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9Mechanisms can be complex: Talia Morag: Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason. Abingdon, Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2016, 288 pp, £88.00 HB (review)Metascience 26 (3): 387-391. 2017.
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2029Developmental Systems TheoryeLS 1-7. 2015.Developmental systems theory (DST) is a wholeheartedly epigenetic approach to development, inheritance and evolution. The developmental system of an organism is the entire matrix of resources that are needed to reproduce the life cycle. The range of developmental resources that are properly described as being inherited, and which are subject to natural selection, is far wider than has traditionally been allowed. Evolution acts on this extended set of developmental resources. From a developmental…Read more
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41Titles and abstracts for the Pitt-London Workshop in the Philosophy of Biology and Neuroscience: September 2001.
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16Jesse Prinz Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3): 559-567. 2008.
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27Exploring the Folkbiological Conception of Human NaturePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 366 (1563): 444. 2011.Integrating the study of human diversity into the human evolutionary sciences requires substantial revision of traditional conceptions of a shared human nature. This process may be made more difficult by entrenched, 'folkbiological' modes of thought. Earlier work by the authors suggests that biologically naive subjects hold an implicit theory according to which some traits are expressions of an animal's inner nature while others are imposed by its environment. In this paper, we report further st…Read more
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262Function, homology and character individuationPhilosophy of Science 73 (1): 1-25. 2006.I defend the view that many biological categories are defined by homology against a series of arguments designed to show that all biological categories are defined, at least in part, by selected function. I show that categories of homology are `abnormality inclusive'—something often alleged to be unique to selected function categories. I show that classifications by selected function are logically dependent on classifications by homology, but not vice-versa. Finally, I reject the view that biolo…Read more
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664Genetic, epigenetic and exogenetic informationIn Richard Joyce (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, Routledge. 2016.We describe an approach to measuring biological information where ‘information’ is understood in the sense found in Francis Crick’s foundational contributions to molecular biology. Genes contain information in this sense, but so do epigenetic factors, as many biologists have recognized. The term ‘epigenetic’ is ambiguous, and we introduce a distinction between epigenetic and exogenetic inheritance to clarify one aspect of this ambiguity. These three heredity systems play complementary roles in s…Read more
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436Genetic, epigenetic and exogenetic information in development and evolutionInterface Focus 7 (5). 2017.The idea that development is the expression of information accumulated during evolution and that heredity is the transmission of this information is surprisingly hard to cash out in strict, scientific terms. This paper seeks to do so using the sense of information introduced by Francis Crick in his sequence hypothesis and central dogma of molecular biology. It focuses on Crick's idea of precise determination. This is analysed using an information-theoretic measure of causal specificity. This all…Read more
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712A Developmental Systems Account of Human NatureIn Elizabeth Hannon & Tim Lewens (eds.), Why We Disagree About Human Nature, Oxford University Press. pp. 00-00. 2018.It is now widely accepted that a scientifically credible conception of human nature must reject the folkbiological idea of a fixed, inner essence that makes us human. We argue here that to understand human nature is to understand the plastic process of human development and the diversity it produces. Drawing on the framework of developmental systems theory and the idea of developmental niche construction we argue that human nature is not embodied in only one input to development, such as the gen…Read more
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1080Developmental Systems Theory as a Process TheoryIn Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupré (eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, Oxford University Press. pp. 225-245. 2018.Griffiths and Russell D. Gray (1994, 1997, 2001) have argued that the fundamental unit of analysis in developmental systems theory should be a process – the life cycle – and not a set of developmental resources and interactions between those resources. The key concepts of developmental systems theory, epigenesis and developmental dynamics, both also suggest a process view of the units of development. This chapter explores in more depth the features of developmental systems theory that favour tre…Read more
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107Beyond the Baldwin effect: James Mark Baldwin's 'social heredity', epigenetic inheritance, and niche constructionIn Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew (eds.), Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Mit Press. pp. 193--215. 2001.I argue that too much attention has been paid to the Baldwin effect. George Gaylord Simpson was probably right when he said that the effect is theoretically possible and may have actually occurred but that this has no major implications for evolutionary theory. The Baldwin effect is not even central to Baldwin's own account of social heredity and biology-culture co-evolution, an account that in important respects resembles the modern ideas of epigenetic inheritance and niche-construction
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135Instinct in the ‘50s: The British Reception of Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive BehaviorBiology and Philosophy 19 (4): 609-631. 2004.At the beginning of the 1950s most students of animal behavior in Britain saw the instinct concept developed by Konrad Lorenz in the 1930s as the central theoretical construct of the new ethology. In the mid 1950s J.B.S. Haldane made substantial efforts to undermine Lorenz''s status as the founder of the new discipline, challenging his priority on key ethological concepts. Haldane was also critical of Lorenz''s sharp distinction between instinctive and learnt behavior. This was inconsistent with…Read more
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284What is the developmentalist challenge?Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 253-258. 1998.Kenneth C. Schaffner's paper is an important contribution to the literature on behavioral genetics and on genetics in general. Schaffner has a long record of injecting real molecular biology into philosophical discussions of genetics. His treatments of the reduction of Mendelian to molecular genetics first drew philosophical attention to the problems of detail that have fuelled both anti-reductionism and more sophisticated models of theory reduction. An injection of molecular detail into discuss…Read more
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57A balanced intervention ladder: promoting autonomy through public health actionPublic Health 129 (8): 1092--1098. 2015.The widely cited Nuffield Council on Bioethics âIntervention Ladderâ structurally embodies the assumption that personal autonomy is maximized by non-intervention. Consequently, the Intervention Ladder encourages an extreme ânegative libertyâ view of autonomy. Yet there are several alternative accounts of autonomy that are both arguably superior as accounts of autonomy and better suited to the issues facing public health ethics. We propose to replace the one-sided ladder, which has any in…Read more
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41God, Genesis and Germlines (review)Metascience 18 (1): 85-86. 2009.The 23rd volume in the respected series Ô Basic Bioethics’, this book contains seven original and two reprinted essays and a substantial introductory chapter by the editor. The main concern of the editor, and of several contributors, is to dispel the view that organised reli- gion has been consistently hostile to new biomedical developments. Instead, they emphasise that the practice of medicine is endorsed by the Church and by Jewish tradition. In principle, germline mod- ification might count a…Read more
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198The fearless vampire conservator: Phillip Kitcher and genetic determinismIn Christoph Rehmann-Sutter & Eva M. Neumann-Held (eds.), Genes in Development: Rethinking the Molecular Paradigm, Duke University Press. pp. 175-198. 2006.Genetic determinism is the idea that many significant human characteristics are rendered inevitable by the presence of certain genes. The psychologist Susan Oyama has famously compared arguing against genetic determinism to battling the undead. Oyama suggests that genetic determinism is inherent in the way we currently represent genes and what genes do. As long as genes are represented as containing information about how the organism will develop, they will continue to be regarded as determining…Read more
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1Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Behavioral Genetics and Developmental ScienceIn Kathryn Hood, Halpern E., Greenberg Carolyn Tucker, Lerner Gary & M. Richard (eds.), Handbook of Developmental Science, Behavior and Genetics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 41--60. 2010.
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246Experimental philosophy of sciencePhilosophy Compass 3 (3). 2008.Experimental philosophy of science gathers empirical data on how key scientific concepts are understood by particular scientific communities. In this paper we briefly describe two recent studies in experimental philosophy of biology, one investigating the concept of the gene, the other the concept of innateness. The use of experimental methods reveals facts about these concepts that would not be accessible using the traditional method of intuitions about possible cases. It also contributes to th…Read more
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28Dissecting developmental biologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 53 134-138. 2015.
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Developmental Systems Theory: What Does it Explain, and How Does It Explain It?In Richard M. Lerner & Janette B. Benson (eds.), Embodiment and Epigenesis: Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Understanding the Role of Biology Within the Relational Developmental System Part A: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Biological Dimensions, Elsevier. pp. 65--94. 2013.
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99Philosophy of Biology in Britain (review)Metascience 16 535-537. 2007.The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s London lecture series for 2004–2005 offers a useful snapshot of the current state of philosophy of biology in Britain. With one or two exceptions the papers are not simply current research articles. The authors map out questions they feel need more research, analyse ongoing debates, or outline the program of their own previously published work. This presumably reflects the fact that the papers are based closely on public lectures. It also makes for surprisingl…Read more
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97Current Emotion Research in PhilosophyEmotion Review 5 (2): 215-222. 2013.There remains a division between the work of philosophers who draw on the sciences of the mind to understand emotion and those who see the philosophy of emotion as more self-sufficient. This article examines this methodological division before reviewing some of the debates that have figured in the philosophical literature of the last decade: whether emotion is a single kind of thing, whether there are discrete categories of emotion, and whether emotion is a form of perception. These questions ha…Read more
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3Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution: Taking Development Seriously (review)Philosophy in Review 25 (3): 213-215. 2005.
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3Introduction: What is developmental systems theory?In Susan Oyama, Paul Griffiths & Russell D. Gray (eds.), Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, Mit Press. pp. 1-11. 2001.
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309Basic Emotions, Complex Emotions, Machiavellian EmotionsRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 52 39-67. 2003.The current state of knowledge in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral ecology allows a fairly robust characterization of at least some, so-called ?basic emotions? - short-lived emotional responses with homologues in other vertebrates. Philosophers, however are understandably more focused on the complex emotion episodes that figure in folk-psychological narratives about mental life, episodes such as the evolving jealousy and anger of a person in an unraveling sexual relationship. On…Read more
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247How the mind grows: A developmental perspective on the biology of cognitionSynthese 122 (1-2): 29-51. 2000.The 'developmental systems' perspective in biology is intended to replace the idea of a genetic program. This new perspective is strongly convergent with recent work in psychology on situated/embodied cognition and on the role of external 'scaffolding' in cognitive development. Cognitive processes, including those which can be explained in evolutionary terms, are not 'inherited' or produced in accordance with an inherited program. Instead, they are constructed in each generation through the inte…Read more
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268The vernacular concept of innatenessMind and Language 24 (5): 605-630. 2009.The proposal that the concept of innateness expresses a 'folk biological' theory of the 'inner natures' of organisms was tested by examining the response of biologically naive participants to a series of realistic scenarios concerning the development of birdsong. Our results explain the intuitive appeal of existing philosophical analyses of the innateness concept. They simultaneously explain why these analyses are subject to compelling counterexamples. We argue that this explanation undermines t…Read more
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From adaptive heuristic to phylogenetic perspective: Some lessons from the evolutionary psychology of emotionIn Paul S. Davies & I. I. I. Harmon R. Holcomb (eds.), The Evolution of Minds: Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 309-325. 2001.
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103The Cronin controversy (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (1): 122-138. 1995.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Medicine |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |