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Theory and reality: an introduction to the philosophy of scienceUniversity of Chicago Press. 2021.How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality, Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of more than a hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Examples and asides engage the beginning student; a glossary of terms explains key concepts; and …Read more
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330Petition to Include Cephalopods as “Animals” Deserving of Humane Treatment under the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory AnimalsHarvard Law School Animal Law and Policy Clinic. forthcoming.
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7Living on Earth: forests, corals, consciousness, and the making of the worldFarrar, Straus and Giroux. 2024.A philosopher's examination of how animal and plant life has shaped the history of our planet.
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71I will sketch, but not argue for here, a hypothesis about its origins and structure. What philosophers think of as folk psychology has dual origins. One is a genuine "intuitive psychology." This is an evolved predictive tool seen also in some nonhuman animals and very young children. It is "peripheral" in what it recognizes and describes. Primarily, it recognizes seeing and acting (including trying) as activities of others. This is common element in how human and non-human animals deal with each…Read more
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35Dewey and the Subject-Matter of ScienceIn John R. Shook & Paul Kurtz (eds.), Dewey's enduring impact: essays on America's philosopher, Prometheus Books. pp. 73--86. 2011.
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Mental Representation, Naturalism, and TeleosemanticsIn Graham Macdonald & David Papineau (eds.), Teleosemantics: New Philo-sophical Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2006.
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36Additivity and the Units of SelectionPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992."Additive variance in fitness" is an important concept in the formal apparatus of population genetics. Wimsatt and Lloyd have argued that this concept can also be used to decide the "unit of selection" in an evolutionary process. The paper argues that the proposed criteria of Wimsatt and Lloyd are ambiguous, and several interpretations of their views are presented. It is argued that none of these interpretations provide acceptable criteria for deciding units of selection. The reason is that addi…Read more
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43Sometimes themes can be found in common across very different systems in which change occurs. Imre Lakatos developed a theory of change in science, and one involving entities visible at different levels. There are theories defended at a particular time, and there are also research programs, larger units that bundle together a sequence of related theories and within which many scientists may work. Research programs are competing higher-level units within a scientific field. Scientific change invo…Read more
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4A model of “ephemeral” population structure is presented that applies not only to biological systems in which discrete groups form but also to networks without group boundaries. The evolution of altruistic behaviors is discussed. Nonrandom interaction and nonlinear fitness structures are modeled; together, these factors can produce stable polymorphisms of altruistic and selfish types, as well as bistability. Empirical applications of the model may be found in microbes, marine invertebrates, annu…Read more
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48Is Popper's philosophy alive or dead? If we make a judgment based on recent discussion in academic philosophy of science, he definitely seems to be fading. Popper is still seen as an important historical figure, a key part of the grand drama of 20th century thinking about science. He is associated with an outlook, a mindset, and a general picture of scientific work. His name has bequeathed us an adjective, "Popperian," that is well established. But the adjective is used for very general ideas th…Read more
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253Causal pluralismIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 326--337. 2009.
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100Why do octopuses matter to philosophy? They matter to the part of philosophy concerned with the mind. To see why, we step back and think about the evolutionary connections between all living things. Biologists think of these relationships in terms of a tree of life. This is a huge tree-like pattern, marking which species are close relatives and which are distantly connected. The vertebrates form one branch of the tree, and that is where we find nearly all the animals with large and complex brain…Read more
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59Altruism is generally understood to be behavior that benefits others at a personal cost to the behaving individual. However, within evolutionary biology, different authors have interpreted the concept of altruism differently, leading to dissimilar predictions about the evolution of altruistic behavior. Generally, different interpretations diverge on which party receives the benefit from altruism and on how the cost of altruism is assessed. Using a simple trait-group framework, we delineate the a…Read more
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173Environmental complexity and the evolution of cognitionIn Robert J. Sternberg & James C. Kaufman (eds.), The Evolution of Intelligence, Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 233--249. 2001.One problem faced in discussions of the evolution of intelligence is the need to get a precise fix on what is to be explained. Terms like "intelligence," "cognition" and "mind" do not have simple and agreed-upon meanings, and the differences between conceptions of intelligence have consequences for evolutionary explanation. I hope the papers in this volume will enable us to make progress on this problem. The present contribution is mostly focused on these basic and foundational issues, although …Read more
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68Human Brains and Animal Minds : Comments on Schechter's Self-Consciousness and 'Split' BrainsJournal of Consciousness Studies 29 (1-2): 153-159. 2022.
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Theory and Reality. An Introduction to the Philosophy of ScienceTijdschrift Voor Filosofie 67 (2): 393-394. 2005.
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23Process dynamics oj normative function, Wayne Christensen and mark BickhardThe Monist 85 (1). 2002.
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52Postscript on the Baldwin Effect and Niche ConstructionIn Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew (eds.), Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Mit Press. pp. 107. 2003.
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20Between Baldwin skepticism and Baldwin boosterismIn Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew (eds.), Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Mit Press. pp. 53--67. 2003.
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102Communication and Common InterestPLOS Computational Biology 9 (11). 2013.Explaining the maintenance of communicative behavior in the face of incentives to deceive, conceal information, or exaggerate is an important problem in behavioral biology. When the interests of agents diverge, some form of signal cost is often seen as essential to maintaining honesty. Here, novel computational methods are used to investigate the role of common interest between the sender and receiver of messages in maintaining cost-free informative signaling in a signaling game. Two measures of…Read more
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29Author-meets-critics: Exceeding our grasp by Kyle StanfordPhilosophical Studies 137 (1): 149-158. 2008.Two of the most potent challenges faced by scientific realism are the underdetermination of theories by data, and the pessimistic induction based on theories previously held to be true, but subsequently acknowledged as false. Recently, Stanford (2006, Exceeding our grasp: Science, history, and the problem of unconceived alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press) has formulated what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives: a version of the underdetermination thesis combined with a hi…Read more
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52Of Nulls and NormsPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.Neyman-Pearson methods in statistics distinguish between Type I and Type II errors. Through rigid control of Type I error, the "null" hypothesis typically receives the benefit of the doubt. I compare philosophers' interpretations of this feature of Neyman-Pearson tests with interpretations given in statistics textbooks. The pragmatic view of the tests advocated by Neyman, largely rejected by philosophers, lives on in many textbooks. Birnbaum thought the pragmatic view has a useful "heuristic" ro…Read more
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8We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us... are ... constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey...
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27The idea that innateness can be understood in terms of genetic coding or genetic programming is discussed. I argue that biology does not provide any support for the view that the whole-organism features of interest to nativists in psychology and linguistics are genetically coded for. This provides some support for recent critical and deflationary treatments of the concept of innateness.
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105Did Darwin really do what Kant said was impossible, and serve as a Newton for the biological world? In assessing this question we need to look at both the structure of evolutionary theory and the structure of our explanation-seeking minds. The short answer to the question is yes. Both underestimates and overestimates of the significance of Darwinian explanations derive from psychological habits which may stem from our own evolutionary history.
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118Information in biologyIn David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 103--119. 2007.The concept of information has acquired a strikingly prominent role in contemporary biology. This trend is especially marked within genetics, but it has also become important in other areas, such as evolutionary theory and developmental biology, particularly where these fields border on genetics. The most distinctive biological role for informational concepts, and the one that has generated the most discussion, is in the description of the relations between genes and the various structures and p…Read more
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5Published as "Useful Lessons from California" in Quadrant Magazine, Volume 50, October 2006. An edited version appears in the Australian newspaper's Higher Education Supplement, as "The Model of Achievement," November 1, 2006.
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105William Dembski holds that "the origin of information is best sought in intelligent causes" ("Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information", 1997). In particular, Dembski argues that Darwinism is not able to explain the existence of biological structures that contain a certain kind of information – "complex specified information" (CSI). To explain these informational features of living systems, we must instead appeal to the choices made by an intelligent designer.
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167Debate about adaptationism in biology continues, in part because within “the” problem of assessing adaptationism, three distinct problems are mixed together. The three problems concern the assessment of three distinct adaptationist positions, each of which asserts the central importance of adaptation and natural selection to the study of evolution, but conceives this importance in a different way. As there are three kinds of adaptationism, there are three distinct "anti-adaptationist" positions …Read more