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36Natural Selection, Mechanism, and the Statistical InterpretationPhilosophy of Science 84 (5): 1080-1092. 2017.What is natural selection? I address this question by exploring the relation between two debates: Is natural selection a mechanism? Is natural selection a causal or a statistical theory? I argue that the first can be assessed only relative to a model and that, following the second, there are two fundamentally different and independent kinds of models, Modern-Synthesis and Darwinian models. MS-models, I argue, are not mechanistic even if they are causal. D-models, in contrast, are mechanistic. A …Read more
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122Natural Agency: The Case of Bacterial CognitionJournal of the American Philosophical Association 3 (1): 69-90. 2017.ABSTRACT:I contrast an ecological account of natural agency with the traditional Cartesian conception using recent research in bacterial cognition and cellular decision making as a test case. I argue that the Cartesian conception—namely, the view that agency presupposes cognition—generates a dilemma between mechanism, the view that bacteria are mere automata, and intellectualism, the view that they exhibit full-blown cognition. Unicellular organisms, however, occupy a middle ground between these…Read more
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80A mechanistic framework for Darwinism or why Fodor’s objection failsSynthese 192 (1): 163-183. 2015.Fodor argue that Darwinism cannot be true on the grounds that there are no laws of selection to support counterfactuals about why traits are selected-for. Darwinian explanations, according to this objection, amount to mere ‘plausible historical narratives’. I argue that the objection is predicated on two problematic assumptions: A nomic-subsumption account of causation and causal explanation, and a fine-grained view of the individuation of selected-for effects. Against the former, I argue that D…Read more
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Seneca College of Applied Arts and TechnologyTeaching staff (Part-time)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Complex Systems, Misc |