Justin Garson

I develop a distinction between two types of psychological hedonism. Inferential hedonism (or “I-hedonism”) holds that each person only has ultimate desires regarding his or her own hedonic states (pleasure and pain). Reinforcement hedonism (or “R–hedonism”) holds that each person's ultimate desires, whatever their contents are, are differentially reinforced in that person’s cognitive system only by virtue of their association with hedonic states. I’ll argue that accepting R-hedonism and rejecting I-hedonism provides a conciliatory position on the traditional altruism debate, and that it coheres well with the neuroscientist Anthony Dickinson’s theory about the evolutionary function of hedonic states, the “hedonic interface theory.” Finally, I’ll defend R-hedonism from potential objections.

The Harvard physiologists Alexander Forbes (1882-1965) and Walter Bradford Cannon (1871-1945) had an enormous impact on the physiology and neuroscience of the twentieth century. In addition to their voluminous scientific output, they also used literature to reflect on the nature of science itself and its social significance. Forbes wrote a novel, The Radio Gunner, a literary memoir, Quest for a Northern Air Route, and several short stories. Cannon, in addition to several books of popular science, wrote a literary memoir in the last year of his life, The Way of an Investigator. The following will provide a brief overview of the life and work of Forbes and Cannon. It will then discuss the way that Forbes used literature to express his views about the changing role of communications technology in the military, and his evolving view of the nervous system itself as a kind of information-processing device. It will go on to discuss the way that Cannon used literature to articulate the horrors he witnessed on the battlefield, as well as to contribute to the philosophy of science, and in particular, to the logic of scientific discovery. Finally, it will consider the historical and philosophical value of deeper investigation of the literary productions of scientists.

This article presents a distinct sense of ‘mechanism’, which I call the functional sense of mechanism. According to this sense, mechanisms serve functions, and this fact places substantive restrictions on the kinds of system activities ‘for which’ there can be a mechanism. On this view, there are no mechanisms for pathology; pathologies result from disrupting mechanisms for functions. Second, on this sense, natural selection is probably not a mechanism for evolution because it does not serve a function. After distinguishing this sense fromsimilar explications of ‘mechanism’, I argue that it is ubiquitous in biology and has valuable epistemic benefits.

Carl F. Craver and Lindley Darden’s new book, In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences, is a fantastic and lucid introduction to the “new mechanism” tradition in the philosophy of science. Over the last 2 decades, but particularly since the turn of the century, this has become an influential framework for thinking about core problems in the history and philosophy of science, with a strong emphasis on biology. There are at least four major aims. First, the new mechanism tradition purports to resolve conventional problems in the philosophy of science, such as the nature of explanation, theory evaluation, reduction, the unity of science, and the levels of the scientific hierarchy. Second, it constitutes what Karl Popper called a Logik der Forschung: a set of maxims and precepts to propel the process of scientific discovery itself. This emphasis on the process of discovery distinguishes the tradition from much of twentieth-century philosophy of science, with its emphasis on the logic of justification. Third, the new mechanism tradition, at least in Craver and Darden’s view, recommends a certain historiographical framework for organizing the history of biology, a framework that depicts the history of biology primarily as a search for mechanisms. Fourth, it constitutes a fundamental metaphysics—a picture of what the physical world is like, in which entities possess various properties, which allow them to have various powers and which are organized in such a way as to give rise to observable phenomena. As the authors provocatively conclude, “nothing in biology makes any sense without the idea that biologists are searching for mechanisms” (202). I do not know whether the authors are correct in their assessment, but this book certainly demonstrates the scope of their ambitions.

During the 1990s, many philosophers wrestled with the problem of function indeterminacy. Although interest in the problem has waned, I argue that solving the problem is of value for biomedical research and practice. This is because a solution to the problem is required in order to specify rigorously the conditions under which a given item is “dysfunctional.” In the following I revisit a solution developed originally by Neander, which uses functional analysis to solve the problem. I situate her solution in the framework of mechanistic explanation and suggest two improvements.

Despite the voluminous literature on biological functions produced over the last 40 years, few philosophers have studied the concept of function as it is used in neuroscience. Recently, Craver (forthcoming; also see Craver 2001) defended the causal role theory against the selected effects theory as the most appropriate theory of function for neuroscience. The following argues that though neuroscientists do study causal role functions, the scope of that theory is not as universal as claimed. Despite the strong prima facie superiority of the causal role theory, the selected effects theory (when properly developed) can handle many cases from neuroscience with equal facility. It argues this by presenting a new theory of function that generalizes the notion of a ‘selection process’ to include processes such as neural selection, antibody selection, and some forms of learning—that is, to include structures that have been differentially retained as well as those that have been differentially reproduced. This view, called the generalized selected effects theory of function, will be defended from criticism and distinguished from similar views in the literature

The first use of the term "information" to describe the content of nervous impulse occurs 20 years prior to Shannon`s (1948) work, in Edgar Adrian`s The Basis of Sensation (1928). Although, at least throughout the 1920s and early 30s, the term "information" does not appear in Adrian`s scientific writings to describe the content of nervous impulse, the notion that the structure of nervous impulse constitutes a type of message subject to certain constraints plays an important role in all of his writings throughout the period. The appearance of the concept of information in Adrian`s work raises at least two important questions: (i) what were the relevant factors that motivated Adrian`s use of the concept of information? (ii) What concept of information does Adrian appeal to, and how can it be situated in relation to contemporary philosophical accounts of the notion of information in biology? The first question involves an account of the application of communications technology in neurobiology as well as the historical and scientific background of Adrian`s major scientific achievement, which was the recording of the action potential of a single sensory neuron. The response to the second question involves an explication of Adrian`s concept of information and an evaluation of how it may be situated in relation to more contemporary philosophical explications of a semantic concept of information. I suggest that Adrian`s concept of information places limitations on the sorts of systems that are referred to as information carriers by causal and functional accounts of information.

We sketch a novel and improved version of Boorse’s biostatistical theory of functions. Roughly, our theory maintains that (i) functions are non-negligible contributions to survival or inclusive fitness (when a trait contributes to survival or inclusive fitness); (ii) situations appropriate for the performance of a function are typical situations in which a trait contributes to survival or inclusive fitness; (iii) appropriate rates of functioning are rates that make adequate contributions to survival or inclusive fitness (in situations appropriate for the performance of that function); and (iv) dysfunction is the inability to perform a function at an appropriate rate in appropriate situations. Based on our theory, we sketch solutions to three problems that have afflicted Boorse’s theory of function, namely, Kingma’s ([2010]) problem of the situation-specificity of functions, the problem of multi-functional traits, and the problem of how to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate rates of functioning.

The following considers the role of historical fidelity in habitat reconstruction efforts. To what extent should habitat reconstruction be guided by the goal of recreating some past state of a damaged ecosystem? I consider Sarkar’s “replacement argument,” which holds that, in most habitat reconstruction efforts, there is little justification for appealing to historical fidelity. I argue that Sarkar does not provide adequate grounds for deprecating historical fidelity relative to other natural values such as biodiversity or wild nature

For some, biology explains all there is to know about the mind. Yet many big questions remain: is the mind shaped by genes or the environment? If mental traits are the result of adaptations built up over thousands of years, as evolutionary psychologists claim, how can such claims be tested? If the mind is a machine, as biologists argue, how does it allow for something as complex as human consciousness? The Biological Mind: A Philosophical Introduction explores these questions and more, using the philosophy of biology to introduce and assess the nature of the mind. Drawing on the four key themes of evolutionary biology; molecular biology and genetics; neuroscience; and biomedicine and psychiatry Justin Garson addresses the following key topics: moral psychology, altruism and levels of selection evolutionary psychology and modularity genes, environment and the nature-nurture debate neuroscience, reductionism and the relation between biology and free will function, selection and mental representation psychiatric classification and the maladapted mind. Extensive use of examples and case studies is made throughout the book, and additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. It will also be an excellent resource for those in related fields such as biology

This book chapter is a short response to a paper by the psychiatrist Nicholas Kontos, on the phenomenon of psychological symptom amplification (PSA). PSA takes place when patients present symptoms to clinicians that they do not actually have, or, perhaps more commonly, they exaggerate symptoms they do have. Kontos argues that, because of modern medical training, it is very difficult for clinicians to recognize that the patient's presented symptoms are exaggerated or nonexistent. I argue that the hiddenness of PSA is a result of far-reaching instutitional changes that took place in American psychiatry in the 1970s. In short, many psychiatrists went from seeing mental disorders as (unconscious) strategies to seeing them as dysfunctions, nothing more. Recognizing PSA involves adopting a perspective that has been effectively abolished in contemporary American psychiatry.

Biological diversity - or ‘biodiversity’ - is the degree of variation of life within an ecosystem. It is a relatively new topic of study but has grown enormously in recent years. Because of its interdisciplinary nature the very concept of biodiversity is the subject of debate amongst philosophers, biologists, geographers and environmentalists. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising twenty-three chapters by a team of international contributors the _Handbook_ is divided into six parts: Historical and sociological contexts, focusing on the emergence of the term and early attempts to measure biodiversity _What is biodiversity? _How should biodiversity be defined? How can biodiversity include entities at the edge of its boundaries, including microbial diversity and genetically engineered organisms? _Why protect biodiversity? _What can traditional environmental ethics_ _contribute to biodiversity?_ _Topics covered include anthropocentrism, intrinsic value, and ethical controversies surrounding the economics of biodiversity _Measurement and methodology: _including decision-theory and conservation, the use of indicators for biodiversity, and the changing use of genetics in biodiversity conservation _Social contexts and global justice: _including conservation and community conflicts and biodiversity and cultural values _Biodiversity and other environmental values_: How does biodiversity relate to other values like ecological restoration or ecological sustainability? Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, environmental science and environmental studies, and conservation management, it will also be extremely useful to those studying biodiversity in subjects such as biology and geography.