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40Weintraub's Aims: A Brief RejoinderEconomics and Philosophy 3 (1): 143-144. 1987.Weintraub is not really interested in whether economics is “science” or not. “Economists are not so unsophisticated as to think that calling economics a ‘science’ says anything about what economists do or should do”. But can it really be a matter of indifference to him whether the subject has the character of chemistry as opposed to literary criticism?
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Intentional Psychology and Evolutionary Biology: Part II: The Crucial DisanalogyBehavior and Philosophy 14 (2): 125. 1986.
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The Structure of Biological ScienceBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1): 119-121. 1987.
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9Review Symposium : Can Economic Theory Explain Everything? (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 9 (4): 509-529. 1979.
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46The biological justification of ethics: A best-case scenario: Alexander RosenbergSocial Philosophy and Policy 8 (1): 86-101. 1990.Social and behavioral scientists — that is, students of human nature — nowadays hardly ever use the term ‘human nature’. This reticence reflects both a becoming modesty about the aims of their disciplines and a healthy skepticism about whether there is any one thing really worthy of the label ‘human nature’. For some feature of humankind to be identified as accounting for our ‘nature’, it would have to reflect some property both distinctive of our species and systematically influential enough to…Read more
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35The human genome project: Research tactics and economic strategies*: Alexander RosenbergSocial Philosophy and Policy 13 (2): 1-17. 1996.In the Museum of Science and Technology in San Jose, California, there is a display dedicated to advances in biotechnology. Most prominent in the display is a double helix of telephone books stacked in two staggered spirals from the floor to the ceiling twenty-five feet above. The books are said to represent the current state of our knowledge of the eukaryotic genome: the primary sequences of DNA polynucleotides for the gene products which have been discovered so far in the twenty years since cl…Read more
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36The Political Philosophy of Biological Endowments: Some ConsiderationsSocial Philosophy and Policy 5 (1): 1-31. 1987.Is a government required or permitted to redistribute the gains and losses that differences in biological endowments generate? In particular, does the fact that individuals possess different biological endowments lead to unfair advantages within a market economy? These are questions on which some people are apt to have strong intuitions and ready arguments. Egalitarians may say yes and argue that as unearned, undeserved advantages and disadvantages, biological endowments are never fair, and that…Read more
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4Perceptual Presentations and Biological Function: A Comment on MatthenJournal of Philosophy 86 (1): 38-44. 1989.
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10La Teoría Económica como Filosofía PoliticaTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 13 (2): 279-299. 1998.Defiendo la legitimidad de la pregunta acerca de cuál puede ser el estatuto cognitivo de la Teoría Económica, y sostengo que la Teoría se comprende mejor como una rama de la Filosofía Política formal, en concreto, como una especie de contractualismo. Esto parece particularmente adecuado corno explicación de la Teoría deI equilibrio general. Dado el carácter intencional de las variables explicativas de la Teoría Económica y el papel de la información al realizar una elección, se argumenta que es …Read more
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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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63The Structure of Biological ScienceCambridge University Press. 1985.This book provides a comprehensive guide to the conceptual methodological, and epistemological problems of biology, and treats in depth the major developments in molecular biology and evolutionary theory that have transformed both biology and its philosophy in recent decades. At the same time the work is a sustained argument for a particular philosophy of biology that unifies disparate issues and offers a framework for expectations about the future directions of the life sciences. The argument e…Read more
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Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and PolicyCambridge University Press. 2000.A collection of essays by Alexander Rosenberg, the distinguished philosopher of science. The essays cover three broad areas related to Darwinian thought and naturalism: the first deals with the solution of philosophical problems such as reductionism, the second with the development of social theories, and the third with the intersection of evolutionary biology with economics, political philosophy, and public policy. Specific papers deal with naturalistic epistemology, the limits of reductionism,…Read more
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Philosophy of Social Science, coll. « Dimensions of Philosophy »Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 180 (1): 104-105. 1990.
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Intentional Psychology and Evolutionary Biology Part 1: The Uneasy AnalogyBehavior and Philosophy 14 (1): 15. 1986.
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Microeconomic General Statements: A Philosophical AnalysisDissertation, The Johns Hopkins University. 1971.
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46Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social ScienceJohns Hopkins University Press. 2019.Although largely conceptual, the book is an unequivocal defense of this new theory in the explanation of human behavior.
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15Is the Theory of Natural Selection a Statistical Theory?Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 14 (n/a): 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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62Microeconomic Laws: A Philosophical AnalysisUniversity of Pittsburgh Press. 1976.Rosenberg applies current thinking in philosophy of science to neoclassical economics in order to assess its claims to scientific standing. Although philosophers have used history and psychology as paradigms for the examination of social science, there is good reason to believe that economics is a more appropriate subject for analysis: it is the most systematized and quantified of the social sciences; its practitioners have reached a measure of consensus on important aspects of their subject; an…Read more
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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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ERRATUM TO ROSENBERG Vol. 14, No. 2, p. 127 bottom: Intentional Psychology and Evolutionary Biology: Part II: The Crucial Disanalogy (review)Behaviorism 16 (1): 97-97. 1988.
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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 |