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  1. Reframing research on evolutionary novelty and co-option: Character identity mechanisms versus deep homology.James DiFrisco, G. P. Wagner & Alan Love - forthcoming - Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology.
    A central topic in research at the intersection of development and evolution is the origin of novel traits. Despite progress on understanding how developmental mechanisms underlie patterns of diversity in the history of life, the problem of novelty continues to challenge researchers. Here we argue that research on evolutionary novelty and the closely associated phenomenon of co-option can be reframed fruitfully by: (1) specifying a conceptual model of mechanisms that underwrite character identity, (2) providing a richer and more empirically precise (...)
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  • The death of the cortical column? Patchwork structure and conceptual retirement in neuroscientific practice.Philipp Haueis - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 85:101-113.
    In 1981, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel received the Nobel Prize for their research on cortical columns—vertical bands of neurons with similar functional properties. This success led to the view that “cortical column” refers to the basic building block of the mammalian neocortex. Since the 1990s, however, critics questioned this building block picture of “cortical column” and debated whether this concept is useless and should be replaced with successor concepts. This paper inquires which experimental results after 1981 challenged the building (...)
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  • Comparative Thinking in Biology.Adrian Currie - 2020 - Cambridge University Press.
    Biologists often study living systems in light of their having evolved, of their being the products of various processes of heredity, adaptation, ancestry, and so on. In their investigations, then, biologists think comparatively: they situate lineages into models of those evolutionary processes, comparing their targets with ancestral relatives and with analogous evolutionary outcomes. This element characterizes this mode of investigation - 'comparative thinking' - and puts it to work in understanding why biological science takes the shape it does. Importantly, comparative (...)
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  • Construct validity in psychological tests – the case of implicit social cognition.Uljana Feest - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (1):1-24.
    This paper looks at the question of what it means for a psychological test to have construct validity. I approach this topic by way of an analysis of recent debates about the measurement of implicit social cognition. After showing that there is little theoretical agreement about implicit social cognition, and that the predictive validity of implicit tests appears to be low, I turn to a debate about their construct validity. I show that there are two questions at stake: First, what (...)
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  • Beyond cognitive myopia: a patchwork approach to the concept of neural function.Philipp Haueis - 2018 - Synthese 195 (12):5373-5402.
    In this paper, I argue that looking at the concept of neural function through the lens of cognition alone risks cognitive myopia: it leads neuroscientists to focus only on mechanisms with cognitive functions that process behaviorally relevant information when conceptualizing “neural function”. Cognitive myopia tempts researchers to neglect neural mechanisms with noncognitive functions which do not process behaviorally relevant information but maintain and repair neural and other systems of the body. Cognitive myopia similarly affects philosophy of neuroscience because scholars overlook (...)
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  • The fine structure of ‘homology’.Aaron Novick - 2018 - Biology and Philosophy 33 (1-2):6.
    There is long-standing conflict between genealogical and developmental accounts of homology. This paper provides a general framework that shows that these accounts are compatible and clarifies precisely how they are related. According to this framework, understanding homology requires both an abstract genealogical account that unifies the application of the term to all types of characters used in phylogenetic systematics and locally enriched accounts that apply only to specific types of characters. The genealogical account serves this unifying role by relying on (...)
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  • Smaller than a Breadbox: Scale and Natural Kinds.Julia R. Bursten - 2018 - British Journal for Philosophy of Science 69 (1):1-23.
    ABSTRACT I propose a division of the literature on natural kinds into metaphysical worries, semantic worries, and methodological worries. I argue that the latter set of worries, which concern how classification influences scientific practices, should occupy centre stage in philosophy of science discussions about natural kinds. I apply this methodological framework to the problems of classifying chemical species and nanomaterials. I show that classification in nanoscience differs from classification in chemistry because the latter relies heavily on compositional identity, whereas the (...)
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  • The life of the cortical column: opening the domain of functional architecture of the cortex.Haueis Philipp - 2016 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 38 (3):1-27.
    The concept of the cortical column refers to vertical cell bands with similar response properties, which were initially observed by Vernon Mountcastle’s mapping of single cell recordings in the cat somatic cortex. It has subsequently guided over 50 years of neuroscientific research, in which fundamental questions about the modularity of the cortex and basic principles of sensory information processing were empirically investigated. Nevertheless, the status of the column remains controversial today, as skeptical commentators proclaim that the vertical cell bands are (...)
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  • Phenomena and Objects of Research in the Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences.Uljana Feest - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):1165-1176.
    It is commonly held that research efforts in the cognitive and behavioral sciences are mainly directed toward providing explanations and that phenomena figure into scientific practice qua explananda. I contend that these assumptions convey a skewed picture of the research practices in question and of the role played by phenomena. I argue that experimental research often aims at exploring and describing “objects of research” and that phenomena can figure as components of, and as evidence for, such objects. I situate my (...)
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  • On the Origins of the Quinarian System of Classification.Aaron Novick - 2016 - Journal of the History of Biology 49 (1):95-133.
    William Sharp Macleay developed the quinarian system of classification in his Horæ Entomologicæ, published in two parts in 1819 and 1821. For two decades, the quinarian system was widely discussed in Britain and influenced such naturalists as Charles Darwin, Richard Owen, and Thomas Huxley. This paper offers the first detailed account of Macleay’s development of the quinarian system. Macleay developed his system under the shaping influence of two pressures: (1) the insistence by followers of Linnaeus on developing artificial systems at (...)
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  • Exploratory Experiments, Concept Formation, and Theory Construction in Psychology.Uljana Feest - 2012 - In Uljana Feest & Friedrich Steinle (eds.), Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice. de Gruyter. pp. 167-189.
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  • Philosophy of natural science.Carl Gustav Hempel - 1966 - Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall.
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  • Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behavior.Mark Wilson - 2006 - Oxford, GB: Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    Mark Wilson presents a highly original and broad-ranging investigation of the way we get to grips with the world conceptually, and the way that philosophical problems commonly arise from this. He combines traditional philosophical concerns about human conceptual thinking with illuminating data derived from a large variety of fields including physics and applied mathematics, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. Wandering Significance offers abundant new insights and perspectives for philosophers of language, mind, and science, and will also reward the interest of psychologists, (...)
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  • Character identity mechanisms: a conceptual model for comparative-mechanistic biology.James DiFrisco, Alan C. Love & Günter P. Wagner - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (4):1-32.
    There have been repeated attempts in the history of comparative biology to provide a mechanistic account of morphological homology. However, it is well-established that homologues can develop from diverse sets of developmental causes, appearing not to share any core causal architecture that underwrites character identity. We address this challenge with a new conceptual model of Character Identity Mechanisms. ChIMs are cohesive mechanisms with a recognizable causal profile that allows them to be traced through evolution as homologues despite having a diverse (...)
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  • Physics Avoidance: And Other Essays in Conceptual Strategy.Mark Wilson - 2017 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Mark Wilson explores our strategies for understanding the world. We frequently cannot reason about nature in the straightforward manner we anticipate, but must use alternative thought processes that reach useful answers in opaque and roundabout ways; and philosophy must find better descriptive tools to reflect this.
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  • Phylogenetic Systematics.Willi Hennig, D. Dwight Davis & Rainer Zangerl - 1980 - Philosophy of Science 47 (3):499-502.
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  • Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice.Uljana Feest & Friedrich Steinle (eds.) - 2012 - de Gruyter.
    Combining philosophical and historical scholarship, the articles in this volume focus on scientific concepts, rather than theories, as units of analysis. They thereby contribute to a growing literature about the role of concepts in scientific research. The authors are particularly interested in exploring the dynamics of research; they investigate the ways in which scientists form and use concepts, rather than in what the concepts themselves represent. The fields treated range from mathematics to virology and genetics, from nuclear physics to psychology, (...)
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  • The Epistemic Goal of a Concept: Accounting for the Rationality of Semantic Change and Variation.Ingo Brigandt - 2010 - Synthese 177 (1):19-40.
    The discussion presents a framework of concepts that is intended to account for the rationality of semantic change and variation, suggesting that each scientific concept consists of three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept’s use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these components, and that change in the concept’s inferential role and reference can be accounted for as being rational relative (...)
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  • ‘Species’ without species.Aaron Novick & W. Ford Doolittle - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 87 (C):72-80.
    Biological science uses multiple species concepts. Order can be brought to this diversity if we recognize two key features. First, any given species concept is likely to have a patchwork structure, generated by repeated application of the concept to new domains. We illustrate this by showing how two species concepts (biological and ecological) have been modified from their initial eukaryotic applications to apply to prokaryotes. Second, both within and between patches, distinct species concepts may interact and hybridize. We thus defend (...)
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  • How Science and Semantics Settle the Issue of Natural Kind Essentialism.Christian Nimtz - 2018 - Erkenntnis 86 (1):149-170.
    Standard arguments for essentialism with respect to natural kinds such as gold, star, water or tiger enlist essentialist principles or essentialist intuitions. I argue that we need neither. All it takes to establish essentialism for the kinds in question are insights from science and semantics. Semantics establishes that natural kind predicates such as “is gold” or “is a star” are paradigm terms whose application conditions are relationally determined, object involving, and actuality dependent. Science assures us that a posteriori hypotheses such (...)
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  • Taming conceptual wanderings: Wilson-Structuralism.Matteo De Benedetto - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):13225-13246.
    Mark Wilson presents a highly original account of conceptual behavior that challenges many received views about concepts in analytic philosophy. Few attempts have been made to rationally reconstruct Wilson’s framework of patches and facades within a precise semantic framework. I will show how a modified version of the structuralist framework offers a semantic reconstruction of scientific theories capable of modeling Wilson’s ideas about conceptual behavior. Specifically, I will argue that Theory-Elements and a modified version of Theory-Nets explicate respectively Wilson’s patches (...)
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  • Conceptual fragmentation and the rise of eliminativism.Henry Taylor & Peter Vickers - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (1):17-40.
    Pluralist and eliminativist positions have proliferated within both science and philosophy of science in recent decades. This paper asks the question why this shift of thinking has occurred, and where it is leading us. We provide an explanation which, if correct, entails that we should expect pluralism and eliminativism to transform other debates currently unaffected, and for good reasons. We then consider the question under what circumstances eliminativism will be appropriate, arguing that it depends not only on the term in (...)
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  • Operationism in Psychology - What the Debate is About, What the Debate Should Be About.Uljana Feest - 2005 - Journal for the Histoty of the Behavioral Sciences 41 (2):131-150.
    I offer an analysis of operationism in psychology, which is rooted in an historical study of the investigative practices of two of its early proponents (S. S. Stevens and E. C. Tolman). According to this analysis, early psychological operationists emphasized the importance of experimental operations and called for scientists to specify what kinds of operations were to count as empirical indicators for the referents of their concepts. While such specifications were referred to as “definitions,” I show that such definitions were (...)
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  • Concepts as Tools in the Experimental Generation of Knowledge in Cognitive Neuropsychology.Uljana Feest - 2010 - Spontaneous Generations 4 (1):173-190.
    This paper asks (a) how new scientific objects of research are onceptualized at a point in time when little is known about them, and (b) how those conceptualizations, in turn, figure in the process of investigating the phenomena in question. Contrasting my approach with existing notions of concepts and situating it in relation to existing discussions about the epistemology of experimentation, I propose to think of concepts as research tools. I elaborate on the conception of a tool that informs my (...)
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  • Refining the causal theory of reference for natural kind terms.P. Kyle Stanford & Philip Kitcher - 2000 - Philosophical Studies 97 (1):97-127.
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  • Remembering (Short-Term) Memory: Oscillations of an Epistemic Thing.Uljana Feest - 2011 - Erkenntnis 75 (3):391-411.
    This paper provides an interpretation of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s notions of epistemic things and historical epistemology . I argue that Rheinberger’s approach articulates a unique contribution to current debates about integrated HPS, and I propose some modifications and extensions of this contribution. Drawing on examples from memory research, I show that Rheinberger is right to highlight a particular feature of many objects of empirical research (“epistemic things”)—especially in the contexts of exploratory experimentation—namely our lack of knowledge about them. I argue that (...)
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  • Conceptual engineering and operationalism in psychology.Elina Vessonen - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):10615-10637.
    This paper applies conceptual engineering to deal with four objections that have been levelled against operationalism in psychology. These objections are: operationalism leads to harmful proliferation of concepts, operationalism goes hand-in-hand with untenable antirealism, operationalism leads to arbitrariness in scientific concept formation, and operationalism is incompatible with the usual conception of scientific measurement. Relying on a formulation of three principles of conceptual engineering, I will argue that there is a useful form of operationalism that does not fall prey to these (...)
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  • Predicate meets property.Mark Wilson - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):549-589.
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  • A Generalized Patchwork Approach to Scientific Concepts.Philipp Haueis - 2024 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 75 (3):741-768.
    Polysemous concepts with multiple related meanings pervade natural languages, yet some philosophers argue that we should eliminate them to avoid miscommunication and pointless debates in scientific discourse. This paper defends the legitimacy of polysemous concepts in science against this eliminativist challenge. My approach analyses such concepts as patchworks with multiple scale-dependent, technique-involving, domain-specific and property-targeting uses (patches). I demonstrate the generality of my approach by applying it to "hardness" in materials science, "homology" in evolutionary biology, "gold" in chemistry and "cortical (...)
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  • Scientific Concepts as Forward-Looking: How Taxonomic Structure Facilitates Conceptual Development.Corinne L. Bloch-Mullins - 2020 - Journal of the Philosophy of History 14 (2):205-231.
    This paper examines the interplay between conceptual structure and the evolution of scientific concepts, arguing that concepts are fundamentally ‘forward-looking’ constructs. Drawing on empirical studies of similarity and categorization, I explicate the way in which the conceptual taxonomy highlights the ‘relevant respects’ for similarity judgments involved in categorization. I then propose that this taxonomy provides some of the cognitive underpinnings of the ongoing development of scientific concepts. I use the concept synapse to illustrate my proposal, showing how conceptual taxonomy both (...)
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