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25Coming of age in the philosophy of biologyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 30 (4). 1987.No abstract
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Review of Gary Cziko's Without miracles: universal selection theory and the second Darwinian revolution (review)Philosophical Psychology 10 399-401. 1997.
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66What's Wrong with Methodological Naturalism?Human Affairs 19 (2). 2009.The compatibility of Darwinism with religious beliefs has been the subject of vigorous debate from 1859 to the present day. Darwin himself did not think that there was any incompatibility between his theory of natural selection and the existence of God. However, he did not think that appeals to the direct or indirect activity of a Creator substantially increased our understanding of any natural phenomenon. In effect, Darwin endorsed what we would today label as ’methodological naturalism,’ rough…Read more
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81Ontic realism and scientific explanationPhilosophy of Science 63 (3): 321. 1996.Wesley Salmon defends an ontic realism that distinguishes explanatory from descriptive knowledge. Explanatory knowledge makes appeals to (unobservable) theoretical acausal mechanisms. Salmon presents an argument designed both to legitimize attributing truth values to theoretical claims and to justify treating theoretical claims as descriptions. The argument succeeds but only at the price of calling the distinction between explanation and description into question. Even if Salmon's attempts to di…Read more
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18Letters: the Grand Competition ContinuesRussell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 12. 1992.
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16Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy by Michael Ruse (review)Isis 79 286-287. 1988.
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Reviews: Philosophical Aspects of Science-Complexity and Evolution (review)Annals of Science 55 (4): 428. 1998.
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15Naturalism and evolutionary epistemologiesIn M. Sintonen, J. Wolenski & I. Niiniluoto (eds.), Handbook of Epistemology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 735--745. 2004.
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30Individualism and the unity of science, Harold Kincaid. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, VII + 165 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 16 (1): 147-174. 2000.
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11Discussions of the moral status of animals typically address the key questions from an anthropocentric point of view. An alternative approach adopts a non-anthropocentric perspective. In this paper, I explore the theoretical and experimental results which make this approach plausible and address two key questions: [1] to what extent is it proper to speak of the moral lives of non-human animals? [2] How might we empirically establish that animals lead moral lives?
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49Ethics and evolution: The biological basis of moralityInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 36 ( 1-2). 1993.
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35Scaling the metaphorical brick wallBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6): 947-948. 1999.Palmer argues that functionalist accounts of the mind are radically incomplete in virtue of a “metaphorical brick wall” that precludes a complete treatment of qualia. I argue that functionalists should remain unmoved by this line of argument to the effect that their accounts fail to do justice to some “intrinsic” features of experience.
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18Russell's Scientific RealismRussell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 8 (1): 195-208. 1988.
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41An Information-Theoretic Approach to Evolutionary Epistemology: Information and Meaning in Evolutionary Processes William F. Harms Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 (review)Biological Theory 1 (4): 431-433. 2006.
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24Ayer and Russell on Naive RealismPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1976. 1976.In this article Ayer's criticisms of Russell's defense of scientific realism and his criticisms of Russell's rejection of naive realism are discussed. It is argued that Ayer's criticisms either lack force or depend for their validity on the assumption of existence of a clear cut distinction between conventional and factual issues, an assumption which is question begging with respect to his discussion of Russell.
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38Metaphors and mechanisms in vehicle-based selection theoryBehavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4): 612-612. 1994.
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73Epistemology from an evolutionary point of viewIn E. Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, The Mit Press. Bradford Books. pp. 453--476. 1994.
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5Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to PhilosophyMichael RuseIsis 79 (2): 286-287. 1988.