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What is Biodiversity?

University of Chicago Press (2008)

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  1. Biodiversity Surgery: Some Epistemological Challenges in Facing Extinction.Elena Casetta & Jorge Marques da Silva - 2015 - Axiomathes 25 (3):239-251.
    Biological conservation has a long story, but what distinguishes Conservation Biology from previous conservation fields is its multidisciplinary scope and its character as a mission-oriented crisis discipline. These characteristics suggested the introduction of the metaphor of biological conservation as a sort of surgery. This paper is about the initial stages of such surgery. Firstly, some data about the so-called “Big Sixth”—the disease—will be presented together with some information about Conservation Biology—the surgeon. Then epistemic and epistemological difficulties in extinction assessment and (...)
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  • Save the planet: eliminate biodiversity.Carlos Santana - 2014 - Biology and Philosophy 29 (6):761-780.
    Recent work in the philosophy of biology has attempted to clarify and defend the use of the biodiversity concept in conservation science. I argue against these views, and give reasons to think that the biodiversity concept is a poor fit for the role we want it to play in conservation biology on both empirical and conceptual grounds. Against pluralists, who hold that biodiversity consists of distinct but correlated properties of natural systems, I argue that the supposed correlations between these properties (...)
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  • Getting the Wrong Anderson? A Short and Opinionated History of New Zealand Philosophy.Charles Pigden - 2011 - In Graham Robert Oppy & Nick Trakakis (eds.), The Antipodean philosopher. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books. pp. 169-195.
    Is the history of philosophy primarily a contribution to PHILOSOPHY or primarily a contribution to HISTORY? This paper is primarily contribution to history (specifically the history of New Zealand) but although the history of philosophy has been big in New Zealand, most NZ philosophers with a historical bent are primarily interested in the history of philosophy as a contribution to philosophy. My essay focuses on two questions: 1) How did New Zealand philosophy get to be so good? And why, given (...)
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  • Microbial diversity and the “lower-limit” problem of biodiversity.Christophe Malaterre - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (2):219-239.
    Science is now studying biodiversity on a massive scale. These studies are occurring not just at the scale of larger plants and animals, but also at the scale of minute entities such as bacteria and viruses. This expansion has led to the development of a specific sub-field of “microbial diversity”. In this paper, I investigate how microbial diversity faces two of the classical issues encountered by the concept of “ biodiversity ”: the issues of defining the units of biodiversity and (...)
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  • Function, selection, and construction in the brain.Justin Garson - 2012 - Synthese 189 (3):451-481.
    A common misunderstanding of the selected effects theory of function is that natural selection operating over an evolutionary time scale is the only functionbestowing process in the natural world. This construal of the selected effects theory conflicts with the existence and ubiquity of neurobiological functions that are evolutionary novel, such as structures underlying reading ability. This conflict has suggested to some that, while the selected effects theory may be relevant to some areas of evolutionary biology, its relevance to neuroscience is (...)
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  • Selected effects and causal role functions in the brain: the case for an etiological approach to neuroscience.Justin Garson - 2011 - Biology and Philosophy 26 (4):547-565.
    Despite the voluminous literature on biological functions produced over the last 40 years, few philosophers have studied the concept of function as it is used in neuroscience. Recently, Craver (forthcoming; also see Craver 2001) defended the causal role theory against the selected effects theory as the most appropriate theory of function for neuroscience. The following argues that though neuroscientists do study causal role functions, the scope of that theory is not as universal as claimed. Despite the strong prima facie superiority (...)
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  • Philosophical issues in ecology: Recent trends and future directions.Mark Colyvan, William Grey, Paul E. Griffiths, Jay Odenbaugh, Stefan Linquist & Hugh P. Possingham - 2009 - Ecology and Society 14 (2).
    Philosophy of ecology has been slow to become established as an area of philosophical interest, but it is now receiving considerable attention. This area holds great promise for the advancement of both ecology and the philosophy of science. Insights from the philosophy of science can advance ecology in a number of ways. For example, philosophy can assist with the development of improved models of ecological hypothesis testing and theory choice. Philosophy can also help ecologists understand the role and limitations of (...)
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  • Multidimensional Concepts and Disparate Scale Types.Brian Hedden & Jacob M. Nebel - forthcoming - Philosophical Review.
    Multidimensional concepts are everywhere, and they are important. Examples include moral value, welfare, scientific confirmation, democracy, and biodiversity. How, if at all, can we aggregate the underlying dimensions of a multidimensional concept F to yield verdicts about which things are Fer than which overall? Social choice theory can be used to model and investigate this aggregation problem. Here, we focus on a particularly thorny problem made salient by this social choice-theoretic framework: the underlying dimensions of a given concept might be (...)
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  • Toward a Consensus on the Intrinsic Value of Biodiversity.Katie H. Morrow - forthcoming - Environmental Values.
    This paper addresses the stalemate on the question whether biodiversity has intrinsic value. I distinguish between a “weak” conception and two “strong” conceptions of intrinsic value in the environmental ethics literature. The strong conceptions of intrinsic value are connected, respectively, to moral standing and to a strongly objectivist account of value. Neither of these forms of value likely applies to biodiversity. However, the weak conception of intrinsic value is neutral about both moral standing and the nature of value and plausibly (...)
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  • On diversity of human-nature relationships in environmental sciences and its implications for the management of ecological crisis.L. Mouysset - 2023 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 45 (2):1-20.
    Decision makers addressing the ecological crisis face the challenge of considering complex ecosystems in their socioeconomic decisions. Complementary to ecological sciences, other scientific frameworks, grouped under the umbrella term environmental sciences, offer decision makers the opportunity to pursue sustainable paths. Because the environmental sciences are drawn from different branches of science, environmental ethics must go beyond the legacy of ecology and the life sciences to describe the contribution of scientific knowledge to addressing the ecological crisis. In this regard, I analyze (...)
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  • On the Horns of a Dilemma: Let the Northern White Rhino Vanish or Intervene?Craig Callender - 2023 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 26 (2):318-332.
    Two females, Nadine and Fatu, are the sole surviving Northern White Rhinos (NWR). The subspecies is functionally extinct. Hope for NWR now lies in emerging reproductive and genetic technologies, which could potentially produce NWR from induced pluripotent stem cells. What is the rationale for this project? This question raises almost every philosophical issue facing conservation science today. I argue that NWR recovery is hard to justify via many traditional paths (e.g., historical fidelity, ecosystem health, biodiversity), but if we shift focus (...)
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  • Concepts of Biodiversity, Pluralism, and Pragmatism: The Case of Walnut Forest Conservation in Central Asia.Elena Popa - 2022 - SATS 23 (1):97-116.
    This paper examines philosophical debates about concepts of biodiversity, making the case for conceptual pluralism. Taking a pragmatist perspective, I argue that normative concepts of biodiversity and eco-centric concepts of biodiversity can serve different purposes. The former would help stress the values of local communities, which have often been neglected by both early scientific approaches to conservation, and by policy makers prioritizing the political or economic interests of specific groups. The latter would help build local research programs independent of pressures (...)
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  • Does everything resemble everything else to the same degree?Ben Blumson - 2022 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1):1-21.
    According to Satosi Watanabe's "theorem of the ugly duckling", the number of predicates satisfied by any two different particulars is a constant, which does not depend on the choice of the two particulars. If the number of predicates satisfied by two particulars is their number of properties in common, and the degree of resemblance between two particulars is a function of their number of properties in common, then it follows that the degree of resemblance between any two different particulars is (...)
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  • A Scale Problem with the Ecosystem Services Argument for Protecting Biodiversity.Katie H. Morrow - 2023 - Environmental Values 32 (3):271-290.
    The ecosystem services argument is a highly publicised instrumental argument for protecting biodiversity. I develop a new objection to this argument based on the lack of a causal connection from global species losses to local ecosystem changes. I survey some alternative formulations of services arguments, including ones incorporating option value or a precautionary principle, and show that they do not fare much better than the standard version. I conclude that environmental thinkers should rely less on ecosystem services as a means (...)
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  • Science and values in the biodiversity-ecosystem function debate.David M. Frank - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (2):1-22.
    This paper explores interactions between ecological science and conservation values in the biodiversity-ecosystem function debate of the 1990–2000s. The scientific debate concerned the interpretation of observed correlations between species richness and ecosystem properties like primary productivity in experimental ecosystems. The debate over the causal or explanatory role of species richness was presumed to have implications for conservation policy, and the use of such research to support policy recommendations generated hostility between rival groups of ecologists. I argue that the debate was (...)
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  • Biologisk mångfald och etik: Om artrikedom och naturvärden.Patrik Baard - 2020 - Tidskrift För Politisk Filosofi 24 (1):24-42.
    I denna artikel kommer jag att ge en översikt över olika argument som ger stöd för slutsatsen att biologisk mångfald per se är värdefullt och bör bevaras. Ett vanligt argument vilar på premissen att biologisk mångfald har egenvärde, men premissen är svår att göra rimlig och får lätt kontraintuitiva följder. Utöver det kommer jag även att kritiskt granska instrumentella värden, relationella värden, och vad som här kallas ’miljöspecifika’ värden. I den sistnämnda kategorin ingår begrepp som naturlighet och naturvärde. Dessa definieras (...)
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  • Invasive species increase biodiversity and, therefore, services: An argument of equivocations.Christopher Lean - 2021 - Conservation Science and Practice 553.
    Some critics of invasion biology have argued the invasion of ecosystems by nonindigenous species can create more valuable ecosystems. They consider invaded communities as more valuable because they potentially produce more ecosystem services. To establish that the introduction of nonindigenous species creates more valuable ecosystems, they defend that value is provisioned by ecosystem services. These services are derived from ecosystem productivity, the production and cycling of resources. Ecosystem productivity is a result of biodiversity, which is understood as local species richness. (...)
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  • Putting History Back into Mechanisms.Justin Garson - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (4):921-940.
    Mechanisms, in the prominent biological sense of the term, are historical entities. That is, whether or not something is a mechanism for something depends on its history. Put differently, while your spontaneously-generated molecule-for-molecule double has a heart, and its heart pumps blood around its body, its heart does not have a mechanism for pumping, since it does not have the right history. My argument for this claim is that mechanisms have proper functions; proper functions are historical entities; so, mechanisms are (...)
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  • Biological normativity: a new hope for naturalism?Walter Veit - 2021 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 24 (2):291-301.
    Since Boorse [Philos Sci 44(4):542–573, 1977] published his paper “Health as a theoretical concept” one of the most lively debates within philosophy of medicine has been on the question of whether health and disease are in some sense ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ or ‘subjective’ and ‘value-laden’. Due to the apparent ‘failure’ of pure naturalist, constructivist, or normativist accounts, much in the recent literature has appealed to more conciliatory approaches or so-called ‘hybrid accounts’ of health and disease. A recent paper by Matthewson (...)
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  • Biocentric Individualism and Biodiversity Conservation: An Argument from Parsimony.Patrik Baard - 2021 - Environmental Values 30 (1):93-110.
    This article argues that holistic ecocentrism unnecessarily introduces elements to explain why we ought to halt biodiversity loss. I suggest that atomistic accounts can justify the same conclusion by utilising fewer elements. Hence, why we ought to preserve biodiversity can be made reasonable without adding elements such as intrinsic values of ecosystems or moral obligations to conserve collectives of organisms. Between two equally good explanations of the same phenomenon, the explanation utilising fewer elements, which speaks in favour of atomistic accounts, (...)
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  • Biodiversity? Yes, But What Kind? A Critical Reassessment in Light of a Challenge from Microbial Ecology.Nicolae Morar - 2019 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 32 (2):201-218.
    Biodiversity has become one of the most important conservation values that drive our ecological management and directly inform our environmental policy. This paper highlights the dangers of strategically appropriating concepts from ecological sciences and also of uncritically inserting them into conservation debates as unqualified normative landmarks. Here, I marshal evidence from a cutting-edge research program in microbial ecology, which shows that if species richness is our major normative target, then we are faced with extraordinary ethical implications. This example challenges our (...)
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  • In defense of living fossils.Derek D. Turner - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (2):23.
    Lately there has been a wave of criticism of the concept of living fossils. First, recent research has challenged the status of paradigmatic living fossil taxa, such as coelacanths, cycads, and tuataras. Critics have also complained that the living fossil concept is vague and/or ambiguous, and that it is responsible for misconceptions about evolution. This paper defends a particular phylogenetic conception of living fossils, or taxa that exhibit deep prehistoric morphological stability; contain few extant species; and make a high contribution (...)
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  • 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.
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  • Multiple diversity concepts and their ethical-epistemic implications.Daniel Steel, Sina Fazelpour, Kinley Gillette, Bianca Crewe & Michael Burgess - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):761-780.
    A concept of diversity is an understanding of what makes a group diverse that may be applicable in a variety of contexts. We distinguish three diversity concepts, show that each can be found in discussions of diversity in science, and explain how they tend to be associated with distinct epistemic and ethical rationales. Yet philosophical literature on diversity among scientists has given little attention to distinct concepts of diversity. This is significant because the unappreciated existence of multiple diversity concepts can (...)
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  • Biodiversity is a chimera, and chimeras aren’t real.Carlos Santana - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (1-2):15.
    A recent article by Burch-Brown and Archer provides compelling arguments that biodiversity is either a natural kind or a pragmatically-valid scientific entity. I call into question three of these arguments. The first argument contends that biodiversity is a Homeostatic Property Cluster. I respond that there is no plausible homeostatic mechanism that would make biodiversity an HPC natural kind. The second argument proposes that biodiversity is a multiply-realizable functional kind. I respond that there is no shared function to ground this account. (...)
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  • Indexically Structured Ecological Communities.Christopher Hunter Lean - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (3):501-522.
    Ecological communities are seldom, if ever, biological individuals. They lack causal boundaries as the populations that constitute communities are not congruent and rarely have persistent functional roles regulating the communities’ higher-level properties. Instead we should represent ecological communities indexically, by identifying ecological communities via the network of weak causal interactions between populations that unfurl from a starting set of populations. This precisification of ecological communities helps identify how community properties remain invariant, and why they have robust characteristics. This respects the (...)
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  • 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, (...)
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  • The coupling of taxonomy and function in microbiomes.S. Andrew Inkpen, Gavin M. Douglas, T. D. P. Brunet, Karl Leuschen, W. Ford Doolittle & Morgan G. I. Langille - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (6):1225-1243.
    Microbiologists are transitioning from the study and characterization of individual strains or species to the profiling of whole microbiomes and microbial ecology. Equipped with high-throughput methods for studying the taxonomic and functional characteristics of diverse samples, they are just beginning to encounter the conceptual, theoretical, and experimental problems of comparing taxonomy to function, and extracting useful measures from such comparisons. Although still unresolved, these problems are well studied in macro-ecology and are reiterated here as an historical precautionary for microbial ecologists. (...)
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  • Biodiversity Realism: Preserving the tree of life.Christopher Hunter Lean - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (6):1083-1103.
    Biodiversity is a key concept in the biological sciences. While it has its origin in conservation biology, it has become useful across multiple biological disciplines as a means to describe biological variation. It remains, however, unclear what particular biological units the concept refers to. There are currently multiple accounts of which biological features constitute biodiversity and how these are to be measured. In this paper, I draw from the species concept debate to argue for a set of desiderata for the (...)
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  • In defence of biodiversity.Joanna Burch-Brown & Alfred Archer - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (6):969-997.
    The concept of biodiversity has played a central role within conservation biology over the last thirty years. Precisely how it should be understood, however, is a matter of ongoing debate. In this paper we defend what we call a classic multidimensional conception of biodiversity. We begin by introducing two arguments for eliminating the concept of biodiversity from conservation biology, both of which have been put forward in a recent paper by Santana. The first argument is against the concept’s scientific usefulness. (...)
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  • 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.
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  • Biodiversity and Biocollections: Problem of Correspondence.Igor Pavlinov - 2016 - In Pavlinov Igor (ed.), Aspects of Biodiversity. KMK Sci Press. pp. 733-786.
    This text is an English translation of those several sections of the original paper in Russian, where collection-related issues are considered. The full citation of the original paper is as following: Pavlinov I.Ya. 2016. [Bioraznoobrazie i biokollektsii: problema sootvetstvia]. In: Pavlinov I.Ya. (comp.). Aspects of Biodiversity. Archives of Zoological Museum of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vol. 54, Pр. 733–786. -/- Orientation of biology, as a natural science, on the study and explanation of the similarities and differences between organisms led in (...)
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  • Philosophical Issues in Ecology.James Justus - 2013 - In Kostas Kampourakis (ed.), The Philosophy of Biology: a Companion for Educators. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 343–371.
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  • Biodiversity at Twenty-Five Years: Revolution Or Red Herring?Nicolae Morar, Ted Toadvine & Brendan J. M. Bohannan - 2015 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 18 (1):16-29.
    A quarter of a century ago, a group of scientists and conservationists introduced ‘biodiversity’ as a media buzzword with the explicit intent of galvanizing public and political support for environ...
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  • A Constructivist Approach Toward a General Definition of Biodiversity.Yves Meinard, Coq Sylvain & Schmid Bernhard - 2014 - Ethics, Policy and Environment 17 (1):88-104.
    Biodiversity sciences witness a double dynamic. Whereas the need for interdisciplinary approaches is increasingly appreciated, most disciplinary studies are still confined to developing operational, discipline-specific indices. We show that a reassessment of the general notion of biodiversity is needed to clarify this situation. We advocate a new approach, according to which the main usefulness of this notion is not to capture quantitatively biological objects or processes, but to organize meaningful and coherent interdisciplinary interactions by constructively criticizing disciplinary studies. We apply (...)
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  • Evaluating Maclaurin and Sterelny’s conception of biodiversity in cases of frequent, promiscuous lateral gene transfer.Gregory J. Morgan - 2010 - Biology and Philosophy 25 (4):603-621.
    The recent conception of biodiversity proposed by James Maclaurin and Sterelny was developed mostly with macrobiological life in mind. They suggest that we measure biodiversity by dividing life into natural units (typically species) and quantifying the differences among units using phenetic rather than phylogenetic measures of distance. They identify problems in implementing quantitative phylogenetic notions of difference for non-prokaryotic species. I suggest that if we focus on microbiological life forms that engage in frequent, promiscuous lateral gene transfer (LGT), and their (...)
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  • The ethics of species extinctions.Anna Wienhues, Patrik Baard, Alfonso Donoso & Markku Oksanen - 2023 - Cambridge Prisms: Extinction 1 (e23):1–15.
    This review provides an overview of the ethics of extinctions with a focus on the Western analytical environmental ethics literature. It thereby gives special attention to the possible philosophical grounds for Michael Soulé’s assertion that the untimely ‘extinction of populations and species is bad’. Illustrating such debates in environmental ethics, the guiding question for this review concerns why – or when – anthropogenic extinctions are bad or wrong, which also includes the question of when that might not be the case (...)
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  • Mapping Controversy: A Cartography of Taxonomy and Biodiversity for the Philosophy of Biology.Charles H. Pence & Stijn Conix - manuscript
    One potentially extremely fruitful use of the tools of corpus analysis in the philosophy of science is to help us understand disputed terrains within the sciences that we study. For philosophers of biology, for instance, few controversies are as heated as those over the concepts we use in taxonomy to classify the living world, with the definition of ‘species’ perhaps most fundamental among them. As many understandings of biodiversity, in turn, involve counting the number of species present in a given (...)
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  • Justifying Nature-based Solutions.Kate Nicole Hoffman - 2023 - Biology and Philosophy 38 (5):1-15.
    Nature-based solutions (NbS) have in recent years occupied a central position in conservation and climate discussions among both scientists and policy makers. NbS generally refer to a set of strategies which use nature, or natural objects, to address societal (human) issues while simultaneously supporting the broader environment. This paper examines the concept of NbS to determine whether it is a useful and well-motivated category to guide future climate and conservation efforts. I argue that NbS may in fact be a valuable (...)
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  • A Causal-Role Account of Ecological Role Functions.Katie H. Morrow - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90: 433–453.
    I develop an account of ecological role functions—the functions of species within ecosystems—which is informed by alternative regime phenomena in ecology. My account is a causal-role theory which includes a counterfactual sensitivity condition. The account tracks and explains a distinction ecologists make between functions and various activities which are not functions. My counterfactual sensitivity condition resolves the liberality problem often attributed to causal-role theories of function, while also illuminating the explanatory centrality of role functions within ecology.
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  • The selectionist rationale for evolutionary progress.Hugh Desmond - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (3):1-26.
    The dominant view today on evolutionary progress is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Even value-neutral progress concepts are seen to lack important theoretical underpinnings: natural selection provides no rationale for progress, and natural selection need not even be invoked to explain large-scale evolutionary trends. In this paper I challenge this view by analysing how natural selection acts in heterogeneous environments. This not only undermines key debunking arguments, but also provides a selectionist rationale for a pattern of “evolutionary unfolding”, where (...)
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  • Functions and Functioning in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic and in Ecology.Roberta L. Millstein - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (5):1107-1118.
    I examine the use of the term function in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, invoked as (1) the healthy functioning of the land community, which is dependent on (2) the maintenance of the characteristic functions of populations that are parts of the land community. The latter can be understood as referring to interactions between species that are the products of coevolution (such as parasite-host, predator-prey) and, thus, in terms of the “selected effect” account of function. The performance of these functions under (...)
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  • Functionalism without Selectionism: Charles Elton's "Functional" Niche and the Concept of Ecological Function.Antoine C. Dussault - 2022 - Biological Theory 17 (1):52-67.
    This article offers an analysis of ecologist Charles Elton’s “functional” concept of the niche and of the notion of function implicitly associated with it. It does so in part by situating Elton’s niche concept within the broader context of the “functionalist-interactionist” approach to ecology he introduced, and in relation to his views on the relationship between ecology and evolution. This involves criticizing the common claim that Elton’s idea of species as fulfilling functional roles within ecological communities committed him to an (...)
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  • A persistence enhancing propensity account of ecological function to explain ecosystem evolution.Antoine C. Dussault & Frédéric Bouchard - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4).
    We argue that ecology in general and biodiversity and ecosystem function research in particular need an understanding of functions which is both ahistorical and evolutionarily grounded. A natural candidate in this context is Bigelow and Pargetter’s evolutionary forward-looking account which, like the causal role account, assigns functions to parts of integrated systems regardless of their past history, but supplements this with an evolutionary dimension that relates functions to their bearers’ ability to thrive and perpetuate themselves. While Bigelow and Pargetter’s account (...)
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  • A Different Kind of Property Cluster Kind.Matthew Slater - unknown
    Richard Boyd has long campaigned for a view of natural kinds he calls the Homeostatic Property Cluster account. This account has been particularly exciting for philosophers of biology unhappy with traditional essentialism about natural kinds and the views that biological kinds are, in one way or another, “historical entities”. Though defenders of HPC kinds have done much to further articulate the view, many questions about the account remain. One pressing question concerns the way in which HPC kinds are supposed to (...)
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  • Philosophical Issues in Recent Paleontology.Derek D. Turner - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (7):494-505.
    The distinction between idiographic science, which aims to reconstruct sequences of particular events, and nomothetic science, which aims to discover laws and regularities, is crucial for understanding the paleobiological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Stephen Jay Gould at times seemed conflicted about whether to say (a) that idiographic science is fine as it is or (b) that paleontology would have more credibility if it were more nomothetic. Ironically, one of the lasting results of the paleobiological revolution was a new (...)
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  • Towards Improving the Ethics of Ecological Research.G. K. D. Crozier & Albrecht I. Schulte-Hostedde - 2015 - Science and Engineering Ethics 21 (3):577-594.
    We argue that the ecological research community should develop a plan for improving the ethical consistency and moral robustness of the field. We propose a particular ethics strategy—specifically, an ongoing process of collective ethical reflection that the community of ecological researchers, with the cooperation of applied ethicists and philosophers of biology, can use to address the needs we identify. We suggest a particular set of conceptual and analytic tools that, we argue, collectively have the resources to provide an empirically grounded (...)
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  • Function in ecology: an organizational approach.Nei Nunes-Neto, Alvaro Moreno & Charbel N. El-Hani - 2014 - Biology and Philosophy 29 (1):123-141.
    Functional language is ubiquitous in ecology, mainly in the researches about biodiversity and ecosystem function. However, it has not been adequately investigated by ecologists or philosophers of ecology. In the contemporary philosophy of ecology we can recognize a kind of implicit consensus about this issue: while the etiological approaches cannot offer a good concept of function in ecology, Cummins’ systemic approach can. Here we propose to go beyond this implicit consensus, because we think these approaches are not adequate for ecology. (...)
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  • (1 other version)Special Issue: Philosophical Considerations in the Teaching of Biology. Part II, Evolution, Development and Genetics.Kostas Kampourakis (ed.) - 2013 - Springer (Science & Education).
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  • Species are Processes: A Solution to the ‘Species Problem’ via an Extension of Ulanowicz’s Ecological Metaphysics. [REVIEW]Jeffrey A. Lockwood - 2012 - Axiomathes 22 (2):231-260.
    Abstract The ‘species problem’ in the philosophy of biology concerns the nature of species. Various solutions have been proposed, including arguments that species are sets, classes, natural kinds, individuals, and homeostatic property clusters. These proposals parallel debates in ecology as to the ontology and metaphysics of populations, communities and ecosystems. A new solution—that species are processes—is proposed and defended, based on Robert Ulanowicz’s metaphysics of process ecology. As with ecological systems, species can be understood as emergent, autocatalytic systems with propensities (...)
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