Switch to: References

Citations of:

Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology

The Mit Press. Bradford Books (1994)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Supervenience and Reduction in Biological Hierarchies.John Collier - 1988 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 14:209-234.
    Supervenience is a relationship which has been used recently to explain the physical determination of biological phenomena despite resistance to reduction. Supervenience, however, is plagued by ambiguities which weaken its explanatory value and obscure some interesting aspects of reduction in biology. Although I suspect that similar considerations affect the use of supervenience in ethics and the philosophy of mind, I don’t intend anything I have to say here to apply outside of the physical and biological cases I consider.The main point (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • A conceptual taxonomy of adaptation in evolutionary biology.Emanuele Serrelli & Francesca Micol Rossi - manuscript
    The concept of adaptation is employed in many fields such as biology, psychology, cognitive sciences, robotics, social sciences, even literacy and art,1 and its meaning varies quite evidently according to the particular research context in which it is applied. We expect to find a particularly rich catalogue of meanings within evolutionary biology, where adaptation has held a particularly central role since Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) throughout important epistemological shifts and scientific findings that enriched and diversified the concept. Accordingly, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Functions and mechanisms: a perspectivalist view.Carl F. Craver - 2013 - In Philippe Huneman (ed.), Functions: selection and mechanisms. Springer. pp. 133--158.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   65 citations  
  • Anatomizing the rhinoceros.Elliott Sober - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):764-765.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • ¿Qué son realmente las especies? La búsqueda de clases naturales en biología.Santiago Ginnobili - 2005 - Análisis Filosófico 25 (1):45-61.
    En What Emotions Really Are y en otros artículos, Griffiths afirma que las clases naturales de los organismos vivos en Biología son cladistas. La afirmación está inmersa en una nueva teoría acerca de las clases naturales. En este trabajo examinaré los argumentos esgrimidos por Griffiths para sostener el estatus privilegiado de las clasificaciones cladistas frente a otras clasificaciones. No se discutirá la teoría de las clases naturales ofrecida, de cuyos méritos no dudo, sino su capacidad para ofrecer una solución en (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Debates in Philosophy of Biology: One Long Argument, or Many?Catherine Kendig - 2011 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (1):73 - 81.
    Philosophy of biology, perhaps more than any other philosophy of science, is a discipline in flux. What counts as consensus and key arguments in certain areas changes rapidly.The publication of Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology (2010 Wiley-Blackwell) is reviewed and is used as a catalyst to a discussion of the recent expansion of subjects and perspectives in the philosophy of biology as well as their diverse epistemological and methodological commitments.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Three kinds of adaptationism.Peter Godfrey-Smith - unknown
    Debate about adaptationism in biology continues, in part because within “the” problem of assessing adaptationism, three distinct problems are mixed together. The three problems concern the assessment of three distinct adaptationist positions, each of which asserts the central importance of adaptation and natural selection to the study of evolution, but conceives this importance in a different way. As there are three kinds of adaptationism, there are three distinct "anti-adaptationist" positions as well. Or putting it more formally, there are three different (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   107 citations  
  • Forty years of 'the strategy': Levins on model building and idealization.Michael Weisberg - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (5):623-645.
    This paper is an interpretation and defense of Richard Levins’ “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology,” which has been extremely influential among biologists since its publication 40 years ago. In this article, Levins confronted some of the deepest philosophical issues surrounding modeling and theory construction. By way of interpretation, I discuss each of Levins’ major philosophical themes: the problem of complexity, the brute-force approach, the existence and consequence of tradeoffs, and robustness analysis. I argue that Levins’ article is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   80 citations  
  • Understanding life: Recent work in philosophy of biology.Kim Sterelny - 1995 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (2):155-183.
    This paper surveys recent philosophy of biology. It aims to introduce outsiders to the field to the recent literature (which is reviewed in the footnotes) and the main recent debates. I concentrate on three of these: recent critiques of the replicator/vehicle distinction and its application to the idea of the gene as the unit of section; the recent defences of group selection and the idea that standard alternatives to group selection are in fact no more than a disguised form of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • New philosophies of science in north America — twenty years later.Joseph Rouse - 1998 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 29 (1):71-122.
    This survey of major developments in North American philosophy of science begins with the mid-1960s consolidation of the disciplinary synthesis of internalist history and philosophy of science (HPS) as a response to criticisms of logical empiricism. These developments are grouped for discussion under the following headings: historical metamethodologies, scientific realisms, philosophies of the special sciences, revivals of empiricism, cognitivist naturalisms, social epistemologies, feminist theories of science, studies of experiment and the disunity of science, and studies of science as practice and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Kuhnian values and cladistic parsimony.Richard Richards - 2002 - Perspectives on Science 10 (1):1-27.
    : According to Kuhn, theory choice is not governed by algorithms, but by values, which influence yet do not determine theory choice. Cladistic hypotheses, however, seem to be evaluated relative to a parsimony algorithm, which asserts that the best phylogenetic hypothesis is the one that requires the fewest character changes. While this seems to be an unequivocal evaluative rule, it is not. The application of the parsimony principle is ultimately indeterminate because the choice and individuation of characters that figure in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Natural language and natural selection.Steven Pinker & Paul Bloom - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):707-27.
    Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   604 citations  
  • Teleosemantics without natural selection.Marshall Abrams - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (1):97-116.
    Ruth Millikan and others advocate theories which attempt to naturalize wide mental content (e.g. beliefs.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Agential Teleosemantics.Tiago Rama - 2022 - Dissertation, Autonomous University of Barcelona
    The field of the philosophy of biology is flourishing in its aim to evaluate and rethink the view inherited from the previous century ---the Modern Synthesis. Different research areas and theories have come to the fore in the last decades in order to account for different biological phenomena that, in the first instance, fall beyond the explanatory scope of the Modern Synthesis. This thesis is anchored and motivated by this revolt in the philosophy of biology. -/- The central target in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology.Ned Block - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1):615-678.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   352 citations  
  • Methodology in evolutionary psychology.Sally Ferguson - 2002 - Biology and Philosophy 17 (5):635-650.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • What determines biological fitness? The problem of the reference environment.Marshall Abrams - 2009 - Synthese 166 (1):21-40.
    Organisms' environments are thought to play a fundamental role in determining their fitness and hence in natural selection. Existing intuitive conceptions of environment are sufficient for biological practice. I argue, however, that attempts to produce a general characterization of fitness and natural selection are incomplete without the help of general conceptions of what conditions are included in the environment. Thus there is a "problem of the reference environment"—more particularly, problems of specifying principles which pick out those environmental conditions which determine (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Representing the past.Ludovica Lorusso - unknown
    In my dissertation I define historical disciplines as disciplines that aim to give a historical interpretation of the evidence. Phylogenetic systematics is a historical discipline and therefore in my definition phylogenies should be thought of as historical interpretations of relationships between taxa.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • In defense of exaptation.Wendy Wilkins & Jennie Dumford - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):763-764.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • A Rube Goldberg machine par excellence.Myrna Gopnik - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):734-735.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Selecting grammars.Norbert Hornstein - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):735-736.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Causal stories.David Magnus - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):744-744.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Evolution and special creation.Ernan Mc Mullin - 1993 - Zygon 28 (3):299-335.
    The logical relationships between the ideas of evolution and of special creation are explored here in the context of a recent paper by Alvin Plantinga claiming that from the perspective of biblical religion it is more likely than not that God acted in a “special” way at certain crucial moments in the long process whereby life developed on earth. I argue against this thesis, asking first under what circumstances the Bible might be thought relevant to an issue of broadly scientific (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Darwinism.James Lennox - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This entry first formulates ‘Darwin's Darwinism’ in terms of five philosophically distinctive themes: (i) probability and chance, (ii) the nature, power and scope of selection, (iii) adaptation and teleology, (iv) nominalism vs. essentialism about species and (v) the tempo and mode of evolutionary change. Both Darwin and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Theory structure, reduction, and disciplinary integration in biology.Kenneth F. Schaffner - 1993 - Biology and Philosophy 8 (3):319-347.
    This paper examines the nature of theory structure in biology and considers the implications of those theoretical structures for theory reduction. An account of biological theories as interlevel prototypes embodying causal sequences, and related to each other by strong analogies, is presented, and examples from the neurosciences are provided to illustrate these middle-range theories. I then go on to discuss several modifications of Nagel''s classical model of theory reduction, and indicate at what stages in the development of reductions these models (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Scientonomy and the sociotechnical domain.Paul E. Patton (ed.) - 2021 - Willmington, Delaware: Vernon Press.
    The sociotechnical domain is the realm of scientists, the communities and institutions they form, and the tools and instruments they use to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge. This paper reviews current scientonomic theory concerning this domain. A core scientonomic concept is that of an epistemic agent. Generally, an agent is an entity capable of intentional action—action that has content or meaning due to its purposeful direction towards a goal. An epistemic agent is one whose actions are the taking of epistemic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Adaptationism, Deflationism, and Anti-Individualism.Tomas Hribek - 2011 - In Tomas Hribek & Juraj Hvorecky (eds.), Knowledge, Value, Evolution. Londýn, Velká Británie: College Publications. pp. 167-187.
    An examination of the externalist theories of Tyler Burge, Daniel Dennett and Ruth Millikan.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Adaptive complexity in sound patterns.Björn Lindblom - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):743-744.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Foucault’s ‘Metabody’.Mary Beth Mader - 2010 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 7 (2):187-203.
    The paper treats several ontological questions about certain nineteenth-century and contemporary medical and scientific conceptualizations of hereditary relation. In particular, it considers the account of mid-nineteenth century psychiatric thought given by Foucault in Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1973–1974 and Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974–1975 . There, Foucault argues that a fantastical conceptual prop, the ‘metabody,’ as he terms it, was implicitly supposed by that period’s psychiatric medicine as a putative ground for psychiatric pathology. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Omnipotence and spatiotemporally restricted entities.Kevin Vandergriff - 2018 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 84 (1):3-29.
    Many people who claim that evolution and theism are in tension assume that God, being omnipotent, could create life in different ways. For instance, Paul Draper has argued that the fact that life evolved on earth supports naturalism over theism. However, for there to be a probabilistic tension between naturalism and theism, because of the fact of evolution, a certain background assumption must be true, namely, that God could have made biological organisms and species through an act of Genesis-style special (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A levels-of-selection approach to evolutionary individuality.Ellen Clarke - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (6):893-911.
    What changes when an evolutionary transition in individuality takes place? Many different answers have been given, in respect of different cases of actual transition, but some have suggested a general answer: that a major transition is a change in the extent to which selection acts at one hierarchical level rather than another. The current paper evaluates some different ways to develop this general answer as a way to characterise the property ‘evolutionary individuality’; and offers a justification of the option taken (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • The emergence of homo loquens and the laws of physics.Carlos P. Otero - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):747-750.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • How much did the brain have to change for speech?R. C. Lewontin - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):740-741.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • What good is five percent of a language competence?A. Charles Catania - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):729-731.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations  
  • (1 other version)O problema da individuação na biologia à luz da determinação da unidade de seleção natural.Karla Chediak - 2005 - Scientiae Studia 3 (1):65-78.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • How Do Natural Selection and Random Drift Interact?Marshall Abrams - 2007 - Philosophy of Science 74 (5):666-679.
    One controversy about the existence of so called evolutionary forces such as natural selection and random genetic drift concerns the sense in which such “forces” can be said to interact. In this paper I explain how natural selection and random drift can interact. In particular, I show how population-level probabilities can be derived from individual-level probabilities, and explain the sense in which natural selection and drift are embodied in these population-level probabilities. I argue that whatever causal character the individual-level probabilities (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • Toward a propensity interpretation of stochastic mechanism for the life sciences.Lane DesAutels - 2015 - Synthese 192 (9):2921-2953.
    In what follows, I suggest that it makes good sense to think of the truth of the probabilistic generalizations made in the life sciences as metaphysically grounded in stochastic mechanisms in the world. To further understand these stochastic mechanisms, I take the general characterization of mechanism offered by MDC :1–25, 2000) and explore how it fits with several of the going philosophical accounts of chance: subjectivism, frequentism, Lewisian best-systems, and propensity. I argue that neither subjectivism, frequentism, nor a best-system-style interpretation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The genome might as well store the entire language in the environment.Anat Ninio - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):746-747.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The evolution of the language faculty: A paradox and its solution.Dan Sperber - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):756-758.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Seeing language evolution in the eye: Adaptive complexity or visual illusion?Lyn Frazier - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):731-732.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Linajes y sistemas: dos tipos de individuos biológicos.Gustavo Caponi - 2012 - Scientiae Studia 10 (2):243-268.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Gould on laws in biological science.Lee Mcintyre - 1997 - Biology and Philosophy 12 (3):357-367.
    Are there laws in evolutionary biology? Stephen J. Gould has argued that there are factors unique to biological theorizing which prevent the formulation of laws in biology, in contradistinction to the case in physics and chemistry. Gould offers the problem of complexity as just such a fundamental barrier to biological laws in general, and to Dollos Law in particular. But I argue that Gould fails to demonstrate: (1) that Dollos Law is not law-like, (2) that the alleged failure of Dollos (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Adaptive complexity and phenomenal consciousness.Shaun Nichols & Todd Grantham - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (4):648-670.
    Arguments about the evolutionary function of phenomenal consciousness are beset by the problem of epiphenomenalism. For if it is not clear whether phenomenal consciousness has a causal role, then it is difficult to begin an argument for the evolutionary role of phenomenal consciousness. We argue that complexity arguments offer a way around this problem. According to evolutionary biology, the structural complexity of a given organ can provide evidence that the organ is an adaptation, even if nothing is known about the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • The view of language.Michael Studdert-Kennedy - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):758-759.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   56 citations  
  • Complexity and adaptation.David Pesetsky & Ned Block - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):750-752.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Again, what the philosophy of biology is not.Werner Callebaut - 2005 - Acta Biotheoretica 53 (2):93-122.
    There are many things that philosophy of biology might be. But, given the existence of a professional philosophy of biology that is arguably a progressive research program and, as such, unrivaled, it makes sense to define philosophy of biology more narrowly than the totality of intersecting concerns biologists and philosophers (let alone other scholars) might have. The reasons for the success of the “new” philosophy of biology remain poorly understood. I reflect on what Dutch and Flemish, and, more generally, European (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • A Potential Tension in DSM-5: The General Definition of Mental Disorder versus Some Specific Diagnostic Criteria.M. Cristina Amoretti & Elisabetta Lalumera - 2019 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 44 (1):85-108.
    The general concept of mental disorder specified in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is definitional in character: a mental disorder might be identified with a harmful dysfunction. The manual also contains the explicit claim that each individual mental disorder should meet the requirements posed by the definition. The aim of this article is two-fold. First, we shall analyze the definition of the superordinate concept of mental disorder to better understand what necessary criteria actually (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Five exaptations in speech: Reducing the arbitrariness of the constraints on language.John Kingston - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):738-739.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Booknotes 15.3.Michael Ruse - 2000 - Biology and Philosophy 15 (3):465-473.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The tragedy of a priori selectionism: Dennett and Gould on adaptationism. [REVIEW]Jeremy C. Ahouse - 1998 - Biology and Philosophy 13 (3):359-391.
    In his recent book on Darwinism, Daniel Dennett has offered up a species of a priori selectionism that he calls algorithmic. He used this view to challenge a number of positions advocated by Stephen J. Gould. I examine his algorithmic conception, review his unqualified enthusiasm for the a priori selectionist position, challenge Dennett's main metaphors (cranes vs. skyhooks and a design space), examine ways in which his position has lead him to misunderstand or misrepresent Gould (spandrels, exaptation, punctuated equilibrium, contingency (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations