied in the notions of plasticity and evolvability. We argue that plasticity and evolvability, like development and heredity, are neither dichotomous nor distinct: the very same mechanisms may be involved in both, and the research perspective chosen depends to a large extent on the type of problem being explored and the kinds of questions being asked. Epigenetic inheritance leads to transgenerationally extended plasticity, and developmentally-induced (...)
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  • Espousing interactions and Fielding reactions: Addressing laypeople's beliefs about genetic determinism.David S. Moore - 2008 - Philosophical Psychology 21 (3):331 – 348.
    Although biologists and philosophers of science generally agree that genes cannot determine the forms of biological and psychological traits, students, journalists, politicians, and other members of the general public nonetheless continue to embrace genetic determinism. This article identifies some of the concerns typically raised by individuals when they first encounter the systems perspective that biologists and philosophers of science now favor over genetic determinism, and uses arguments informed by that perspective to address those concerns. No definitive statements can yet be (...)
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  • Biohumanities: Rethinking the relationship between biosciences, philosophy and history of science, and society.Karola Stotz & Paul E. Griffiths - 2007 - Quarterly Review of Biology 83 (1):37--45.
    We argue that philosophical and historical research can constitute a ‘Biohumanities’ which deepens our understanding of biology itself; engages in constructive 'science criticism'; helps formulate new 'visions of biology'; and facilitates 'critical science communication'. We illustrate these ideas with two recent 'experimental philosophy' studies of the concept of the gene and of the concept of innateness conducted by ourselves and collaborators.
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  • (1 other version)“If there is nothing beyond the organic...”: Heredity and Culture at the Boundaries of Anthropology in the Work of Alfred L. Kroeber.Maria E. Kronfeldner - 2009 - NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 17 (2):107-133.
    Continuing Franz Boas' work to establish anthropology as an academic discipline in the US at the turn of the twentieth century, Alfred L. Kroeber re-defined culture as a phenomenon sui generis. To achieve this he asked geneticists to enter into a coalition against hereditarian thoughts prevalent at that time in the US. The goal was to create space for anthropology as a separate discipline within academia, distinct from other disciplines. To this end he crossed the boundary separating anthropology from biology (...)
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  • Bioknowledge with Burian. [REVIEW]Robert A. Wilson - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (1):131-139.
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  • On organism: Environment buffers and their ecological significance.José-Leonel Torres & Lynn Trainor - 2008 - Biology and Philosophy 23 (3):403-416.
    We consider, from a physical perspective, the case where the interface between an organism and its environment becomes large enough that it acts as a buffer regulating their matter and energy exchanges. We illustrate the physiological and evolutionary role of buffers through the example of lungfish estivation. Then we ponder the relevance of buffers of this kind to the quest for a general definition of concepts like niche construction, the extended phenotype, and related ones, whose meaning is conveyed at present (...)
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  • Realization: Metaphysics, mind, and science.Robert A. Wilson - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):985-996.
    This paper surveys some recent work on realization in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science.
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  • Women Philosophers on Economics, Technology, Environment, and Gender History: Shaping the Future, Rethinking the Past.Ruth Edith Hagengruber (ed.) - 2023 - De Gruyter.
    In times of current crisis, the voices of women are needed more than ever. The accumulation of war and environmental catastrophes teaches us that exploitation of people and nature through violent appropriation and enrichment for the sake of short-term self-interest exacts its price. This book presents contributions on the currently most relevant and most urgent issues: reshaping the economy, environmental problems, technology and the re-reading of history from the non-western and western tradition. With an outlook into the problems of class, (...)
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  • Forma, función y arquitectura biológica.Giorgio Airoldi & Cristian Saborido - 2022 - Cuadernos Filosóficos / Segunda Época 19.
    Los conceptos de evolución y cambio evolutivo son a la vez laxos y polisémicos: se aplican a fenómenos muy diferentes y no siempre se definen con precisión. La aplicación extendida del paradigma neo-darwinista clásico, además, suele imponer un esquema adaptacionista al análisis de los hechos evolutivos, en el cual las funciones juegan un papel lógicamente anterior a los rasgos y sus formas. En este artículo proponemos, como etapa previa a la formulación de hipótesis sobre las causas del cambio, un modelo (...)
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  • The genetic informational network: how DNA conveys semantic information.Emmanuel Saridakis - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (4):1-21.
    The question of whether “genetic information” is a merely causal factor in development or can be made sense of semantically, in a way analogous to a language or other type of representation, has generated a long debate in the philosophy of biology. It is intimately connected with another intense debate, concerning the limits of genetic determinism. In this paper I argue that widespread attempts to draw analogies between genetic information and information contained in books, blueprints or computer programs, are fundamentally (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Middle Way to Reality: on Why I Am Not a Buddhist and Other Philosophical Curiosities.Christian Coseru - 2021 - Sophia 60 (3):1-24.
    This paper examines four central issues prompted by Thompson's recent critique of the Buddhist modernism phenomenon: (i) the suitability of evolutionary psychology as a framework of analysis for Buddhist moral psychological ideas; (ii) the issue of what counts as the core and main trajectory of the Buddhist intellectual tradition; (iii) the scope of naturalism in the relation between science and metaphysics, and (iv) whether a Madhyamaka-inspired anti-foundationalism stance can serve as an effective platform for debating the issue of progress in (...)
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  • Coordination in theory extension: How Reichenbach can help us understand endogenization in evolutionary biology.Michele Luchetti - 2021 - Synthese (3-4):1-26.
    Reichenbach’s early solution to the scientific problem of how abstract mathematical representations can successfully express real phenomena is rooted in his view of coordination. In this paper, I claim that a Reichenbach-inspired, ‘layered’ view of coordination provides us with an effective tool to systematically analyse some epistemic and conceptual intricacies resulting from a widespread theorising strategy in evolutionary biology, recently discussed by Okasha (2018) as ‘endogenization’. First, I argue that endogenization is a form of extension of natural selection theory that (...)
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  • Digging the channels of inheritance: On How to Distinguish Between Cultural and Biological Inheritance.Maria Kronfeldner - 2021 - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376.
    Theories of cultural evolution rest on the assumption that cultural inheritance is distinct from biological inheritance. Cultural and biological inheritance are two separate so-called channels of inheritance, two sub-systems of the sum total of developmental resources traveling in distinct ways between individual agents. This paper asks: what justifies this assumption? In reply, a philosophical account is offered that points at three related but distinct criteria that (taken together) make the distinction between cultural and biological inheritance not only precise but also (...)
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  • Making Sense of the Relationship Between Adaptive Thinking and Heuristics in Evolutionary Psychology.Shunkichi Matsumoto - 2021 - Biological Theory 16 (1):16-29.
    In recent years, quite a few evolutionary psychologists have come to embrace a heuristic interpretation of the discipline. They claim that, no matter how methodologically incomplete, adaptive thinking works fine as a good heuristic that effectively reduces the hypothesis space by generating novel and promising hypotheses that can eventually be empirically tested. The purpose of this article is to elucidate the use of heuristics in evolutionary psychology, thereby clarifying the role adaptive thinking has to play. To that end, two typical (...)
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  • Non-genetic inheritance: Evolution above the organismal level.Anton Sukhoverkhov & Nathalie Gontier - 2021 - Biosystems 1 (200):104325.
    The article proposes to further develop the ideas of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis by including into evolutionary research an analysis of phenomena that occur above the organismal level. We demonstrate that the current Extended Synthesis is focused more on individual traits (genetically or non-genetically inherited) and less on community system traits (synergetic/organizational traits) that characterize transgenerational biological, ecological, social, and cultural systems. In this regard, we will consider various communities that are made up of interacting populations, and for which the (...)
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  • Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences.Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre & Marc Silberstein (eds.) - 2014 - Springer.
    The Darwinian theory of evolution is itself evolving and this book presents the details of the core of modern Darwinism and its latest developmental directions. The authors present current scientific work addressing theoretical problems and challenges in four sections, beginning with the concepts of evolution theory, its processes of variation, heredity, selection, adaptation and function, and its patterns of character, species, descent and life. The second part of this book scrutinizes Darwinism in the philosophy of science and its usefulness in (...)
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  • Hierarchy Theory of Evolution and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Some Epistemic Bridges, Some Conceptual Rifts.Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda & Francisco Vergara-Silva - 2018 - Evolutionary Biology 45 (2):127-139.
    Contemporary evolutionary biology comprises a plural landscape of multiple co-existent conceptual frameworks and strenuous voices that disagree on the nature and scope of evolutionary theory. Since the mid-eighties, some of these conceptual frameworks have denounced the ontologies of the Modern Synthesis and of the updated Standard Theory of Evolution as unfinished or even flawed. In this paper, we analyze and compare two of those conceptual frameworks, namely Niles Eldredge’s Hierarchy Theory of Evolution (with its extended ontology of evolutionary entities) and (...)
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  • Five Clarifications about Cultural Evolution.Liane Gabora - 2011 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 11 (1-2):61-83.
    This paper reviews and clarifies five misunderstandings about cultural evolution identified by Henrich et al.. First, cultural representations are neither discrete nor continuous; they are distributed across neurons that respond to microfeatures. This enables associations to be made, and cultural change to be generated. Second, ‘replicator dynamics’ do not ensure natural selection. The replicator notion does not capture the distinction between actively interpreted self-assembly code and passively copied self-description, which leads to a fundamental principle of natural selection: inherited information is (...)
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  • Functional Information: a Graded Taxonomy of Difference Makers.Nir Fresco, Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka - 2020 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 11 (3):547-567.
    There are many different notions of information in logic, epistemology, psychology, biology and cognitive science, which are employed differently in each discipline, often with little overlap. Since our interest here is in biological processes and organisms, we develop a taxonomy of functional information that extends the standard cue/signal distinction (in animal communication theory). Three general, main claims are advanced here. (1) This new taxonomy can be useful in describing learning and communication. (2) It avoids some problems that the natural/non-natural information (...)
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  • What’s wrong with the modern evolutionary synthesis? A critical reply to Welch.Koen B. Tanghe, Alexis De Tiège, Lieven Pauwels, Stefaan Blancke & Johan Braeckman - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (3-4):23.
    Welch :263–279, 2017) has recently proposed two possible explanations for why the field of evolutionary biology is plagued by a steady stream of claims that it needs urgent reform. It is either seriously deficient and incapable of incorporating ideas that are new, relevant and plausible or it is not seriously deficient at all but is prone to attracting discontent and to the championing of ideas that are not very relevant, plausible and/or not really new. He argues for the second explanation. (...)
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  • Semiotic Mechanisms Underlying Niche Construction.Jeffrey V. Peterson, Ann Marie Thornburg, Marc Kissel, Christopher Ball & Agustín Fuentes - 2018 - Biosemiotics 11 (2):181-198.
    The explanatory value of niche construction can be strengthened by firm footing in semiotic theory. Anthropologists have a unique perspective on the integration of such diverse approaches to human action and evolutionary processes. Here, we seek to open a dialogue between anthropology and biosemiotics. The overarching aim of this paper is to demonstrate that niche construction, including the underlying mechanism of reciprocal causation, is a semiotic process relating to biological development as well as cognitive development and cultural change. In making (...)
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  • Reduccionismo, leyes naturales y complejidad: diferentes estrategias de investigación y explicación científica.Maximiliano Martínez, Eduardo García & Catherine Bernal - 2017 - Scientiae Studia 15 (2):243.
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  • Beyond the search for the subject: An anti-essentialist ontology for liberal democracy.Samuel Bagg - 2021 - European Journal of Political Theory 20 (2):208-231.
    Reading Foucault’s work on power and subjectivity alongside “developmentalist” approaches to evolutionary biology, this article endorses poststructuralist critiques of political ideals grounded in the value of subjective agency. Many political theorists embrace such critiques, of course, but those who do are often skeptical of liberal democracy, and even of normative theory itself. By contrast, those who are left to theorize liberal democracy tend to reject or ignore poststructuralist insights, and have continued to employ dubious ontological assumptions regarding human agents. Against (...)
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