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300Matthen 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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51Reflexivity, 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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296Solving the Circularity Problem for Functions: A Response to NanayJournal of Philosophy 109 (10): 613-622. 2012.
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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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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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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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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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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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335Fitness, 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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20Neo-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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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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311How 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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101The 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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121How Darwinian reductionism refutes genetic determinismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (1): 122-135. 2006.Genetic determinism labels the morally problematical claim that some socially significant traits, traits we care about, such as sexual orientation, gender roles, violence, alcoholism, mental illness, intelligence, are largely the results of the operation of genes and not much alterable by environment, learning or other human intervention. Genetic determinism does not require that genes literally fix these socially significant traits, but rather that they constrain them within narrow channels bey…Read more
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121On the original contract: Evolutionary game theory and human evolutionAnalyse & Kritik 27 (1): 136157. 2005.This paper considers whether the available evidence from archeology, biological anthropology, primatology, and comparative gene-sequencing, can test evolutionary game theory models of cooperation as historical hypotheses about the actual course of human prehistory. The examination proceeds on the assumption that cooperation is the product of cultural selection and is not a genetically encoded trait. Nevertheless, we conclude that gene sequence data may yet shed signi cant light on the evolution …Read more
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25Genie Selection, Molecular Biology and Biological InstrumentalismMidwest Studies in Philosophy 18 (1): 343-362. 1993.
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391. From developmental molecular biology to neurogenomics 2. More than you wanted to know about short term and long term implicit memory 3. How are explicit memories stored? 4. How the brain recalls memories 5. Each explicit memory is just a lot of implicit memories 6. Is ‘knowledge how’ computable? 7. Computationalism and neuroscience..
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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 |