•  22
    Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ances…Read more
  •  25
    Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits as much as are our gait and posture. This much few would dispute. Evolutionary psychology goes further than this, claiming that our psychological traits -- including a wide variety of traits, from mate preference and jealousy to language and reason -- can be understood as specific adaptations to ances…Read more
  •  5
    The Phenotype as the Level of Selection: Cave Organisms as Model Systems
    with Thomas C. Kane and Daniel W. Fong
    PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (1): 151-164. 1990.
    Selection operates at many levels. Some of the most obvious cases are organismic, such as changes in coloration under the influence of predation (cf. Kettlewell 1973; also Endler 1986). It also operates at other levels. Meiotic drive involves selection for a gene, independently of its effect on the organism. At a higher level, there may also be selection for patterns of colony growth in social insects, again under the influence of predation (cf. Wilson 1971). The appropriate level of selection i…Read more
  •  2
    Form and Order in Evolutionary Biology: Stuart Kauffman's Transformation of Theoretical Biology
    PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (2): 266-287. 1990.
    Stuart Kauffman’s forthcoming book, The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1991), is a large and ambitious attempt to bring about a major reorientation in theoretical biology and to provide a fundamental reinterpretation of the place of selection in evolutionary theory. Kauffman offers a formal framework which allows one to pose precise and well-defined questions about the constraints that self-organization imposes on the evolution of complex systems, and the relatio…Read more
  •  50
    Disappearance and the identity theory
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (September): 473-85. 1981.
    We have no schema for comprehending how a radical revision of our conceptual scheme such as that embraced by "eliminative materialism" could possibly be rationally justified. This general point is illustrated and pressed through an examination of richard rorty's classic defense of the "disappearance form of the identity theory." it is argued that 1) though more standard critiques of rorty fail, 2) rorty fails to make out the case for the view that incorrigibility" is the "mark of the mental" to …Read more
  •  6
    Heuristics and Satisficing
    In William Bechtel & George Graham (eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science, Blackwell. 2017.
    Bounded rationality is a fundamental feature of cognition. We make choices between alternatives in light of our goals, relying on incomplete information and limited resources. As a consequence, PROBLEM SOLVING cannot be exhaustive: we cannot explore all the possibilities which confront us, and search must be constrained in ways that facilitate search efficiency even at the expense of search effectiveness. If we think of problem solving as a search through the space of possibilities as it was con…Read more
  •  135
    Emergence
    Biological Theory 2 (1): 91-96. 2007.
  •  63
    Turing tests for intelligence: Ned Block's defense of psychologism (review)
    Philosophical Studies 41 (May): 421-6. 1982.
  •  223
    Natural and artificial complexity
    Philosophy of Science 64 (4): 267. 1997.
    Genetic regulatory networks are complex, involving tens or hundreds of genes and scores of proteins with varying dependencies and organizations. This invites the application of artificial techniques in coming to understand natural complexity. I describe two attempts to deploy artificial models in understanding natural complexity. The first abstracts from empirically established patterns, favoring random architectures and very general constraints, in an attempt to model developmental phenomena. T…Read more
  •  70
    How not to reduce a functional psychology
    Philosophy of Science 49 (1): 125-37. 1982.
    There is often substantial disparity between philosophical ideals and scientific practice. Philosophical reductionism is motivated by a drive for ontological austerity. The vehicle is conceptual parsimony: the fewer our conceptual primitives, the less are our ontological commitments. A general moral to be drawn from my “Functionalism and Reductionism” is that scientific reduction does not, and should not be expected to, facilitate conceptual economy; yet reduction it still is, and in the classic…Read more
  •  104
    Functionalism and reductionism
    Philosophy of Science 46 (4): 533-58. 1979.
    It is here argued that functionalist constraints on psychology do not preclude the applicability of classic forms of reduction and, therefore, do not support claims to a principled, or de jure, autonomy of psychology. In Part I, after isolating one minimal restriction any functionalist theory must impose on its categories, it is shown that any functionalism imposing an additional constraint of de facto autonomy must also be committed to a pure functionalist--that is, a computationalist--model fo…Read more
  •  77
    Evolution Without Adaptation?
    Metascience 18 (2): 319-323. 2009.
  •  82
    Cognitive science and neuroscience: New wave reductionism
    Philosopical Psychology 12 (3): 297-307. 1999.
    John Bickle's Psychoneural reduction: the new wave (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) aims to resurrect reductionism within philosophy of mind. He develops a new model of scientific reduction, geared to enhancing our understanding of how theories in neuroscience and cognitive science are interrelated. I put this discussion in context, and assess the prospects for new wave reductionism, both as a general model of scientific reduction and as an attempt to defend reductionism in the philosophy of min…Read more
  •  115
    Autonomy and multiple realization
    Philosophy of Science 75 (5): 526-536. 2008.
    Multiple realization historically mandated the autonomy of psychology, and its principled irreducibility to neuroscience. Recently, multiple realization and its implications for the reducibility of psychology to neuroscience have been challenged. One challenge concerns the proper understanding of reduction. Another concerns whether multiple realization is as pervasive as is alleged. I focus on the latter question. I illustrate multiple realization with actual, rather than hypothetical, cases of …Read more
  •  28
    Mismatching categories?
    with William Edward Morris
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 62-63. 1993.
  •  104
    Sober on Brandon on screening-off and the levels of selection
    with Robert N. Brandon, Janis Antonovics, Richard Burian, Scott Carson, Greg Cooper, Paul Sheldon Davies, Christopher Horvath, Brent D. Mishler, Kelly Smith, and Peter Thrall
    Philosophy of Science 61 (3): 475-486. 1994.
    Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion
  •  37
    Emergence and its place in nature: a case study of biochemical networks
    with Fred C. Boogerd, Frank J. Bruggeman, Achim Stephan, and Hans V. Westerhoff
    Synthese 145 (1): 131-164. 2005.
    We will show that there is a strong form of emergence in cell biology. Beginning with C.D. Broad’s classic discussion of emergence, we distinguish two conditions sufficient for emergence. Emergence in biology must be compatible with the thought that all explanations of systemic properties are mechanistic explanations and with their sufficiency. Explanations of systemic properties are always in terms of the properties of the parts within the system. Nonetheless, systemic properties can still be e…Read more
  •  370
    Emergence and Its Place in Nature: A Case Study of Biochemical Networks
    with F. C. Boogerd, F. J. Bruggeman, Achim Stephan, and H. Westerhoff
    Synthese 145 (1). 2005.
    We will show that there is a strong form of emergence in cell biology. Beginning with C.D. Broad's classic discussion of emergence, we distinguish two conditions sufficient for emergence. Emergence in biology must be compatible with the thought that all explanations of systemic properties are mechanistic explanations and with their sufficiency. Explanations of systemic properties are always in terms of the properties of the parts within the system. Nonetheless, systemic properties can still be e…Read more
  •  29
    An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scien…Read more
  •  132
    Multiple realization and methodological pluralism
    Synthese 167 (3): 473-492. 2009.
    Multiple realization was once taken to be a challenge to reductionist visions, especially within cognitive science, and a foundation of the “antireductionist consensus.” More recently, multiple realization has come to be challenged on naturalistic grounds, as well as on more “metaphysical” grounds. Within cognitive science, one focal issue concerns the role of neural plasticity for addressing these issues. If reorganization maintains the same cognitive functions, that supports claims for multipl…Read more
  •  19
    Form and Order in Evolutionary Biology: Stuart Kauffman's Transformation of Theoretical Biology
    with Richard M. Burian
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990. 1990.
    The formal framework of Kauffman (1991) depicts the constraints of self-organization on the evolution of complex systems and the relation of self-organization to selection. We discuss his treatment of 'generic constraints' as sources of order (section 2) and the relation between adaptation and organization (section 3). We then raise a number of issues, including the role of adaptation in explaining order (section 4) and the limitations of formal approaches in explaining the distinctively biologi…Read more
  •  103
    William Uttal's The new phrenology is a broad attack on localization in cognitive neuroscience. He argues that even though the brain is a highly differentiated organ, "high level cognitive functions" should not be localized in specific brain regions. First, he argues that psychological processes are not well-defined. Second, he criticizes the methods used to localize psychological processes, including imaging technology: he argues that variation among individuals compromises localization, and th…Read more
  •  34
    Against generality: Meaning in genetics and philosophy
    with Richard M. Burian and Wim J. Van der Steen
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 27 (1): 1-29. 1996.