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36The problem of generation has been, for Kant scholars, a kind of test of Kant's successive concepts of finality. Although he deplores the absence of a naturalistic account of purposiveness (and hence of reproduction) in his pre-critical writings, in the First Critique he nevertheless presents a "reductionist" view of finality in the Transcendental Dialectic's Appendices. This finality can be used only as a language, extended to the whole of nature, but which must be filled with mechanistic expla…Read more
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5Classification, Disease, and Evidence (edited book)Springer Science + Business. 2014.This anthology of essays presents a sample of studies from recent philosophy of medicine addressing issues which attempt to answer very general (interdependent) questions: (a) what is a disease and what is health? (b) How do we (causally) explain diseases? (c) And how do we distinguish diseases, i.e. define classes of diseases and recognize that an instance X of disease belongs to a given class B? (d) How do we assess and choose cure/ therapy?
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61On Probabilities in Biology and PhysicsErkenntnis 80 (S3): 433-456. 2015.This volume focuses on various questions concerning the interpretation of probability and probabilistic reasoning in biology and physics. It is inspired by the idea that philosophers of biology and philosophers of physics who work on the foundations of their disciplines encounter similar questions and problems concerning the role and application of probability, and that interaction between the two communities will be both interesting and fruitful. In this introduction we present the background t…Read more
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46Individuality as a Theoretical Scheme. II. About the Weak Individuality of Organisms and EcosystemsBiological Theory 9 (4): 374-381. 2014.Following a previous elaboration of the concept of weak individuality and some examples of its instances in ecology and biology, the article focuses on general features of the concept, arguing that in any ontological field individuals are understood on the basis of our knowledge of interactions, through the application of these general formulas for extracting individuals from interactions. Then, the specificities of the individuality in the sense of this weak concept are examined in ecology; I c…Read more
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53Emergence made ontological? Computational versus combinatorial approachesPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 595-607. 2008.I challenge the usual approach of defining emergence in terms of properties of wholes “emerging” upon properties of parts. This approach indeed fails to meet the requirement of nontriviality, since it renders a bunch of ordinary properties emergent; however, by defining emergence as the incompressibility of a simulation process, we have an objective meaning of emergence because the difference between the processes satisfying the incompressibility criterion and the other processes does not depend…Read more
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Computer sciences meet evolutionary biology: issues in gradualismIn Torres Juan, Pombo Olga, Symons John & Rahman Shahid (eds.), Special sciences and the Unity of Science, Springer. 2012.
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56Assessing statistical views of natural selection: Room for non-local causation?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4): 604-612. 2013.Recently some philosophers have emphasized a potentially irreconcilable conceptual antagonism between the statistical characterization of natural selection and the standard scientific discussion of natural selection in terms of forces and causes. Other philosophers have developed an account of the causal character of selectionist statements represented in terms of counterfactuals. I examine the compatibility between such statisticalism and counterfactually based causal accounts of natural select…Read more
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29From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality (edited book)MIT Press. 2013.Our intuitive assumption that only organisms are the real individuals in the natural world is at odds with developments in cell biology, ecology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and other fields. Although organisms have served for centuries as nature’s paradigmatic individuals, science suggests that organisms are only one of the many ways in which the natural world could be organized. When living beings work together—as in ant colonies, beehives, and bacteria-metazoan symbiosis—new collective in…Read more
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3Kant's Critique Of Leibnizian Theory Of Organisms: An Unnoticed Cornerstone For Criticism?Yeditepe'de Felsefe (Philosophy at Yeditepe) 4
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90From the critique of judgment to the hermeneutics of nature: Sketching the fate of philosophy of nature after Kant (review)Continental Philosophy Review 39 (1): 1-34. 2006.This paper proposes an interpretative framework for some developments of the philosophy of nature after Kant. I emphasize the critique of the economy of nature in the Critique of judgement. I argue that it resulted in a split of a previous structure of knowledge; such a structure articulated natural theology and natural philosophy on the basis of the consideration of the order displayed by living beings, both in their internal organisation and their ecological distribution. The possibility of a …Read more
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92Understanding purpose: Kant and the philosophy of biology (edited book)University of Rochester Press. 2007.A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's philosophy of biology.
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113Emergence and adaptationMinds and Machines 18 (4): 493-520. 2008.I investigate the relationship between adaptation, as defined in evolutionary theory through natural selection, and the concept of emergence. I argue that there is an essential correlation between the former, and “emergence” defined in the field of algorithmic simulations. I first show that the computational concept of emergence (in terms of incompressible simulation) can be correlated with a causal criterion of emergence (in terms of the specificity of the explanation of global patterns). On th…Read more
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27Montpellier Vitalism and the Emergence of Alienism in France (1750–1800): The Case of the PassionsScience in Context 21 (4): 615-647. 2008.ArgumentThis paper considers how certain ideas elaborated by the Montpellier vitalists influenced the rise of French alienism, and how those ideas framed the changing view of passions during the eighteenth century. Various kinds of evidence attest that the passions progressively became the focus of medical attention, rather than a theme specific to moralists and philosophers. Vitalism conceived of organisms as animal economies understandable through the transformations of the various modes of th…Read more
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51Individuality as a Theoretical Scheme. I. Formal and Material Concepts of IndividualityBiological Theory 9 (4): 361-373. 2014.Biological individuals are usually defined by evolutionists through a reference to natural selection. This article looks for a concept of individuality that would hold at the same time for organisms and for communities or ecosystems, the latter being unaffected by natural selection. In the wake of Simon’s notion of “quasi-independence,” I elaborate a concept of “weak individuality” defined by probabilistic connections between sub-entities, read off our knowledge of their interactions. This forma…Read more
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47This chapter surveys the philosophical problems raised by the two Darwinian claims of the existence of a Tree of a life, and the explanatory power of natural selection. It explores the specificity of explanations by natural selection, emphasizing the high context-dependency of any process of selection. Some consequences are drawn about the difficulty of those explanations to fit a nomological model of explanation, and the irreducibility of their historic-narrative dimension. The paper introduces…Read more
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26Computer Science Meets Evolutionary Biology: Pure Possible Processes and the Issue of GradualismIn Torres Juan, Pombo Olga, Symons John & Rahman Shahid (eds.), Special sciences and the Unity of Science, Springer. pp. 137--162. 2012.
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12Purposiveness, Necessity, and ContingencyIn Eric Watkins & Ina Goy (eds.), Kant's Theory of Biology, De Gruyter. pp. 185-202. 2014.
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31Assessing the prospects for a return of organisms in evolutionary biologyHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32 (2/3). 2010.
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25Functions: selection and mechanisms (edited book)Springer. 2013.This volume handles in various perspectives the concept of function and the nature of functional explanations, topics much discussed since two major and conflicting accounts have been raised by Larry Wright and Robert Cummins’s papers in the 1970s. Here, both Wright’s ”etiological theory of functions’ and Cummins’s ”systemic’ conception of functions are refined and elaborated in the light of current scientific practice, with papers showing how the ”etiological’ theory faces several objections an…Read more
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82Kant vs. Leibniz in the Second Antinomy: Organisms Are Not Infinitely Subtle MachinesKant Studien 105 (2): 155-195. 2014.This paper interprets the two pages devoted in the Critique of Pure Reason to a critique of Leibniz’s view of organisms as infinitely organized machines. It argues that this issue of organisms represents a crucial test-case for Kant in regard to the conflicting notions of space, continuity and divisibility held by classical metaphysics and by criticism. I first present Leibniz’s doctrine and its justification. In a second step, I explain the general reasoning by which Kant defines the problem of…Read more
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21Weak realism in the etiological theory of functionsIn Functions: selection and mechanisms, Springer. pp. 105--130. 2013.
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University of Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneDepartment for Teaching and Research in Philosophy (UFR10)Regular Faculty
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Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueInstitute for the History and Philosophy of Science and TechnologyRegular Faculty
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Biology |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |