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  1. Rethinking hereditary relations: the reconstitutor as the evolutionary unit of heredity.Sophie J. Veigl, Javier Suárez & Adrian Stencel - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-42.
    This paper introduces the reconstitutor as a comprehensive unit of heredity within the context of evolutionary research. A reconstitutor is the structure resulting from a set of relationships between different elements or processes that are actively involved in the recreation of a specific phenotypic variant in each generation regardless of the biomolecular basis of the elements or whether they stand in a continuous line of ancestry. Firstly, we justify the necessity of introducing the reconstitutor by showing the limitations of other (...)
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  • Epistemic Normativity and Social Norms.Peter J. Graham - 2015 - In David K. Henderson & John Greco, Epistemic Evaluation: Purposeful Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 247-273.
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  • The importance of symbiosis in philosophy of biology: an analysis of the current debate on biological individuality and its historical roots.Javier Suárez - 2018 - Symbiosis 76 (2):77-96.
    Symbiosis plays a fundamental role in contemporary biology, as well as in recent thinking in philosophy of biology. The discovery of the importance and universality of symbiotic associations has brought new light to old debates in the field, including issues about the concept of biological individuality. An important aspect of these debates has been the formulation of the hologenome concept of evolution, the notion that holobionts are units of natural selection in evolution. This review examines the philosophical assumptions that underlie (...)
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  • Plant Individuality and Multilevel Selection Theory.Ellen Clarke - 2011 - In Brett Calcott & Kim Sterelny, The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. pp. 227--250.
    This chapter develops the idea that the germ-soma split and the suppression of individual fitness differences within the corporate entity are not always essential steps in the evolution of corporate individuals. It illustrates some consequences for multilevel selection theory. It presents evidence that genetic heterogeneity may not always be a barrier to successful functioning as a higher-level individual. This chapter shows that levels-of-selection theorists are wrong to assume that the central problem in transitions is always that of minimizing within-group competition. (...)
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  • Holobionts: Ecological communities, hybrids, or biological individuals? A metaphysical perspective on multispecies systems.Vanessa Triviño & Javier Suárez - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences:1-11.
    Holobionts are symbiotic assemblages composed by a macrobe host plus its symbiotic microbiota. In recent years, the ontological status of holobionts has created a great amount of controversy among philosophers and biologists: are holobionts biological individuals or are they rather ecological communities of independent individuals that interact together? Chiu and Eberl have recently developed an eco-immunity account of the holobiont wherein holobionts are neither biological individuals nor ecological communities, but hybrids between a host and its microbiota. According to their account, (...)
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  • The Computational Boundary of a “Self”: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition.Michael Levin - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
    All epistemic agents physically consist of parts that must somehow comprise an integrated cognitive self. Biological individuals consist of subunits (organs, cells, molecular networks) that are themselves complex and competent in their own context. How do coherent biological Individuals result from the activity of smaller sub-agents? To understand the evolution and function of metazoan bodies and minds, it is essential to conceptually explore the origin of multicellularity and the scaling of the basal cognition of individual cells into a coherent larger (...)
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  • Gender as a historical kind: a tale of two genders?Marion Godman - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (3-4):21.
    Is there anything that members of each binary category of gender have in common? Even many non-essentialists find the lack of unity within a gender worrying as it undermines the basis for a common political agenda for women. One promising proposal for achieving unity is by means of a shared historical lineage of cultural reproduction with past binary models of gender. I demonstrate how such an account is likely to take on board different binary and also non-binary systems of gender. (...)
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  • Are Synthetic Genomes Parts of a Genetic Lineage?Gunnar Babcock - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (4):995-1011.
    Biologists are nearing the creation of the first fully synthetic eukaryotic genome. Does this mean that we still soon be able to create genomes that are parts of an existing genetic lineage? If so, it might be possible to bring back extinct species. But do genomes that are synthetically assembled, no matter how similar they are to native genomes, really belong to the genetic lineage on which they were modelled? This article will argue that they are situated within the same (...)
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  • Functional ecology's non-selectionist understanding of function.Antoine C. Dussault - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 70 (C):1-9.
    This paper reinforces the current consensus against the applicability of the selected effect theory of function in ecology. It does so by presenting an argument which, in contrast with the usual argument invoked in support of this consensus, is not based on claims about whether ecosystems are customary units of natural selection. Instead, the argument developed here is based on observations about the use of the function concept in functional ecology, and more specifically, research into the relationship between biodiversity and (...)
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  • Scientific realism with historical essences: the case of species.Marion Godman - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 12):3041-3057.
    Natural kinds, real kinds, or, following J.S Mill simply, Kinds, are thought to be an important asset for scientific realists in the non-fundamental (or “special”) sciences. Essential natures are less in vogue. I show that the realist would do well to couple her Kinds with essential natures in order to strengthen their epistemic and ontological credentials. I argue that these essential natures need not however be intrinsic to the Kind’s members; they may be historical. I concentrate on assessing the merits (...)
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  • Unsharp Humean Chances in Statistical Physics: A Reply to Beisbart.Luke Glynn, Radin Dardashti, Karim P. Y. Thebault & Mathias Frisch - 2014 - In M. C. Galavotti, New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 531-542.
    In an illuminating article, Claus Beisbart argues that the recently-popular thesis that the probabilities of statistical mechanics (SM) are Best System chances runs into a serious obstacle: there is no one axiomatization of SM that is robustly best, as judged by the theoretical virtues of simplicity, strength, and fit. Beisbart takes this 'no clear winner' result to imply that the probabilities yielded by the competing axiomatizations simply fail to count as Best System chances. In this reply, we express sympathy for (...)
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  • Teleological organisation.Sune Holm & John Basl - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4):1027-1029.
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  • The Origins and Development of the Idea of Organism-Environment Interaction.Trevor Pearce - 2014 - In Gillian Barker, Eric Desjardins & Trevor Pearce, Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer.
    The idea of organism-environment interaction, at least in its modern form, dates only to the mid-nineteenth century. After sketching the origins of the organism-environment dichotomy in the work of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, I will chart its metaphysical and methodological influence on later scientists and philosophers such as Conwy Lloyd Morgan and John Dewey. In biology and psychology, the environment was seen as a causal agent, highlighting questions of organismic variation and plasticity. In philosophy, organism-environment interaction provided a new (...)
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  • On the Logical Positivists' Philosophy of Psychology: Laying a Legend to Rest.Sean Crawford - 2014 - In Thomas Uebel, New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 711-726.
    The received view in the history of the philosophy of psychology is that the logical positivists—Carnap and Hempel in particular—endorsed the position commonly known as “logical” or “analytical” behaviourism, according to which the relations between psychological statements and the physical-behavioural statements intended to give their meaning are analytic and knowable a priori. This chapter argues that this is sheer legend: most, if not all, such relations were viewed by the logical positivists as synthetic and knowable only a posteriori. It then (...)
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  • Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences.Gillian Barker, Eric Desjardins & Trevor Pearce (eds.) - 2014 - Dordrecht: Springer.
    Despite the burgeoning interest in new and more complex accounts of the organism-environment dyad by biologists and philosophers, little attention has been paid in the resulting discussions to the history of these ideas and to their deployment in disciplines outside biology—especially in the social sciences. Even in biology and philosophy, there is a lack of detailed conceptual models of the organism-environment relationship. This volume is designed to fill these lacunae by providing the first multidisciplinary discussion of the topic of organism-environment (...)
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  • Pluralists about Pluralism? Versions of Explanatory Pluralism in Psychiatry.Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2014 - In Thomas Uebel, New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 105-119.
    In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...)
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  • (1 other version)Is evolution fundamental when it comes to defining biological ontology? Yes.Ellen Clarke - 2017 - In Shamik Dasgupta, Brad Weslake & Ravit Dotan, Current Controversies in Philosophy of Science. London: Routledge.
    I argue for the usefulness of the evolutionary kind of biological individual.
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  • Asexual organisms, identity and vertical gene transfer.Gunnar Babcock - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 81:101265.
    This paper poses a problem for traditional phylogenetics: The identity of organisms that reproduce through fission can be understood in several different ways. This prompts questions about how to differentiate parent organisms from their offspring, making vertical gene transfer unclear. Differentiating between parents and offspring stems from what I call the identity problem. How the problem is resolved has implications for phylogenetic groupings. If the identity of a particular asexual organism persists through fission, the vertical lineage on a phylogenetic tree (...)
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  • Bivalent Selection and Graded Darwinian Individuality.Daniel J. Molter - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1):axz026.
    Philosophers are approaching a consensus that biological individuality, including evolutionary individuality, comes in degrees. Graded evolutionary individuality presents a puzzle when juxtaposed with another widely embraced view: that evolutionary individuality follows from being a selectable member of a Darwinian population. Population membership is, on the orthodox view, a bivalent condition, so how can members of Darwinian populations vary in their degree of individuality? This article offers a solution to the puzzle, by locating difference in degree of evolutionary individuality at the (...)
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  • Teaching evolutionary developmental biology: concepts, problems, and controversy.A. C. Love - 2013 - In Kostas Kampourakis, The Philosophy of Biology: a Companion for Educators. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 323-341.
    Although sciences are often conceptualized in terms of theory confirmation and hypothesis testing, an equally important dimension of scientific reasoning is the structure of problems that guide inquiry. This problem structure is evident in several concepts central to evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo)—constraints, modularity, evolvability, and novelty. Because problems play an important role in biological practice, they should be included in biological pedagogy, especially when treating the issue of scientific controversy. A key feature of resolving controversy is synthesizing methodologies from different (...)
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  • Biological Explanation.Angela Potochnik - 2013 - In Kostas Kampourakis, The Philosophy of Biology: a Companion for Educators. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 49-65.
    One of the central aims of science is explanation: scientists seek to uncover why things happen the way they do. This chapter addresses what kinds of explanations are formulated in biology, how explanatory aims influence other features of the field of biology, and the implications of all of this for biology education. Philosophical treatments of scientific explanation have been both complicated and enriched by attention to explanatory strategies in biology. Most basically, whereas traditional philosophy of science based explanation on derivation (...)
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  • Risks Deriving from the Agential Profiles of Modern AI Systems.Barnaby Crook - forthcoming - In Vincent C. Müller, Leonard Dung, Guido Löhr & Aliya Rumana, Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: The State of the Art. Berlin: SpringerNature.
    Modern AI systems based on deep learning are neither traditional tools nor full-blown agents. Rather, they are characterised by idiosyncratic agential profiles, i.e., combinations of agency-relevant properties. Modern AI systems lack superficial features which enable people to recognise agents but possess sophisticated information processing capabilities which can undermine human goals. I argue that systems fitting this description, when they are adversarial with respect to human users, pose particular risks to those users. To explicate my argument, I provide conditions under which (...)
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  • Environmental Ethics.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Kostas Kampourakis, The Philosophy of Biology: a Companion for Educators. Dordrecht: Springer.
    A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...)
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  • Review of Javier Suárez and Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Units of Selection[REVIEW]Sandy Boucher - forthcoming - Metascience.
    Review of Javier Suárez and Elisabeth A. Lloyd, _Units of Selection_. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, 75 pp, £49.99 HB.
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  • Peter Godfrey-Smith, Philosophy of Biology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 200 pp., $29.95. [REVIEW]Cailin O’Connor - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (4):731-733.
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