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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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2061Developmental 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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17Jesse 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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263Function, 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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682Genetic, 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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440Genetic, 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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717A 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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1091Developmental 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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107The Developmental Systems Perspective: Organism-environment systems as units of development and evolutionIn Massimo Pigliucci & Katherine Preston (eds.), Phenotypic Integration: Studying the Ecology and Evolution of Complex Phenotypes, Oxford University Press. pp. 409-431. 2002.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
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Adaptation and adaptationismIn Robert A. Wilson & Frank C. Keil (eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Mit Press. pp. 3-4. 1999.Encyclopedia entry on the concepts of adaptation and adaptationism.
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186Genetics and philosophy : an introductionCambridge 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
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63Tracking the shift to 'postgenomics'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.
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280Evolutionary Psychology: History and Current StatusIn Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, Routledge. pp. 263--268. 2005.The development of evolutionary approaches to psychology from Classical Ethology through Sociobiology to Evolutionary Psychology is outlined and the main tenets of today's Evolutionary Psychology briefly examined: the heuristic value of evolutionary thinking for psychology, the massive modularity thesis and the monomorphic mind thesis.
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119Biohumanities: Rethinking the relationship between biosciences, philosophy and history of science, and societyQuarterly 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.
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200Gut reactions: A perceptual theory of emotion (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3): 559-567. 2008.
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28Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution (edited book)MIT Press. 2001.The nature/nurture debate is not dead. Dichotomous views of development still underlie many fundamental debates in the biological and social sciences. Developmental systems theory offers a new conceptual framework with which to resolve such debates. DST views ontogeny as contingent cycles of interaction among a varied set of developmental resources, no one of which controls the process. These factors include DNA, cellular and organismic structure, and social and ecological interactions. DST has …Read more
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2Conceptual change and conceptual diversity contribute to progress in scienceIn Gabriele Bammer (ed.), Change! Combining Analytic Approaches with Street Wisdom, Australian National University Press. pp. 163--176. 2015.
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119Molecular and Developmental BiologyIn 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
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The Baldwin effect and Genetic assimilation: Contrasting explanatory foci and Gene concepts in two approaches to an evolutionary processIn Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence & Stephen P. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 91-101. 2006.David Papineau (2003; 2005) has discussed the relationship between social learning and the family of postulated evolutionary processes that includes ‘organic selection’, ‘coincident selection’, ‘autonomisation’, ‘the Baldwin effect’ and ‘genetic assimilation’. In all these processes a trait which initially develops in the members of a population as a result of some interaction with the environment comes to develop without that interaction in their descendants. It is uncontroversial that the deve…Read more
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382Functional analysis and proper functionsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (3): 409-422. 1993.The etiological approach to ‘proper functions’ in biology can be strengthened by relating it to Robert Cummins' general treatment of function ascription. The proper functions of a biological trait are the functions it is assigned in a Cummins-style functional explanation of the fitness of ancestors. These functions figure in selective explanations of the trait. It is also argued that some recent etiological theories include inaccurate accounts of selective explanation in biology. Finally, a gene…Read more
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32Replicators and vehicles? Or developmental systems?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4): 623-624. 1994.
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Scientists’ Concepts of Innateness: Evolution or Attraction?In Richard Samuels & Daniel A. Wilkenfeld (eds.), Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science, Bloomsbury. pp. 172-201. 2019.
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 |