This paper is divided into three sections. In the first section we offer a retooling of some traditional concepts, namely icons and symbols, which allows us to describe an evolutionary continuum of communication systems. The second section consists of an argument from theoretical biology. In it we explore the advantages and disadvantages of phenotypic plasticity. We argue that a range of the conditions that selectively favor phenotypic plasticity also favor a nongenetic transmission system that would allow for the inheritance of (...) acquired characters. The first two sections are independent, the third depends on both of them. In it we offer an argument that human natural languages have just the features required of an ideal transmission mechanism under the conditions described in section 2. (shrink)

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 (...) fitness. I distinguish various reference environment problems and propose solutions to some of them. While there has been a limited amount of work on problems concerning what I call "subenvironments", there appears to be no earlier work on problems of what I call the "whole environment". The first solution I propose for a whole environment problem specifies the overall environment for natural selection on a set of biological types present in a population over a specified period of time. The second specifies an environment relevant to extinction of types in a population; this kind of environment is especially relevant to certain kinds of long-term evolution. (shrink)

and was correct to conclude that the way a biological population is described should affect conclusions about whether natural selection occurs, but wrong to conclude that natural selection is therefore not a cause. After providing a new argument that ignored crucial biological details, I give a biological illustration that motivates a fairly extreme dependence on description. I argue that contrary to an implication of , biologists allow much flexibility in describing populations, as contemporary research on recent human evolution shows. Properly (...) understood, such description-dependence is consistent with descriptions capturing different causal relations involving the same population. I thus show that Walsh’s arguments fail for reasons that have not previously been understood; I argue that Walsh’s more recent “Sure Thing” argument fails for similar reasons. The resulting view provides a new perspective on causation in evolutionary processes. (shrink)

The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...) primary and secondary qualities from Galileo onward. It is arguably one of several conceptions involved in Whewell’s method of the “consilience of inductions” (Laudan 1971) and is to be found in several places in Peirce. (From M. Brewer and B. Collins, eds., (1981); Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences (a festschrift for Donald T. Campbell), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 123–162.). (shrink)

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 (...) interaction. It brings together scholars from history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, medicine, and biology to discuss the common focus of their work: entangled life, or the complex interaction of organisms and environments. (shrink)

Willard van Orman Quine once said that he had a preference for a desert ontology. This was in an earlier day when concerns with logical structure and ontological simplicity reigned supreme. Ontological genocide was practiced upon whole classes of upper-level or ‘derivative’ entities in the name of elegance, and we were secure in the belief that one strayed irremediably into the realm of conceptual confusion and possible error the further one got from ontic fundamentalism. In those days, one paid more (...) attention to generic worries about possible errors than to actual errors derived from distancing oneself too far from the nitty-gritty details of actual theory, actual inferences from actual data, the actual conditions under which we posited and detected entities, calibrated and ‘burned in’ instruments, identified and rejected artifacts, debugged programs and procedures, explained the mechanisms behind regularities, judged correlations to be spurious, and in general, to the real complexities and richness of actual scientific practice. (shrink)

Richard Levins’ distinction between aggregate, composed and evolved systems acquires new significance as we recognize the importance of mechanistic explanation. Criteria for aggregativity provide limiting cases for absence of organization, so through their failure, can provide rich detectors for organizational properties. I explore the use of failures of aggregativity for the analysis of mechanistic systems in diverse contexts. Aggregativity appears theoretically desireable, but we are easily fooled. It may be exaggerated through approximation, conditions of derivation, and extrapolating from some conditions (...) of decomposition illegtimately to others. Evolved systems particularly may require analyses under alternative complementary decompositions. Exploring these conditions helps us to better understand the strengths and limits of reductionistic methods. (shrink)

Historically, one of the most controversial aspects of Darwinian evolution has been the prominent role that randomness and random change play in it. Most biologists agree that mutations in DNA have random effects on fitness. However, fitness is a highly simplified scalar representation of an enormously complex phenotype. Challenges to Darwinian thinking have focused on such complex phenotypes. Whether mutations affect such complex phenotypes randomly is ill understood. Here I discuss three very different classes of well-studied molecular phenotypes in which (...) mutations cause nonrandom changes, based on our current knowledge. What is more, this nonrandomness facilitates evolutionary adaptation. Thus, living beings may translate DNA change into nonrandom phenotypic change that facilitates Darwinian evolution. (shrink)

A participant–observer who is both informed and interested in ethical issues, and is embedded within a nanotechnology research and development facility may be able to influence the ethical awareness of researchers in nanotechnology, and tease out the societal implications of the work being conducted. Two inter-disciplinary methods were employed: (1) regular involvement in the technical and scientific research at the facility by the participant–observer, and (2) repeated interactions and discussions between the participant–observer and the scientists. As a result of this (...) qualitative approach, an ethics questionnaire was developed and tested. This questionnaire has been incorporated into the admissions procedures for researchers as they commence use of the nanotech facility. The questionnaire highlights the importance of ethical issues in nanotechnology research and draws researchers into an engagement with possible ethical consequences and with future societal implications of their work. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop ideas about robustness analyses. I introduce a form of robustness analysis that I call sufficient parameter robustness, which has been neglected in the literature. I claim that sufficient parameter robustness is different from derivational robustness, the focus of previous research. My purpose is not only to suggest a new taxonomy of robustness, but also to argue that previous authors have concentrated on a narrow sense of robustness analysis, which they have inadequately distinguished (...) from other investigations of models such as sensitivity analysis. (shrink)

In addition to their core explanatory and predictive assumptions, scientific models include simplifying assumptions, which function as idealizations, approximations, and abstractions. There are methods to investigate whether simplifying assumptions bias the results of models, such as robustness analyses. However, the equally important issue – the focus of this paper – has received less attention, namely, what are the methodological and epistemic strengths and limitations associated with different simplifying assumptions. I concentrate on one type of simplifying assumption, the use of mega (...) parameters as abstractions in ecological models. First, I argue that there are two kinds of mega parameters qua abstractions, sufficient parameters and aggregative parameters, which have gone unnoticed in the literature. The two are associated with different heuristics, holism and reductionism, which many view as incompatible. Second, I will provide a different analysis of abstractions and the associated heuristics than previous authors. Reductionism and holism and the accompanying abstractions have different methodological and epistemic functions, strengths, and limitations, and the heuristics should be viewed as providing complementary research perspectives of cognitively limited beings. This is then, third, used as a premise to argue for epistemic and methodological pluralism in theoretical ecology. Finally, the presented taxonomy of abstractions is used to comment on the current debate whether mechanistic accounts of explanation are compatible with the use of abstractions. This debate has suffered from an abstract discussion of abstractions. With a better taxonomy of abstractions the debate can be resolved. (shrink)

Which domains of biology do philosophers of biology primarily study? The fact that philosophy of biology has been dominated by an interest for evolutionary biology is widely admitted, but it has not been strictly demonstrated. Here I analyse the topics of all the papers published in Biology & Philosophy, just as the journal celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. I then compare the distribution of biological topics in Biology & Philosophy with that of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of (...) Science of the USA, focusing on the recent period 2003–2015. This comparison reveals a significant mismatch between the distributions of these topics. I examine plausible explanations for that mismatch. Finally, I argue that many biological topics underrepresented in philosophy of biology raise important philosophical issues and should therefore play a more central role in future philosophy of biology. (shrink)

We argue that ecologists have conceived of the community concept in at least three ways, and that ecologists have used “community,” as indicated by ecological terminology, in two main ways. The typological conception emphasizes phenomenological descriptions of co-occurring species, the functional conception emphasizes mathematical relationships among co-occurring species, and the statistical conception emphasizes the frequency of species’ co-occurrence. The type usage emphasizes idealized “types,” and the group usage emphasizes quantitative boundaries and/or mathematically precise interactions. We further argue that all of (...) these senses of “community” are problematic. Ecologists seem unable to say precisely what a community is, in part because of the difficulty of measuring community properties, determining the temporal and spatial scale for various communities, and evaluating the different meanings attributed to community terms. We suggest that although and appear to be difficulties that are heuristically useful for future ecological theorizing, does not. (shrink)

Robustness may increase the degree to which the robust result is indirectly confirmed if it is shown to depend on confirmed rather than disconfirmed assumptions. Although increasing the weight with which existing evidence indirectly confirms it in such a case, robustness may also be irrelevant for confirmation, or may even disconfirm. Whether or not it confirms depends on the available data and on what other results have already been established.

We claim that the process of theoretical model refinement in economics is best characterised as robustness analysis: the systematic examination of the robustness of modelling results with respect to particular modelling assumptions. We argue that this practise has epistemic value by extending William Wimsatt's account of robustness analysis as triangulation via independent means of determination. For economists robustness analysis is a crucial methodological strategy because their models are often based on idealisations and abstractions, and it is usually difficult to tell (...) which idealisations are truly harmful. (shrink)

. Gender is a social construct. Technically, it is a grammatical structuring category that may refer to sex, as is typical of Indo‐European languages, or to another set of features such as animate versus inanimate, as is typical of Algonkian languages. Gender in language forces speakers of the language to be continually conscious of application of the category, and they tend to project the categorization into their experience of the world and collocate observations under these broad categories. Western science has (...) been developed by speakers of Indo‐European languages employing male/female genders, and in a cultural tradition that at least since the time of Classical Greece has collocated male with active, creative, rational, and public /dominant , and female with passive, irrational/emotional, and private /subordinate. Religion and science‐organons for rendering existential experience intelligible‐have always been used by the dominant class as instruments of power, and therefore in Western cultures have been entangled with legitimization of a congeries of concepts collocated with male gender. This paper illustrates the social construction of this congeries by contrasting it with non‐Western usages and valuations. (shrink)

The multiple-models approach, which has its origins in Levins’s work, is gaining broader acceptance among philosophers. Levins asserted that there is a trade-off between modeling desiderata, which justified the multiple-models approach through two separate justificatory paths. Some attention has been paid to the trade-off thesis, culminating in a paper by Matthewson and Weisberg. However, no attention has been paid to how the trade-off is supposed to justify the multiple-models approach. I argue that a trade-off between generality and precision cannot support (...) one of Levins’s justificatory paths, and I consider what that might mean for the multiple-models approach. (shrink)

William Whewell’s philosophy of scientific discovery is applied to the problem of understanding the nature of unification and explanation by the composition of causes in Newtonian mechanics. The essay attempts to demonstrate: the sense in which ”approximate’ laws successfully refer to real physical systems rather than to idealizations of them; why good theoretical constructs are not badly underdetermined by observation; and why, in particular, Newtonian forces are not conventional and how empiricist arguments against the existence of component causes, and against (...) the veracity of the fundamental laws, are flawed. (shrink)

All economic models involve abstractions and idealisations. Economic theory itself does not tell which idealizations are truly fatal or harmful for the result and which are not. This is why much of what is seen as theoretical contribution in economics is constituted by deriving familiar results from different modelling assumptions. If a modelling result is robust with respect to particular modelling assumptions, the empirical falsity of these particular assumptions does not provide grounds for criticizing the result. In this paper we (...) demonstrate how derivational robustness analysis does carry epistemic weight and answer criticism concerning its non-empirical nature and the problematic form of the required independence of the ways of derivation. The epistemic rationale and importance of robustness analysis also challenge some common conceptions of the role of theory in economics. (shrink)