The concept of niche (setting, context, habitat, environment) has been little studied by ontologists, in spite of its wide application in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary biology to economics. What follows is a first formal theory of this concept, a theory of the relations between objects and their niches. The theory builds upon existing work on mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location as tools of formal ontology. It will be illustrated above all by means of simple biological (...) examples, but the concept of niche should be understood as being, like concepts such as part, boundary, and location, a structural concept that is applicable in principle to a wide range of different domains. (shrink)

The ultimate source of explanation in biology is the principle of natural selection. Natural selection means differential reproduction of genes and gene combinations. It is a mechanistic process which accounts for the existence in living organisms of end-directed structures and processes. It is argued that teleological explanations in biology are not only acceptable but indeed indispensable. There are at least three categories of biological phenomena where teleological explanations are appropriate.

Reconstructing the Past seeks to clarify and help resolve the vexing methodological issues that arise when biologists try to answer such questions as whether human beings are more closely related to chimps than they are to gorillas. It explores the case for considering the philosophical idea of simplicity/parsimony as a useful principle for evaluating taxonomic theories of evolutionary relationships. For the past two decades, evolutionists have been vigorously debating the appropriate methods that should be used in systematics, the field that (...) aims at reconstructing phylogenetic relationships among species. This debate over phylogenetic inference, Elliott Sober observes, raises broader questions of hypothesis testing and theory evaluation that run head on into long standing issues concerning simplicity/parsimony in the philosophy of science. Sober treats the problem of phylogenetic inference as a detailed case study in which the philosophical idea of simplicity/parsimony can be tested as a principle of theory evaluation. Bringing together philosophy and biology, as well as statistics, Sober builds a general framework for understanding the circumstances in which parsimony makes sense as a tool of phylogenetic inference. Along the way he provides a detailed critique of parsimony in the biological literature, exploring the strengths and limitations of both statistical and nonstatistical cladistic arguments. (shrink)

In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from (...) the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published. (shrink)

Preface by Daniel C. Dennett Beginning with a general theory of function applied to body organs, behaviors, customs, and both inner and outer representations, ...

This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of the idea in the work of (...) Dewey and Spencer is considered, as is the impact of recent evolutionary theory on our understanding of the place of mind in nature. (shrink)

This volume provides a guide to the discussion among biologists and philosophersabout the role of concepts such as function and design in an evolutionary understanding oflife.

Beginning with an examination of the concept of "adaptation" within evolutionary biology, I maintain that once we develop a robust account of ideally complete adaptation explanations, we can use this account as a model for developing incomplete evolutionary explanations--a discussion which leads to a consideration of the role of incomplete evolutionary explanations. I argue that given the historical nature of evolutionary phenomena, complete evolutionary explanations can be achieved only through a precise specification of the causal mechanisms responsible for the phenomenon (...) in question. In the first half of the dissertation, I review current alternative methodologies for establishing adaptation explanations within population genetics. I assert that ahistorical, teleonomic, and comparative methodologies fail to consistently distinguish adaptations, as products of evolution by natural selection, from other evolutionary phenomena. Combining a causal mechanical approach to identifying adaptation explanations with the distinction between how-possibly and how-actually explanations, I analyze the dual role of incomplete explanations within evolutionary biology. The second half of the dissertation deals with the project of extending this explanatory model to encompass the evolution of cultural phenomena. This project has three parts: a restatement of the causal mechanical methodology in terms of non-genetic evolution, a presentation of possible mechanisms of cultural evolution, and an application of the model to actual systems of cultural transmission. I demonstrate that it is both possible and useful to consider cultural evolution with a dual-inheritance framework combining both cultural and genetic transmission. This approach provides a theoretical framework for considering a series of questions. How should we conceptualize the relation between genetic and cultural evolution? How does the transmission system affect the dynamics of the system's evolution? Can cultural evolution oppose genetic evolution? If so, under what conditions? In answering all of these questions, I continually press for increased empirical investigation of the mechanisms of evolutionary change, be they cultural, genetic, or some combination of the two. Throughout, I argue that an appreciation of the interplay between theoretical speculation and empirical research is necessary for advancing our understanding of both evolutionary mechanisms and the processes within which they interact. (shrink)