•  91
    The degeneration of the cognitive theory of emotions
    Philosophical Psychology 2 (3): 297-313. 1989.
    The type of cognitive theory of emotion traditionally espoused by philosophers of mind makes two central claims. First, that the occurrence of propositional attitudes is essential to the occurrence of emotions. Second, that the identity of a particular emotional state depends upon the propositional attitudes that it involves. In this paper I try to show that there is little hope of developing a theory of emotion which makes these claims true. I examine the underlying defects of the programme, an…Read more
  •  91
    Current Emotion Research in Philosophy
    Emotion 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
  •  89
    Folk, functional and neurochemical aspects of mood
    Philosophical Psychology 2 (1): 17-32. 1989.
    It has been suggested that moods are higher order-dispositions. This proposal is considered, and various shortcomings uncovered. The notion of a higher-order disposition is replaced by the more general notion of a higher-order functional state. An account is given in which moods are higher-order functional states, and the overall system of moods is a higher-order functional description of the mind. This proposal is defended in two ways. First, it is shown to capture some central features of our …Read more
  •  89
    The historical turn in the study of adaptation
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (4): 511-532. 1996.
    A number of philosophers and ‘evolutionary psychologists’ have argued that attacks on adaptationism in contemporary biology are misguided. These thinkers identify anti-adaptationism with advocacy of non-adaptive modes of explanation. They overlook the influence of anti-adaptationism in the development of more rigorous forms of adaptive explanation. Many biologists who reject adaptationism do not reject Darwinism. Instead, they have pioneered the contemporary historical turn in the study of adapt…Read more
  •  67
    Review of 'Niche Construction' (review)
    Biology and Philosophy 20 (1): 11-20. 2005.
  •  64
    Multispecies individuals
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (2): 33. 2018.
    We assess the arguments for recognising functionally integrated multispecies consortia as genuine biological individuals, including cases of so-called ‘holobionts’. We provide two examples in which the same core biochemical processes that sustain life are distributed across a consortium of individuals of different species. Although the same chemistry features in both examples, proponents of the holobiont as unit of evolution would recognize one of the two cases as a multispecies individual whils…Read more
  •  61
    Genes: Philosophical Analyses Put to the Test
    with Karola Stotz
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 26 (1): 5-28. 2004.
    This paper describes one complete and one ongoing empirical study in which philosophical analyses of the concept of the gene were operationalized and tested against questionnaire data obtained from working biologists to determine whether and when biologists conceive genes in the ways suggested. These studies throw light on how different gene concepts contribute to biological research. Their aim is not to arrive at one or more correct 'definitions' of the gene, but rather to map out the variation…Read more
  •  60
    Epigenetics: ambiguities and implications
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 38 (4): 1-20. 2016.
    Everyone has heard of ‘epigenetics’, but the term means different things to different researchers. Four important contemporary meanings are outlined in this paper. Epigenetics in its various senses has implications for development, heredity, and evolution, and also for medicine. Concerning development, it cements the vision of a reactive genome strongly coupled to its environment. Concerning heredity, both narrowly epigenetic and broader ‘exogenetic’ systems of inheritance play important roles i…Read more
  •  56
    Liberals Ate My Genes?
    with Kenneth F. Schaffner, Ullica Segerstrale, and Steven Pinker
    Metascience 13 (1): 28-51. 2004.
  •  56
    Robert Solomon’s philosophy of emotion should be understood in the light of his lifelong commitment to existentialism and his advocacy of “the passionate life” as a means of creating value. Although he developed his views in the framework of the “cognitive theory” of emotions, closer examination reveals many themes in common with a socially situated, transactionalist view of emotions.
  •  55
    The widely cited Nuffield Council on Bioethics ‘Intervention Ladder’ structurally embodies the assumption that personal autonomy is maximized by non-intervention. Consequently, the Intervention Ladder encourages an extreme ‘negative liberty’ 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
  •  53
    Tracking the shift to 'postgenomics'
    with Karola Stotz and Adam Bostanci
    Community Genetics 9 (3). 2006.
    Current knowledge about the variety and complexity of the processes that allow regulated gene expression in living organisms calls for a new understanding of genes. A ‘postgenomic’ understanding of genes as entities constituted during genome expression is outlined and illustrated with specific examples that formed part of a survey research instrument developed by two of the authors for an ongoing empirical study of conceptual change in contemporary biology.
  •  53
    Diseases are Not Adaptations and Neither are Their Causes
    Biological Theory 15 (3): 136-142. 2020.
    In a recent article in this journal, Zachary Ardern criticizes our view that the most promising candidate for a naturalized criterion of disease is the "selected effects" account of biological function and dysfunction. Here we reply to Ardern’s criticisms and, more generally, clarify the relationship between adaptation and dysfunction in the evolution of health and disease.
  •  52
    Lost: One Gene Concept. Reward to Finder (review)
    Biology and Philosophy 17 (2): 271-283. 2002.
  •  52
    Causal reasoning about genetics: synthesis and future directions
    with Kate E. Lynch, Ilan Dar Nimrod, and James Morandini
    Behavior Genetics 2 (49): 221-234. 2019.
    When explaining the causes of human behavior, genes are often given a special status. They are thought to relate to an intrinsic human 'essence', and essentialist biases have been shown to skew the way in which causation is assessed. Causal reasoning in general is subject to other pre-existing biases, including beliefs about normativity and morality. In this synthesis we show how factors which influence causal reasoning can be mapped to a framework of genetic essentialism, which reveals both the…Read more
  •  51
    Behavioral genetics and development: Historical and conceptual causes of controversy
    with James Tabery
    New Ideas in Psychology 26 (3): 332-352. 2008.
    Traditional, quantitative behavioral geneticists and developmental psychobiologists such as Gilbert Gottlieb have long debated what it would take to create a truly developmental behavioral genetics. These disputes have proven so intractable that disputants have repeatedly suggested that the problem rests on their opponents' conceptual confusion; whilst others have argued that the intractability results from the non-scientific, political motivations of their opponents. The authors provide a diffe…Read more
  •  51
    Our Plastic Nature
    In Snait Gissis & Eva Jablonka (eds.), Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology, Mit Press. pp. 319--330. 2011.
    This chapter analyzes the notion of human nature and the concept of inner nature from the perspective of developmental systems theory. It explores the folkbiology of human nature and looks at three features associated with traits that are expressions of the inner nature that organisms inherit from their parents: fixity, typicality, teleology.
  •  45
    The place of function in a world of mechanisms (review)
    with Peter Godfrey-Smith, Huw Price, Werner Callebaut, and Karola Stotz
    Metascience 6 (2): 7-31. 1997.
  •  43
    Pv~P: Cambridge Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy, Issue 1, 1982.
  •  42
    Volume 98, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 205-208.
  •  39
    God, 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
  •  36
    Titles and abstracts for the Pitt-London Workshop in the Philosophy of Biology and Neuroscience: September 2001
    with Karen Arnold, James Bogen, Ingo Brigandt, Joe Cain, Catherine Kendig, James Lennox, Alan C. Love, Peter Machamer, Jacqueline Sullivan, Sandra D. Mitchell, David Papineau, Karola Stotz, and D. M. Walsh
    . 2001.
    Titles and abstracts for the Pitt-London Workshop in the Philosophy of Biology and Neuroscience: September 2001.
  •  35
    Signals That Make a Difference
    with Brett Calcott and Arnaud Pocheville
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (1): 233-258. 2020.
    Recent work by Brian Skyrms offers a very general way to think about how information flows and evolves in biological networks—from the way monkeys in a troop communicate to the way cells in a body coordinate their actions. A central feature of his account is a way to formally measure the quantity of information contained in the signals in these networks. In this article, we argue there is a tension between how Skyrms talks of signalling networks and his formal measure of information. Although Sk…Read more
  •  33
    Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation
    with R. D. Gray
    Journal of Philosophy 91 (6): 277-304. 1994.
  •  30
    A niche for the genome
    Biology and Philosophy 31 (1): 143-157. 2016.
    In their considered reviews both Thomas Pradeu and Lindell Bromham introduce important topics not sufficiently covered in our book. Pradeu asks us to enlarge on the epigenetic and ecological context of genes, particularly in the form of symbioses. We use the relationship between eukaryotes and their symbiotic organisms as a welcome opportunity to clarify our concept of the developmental niche, and its relationship to the developmental system. Bromham’s comments reveal that she is primarily inter…Read more
  •  29
    Comparing Causes - an Information-Theoretic Approach to Specificity, Proportionality and Stability
    with Arnaud Pocheville and Karola C. Stotz
    Proceedings of the 15th Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. 2017.
    The interventionist account of causation offers a criterion to distinguish causes from non-causes. It also aims at defining various desirable properties of causal relationships, such as specificity, proportionality and stability. Here we apply an information-theoretic approach to these properties. We show that the interventionist criterion of causation is formally equivalent to non-zero specificity, and that there are natural, information-theoretic ways to explicate the distinction between poten…Read more
  •  29
    Generating Thoughts on Genetics (review)
    Metascience 17 (2): 273-275. 2008.
  •  28
    Replicators and vehicles? Or developmental systems?
    with R. D. Gray
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4): 623-624. 1994.
  •  26
    Recent work on the evolution of culture (review)
    Metascience 15 (2): 265-270. 2006.