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22Chance in the Modern SynthesisIn Grant Ramsey & Charles H. Pence (eds.), Chance in Evolution, University of Chicago. 2016.The modern synthesis in evolutionary biology is taken to be that period in which a consensus developed among biologists about the major causes of evolution, a consensus that informed research in evolutionary biology for at least a half century. As such, it is a particularly fruitful period to consider when reflecting on the meaning and role of chance in evolutionary explanation. Biologists of this period make reference to “chance” and loose cognates of “chance,” such as: “random,” “contingent,” …Read more
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12Bivalent Selection and Graded Darwinian IndividualityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (1): 73-84. 2022.Philosophers are approaching a consensus that biological individuality, including evolutionary individuality, comes in degrees. Graded evolutionary individuality presents a puzzle when juxtaposed with another widely embraced view: that evolutionary individuality follows from being a selectable member of a Darwinian population. Population membership is, on the orthodox view, a bivalent condition, so how can members of Darwinian populations vary in their degree of individuality? This article offer…Read more
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5Bueno et al.'s Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices (review)BJPS Review of Books. 2019.
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30On mycorrhizal individualityBiology and Philosophy 34 (5): 1-16. 2019.This paper argues that a plant together with the symbiotic fungus attached to its roots, a mycorrhizal collective, is an evolutionary individual, and further, that mycorrhizal individuality has important implications for evolutionary theory. Theoretical individuation is defended and then employed to show that mycorrhizal collectives function as interactors according to David Hull’s replicator-interactor model of evolution by natural selection, and because they have the potential to engage in pse…Read more
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44Species in the Age of Discordance: Meeting Report and IntroductionPhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11. 2019.The papers included in this special issue were selected from a series of three interdisciplinary workshops titled Species in the Age of Discordance. Participants including philosophers, phylogeneticists, systematists, population geneticists, invasion biologists, historians, social scientists, botanists, herpetologists, ichthyologists, and microbiologists, among others, were asked to consider species in the context of discordance. The sense of “discordance” was left intentionally ambiguous in the…Read more
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307Bivalent Selection and Graded Darwinian IndividualityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1). 2019.Philosophers are approaching a consensus that biological individuality, including evolutionary individuality, comes in degrees. Graded evolutionary individuality presents a puzzle when juxtaposed with another widely embraced view: that evolutionary individuality follows from being a selectable member of a Darwinian population. Population membership is, on the orthodox view, a bivalent condition, so how can members of Darwinian populations vary in their degree of individuality? This article offer…Read more
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322Chance in the Modern SynthesisIn Grant Ramsey & Charles H. Pence (eds.), Chance in Evolution, University of Chicago. pp. 76-102. 2016.The modern synthesis in evolutionary biology is taken to be that period in which a consensus developed among biologists about the major causes of evolution, a consensus that informed research in evolutionary biology for at least a half century. As such, it is a particularly fruitful period to consider when reflecting on the meaning and role of chance in evolutionary explanation. Biologists of this period make reference to “chance” and loose cognates of “chance,” such as: “random,” “contingent,” …Read more
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75On Mushroom IndividualityPhilosophy of Science 84 (5): 1117-1127. 2017.This paper is an application of the principles of individuality found in Guay and Pradeu to illuminate biological individuality in mushrooms. I begin with the distinction between logico-cognitive individuals and ontological individuals, and then I argue for genidentity plus material continuity, as a minimum conception of ontological individuality in biology. Of the many materially-continuous genidenticals found in fungi, only those with functional roles in biological theory, either evolutionary …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
Metaphysics |