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 (...) I believe some exposure to environmental ethics can help focus their interests and goals. I identify three primary areas in which environmental ethics can con- tribute to their education. The first is an examination of who (or what) should be considered to be part of our moral community (i.e., the community to whom we owe direct duties). Is it humans only? Or does it include all sentient life? Or all life? Or ecosystems considered holistically? Often, readings implicitly assume one or more of these answers; the goal is to make the student more sensitive to these implicit claims and to get them to think about the different reasons that support them. The second area, related to the first, is the application of the different answers concerning the extent of the ethical community to real environmental issues and problems. Students need to be aware of how the different answers concerning the moral community can imply conflicting answers for how we should act in certain cases and to think about ways to move toward conflict resolution. The third area in which environmental ethics can contribute is a more conceptual one, focusing on central concepts such as biodiversity, sustainability, species, and ecosystems. Exploring and evaluating various meanings of these terms will make students more reflective and thoughtful citizens and biologists, sensitive to the implications that different conceptual choices make. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of three parts. Part I is a defense of an artificial language methodology in philosophy and a historical and systematic defense of the logical empiricists' application of an artificial language methodology to scientific theories. These defenses provide a justification for the presumptions of a host of criteria of empirical significance, which I analyze, compare, and develop in part II. On the basis of this analysis, in part III I use a variety of criteria to evaluate the scientific (...) status of intelligent design, and further discuss confirmation, reduction, and concept formation. (shrink)

Thomas Crisp has attempted to revive something akin to Alvin Plantinga’s Principle of Dwindling Probabilities to argue that the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus does not make the posterior probability of the resurrection very high. I argue that Crisp’s argument fails because he is attempting to evaluate a concrete argument in an a priori manner. I show that the same moves he uses would be absurd in other contexts, as applied both to our acquaintance with human beings and (...) to evidence for divine intervention. Crisp’s attempt to relate the evidence for a specific act of God such as the resurrection to generic theism, thereby creating skepticism about the power of the evidence, is symptomatic of a larger problem in the philosophy of religion which I dub “separationism” and which has characterized the work of both advocates of classical apologetics and philosophers of science. (shrink)

The indispensability argument is sometimes seen as weakened by its reliance on a controversial premise of confirmation holism. Recently, some philosophers working on the indispensability argument have developed versions of the argument which, they claim, do not rely on holism. Some of these writers even claim to have strengthened the argument by eliminating the controversial premise. I argue that the apparent removal of holism leaves a lacuna in the argument. Without the holistic premise, or some other premise which facilitates the (...) transfer of evidence to mathematical portions of scientific theories, the argument is implausible. (shrink)

Selectionist evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making novel predictions that are surprising, risky, and correct. I argue that it in fact exhibits the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to two other virtues: explanatory unification and model fitting. Two case studies show the predictive capacity of selectionist evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in E. coli, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.

Eliminative reasoning seems to play an important role in the sciences, but should it be part of our best theory of science? Statistical evidence, prevalent across the sciences, causes problems for eliminative inference, supporting the view that probabilistic theories of confirmation provide a better framework for reasoning about evidence. Here I argue that deductive elimination has an important inferential role to play in science, one that is compatible with probabilistic approaches to evidence. Eliminative inferences help frame testing problems, an essential (...) step that determines the context for evaluating statistical evidence. I illustrate this process with examples from molecular evolutionary biology. (shrink)

There are various questions that arise in connection with the “intelligent design” (ID) controversy. This introductory section aims to distinguish five of these questions. Later sections are devoted to detailed discussions of each of these five questions. The first (and central) question is the one that has been discussed most frequently in the news lately: (Q1) Should ID be taught in our public schools? It is helpful to break this general “public school curriculum question” into the following two more specific (...) sub-questions: (Q1.1) Should ID be included in the science curriculum of our public schools? (Q1.2) Should ID be included in some part of our public school curriculum? Of course, these public school curriculum questions should be distinguished from other (perhaps related, but distinct) questions that are often asked about ID. Here is another question that is very frequently discussed, not only in the debate about (Q1), but in the ID controversy generally: (Q2) What is ID? In other words, is ID a scientific theory, a religious doctrine, an.. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the logical relation between two claims: observations are theory-laden1 and there is no empirical common ground upon which to evaluate successive scientific theories that belong to different paradigms. I, first, construct an argument where is the main premise and is the conclusion. I argue that the term „theory-laden” has three distinct senses: semantic, psychological and epistemic. If ‘theory-laden’ is understood in either epistemic or psychological senses, then the conclusion becomes a claim about people. If incommensurability (...) is to be a claim about theories, then ‘theory-laden’ in the main premise should be understood in the semantic sense. I, then, argue that there is a further distinction to be drawn between the absolute and relative senses of theory-laden. The relative sense of theory-laden allows observations that are relatively neutral between the theories under examination. I then conclude that the argument from theory-ladenness only shows that foundational empiricism is not a tenable philosophical position, but it fails to show that no empirical test can decide between successive theories that belong to different paradigms. (shrink)

This chapter offers a critique of intelligent design arguments against evolution and a philosophical discussion of the nature of science, drawing several lessons for the teaching of evolution and for science education in general. I discuss why Behe’s irreducible complexity argument fails, and why his portrayal of organismal systems as machines is detrimental to biology education and any under-standing of how organismal evolution is possible. The idea that the evolution of complex organismal features is too unlikely to have occurred by (...) random mutation and selection (as recently promoted by Dembski) is very widespread, but it is easy to show students why such small probability arguments are fallacious. While intelligent design proponents have claimed that the exclusion of supernatural causes mandated by scientific methods is dogmatically presupposed by science, scientists have an empirical justification for using such methods. This justification is instructive for my discussion of how to demarcate science from pseudoscience. I argue that there is no universal account of the nature of science, but that the criteria used to judge an intellectual approach vary across historical periods and have to be specific to the scientific domain. Moreover, intellectual approaches have to be construed as practices based on institutional factors and values, and to be evaluated in terms of the activities of their practitioners. Science educators should not just teach scientific facts, but present science as a practice and make students reflect on the nature of science, as this gives them a better appreciation of the ways in which intelligent design falls short of actual science. (shrink)