-
11Phylogenetic InferenceIn Aviezer Tucker (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography, Wiley‐blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction From Art to Science: An Introduction to Schools of Thought How to Infer Phylogeny, Or, Why Some Cladists Aren't “Cladists” Summary and Synthesis Acknowledgment References.
-
59Meeting report: First ISHPSSB off-year workshop (review)Biology and Philosophy 20 (4): 927-929. 2005.
-
96Review: Samir Okasha: Evolution and the Levels of Selection (review)Mind 117 (468): 1116-1119. 2008.
-
125Critical notice: Cycles of contingency – developmental systems and evolution (review)Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3): 517-544. 2005.The themes, problems and challenges of developmental systems theory as described in Cycles of Contingency are discussed. We argue in favor of a robust approach to philosophical and scientific problems of extended heredity and the integration of behavior, development, inheritance, and evolution. Problems with Sterelny's proposal to evaluate inheritance systems using his `Hoyle criteria' are discussed and critically evaluated. Additional support for a developmental systems perspective is sought in…Read more
-
34Justice, Vulnerable Populations, and the Use of Conversational AI in PsychotherapyAmerican Journal of Bioethics 23 (5): 48-50. 2023.Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) identify a major benefit of conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) in psychotherapy as its ability to expand access to mental healthcare for vulnerable populatio...
-
Colonies are individualsIn Frédéric Bouchard & Philippe Huneman (eds.), From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality, Mit Press. 2013.
-
11The Biological and the MereologicalIn Thomas Pradeu & Alexandre Guay (eds.), Individuals Across the Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2016.Michael Ghiselin and David Hull’s individuality thesis is that biological species are individuals. Philosophers often treat the term “individual” as synonymous with “mereological sum” and characterize it in terms of mereology. It is easy to see how the biological project has been interpreted as a mereological one. This chapter argues that this is a mistake, that biological part/whole relations often violate the axioms of mereology. Conflating these projects confuses the central issues at stake i…Read more
-
511The individuality thesis (3 ways)Biology and Philosophy 31 (6): 913-930. 2016.I spell out and update the individuality thesis, that species are individuals, and not classes, sets, or kinds. I offer three complementary presentations of this thesis. First, as a way of resolving an inconsistent triad about natural kinds; second, as a phylogenetic systematics theoretical perspective; and, finally, as a novel recursive account of an evolved character. These approaches do different sorts of work, serving different interests. Presenting them together produces a taxonomy of the d…Read more
-
272Species in the Age of DiscordancePhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11 (21). 2019.Biological lineages move through time, space, and each other. As they do, they diversify, diverge, and grade away from and into one another. One result of this is genealogical discordance; i.e., the lineages of a biological entity may have different histories. We see this on numerous levels, from microbial networks, to holobionts, to population-level lineages. This paper considers how genealogical discordance impacts our study of species. More specifically, I consider this in the context of thre…Read more
-
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
-
4Marc Ereshefsky, The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy: A Philosophical Study of Biological Taxonomy. New York: Cambridge University Press , 328 pp., $80.00 (review)Philosophy of Science 72 (3): 491-494. 2005.
-
146Coherence, Consistency, and Cohesion: Clade Selection in Okasha and BeyondPhilosophy of Science 72 (5): 1026-1040. 2005.Samir Okasha argues that clade selection is an incoherent concept, because the relation that constitutes clades is such that it renders parent-offspring (reproduction) relations between clades impossible. He reasons that since clades cannot reproduce, it is not coherent to speak of natural selection operating at the clade level. We argue, however, that when species-level lineages and clade-level lineages are treated consistently according to standard cladist commitments, clade reproduction is in…Read more
-
35Book review the poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy (review)Philosophy of Science 72 (3): 491-494. 2005.
-
87Colonies are individuals: revisiting the superorganism revivalIn Frédéric Bouchard & Philippe Huneman (eds.), From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality, Mit Press. pp. 195. 2013.
-
46Clade Selection and Levels of Lineage: A Reply to RieppelBiological Theory 4 (2): 214-218. 2009.
-
70Reframing the Ethical Issues in Part-Human Animal Research: The Unbearable Ontology of Inexorable Moral ConfusionAmerican Journal of Bioethics 12 (9): 17-25. 2012.Research that involves the creation of animals with human-derived parts opens the door to potentially valuable scientific and therapeutic advances, yet invokes unsettling moral questions. Critics and champions alike stand to gain from clear identification and careful consideration of the strongest ethical objections to this research. A prevailing objection argues that crossing the human/nonhuman species boundary introduces inexorable moral confusion (IMC) that warrants a restriction to this rese…Read more
-
90How to misidentify a type specimenBiology and Philosophy 27 (6): 767-784. 2012.Type specimens are used to designate species. What is the nature of the relation between a type specimen and the species it designates? If species names are rigid designators, and type specimens ostensively define species, then that relation is, at the very least, a close one. Levine :325–338, 2001) argues that the relationship of type specimen to a named species is one of necessity—and that this presents problems for the individuality thesis. Namely, it seems odd that a contingently selected sp…Read more
-
71Clades Are ReproducersBiological Theory 1 (4): 381-391. 2006.Exploring whether clades can reproduce leads to new perspectives on general accounts of biological development and individuation. Here we apply James Griesemer's general account of reproduction to clades. Griesemer's account of reproduction includes a requirement for development, raising the question of whether clades may bemeaningfully said to develop. We offer two illustrative examples of what clade development might look like, though evaluating these examples proves difficult due to the pauci…Read more
-
56Moral confusion and developmental essentialism in part-human hybrid researchAmerican Journal of Bioethics 8 (12). 2008.No abstract
-
51Thomas Pradeu’s The Limits of the Self provides a precise account of biological identity developed from the central concepts of immunology. Yet the central concepts most relevant to this task are themselves deemed inadequate, suffering from ambiguity and imprecision. Pradeu seeks to remedy this by proposing a new guiding theory for immunology, the continuity theory. From this, an account of biological identity is provided in terms of uniqueness and individuality, ultimately leading to a defense …Read more
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |