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2490Science Gone Astray: Evolution and Rape (review)Michigan Law Review 99 (6): 1536-1559. 2001.This is a critique of "A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion" (Thornhill & Palmer, 2000). Lloyd argues that they have failed to do "excellent science" as required to defend themselves against criticism. As an example, Lloyd contends that they make conclusions which depend on rape being a single trait, while failing to prorivde any basis for such an assumption.
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1420Objectivity and the double standard for feminist epistemologiesSynthese 104 (3). 1995.The emphasis on the limitations of objectivity, in specific guises and networks, has been a continuing theme of contemporary analytic philosophy for the past few decades. The popular sport of baiting feminist philosophers — into pointing to what's left out of objective knowledge, or into describing what methods, exactly, they would offer to replace the powerful objective methods grounding scientific knowledge — embodies a blatant double standard which has the effect of constantly putting feminis…Read more
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500Groups on groups: Some dynamics and possible resolution of the units of selection debates in evolutionary biology (review)Biology and Philosophy 15 (3): 389-401. 2000.David Hull's analysis of conceptual change in science, as presentedin his book, Science as a Process (1988), provides a useful framework for understanding one of the scientific controversies in which he actively and constructively intervened, the units of selectiondebates in evolutionary biology. What follows is a brief overview ofthose debates and some reflections on them.
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668The anachronistic anarchistPhilosophical Studies 81 (2-3). 1996.A reading of Feyerabend in Against Method, and a comparison of C.S. Peirce.
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591Response to Puts and Dawood's 'The Evolution of Female Orgasm: Adaptation or Byproduct?'--Been ThereTwin Studies and Human Genetics 9 (4). 2006.
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611Why the Gene will not returnPhilosophy of Science 72 (2): 287-310. 2005.I argue that four of the fundamental claims of those calling themselves `genic pluralists'Philip Kitcher, Kim Sterelny, and Ken Watersare defective. First, they claim that once genic selectionism is recognized, the units of selection problems will be dissolved. Second, Sterelny and Kitcher claim that there are no targets of selection. Third, Sterelny, Kitcher, and Waters claim that they have a concept of genic causation that allows them to give independent genic causal accounts of all selection …Read more
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927Confirmation and Robustness of Climate ModelsPhilosophy of Science 77 (5). 2010.Recent philosophical attention to climate models has highlighted their weaknesses and uncertainties. Here I address the ways that models gain support through observational data. I review examples of model fit, variety of evidence, and independent support for aspects of the models, contrasting my analysis with that of other philosophers. I also investigate model robustness, which often emerges when comparing climate models simulating the same time period or set of conditions. Starting from Michael…Read more
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129The role of 'complex' empiricism in the debates about satellite data and climate modelsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (2): 390-401. 2012.climate scientists have been engaged in a decades-long debate over the standing of satellite measurements of the temperature trends of the atmosphere above the surface of the earth. This is especially significant because skeptics of global warming and the greenhouse effect have utilized this debate to spread doubt about global climate models used to predict future states of climate. I use this case from an under-studied science to illustrate two distinct philosophical approaches to the relation …Read more
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1520Empiricism, Objectivity, and ExplanationMidwest Studies in Philosophy 18 (1): 121-131. 1993.We sley Salmon, in his influential and detailed book, Four Decades of Scientific Explanation, argues that the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation, “construed as the claim that scientific explanation can be explicated entirely in pragmatic terms” (1989, 185) is inadequate. The specific inadequacy ascribed to a pragmatic account is that objective relevance relations cannot be incorporated into such an account. Salmon relies on the arguments given in Kitcher and Salmon (1987) to ground thi…Read more
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8Selection Models and the Darwinian Theory of Natural SelectionPhilosophie Et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie 3 108-112. 1988.
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1641Pre-Theoretical Assumptions in Evolutionary Explanations of female sexualityPhilosophical Studies 69 (2-3): 139-153. 1993.My contribution to this Symposium focuses on the links between sexuality and reproduction from the evolutionary point of view.' The relation between women's sexuality and reproduction is particularly importantb ecause of a vital intersectionb etweenp olitics and biology feminists have noticed, for more than a century, that women's identity is often defined in terms of her reproductive capacity. More recently, in the second wave of the feminist movement in the United States, debates about women's…Read more
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81I—Elisabeth A. Lloyd: Varieties of Support and Confirmation of Climate ModelsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 83 (1): 213-232. 2009.
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54Evaluation of Evidence in Group Selection DebatesPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986. 1986.I address the controversy in evolutionary biology concerning which levels of biological entity (units) can and do undergo natural selection. I refine a definition of the unit of selection, first presented by William Wimsatt, that is grounded in the structure of natural selection models. I examine Elliott Sober's objection to this structural definition, the "homogeneous populations" problem; I find that neither the proposed definition nor Sober's own causal account can solve the problem. Sober, i…Read more
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889A semantic approach to the structure of population geneticsPhilosophy of Science 51 (2): 242-264. 1984.A precise formulation of the structure of modern evolutionary theory has proved elusive. In this paper, I introduce and develop a formal approach to the structure of population genetics, evolutionary theory's most developed sub-theory. Under the semantic approach, used as a framework in this paper, presenting a theory consists in presenting a related family of models. I offer general guidelines and examples for the classification of population genetics models; the defining features of the models…Read more
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776Model robustness as a confirmatory virtue: The case of climate scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49 58-68. 2015.I propose a distinct type of robustness, which I suggest can support a confirmatory role in scientific reasoning, contrary to the usual philosophical claims. In model robustness, repeated production of the empirically successful model prediction or retrodiction against a background of independentlysupported and varying model constructions, within a group of models containing a shared causal factor, may suggest how confident we can be in the causal factor and predictions/retrodictions, especially…Read more
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54The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary TheoryPrinceton University Press. 1994.Traditionally a scientific theory is viewed as based on universal laws of nature that serve as axioms for logical deduction. In analyzing the logical structure of evolutionary biology, Elisabeth Lloyd argues that the semantic account is more appropriate and powerful. This book will be of interest to biologists and philosophers alike.
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484Constitutional Failures of Meritocracy and Their ConsequencesHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 3 (1): 142-144. 2013.Many of the commentators—let’s ignore their sex for the moment—suggested including women in the Feyerabend conference. Then the question was raised, “but are they of the right quality, status, rank?” That is, do they bring down the average quality of the conference in virtue of their being of inferior status, or, in Vincenzo Politi’s words, not “someone whose work is both relevant to the topic of the conference and also as widely recognized as the work of the invited speakers” (HOPOS-L archive, …Read more
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58The Semantic Approach and Its Application to Evolutionary TheoryPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988. 1988.In this talk I do three things. First, I review what I take to be fruitful applications of the semantic view of theory structure to evolutionary theory. Second, I list and correct three common misunderstandings about the semantic view. Third, I evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of Horan's paper in this symposium. Specifically, I argue that the criticisms leveled against the semantic view by Horan are inappropriate because they incorporate some basic misconceptions about the semantic view its…Read more
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400Individuality and adaptation across levels of selection: How shall we name and generalize the unit of Darwinism?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96 (21): 11904-09. 1999.Two major clarifications have greatly abetted the understanding and fruitful expansion of the theory of natural selection in recent years: the acknowledgment that interactors, not replicators, constitute the causal unit of selection; and the recognition that interactors are Darwinian individuals, and that such individuals exist with potency at several levels of organization (genes, organisms, demes, and species in particular), thus engendering a rich hierarchical theory of selection in contrast …Read more
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21Science, Politics, and EvolutionCambridge University Press. 2008.This book brings together important essays by one of the leading philosophers of science at work today. Elisabeth A. Lloyd examines several of the central topics in philosophy of biology, including the structure of evolutionary theory, units of selection, and evolutionary psychology, as well as the Science Wars, feminism and science, and sexuality and objectivity. Lloyd challenges the current evolutionary accounts of the female orgasm and analyses them for bias. She also offers an innovative ana…Read more
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67Rx: Distinguish group selection from group adaptationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4): 628-629. 1994.I admire Wilson & Sober's (W & S's) aim, to alert social scientists that group selection has risen from the ashqs, and to explicate its relevance to the behavioral sciences. Group selection has beenwidely misunderstood; furthermore, both authors have been instrumental in illuminating conceptual problems surrounding higher-level selection. Still, I find that this target article muddies the waters, primarily through its shifting and confused definition of a "vehicle" of selection. The fundamental …Read more
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Indiana University, BloomingtonDepartment of History and Philosophy of Science and MedicineDistinguished Professor
Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |