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18Fact, Fiction, and FitnessJournal of Philosophy 81 (7): 372-383. 1984.Alexander Rosenberg began his recent article on the concept of fitness with the remark that “debates about the cognitive status of the Darwinian theory of natural selection should have ended long ago.” I agree that this obsession need to be overcome. But Rosenberg repeats some of the old mistakes and invents epicycles on others. In this comment I will not be able to circumscribe fully the range of the topics that an adequate treatment of this cluster of problems demands. A few critical comments …Read more
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17Gradualism, natural selection, and the randomness of mutation–fisher, Kimura, and Orr, connecting the dotsBiology and Philosophy 38 (2): 1-22. 2023.Evolutionary gradualism, the randomness of mutations, and the hypothesis that natural selection exerts a pervasive and substantial influence on evolutionary outcomes are pair-wise logically independent. Can the claims about selection and mutation be used to formulate an argument for gradualism? In his Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, R.A. Fisher made an important start at this project in his famous “geometric argument” by showing that a random mutation that has a smaller effect on two or m…Read more
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15Review of E xplanation and Causation (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (2). 1987.
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1311 Metaphysical and epistemological issues in modern Darwinian theoryIn J. Hodges & Gregory Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Cambridge University Press. pp. 267. 2003.
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13Core questions in philosophyRoutledge. 2020.Writing in an engaging lecture-style format, Elliott Sober shows students how philosophy is best used to evaluate many different kinds of arguments and to construct sound theories. Well-known arguments and problems from the history of philosophy are discussed and analyzed, not as a means to honor the dead or merely to discuss what various philosophers have thought, but to engage with, criticize, and even improve ideas from the past. In addition--because philosophy cannot function apart from its …Read more
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13At the Memorial Gathering for Ellery EellsIn Ellery Eells & James H. Fetzer (eds.), The Place of Probability in Science, Springer. pp. 284. 2010.
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13Book reviews : Sociobiology and the preemption of social science. By Alexander Rosenberg. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins university press, 1980; oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. XI + 227. $20.00 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (1): 89-93. 1985.
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12Methods of ScienceIn Graham Oppy (ed.), A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy, Wiley. 2019.Do the methods of science lead to atheism? This is different from asking whether the results of science (e.g., well‐confirmed theories in evolutionary biology or cosmology) have that consequence. In this chapter, I consider several philosophical theories about scientific reasoning and trace out their implications for atheism, theism, and agnosticism. These theories include different versions of empiricism, logical positivism, inference to the best explanation, Bayesianism, hypothetico‐deductivis…Read more
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11Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards? Philosophical Essays on Darwin’s TheoryPrometheus Books. 2010.Is it accurate to label Darwin's theory "the theory of evolution by natural selection," given that the concept of common ancestry is at least as central to Darwin's theory? Did Darwin reject the idea that group selection causes characteristics to evolve that are good for the group though bad for the individual? How does Darwin's discussion of God in The Origin of Species square with the common view that he is the champion of methodological naturalism? These are just some of the intriguing questi…Read more
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11Group selection and “the pious gene”Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (4): 782-787. 1996.The six commentaries raise five issues about multi-level selection theory that we attempt to address: (1) replicators without vehicles, (2) group selection and movement between groups, (3) absolute versus relative fitness, (4) group-level psychological adaptions, and (5) multi-level selection as a predictive theory.
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10Philosophy of BiologyRoutledge. 1993.Perhaps because of it implications for our understanding of human nature, recent philosophy of biology has seen what might be the most dramatic work in the philosophies of the ?special? sciences. This drama has centered on evolutionary theory, and in the second edition of this textbook, Elliott Sober introduces the reader to the most important issues of these developments. With a rare combination of technical sophistication and clarity of expression, Sober engages both the higher level of theory…Read more
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10Problems for environmentalismIn Mohan Matthen & Christopher Stephens (eds.), Philosophy of Biology, Elsevier. pp. 144--365. 2007.
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10Comments on Rosenberg's ReviewBehavior and Philosophy 14 (1): 89. 1986.Long ago, my undergraduate advisor counseled me against “replying to reviews.” Alexander Rosenberg cannot be blamed for tempting me to disregard this advice, since his review of my book, The Nature of Selection, is a generous one. However, the editors of this journal invited me to comment and this proved to be more temptation than I could withstand. In what follows, I take up some of the main themes that Rosenberg discusses and try to clarify those issues that divide us.
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10Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 3rd ed. (edited book)MIT Press. 2006.These essays by leading scientists and philosophers address conceptual issues that arise in the theory and practice of evolutionary biology. The third edition of this widely used anthology has been substantially revised and updated. Four new sections have been added: on women in the evolutionary process, evolutionary psychology, laws in evolutionary theory, and race as social construction or biological reality. Other sections treat fitness, units of selection, adaptationism, reductionism, essent…Read more
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9Adaptationism and Optimality (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2001.The debate over the relative importance of natural selection as compared to other forces affecting the evolution of organisms is a long-standing and central controversy in evolutionary biology. The theory of adaptationism argues that natural selection contains sufficient explanatory power in itself to account for all evolution. However, there are differing views about the efficiency of the adaptation model of explanation. If the adaptationism theory is applied, are energy and resources being use…Read more
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7Intelligent design is untestable: What about natural selection?In Antonio Zilhao (ed.), Evolution, Rationality, and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century, Routledge. pp. 17-39. 2005.The argument from design is best understood as a likelihood inference. Its Achilles heel is our lack of knowledge concerning the aims and abilities that the putative designer would have; in consequence, it is impossible to determine whether the observations are more probable under the design hypothesis than they are under the hypothesis of chance. Hypotheses about the role played by natural selection in the history of life also can be evaluated within a likelihood framework, and here too there a…Read more
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7SimplicityIn W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.Scientists often appeal to a criterion of simplicity as a consideration that helps them decide which hypotheses are most plausible. Some such principle seems to be essential; the data, all by themselves, apparently cannot single out as best one hypothesis among the set of competitors.
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7Does "Fitness" Fit the Facts?Journal of Philosophy 84 (4): 220-223. 1987.My critical remarks' on Alexander Rosenberg’s article on fitness have elicited a rejoinder from Mary Williams and Rosenberg himself. They charge that my criticisms are a “tissue of misunderstandings” (738); since they misunderstand my own position in fundamental ways, it may help to try to clarify the points that divide us. In the interest of brevity, I will ignore technical issues concerning the internal correctness of Williams’s axiomatization and will focus on questions of broader philosophic…Read more
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6Philosophy of BiologyIn Nicholas Bunnin & E. P. Tsui‐James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Blackwell. 2002.This chapter contains sections titled: The Subject Matter of Biology The Structure of Evolutionary Theory The Philosophical Significance of Evolutionary Theory.
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6Book Reviews : Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science. BY ALEXANDER ROSENBERG. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. Pp. xi + 227. $20.00 (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (1): 89-93. 1985.
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3Unto OthersIn Michael Ruse (ed.), Philosophy After Darwin: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Princeton University Press. pp. 433-451. 2009.
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2Psychological EgoismIn Hugh LaFollette & Ingmar Persson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, Blackwell. pp. 148-168. 2013.Psychological egoism is a theory about motivation. It claims that all of our ultimate desires are self‐directed. Whenever we want others to do well (or ill), we have these other‐directed desires only instrumentally; we care about others only because we think that the welfare of others will have ramifications for our own welfare. As stated, egoism is a descriptive, not a normative, claim. It aims to characterize what motivates human beings in fact; the theory does not say whether it is good or ba…Read more
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1Psychological EgoismIn Hugh LaFollette & Ingmar Persson (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, 2nd edition, Wiley Blackwell. pp. 148-168. 2013.
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1Three differences between deliberation and evolutionIn Peter Danielson (ed.), Modeling rationality, morality, and evolution, Oxford University Press. 1998.In this paper, I'll explore three contexts in which the heuristic of personification yields the wrong answer. They all come from game theoretic discussion of altruism and the Prisoner's Dilemma. Whether it is applied to evolution or to rational deliberation, game theory models situations that involve frequency dependence. In the evolutionary case, how fit a trait is, and whether it is more or less fit than the alternatives, depends on the composition of the population (Maynard Smith 1982). In th…Read more
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1Force and disposition in evolutionary theoryIn Christopher Hookway (ed.), Minds, Machines, and Evolution: Philosophical Studies, Cambridge University Press. 1984.
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1Kindness and Cruelty in EvolutionIn Richard J. Davidson & Anne Harrington (eds.), Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature, Oxford University Press. pp. 46-65. 2002.Human nature is intriguing in such that it can express both negative and positive emotions, as in kindness and cruelty. The question is whether both are a natural part of our nature as human beings, or is one produced to serve as the alternate of the other. Another question that is brought to the table in this chapter is how does one determine what is natural and what is not, being its true definition? The chapter attempts to answer these questions based on evolution theory, whether events earli…Read more
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Morality and ‘Unto Others'. Response to commentary discussionJournal of Consciousness Studies 7 (1-2): 257-268. 2000.We address the following issues raised by the commentators of our target article and book: the problem of multiple perspectives; how to define group selection; distinguishing between the concepts of altruism and organism; genetic versus cultural group selection; the dark side of group selection; the relationship between psychological and evolutionary altruism; the question of whether the psychological questions can be answered; psychological experiments. We thank the contributors for their comme…Read more
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Evolutionary theory, causal completeness, and theism : the case of "guided" mutationIn R. Paul Thompson & Denis Walsh (eds.), Evolutionary biology: conceptual, ethical, and religious issues, Cambridge University Press. 2014.
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