•  211
    Ethology, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology
    In Sahorta Sarkar & Anya Plutynski (eds.), Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Blackwell. pp. 393-414. 2008.
    In the years leading up to the Second World War the ethologists Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, created the tradition of rigorous, Darwinian research on animal behavior that developed into modern behavioral ecology. At first glance, research on specifically human behavior seems to exhibit greater discontinuity that research on animal behavior in general. The 'human ethology' of the 1960s appears to have been replaced in the early 1970s by a new approach called ‘sociobiology’. Sociobiology …Read more
  •  195
    The misuse of Sober's selection for/selection of distinction
    with R. Goode
    Biology and Philosophy 10 (1): 99-108. 1995.
    Elliott Sober''s selection for/selection of distinction has been widely used to clarify the idea that some properties of organisms are side-effects of selection processes. It has also been used, however, to choose between different descriptions of an evolutionary product when assigning biological functions to that product. We suggest that there is a characteristic error in these uses of the distinction. Complementary descriptions of function are misrepresented as mutually excluding one another. …Read more
  •  187
    The fearless vampire conservator: Phillip Kitcher and genetic determinism
    In 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
  •  186
    Gut reactions: A perceptual theory of emotion (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3): 559-567. 2008.
  •  184
    Don’t Give Up on Basic Emotions
    Emotion Review 3 (4): 444-454. 2011.
    We argue that there are three coherent, nontrivial notions of basic-ness: conceptual basic-ness, biological basic-ness, and psychological basic-ness. There is considerable evidence for conceptually basic emotion categories (e.g., “anger,” “fear”). These categories do not designate biologically basic emotions, but some forms of anger, fear, and so on that are biologically basic in a sense we will specify. Finally, two notions of psychological basic-ness are distinguished, and the evidence for the…Read more
  •  182
    Genetics and philosophy : an introduction
    Cambridge University Press. 2013.
    In the past century, nearly all of the biological sciences have been directly affected by discoveries and developments in genetics, a fast-evolving subject with important theoretical dimensions. In this rich and accessible book, Paul Griffiths and Karola Stotz show how the concept of the gene has evolved and diversified across the many fields that make up modern biology. By examining the molecular biology of the 'environment', they situate genetics in the developmental biology of whole organisms…Read more
  •  180
    Is emotion a natural kind?
    In Robert C. Solomon (ed.), Thinking About Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions, Oxford University Press. 2002.
    In _What Emotions Really Are: The problem of psychological categories_ I argued that it is unlikely that all the psychological states and processes that fall under the vernacular category of emotion are sufficiently similar to one another to allow a unified scientific psychology of the emotions. In this paper I restate what I mean by ?natural kind? and my argument for supposing that emotion is not a natural kind in this specific sense. In the following sections I discuss the two most promising p…Read more
  •  174
    Innateness, canalization, and 'biologicizing the mind'
    Philosophical Psychology 21 (3). 2008.
    This article examines and rejects the claim that 'innateness is canalization'. Waddington's concept of canalization is distinguished from the narrower concept of environmental canalization with which it is often confused. Evidence is presented that the concept of environmental canalization is not an accurate analysis of the existing concept of innateness. The strategy of 'biologicizing the mind' by treating psychological or behavioral traits as if they were environmentally canalized physiologica…Read more
  •  142
    Toward a "machiavellian" theory of emotional appraisal
    In Dylan Evans & Pierre Cruse (eds.), Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality, Oxford University Press. 2002.
    The aim of appraisal theory in the psychology of emotion is to identify the features of the emotion-eliciting situation that lead to the production of one emotion rather than another2. A model of emotional appraisal takes the form of a set of dimensions against which potentially emotion-eliciting situations are assessed. The dimensions of the emotion hyperspace might include, for example, whether the eliciting situation fulfills or frustrates the subject’s goals or whether an actor in the elicit…Read more
  •  142
    Gene
    In David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge University Press. 2005.
    The historian Raphael Falk has described the gene as a ‘concept in tension’ (Falk 2000) – an idea pulled this way and that by the differing demands of different kinds of biological work. Several authors have suggested that in the light of contemporary molecular biology ‘gene’ is no more than a handy term which acquires a specific meaning only in a specific scientific context in which it occurs. Hence the best way to answer the question ‘what is a gene’, and the only way to provide a truly philos…Read more
  •  142
    Measuring Causal Specificity
    with Arnaud Pocheville, Brett Calcott, Karola Stotz, Hyunju Kim, and Rob Knight
    Philosophy of Science 82 (4): 529-555. 2015.
    Several authors have argued that causes differ in the degree to which they are ‘specific’ to their effects. Woodward has used this idea to enrich his influential interventionist theory of causal explanation. Here we propose a way to measure causal specificity using tools from information theory. We show that the specificity of a causal variable is not well-defined without a probability distribution over the states of that variable. We demonstrate the tractability and interest of our proposed mea…Read more
  •  138
    Dobzhansky argued that biology only makes sense if life on earth has a shared history. But his dictum is often reinterpreted to mean that biology only makes sense in the light of adaptation. Some philosophers of science have argued in this spirit that all work in ‘proximal’ biosciences such as anatomy, physiology and molecular biology must be framed, at least implicitly, by the selection histories of the organisms under study. Others have denied this and have proposed non-evolutionary ways in wh…Read more
  •  131
    The emerging discipline of evolutionary developmental biology has opened up many new lines of investigation into morphological evolution. Here I explore how two of the core theoretical concepts in ‘evo-devo’ – modularity and homology – apply to evolutionary psychology. I distinguish three sorts of module – developmental, functional and mental modules and argue that mental modules need only be ‘virtual’ functional modules. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that separate mental modules are so…Read more
  •  130
    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
  •  127
    Dancing in the dark: Evolutionary psychology and the argument from design
    with Karola Stotz
    In Steven Scher & Frederick Rauscher (eds.), Evolutionary Psychology: Alternative Approaches, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 135--160. 2001.
    The Narrow Evolutionary Psychology Movement represents itself as a major reorientation of the social/behavioral sciences, a group of sciences previously dominated by something called the ‘Standard Social Science Model’. Narrow Evolutionary Psychology alleges that the SSSM treated the mind, and particularly those aspects of the mind that exhibit cultural variation, as devoid of any marks of its evolutionary history. Adherents of Narrow Evolutionary Psychology often suggest that the SSSM owed more…Read more
  •  125
    The phenomena of homology
    Biology and Philosophy 22 (5): 643-658. 2007.
    Philosophical discussions of biological classification have failed to recognise the central role of homology in the classification of biological parts and processes. One reason for this is a misunderstanding of the relationship between judgments of homology and the core explanatory theories of biology. The textbook characterisation of homology as identity by descent is commonly regarded as a definition. I suggest instead that it is one of several attempts to explain the phenomena of homology. Tw…Read more
  •  118
    The distinction between innate and acquired characteristics
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010.
    The idea that some characteristics of an organism are explained by the organism's intrinsic nature, whilst others reflect the influence of the environment is an ancient one. It has even been argued that this distinction is itself part of the evolved psychology of the human species. The distinction played an important role in the history of philosophy as the locus of the dispute between Rationalism and Empiricism discussed in another entry in this encyclopedia. This entry, however, focuses on twe…Read more
  •  115
    Modularity, and the psychoevolutionary theory of emotion
    Biology and Philosophy 5 (2): 175-196. 1990.
    It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may c…Read more
  •  113
    Replicator II – judgement day
    with Russell D. Gray
    Biology and Philosophy 12 (4): 471-492. 1997.
    The Developmental Systems approach to evolution is defended against the alternative extended replicator approach of Sterelny, Smith and Dickison (1996). A precise definition is provided of the spatial and temporal boundaries of the life-cycle that DST claims is the unit of evolution. Pacé Sterelny et al., the extended replicator theory is not a bulwark against excessive holism. Everything which DST claims is replicated in evolution can be shown to be an extended replicator on Sterelny et al.s de…Read more
  •  104
    Developmental systems theory is an attempt to sum up the ideas of a research tradition in developmental psychobiology that goes back at least to Daniel Lehrman’s work in the 1950s. It yields a representation of evolution that is quite capable of accommodating the traditional themes of natural selection and also the new results that are emerging from evolutionary developmental biology. But it adds something else - a framework for thinking about development and evolution without the distorting dic…Read more
  •  104
    Biohumanities: Rethinking the relationship between biosciences, philosophy and history of science, and society
    with Karola Stotz and Paul E. Griffiths
    Quarterly Review of Biology 83 (1): 37--45. 2007.
    We argue that philosophical and historical research can constitute a ‘Biohumanities’ which deepens our understanding of biology itself; engages in constructive 'science criticism'; helps formulate new 'visions of biology'; and facilitates 'critical science communication'. We illustrate these ideas with two recent 'experimental philosophy' studies of the concept of the gene and of the concept of innateness conducted by ourselves and collaborators.
  •  102
    The Cronin controversy (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (1): 122-138. 1995.
  •  98
    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
  •  98
    Biological Criteria of Disease: Four Ways of Going Wrong
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 1 (4). 2017.
    We defend a view of the distinction between the normal and the pathological according to which that distinction has an objective, biological component. We accept that there is a normative component to the concept of disease, especially as applied to human beings. Nevertheless, an organism cannot be in a pathological state unless something has gone wrong for that organism from a purely biological point of view. Biology, we argue, recognises two sources of biological normativity, which jointly gen…Read more
  •  96
    David Hull’s Natural Philosophy of Science
    Biology and Philosophy 15 (3): 301-310. 2000.
    Throughout his career David Hull has sought to bring the philosophy of science into closer contact with science and especially with biological science (Hull 1969, 1997b). This effort has taken many forms. Sometimes it has meant ‘either explaining basic biology to philosophers or explaining basic philosophy to biologists’ (Hull 1996, p. 77). The first of these tasks, simple as it sounds, has been responsible for revolutionary changes. It is well known that traditional philosophy of science, modele…Read more
  •  94
    Philosophy 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
  •  94
    Cladistic classification and functional explanation
    Philosophy of Science 61 (2): 206-227. 1994.
    I adopt a cladistic view of species, and explore the possibility that there exists an equally valuable cladistic view of organismic traits. This suggestion seems to run counter to the stress on functional views of biological traits in recent work in philosophy and psychology. I show how the tension between these two views can be defused with a multilevel view of biological explanation. Despite the attractions of this compromise, I conclude that we must reject it, and adopt an essentially cladist…Read more
  •  94
    Molecular and Developmental Biology
    In Peter Machamer & Michael Silberstein (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell Publishers. pp. 252-271. 2002.
    Philosophical discussion of molecular and developmental biology began in the late 1960s with the use of genetics as a test case for models of theory reduction. With this exception, the theory of natural selection remained the main focus of philosophy of biology until the late 1970s. It was controversies in evolutionary theory over punctuated equilibrium and adaptationism that first led philosophers to examine the concept of developmental constraint. Developmental biology also gained in prominenc…Read more