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  1. Inherited representations are read in development.Nicholas Shea - 2013 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (1):1-31.
    Recent theoretical work has identified a tightly-constrained sense in which genes carry representational content. Representational properties of the genome are founded in the transmission of DNA over phylogenetic time and its role in natural selection. However, genetic representation is not just relevant to questions of selection and evolution. This paper goes beyond existing treatments and argues for the heterodox view that information generated by a process of selection over phylogenetic time can be read in ontogenetic time, in the course of (...)
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  • Arbitrary Signals and Cognitive Complexity.Ronald J. Planer & David Kalkman - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (2):563-586.
    The arbitrariness of a signal has long been seen as a theoretically important but difficult to pin down notion. In this article, we suggest there are at least two different notions of arbitrariness at play in philosophical and scientific debates concerning the use of arbitrary signals, and work towards improved analyses of both. We then consider how these different types of arbitrariness can co-occur and come apart. Finally, we examine the connections between these two types of arbitrariness and the cognitive (...)
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  • Representation in Cognitive Science.Nicholas Shea - 2018 - Oxford University Press.
    How can we think about things in the outside world? There is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. In light of pioneering research, Nicholas Shea develops a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation with a firm focus on the subpersonal representations that pervade the cognitive sciences.
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  • Recent Work in The Philosophy of Biology.Christopher J. Austin - 2017 - Analysis 77 (2):412-432.
    The biological sciences have always proven a fertile ground for philosophical analysis, one from which has grown a rich tradition stemming from Aristotle and flowering with Darwin. And although contemporary philosophy is increasingly becoming conceptually entwined with the study of the empirical sciences with the data of the latter now being regularly utilised in the establishment and defence of the frameworks of the former, a practice especially prominent in the philosophy of physics, the development of that tradition hasn’t received the (...)
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  • Exploitable Isomorphism and Structural Representation.Nicholas Shea - 2014 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 114 (2pt2):123-144.
    An interesting feature of some sets of representations is that their structure mirrors the structure of the items they represent. Founding an account of representational content on isomorphism, homomorphism or structural resemblance has proven elusive, however, largely because these relations are too liberal when the candidate structure over representational vehicles is unconstrained. Furthermore, in many cases where there is a clear isomorphism, it is not relied on in the way the representations are used. That points to a potential resolution: that (...)
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  • The Practical Value of Biological Information for Research.Beckett Sterner - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (2):175-194,.
    Many philosophers are skeptical about the scientific value of the concept of biological information. However, several have recently proposed a more positive view of ascribing information as an exercise in scientific modeling. I argue for an alternative role: guiding empirical data collection for the sake of theorizing about the evolution of semantics. I clarify and expand on Bergstrom and Rosvall’s suggestion of taking a “diagnostic” approach that defines biological information operationally as a procedure for collecting empirical cases. The more recent (...)
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  • Genetic Representation Explains the Cluster of Innateness‐Related Properties.Nicholas Shea - 2012 - Mind and Language 27 (4):466-493.
    The concept of innateness is used to make inferences between various better-understood properties, like developmental canalization, evolutionary adaptation, heritability, species-typicality, and so on (‘innateness-related properties’). This article uses a recently-developed account of the representational content carried by inheritance systems like the genome to explain why innateness-related properties cluster together, especially in non-human organisms. Although inferences between innateness-related properties are deductively invalid, and lead to false conclusions in many actual cases, where some aspect of a phenotypic trait develops in reliance on (...)
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  • (1 other version)Origins.Aviezer Tucker - 2024 - Perspectives on Science 32 (6):770-794.
    Scientific origins are information sources that transmit encoded information signals to receivers. Originary sciences identify information preserving receivers and decode the signals to infer their origins. Paradigmatic cases of scientific origination such as the Big Bang, the origins of species, horizontal gene transfer, the origin of the Polynesian potato, and ideational origins in the history of ideas are analyzed to discover what is common to them ontologically and epistemically. Some causes are not origins. Origination supervenes on causation, but has different (...)
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  • 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 (...)
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  • What is a gene for?Lindell Bromham - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (1):103-123.
    The word “gene” means different things to different people, and can even be used in multiple ways by the same individual. In this review, I follow a particular thread running through Griffith and Stotz’s “Genetics and Philosophy: an introduction”, which is the way that methods of investigation influence the way we define the concept of “gene”, from nineteen century breeding experiments to twenty-first century big data bioinformatics. These different views lead to a set of gene concepts, which only partially overlap (...)
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  • (1 other version)On the 'transmission sense of information'.Ulrich E. Stegmann - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (1):141-144.
    Abstract In order to illuminate the role of information in biology, Bergstrom and Rosvall (Biol Philos 26:159–176, 2011a ; Biol Philos 26:195–200, 2011b ) propose a ‘transmission sense of information’ which builds on Shannon’s theory. At the core of the transmission sense is an appeal to the reduction in uncertainty in receivers and to etiological function. I explore several ways of cashing out uncertainty reduction as well as the consequences of appealing to function. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI (...)
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  • Are Genetic Representations Read in Development?Ronald J. Planer - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4):997-1023.
    The status of genes as bearers of semantic content remains very much in dispute among philosophers of biology. In a series of papers, Nicholas Shea has argued that his ‘infotel’ theory of semantics vindicates the claim that genes carry semantic content. On Shea’s account, each organism is associated with a ‘developmental system’ that takes genetic representations as inputs and produces whole-organism traits as outputs. Moreover, at least in his most recent work on the topic, Shea is explicit in claiming that (...)
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  • Response to commentaries on “The Transmission Sense of Information”.Carl T. Bergstrom & Martin Rosvall - 2011 - Biology and Philosophy 26 (2):195-200.
    Response to commentaries on “The Transmission Sense of Information” Content Type Journal Article Pages 195-200 DOI 10.1007/s10539-011-9257-3 Authors Carl T. Bergstrom, Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1800, USA Martin Rosvall, Integrated Science Lab, Department of Physics, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden Journal Biology and Philosophy Online ISSN 1572-8404 Print ISSN 0169-3867 Journal Volume Volume 26 Journal Issue Volume 26, Number 2.
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  • What makes neurophysiology meaningful? Semantic content ascriptions in insect navigation research.Kelle Dhein - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (5):1-22.
    In the course of investigating the living world, biologists regularly attribute semantic content to the phenomena they study. In this paper, I examine the case of a contemporary research program studying the navigation behaviors of ants and develop an account of the norms governing researchers’ ascriptions of semantic content in their research practices. The account holds that researchers assign semantic content to behaviors that reliably achieve a difficult goal-directed function, and it also suggests a productive role for attributions of semantic (...)
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  • Información Biológica: ¿La Teoría de la Información Ataca de Nuevo?María Ferreira Ruiz - 2019 - Manuscrito 42 (1):169-209.
    The philosophy of biology literature offers several arguments aimed at showing that information theory is conceptually unsuited to capture the informational talk in molecular biology. Such arguments led to the consensus that, if the informational talk in biology can be defended and explained at all, we need a different strategy. The debate, in fact, developed mostly along this line. However, recent contributions seem to (and even claim to) challenge the consensus and thus to vindicate the role and relevance of information (...)
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  • Causal Parity and Externalisms: Extensions in Life and Mind. [REVIEW]Philippe Huneman - 2013 - Minds and Machines 23 (3):377-404.
    This paper questions the form and prospects of “extended theories” which have been simultaneously and independently advocated both in the philosophy of mind and in the philosophy of biology. It focuses on Extend Mind Theory (EMT) and Developmental Systems Theory (DST). It shows first that the two theories vindicate a parallel extension of received views, the former concerning extending cognition beyond the brain, the latter concerned with extending evolution and development beyond the genes. It also shows that both arguments rely (...)
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  • Memory, Sign Systems, and Self-Reproductive Processes.Anton Sukhoverkhov - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (2):161-166.
    This article presents a project of general theory of memory that embraces different types of memory: physical, biological, and social. The theory of memory presented here revises and unifies the general theory of sign systems and the theory of information, because memory processes in biological and social systems are informational processes that continuously construct and are constructed by sign systems. This article shows that memory cannot be reduced only to inherited information and material structures that “keep,” “represent,” or “carry” that (...)
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  • Can a Theory of Content Rely on Selected Effect Functions? Response to Christie, Brusse, et al.Nicholas Shea - 2022 - Australasian Philosophical Review 6 (4):400-411.
    In the target article, Christie, Brusse, et al. argue that selected effect functions do not, in general, explain why a trait exists in a population and, therefore, theories of representational content should not rely on selected effect functions. This response focuses on the claim about functions-for-representation. The role of evolutionary functions in a theory of content is to pick out outcomes that have been systematically stabilized by natural selection. Correctness conditions are conditions involved in explaining how that happened. Selected effect (...)
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