This paper explores how work in the philosophy of science can be used when teaching scientific content to science students and when training future science teachers. I examine the debate on the concept of fitness in biology and in the philosophy of biology to show how conceptual pluralism constitutes a problem for the conceptual change model, and how philosophical work on conceptual clarification can be used to address that problem. The case of fitness exemplifies how the philosophy of science offers (...) tools to resolve teaching difficulties and make the teaching of scientific concepts more adequate to the actual state of affairs in science. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the question whether a mechanistic approach can account for evolutionary causes. The last decade has seen a major attempt to account for natural selection as a mechanism. Nevertheless, we stress the relevance of broadening the debate by including the other evolutionary causes inside the mechanistic approach, in order to be a legitimate conceptual framework on the same footing as other approaches to evolutionary theory. We analyse the current debate on natural selection as a mechanism, and (...) extend it to the rest of the evolutionary causes. We focus on three approaches that we call the stochastic view, the functional view, and the minimalist view. We argue that all of them are unable to account for evolutionary causes as mechanisms. It is concluded that the current mechanistic proposals cannot be accepted as a common framework for evolutionary causes. Finally, we outline some guidelines and requirements that any mechanistic proposal should meet in order to be applied to evolutionary theory. (shrink)

A recent debate over the causal foundations of evolutionary theory pits those who believe that natural selection causally explains long-term, adaptive population change against those who do not. In this paper, I argue that this debate – far from being an invention of several articles in 2002 – dates from our very first engagements with evolution as a quantified, statistical science. Further, when we analyze that history, we see that a pivotal figure in the early use of statistical methodology in (...) evolutionary theory, W.F.R. Weldon, changes his mind about precisely the central claim at issue. I close by drawing some morals which I think the case can offer for the contemporary debate going forward. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic, an extremely influential view in environmental ethics and conservation biology, is committed to the claim that interdependence between humans, other species, and abiotic entities plays a central role in our ethical responsibilities. Thus, a robust understanding of “interdependence” is necessary for evaluating the viability of the Land Ethic and related views, including ecological ones. I characterize and defend a Leopoldian concept of “interdependence,” arguing that it ought to include both negative and positive causal relations. I also (...) show that strength and type of interdependence can vary with time, space, and context. (shrink)

There is a tension between, on the one hand, the view that natural selection refers to individual-level causes, and on the other hand, the view that it refers to a population-level cause. In this article, I make the case for the individual-level cause view. I respond to recent claims made by McLoone that the individual-level cause view is inconsistent. I show that if one were to follow his arguments, any causal claim in any context would have to be regarded as (...) vindicating a form of population-level cause view. I show why this is implausible and how a consistent individual-level cause position can be held within the interventionist account of causation. Finally, I argue that there is one sense in which natural selection might be said to refer to population-level causes of evolutionary change. The upshot is that, as noted by others, natural selection can be regarded as referring to a population-level cause in the context of frequency-dependent selection and other situations of fitness-altering interactions between the individuals of a population. But whether this statement is true will depend on the empirical case investigated, not some a priori conceptual distinction. Thus, even though situations of frequency dependence might be ubiquitous, it is orthogonal to the conceptual question of whether frequency-independent natural selection—McLoone’s target—refers to individual- or population-level causes. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to the study of the philosophical notions of mechanisms and causality in biology and economics. This chapter sets the stage for this volume, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, in three ways. First, it gives a broad review of the recent changes and current state of the study of mechanisms and causality in the philosophy of science. Second, consistent with a recent trend in the philosophy of science to focus on scientific practices, it in (...) turn implies the importance of studying the scientific methods employed by researchers. Finally, by way of providing an overview of each chapter in the volume, this chapter demonstrates that biology and economics are two fertile fields for the philosophy of science and shows how biological and economic mechanisms and causality can be synthesized. (shrink)