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93Modus DarwinBiology and Philosophy 14 (2): 253-278. 1999.Modus Darwin is a principle of inference that licenses the conclusion that two species have a common ancestor, based on the observation that they are similar. The present paper investigates the principle's probabilistic foundations.
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170Two outbreaks of lawlessness in recent philosophy of biologyPhilosophy of Science 64 (4): 467. 1997.John Beatty (1995) and Alexander Rosenberg (1994) have argued against the claim that there are laws in biology. Beatty's main reason is that evolution is a process full of contingency, but he also takes the existence of relative significance controversies in biology and the popularity of pluralistic approaches to a variety of evolutionary questions to be evidence for biology's lawlessness. Rosenberg's main argument appeals to the idea that biological properties supervene on large numbers of phys…Read more
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316Black box inference: When should intervening variables be postulated?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (3): 469-498. 1998.An empirical procedure is suggested for testing a model that postulates variables that intervene between observed causes and abserved effects against a model that includes no such postulate. The procedure is applied to two experiments in psychology. One involves a conditioning regimen that leads to response generalization; the other concerns the question of whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind.
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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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40Explanatory presuppositionAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (2). 1986.This Article does not have an abstract
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43Old problems for a new theory: Mayo on Giere's theory of causationPhilosophical Studies 52 (3). 1987.
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213The evolution of rationalitySynthese 46 (January): 95-120. 1981.How could the fundamental mental operations which facilitate scientific theorizing be the product of natural selection, since it appears that such theoretical methods were neither used nor useful "in the cave"-i.e., in the sequence of environments in which selection took place? And if these wired-in information processing techniques were not selected for, how can we view rationality as an adaptation? It will be the purpose of this paper to address such questions as these, and in the process to s…Read more
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629Absence of evidence and evidence of absence: evidential transitivity in connection with fossils, fishing, fine-tuning, and firing squadsPhilosophical Studies 143 (1): 63-90. 2009.“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” is a slogan that is popular among scientists and nonscientists alike. This article assesses its truth by using a probabilistic tool, the Law of Likelihood. Qualitative questions (“Is E evidence about H ?”) and quantitative questions (“How much evidence does E provide about H ?”) are both considered. The article discusses the example of fossil intermediates. If finding a fossil that is phenotypically intermediate between two extant species provides …Read more
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34I_– _Elliott SoberAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 74 (1): 237-280. 2000.In ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Quine attacks the analytic/synthetic distinction and defends a doctrine that I call epistemological holism. Now, almost fifty years after the article’s appearance, what are we to make of these ideas? I suggest that the philosophical naturalism that Quine did so much to promote should lead us to reject Quine’s brief against the analytic/synthetic distinction; I also argue that Quine misunderstood Carnap's views on analyticity. As for epistemological holism, I claim …Read more
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35Critical Commentary on Unto OthersPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3): 697-701. 2002.Altruism has both an evolutionary and a psychological meaning. As the term is used in evolutionary theory, a trait is deemed altruistic if it reduces the fitness of the actor and enhances the fitness of someone else. In its psychological sense, the thesis that we have altruistic ultimate motives asserts that we care about the welfare of others, not just as a means of enhancing our own well-being, but as an end in itself. In Unto Others (hereafter UO), we consider both evolutionary altruism (Part…Read more
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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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151The causal efficacy of contentPhilosophical Studies 63 (July): 1-30. 1991.Several philosophers have argued recently that semantic properties do play a causal role. 1 It is our view that none of these arguments are satisfactory. Our aim is to reveal some of the deficiencies of these arguments, and to reassess the question in our own way. In section 1, we shall explain in more detail what is involved in the pretheoretical idea of a causally efficacious property and so provide a fuller sense of the issue. In section 2 we shall discuss Fodor's and Kim's arguments that the…Read more
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24Précis of Evidence and Evolution: The Logic behind the SciencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (3): 661-665. 2011.Evidence and Evolution has four chapters: (1) Evidence, (2) Intelligent Design, (3) Natural Selection, and (4) Common Ancestry. The first chapter develops tools that are used in the rest of the book, though more ideas about evidence are added. In Chapter 1, I endorse a pluralistic outlook—Bayesianism is fine in some inference problems, likelihoodism in others, and AIC in still others. In Chapter Two, on intelligent design, I try to develop the strongest possible formulation of the design argumen…Read more
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81The philosophical significance of Stein’s paradoxEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (3): 411-433. 2017.Charles Stein discovered a paradox in 1955 that many statisticians think is of fundamental importance. Here we explore its philosophical implications. We outline the nature of Stein’s result and of subsequent work on shrinkage estimators; then we describe how these results are related to Bayesianism and to model selection criteria like AIC. We also discuss their bearing on scientific realism and instrumentalism. We argue that results concerning shrinkage estimators underwrite a surprising form o…Read more
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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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236Temporally asymmetric inference in a Markov processPhilosophy of Science 58 (3): 398-410. 1991.A model of a Markov process is presented in which observing the present state of a system is asymmetrically related to inferring the system's future and inferring its past. A likelihood inference about the system's past state, based on observing its present state, is justified no matter what the parameter values in the model happen to be. In contrast, a probability inference of the system's future state, based on observing its present state, requires further information about the parameter value…Read more
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42Independent evidence about a common causePhilosophy of Science 56 (2): 275-287. 1989.To infer the state of a cause from the states of its effects, independent lines of evidence are preferable to dependent ones. This familiar idea is here investigated, the goal being to identify its presuppositions. Connections are drawn with Reichenbach's (1956) and Salmon's (1984) discussions of the principle of the common cause
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166Panglossian functionalism and the philosophy of mindSynthese 64 (August): 165-93. 1985.I want to explore what happens to two philosophical issues when we assume that the mind, a functional device, is to be understood by the same sort of functional analysis that guides biological investigation of other organismic systems and characteristics. The first problem area concerns the concept of rationality, its connection with reliability and reproductive success, and the status of rationality hypotheses in attribution of beliefs. It has been argued that ascribing beliefs to someone requi…Read more
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97What is psychological egoism?Behaviorism 17 (2): 89-102. 1989.Egoism and altruism need not be characterized as single factor theories of motivation, according to which there is a single kind of preference that moves people to action. Rather, each asserts a claim of causal primacy—a claim as to which sort of preference is the more powerful influence on behavior. This paper shows that this idea of causal primacy can be clarified in a standard scientific way. This formulation explains why many observed behaviors fail to discriminate between the hypothesis tha…Read more
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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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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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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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21Optimist/pessimistBehavioral and Brain Sciences 10 (1): 87-88. 1987.The reception so far of Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition reminds me of the old saw about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. Looking at the same glass of water, the former sees it as half full while the latter sees it as half empty. Some have seen Kitcher's book as a vindication of the possibility of an evolutionary science of human behavior; others have seen it as a devastating critique of the most influential efforts to date to construct such a science. As in the joke about the wate…Read more
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24Coincidences and How to Reason about ThemIn Henk W. de Regt (ed.), Epsa Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009, Springer. pp. 355--374. 2012.Suppose that several observations “coincide,” meaning that they are similar in some interesting respect. Is this coinciding a mere coincidence, or does it derive from a common cause? Those who reason about this kind of question—whether they embrace the first answer or the second—often deploy a mode of inference that I call probabilistic modus tollens. In this chapter I criticize probabilistic modus tollens and consider likelihood and Bayesian frameworks for reasoning about coincidences. I also c…Read more
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100Responses to Fitelson, Sansom, and Sarkar (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (3): 692-704. 2011.
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137Evolutionary theory and the reality of macro probabilitiesIn Ellery Eells & James H. Fetzer (eds.), The Place of Probability in Science, Springer. pp. 133--60. 2010.Evolutionary theory is awash with probabilities. For example, natural selection is said to occur when there is variation in fitness, and fitness is standardly decomposed into two components, viability and fertility, each of which is understood probabilistically. With respect to viability, a fertilized egg is said to have a certain chance of surviving to reproductive age; with respect to fertility, an adult is said to have an expected number of offspring.1 There is more to evolutionary theory tha…Read more
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