Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Explanatory Internalism: Challenging Selected-Effect Functions (prerpint).Tiago Rama - manuscript
    Explanatory Externalism states that the only adaptive force in evolution is natural selection. Explanatory Externalism is a central thesis of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. The etiological theory of natural selected-effect functions also advocates Explanatory Externalism. According to this theory, natural selection is the process responsible for determining the proper natural functions of traits. However, I will point out several challenges to Explanatory Externalism that are proposed primarily by developmental biology and its various subfields. Based on these challenges, this paper will (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Biosynthesis of Proteins for Nano Engines as a Normative Process.Wim Beekman & Henk Jochemsen - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (3):441-455.
    In this article two questions are discussed with regard to semiosis in protein biosynthesis for nano engines. (1) What kind of semiosis is involved in the construction of these proteins? and (2) How can we explain the semiotic process observed? With regard to the first issue we draw attention to comparisons between semiosis in protein biosynthesis and human natural language. The notion of normativity appears to be of great importance for both. A comparison also demonstrates differences. Nevertheless, because of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Is a Cognitive Revolution in Theoretical Biology Underway?Tiago Rama - 2024 - Foundations of Science 1:1-22.
    The foundations of biology have been a topic of debate for the past few decades. The traditional perspective of the Modern Synthesis, which portrays organisms as passive entities with limited role in evolutionary theory, is giving way to a new paradigm where organisms are recognized as active agents, actively shaping their own phenotypic traits for adaptive purposes. Within this context, this article raises the question of whether contemporary biological theory is undergoing a cognitive revolution. This inquiry can be approached in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Naturalized Teleology: Cybernetics, Organization, Purpose.Carl Sachs - 2023 - Topoi 42 (3):781-791.
    The rise of mechanistic science in the seventeenth century helped give rise to a heated debate about whether teleology—the appearance of purposive activity in life and in mind—could be naturalized. At issue here were both what is meant by “teleology” as well as what is meant “nature”. I shall examine a specific episode in the history of this debate in the twentieth century with the rise of cybernetics: the science of seemingly “self-controlled” systems. Against cybernetics, Hans Jonas argued that cybernetics (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Self-Organization Through Semiosis.Wim Beekman & Henk Jochemsen - 2023 - Biological Theory 18 (2):90-100.
    This article deals with the question of how self-organization in living organisms is realized. Self-organization may be observed in open systems that are out of equilibrium. Many disequilibria-conversion phenomena exist where free energy conversion occurs by spontaneously formed engines. However, how is self-organization realized in living entities? Living cells turn out to be self-organizing disequilibria-converting systems of a special kind. Disequilibrium conversion is realized in a typical way, through employing information specifying protein complexes acting as nano engines. The genetic code (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • What Is It Like To Be an Environment? A Semantic and Epistemological Inquiry.Philippe Huneman - 2021 - Biological Theory 17 (1):94-112.
    In this article, I consider the term “environment” in various claims and models by evolutionists and ecologists. I ask whether “environment” is amenable to a philosophical explication, in the same way some key terms of evolutionary theorizing such as “fitness,” “species,” or more recently “population” have been. I will claim that it cannot. In the first section, I propose a typology of theoretical terms, according to whether they are univocal or equivocal, and whether they have been the object of formal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Life’s organization between matter and form: Neo-Aristotelian approaches and biosemiotics.Çağlar Karaca - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (2):1-40.
    In this paper, I discuss the neo-Aristotelian approaches, which usually reinterpret Aristotle’s ideas on form and/or borrow the notion of formal cause without engaging with the broader implications of Aristotle’s metaphysics. In opposition to these approaches, I claim that biosemiotics can propose an alternative view on life’s form. Specifically, I examine the proposals to replace the formal cause with gene-centrism, functionalism, and structuralism. After critically addressing these approaches, I discuss the problems of reconciling Aristotelianism with the modern view of life’s (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Sombrillas y operaciones en la construcción científica del mundo.Alfonso Arroyo-Santos - 2017 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 8:107--116.
    This paper argues that many of the conceptual controversies in evolutionary biology are due to the use of different operational definitions. Since the set of operations is not consistent, then there are many ways to understand, in practice, how concepts should be investigated. In this paper we introduce a formal analysis to study the scope of operationalism and we conclude that the controversial concepts are in fact umbrella variables, that is, a single term can be referring to different processes, phenomena (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Semiosis and Information: Meeting the Challenge of Information Science to Post-Reductionist Biosemiotics.Arran Gare - 2020 - Biosemiotics 13 (3):327-346.
    The concept of information and its relation to biosemiotics is a major area of contention among biosemioticians. Biosemioticians influenced by von Uexküll, Sebeok, Bateson and Peirce are critical of the way the concept as developed in information science has been applied to biology, while others believe that for biosemiotics to gain acceptance it will have to embrace information science and distance biosemiotics from Peirce’s philosophical work. Here I will defend the influence of Peirce on biosemiotics, arguing that information science and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Thinking embodiment with genetics: epigenetics and postgenomic biology in embodied cognition and enactivism.Maurizio Meloni & Jack Reynolds - 2020 - Synthese 198 (11):10685-10708.
    The role of the body in cognition is acknowledged across a variety of disciplines, even if the precise nature and scope of that contribution remain contentious. As a result, most philosophers working on embodiment—e.g. those in embodied cognition, enactivism, and ‘4e’ cognition—interact with the life sciences as part of their interdisciplinary agenda. Despite this, a detailed engagement with emerging findings in epigenetics and post-genomic biology has been missing from proponents of this embodied turn. Surveying this research provides an opportunity to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • A Problem for Cognitive Load Theory—the Distinctively Human Life‐form.Jan Derry - 2020 - Journal of Philosophy of Education 54 (1):5-22.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Transhumanism, Moral Perfection, and Those 76 Trombones.Tom Koch - 2020 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 45 (2):179-192.
    Transhumanism advances an ideology promising a positive human advance through the application of new and as yet unrealized technologies. Underlying the whole is a libertarian ethos married to a very Christian eschatology promising a miraculous transformation that will answer human needs and redress human failings. In this paper, the supposedly scientific basis on which transhumanist promises are built is critiqued as futurist imaginings with little likelihood of actualization. Transhumanists themselves are likened to the affable con man Professor Harold Hill who, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • (1 other version)Genetics without genes? The centrality of genetic markers in livestock genetics and genomics.James W. E. Lowe & Ann Bruce - 2019 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (4):1-29.
    In this paper, rather than focusing on genes as an organising concept around which historical considerations of theory and practice in genetics are elucidated, we place genetic markers at the heart of our analysis. This reflects their central role in the subject of our account, livestock genetics concerning the domesticated pig, Sus scrofa. We define a genetic marker as a element existing in different forms in the genome, that can be identified and mapped using a variety of quantitative, classical and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)Genetics without genes? The centrality of genetic markers in livestock genetics and genomics.James W. E. Lowe & Ann Bruce - 2019 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (4):1-29.
    In this paper, rather than focusing on genes as an organising concept around which historical considerations of theory and practice in genetics are elucidated, we place genetic markers at the heart of our analysis. This reflects their central role in the subject of our account, livestock genetics concerning the domesticated pig, Sus scrofa. We define a genetic marker as a element existing in different forms in the genome, that can be identified and mapped using a variety of quantitative, classical and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • 遺伝子の運ぶ遺伝情報.Tomoko Ishida - 2018 - Journal of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 46 (1):11-31.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Philosophy of Molecular Biology.Ingo Brigandt - 2018 - eLS: Encyclopedia of Life Sciences.
    Ongoing empirical discoveries in molecular biology have generated novel conceptual challenges and perspectives. Philosophers of biology have reacted to these trends when investigating the practice of molecular biology and contributed to scientific debates on methodological and conceptual matters. This article reviews some major philosophical issues in molecular biology. First, philosophical accounts of mechanistic explanation yield a notion of explanation in the context of molecular biology that does not have to rely on laws of nature and comports well with molecular discovery. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The issue of life: Aristotle in nursing perspective.Ingunn Elstad - 2009 - Nursing Philosophy 10 (4):275-286.
    This paper explores the issue of life and its relevance to nursing, through Aristotle's philosophy and an Aristotelian interpretation of Nightingale's Notes on Nursing. Life as process and becoming has ontological status in Aristotle's philosophy and this dynamism is particularly relevant for nursing. The paper presents aspects of Aristotle's philosophy of life: his account of life as inherent powers of the individual, his analysis of change and time, and his understanding of sickness and health as qualitative states of living beings. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation.Carl F. Craver - 2014 - In Marie I. Kaiser, Oliver R. Scholz, Daniel Plenge & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Explanation in the special science: The case of biology and history. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 27-52.
    According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   80 citations  
  • Objects and processes: two notions for understanding biological information.Agustín Mercado-Reyes, Pablo Padilla Longoria & Alfonso Arroyo-Santos - forthcoming - Journal of Theoretical Biology.
    In spite of being ubiquitous in life sciences, the concept of information is harshly criticized. Uses of the concept other than those derived from Shannon's theory are denounced as pernicious metaphors. We perform a computational experiment to explore whether Shannon's information is adequate to describe the uses of said concept in commonplace scientific practice. Our results show that semantic sequences do not have unique complexity values different from the value of meaningless sequences. This result suggests that quantitative theoretical frameworks do (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • (1 other version)Scientific Pluralism.Stephen H. Kellert, Helen E. Longino & C. Kenneth Waters (eds.) - 1956 - Univ of Minnesota Press.
    Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science?
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching.Michael R. Matthews (ed.) - 2014 - Springer.
    This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Emergentism by default: A view from the bench.Ana M. Soto & Carlos Sonnenschein - 2006 - Synthese 151 (3):361-376.
    For the last 50 years the dominant stance in experimental biology has been reductionism in general, and genetic reductionism in particular. Philosophers were the first to realize that the belief that the Mendelian genes were reduced to DNA molecules was questionable. Soon, experimental data confirmed these misgivings. The optimism of molecular biologists, fueled by early success in tackling relatively simple problems has now been tempered by the difficulties encountered when applying the same simple ideas to complex problems. We analyze three (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Scientific Classification.John Dupré - 2006 - Theory, Culture and Society 23 (2-3):30-32.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • What are genes “for” or where are traits “from”? What is the question?Anne V. Buchanan, Samuel Sholtis, Joan Richtsmeier & Kenneth M. Weiss - 2009 - Bioessays 31 (2):198-208.
    For at least a century it has been known that multiple factors play a role in the development of complex traits, and yet the notion that there are genes “for” such traits, which traces back to Mendel, is still widespread. In this paper, we illustrate how the Mendelian model has tacitly encouraged the idea that we can explain complexity by reducing it to enumerable genes. By this approach many genes associated with simple as well as complex traits have been identified. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Existentialism as Biology.Ronald de Sousa - 2010 - Emotion Review 2 (1):76-83.
    Existentialism is compatible with a broadly biological vision of who we are. This thesis is grounded in an analysis of “concrete” or “individual” possibility, which differs from standard conceptions of possibility in that it allows for possibilities to come into being or disappear through time. Concrete possibilities are introduced both in individual life and by major transitions in evolution. In particular, the advent of ultrasociality and of language has enabled human goals to be formulated in partial independence from the vestigial (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)Moralizing biology: The appeal and limits of the new compassionate view of nature.Maurizio Meloni - 2013 - History of the Human Sciences 26 (3):82-106.
    In recent years, a proliferation of books about empathy, cooperation and pro-social behaviours (Brooks, 2011a) has significantly influenced the discourse of the life-sciences and reversed consolidated views of nature as a place only for competition and aggression. In this article I describe the recent contribution of three disciplines – moral psychology (Jonathan Haidt), primatology (Frans de Waal) and the neuroscience of morality – to the present transformation of biology and evolution into direct sources of moral phenomena, a process here named (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Fundamental issues in systems biology.Maureen A. O'Malley & John Dupré - 2005 - Bioessays 27 (12):1270-1276.
    In the context of scientists' reflections on genomics, we examine some fundamental issues in the emerging postgenomic discipline of systems biology. Systems biology is best understood as consisting of two streams. One, which we shall call ‘pragmatic systems biology’, emphasises large‐scale molecular interactions; the other, which we shall refer to as ‘systems‐theoretic biology’, emphasises system principles. Both are committed to mathematical modelling, and both lack a clear account of what biological systems are. We discuss the underlying issues in identifying systems (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   76 citations  
  • 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. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Experimental Philosophy of Economics.Michiru Nagatsu - 2013 - Economics and Philosophy 29 (2):263-76.
    This article is a prelude to an experimental study of the preference concept in economics. I argue that a new empirical approach called experimental philosophy of science is a promising approach to advance the philosophy of economics. In particular, I discuss two debates in the field, the neuroeconomics controversy and the commonsensible realism debate, and suggest how experimental and survey techniques can generate data that will inform these debates. Some of the likely objections from philosophers and economists are addressed, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The Dynamics of Scientific Concepts: The Relevance of Epistemic Aims and Values.Ingo Brigandt - 2012 - In Uljana Feest & Friedrich Steinle (eds.), Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice. de Gruyter. pp. 75-103.
    The philosophy of science that grew out of logical positivism construed scientific knowledge in terms of set of interconnected beliefs about the world, such as theories and observation statements. Nowadays science is also conceived of as a dynamic process based on the various practices of individual scientists and the institutional settings of science. Two features particularly influence the dynamics of scientific knowledge: epistemic standards and aims (e.g., assumptions about what issues are currently in need of scientific study and explanation). While (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • Scientific Reasoning Is Material Inference: Combining Confirmation, Discovery, and Explanation.Ingo Brigandt - 2010 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 24 (1):31-43.
    Whereas an inference (deductive as well as inductive) is usually viewed as being valid in virtue of its argument form, the present paper argues that scientific reasoning is material inference, i.e., justified in virtue of its content. A material inference is licensed by the empirical content embodied in the concepts contained in the premises and conclusion. Understanding scientific reasoning as material inference has the advantage of combining different aspects of scientific reasoning, such as confirmation, discovery, and explanation. This approach explains (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • The Epistemic Goal of a Concept: Accounting for the Rationality of Semantic Change and Variation.Ingo Brigandt - 2010 - Synthese 177 (1):19-40.
    The discussion presents a framework of concepts that is intended to account for the rationality of semantic change and variation, suggesting that each scientific concept consists of three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept’s use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these components, and that change in the concept’s inferential role and reference can be accounted for as being rational relative (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  • What does it mean to be 75% pumpkin? The units of comparative genomics.Monika Piotrowska - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):838-850.
    Comparative genomicists seem to be convinced that the unit of measurement employed in their studies is a gene that drives the function of cells and ultimately organisms. As a result, they have come to some substantive conclusions about how similar humans are to other organisms based on the percentage of genetic makeup they share. I argue that the actual unit of measurement employed in the studies corresponds to a structural rather than a functional gene concept, thus rendering many of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • (1 other version)Invisible genomes: The genomics revolution and patenting practice.Adam Bostanci & Jane Calvert - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (1):109-119.
    In the mid-1990s, the company Human Genome Sciences submitted three potentially revolutionary patent applications to the US Patent and Trademark Office, each of which claimed the entire genome sequence of a microorganism. The patent examiners, however, objected to these applications, and after negotiation they were eventually re-written to resemble more traditional gene patents. In this paper, which is based on a study of the patent examination files, we examine the reasons why these patent applications were unsuccessful in their original form. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • 2001 and all that: A tale of a third science.Karola Stotz - unknown
    The paper describes the change from molecular genetics to postgenomic biology. It focuses on phenomena in the regulation of gene expression that provide a break with the central dogma, according to which sequence specificity for a gene product must be template derived. In its place we find what is called here ‘constitutive molecular epigenesis’. Its three classes of phenomena, which I call sequence ‘activation’, ‘selection’ and ‘creation’, are exemplified by processes such as transcriptional activation, alternative cis- and trans-splicing, and RNA (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Experimental philosophy of science.Paul E. Griffiths & Karola Stotz - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (3):507–521.
    Experimental philosophy of science gathers empirical data on how key scientific concepts are understood by particular scientific communities. In this paper we briefly describe two recent studies in experimental philosophy of biology, one investigating the concept of the gene, the other the concept of innateness. The use of experimental methods reveals facts about these concepts that would not be accessible using the traditional method of intuitions about possible cases. It also contributes to the study of conceptual change in science, which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • The levels of selection debate: Philosophical issues.Samir Okasha - 2006 - Philosophy Compass 1 (1):74–85.
    For a number of years, the debate in evolutionary biology over the ’levels of selection’ has attracted intense interest from philosophers of science. The main question concerns the level of the biological hierarchy at which natural selection occurs. Does selection act on organisms, genes, groups, colonies, demes, species, or some combination of these? According to traditional Darwinian theory the answer is the organism -- it is the differential survival and reproduction of individual organisms that drives the evolutionary process. But there (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • With ‘Genes’ Like That, Who Needs an Environment? Postgenomics’s Argument for the ‘Ontogeny of Information’.Karola Stotz - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):905-917.
    The linear sequence specification of a gene product is not provided by the target DNA sequence alone but by the mechanisms of gene expressions. The main actors of these mechanisms, proteins and functional RNAs, relay environmental information to the genome with important consequences to sequence selection and processing. This `postgenomic' reality has implications for our understandings of development not as predetermined by genes but as an epigenetic process. Critics of genetic determinism have long argued that the activity of `genes' and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   35 citations  
  • When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds.Robert A. Wilson, Matthew J. Barker & Ingo Brigandt - 2007 - Philosophical Topics 35 (1-2):189-215.
    Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   107 citations  
  • Philosophical issues in experimental biology.Ingo Brigandt - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (3):423-435.
    Review essay of The Philosophy of Experimental Biology by Marcel Weber (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Rational animals: What the bravest lion won't risk.Ronald de Sousa - 2004 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 4 (12):365-386.
    I begin with a rather unpromising dispute that Nozick once had with Ian Hacking in the pages of the London Review of Books, in which both vied with one another in their enthusiasm to repudiate the thesis that some human people or peoples are closer than others to animality. I shall attempt to show that one can build, on the basis of Nozick’s discussion of rationality, a defense of the view that the capacity tor language places human rationality out of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Emotions as natural and normative kinds.Paul E. Griffiths - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):901-911.
    In earlier work I have claimed that emotion and some emotions are not `natural kinds'. Here I clarify what I mean by `natural kind', suggest a new and more accurate term, and discuss the objection that emotion and emotions are not descriptive categories at all, but fundamentally normative categories.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   69 citations  
  • Recent work on individualism in the social, behavioural, and biological sciences.Robert A. Wilson - 2004 - Biology and Philosophy 19 (3):397-423.
    The social, behavioral, and a good chunk of the biological sciences concern the nature of individual agency, where our paradigm for an individual is a human being. Theories of economic behavior, of mental function and dysfunction, and of ontogenetic development, for example, are theories of how such individuals act, and of what internal and external factors are determinative of that action. Such theories construe individuals in distinctive ways.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Dark Matter Realism.Niels C. M. Martens - 2021 - Foundations of Physics 52 (1):1-19.
    According to the standard model of cosmology, Λ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Lambda $$\end{document}CDM, the mass-energy budget of the current stage of the universe is not dominated by the luminous matter that we are familiar with, but instead by some form of dark matter (and dark energy). It is thus tempting to adopt scientific realism about dark matter. However, there are barely any constraints on the myriad of possible properties of this entity—it is not even certain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Ethischer Diskurs zu Epigenetik und Genomeditierung: die Gefahr eines (epi-)genetischen Determinismus und naturwissenschaftlich strittiger Grundannahmen.Karla Karoline Sonne Kalinka Alex & Eva C. Winkler - 2021 - In Boris Fehse, Ferdinand Hucho, Sina Bartfeld, Stephan Clemens, Tobias Erb, Heiner Fangerau, Jürgen Hampel, Martin Korte, Lilian Marx-Stölting, Stefan Mundlos, Angela Osterheider, Anja Pichl, Jens Reich, Hannah Schickl, Silke Schicktanz, Jochen Taupitz, Jörn Walter, Eva Winkler & Martin Zenke (eds.), Fünfter Gentechnologiebericht: Sachstand und Perspektiven für Forschung und Anwendung. pp. 299-323.
    Slightly modified excerpt from the section 13.4 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick (translated into englisch): This chapter is based on an analysis of ethical debates on epigenetics and genome editing, debates, in which ethical arguments relating to future generations and justice play a central role. The analysis aims to contextualize new developments in genetic engineering, such as genome and epigenome editing, ethically. At the beginning, the assumptions of "genetic determinism," on which "genetic essentialism" is based, of "epigenetic determinism" as well as "genetic" (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Mendel on Developmental Information.Yafeng Shan - 2021 - In Chris Meyns (ed.), Information and the History of Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 262-280.
    It has been widely received that one of Gregor Mendel’s most important contributions to the history of genetics is his novel work on developmental information (for example, the proposal of the famous Mendelian ratios like 1:2:1, 3:1, and 9:3:3:1). This view is well evidenced by the fact that much of early Mendelians’ work in the 1900s focuses on the retrodiction (viz. the re-analysis of the pre-exist data with Mendel’s approach). However, there is no consensus on what Mendel meant by development (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)A Theory of Conceptual Advance: Explaining Conceptual Change in Evolutionary, Molecular, and Evolutionary Developmental Biology.Ingo Brigandt - 2006 - Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh
    The theory of concepts advanced in the dissertation aims at accounting for a) how a concept makes successful practice possible, and b) how a scientific concept can be subject to rational change in the course of history. Traditional accounts in the philosophy of science have usually studied concepts in terms only of their reference; their concern is to establish a stability of reference in order to address the incommensurability problem. My discussion, in contrast, suggests that each scientific concept consists of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Uprooting Narratives: Legacies of Colonialism in the Neoliberal University.Melanie Bowman & María Rebolleda-Gómez - 2020 - Hypatia 35 (1):18-40.
    Two intertwined stories evince the influence of colonialism on Western universities. The first story centers on a conflict about wild rice research between the Anishinaabe people and the University of Minnesota. Underlying this conflict is a genetic notion of biological identity that facilitates the commodification of wild rice. This notion of identity is inextricably linked to agricultural control and expansion. The second story addresses the foundation of Western universities on the goals of civilization and capitalist productivity. These norms persist even (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Individuating Genes as Types or Individuals: Philosophical Implications on Individuality, Kinds, and Gene Concepts.Ruey-Lin Chen - unknown
    “What is a gene?” is an important philosophical question that has been asked over and over. This paper approaches this question by understanding it as the individuation problem of genes, because it implies the problem of identifying genes and identifying a gene presupposes individuating the gene. I argue that there are at least two levels of the individuation of genes. The transgenic technique can individuate “a gene” as an individual while the technique of gene mapping in classical genetics can only (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Psa 2018.Philsci-Archive -Preprint Volume- - unknown
    These preprints were automatically compiled into a PDF from the collection of papers deposited in PhilSci-Archive in conjunction with the PSA 2018.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark