•  55
    Multilevel selection and the return of group-level functionalism
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (2): 305-306. 1998.
    We reinforce Thompson's points by providing a second example of the paradox that makes group selection appear counterintuitive and by discussing the wider implications of multilevel selection theory.
  •  335
    Parsimony and models of animal minds
    In Robert W. Lurz (ed.), The Philosophy of Animal Minds, Cambridge University Press. pp. 237. 2009.
    The chapter discusses the principle of conservatism and traces how the general principle is related to the specific one. This tracing suggests that the principle of conservatism needs to be refined. Connecting the principle in cognitive science to more general questions about scientific inference also allows us to revisit the question of realism versus instrumentalism. The framework deployed in model selection theory is very general; it is not specific to the subject matter of science. The chapt…Read more
  •  316
    Black 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.
  •  43
    Explanatory presupposition
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (2). 1986.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  59
    Why must homunculi be so stupid?
    Mind 91 (363): 420-422. 1982.
    Writers like Attneave [I960], Fodor [I968], and Dennett [1978] have argued that explanations of a mental capacity can only avoid the emptiness of Moliere's dormative virtue by decomposing the capacity into a set of components which are more rudimentary. But What is wrong with smart homunculi? I argue that smart homunculi may explain token events, such as why I now see the page in front of me, but they do not explain what seeing is. It is the importance of the latter explanatory problem which exp…Read more
  •  44
    Old problems for a new theory: Mayo on Giere's theory of causation
    with Ellery Eells
    Philosophical Studies 52 (3). 1987.
  •  94
    Modus Darwin
    Biology 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.
  •  38
    I_– _Elliott Sober
    Aristotelian 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
  •  58
    Evolution and the Problem of Other Minds
    Journal of Philosophy 97 (7): 365. 2000.
  •  389
    The authors demonstrate that unselfish behavior is in fact an important feature of both biological and human nature. Their book provides a panoramic view of altruism throughout the animal kingdom--from self-sacrificing parasites to the human capacity for selflessness--even as it explains the evolutionary sense of such behavior.
  •  1
    Kindness and Cruelty in Evolution
    In Richard J. Davidson & Anne Harrington (eds.), Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature, Oup Usa. 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
  •  247
    “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
  •  24
    Précis of Evidence and Evolution: The Logic behind the Science
    Philosophy 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
  •  7
    Does "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
  •  175
    Two outbreaks of lawlessness in recent philosophy of biology
    Philosophy 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
  •  236
    Temporally asymmetric inference in a Markov process
    Philosophy 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
  •  43
    Independent evidence about a common cause
    Philosophy 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
  •  152
    The causal efficacy of content
    Philosophical 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
  •  167
    Panglossian functionalism and the philosophy of mind
    Synthese 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
  •  10
    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
  •  215
    The evolution of rationality
    Synthese 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
  •  15
    Fact, Fiction, and Fitness
    Journal 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
  •  39
    Critical Commentary on Unto Others
    Philosophy 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
  •  219
    What's historical about historical materialism?
    with Andrew Levine
    Journal of Philosophy 82 (6): 304-326. 1985.
  •  24
    Coincidences and How to Reason about Them
    In Henk W. de Regt (ed.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009, Springer. pp. 355--374. 2011.
    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
  •  102
    Responses to Fitelson, Sansom, and Sarkar (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (3): 692-704. 2011.