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6Living fossils and conservation valuesFrontiers in Earth Science 20. 2023.Horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) have been in decline in Long Island Sound, and recently there has been discussion of whether the state of Connecticut should stop issuing licenses for commercial harvesting. This paper argues that in spite of concerns about the living fossil concept, the fact that the horseshoe crabs are living fossils should count in favor of more stringent protection. The paper distinguishes four different views about the status of the living fossil concept: 1) eliminativis…Read more
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14Creativity Without Agency: Evolutionary Flair & Aesthetic EngagementErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10 (n/a). 2023.Common philosophical accounts of creativity align creative products and processes with a particular kind of agency: namely, that deserving of praise or blame. Considering evolutionary examples, we explore two ways of denying that creativity requires forms of agency. First, we argue that decoupling creativity from praiseworthiness comes at little cost: accepting that evolutionary processes are non-agential, they nonetheless exhibit many of the same characteristics and value associated with creati…Read more
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15The Topography of Historical ContingencyJournal of the Philosophy of History 6 (1): 1-19. 2012.Abstract Starting with Ben-Menahem's definition of historical contingency as sensitivity to variations in initial conditions, we suggest that historical events and processes can be thought of as forming a complex landscape of contingency and necessity. We suggest three different ways of extending and elaborating Ben-Menahem's concepts: (1) By supplementing them with a notion of historical disturbance; (2) by pointing out that contingency and necessity are subject to scaling effects; (3) by showi…Read more
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4Brill Online Books and JournalsJournal of the Philosophy of History 6 (1): 1-19. 2012.Starting with Ben-Menahem’s definition of historical contingency as sensitivity to variations in initial conditions, we suggest that historical events and processes can be thought of as forming a complex landscape of contingency and necessity. We suggest three different ways of extending and elaborating Ben-Menahem’s concepts: By supplementing them with a notion of historical disturbance; by pointing out that contingency and necessity are subject to scaling effects; by showing how degrees of con…Read more
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9Narrative Explanation and Non-Epistemic ValueJournal of the Philosophy of History 17 (1): 53-76. 2023.Explanations in the natural historical sciences often take the form of stories. This paper examines two accounts of the sources of narrative’s explanatory power: Beatty’s suggestion that narrative explanation is closely connected to historical contingency, and that narratives explain by contrasting what happened with what might have happened; and Ereshefsky and Turner’s view that narratives explain by organizing events around a central subject with a distinctive direction of historical developme…Read more
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13Historical Contingency: A Special Issue on Epistemic & Non-Epistemic Values in Historical SciencesJournal of the Philosophy of History 17 (1): 1-8. 2023.
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6Proportionality and the Precautionary PrincipleEthics, Policy and Environment 16 (3): 341-343. 2013.Daniel Steel addresses one of the most serious objections against the precautionary principle. According to the dilemma objection, strong versions of the PP are incoherent or self-defeating, w...
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5Are We at War with Nature?Environmental Values 14 (1). 2005.A number of people, from William James to Dave Foreman and Vandana Shiva, have suggested that humans are at war with nature. Moreover, the analogy with warfare figures in at least one important argument for strategic monkeywrenching. In general, an analogy can be used for purposes of (1) justification; (2) persuasion; or (3) as a tool for generating novel hypotheses and recommendations. This paper argues that the analogy with warfare should not be used for justificatory or rhetorical purposes, b…Read more
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15The Lack of Clarity in the Precautionary PrincipleEnvironmental Values 13 (4). 2004.The precautionary principle states, roughly, that it is better to take precautionary measures now than to deal with serious harms to the environment or human health later on. This paper builds on the work of Neil A. Manson in order to show that the precautionary principle, in all of its forms, is fraught with vagueness and ambiguity. We examine the version of the precautionary principle that was formulated at the Wingspread Conference sponsored by the Science and Environmental Health Network in …Read more
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18Monkeywrenching, Perverse Incentives and EcodefenceEnvironmental Values 15 (2). 2006.By focusing too narrowly on consequentialist arguments for ecosabotage, environmental philosophers such as Michael Martin (1990) and Thomas Young (2001) have tended to overlook two important facts about monkeywrenching. First, advocates of monkeywrenching see sabotage above all as a technique for counteracting perverse economic incentives. Second, their main argument for monkeywrenching – which I will call the ecodefence argument – is not consequentialist at all. After calling attention to these…Read more
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82Living fossils and conservation valuesFrontiers in Earth Science 11. 2023.Horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) have been in decline in Long Island Sound, and recently there has been discussion of whether the state of Connecticut should stop issuing licenses for commercial harvesting. This paper argues that in spite of concerns about the living fossil concept, the fact that the horseshoe crabs are living fossils should count in favor of more stringent protection. The paper distinguishes four different views about the status of the living fossil concept: 1) eliminativis…Read more
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4Causal History, Environmental Art, and Biotechnologically Assisted RestorationEthics, Policy and Environment 25 (2): 125-128. 2022.Eric Katz’s insight about the relationship between causal history and value only generates a principled critique of de-extinction when conjoined with the diminishment claim, or the claim that human involvement in something’s causal history diminishes its value. The diminishment claim is a form of negative anthropocentrism. In addition to thinking about de-extinction as a form of ecological restoration, we could think of it as a form of environmental artwork. This reframing highlights the implaus…Read more
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25“I’m Not Saying It Was Aliens”: An Archaeological and Philosophical Analysis of a Conspiracy TheoryIn Sean Allen-Hermanson Anton Killin (ed.), Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy. Synthese Library (Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science), Springer Verlag. pp. 7-24. 2021.This chapter draws upon the archaeological and philosophical literature to offer an analysis and diagnosis of the popular ‘ancient aliens’ theory. First, we argue that ancient aliens theory is a form of conspiracy theory. Second, we argue that it differs from other familiar conspiracy theories because it does distinctive ideological work. Third, we argue that ancient aliens theory is a form of non-contextualized inquiry that sacrifices the very thing that makes archaeological research successful…Read more
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29Form and Content: An Introduction to Formal LogicDigital Commons @ Connecticut College. 2020.Derek Turner, Professor of Philosophy, has written an introductory logic textbook that students at Connecticut College, or anywhere, can access for free. The book differs from other standard logic textbooks in its reliance on fun, low-stakes examples involving dinosaurs, a dog and his friends, etc. This work is published in 2020 under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share this text in any format or medium. You may not use it for commer…Read more
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12The functions of fossils: Inference and explanation in functional morphologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1): 193-212. 2000.This paper offers an account of the relationship between inference and explanation in functional morphology which combines Robert Brandon's theory of adaptation explanation with standard accounts of inference to the best explanation. Inferences of function from structure, it is argued, are inferences to the best adaptation explanation. There are, however, three different approaches to the problem of determining which adaptation explanation is the best. The theory of inference to the best adaptat…Read more
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19Paleoaesthetics and the Practice of PaleontologyCambridge University Press. 2019.The practice of paleontology has an aesthetic as well as an epistemic dimension. Paleontology has distinctively aesthetic aims, such as cultivating sense of place and developing a better aesthetic appreciation of fossils. Scientific cognitivists in environmental aesthetics argue that scientific knowledge deepens and enhances our appreciation of nature. Drawing on that tradition, this Element argues that knowledge of something's history makes a difference to how we engage with it aesthetically. T…Read more
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5Speculation in the Historical SciencesPhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11. 2019.In Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Adrian Currie offers an account of how historically oriented researchers in paleontology, archaeology, and the geosciences make the most out of their epistemically unlucky circumstances. He argues that there are three things, in particular, that can help scientists gain traction in unlucky circumstances: methodological omnivory, epistemic scaffolding, and “empirically grounded speculation”. Together, these three aspects of the practice of historical science help explain …Read more
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21In defense of living fossilsBiology and Philosophy 34 (2): 23. 2019.Lately there has been a wave of criticism of the concept of living fossils. First, recent research has challenged the status of paradigmatic living fossil taxa, such as coelacanths, cycads, and tuataras. Critics have also complained that the living fossil concept is vague and/or ambiguous, and that it is responsible for misconceptions about evolution. This paper defends a particular phylogenetic conception of living fossils, or taxa that exhibit deep prehistoric morphological stability; contain …Read more
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Evolution and Inquiry: An AnalogyDissertation, Vanderbilt University. 2000.Part One of this dissertation explores an analogy between Darwinian evolution by natural selection and the process of inquiry. Beliefs are memes, or replicators, much like biological replicators . As beliefs replicate, their numbers can increase at a geometrical rate. Important checks to the replication of beliefs include limited human memory and attention, as well as the law of non-contradiction. When someone detects an inconsistency, the contradictory beliefs enter into an intellectual struggl…Read more
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6Misleading observable analogues in paleontologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 36 (1): 175-183. 2005.Carman argues, in ‘The electrons of the dinosaurs and the center of the Earth’, that we may have more reason to be realists about dinosaurs than about electrons, because there are plenty of observable analogues for dinosaurs but not for electrons. These observable analogues severely restrict the range of plausible ontologies, thus reducing the threat of underdetermination. In response to this argument, I show that the observable analogues for ancient organisms are a mixed epistemic blessing at b…Read more
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13Why Not NIMBY?Ethics, Policy and Environment 17 (1): 105-115. 2014.This paper develops responses to several critics who commented on an earlier paper that we published in this journal. In that paper, we argued that there is nothing necessarily wrong with NIMBY claims or those who make them. The critics raised some important issues, such as whether “NIMBY” is essentially a pejorative term; the possibility that NIMBY claimants are saying something deep about the noncomparability of places; what exactly it means for policy makers to defer to a NIMBY claim; the rel…Read more
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3Defending Science — Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism, by Susan Haack (review)Disputatio 1 (17): 84-90. 2004.017-9
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13De-extinction as Artificial Species SelectionPhilosophy and Technology 30 (4): 395-411. 2017.This paper offers a paleobiological perspective on the debate concerning the possible use of biotechnology to bring back extinct species. One lesson from paleobiology is that extinction selectivity matters in addition to extinction rates and extinction magnitude. Combining some of Darwin’s insights about artificial selection with the theory of species selection that paleobiologists developed in the 1970s and 1980s provides a useful context for thinking about de-extinction. Using recent work on t…Read more
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17Introduction: Scientific knowledge of the deep pastStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 55 43-46. 2016.
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18Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism DebateCambridge University Press. 2007.Scientists often make surprising claims about things that no one can observe. In physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, scientists can at least experiment on those unobservable entities, but what about researchers in fields such as paleobiology and geology who study prehistory, where no such experimentation is possible? Do scientists discover facts about the distant past or do they, in some sense, make prehistory? In this book Derek Turner argues that this problem has surprising and importan…Read more
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8An evolutionary account of chronic pain: Integrating the natural method in evolutionary psychologyPhilosophical Psychology 18 (2): 243-257. 2005.This paper offers an evolutionary account of chronic pain. Chronic pain is a maladaptive by-product of pain mechanisms and neural plasticity, both of which are highly adaptive. This account shows how evolutionary psychology can be integrated with Flanagan's natural method, and in a way that avoids the usual charges of panglossian adaptationism and an uncritical commitment to a modular picture of the mind. Evolutionary psychology is most promising when it adopts a bottom-up research strategy that…Read more
New London, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |