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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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89From 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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91Understanding 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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112Emergence 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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26Montpellier 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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50Individuality 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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46This 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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25Computer 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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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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12Purposiveness, Necessity, and ContingencyIn Eric Watkins & Ina Goy (eds.), Kant's Theory of Biology, De Gruyter. pp. 185-202. 2014.
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24Functions: 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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9Espece et adaptation chez Kant et BuffonIn Jean Ferrari (ed.), Kant Et la France, G. Olms. pp. 107--120. 2005.
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29Écrire le cas – Pinel aliénistePhilosophie 120 (1): 67-94. 2014.Dans cet article, j’entends analyser la spécificité du cas clinique tel qu’il apparaît dans l’aliénisme de Pinel, et la manière dont la structure de son récit éclaire certains aspects de l’institution de la psychiatrie médicale. Le cas clinique est si naturellement vu comme un objet de plein droit médical, qu’il nous semble que le médecin parle de cas comme le botaniste parle de plantes. Rien de plus...
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17This extensive book may be the most complete synthesis of various criticisms of neo-Darwinian ideas stemming from distinct research traditions that, although steeped in the past, have received new attention in the last decade. The criticisms are used to build an alternative to neo-Darwinism by contesting its core claim; that is, natural selection is the cause of evolution
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9Adaptations in Transitions: How to Make Sense of Adaptation WhenIn Frédéric Bouchard & Philippe Huneman (eds.), From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality, Mit Press. pp. 141. 2013.
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114Natural Selection: A Case for the Counterfactual Approach (review)Erkenntnis 76 (2): 171-194. 2012.This paper investigates the conception of causation required in order to make sense of natural selection as a causal explanation of changes in traits or allele frequencies. It claims that under a counterfactual account of causation, natural selection is constituted by the causal relevance of traits and alleles to the variation in traits and alleles frequencies. The “statisticalist” view of selection (Walsh, Matthen, Ariew, Lewens) has shown that natural selection is not a cause superadded to the…Read more
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60Inscrutability and the Opacity of Natural Selection and Random Genetic Drift: Distinguishing the Epistemic and Metaphysical AspectsErkenntnis 80 (S3): 491-518. 2015.‘Statisticalists’ argue that the individual interactions of organisms taken together constitute natural selection. On this view, natural selection is an aggregated effect of interactions rather than some added cause acting on populations. The statisticalists’ view entails that natural selection and drift are indistinguishable aggregated effects of interactions, so that it becomes impossible to make a difference between them. The present paper attempts to make sense of the difference between sele…Read more
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34Formal Darwinism as a tool for understanding the status of organisms in evolutionary biologyBiology and Philosophy 29 (2): 271-279. 2014.This paper uses the framework of Formal Darwinism (FD) to evaluate organism-centric critiques of the Modern Synthesis (MS). The first section argues that the FD project reconciles two kinds of selective explanations in biology. Thus it is not correct to say that the MS neglects organisms—instead, it explains organisms’ design, as argued in the second section. In the third section I employ a concept of the organism derived from Kant that has two aspects: the parts presupposing the whole, and the …Read more
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117Determinism, predictability and open-ended evolution: lessons from computational emergenceSynthese 185 (2): 195-214. 2012.Among many properties distinguishing emergence, such as novelty, irreducibility and unpredictability, computational accounts of emergence in terms of computational incompressibility aim first at making sense of such unpredictability. Those accounts prove to be more objective than usual accounts in terms of levels of mereology, which often face objections of being too epistemic. The present paper defends computational accounts against some objections, and develops what such notions bring to the u…Read more
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The Plurality of ModelingHistory and Philosophy of the Life Science 36 (1): 1-11. 2014.Philosophers of science have recently focused on the scientific activity of modeling phenomena, and explicated several of its properties, as well as the activities embedded into it. A first approach to modeling has been elaborated in terms of representing a target system: yet other epistemic functions, such as producing data or detecting phenomena, are at least as relevant. Additional useful distinctions have emerged, such as the one between phenomenological and mechanistic models. In biological…Read more
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6Biodiversity and the Diversities of LifeRivista di Estetica 59 44-62. 2015.I am first going to develop a sort of cartography of the different meanings and usages of “biodiversity”, which will emphasize a few leitmotives. Next, to introduce some of these leitmotives, I will highlight two or three important elements in the process through which the term came to form a decisive role both for scientists from different fields linked to ecology, and the politicians or lawyers involved with the policies that govern the consequences of human actions on nature. In the conclusio…Read more
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14Natural sciencesIn Allen W. Wood & Songsuk Susan Hahn (eds.), The Cambridge history of philosophy in the nineteenth century (1790-1870), Cambridge University Press. 2011.
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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 |