•  86
    A Modest Proposal (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2): 487-494. 2004.
    This paper is an essay review of John Earman's book,\nHume's Abject Failure--the Argument against Miracles\n(Oxford University Press, New York, 2000). Earman is very\ncritical of Hume's famous argument about miracles, I am\nmore sympathetic, though I grant that Earman makes many\ngood critical points. Earman's method of analysis is\nBayesian, as is mine
  •  48
    Précis of Evidence and Evolution: The Logic behind the Science (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (3): 661-665. 2011.
  •  20
    The design argument
    In Neil A. Manson (ed.), God and design: the teleological argument and modern science, Routledge. pp. 25--53. 2003.
    The design argument is one of three main arguments for the existence of God; the others are the ontological argument and the cosmological argument. Unlike the ontological argument, the design argument and the cosmological argument are a posteriori. And whereas the cosmological argument could focus on any present event to get the ball rolling (arguing that it must trace back to a first cause, namely God), design theorists are usually more selective.
  •  220
    In my paper “Intelligent Design Theory and the Supernatural—the ‘God or Extra-Terrestrial’ Reply,” I argued that Intelligent Design (ID) Theory, when coupled with independently plausible further assumptions, leads to the conclusion that a supernatural intelligent designer exists. ID theory is therefore not neutral on the question of whether there are supernatural agents. In this respect, it differs from the Darwinian theory of evolution. John Beaudoin replies to my paper in his “Sober on Intelli…Read more
  •  82
    The concept of fitness began its career in biology long before evolutionary theory was mathematized. Fitness was used to describe an organism’s vigor, or the degree to which organisms “fit” into their environments. An organism’s success in avoiding predators and in building a nest obviously contribute to its fitness and to the fitness of its offspring, but the peacock’s gaudy tail seemed to be in an entirely different line of work. Fitness, as a term in ordinary language (as in “physical fitness…Read more
  •  705
    In the world of philosophy of science, the dominant theory of confirmation is Bayesian. In the wider philosophical world, the idea of inference to the best explanation exerts a considerable influence. Here we place the two worlds in collision, using Bayesian confirmation theory to argue that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant
  •  51
    Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology (edited book)
    The Mit Press. Bradford Books. 1994.
    Changes and additions in the new edition reflect the ways in which the subject has broadened and deepened on several fronts; more than half of the-chapters are ...
  •  15
    Screening-off and the units of selection
    Philosophy of Science 59 (1): 142-152. 1992.
    Brandon ([1982] 1984, 1990) has argued that Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off can be used to characterize (i) the idea that natural selection acts directly on an organism's phenotype, only indirectly on its genotype, and (ii) the biological problem of the levels of selection. Brandon also suggests (iii) that screening-off events in a causal chain are better explanations than the events they screen off. This paper critically evaluates Brandon's proposals
  •  18
    Fact, fiction, and Fitness
    Journal of Philosophy 81 (7): 372-384. 1984.
    Alexander Rosenberg begins 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 needs to be overcome. But Rosenberg repeats some of the old mis- takes and invents epicycles on others. In this comment I will not be able to circumscribe fully the range of topics that an adequate treatment of this cluster of problems demands. A few critical re marks …Read more
  •  378
    The Nature of Selection is a straightforward, self-contained introduction to philosophical and biological problems in evolutionary theory. It presents a powerful analysis of the evolutionary concepts of natural selection, fitness, and adaptation and clarifies controversial issues concerning altruism, group selection, and the idea that organisms are survival machines built for the good of the genes that inhabit them. "Sober's is the answering philosophical voice, the voice of a first-rate philoso…Read more
  •  6
    Are human beings part of the rest of nature?
    with Christopher Lang and Karen Strier
    Biology and Philosophy 17 (5): 661-671. 2002.
    Unified explanations seek to situate the traits of human beings in a causal framework that also explains the trait values found in nonhuman species. Disunified explanations claim that the traits of human beings are due to causal processes not at work in the rest of nature. This paper outlines a methodology for testing hypotheses of these two types. Implications are drawn concerning evolutionary psychology, adaptationism, and anti-adaptationism.
  •  8
    Coincidences and how to reason about them
    In Henk W. De Regt, Stephan Hartmann & Samir Okasha (eds.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009, Springer. pp. 355-374. 2012.
    The naïve see causal connections everywhere. Consider the fact that Evelyn Marie Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice. The naïve find it irresistible to think that this cannot be a coincidence. Maybe the lottery was rigged or perhaps some uncanny higher power placed its hand upon her brow. Sophisticates respond with an indulgent smile and ask the naïve to view Adams’ double win within a larger perspective. Given all the lotteries there have been, it isn’t at all surprising that someone would w…Read more
  •  48
    Replies to commentators on Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards?
    Philosophical Studies 172 (3): 829-840. 2015.
    Here I reply to Jean Gayon's, Tim Lewens's, and Samir Okasha's comments on Did Darwin write the Origin backwards? The topics addressed include: Darwin's thinking that common ancestry is "evidentially prior" to natural selection; how Darwin uses phylogenetic trees to test hypotheses concerning natural selection; how group and indivdiual selection should be defined, and how each is related to the concept of adaptation
  •  20
    Evolutionary theory and the ontological status of properties
    Philosophical Studies 40 (2). 1981.
    Quine has developed two reasons for thinking that our ontology should not include the ontological category of properties. His first point is that the criterion for individuating properties is unclear, and the second is that postulating the existence of properties would not explain anything. In what follows I critically examine these two themes, which I will call the clarity argument and the parsimony argument. Although I will suggest that these two arguments are defective, I also will try to sho…Read more
  •  22
    Cartwright on explanation and idealization
    with Mehmet Elgin
    Erkenntnis 57 (3). 2002.
    Nancy Cartwright (1983, 1999) argues that (1) the fundamental laws of physics are true when and only when appropriate ceteris paribus modifiers are attached and that (2) ceteris paribus modifiers describe conditions that are almost never satisfied. She concludes that when the fundamental laws of physics are true, they don't apply in the real world, but only in highly idealized counterfactual situations. In this paper, we argue that (1) and (2) together with an assumption about contraposition ent…Read more
  •  519
    In their book What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini construct an a priori philosophical argument and an empirical biological argument. The biological argument aims to show that natural selection is much less important in the evolutionary process than many biologists maintain. The a priori argument begins with the claim that there cannot be selection for one but not the other of two traits that are perfectly correlated in a population; it concludes that there cannot b…Read more
  •  197
    Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4): 585-608. 1994.
    In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s a…Read more
  •  4
    Revisability, a priori truth, and evolution
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (1). 1981.
    The positivists suggest that some truths may be immune from empirical refutation and yet lacking in rational justification. Quine holds that every proposition is in principle empirically refutable so there are no a priori truths. I’ll provide a working characterization of the idea of “rational revisability” and argue it’s impossible for us to take a chain of rational revision and end up revising everything which we now believe. Quine's position on revisability is also in tension with certain the…Read more
  •  15
    Equilibrium explanation
    Philosophical Studies 43 (2). 1983.
  •  13
    Is entropy relevant to the asymmetry between retrodiction and prediction?
    with Martin Barrett
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (2): 141-160. 1992.
    The idea that the changing entropy of a system is relevant to explaining why we know more about the system's past than about its future has been criticized on several fronts. This paper assesses the criticisms and clarifies the epistemology of the inference problem. It deploys a Markov process model to investigate the relationship between entropy and temporally asymmetric inference
  •  54
    Likelihood, Model Selection, and the Duhem-Quine Problem
    Journal of Philosophy 101 (5): 221-241. 2004.
    In what follows I will discuss an example of the Duhem-Quine problem in which Pr(H A), Pr(A H), and Pr(OI +H& ?A) (where H is the hypothesis, A the auxiliary assumptions, and O the observational prediction) can be construed objectively; however, only some of those quantities are relevant to the analysis that I provide. The example involves medical diagnosis. The goal is to test the hypothesis that someone has tuberculosis; the auxiliary assumptions describe the er- ror characteristics of the tes…Read more
  •  21
    Why Not Solipsism?
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (3): 547-566. 1995.
    Solipsism poses a familiar epistemological problem. Each of us has beliefs about a world that allegedly exists outside our own minds. The problem is to justify these nonsolipsistic convictions. One standard approach is to argue that the existence of things outside our own sensations may reasonably be inferred from regularities that obtain within our sensations. Certain experiences, which I will call tiger sounds and tiger visual images, exhibit a striking correlation. We can explain the existenc…Read more
  •  193
    A Plea for Pseudo‐Processes†
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 66 (3-4): 303-309. 2017.
    Is all explanations causal explanation? Puzzles about barometer readings "explain" storms and shadow lengths "explaining" flagpole heights make it attractive to think so. Wesley Salmon (1984) has endorsed this causal thesis. One way to test this thesis is to assess the explanatory import of pseudo-processes. I do so by discussing the concept of heritability, which measures a pseudo-process, and one role it played in the theory of natural selection: explaining response to selection. This will sh…Read more
  •  5
    Reply to Godfrey-Smith
    Philosophical Studies 95 (1-2): 183-186. 1999.
  •  10
    Explanation and causation (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (2): 243-257. 1987.
  •  371
    Instrumentalism Revisited
    Critica 31 (91): 3-39. 1999.
    The logical empiricists said some good things about epistemology and scientific method. However, they associated those epistemological ideas with some rather less good ideas about philosophy of language. There is something epistemologically suspect about statements that cannot be tested. But to say that those statements are meaningless is to go too far. And there is something impossible about trying to figure out which of two empirically equivalent theories is true. But to say that those theorie…Read more
  •  62
    What Is Evolutionary Altruism?
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (sup1): 75-99. 1988.
    In this paper I want to clarify what biologists are talking about when they talk about the evolution of altruism. I’ll begin by saying something about the common sense concept. This familiar idea I’ll call ‘vernacular altruism.’ One point of doing this is to make it devastatingly obvious that the common sense concept is very different from the concept as it’s used in evolutionary theory. After that preliminary, I’ll describe some features of the evolutionary concept. Then I’ll conclude by briefl…Read more