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26Subversive Reflections on the Human Genome ProjectPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.By developing an elaborate allegory, this paper attempts to show that the advertised aim of the Human Genome project, to sequence the entire 3 billion base pair primary sequence of the nucleic acid molecules that constitute the human genome, does not make scientific sense. This raises the questions of what the real aim of the project could be, and why the molecular biological community has chosen to offer the primary sequence as the objective to be funded, when identifying functionally important…Read more
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19Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary IntroductionRoutledge. 2007.Is life a purely physical process? What is human nature? Which of our traits is essential to us? In this volume, Daniel McShea and Alex Rosenberg – a biologist and a philosopher, respectively – join forces to create a new gateway to the philosophy of biology; making the major issues accessible and relevant to biologists and philosophers alike. Exploring concepts such as supervenience; the controversies about genocentrism and genetic determinism; and the debate about major transitions central to …Read more
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168Are homologies (selected effect or causal role) function free?Philosophy of Science 76 (3): 307-334. 2009.This article argues that at least very many judgments of homology rest on prior attributions of selected‐effect (SE) function, and that many of the “parts” of biological systems that are rightly classified as homologous are constituted by (are so classified in virtue of) their consequence etiologies. We claim that SE functions are often used in the prior identification of the parts deemed to be homologous and are often used to differentiate more restricted homologous kinds within less restricted…Read more
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301Matthen and Ariew’s Obituary for Fitness: Reports of its Death have been Greatly Exaggerated (review)Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3): 343-353. 2005.Philosophers of biology have been absorbed by the problem of defining evolutionary fitness since Darwin made it central to biological explanation. The apparent problem is obvious. Define fitness as some biologists implicitly do, in terms of actual survival and reproduction, and the principle of natural selection turns into an empty tautology: those organisms which survive and reproduce in larger numbers, survive and reproduce in larger numbers. Accordingly, many writers have sought to provide a …Read more
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177The issue of whether there are laws in biology and the “special science”1 has been of interest owing to the debate about whether scientific explanation requires laws. A well-warn argument goes thus: no laws in social science, no explanations, or at least no scientific explanations, at most explanation-sketches. The conclusion is not just a matter of labeling. If explanations are not scientific they are not epistemically or practically reliable. There are at least three well-known diagnoses of wh…Read more
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2410 The metaphysics of microeconomicsIn Uskali Mäki (ed.), The Economic World View: Studies in the Ontology of Economics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 66--174. 2001.
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69Discussion note: Indeterminism, probability, and randomness in evolutionary theoryPhilosophy of Science 68 (4): 536-544. 2001.
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56Reflexivity, uncertainty and the unity of scienceJournal of Economic Methodology 20 (4): 429-438. 2013.The paper argues that substantial support for Soros' claims about uncertainty and reflexivity in economics and human affairs generally are provided by the operation of both factors in the biological domain to produce substantially the same processes which have been recognized by ecologists and evolutionary biologists. In particular predator prey relations have their sources in uncertainty – i.e. the random character of variations, and frequency dependent co-evolution – reflexivity. The paper arg…Read more
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297Solving the Circularity Problem for Functions: A Response to NanayJournal of Philosophy 109 (10): 613-622. 2012.
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79Lessons from biology for philosophy of the human sciencesPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (1): 3-19. 2005.The social sciences must be biological ones, owing simply to the fact that they focus on the causes and effects of the behavior of members of a biological species, Homo sapiens. Our improved understanding of biology as a science and of the biological realm should enable us therefore to solve several of the outstanding problems of the philosophy of social science. The solution to these problems leaves most of the social and behavioral sciences pretty much as it finds them, though it does provide …Read more
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23Book Review:Philosophy of Biology and His Philosophy of Biology Elliot Sober (review)Philosophy of Science 63 (3): 452-. 1996.An examination of the foundations of Elliot Sober's philosophy of biology as reflected in his introductory textbook of that title reveals substantial and controversial philosophical commitments. Among these are the claim that all understanding is historical, the assertion that there are biological laws but they are necessary truths, the view that the fundamental theory in biology is a narrative, and the suggestion that biology adverts to ungrounded probabilistic propensities of the sort to be me…Read more
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60The Scientific Instrument: The Case for Constructive Empiricism over Scientific RealismPhilosophical Studies 106 109. 2001.
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68From Rational Choice to Reflexivity: Learning from Sen, Keynes, Hayek, Soros, and most of all, from DarwinEconomic Thought 3 (1): 21. 2014.This paper identifies the major failings of mainstream economics and the rational choice theory it relies upon. These failures were identified by the four figures mentioned in the title: economics treats agents as rational fools; by the time the long … More ›
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The character concept: Adaptationalism to molecular developmentsIn G. P. Wagner (ed.), The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology, Academic Press. pp. 201--216. 2001.
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2313 Darwinism in moral philosophy and social theoryIn J. Hodges & Gregory Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Cambridge University Press. pp. 310. 2003.
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103Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary IntroductionRoutledge. 2000.This user-friendly text covers key issues in the philosophy of science in an accessible and philosophically serious way. It will prove valuable to students studying philosophy of science as well as science students. Prize-winning author Alex Rosenberg explores the philosophical problems that science raises by its very nature and method. He skilfully demonstrates that scientific explanation, laws, causation, theory, models, evidence, reductionism, probability, teleology, realism and instrumentali…Read more
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83It is widely held that disciplines are autonomous when their taxonomies are “substrate neutral” and when the events, states and processes that realize their descriptive vocabulary are heterogeneous. This will be particularly true in the case of disciplines whose taxonomy consists largely in terms that individuate by function. Having concluded that the multiple realization of functional kinds is far less widespread than assumed or argued for, Shapiro cannot avail himself of the argument for the a…Read more
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21Neo-Classical Economics and Evolutionary Theory: Strange Bedfellows?PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992.Microeconomic theory and the theory of natural selection share salient features. This has encouraged economics to appeal to the character of evolutionary theory in defending the adequacy of microeconomics, despite its evident weaknesses as an explanatory or predictive theory. This paper explores the differences and similarities between these two theories and the phenomena they treat in order to assess the force of the economist's appeal to evolutionary theory as a model for how economic theory s…Read more
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337Fitness, probability and the principles of natural selectionBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (4): 693-712. 2004.We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken…Read more
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572 Why I am a naturalistIn Matthew C. Haug (ed.), Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory?, Routledge. pp. 32. 2013.
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319How to reconcile physicalism and antireductionism about biologyPhilosophy of Science 72 (1): 43-68. 2005.Physicalism and antireductionism are the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of biology. But these two theses are difficult to reconcile. Merely embracing an epistemic antireductionism will not suffice, as both reductionists and antireductionists accept that given our cognitive interests and limitations, non-molecular explanations may not be improved, corrected or grounded in molecular ones. Moreover, antireductionists themselves view their claim as a metaphysical or ontological one about the exi…Read more
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102The Metaphysics of MicroeconomicsThe Monist 78 (3): 352-367. 1995.The study of economics has been a going concern among philosophers for the better part of twenty years without very many people even noticing that economics has a metaphysics. Indeed, among economists the term ‘metaphysical’ is probably an epithet of opprobrium, employed to suggest that a claim is untestable or otherwise without cognitive significance. Philosophers of economics will admit to the existence of an epistemology of economics—the study of the nature, extent and justification of econom…Read more
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Davidson's unintended attack on psychologyIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Ernest LePore (eds.), Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Blackwell. 1985.
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53Selection and science: Critical notice of David Hull's science as a process (review)Biology and Philosophy 7 (2): 217-228. 1992.An examination of Hull's claims about the nature of interactors, replicators and selection, with special attention to how the genetic material realizes the first two types, and a critique of Hull's attempt to apply the theory of natural selection to the explanation of scientific change, and in particular the succession of theories. I conclude that difficulties attending the molecular instantiation of Hull's theory are vastly increased when it comes to be applied to memes.
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Arizona State UniversityPhilosophy - School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious StudiesProfessor (Part-time)
Durham, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Social Science |