•  34
    Exploitation: A Missing Element to Our Understanding of Environmental Justice
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 26 (3): 374-386. 2023.
    Environmental justice crucially depends on issues of distributive justice. However, absent from philosophical examinations of environmental justice has been careful consideration of the role exploitation should occupy in our moral evaluations of some cases the initially present as instances of environmental injustice. This paper seeks to both motivate the importance of understanding the significance exploitation has in select cases of environmental justice, as well as provide a conceptual framew…Read more
  •  20
    Are homologies really natural kinds?
    Biology and Philosophy 34 (4): 42. 2019.
    The metaphysical nature of homologies has been variously characterized as natural kind, individualist, and pluralist-pragmatic. In this essay, I aim to build on the work of proponents of a natural kinds ontology for homologies using Richard Boyd’s influential HPC account of natural kinds. I aim to advance this position by showing the unique fit of extending the HPC account to homologies, deflecting individualist critiques, as well as the pluralist-pragmatic alternative, showing that homologies h…Read more
  •  9
    Theoricity and homology: a reply to Roffe, Ginnobili, and Blanco
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (4): 62. 2018.
    Roffe et al. develop a rather creative line of response to Pearson’s :475–492, 2010) critique of pattern cladisma response centering on a structuralist approach to the homology concept. In this brief reply I attempt to demonstrate, however, that Roffe, and Ginnobili, and Blanco subtly mis-characterize the target of Pearson’s critique. The consequence of this mischaracterization is that even though the structuralist framework may help make sense of pattern cladism, it does not undermine Pearson’s…Read more
  •  20
    The notion of how-possibly explanations emerged with William Dray in response to Carl Hempel’s influential deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation. Dray’s aim was to distinguish explanations of states of affairs that might occur, in contrast to the aim of D-N explanations working to establish that states of affairs must actually occur. More recently, interest in how-possibly explanations has been particularly keen among philosophers of biology. One of the concerns philosophers of b…Read more
  •  520
    A common view of how-possibly explanations in biology treats them as explanatorily incomplete. In addition to this interpretation of how-possibly explanation, I argue that there is another interpretation, one which features what I term “explanatory strategies.” This strategy-centered interpretation of how-possibly explanation centers on there being a different explanatory context within which how-possibly explanations are offered. I contend that, in conditions where this strategy context is reco…Read more
  •  6
    Is heritability explanatorily useful?
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1): 270-288. 2005.
  •  31
    In this essay, we set out to survey and critically assess various attitudes and understandings of reductionism as it appears in discussions regarding the scientific study of religion. Our objective in the essay is twofold. First, we articulate what we will refer to as three ‘meta-interpretative’ frameworks, which summarize the distinct positions one can witness in response to the explanations coming out of research within the new science of religion. Second, and more importantly, we seek to demo…Read more
  •  40
    Does Environmental Pragmatism Shirk Philosophical Duty?
    Environmental Values 23 (3): 335-352. 2014.
    Environmental pragmatism is routinely characterised as an environmental philosophy that rejects the traditional values questions within environmental ethics. Critics of environmental pragmatism, in turn, complain that it cannot be characterised as an environmental philosophy, since it evades precisely the philosophical issues with which environmental philosophers are supposed to engage. This essay works to defend environmental pragmatism against the charge that it necessarily evades the central …Read more
  •  66
    Is heritability explanatorily useful?
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1): 270-288. 2007.
    The paper addresses the question of whether heritability can be useful in establishing genetics as an explanation for an individual’s display of some trait or behavior. After reviewing the fundamental philosophical challenge to heritability—that heritability is a population level measure—an argument is presented for rethinking the role heritability occupies in both causal and explanatory claims. It is argued that heritability can be useful for genetically based explanations of individual traits,…Read more
  •  87
    Intelligent Design proponents consistently deny that science is rightfully governed by the norm of methodological naturalism—that independent of one’s actual metaphysical commitments regarding the natural/supernatural, a scientist, qua scientist, must behave as if the world is constituted by the natural, material world. This essay works to develop more fully a pragmatic justification for methodological naturalism, one that focuses on a number of key elements found in 17th and 18th century embryo…Read more
  •  27
    Pattern Cladism, Homology, and Theory-Neutrality
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32 (4). 2010.