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58Review of Daniel W. McShea and Robert N. Brandon, Biology's First Law (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (1). 2011.McShea and Brandon propose that in the absence of constraint, biological diversity increases spontaneously. While heuristically useful, the thesis is unclear and of dubious empirical validity. The authors have no natural way to distinguish entropic decrease of diversity from the kind of increase that they are interested in. They make unsupported claims about how to explain dramatic increases of diversity and increases of functional complexity.
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58Intensionality and perception: A reply to RosenbergJournal of Philosophy 86 (December): 727-733. 1989.
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57A Note on Parmenides' Denial of Past and FutureDialogue 25 (3): 553-. 1986.Does Parmenides really use the non-existence argument to deny the past?
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51Elsevier Handbook in Philosophy of Biology (edited book)Elsevier. 2004.This collection of 25 essays by leading researchers provides an overview of the state of the field.
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49Human rationality and the unique origin constraintIn André Ariew (ed.), Functions, Oxford University Press. pp. 341. 2002.This paper offers a new definition of "adaptationism". An evolutionary account is adaptationist, it is suggested, if it allows for multiple independent origins for the same function -- i.e., if it violates the "Unique Origin Constraint". While this account captures much of the position Gould and Lewontin intended to stigmatize, it leaves it open that adaptationist accounts may sometimes be appropriate. However, there are many important cases, including that of human rationality, in which it i…Read more
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48Color nominalism, pluralistic realism, and color scienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (1): 39-40. 2003.Byrne & Hilbert are right that it might be an objective fact that a particular tomato is unique red, but wrong that it cannot simultaneously be yellowish-red (not only objectively, but from somebody else's point of view). Sensory categorization varies among organisms, slightly among conspecifics, and sharply across taxa. There is no question of truth or falsity concerning choice of categories, only of utility and disutility. The appropriate framework for color categories is Nominalism and Plural…Read more
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45Review of Thomas Natsoulas, Consciousness and Perceptual Experience (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2014. 2014.A review of Thomas Natsoulas's "Consciousness and Perceptual Experience."
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43Discussion. Evolution, Wisconsin style: selection and the explanation of individual traitsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (1): 143-150. 1999.natural selection may show why all (most, some) humans have an opposable thumb, but cannot show why any particular human has one, Karen Neander ([1995a], [1995b]) argues that this is false because natural selection is 'cumulative'. It is argued here, on grounds independent of its cumulativity, that selection can explain the characteristics of individual organisms subsequent to the event. The difference of opinion between Sober and his critics turns on an ontological dispute about how organisms a…Read more
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42Is color perception really categorical?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (4): 504-505. 2005.Are color categories the evolutionary product of their usefulness in communication, or is this an accidental benefit they give us? It is argued here that embodiment constraints on color categorization suggest that communication is an add-on at best. Thus, the Steels & Belpaeme (S&B) model may be important in explaining coordination, but only at the margin. Furthermore, the concentration on discrimination is questionable: coclassification is at least as important.
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38How (and why) Darwinian selection restricts environmental feedbackBehavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (3): 545-545. 2001.Selectionist models date back to Empedocles in Ancient Greece. The novelty of Darwinian selection is that it is able to produce adaptively valuable things without being sensitive to adaptive value. Darwin achieved this result by a restriction of environmental feedback to the replicative process. Immune system selection definitely does not respect this restriction, and it is doubtful whether operant learning does.
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34Review of Benjamin Morison, On Location: Aristotle's Concept of Place (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (2). 2003.
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33Assembling the EmotionsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (sup1): 185-212. 2006.Endogenous depression is highly correlated with low levels of serotonin in the central nervous system. Does this imply or suggest that this sort of depression just is this neurochemical deficit? Scorning such an inference, Antonio Damasio writes:If feeling happy or sad … corresponds in part to the cognitive modes under which your thoughts are operating, then the explanation also requires that the chemical acts on the circuits which generate and manipulate [such thoughts]. Which means that reduci…Read more
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22How Do We Know How Sensory Properties Appear? A Reply to Νenad MiščevićCroatian Journal of Philosophy 12 (3): 509-518. 2012.The paper is a reply to Miščević (same volume). His objections are discussed and answered, in particular objections concerning Cartesian certainty in our knowledge of color.
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21R. M. Dancy, "Sense and Contradiction" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (3): 345. 1978.
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21What Sort of Science Is Evolutionary Biology?Dialogue 30 (1-2): 129-. 1991.A review of Paul Thompson's semantic interpretation of evolutionary theory.
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17Intentionality and the linguistic analogyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1): 77-94. 2000.
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14Aristotle's Semantics and a Puzzle Concerning ChangeCanadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (sup1): 21-40. 1984.In this paper I shall examine Aristotle's treatment of a certain puzzle concerning change. In section I, I shall show that within a certain standard framework for the semantics of subject-predicate sentences a number of things that Aristotle wants to maintain do not make sense. Then, I shall outline a somewhat non-standard account of the semantics for such sentences — arguably Aristotle's — and show how the proposals concerning change fit quite naturally into this framework. The results of this …Read more
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Perception |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Biology |
Aesthetic Pleasure |
Aesthetic Subjectivism |
The Value of Art |