•  55
    On Sociobiology (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 3 (4): 479-489. 1980.
  •  8
    Grades of Organization and the Units of Selection Controversy
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.
    Much recent work in sociobiology can be understood as designed to demonstrate the sufficiency of selection operating at lower levels of organization by the development of models at the level of the gene or the individual. Higher level units are accordingly viewed as artifacts of selection operating at lower levels. The adequacy of this latter form of argument is dependent upon issues of the complexity of the systems under consideration. A taxonomy is proposed elaborating a series of types, or gr…Read more
  •  4
    The Phenotype as the Level of Selection: Cave Organisms as Model Systems
    with Thomas C. Kane and Daniel W. Fong
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 151-164. 1990.
    Selection operates at many levels. Robert Brandon has distinguished the question of the level of selection from the unit of selection, arguing that the phenotype is commonly the target of selection, whatever the unit of selection might be. He uses "screening off" as a criterion for distinguishing the level of selection. Cave animals show a common morphological pattern which includes hypertrophy of some structures and reduction or loss of others. In a study of a cave dwelling crustacean, Gammarus…Read more
  •  6
    A Defense of Propensity Interpretations of Fitness
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992.
    We offer a systematic examination of propensity interpretations of fitness, which emphasizes the role that fitness plays in evolutionary theory and takes seriously the probabilistic character of evolutionary change. We distinguish questions of the probabilistic character of fitness from the particular interpretations of probability which could be incorporated. The roles of selection and drift in evolutionary models support the view that fitness must be understood within a probabilistic framework…Read more
  •  14
    The "tally argument" and the validation of psychoanalysis
    Philosophy of Science 57 (4): 668-676. 1990.
    The classic charge against Freudian theory is that the therapeutic success of psychoanalysis can be explained without appeal to the mechanisms of repression and insight. Whatever therapeutic success psychoanalysis might enjoy would then provide no support for the diagnostic claim that psychological disorders are due to repressed desires or for the therapeutic claim that the gains in psychoanalysis are due to insight into repressed causes. Adolf Grünbaum has repeated the charge in The Foundations…Read more
  •  6
    Union and interaction of body and soul
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 23 (2): 221-226. 1985.
  • Form and order in evolutionary biology
    In Margaret A. Boden (ed.), The philosophy of artificial life, Oxford University Press. pp. 146--72. 1996.
  •  35
    Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ances…Read more
  •  38
    Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ances…Read more
  •  14
    The Phenotype as the Level of Selection: Cave Organisms as Model Systems
    with Thomas C. Kane and Daniel W. Fong
    PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (1): 151-164. 1990.
    Selection operates at many levels. Some of the most obvious cases are organismic, such as changes in coloration under the influence of predation (cf. Kettlewell 1973; also Endler 1986). It also operates at other levels. Meiotic drive involves selection for a gene, independently of its effect on the organism. At a higher level, there may also be selection for patterns of colony growth in social insects, again under the influence of predation (cf. Wilson 1971). The appropriate level of selection i…Read more
  •  5
    Form and Order in Evolutionary Biology: Stuart Kauffman's Transformation of Theoretical Biology
    PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (2): 266-287. 1990.
    Stuart Kauffman’s forthcoming book, The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1991), is a large and ambitious attempt to bring about a major reorientation in theoretical biology and to provide a fundamental reinterpretation of the place of selection in evolutionary theory. Kauffman offers a formal framework which allows one to pose precise and well-defined questions about the constraints that self-organization imposes on the evolution of complex systems, and the relatio…Read more
  •  6
    Disappearance and the identity theory
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (September): 473-85. 1981.
    We have no schema for comprehending how a radical revision of our conceptual scheme such as that embraced by "eliminative materialism" could possibly be rationally justified. This general point is illustrated and pressed through an examination of richard rorty's classic defense of the "disappearance form of the identity theory." it is argued that 1) though more standard critiques of rorty fail, 2) rorty fails to make out the case for the view that incorrigibility" is the "mark of the mental" to …Read more
  •  9
    Emergence
    Biological Theory 2 (1): 91-96. 2007.
  •  12
    Turing tests for intelligence: Ned Block's defense of psychologism (review)
    Philosophical Studies 41 (May): 421-6. 1982.
  •  22
    Natural and artificial complexity
    Philosophy of Science 64 (4): 267. 1997.
    Genetic regulatory networks are complex, involving tens or hundreds of genes and scores of proteins with varying dependencies and organizations. This invites the application of artificial techniques in coming to understand natural complexity. I describe two attempts to deploy artificial models in understanding natural complexity. The first abstracts from empirically established patterns, favoring random architectures and very general constraints, in an attempt to model developmental phenomena. T…Read more
  •  26
    How not to reduce a functional psychology
    Philosophy of Science 49 (1): 125-37. 1982.
    There is often substantial disparity between philosophical ideals and scientific practice. Philosophical reductionism is motivated by a drive for ontological austerity. The vehicle is conceptual parsimony: the fewer our conceptual primitives, the less are our ontological commitments. A general moral to be drawn from my “Functionalism and Reductionism” is that scientific reduction does not, and should not be expected to, facilitate conceptual economy; yet reduction it still is, and in the classic…Read more
  •  30
    Functionalism and reductionism
    Philosophy of Science 46 (4): 533-58. 1979.
    It is here argued that functionalist constraints on psychology do not preclude the applicability of classic forms of reduction and, therefore, do not support claims to a principled, or de jure, autonomy of psychology. In Part I, after isolating one minimal restriction any functionalist theory must impose on its categories, it is shown that any functionalism imposing an additional constraint of de facto autonomy must also be committed to a pure functionalist--that is, a computationalist--model fo…Read more
  •  7
    Evolution Without Adaptation?
    Metascience 18 (2): 319-323. 2009.
  •  14
    Cognitive science and neuroscience: New wave reductionism
    Philosopical Psychology 12 (3): 297-307. 1999.
    John Bickle's Psychoneural reduction: the new wave (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) aims to resurrect reductionism within philosophy of mind. He develops a new model of scientific reduction, geared to enhancing our understanding of how theories in neuroscience and cognitive science are interrelated. I put this discussion in context, and assess the prospects for new wave reductionism, both as a general model of scientific reduction and as an attempt to defend reductionism in the philosophy of min…Read more
  •  5
    Autonomy and multiple realization
    Philosophy of Science 75 (5): 526-536. 2008.
    Multiple realization historically mandated the autonomy of psychology, and its principled irreducibility to neuroscience. Recently, multiple realization and its implications for the reducibility of psychology to neuroscience have been challenged. One challenge concerns the proper understanding of reduction. Another concerns whether multiple realization is as pervasive as is alleged. I focus on the latter question. I illustrate multiple realization with actual, rather than hypothetical, cases of …Read more
  •  44
    Mismatching categories?
    with William Edward Morris
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 62-63. 1993.
  •  26
    Sober on Brandon on screening-off and the levels of selection
    with Robert N. Brandon, Janis Antonovics, Richard Burian, Scott Carson, Greg Cooper, Paul Sheldon Davies, Christopher Horvath, Brent D. Mishler, Kelly Smith, and Peter Thrall
    Philosophy of Science 61 (3): 475-486. 1994.
    Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion
  •  29
    Emergence and Its Place in Nature: A Case Study of Biochemical Networks
    with F. C. Boogerd, F. J. Bruggeman, Achim Stephan, and H. Westerhoff
    Synthese 145 (1). 2005.
    We will show that there is a strong form of emergence in cell biology. Beginning with C.D. Broad's classic discussion of emergence, we distinguish two conditions sufficient for emergence. Emergence in biology must be compatible with the thought that all explanations of systemic properties are mechanistic explanations and with their sufficiency. Explanations of systemic properties are always in terms of the properties of the parts within the system. Nonetheless, systemic properties can still be e…Read more
  •  45
    Emergence and its place in nature: a case study of biochemical networks
    with Fred C. Boogerd, Frank J. Bruggeman, Achim Stephan, and Hans V. Westerhoff
    Synthese 145 (1): 131-164. 2005.
    We will show that there is a strong form of emergence in cell biology. Beginning with C.D. Broad’s classic discussion of emergence, we distinguish two conditions sufficient for emergence. Emergence in biology must be compatible with the thought that all explanations of systemic properties are mechanistic explanations and with their sufficiency. Explanations of systemic properties are always in terms of the properties of the parts within the system. Nonetheless, systemic properties can still be e…Read more
  •  41
    An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scien…Read more