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33The Inevitability of a Generalized Darwinian Theory of Behavior, Society, and CultureAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 58 (1): 51-62. 2021.The paper argues that the evident features of all human affairs of interest to the social scientist demand Darwinian explanations. It must however be recognized that the range of regularities, models, theories that a successful Darwinian research program will inspire must be heterogeneous, operate at very different scales, identify a diversity of distinct and often unrepeated processes operating through multifarious instances of blind variation and environmental selection. There will be no canon…Read more
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33Can physicalist antireductionism compute the embryo?Philosophy of Science 64 (4): 371. 1997.It is widely held that (1) there are autonomous levels of organization above that of the macromolecule and that (2) at least sometimes macromolecular processes are best explained in terms of such autonomous kinds. I argue that molecular developmental biology honors neither of these claims, and I show that the only way they can be rendered consistent with a minimal physicalism is through the adoption of controversial claims about causation and explanation which undercut the force of these two ant…Read more
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31Review symposium : IV—anti-behaviourism in the hour of its disintegrationPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 2 (1): 355-363. 1972.
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31The Virtues of Vagueness in the Languages of ScienceDialogue 14 (2): 281-305. 1975.Philosophers have traditionally decried vagueness as an unmitigated evil, and natural scientists have consistently agreed with them. Nevertheless, as I hope to show, the vagueness of scientific terms has some important advantages for the theories in which these terms figure. In so arguing I do not mean to put the best face on some unpleasant facts or to make a virtue out of a necessity. I shall begin, however, by arguing that on some contemporary accounts of scientific language the vagueness of …Read more
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31Genes, Mind and Culture by Charles Lumsden and E. O. Wilson (review)Journal of Philosophy 80 (5): 304-311. 1983.
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28Mackie and Shoemaker on dispositions and propertiesMidwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1): 77-91. 1984.
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27Reduction and MechanismCambridge University Press. 2020.Reductionism is a widely endorsed methodology among biologists, a metaphysical theory advanced to vindicate the biologist's methodology, and an epistemic thesis those opposed to reductionism have been eager to refute. While the methodology has gone from strength to strength in its history of achievements, the metaphysical thesis grounding it remained controversial despite its significant changes over the last 75 years of the philosophy of science. Meanwhile, antireductionism about biology, and e…Read more
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26Is there an evolutionary biology of playIn Colin Allen & D. Jamison (eds.), Readings in Animal Cognition, Mit Press. pp. 217--228. 1996.
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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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25Typologies: Obstacles and opportunities in scientific changeBehavioral and Brain Sciences 4 (2): 298-299. 1981.
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25Genie Selection, Molecular Biology and Biological InstrumentalismMidwest Studies in Philosophy 18 (1): 343-362. 1993.
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25The administrators of the human genome project were eager to stimulate public discussion, academic debate, legal and legislative deliberation of how individuals and institutions should respond to the revolution in genomics. Paramount among the issues whose discussion they encouraged are three obvious matters: The threat which access to our genetic information poses for heath insurance, employment, and social discrimination the nefarious consequences for scientific advance of turning basic scient…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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24Is the Theory of Natural Selection a Statistical Theory?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (sup1): 187-207. 1988.In The Structure of Biological Science I argued that the theory of natural selection is a statistical theory for reasons much like those which makes thermodynamics a statistical theory. In particular, the theory claims that fitness differences are large enough and the life span of species long enough for increases in average fitness always to appear in the long run; and this claim, I held, is of the same form as the statistical version of the second law of thermodynamics.For the latter law also …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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23The past recaptured: Mongin on the problem of realism in economicsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 18 (3): 379-381. 1988.
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23Critical review: Sober's Philosophy of biology and his philosophy of biologyPhilosophy of Science 63 (3): 452-464. 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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22On Fodor's distinction between strong and weak equivalence in machine simulationPhilosophy of Science 40 (March): 118-120. 1973.
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2113 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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21The philosophy of science: a contemporary introductionRoutledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2000.Any serious student attempting to better understand the nature, methods, and justification of science will value Alex Rosenberg's and Lee McIntyre's updated and substantially revised Fourth Edition of Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction. Weaving lucid explanations with clear analyses, the volume is as a much-used, thematically-oriented introduction to the field.
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21History as Applied Science: A Philosophical Study (review)Philosophy of Science 41 (4): 430-431. 1974.
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20On the interanimation of micro and macroeconomicsPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 6 (1): 35-53. 1976.
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20Genes, Mind and Culture by Charles Lumsden and E. O. Wilson (review)Journal of Philosophy 80 (5): 304-311. 1983.
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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 |