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  1. Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature.Peter Godfrey-Smith (ed.) - 1996 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    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 (...)
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  • Biology’s First Law: The Tendency for Diversity and Complexity to Increase in Evolutionary Systems.Daniel W. McShea & Robert N. Brandon - 2010 - University of Chicago Press.
    1 The Zero-Force Evolutionary Law 2 Randomness, Hierarchy, and Constraint 3 Diversity 4 Complexity 5 Evidence, Predictions, and Tests 6 Philosophical Foundations 7 Implications.
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  • The Organism as the Subject and Object of Evolution.Richard C. Lewontin - 1983 - Scientia 77 (18):65.
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  • Phenotypic Evolution: A Reaction Norm Perspective.Carl Schlichting & Massimo Pigliucci - 1998 - Sinauer.
    Phenotypic Evolution explicitly recognizes organisms as complex genetic-epigenetic systems developing in response to changing internal and external environments. As a key to a better understanding of how phenotypes evolve, the authors have developed a framework that centers on the concept of the Developmental Reaction Norm. This encompasses their views: (1) that organisms are better considered as integrated units than as disconnected parts (allometry and phenotypic integration); (2) that an understanding of ontogeny is vital for evaluating evolution of adult forms (ontogenetic (...)
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  • Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture.Massimo Pigliucci - 2001 - Johns Hopkins University Press.
    Phenotypic plasticity integrates the insights of ecological genetics, developmental biology, and evolutionary theory. Plasticity research asks foundational questions about how living organisms are capable of variation in their genetic makeup and in their responses to environmental factors. For instance, how do novel adaptive phenotypes originate? How do organisms detect and respond to stressful environments? What is the balance between genetic or natural constraints (such as gravity) and natural selection? The author begins by defining phenotypic plasticity and detailing its history, including (...)
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  • Replaying Life’s Tape.John Beatty - 2006 - Journal of Philosophy 103 (7):336-362.
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  • Environmental complexity and the evolution of cognition.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2001 - In Robert J. Sternberg & James C. Kaufman (eds.), The Evolution of Intelligence. Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 233--249.
    One problem faced in discussions of the evolution of intelligence is the need to get a precise fix on what is to be explained. Terms like "intelligence," "cognition" and "mind" do not have simple and agreed-upon meanings, and the differences between conceptions of intelligence have consequences for evolutionary explanation. I hope the papers in this volume will enable us to make progress on this problem. The present contribution is mostly focused on these basic and foundational issues, although the last section (...)
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  • The evolution of phenotypic plasticity: Genealogy of a debate in genetics.Antonine Nicoglou - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 50:67-76.
    The paper describes the context and the origin of a particular debate that concerns the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. In 1965, British biologist A. D. Bradshaw proposed a widely cited model intended to explain the evolution of norms of reaction, based on his studies of plant populations. Bradshaw’s model went beyond the notion of the “adaptive norm of reaction” discussed before him by Dobzhansky and Schmalhausen by suggesting that “plasticity” the ability of a phenotype to be modified by the environment (...)
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  • How the Concept of Population Resolves Concepts of Environment.Roberta L. Millstein - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):741-755.
    Elsewhere, I defend the “causal interactionist population concept” (CIPC). Here I further defend the CIPC by showing how it clarifies another concept that biologists grapple with, namely, environment. Should we understand selection as ranging only over homogeneous environments or, alternatively, as ranging over any habitat area we choose to study? I argue instead that the boundaries of the population dictate the range of the environment, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, over which selection operates. Thus, understanding the concept of population helps us (...)
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  • Two explanations of evolutionary progress.Gregory Radick - 2000 - Biology and Philosophy 15 (4):475-491.
    Natural selection explains how living forms are fitted to theirconditions of life. Darwin argued that selection also explains what hecalled the gradual advancement of the organisation, i.e.evolutionary progress. Present-day selectionists disagree. In theirview, it is happenstance that sustains conditions favorable to progress,and therefore happenstance, not selection, that explains progress. Iargue that the disagreement here turns not on whether there exists aselection-based condition bias – a belief now attributed to Darwin – but on whether there needs to be such a bias (...)
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  • How organisms respond to environmental changes: from phenotypes to molecules (and vice versa).Massimo Pigliucci - 1996 - Trends in Ecology and Evolution 11 (4):168-173.
    The concept of reaction norms plays a crucial role in connecting molecular and evolutionary biology.
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  • Self-Extending Symbiosis: A Mechanism for Increasing Robustness Through Evolution.Hiroaki Kitano & Kanae Oda - 2006 - Biological Theory 1 (1):61-66.
    Robustness is a fundamental property of biological systems, observed ubiquitously across species and at different levels of organization from gene regulation to ecosystem. The theory of biological robustness argues that robustness fosters evolv-ability and that together they entail various tradeoffs as well as characteristic architectures and mechanisms. We argue that classes of biological systems have evolved to enhance their robustness by extending their system boundary through a series of symbioses with foreign biological entities . A series of major biological innovations (...)
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  • The notion of progress in evolutionary biology – the unresolved problem and an empirical suggestion.Bernd Rosslenbroich - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (1):41-70.
    Modern biology is ambivalent about the notion of evolutionary progress. Although most evolutionists imply in their writings that they still understand large-scale macroevolution as a somewhat progressive process, the use of the term “progress” is increasingly criticized and avoided. The paper shows that this ambivalence has a long history and results mainly from three problems: (1) The term “progress” carries historical, theoretical and social implications which are not congruent with modern knowledge of the course of evolution; (2) An incongruence exists (...)
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  • Time in the Evolutionary Process.John Maynard Smith - 1972 - In J. T. Fraser, F. C. Haber & G. H. Mueller (eds.), The Study of Time. Springer Verlag. pp. 1.
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