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  1. Epistemology and anomaly detection in astrobiology.Christopher Kempes & David Kinney - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (4):1-25.
    We examine the epistemological foundations of a leading technique in the search for evidence of life on exosolar planets. Specifically, we consider the “transit method” for spectroscopic analysis of exoplanet atmospheres, and the practice of treating anomalous chemical compositions of the atmospheres of exosolar planets as indicators of the potential presence of life. We propose a methodology for ranking the anomalousness of atmospheres that uses the mathematical apparatus of support vector machines, and which aims to be agnostic with respect to (...)
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  • Definition: A practical guide to constructing and evaluating definitions of terms.David Hitchcock - 2021 - Windsor, ON: Windsor Studies in Argumentation.
    This book proposes guidelines for constructing and evaluating definitions of terms, i.e. words or phrases of general application. The guidelines extend to adoption of nomenclature. The book is meant to be a practical guide for people who find themselves in their daily lives or their employment producing or evaluating definitions of terms. It can be consulted rather than being read through. The book’s theoretical framework is a distinction, due to Robert H. Ennis, of three dimensions of definitions: the act of (...)
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  • Natural Selection of Independently Originated Life Clades.Margarida Hermida - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (3):454-470.
    Life on Earth descends from a common ancestor. However, it is likely that there are other instances of life in the universe. If so, each abiogenesis event will have given rise to an independently originated life clade, of which Earth-life is an example. In this paper, I argue that the set of all IOLCs in the universe forms a Darwinian population subject to natural selection, with more widely dispersed IOLCs being less likely to face extinction. As a result, we should (...)
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  • Synthetic fictions: turning imagined biological systems into concrete ones.Tarja Knuuttila & Rami Koskinen - 2020 - Synthese 198 (9):8233-8250.
    The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be viewed as concrete fictions. Both minimal cells and alternative genetic systems are modal in nature: they, as well as their abstract cousins, can be used to study unactualized possibilia. We approach these synthetic constructs through Vaihinger’s notion of a semi-fiction and Goodman’s notion of semifactuality. Our study highlights the relative existence of such concrete fictions. (...)
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  • From Buzz to Burst—Critical Remarks on the Term ‘Life’ and Its Ethical Implications in Synthetic Biology.Michael Funk, Johannes Steizinger, Daniel Falkner & Tobias Eichinger - 2019 - NanoEthics 13 (3):173-198.
    In this paper, we examine the use of the term ‘life’ in the debates within and about synthetic biology. We review different positions within these debates, focusing on the historical background, the constructive epistemology of laboratory research and the pros and cons of metaphorical speech. We argue that ‘life’ is used as buzzword, as folk concept, and as theoretical concept in inhomogeneous ways. Extending beyond the review of the significant literature, we also argue that ‘life’ can be understood as aBurstwordin (...)
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  • Beyond categorical definitions of life: a data-driven approach to assessing lifeness.Christophe Malaterre & Jean-François Chartier - 2019 - Synthese 198 (5):4543-4572.
    The concept of “life” certainly is of some use to distinguish birds and beavers from water and stones. This pragmatic usefulness has led to its construal as a categorical predicate that can sift out living entities from non-living ones depending on their possessing specific properties—reproduction, metabolism, evolvability etc. In this paper, we argue against this binary construal of life. Using text-mining methods across over 30,000 scientific articles, we defend instead a degrees-of-life view and show how these methods can contribute to (...)
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  • Reductionism or holism? The two faces of biology.Joseph A. Walker & Thomas E. Cloete - 2023 - HTS Theological Studies 79 (3):7.
    Reductionism and holism, that is, antireductionism, are two of the prevailing paradigms within the philosophy of biology. Reductionists strive to understand biological phenomena by reducing them to a series of levels of complexity with each lower level forming the foundation for the subsequent level, by mapping such biological phenomena inasmuch as possible to the principal phenomena within the fundamental sciences of chemistry and physics. In this way, complex phenomena can be reduced to assemblages of more elementary explananda. Holism, in counterpart, (...)
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  • ¿Es la vida una clase natural?José Tomás Alvarado Marambio - 2023 - Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 23 (46):289-311.
    En una serie de trabajos Carol Cleland ha argumentado por los últimos veinte años que la búsqueda de una definición de la vida es no solo inútil sino contraproducente. Una definición en términos de condiciones necesarias y suficientes nos podría cegar para la tarea mucho más importante de desarrollar una teoría universal de la vida. La principal justificación para este alegato es que la vida es una clase natural. Términos para clases naturales no poseen definiciones ideales, porque pretenden hacer referencia (...)
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