•  8
    The Study That Made Rats Jump for Joy, and Then Killed Them
    with Christine E. Webb and Elise Huchard
    Bioessays 42 (6): 2000030. 2020.
    Graphical AbstractMuch contemporary behavioral science stops short of considering the ethical implications of its own findings. This generates a contradiction between methods and discoveries, and hinders translation between updated scientific evidence for animal sentience and corresponding political and legal changes. A recent and particularly illustrative example in rodents is described here.
  •  5
    What, if anything, does biological evolution tell us about the nature of religion, ethical values, or even the meaning and purpose of life? The Moral Meaning of Nature sheds new light on these enduring questions by examining the significance of an earlier—and unjustly neglected—discussion of Darwin in late nineteenth-century Germany. We start with Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings staged one of the first confrontations with the Christian tradition using the resources of Darwinian thought. The …Read more
  •  36
    The puzzle of how altruism can evolve has been at the center of recent debates over Hamilton’s Rule, inclusive fitness, and kin-selection. In this paper, I use recent debates over altruism and Hamilton’s legacy as an example to illustrate a more general problem in evolutionary theory that has philosophical significance; I attempt to explain this significance and to draw a variety of conclusions about it. The problem is that specific behaviours and general concepts of organism agency and intentio…Read more
  •  21
    The Evolution of Altruism and its Significance for Environmental Ethics
    Environmental Ethics 39 (4): 413-436. 2017.
    The significance of scientific research into the evolution of altruism for environmental ethics can be highlighted through an analysis of recent debates over William Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness. Recent debates over how to explain altruism have become particularly charged with ideological weight because they are seen to have some consequence for how we understand the human moral project, especially with regard to nonhuman life. By analyzing the place of evolutionary theory in the work …Read more
  •  35
    Neo-Darwinists and Neo-Aristotelians: how to talk about natural purpose
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 38 (4): 1-22. 2016.
    This paper examines the points of disagreement between Neo-Darwinian and recent Neo-Aristotelian discussions of the status of purposive language in biology. I discuss recent Neo-Darwinian “evolutionary” treatments and distinguish three ways to deal with the philosophical status of teleological language of purpose: teleological error theory, methodological teleology, and Darwinian teleological realism. I then show how “non-evolutionary” Neo-Aristotelian approaches in the work of Michael Thompson …Read more
  •  66
    Specters of the nineteenth century: Charles Taylor and the problem of historicism (review)
    Journal of Religious Ethics 40 (1): 171-192. 2012.
    This paper identifies and analyzes the problem of historicism in Charles Taylor's work overall, but with particular emphasis on his most recent publication, A Secular Age. I circumscribe the problem of historicism through reference to the nineteenth-century German philosophical tradition in which it developed, in particular in the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey. I then trace the structural similarities between the notions of history to be found in the thought of Taylor and Dilthey and how these stru…Read more