In this article I suggest a view of evolution characterized as a progressive process toward successively higher levels of complexity. In this approach, complexity is defined by means of an operational definition giving the possibility of its measurement by means of a procedure in which development has a crucial role. Furthermore, the concept of competition applied in the complexity space explains the cumulative emergence of new species as well as the presence of stagnant species. In this process, species are formed (...) in a hierarchical order in which the human species is situated on the highest level. This view of evolution, thus also embracing human cultural evolution, is depicted in a diagram of complexity versus time, thus forming a new kind of a Tree of Life. The purpose of the suggested interpretation of evolution is to make it more readily acceptable for common people. (shrink)

This paper critiques current arguments advancing the potential for transhumanism and a range of biological and pharmacological enhancements to better human flourishing. It does so from a historical perspective weighing the individualistic and competitive evolutionary theories of Darwin with the cooperative and communal theories of Prince Peter Kropotkin a generation later. In doing so it proposes the transhumanist and enhancement enthusiasts operate within a paradigm similar to Darwin’s, one that is atomist and individualistic. The critique, which considers the status of (...) those with cognitive, sensory and physical limits, advances a vision of society as a cooperative and communal rather than individualistic and competitive. Within this framework the argument is not one of either/or but on the lexicographical superiority of the communal and social over the individualistic and competitive ethos underlying both Darwin and most contemporary transhumanist literature. This reordering of priorities, it is argued, reflects advances in contemporary biology and evolutionary thinking. (shrink)

Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about ‘the planet’ as a whole. James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock’s Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to (...) confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence. (shrink)

In our response to the 27 commentaries, we refine the theoretical claims, clarify several misconceptions of our framework, and explore substantial disagreements. In doing so, we show that our framework accommodates multiple historical scenarios; debate the historical evidence, particularly about “pre-Axial” religions; offer important details about cultural evolutionary theory; clarify the termprosociality;and discuss proximal mechanisms. We review many interesting extensions, amplifications, and qualifications of our approach made by the commentators.

Recognition of and responsiveness to the behavioral dispositions of others are key features of moral systems for facilitating social cooperation and the mediation of punishment. Here we investigate the coevolutionary possibilities of recognition and conditional social behavior with respect to both altruism and spite. Using two evolutionary models, we find that recognition abilities can support both spite and altruism but that some can only coevolve with spite. These results show that it is essential to consider harmful social behaviors as both (...) a product of and an influence on the core features of our moral systems. (shrink)

In this paper I want to clarify what biologists are talking about when they talk about the evolution of altruism. I'll begin by saying something about the common sense concept. This familiar idea I'll call 'vernacular altruism.' One point of doing this is to make it devastatingly obvious that the common sense concept is very different from the concept as it's used in evolutionary theory. After that preliminary, I'll describe some features of the evolutionary concept. Then I'll conclude by briefly (...) considering what explanatory relation might obtain between vernacular altruism and evolutionary altruism. (shrink)

This is the second part of a two-part paper. It can be read independently of the first part provided that the reader is prepared to go along with the unorthodox views on game theory which were advanced in Part I and are summarized below. The body of the paper is an attempt to study some of the positive implications of such a viewpoint. This requires an exploration of what is involved in modeling “rational players” as computing machines.

I discuss two subjects in Samir Okasha’s excellent book, Evolution and the Levels of Selection. In consonance with Okasha’s critique of the conventionalist view of the units of selection problem, I argue that conventionalists have not attended to what realists mean by group, individual, and genic selection. In connection with Okasha’s discussion of the Price equation and contextual analysis, I discuss whether the existence of these two quantitative frameworks is a challenge to realism.

The substance of the commentaries, however, reveals considerable disagreement about how UO conceptualizes the idea of group selection. Dennett describes the issues as “mind-twistingly elusive and slippery” and hints that it is mere hype to say that group selection has been revived. Barrett and Godfrey-Smith discuss the problem of multiple perspectives at length and claim that we are too liberal in our definition of groups. We believe that these criticisms obscure the simplicity of the basic question that group selection theory (...) is designed to answer and the historical continuity of that theory, from Darwin to the present. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Biological, brain, and behavioral sciences offer strong and growing support for the virtue ethics account of moral judgment and ethical behavior in business organizations. The acquisition of moral agency in business involves the recognition, refinement, and habituation through the processes of reflexion and reflection of a moral sense encapsulated in innate modules for compassion, hierarchy, reciprocity, purity, and affiliation adaptive for communal life both in ancestral and modern environments. The genetic and neural bases of morality exist independently of institutional frameworks (...) and social structures. The latter not only shape moral behaviors within circumscribed limits, they also imply a plurality and compartmentalization of roles which may enable or impede the habituation of virtue. Becoming a virtuous agent entails the practical refinement of predispositionsin situas a member of a community of practitioners rather than entailing a normative ethical educational project seeking an intellectual resolution of abstract moral questions. (shrink)

The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity, and Daston’s later and earlier works On Scientific Observation and The Moral Economy of Science. I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan’s work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by the (...) mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of the real that causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant’s own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of “pathology.” This questions Daston and Galison’s argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison take appearance for being in their application of the Foucauldian concept of technologies of the self in modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston’s later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing “entities” in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of “being” in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science. (shrink)

Why do irrational beliefs adopt the trappings of science, to become what is known as “pseudoscience”? Here, we develop and extend an epidemiological framework to map the factors that explain the form and the popularity of irrational beliefs in scientific garb. These factors include the exploitation of epistemic vigilance, the misunderstanding of the authority of science, the use of the honorific title of “science” as an explicit argument for belief, and the phenomenon of epistemic negligence. We conclude by integrating the (...) various factors in an epidemiological framework and thus provide a comprehensive cultural evolutionary account of science mimicry. (shrink)

Robert Trivers has proposed perhaps the only serious adaptationist account of self-deception—that the primary function of self-deception is to better deceive others. But this account covers only a subset of cases and needs further refinement. A better evolutionary account of self-deception and cognitive biases more generally will more rigorously recognize the various ways in which false beliefs affect both the self and others. This article offers formulas for determining the optimal doxastic orientation, giving special consideration to conflicted self-deception as an (...) alternative to outright self-delusion. A novel taxonomy of self-deception, as it relates to the beliefs held by others, is also presented. While Trivers makes a plausible case for the adaptive value of certain cognitive biases, a more fragmented and nuanced account of the social forces impacting the evolution of self-deception is needed. (shrink)

Key to Steve Fuller’s recent defense of intelligent design is the claim that it alone can explain why science is even possible. By contrast, Fuller argues that Darwinian evolutionary theory posits a purposeless universe leaving humans with no motivation to study science and no basis for modifying an underlying reality. I argue that this view represents a retreat from insights about knowledge within Fuller’s own program of social epistemology. I argue for a Darwinian picture of science as a product of (...) cultural evolution building upon biological capabilities and liabilities bequeathed to us by biological evolution. Dual Inheritance or Gene-Culture Coevolution Theory can help us understand how complex social institutions emerged out of distinct, if connected, processes of biological and cultural evolution. Only by understanding how the unnatural nature of modern science emerged through cultural evolution can we consider where modern science functions well or poorly. (shrink)

Explaining the emergence of life is perhaps central and the most challenging question in modern science. Within this area of research, the emergence and evolution of the genetic code is supposed to be a critical transition in the evolution of modern organisms. The canonical genetic code is one of the most dominant aspects of life on this planet, and thus studying its origin is critical to understanding the evolution of life, including life’s emergence. In this sense it is possible to (...) view the ribosome as a digital-to-analogue information converter. Why the translation apparatus evolved, is one of the enduring mysteries of molecular biology. Assuming the hypothesis that during the emergence of life evolution had to first involve autocatalytic systems, which only subsequently acquired the capacity of genetic heredity, in the present article we discuss some aspects and causes of the possible emergence of digital, discrete information arising from analogue information realized in the intra- and inter-molecular interactions throughout molecular evolution. How such reverse translation was achieved at a molecular level is still unclear. The results of such debates and investigations might shift current biological paradigms and might also have a momentous significance for modern philosophy in understanding our place in the universe. (shrink)

In contrast to the traditional relational semiotics, biosemiotics decisively deviates towards dynamical aspects of signs at the evolutionary and developmental time scales. The analysis of sign dynamics requires constructivism to explain how new components such as subagents, sensors, effectors, and interpretation networks are produced by developing and evolving organisms. Semiotic networks that include signs, tools, and subagents are multilevel, and this feature supports the plasticity, robustness, and evolvability of organisms. The origin of life is described here as the emergence of (...) simple self-constructing semiotic networks that progressively increased the diversity of their components and relations. Primitive organisms have no capacity to classify and track objects; thus, we need to admit the existence of proto-signs that directly regulate activities of agents without being associated with objects. However, object recognition and handling became possible in eukaryotic species with the development of extensive rewritable epigenetic memory as well as sensorial and effector capacities. Semiotic networks are based on sequential and recursive construction, where each step produces components that are needed for the following steps of construction. Construction is not limited to repair and reproduction of what already exists or is unambiguously encoded, it also includes production of new components and behaviors via learning and evolution. A special case is the emergence of new levels of organization known as metasystem transition. Multilevel semiotic networks reshape the phenotype of organisms by combining a mosaic of features developed via learning and evolution of cooperating and/or conflicting subagents. (shrink)

This is a review article of Paul Cillier's 1999 book _Complexity and Postmodernism_. The review article is generally encouraging and constructive, although isolates a number of areas in need of clarification or development in Cillier's work. The volume of the _South African Journal of Philosophy_ in which the review article appeared also printed a response by Cilliers.

In fact, nearly every scientist who has written on the general subject of evolution has felt compelled to show how deftly he can skate toward the abyss of teleology without falling in.J.H. Campbell, 163Molecular biology has as its primary objective the elucidation of the coupling between genotype and phenotype. This goal has so far been pursued within a neoDarwinian theoretical framework which is relatively limited. Within this framework we can indeed understand remarkably well the mechanisms of replication and expression of (...) genes and the means by which replication and expression are regulated in cells; we know how genotype determines phenotype at the molecular level, in single cells. We are also close to an understanding of the relationship between genes and development in muticellular animals and plants. (shrink)

In this paper I want to clarify what biologists are talking about when they talk about the evolution of altruism. I’ll begin by saying something about the common sense concept. This familiar idea I’ll call ‘vernacular altruism.’ One point of doing this is to make it devastatingly obvious that the common sense concept is very different from the concept as it’s used in evolutionary theory. After that preliminary, I’ll describe some features of the evolutionary concept. Then I’ll conclude by briefly (...) considering what explanatory relation might obtain between vernacular altruism and evolutionary altruism. Although the points I’ll make are rather elementary ones, their interest is not restricted to those who have never heard of the evolutionary problem. The reason for this is that there is some amount of confusion about evolutionary altruism among evolutionary biologists themselves. (shrink)

According to an influential view in contemporary cognitive science, many human cognitive capacities are innate. The primary support for this view comes from ‘poverty of stimulus’ arguments. In general outline, such arguments contrast the meagre informational input to cognitive development with its rich informational output. Consider the ease with which humans acquire languages, become facile at attributing psychological states (‘folk psychology’), gain knowledge of biological kinds (‘folk biology’), or come to understand basic physical processes (‘folk physics’). In all these cases, (...) the evidence available to a growing child is far too thin and noisy for it to be plausible that the underlying principles involved are derived from general learning mechanisms. This only alternative hypothesis seems to be that the child’s grasp of these principles is innate. (Cf. Laurence and Margolis, 2001.). (shrink)

ABSTRACT In social evolution theory, biological individuals are often represented on the model of rational agents, that is, as if they were ‘seeking’ to maximize their own reproductive success. In the 1990s, important criticisms of this mode of thinking were made by Brian Skyrms and Elliott Sober, who both argued that ‘rational agent’ models can lead to incorrect predictions when there are positive correlations between individuals’ phenotypes. In this article, I argue that one model of rational choice—namely, Savage’s model —can (...) actually be vindicated in evolutionary biology, provided that the pay-offs are computed in inclusive fitness terms. I also show that the use of this model is better avoided when pay-offs are non-additive, or when certain causal influences affect the outcome of natural selection. The result is a partial rehabilitation of this mode of thinking, conditional on both the additivity of the pay-off structure and the absence of any form of manipulation or coercion. _1_ Introduction _2_ When Natural Selection and Rational Deliberation Part Ways _3_ A Simple Solution: Redefining the Pay-offs in Inclusive Fitness Terms _4_ Sober on Inclusive Fitness Maximization _5_ Inclusive Fitness with Non-additive Pay-offs _6_ Causal Influences and the Savage– Hamilton Model _6.1_ Reciprocity and partner choice _6.2_ Coercion and manipulation _7_ Conclusion Appendix. (shrink)

This paper describes a cross-cultural research project on the relation between how people conceptualize nature and how they act in it. Mental models of nature differ dramatically among and within populations living in the same area and engaged in more or less the same activities. This has novel implications for environmental decision making and management, including dealing with commons problems. Our research also offers a distinct perspective on models of culture, and a unified approach to the study of culture and (...) cognition. We argue that cultural transmission and formation does not consist primarily in shared rules or norms, but in complex distributions of causally-connected representations across minds in interaction with the environment. The cultural stability and diversity of these representations often derives from rich, biologically-prepared mental mechanisms that limit variation to readily transmissible psychological forms. This framework addresses a series of methodological issues, such as the limitations of conceiving culture to be a well-defined system or bounded entity, an independent variable, or an internalized component of minds. (shrink)

While both economic and social considerations of fairness and equity play an important role in financial decision-making, it is not clear which of these two motives is more primal and immediate and which one is secondary and slow. Here we used variants of the ultimatum game to examine this question. Experiment 1 shows that acceptance rate of unfair offers increases when participants are asked to base their choice on their gut-feelings, as compared to when they thoroughly consider the available information. (...) In line with these results, Experiments 2 and 3 provide process evidence that individuals prefer to first examine economic information about their own utility rather than social information about equity and fairness, even at the price of foregoing such social information. Our results suggest that people are more economically rational at the core, but social considerations (e.g., inequality aversion) require deliberation, which under certain conditions override their self-interested impulses. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMetaphysics has long been regarded as providing meaning to the world. Subsequent progressive replacement attempts of this narrative by a scientific approach have generally led to a view of life as being void of meaning. However, this has not affected the quest for meaning or for an understanding of this meaning, despite an increasing societal neglect of the importance of its pursuit. This article aims to contribute to a philosophical understanding of the sense of life in the world, drawing on (...) Jean-Luc Nancy's understanding of sense as developed in his Sense of the World. To talk of “sense” rather than of “meaning” is an unconventional choice in the field, yet both differ from one another in that sense refers to an opening as the very possibility of meaningfulness generally. This means that, to understand meaning, we must understand sense. Key to Nancy's conception of sense is the transitivity of the verb being; being traverses itself from being as non-being “to” being as existence. Nancy is concer... (shrink)

Biological evolution is often viewed narrowly as a change of morphology or allele frequency in a sequence of generations. Here I pursue an alternative informational concept of evolution, as preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information in natural agents. Functional information is a network of signs that are used by agents to preserve and regulate their functions. Functional information is preserved in evolution via complex interplay of copying and construction processes: the digital components are copied, whereas interpreting subagents together with (...) scaffolds, tools, and resources, are constructed. Some of these processes are simple and invariant, whereas others are complex and contextual. Advance of functional information includes improvement and modification of already existing functions. Although the genome information may change passively and randomly, the interpretation is active and guided by the logic of agent behavior and embryonic development. Emergence of new functions is based on the reinterpretation of already existing information, when old tools, resources, and control algorithms are adopted for novel functions. Evolution of functional information progressed from protosemiosis, where signs correspond directly to actions, to eusemiosis, where agents associate signs with objects. Language is the most advanced form of eusemiosis, where the knowledge of objects and models is communicated between agents. (shrink)

Methodological reductionists practice ‘wannabe reductionism’. They claim that one should pursue reductionism, but never propose how. I integrate two strains in prior work to do so. Three kinds of activities are pursued as “reductionist”. “Successional reduction” and inter-level mechanistic explanation are legitimate and powerful strategies. Eliminativism is generally ill-conceived. Specific problem-solving heuristics for constructing inter-level mechanistic explanations show why and when they can provide powerful and fruitful tools and insights, but sometimes lead to erroneous results. I show how traditional metaphysical (...) approaches fail to engage how science is done. The methods used do so, and support a pragmatic and non-eliminativist realism. (shrink)

The language of intentional psychology is commonly used as a means of addressing issues concerning selection. This habit is generally considered an efficient shorthand, but oft-reported misunderstandings leave room for doubt. I stress the general point that efficiency of a mode of expression is an empirical matter, deserving the same treatment, theoretically and methodologically, as other such matters. Mistaken assumptions regarding the relevant cognitive capacities may make for inefficient communication, and discourse about human evolution is a plausible case in point.

During the last two decades, a new understanding of life emerged at the forefront of science.The development of complexity theory, technically known as nonlinear dynamics, has allowed scientists and mathematicians to model the complexities of living systems in new ways that have yielded many important discoveries. In this article, the author reviews the basic concepts, current achievements and status of complexity theory from the perspective of the new understanding of biological life. Models and theories discussed include the theory of dissipative (...) structures for nonlinear chemical systems, the application of bifurcation theory to genetic networks and cell differentiation, the study of the origin of biological form, a new approach to the understanding of developmental stability in embryology, and a model of the ‘origin of life’ and prebiotic evolution in tiny, membrane-bounded vesicles in the primeval oceans. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the impact that Lamarckian evolutionary theory had in the scientific community during the period between the advent of Zoological Philosophy and the publication Origin of Species. During these 50 years Lamarck’s model was a well known theory and it was discussed by the scientific community as a hypothesis to explain the changing nature of the fossil record throughout the history of Earth. Lamarck’s transmutation theory established the foundation of an evolutionary model introducing a new way to research (...) in nature. Darwin’s selectionist theory was proposed in 1859 to explain the origin of species within this epistemological process. In this context, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and Auguste Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive appear as two major works for the dissemination of Lamarck’s evolutionary ideology after the death of the French naturalist in 1829. (shrink)

Vitriolic debates between supporters of the intrinsic value and the care approaches to environmental ethics make it sound as though these two sides share no common ground. Yet ecofeminist Jim Cheney holds up Holmes Rolston's work as a paragon of feminist sensibility. I explore where Cheney gets this idea from and try to root out some potential connections between intrinsic value and care approaches. The common ground is explored through Alasdair Maclntyre's articulation of a narrative ethics and the development of (...) the notion of an ecological and evolutionary tradition. (shrink)

Contemporary literature in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind points to the locus of significant unresolved theoretical and methodological issues in political theory and political science, and particularly to the persistently anomalous status of mental concepts. The manner in which political and social theorists have accessed and deployed this literature, however, has been highly selective and conceptually problematical. The purpose has often been to justify prior agendas, and issues relating to how brain processes are involved in an explanation of (...) political phenomena have not been satisfactorily confronted. Cognitive science is itself a highly contested field with indigenous theoretical difficulties, and it is necessary to sort out and analyze the salient positions in this conversation and to begin, at least tentatively, to assess critically its implications for both social theory and empirical research and to suggest a direction for further investigation. (shrink)

In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins (1976) proposed the existence of a unit of cultural inheritance that he called the meme. Some examples of memes are clothing fashions, tool designs, and architectural designs. Like genes, memes must share three properties: longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. Longevity refers to the lifespan of a meme, fecundity to the rate of spread of a meme, and copying-fidelity to how accurately a meme is replicated. In other work (Hardisty and Cassill, in preparation), we hypothesized that successful (...) memes should share a fourth property with successful genes: memes should affect an organism’s lifetime fitness by improving survival or reproduction. Sterelny (2006) argued that high-fitness memes include tools or artifacts that are physically enduring, made from easy to find materials, and easy to reverse-engineer. Here, we argue that another way to link memes to individual fitness is to think of tools as part of an organism’s ecological niche. Each tool or artifact an organism makes that extends its evolutionary lifespan or increases its reproductive output is thus a meme that is directly contributing to that organism’s fitness. (shrink)

Natural selection generated a natural sense of justice. This natural sense of justice created a set of natural rights; rights humans accorded to each other in virtue of being members of the same tribe. Sharing the responsibility for natural rights between all members of the same tribe allowed humans to take advantage of all opportunities for cooperation. Human rights are the present day political emanation of natural rights. Theoretically, human rights are accorded by all humans to all humans in virtue (...) of being humans; however, the idea that the corresponding responsibility is now shared among all humans is not broadly accepted. The natural sense of justice creates an ambiguity: on the one hand humans consider the nation they belong to as the social system that should guarantee their human rights ; on the other hand, as cooperation between nations intensifies, expectations of global mutual responsibility increase as well. (shrink)

Altruism is one of the most studied topics in theoretical evolutionary biology. The debate surrounding the evolution of altruism has generally focused on the conditions under which altruism can evolve and whether it is better explained by kin selection or multilevel selection. This debate has occupied the forefront of the stage and left behind a number of equally important questions. One of them, which is the subject of this article, is whether the word “selection” in “kin selection” and “multilevel selection” (...) necessarily refers to “evolution by natural selection.” I show, using a simple individual-centered model, that once clear conditions for natural selection and altruism are specified, one can distinguish two kinds of evolution of altruism, only one of which corresponds to the evolution of altruism by natural selection, the other resulting from other evolutionary processes. (shrink)

Competition over reproductive opportunities among members of one sex often harms the opposite sex, creating a conflict of interest between individual males and females. Recently, this battle of the sexes has become a paradigm in the study of intersexual coevolution. Here, we review recent theoretical and empirical advances suggesting that – as in any scenario of intraspecific competition – selfishness (competitiveness) can be influenced by the genetic relatedness of competitors. When competitors are positively related (e.g. siblings), an individual may refrain (...) from harming its competitor(s) and their mate(s) because this can improve the focal individual's inclusive fitness. These findings reveal that population genetic structure might be of paramount importance when studying the battle of the sexes. We conclude by identifying some new lines of research at the interface of sexual selection and social evolution. (shrink)

This paper proposes a model of human uniqueness based on an unusual distinction between two contrasted kinds of political competition and political status: (1) antagonistic competition, in quest of dominance (antagonistic status), a zero-sum, self-limiting game whose stake—who takes what, when, how—summarizes a classical definition of politics (Lasswell 1936), and (2) synergistic competition, in quest of merit (synergistic status), a positive-sum, self-reinforcing game whose stake becomes “who brings what to a team’s common good.” In this view, Rawls’s (1971) famous virtual (...) “veil of ignorance” mainly conceals politics’ antagonistic stakes so as to devise the principles of a just, egalitarian society, yet without providing any means to enforce these ideals (Sen 2009). Instead, this paper proposes that human uniqueness flourished under a real “adapted veil of ignorance” concealing the steady inflation of synergistic politics which resulted from early humans’ sturdy egalitarianism. This proposition divides into four parts: (1) early humans first stumbled on a purely cultural means to enforce a unique kind of within-team antagonistic equality—dyadic balanced deterrence thanks to handheld weapons (Chapais 2008); (2) this cultural innovation is thus closely tied to humans’ darkest side, but it also launched the cumulative evolution of humans’ brightest qualities—egalitarian team synergy and solidarity, together with the associated synergistic intelligence, culture, and communications; (3) runaway synergistic competition for differential merit among antagonistically equal obligate teammates is the single politically selective mechanism behind the cumulative evolution of all these brighter qualities, but numerous factors to be clarified here conceal this mighty evolutionary driver; (4) this veil of ignorance persists today, which explains why humans’ unique prosocial capacities are still not clearly understood by science. The purpose of this paper is to start lifting this now-ill-adapted veil of ignorance, thus uncovering the tight functional relations between egalitarian team solidarity and the evolution of human uniqueness. (shrink)

As a system of knowledge, nursing has utilized a range of subjects and reconstituted them to reflect the thinking and practice of health care. Often drawn to a holistic model, nursing finds it difficult to resist the reductionist tendencies in biological and medical thinking. In this paper I will propose a relational approach to knowledge that is able to address this issue. The paper argues that biology is not characterized by one stable theory but is often a contentious topic and (...) employs philosophically diverse models in its scientific research. Biology need not be seen as a reductionist science, but reductionism is nonetheless an important current within biological thinking. These reductionist currents can undermine nursing knowledge in four main ways. Firstly, that the conclusions drawn from reductionism go far beyond their data based on an approach that prioritizes biological explanations and eliminates others. Secondly, that the methods employed by biologists are sometimes weak, and the limitations are insufficiently acknowledged. Thirdly, that the assumptions that drive the research agenda are problematic, and finally that uncritical application of these ideas can be potentially disastrous for nursing practice. These issues are explored through an examination of the problems reductionism poses for the issue of gender, mental health, and altruism. I then propose an approach based on critical realism that adopts an anti‐reductionist philosophy that utilizes the conceptual tools of emergence and a relational ontology. (shrink)

Many biologists still believe in a sort of post-Cartesian foundation of reality wherein objects are independent of subjects which cognize them. Recent research in behaviour, cognition, and psychology, however, provides plenty of evidence to the effect that the perception of an object differs depending on the kind of animal observer, and also its personality, hormonal, and sensorial set-up etc. In the following, I argue that exposed surfaces of organisms interact with other organisms’ perception to form semiautonomous relational entities called semantic (...) organs, which participate in biological reality as discrete heritable evolutionary units. The inner dimensions and potentialities of an organism can enter the senses of another living being when effectively expressed on the outer surfaces of the former and meaningfully perceived by the latter. Semantic organs have three basic sources of variability: intrinsic, i.e., genetic, epigenetic, and developmental processes; extrinsic, meaning the biotic and abiotic environmental conditions which affect the developmental generators of intrinsic variability; and perceptual, stemming from differences in the subject-specific interpretation of a SO’s structural basis. Extrinsic and intrinsic sources of variability are, however, just precursors to semantic organs. SOs are relational entities which always come into existence through an act of perception and their actual form depends both on the physical potentialities of the bearer and the species- or group-specific interpretation of the receiver. (shrink)

In this article the predominant, purely theoretical perspectives on animal ethics are questioned and two important sources for empirical data in the context of animal ethics are discussed: methods of the social and methods of the natural sciences. Including these methods can lead to an empirical animal ethics approach that is far more adapted to the needs of humans and nonhuman animals and more appropriate in different circumstances than a purely theoretical concept solely premised on rational arguments. However, the potential (...) tension between lay people’s moral judgements and ethical theory must be handled with care. The thorough analysis of qualitative data can lead to a deep insight into e.g. ethical problems with the application of laws and guidelines, practicality issues with ethical theories, personal ambivalence, and cognitive biases. The interaction between animal ethics theory and empirical findings can lead to both a more context-sensitive and applicable ethical theory and a less arbitrary folk moral system. Findings from the natural sciences can also contribute valuable information to animal ethics theory—the more we know about the properties and preferences of nonhuman animals the better we can respect them. Here, however, it is vital not to justify invasive procedures for the sake of “ethical progress”. It might be ethically required to forego some scientific findings about nonhuman animals if it is not clear how much a procedure would harm them. Only with robust empirical methods will light ultimately be shed on the nature of our moral relationship with animals. (shrink)

Due to the variation, contingency and complexity of living systems, biology is often taken to be a science without fundamental theories, laws or general principles. I revisit this question in light of the quest for design principles in systems biology and show that different views can be reconciled if we distinguish between different types of generality. The philosophical literature has primarily focused on generality of specific models or explanations, or on the heuristic role of abstraction. This paper takes a different (...) approach in emphasizing a theory-constituting role of general principles. Design principles signify general dependency-relations between structures and functions, given a set of formally defined constraints. I contend that design principles increase our understanding of living systems by relating specific models to general types. The categorization of types is based on a delineation of the scope of biological possibilities, which serves to identify and define the generic features of classes of systems. To characterize the basis for general principles through generic abstraction and reasoning about possibility spaces, I coin the term constraint-based generality. I show that constraint-based generality is distinct from other types of generality in biology, and argue that general principles play a unifying role that does not entail theory reduction. (shrink)

Edited by Alessandro Minelli and Thomas Pradeu, Towards a Theory of Development gathers essays by biologists and philosophers, which display a diversity of theoretical perspectives. The discussions not only cover the state of art, but broaden our vision of what development includes and provide pointers for future research. Interestingly, all contributors agree that explanations should not just be gene-centered, and virtually none use design and other engineering metaphors to articulate principles of cellular and organismal organization. I comment in particular on (...) the issue of how to construe the notion of a ‘theory’ and whether developmental biology has or should aspire to have theories, which four of the contributions discuss in detail while taking opposing positions. Beyond construing a theory in terms of its empirical content, my aim is to shift the focus toward the role that theories have for guiding future scientific theorizing and practice. Such a conception of ‘theory’ is particularly important in the context of development, because arriving at a theoretical framework that provides guidance for the discipline of developmental biology as a whole is more plausible than a unified representation of development across all taxa. (shrink)