Results for 'biology'

970 found
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  1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4. 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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  5. 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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  6. Holistic biology: Back on stage? Comments on post-genomics in historical perspective.Alfred Gierer - 2002 - Philosophia Naturalis 39 (1):25-44.
    A strong motivation for the human genome project was to relate biological features to the structure and function of small sets of genes, and ideally to individual genes. However, it is now increasingly realized that many problems require a "systems" approach emphasizing the interplay of large numbers of genes, and the involvement of complex networks of gene regulation. This implies a new emphasis on integrative, systems theoretical approaches. It may be called 'holistic' if the term is used without irrational overtones, (...)
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  7.  44
    Computational Biology and Chemistry with AI and ML.Palakurti Naga Ramesh - 2024 - International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences and Technology 1 (17):29-39.
    Deep learning, a transformative force in computational biology, has reshaped biological data analysis and interpretation terrain. This review delves into the multifaceted role of deep knowledge in this field, exploring its historical roots, inherent advantages, and persistent challenges. It investigates explicitly its application in two pivotal domains: DNA sequence classification, where it has been used to identify disease-causing mutations, and protein structure prediction from sequence data, where it has enabled the accurate determination of protein tertiary structures. Moreover, it offers (...)
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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10. 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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  11.  38
    Beyond Biological Limits: Autopoiesis and Emergence in the Systemic Continuum Paradigm.Ignacio Lucas de León - manuscript
    This fourth preprint in the Systemic Continuum Paradigm (PSC) series extends autopoiesis—traditionally confined to living organisms—across non-biological substrates such as advanced neural networks, robotics, and augmented intelligence. Building on the prior three preprints, we argue that self-maintenance and operational closure can arise whenever synergy surpasses a critical threshold, irrespective of substrate. Key contributions include: 1. Revisiting Autopoiesis Beyond Biology: Grounding Maturana & Varela’s concept of self-production in the PSC framework to show how informational “metabolism” can maintain system identity without (...)
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  12. 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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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15. Synthetic Biology and Biofuels.Catherine Kendig - 2012 - In Paul B. Thompson & David M. Kaplan, 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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  16. 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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  17. 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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  18. Biology in the Timaeus’ Account of Nous and Cognitive Life.Douglas R. Campbell - 2024 - In Melina G. Mouzala, Cognition in Ancient Greek Philosophy and its Reception: Intedisciplinary Approaches. Academia Verlag/Nomos. pp. 147-174.
    I develop an account of the role that biology plays in the Timaeus’ view of nous and other aspects of cognitive life. I begin by outlining the biology of human cognition. I then argue that these biological views shine an important light on different aspects of the soul. I then argue that the human body is particularly friendly to nous, paying special attention to the heart and the liver. I next consider the ways that the body fails to (...)
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  19. Mathematical biology and the existence of biological laws.Mauro Dorato - 2012 - In D. Dieks, S. Hartmann, T. Uebel & M. Weber, 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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  20. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  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. Kant’s Theory of Biology and the Argument from Design.Ina Goy - 2014 - In Eric Watkins & Ina Goy, Kant's Theory of Biology. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 203-220.
    In this paper, I treat the question of whether and in what regard Kant's theory of biology contains a version of the argument from design, which is the question of whether Kant considers the purposive order of organized nature as a physicotheological proof for the existence of God, and in turn, the existence of God as the supersensible ground for the teleological order of organized nature. As an introduction to the topic, I name traditional examples of the argument from (...)
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  25. A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism.Christopher J. Austin - 2017 - In William M. R. Simpson, Robert Charles Koons & Nicholas Teh, 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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  26. The Practical Value of Biological Information for Research.Beckett Sterner - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (2):175-194,.
    Many philosophers are skeptical about the scientific value of the concept of biological information. However, several have recently proposed a more positive view of ascribing information as an exercise in scientific modeling. I argue for an alternative role: guiding empirical data collection for the sake of theorizing about the evolution of semantics. I clarify and expand on Bergstrom and Rosvall’s suggestion of taking a “diagnostic” approach that defines biological information operationally as a procedure for collecting empirical cases. The more recent (...)
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  27. 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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  28. 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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  29. Biological Emergence: a Key Exemplar of the Open Systems View.George F. R. Ellis - forthcoming - In Michael E. Cuffaro & Stephan Hartmann, 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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  30. 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. 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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  32. 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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  33. 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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  34. 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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  35. Biological Plausibility of the Pace of Creation Written in the Genesis.Massimo Cocchi - 2012 - Scientific GOD Journal.
    The purpose of this paper is to discuss the biological plausibility of the pace of creation written in the genesis. A fascinating hypothesis is made on the central role of serotonin as a guide, as the director of the phenomena that enable the best use of light by the plant world, the growth, the regulation of mood in the complex molecular interactions that characterize the varying levels of consciousness. This hypothesis provides biological interpretations of the c.
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  36. 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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  37. What are biological sexes?Paul E. Griffiths - manuscript
    Biological sexes (male, female, hermaphrodite) are defined by different gametic strategies for reproduction. Sexes are regions of phenotypic space which implement those gametic reproductive strategies. Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes - one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or (...)
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  38. Biological Agents of Bioremediation: A Concise Review.Karabi Biswas - 2015 - Frontiers in Environmental Microbiology 1 (3):39-43.
    Due to intensive agriculture, rapid industrialization and anthropogenic activities have caused environmental pollution, land degradation and increased pressure on the natural resources and contributing to their adulteration. Bioremediation is the use of biological organisms to destroy, or reduce the hazardous wastes on a contaminated site. Bioremediation is the most potent management tool to control the environmental pollution and recover contaminated soil. Use of biological materials, coupled to other advanced processes is one of the most promising and inexpensive approaches for removing (...)
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  39. Broadening the problem agenda of biological individuality: individual differences, uniqueness and temporality.Rose Trappes & Marie I. Kaiser - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (2):1-28.
    Biological individuality is a notoriously thorny topic for biologists and philosophers of biology. In this paper we argue that biological individuality presents multiple, interconnected questions for biologists and philosophers that together form a problem agenda. Using a case study of an interdisciplinary research group in ecology, behavioral and evolutionary biology, we claim that a debate on biological individuality that seeks to account for diverse practices in the biological sciences should be broadened to include and give prominence to questions (...)
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  40. The Biological Framework for a Mathematical Universe.Ronald Williams - unknown - Dissertation, Temple University
    The mathematical universe hypothesis is a theory that the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics, specifically a mathematical structure. Our research provides evidence that the mathematical structure of the universe is biological in nature and all systems, processes, and objects within the universe function in harmony with biological patterns. Living organisms are the result of the universe’s biological pattern and are embedded within their physiology the patterns of this biological universe. Therefore physiological patterns in living (...)
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  41. 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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  42. More Plant Biology in Philosophy Education.Özlem Yilmaz - 2021 - Dublin, Ireland: Graphikon Teo.
    This is an article in Thomas J.J. McCloughlin (Ed.) The Nature of Science in Biology: A Resource for Educators. Graphikon Teo, Dublin. -/- Abstract: Philosophers usually tend to think of animals when they think about life, plants often only appear in their works as on the margins, in the background; they are rarely in the centre. However, plant life involves unique processes, including remarkable modes of interaction between plants and their environments. Needless to say, plants are vital parts of (...)
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  43. Moralizing biology.Maurizio Meloni - 2013 - History of the Human Sciences 26 (3):82-106.
    In recent years, a proliferation of books about empathy, cooperation and pro-social behaviours (Brooks, 2011a) has significantly influenced the discourse of the life-sciences and reversed consolidated views of nature as a place only for competition and aggression. In this article I describe the recent contribution of three disciplines – moral psychology (Jonathan Haidt), primatology (Frans de Waal) and the neuroscience of morality – to the present transformation of biology and evolution into direct sources of moral phenomena, a process here (...)
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  44. 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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  45. Biological Parenthood: Gestational, Not Genetic.Anca Gheaus - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2):225-240.
    Common sense morality and legislations around the world ascribe normative relevance to biological connections between parents and children. Procreators who meet a modest standard of parental competence are believed to have a right to rear the children they brought into the world. I explore various attempts to justify this belief and find most of these attempts lacking. I distinguish between two kinds of biological connections between parents and children: the genetic link and the gestational link. I argue that the second (...)
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  46. 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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  47. Integrative pluralism for biological function.Beckett Sterner & Samuel Cusimano - 2019 - Biology and Philosophy 34 (6):1-21.
    We introduce a new type of pluralism about biological function that, in contrast to existing, demonstrates a practical integration among the term’s different meanings. In particular, we show how to generalize Sandra Mitchell’s notion of integrative pluralism to circumstances where multiple epistemic tools of the same type are jointly necessary to solve scientific problems. We argue that the multiple definitions of biological function operate jointly in this way based on how biologists explain the evolution of protein function. To clarify how (...)
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  48. Evolutionary biology: puzzle solving or paradigm shifting?Massimo Pigliucci - 2006 - Quarterly Review of Biology 81 (4):377-379.
    How does evolutionary biology fit with Thomas Kuhn's famous distinction between puzzle solving and paradigm shifts in science?
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  49. Persons Versus Brains: Biological Intelligence in Human Organisms.E. Steinhart - 2001 - Biology and Philosophy 16 (1):3-27.
    I go deep into the biology of the human organism to argue that the psychological features and functions of persons are realized by cellular and molecular parallel distributed processing networks dispersed throughout the whole body. Persons supervene on the computational processes of nervous, endocrine, immune, and genetic networks. Persons do not go with brains.
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  50. The Return of the Organism as a Fundamental Explanatory Concept in Biology.Daniel J. Nicholson - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (5):347-359.
    Although it may seem like a truism to assert that biology is the science that studies organisms, during the second half of the twentieth century the organism category disappeared from biological theory. Over the past decade, however, biology has begun to witness the return of the organism as a fundamental explanatory concept. There are three major causes: (a) the realization that the Modern Synthesis does not provide a fully satisfactory understanding of evolution; (b) the growing awareness of the (...)
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