Results for 'Theoetical Biology'

947 found
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  1. Life Questioning Itself: By Way of an Introduction.Arran Gare - 2008 - Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 4 (1-2):1-14.
    This is the introductory essay to the special edition of 'Cosmos & History' focusing on the question 'What is Life?'.
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  2.  46
    Biology as a Construct: Universals, Historicity, and the Postmodern Critique.Hippokratis Kiaris - 2024 - Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 67 (3):337-347.
    The integration of postmodern thinking in the sciences, especially in biology, has been subject to harsh criticism. Contrary to Enlightenment ideals of objectivity and neutrality in the scientific method, the postmodern stance holds that truth is relative, not universal, and therefore progress is ambiguous. The effect of postmodern thought has ramifications that extend from the distrust of preexisting scientific conclusions to questions about the impact of progress in society. It also reflects skepticism about the scientific endeavor. Especially when postmodern (...)
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  3. When biological ageing is desirable? A reply to García-Barranquero et al.Joona Räsänen - 2024 - Journal of Medical Ethics 50 (6):425-426.
    García-Barranquero et al explore the desirability of human ageing. They differentiate between chronological and biological views of ageing and contend that the positive aspects of ageing are solely linked to chronological ageing. Consequently, the authors embrace the potential for technological interventions in biological ageing. Contrary to their stance, I argue that there are sometimes desirable aspects associated with biological ageing. Therefore, proposals aiming to eliminate, mitigate or diminish biological ageing are not without problems.
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  4. Biological normativity: a new hope for naturalism?Walter Veit - 2021 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 24 (2):291-301.
    Since Boorse [Philos Sci 44(4):542–573, 1977] published his paper “Health as a theoretical concept” one of the most lively debates within philosophy of medicine has been on the question of whether health and disease are in some sense ‘objective’ and ‘value-free’ or ‘subjective’ and ‘value-laden’. Due to the apparent ‘failure’ of pure naturalist, constructivist, or normativist accounts, much in the recent literature has appealed to more conciliatory approaches or so-called ‘hybrid accounts’ of health and disease. A recent paper by Matthewson (...)
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  5. Are biological traits explained by their 'selected effect' functions?Joshua R. Christie, Carl Brusse, Pierrick Bourrat, Peter Takacs & Paul Edmund Griffiths - forthcoming - Australasian Philosophical Review.
    The selected effects or ‘etiological’ theory of Proper function is a naturalistic and realist account of biological teleology. It is used to analyse normativity in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and elsewhere. The theory has been developed with a simple and intuitive view of natural selection. Traits are selected because of their positive effects on the fitness of the organisms that have them. These ‘selected effects’ are the Proper functions of the traits. Proponents argue that this (...)
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  6. Biological Individuals.Robert A. Wilson & Matthew J. Barker - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...)
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  7. (1 other version)Biological Atomism and Cell Theory.Daniel J. Nicholson - 2010 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (3):202-211.
    Biological atomism postulates that all life is composed of elementary and indivisible vital units. The activity of a living organism is thus conceived as the result of the activities and interactions of its elementary constituents, each of which individually already exhibits all the attributes proper to life. This paper surveys some of the key episodes in the history of biological atomism, and situates cell theory within this tradition. The atomistic foundations of cell theory are subsequently dissected and discussed, together with (...)
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  8. Biological Essentialism, Projectable Human Kinds, and Psychiatric Classification.Jonathan Y. Tsou - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):1155-1165.
    A minimal essentialism (‘intrinsic biological essentialism’) about natural kinds is required to explain the projectability of human science terms. Human classifications that yield robust and ampliative projectable inferences refer to biological kinds. I articulate this argument with reference to an intrinsic essentialist account of HPC kinds. This account implies that human sciences (e.g., medicine, psychiatry) that aim to formulate predictive kind categories should classify biological kinds. Issues concerning psychiatric classification and pluralism are examined.
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  9. Impermanent Biological Phenomena.Sun Kyeong Yu - 2020 - In Buddhism and Culture (Buddhist magazine in Korea). Seoul, South Korea:
    “Impermanent Biological Phenomena” July 2021, Buddhism and Culture (a Korean-language Buddhist magazine sponsored by the Foundation for the Promotion of Korean Buddhism), Korea.
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  10. Spiritual Biology: Reply to Critics - Part One.Bhakti Madhava Puri, Bhakti Niskama Shanta & Bhakti Vijnana Muni - 2012 - The Harmonizer.
    We received several critical comments regarding the "The Science of Spiritual Biology." We reply to those criticisms in order to further clarify some of the important points that were made. It is only to be expected that a strong emotional response may be evoked by the revolution in scientific thinking that the modern paradigm of cognitive biology presents. We have to be prepared to accept that, and maintain the integrity of the scientific approach.
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  11. Assuming in biology the reality of real virtuality (a come back for entelechy?).Armando Aranda-Anzaldo - 2011 - Ludus Vitalis 19 (36):333-342.
    Since Aristotle the central question in biology was the origin of organic form; a question put in the backyard by neo-Darwinism that considers organic form as a side effect of the interactions between genes and their products. On the other hand, the fashionable notion of self-organization also fails to provide a true causal explanation for organic form. For Aristotle form is both a cause and the principle of intelligibility and this coupled to the classical concepts of potentiality and actuality (...)
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  12. From Biological Synapses to "Intelligent" Robots.Birgitta Dresp-Langley - 2022 - Electronics 11:1-28.
    This selective review explores biologically inspired learning as a model for intelligent robot control and sensing technology on the basis of specific examples. Hebbian synaptic learning is discussed as a functionally relevant model for machine learning and intelligence, as explained on the basis of examples from the highly plastic biological neural networks of invertebrates and vertebrates. Its potential for adaptive learning and control without supervision, the generation of functional complexity, and control architectures based on self-organization is brought forward. Learning without (...)
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  13. Biological Emergence: a Key Exemplar of the Open Systems View.George F. R. Ellis - forthcoming - In Michael E. Cuffaro & Stephan Hartmann (eds.), Open Systems: Physics, Metaphysics, and Methodology (2025: Oxford University Press). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    The context for biological emergence is modular hierarchical structures; their existence is what enables functional complexity to arise. Because of the openness of organisms to their environment, complete initial data (position, momentum) of all particles making up their structure is insufficient to determine future outcomes, because unpredictable new matter, energy, and information impacts each organism from the exterior. Consequently, through Darwinian evolution, life has developed processes to handle this issue functionally on short time scales as well on longer developmental timescales. (...)
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  14. Biological constraints as norms in evolution.Mathilde Tahar - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (1):1-21.
    Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179–191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account (...)
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  15. Trends in Theoretical Biology: the 20th Century.Kalevi Kull - 2000 - Aquinas 43 (2):235-250.
    The paper examines the main trends in the search for a theory of general biology throughout the 20th century — the physicalization on one hand, and the semiotization on the other. These two approaches had their predecessors and were formed already in the 19th century biology, as Darwinian and Baerian biology. In theoretical biology, there are co-existing (however, asymmetrical) trends toward specifying solutions and generalizing axioms. The inclusion of the biological organism as a subject into biological (...)
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  16. The moral landscape of biological conservation: Understanding conceptual and normative foundations.Anna Wienhues, Linnea Luuppala & Anna Deplazes-Zemp - 2023 - Biological Conservation 288:110350.
    Biological conservation practices and approaches take many forms. Conservation projects do not only differ in their aims and methods, but also concerning their conceptual and normative background assumptions and their underlying motivations and objectives. We draw on philosophical distinctions from the ethics of conservation to explain variances of different positions on conservation projects along six dimensions: (1) conservation ideals, (2) intervention intuitions, (3) the moral considerability of nonhuman beings, (4) environmental values, (5) views on nature and (6) human roles in (...)
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  17. Universal Biology Does Not Prescribe Planetary Isolationism.Carlos Mariscal - 2017 - Theology and Science 2 (15):150-152.
    Stephen Hawking’s caution against messaging extraterrestrial intelligence is a claim of universal biology and is probably false.
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  18. Understanding Biology in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.Adham El Shazly, Elsa Lawerence, Srijit Seal, Chaitanya Joshi, Matthew Greening, Pietro Lio, Shantung Singh, Andreas Bender & Pietro Sormanni - manuscript
    Modern life sciences research is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to model biological systems, primarily centered around the use of machine learning (ML) models. Although ML is undeniably useful for identifying patterns in large, complex data sets, its widespread application in biological sciences represents a significant deviation from traditional methods of scientific inquiry. As such, the interplay between these models and scientific understanding in biology is a topic with important implications for the future of scientific research, yet (...)
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  19. How Biology Became Social and What It Means for Social Theory.Maurizio Meloni - 2014 - The Sociological Review 62:593-614.
    In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life-sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated data (...)
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  20. How Biological Technology Should Inform the Causal Selection Debate.Janella Baxter - 2019 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11.
    Waters’s (2007) actual difference making and Weber’s (2013, 2017) biological normality approaches to causal selection have received many criticisms, some of which miss their target. Disagreement about whether Waters’s and Weber’s views succeed in providing criteria that uniquely singles out the gene as explanatorily significant in biology has led philosophers to overlook a prior problem. Before one can address whether Waters’s and Weber’s views successfully account for the explanatory significance of genes, one must ask whether either view satisfactorily meets (...)
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  21. Biological-mereological coincidence.Judith K. Crane - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 161 (2):309-325.
    This paper presents and defends an account of the coincidence of biological organisms with mereological sums of their material components. That is, an organism and the sum of its material components are distinct material objects existing in the same place at the same time. Instead of relying on historical or modal differences to show how such coincident entities are distinct, this paper argues that there is a class of physiological properties of biological organisms that their coincident mereological sums do not (...)
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  22. Biologically Unavoidable Sequences.Samuel Alexander - 2013 - Electronic Journal of Combinatorics 20 (1):1-13.
    A biologically unavoidable sequence is an infinite gender sequence which occurs in every gendered, infinite genealogical network satisfying certain tame conditions. We show that every eventually periodic sequence is biologically unavoidable (this generalizes König's Lemma), and we exhibit some biologically avoidable sequences. Finally we give an application of unavoidable sequences to cellular automata.
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  23. Evolutionary biology meets consciousness: essay review of Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul.Heather Browning & Walter Veit - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (1):1-11.
    In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of (...)
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  24. Mechanism, autonomy and biological explanation.Leonardo Bich & William Bechtel - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (6):1-27.
    The new mechanists and the autonomy approach both aim to account for how biological phenomena are explained. One identifies appeals to how components of a mechanism are organized so that their activities produce a phenomenon. The other directs attention towards the whole organism and focuses on how it achieves self-maintenance. This paper discusses challenges each confronts and how each could benefit from collaboration with the other: the new mechanistic framework can gain by taking into account what happens outside individual mechanisms, (...)
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  25. Standard Aberration: Cancer Biology and the Modeling Account of Normal Function.Seth Goldwasser - 2023 - Biology and Philosophy 38 (1):(4) 1-33.
    Cancer biology features the ascription of normal functions to parts of cancers. At least some ascriptions of function in cancer biology track local normality of parts within the global abnormality of the aberration to which those parts belong. That is, cancer biologists identify as functions activities that, in some sense, parts of cancers are supposed to perform, despite cancers themselves having no purpose. The present paper provides a theory to accommodate these normal function ascriptions—I call it the Modeling (...)
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  26. The Multiple Realizability of Biological Individuals.Ellen Clarke - 2013 - Journal of Philosophy 110 (8):413-435.
    Biological theory demands a clear organism concept, but at present biologists cannot agree on one. They know that counting particular units, and not counting others, allows them to generate explanatory and predictive descriptions of evolutionary processes. Yet they lack a unified theory telling them which units to count. In this paper, I offer a novel account of biological individuality, which reconciles conflicting definitions of ‘organism’ by interpreting them as describing alternative realisers of a common functional role, and then defines individual (...)
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  27. (1 other version)Biology and Theology in Aristotle's Theoretical and Practical Sciences.Monte Johnson - 2021 - In Sophia M. Connell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Biology. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 12-29.
    Biology and theology are interdependent theoretical sciences for Aristotle. In prominent discussions of the divine things (the stars and their unmoved movers) Aristotle appeals to the science of living things, and in prominent discussions of the nature of plants and animals Aristotle appeals to the nature of the divine. There is in fact a single continuous series of living things that includes gods, humans, animals, and plants, all of them in a way divine. Aristotle has this continuum of divine (...)
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  28. Universal Biology: Assessing universality from a single example.Carlos Mariscal - 2015 - In The Impact of Discovering Life Beyond Earth. Cambridge, UK: pp. 113-126.
    Is it possible to know anything about life we have not yet encountered? We know of only one example of life: our own. Given this, many scientists are inclined to doubt that any principles of Earth’s biology will generalize to other worlds in which life might exist. Let’s call this the “N = 1 problem.” By comparison, we expect the principles of geometry, mechanics, and chemistry would generalize. Interestingly, each of these has predictable consequences when applied to biology. (...)
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  29. Evolutionary Biology and Classical Teleological Arguments for God's Existence.James Dominic Rooney - 2013 - Heythrop Journal 54 (4):617-630.
    Much has been made of how Darwinian thinking destroyed proofs for the existence of God from ‘design’ in the universe. I challenge that prevailing view by looking closely at classical ‘teleological’ arguments for the existence of God. One version championed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas stems from how chance is not a sufficient kind of ultimate explanation of the universe. In the course of constructing this argument, I argue that the classical understanding of teleology is no less necessary in modern (...)
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  30.  58
    Biological Antecedents Essentialism.Margarida Hermida - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.
    An essentialist claim often made about organisms is that they could not have originated in different gametes. The thesis of gametic essentialism (GE) is usually understood either as a particular case of material origin essentialism, or as genetic essentialism. This paper argues that it should instead be understood in terms of the numerical identity of the gametes. Since gametes are living cells, their identity conditions should be the same as those of other living beings, and therefore involve neither specific material (...)
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  31. Biology's last paradigm shift. The transition from natural theology to Darwinism.Massimo Pigliucci - 2012 - Paradigmi 2012 (3):45-58.
    The theory of evolution, which provides the conceptual framework for all modern research in organismal biology and informs research in molecular bi- ology, has gone through several stages of expansion and refinement. Darwin and Wallace (1858) of course proposed the original idea, centering on the twin concepts of natural selection and common descent. Shortly thereafter, Wallace and August Weismann worked toward the complete elimination of any Lamarckian vestiges from the theory, leaning in particular on Weismann’s (1893) concept of the (...)
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  32. (1 other version)Mathematical biology and the existence of biological laws.Mauro Dorato - 2012 - In D. Dieks, S. Hartmann, T. Uebel & M. Weber (eds.), Probabilities, Laws and Structure. Springer.
    An influential position in the philosophy of biology claims that there are no biological laws, since any apparently biological generalization is either too accidental, fact-like or contingent to be named a law, or is simply reducible to physical laws that regulate electrical and chemical interactions taking place between merely physical systems. In the following I will stress a neglected aspect of the debate that emerges directly from the growing importance of mathematical models of biological phenomena. My main aim is (...)
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  33. Synthetic Biology and Biofuels.Catherine Kendig - 2012 - In Paul B. Thompson & David M. Kaplan (eds.), Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. New York: Springer Verlag.
    Synthetic biology is a field of research that concentrates on the design, construction, and modification of new biomolecular parts and metabolic pathways using engineering techniques and computational models. By employing knowledge of operational pathways from engineering and mathematics such as circuits, oscillators, and digital logic gates, it uses these to understand, model, rewire, and reprogram biological networks and modules. Standard biological parts with known functions are catalogued in a number of registries (e.g. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Registry of Standard (...)
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  34. The evolution of the biological sciences.Nathalie Gontier - 2024 - In Nathalie Gontier, Andy Lock & Chris Sinha (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution. OUP. pp. 3-25.
    This chapter introduces the main research schools and paradigms along which the field of evolutionary biology has been developing. Evolutionary thinking was originally founded upon the Neo-Darwinian paradigm that combines the teachings of traditional Darwinism with those of the Modern Synthesis. The Neo-Darwinian paradigm has since further diversified into the Micro-, Meso-, and Macroevolutionary schools, and it has also started to integrate the school of Ecology. Together, these schools establish the paradigm called Ecological Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Eco-Evo-Devo). A (...)
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  35. A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism.Christopher J. Austin - 2017 - In William M. R. Simpson, Robert Charles Koons & Nicholas Teh (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 185-210.
    Although contemporary metaphysics has recently undergone a neo-Aristotelian revival wherein dispositions, or capacities are now commonplace in empirically grounded ontologies, being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, a central Aristotelian concept has yet to be given serious attention – the doctrine of hylomorphism. The reason for this is clear: while the Aristotelian ontological distinction between actuality and potentiality has proven to be a fruitful conceptual framework with which to model the operation of the natural world, the distinction between (...)
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  36. Measurement in biology is methodized by theory.Maël Montévil - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (3):35.
    We characterize access to empirical objects in biology from a theoretical perspective. Unlike objects in current physical theories, biological objects are the result of a history and their variations continue to generate a history. This property is the starting point of our concept of measurement. We argue that biological measurement is relative to a natural history which is shared by the different objects subjected to the measurement and is more or less constrained by biologists. We call symmetrization the theoretical (...)
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  37. Biological Explanations of Social Inequalities.Dan Lowe - 2022 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (4):694-719.
    Inequalities of social goods between gender, racial, or other groups call out for explanation. Such inequalities might be explained by socialization and discrimination. But historically some have attributed these inequalities to biological differences between social groups. Such explanations are highly controversial: on the one hand, they have a very troubling racist and sexist history, but on the other hand, they are empirical claims, and so it seems inappropriate to rule them out a priori. I propose that the appropriate epistemic attitude (...)
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  38. Can synthetic biology shed light on the origin of life?Christophe Malaterre - 2009 - Biological Theory 4 (4):357-367.
    It is a most commonly accepted hypothesis that life originated from inanimate matter, somehow being a synthetic product of organic aggregates, and as such, a result of some sort of prebiotic synthetic biology. In the past decades, the newly formed scientific discipline of synthetic biology has set ambitious goals by pursuing the complete design and production of genetic circuits, entire genomes or even whole organisms. In this paper, I argue that synthetic biology might also shed some novel (...)
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  39. Synthetic Biology and Synthetic Knowledge.Christophe Malaterre - 2013 - Biological Theory (8):346–356.
    Probably the most distinctive feature of synthetic biology is its being “synthetic” in some sense or another. For some, synthesis plays a unique role in the production of knowledge that is most distinct from that played by analysis: it is claimed to deliver knowledge that would otherwise not be attained. In this contribution, my aim is to explore how synthetic biology delivers knowledge via synthesis, and to assess the extent to which this knowledge is distinctly synthetic. On the (...)
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  40. From physics to biology by extending criticality and symmetry breakings.Giuseppe Longo & Maël Montévil - 2011 - Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 106:340 - 347.
    Symmetries play a major role in physics, in particular since the work by E. Noether and H. Weyl in the first half of last century. Herein, we briefly review their role by recalling how symmetry changes allow to conceptually move from classical to relativistic and quantum physics. We then introduce our ongoing theoretical analysis in biology and show that symmetries play a radically different role in this discipline, when compared to those in current physics. By this comparison, we stress (...)
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  41. Absolute Biological Needs.Stephen McLeod - 2014 - Bioethics 28 (6):293-301.
    Absolute needs (as against instrumental needs) are independent of the ends, goals and purposes of personal agents. Against the view that the only needs are instrumental needs, David Wiggins and Garrett Thomson have defended absolute needs on the grounds that the verb ‘need’ has instrumental and absolute senses. While remaining neutral about it, this article does not adopt that approach. Instead, it suggests that there are absolute biological needs. The absolute nature of these needs is defended by appeal to: their (...)
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  42. Dreaming of a Universal Biology: Synthetic Biology and the Origins of Life.Massimiliano Simons - 2021 - Hyle: International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry 27:91-116.
    Synthetic biology aims to synthesize novel biological systems or redesign existing ones. The field has raised numerous philosophical questions, but most especially what is novel to this field. In this article I argue for a novel take, since the dominant ways to understand synthetic biology’s specificity each face problems. Inspired by the examination of the work of a number of chemists, I argue that synthetic biology differentiates itself by a new regime of articulation, i.e. a new way (...)
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  43. Complexity Biology-based Information Structures can explain Subjectivity, Objective Reduction of Wave Packets, and Non-Computability.Alex Hankey - 2014 - Cosmos and History 10 (1):237-250.
    Background: how mind functions is subject to continuing scientific discussion. A simplistic approach says that, since no convincing way has been found to model subjective experience, mind cannot exist. A second holds that, since mind cannot be described by classical physics, it must be described by quantum physics. Another perspective concerns mind's hypothesized ability to interact with the world of quanta: it should be responsible for reduction of quantum wave packets; physics producing 'Objective Reduction' is postulated to form the basis (...)
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  44. From Biological to Synthetic Neurorobotics Approaches to Understanding the Structure Essential to Consciousness, Part 1.Jeffrey White & Jun Tani - 2016 - APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 1 (16):13-23.
    Direct neurological and especially imaging-driven investigations into the structures essential to naturally occurring cognitive systems in their development and operation have motivated broadening interest in the potential for artificial consciousness modeled on these systems. This first paper in a series of three begins with a brief review of Boltuc’s (2009) “brain-based” thesis on the prospect of artificial consciousness, focusing on his formulation of h-consciousness. We then explore some of the implications of brain research on the structure of consciousness, finding limitations (...)
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  45. Impressionable Biologies: From the Archaeology of Plasticity to the Sociology of Epigenetics.Maurizio Meloni - 2019 - New York, USA: Routledge.
    Chapter 1st of the book. This chapter explores the fundamental ambiguity of the concept of plasticity – between openness and determination, change and stabilization of forms. This pluralism of meanings is used to unpack different instantiations of corporeal plasticity across various epochs, starting from ancient and early modern medicine, particularly humouralism. A genealogical approach displaces the notion that plasticity is a unitary phenomenon, coming in the abstract, and illuminates the unequal distribution of different forms of plasticities across social, gender, and (...)
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  46. From Biological Functions to Natural Goodness.Parisa Moosavi - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19.
    Neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism aims to place moral virtue in the natural world by showing that moral goodness is an instance of natural goodness—a kind of goodness supposedly also found in the biological realm of plants and non-human animals. One of the central issues facing neo-Aristotelian naturalists concerns their commitment to a kind of function ascription based on the concept of the flourishing of an organism that seems to have no place in modern biology. In this paper, I offer a (...)
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  47. Biology and Theology in Malebranche's Theory of Organic Generation.Karen Detlefsen - 2014 - In Ohad Nachtomy & Justin E. H. Smith (eds.), The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy. New York, NY: Oup Usa. pp. 137-156.
    This paper has two parts: In the first part, I give a general survey of the various reasons 17th and 18th century life scientists and metaphysicians endorsed the theory of pre-existence according to which God created all living beings at the creation of the universe, and no living beings are ever naturally generated anew. These reasons generally fall into three categories. The first category is theological. For example, many had the desire to account for how all humans are stained by (...)
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  48. Biology at Home: The Six Attributes of Home-based Biology Experiments (HBEs) for Remote Authentic Learning.Dave Arthur Robledo - 2021 - Psychology and Education 58 (4):4319-43123.
    Home-based biology experiments are activities that utilize household materials that have been adapted for the remote learning environment and are aligned to standard learning competencies. Recognizingthe households and kitchens as extensions of laboratories, HBEs can be used to deliver authentic learning experiences for the students at home. Furthermore, there are several attributes of HBEs that should be considered before the implementation of the activity. These attributes are, it is ethical and safe to perform, it produces tangible products, encourages students (...)
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  49. Code biology and the problem of emergence.Arran Gare - 2021 - Biosystems 208.
    It should now be recognized that codes are central to life and to understanding its more complex forms, including human culture. Recognizing the ‘conventional’ nature of codes provides solid grounds for rejecting efforts to reduce life to biochemistry and justifies according a place to semantics in life. The question I want to consider is whether this is enough. Focussing on Eigen’s paradox of how a complex code could originate, I will argue that along with Barbieri’s efforts to account for the (...)
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  50. Biological Autonomy.Attila Grandpierre & Menas Kafatos - 2012 - Philosophy Study 2 (9):631-649.
    We argue that genuine biological autonomy, or described at human level as free will, requires taking into account quantum vacuum processes in the context of biological teleology. One faces at least three basic problems of genuine biological autonomy: (1) if biological autonomy is not physical, where does it come from? (2) Is there a room for biological causes? And (3) how to obtain a workable model of biological teleology? It is shown here that the solution of all these three problems (...)
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