Showing papers on "Philosophy of biology published in 2003"

Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change

Abstract: According to the received tradition, the language used to to refer to natural kinds in scientific discourse remains stable even as theories about these kinds are refined. In this illuminating book, Joseph LaPorte argues that scientists do not discover that sentences about natural kinds, like 'Whales are mammals, not fish', are true rather than false. Instead, scientists find that these sentences were vague in the language of earlier speakers and they refine the meanings of the relevant natural-kind terms to make the sentences true. Hence, scientists change the meaning of these terms, This conclusions prompts LaPorte to examine the consequences of this change in meaning for the issue of incommensurability and for the progress of science. This book will appeal to students and professional in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of language.

Evolutionary Morphology, Innovation, and the Synthesis of Evolutionary and Developmental Biology

Abstract: One foundational question in contemporarybiology is how to `rejoin’ evolution anddevelopment. The emerging research program(evolutionary developmental biology or`evo-devo’) requires a meshing of disciplines,concepts, and explanations that have beendeveloped largely in independence over the pastcentury. In the attempt to comprehend thepresent separation between evolution anddevelopment much attention has been paid to thesplit between genetics and embryology in theearly part of the 20th century with itscodification in the exclusion of embryologyfrom the Modern Synthesis. This encourages acharacterization of evolutionary developmentalbiology as the marriage of evolutionary theoryand embryology via developmental genetics. Butthere remains a largely untold story about thesignificance of morphology and comparativeanatomy (also minimized in the ModernSynthesis). Functional and evolutionarymorphology are critical for understanding thedevelopment of a concept central toevolutionary developmental biology,evolutionary innovation. Highlighting thediscipline of morphology and the concepts ofinnovation and novelty provides an alternativeway of conceptualizing the `evo’ and the `devo’to be synthesized.

Ernst Mayr's 'ultimate / proximate' distinction reconsidered and reconstructed

Abstract: It's been 41 years since the publication of Ernst Mayr's “Cause and Effect in Biology” wherein Mayr most clearly develops his version of the influential distinction between ultimate and proximate causes in biology. In critically assessing Mayr's essay I uncover false statements and red-herrings about biological explanation. Nevertheless, I argue to uphold an analogue of the ultimate/proximate distinction as it refers to two different kinds of explanations, one dynamical the other statistical.

The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy

Abstract: It is a commonplace to say that in antiquity philosophy was conceived as a way of life or an art of living, but precisely what such claims amount to has remained unclear. If ancient philosophers did think that philosophy should transform an individual's way of life, then what conception of philosophy stands behind this claim? John Sellars explores this question via a detailed account of ancient Stoic ideas about the nature and function of philosophy. He considers the Socratic background to Stoic thinking about philosophy and Sceptical objections raised by Sextus Empiricus, and offers readings of late Stoic texts by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Sellars argues that the conception of philosophy as an 'art of living', inaugurated by Socrates and developed by the Stoics, has persisted since antiquity and remains a living alternative to modern attempts to assimilate philosophy to the natural sciences. It also enables us to rethink the relationship between an individual's philosophy and their biography. The book appears here in paperback for the first time with a new preface by the author.

The Road from Haeckel: The Jena Tradition in Evolutionary Morphology and the Origins of "Evo-Devo"

Abstract: With Carl Gegenbaur and Ernst Haeckel, inspired by Darwin and the cell theory, comparative anatomy and embryology became established and flourished in Jena. This tradi- tion was continued and developed further with new ideas and methods devised by some of Haeckel's students. This first period of innovative work in evolutionary morphology was followed by periods of crisis and even a disintegration of the discipline in the early twentieth century. This stagnation was caused by a lack of interest among morphologists in Mendelian genetics, and uncertainty about the mechanisms of evolution. Idealistic morphology was still influental in Germany, which prevented a full appreciation of the importance of Darwin's theory of natural selection for comparative morphology. Evolutionary morphology and embryology failed to contribute significantly to the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, thereby probably delaying the integration of developmental biology into modern evolutionary biology. However, Haeckel's student Oscar Hertwig, as well as Victor Franz and Alexej N. Sewertzoff from a younger generation, all tried to forge their own synthetic approaches in which (inspired by Haeckel's work) embryology played an important role. Important for all three researchers were attempts to refine, and sometimes redefine, the biogenetic law, and to find new scientific explanations for it (and for the many exceptions to it). Their research was later more or less forgotten, and had little influence on the architects of the modern synthesis. As the relationship between evolutionary and developmental biology is now again rising in importance in the form of "Evo-Devo", we would like to draw attention to how this earlier research tradition grappled with similar questions to those now on the agenda, albeit from sometimes quite different perspectives.

On the Embodied Nature of Action

Abstract: A theory of the embodiment of action is proposed. Reflections on relations between human intentions, the human body and the notion of agency lead us to argue that phenomenological analysis is not sufficient for such a theory. Our consideration, that the most fundamental level of embodied agency is that of life itself, brings us to the philosophy of biology and the theory of the organism: briefly, certain parts of the natural environment are intrinsic to the constitution of organisms and, in their more sophisticated configuration, as agents. Action is embodied in the sense that certain physiological processes are internal in relation to it and play a constitutive role in its performance. The way in which environment, context and consciousness affect and constitute the nature of agency at personal and sub-personal levels is elaborated. We see that human agents perceive and act upon their world through a complex shifting between those levels. A summary of the ways in which the social sciences can be enriched by this more comprehensive view of human agency provides the basis of justification for claiming Actor-Network Theory (ANT), originally developed by sociologists studying science and technology, as a promising framework for the continuation of this reasoning.

Darwin's nihilistic idea: Evolution and the meaninglessness of life

Abstract: Evolution and the Meaninglessness of Life No one has expressed the destructive power of Darwinian theory more effectively than Daniel Dennett. Others have recognized that the theory of evolution offers us a universal acid, but Dennett, bless his heart, coined the term. Many have appreciated that the mechanism of random variation and natural selection is a substrate-neutral algorithm that operates at every level of organization from the macromolecular to the mental, at every time scale from the geological epoch to the nanosecond. But it took Dennett to express the idea in a polysyllable or two. These two features of Darwinism undermine more wishful thinking about the way the world is than any other brace of notions since mechanism was vindicated in physics. The solvent algorithm deprives nature of purpose, on the global and the local scale. Both evolutionary phylogeny and organismic ontology can be explained as the operation of passive environmental filtration on variations produced by real (not just epistemic) randomness. Types and tokens are built by the iteration of this same process at multiple levels. Even when you get to the locus classicus of purposeful phenomena in human cognition and its consequences in action, natural selection explains both capacities and performance in a way that dispenses with purpose even here. Darwinism thus puts the capstone on a process which since Newton's time has driven teleology to the explanatory sidelines. In short it has made Darwinians into metaphysical Nihilists denying that there is any meaning or purpose to the universe, its contents and its cosmic history. But in making Darwinians into metaphysical nihilists, the solvent algorithm should have made them into ethical nihilists too. For intrinsic values and obligations make sense only against the background of purposes, goals, and ends which are not merely instrumental. But the leading Darwinian philosophers have shied away from this implication and instead have embraced ethical naturalism. And this despite the ever-increasing power of Darwinism to explain away normative ethics as a local adaptation. One might well expect tenderhearted scientists and others faced by a forced choice between naturalism and nihilism to choose the former, if only because acknowledging Darwinism's commitment to Nihilism makes it an even less attractive theory to the unconverted. But to see ethical naturalism exuberantly defended by no less a steely eyed Darwinian than Dennett is something of a surprise. In the conclusion to Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and

Reflecting on complexity of biological systems: Kant and beyond?

Abstract: Living organisms are currently most often seen as complex dynamical systems that develop and evolve in relation to complex environments Reflections on the meaning of the complex dynamical nature of living systems show an overwhelming multiplicity in approaches, descriptions, definitions and methodologies Instead of sustaining an epistemic pluralism, which often functions as a philosophical armistice in which tolerance and so-called neutrality discharge proponents of the burden to clarify the sources and conditions of agreement and disagreement, this paper aims at analysing: (i) what has been Kant's original conceptualisation of living organisms as natural purposes; (ii) how the current perspectives are to be related to Kant's viewpoint; (iii) what are the main trends in current complexity thinking One of the basic ideas is that the attention for structure and its epistemological consequences witness to a great extent of Kant's viewpoint, and that the idea of organisational stratification today constitutes a different breeding ground within which complexity issues are raised The various approaches of complexity in biological systems are captured in terms of two different styles, universalism and (weak and strong) constructivism, between which hybrid forms exist

Shifting the Paradigm of Philosophy of Science: Philosophy of Information and a New Renaissance

Abstract: Computing is changing the traditional field of Philosophy of Science in a very profound way. First as a methodological tool, computing makes possible ``experimental Philosophy'' which is able to provide practical tests for different philosophical ideas. At the same time the ideal object of investigation of the Philosophy of Science is changing. For a long period of time the ideal science was Physics (e.g., Popper, Carnap, Kuhn, and Chalmers). Now the focus is shifting to the field of Computing/Informatics. There are many good reasons for this paradigm shift, one of those being a long standing need of a new meeting between the sciences and humanities, for which the new discipline of Computing/Informatics gives innumerable possibilities. Contrary to Physics, Computing/Informatics is very much human-centered. It brings a potential for a new Renaissance, where Science and Humanities, Arts and Engineering can reach a new synthesis, so very much needed in our intellectually split culture. This paper investigates contemporary trends and the relation between the Philosophy of Science and the Philosophy of Computing and Information, which is equivalent to the present relation between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Physics.

In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology

Abstract: Philip Kitcher is one of the leading figures in the philosophy of science today. Here he collects, for the first time, many of his published articles on the philosophy of biology, spanning from the mid-1980's to the present. The book's title refers to Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk who was one of the first scientists to develop a theory of heredity. Mendel's work has been deeply influential to our understanding of our selves and our world, just as the study of genetics today will have a profound and long-term impact on future scientific research. Kitcher's articles cover a broad range of topics with similar philosophical and social significance: socio-biology, evolutionary psychology, species, race, altruism, genetic determinism, and the rebirth of creationism in Intelligent Design. Kitcher's work on the intersection of biology and the philosophy of science is both unprecedented and wide-ranging, and will appeal not only to philosophers of science, but to scholars and students across disciplines.

Philosophy of biology

Abstract: Philosophy of biology : , Philosophy of biology : , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

The Introduction of Information into Neurobiology

Abstract: The first use of the term “information” to describe the content of nervous impulse occurs in Edgar Adrian's The Basis of Sensation (1928). What concept of information does Adrian appeal to, and how can it be situated in relation to contemporary philosophical accounts of the notion of information in biology? The answer requires an explication of Adrian's use and an evaluation of its situation in relation to contemporary accounts of semantic information. I suggest that Adrian's concept of information can be to derive a concept of arbitrariness or semioticity in representation. This in turn provides one way of resolving some of the challenges that confront recent attempts in the philosophy of biology to restrict the notion of information to those causal connections that can in some sense be referred to as arbitrary or semiotic.

Searching for the Searchlight Theory: From Karl Popper to Otto Selz

Abstract: The idea that we acquire knowledge by trial and error has been one of the truly great ideas of the twentieth century. As no reader of his philosophical and autobiographical work could have failed to notice, Karl Popper credits himself for having invented this idea. The theory of trial and error or, in Popper's words, the Searchlight theory of knowledge and mind, is not just a part of Popper's comprehensive philosophy but rather one of its key features. It is at the bottom of some of his most spectacular achievements in methodology, epistemology, the philosophy of biology, and even political philosophy. Indeed, it is put forward at once as a model for the growth of individual knowledge (both human and animal), the growth of life (Darwin's theory of evolution), and the growth of scientific knowledge (philosophy of science). As happens so often with innovative ideas, the Searchlight theory derives much of its glamour from the theory it rejects: the view of the mind being a tabula rasa and sense perception the origin of all (human) knowledge. Popper nicknames this empiricists' view as the Bucket theory since it conceives of the mind as nothing but the conduit for sense-impressions, an empty bucket to be filled by the accumulation and storage of information.1 In his hands the Bucket theory collapses under the strain of philosophical arguments and scientific facts and is replaced by a theory which maintains that our knowledge of the physical world is drawn from our mind and constructed from the repertoire of knowledge dispositions we already possess. Acquiring dispositions proceeds according to the method of trial and error elimination. This method, Popper contends, consists essentially of three stages: forming a problem or expectation, trying out a number of solutions of the problem, and eliminating or discarding false solutions as erroneous.2 A key feature of Popper's theory of trial and error elimination, and the reason for speaking of a Searchlight theory of knowledge and mind, is his insistence that problems or expectations take precedence over observations. Observations are always preceded by expectations, points of view, questions or problems which, as a searchlight, illuminate a certain area, thereby enabling the organism or the scientist to know what to observe in the first place.The question arises how and when did Popper come to this theory of the growth of knowledge and mind which was to have such radical implications for the philosophy of science, epistemology, and the philosophy of psychology? My aim in this article is to trace the roots of his theory of the Searchlight.3 The earliest traces of the theory are to be found in his unpublished dissertation, Zur Methodenfrage der Cognitive psychology (1928). Here I will focus upon this "hasty last minute affair" written in the tradition of early German cognitive psychology and supervised by one of its most outstanding proponents, Karl Buhler. Scrutiny of this manuscript, however, reveals not so much the formative influence of Buhler as that of Otto Selz. Indeed, I will argue that Popper borrowed his crucially important Searchlight theory from Selz. Thus having found the origin of the key notion of his epistemology in psychology, the relation between psychology and philosophy in Popper's work, always fraught with tension, is up for thorough reconsideration.The Wurzburger School of DenkpsychologieIt is only against the background of the prior history of psychology, with its development of sensualism and associationism by Wilhelm Max Wundt (1832-1920), Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), and G. E. Muller (1850-1934) that the achievements of Denkpsychologie, or cognitive psychology, can be properly understood. Wundt had defined psychology as the science of immediate experience. In analyzing experience into its ultimate elements and in formulating the laws in accordance with which these elements are combined, Wundt leaned heavily on sensationalism and associationism. …

Developmental Systems and Animal Behaviour

Abstract: This is a critical notice of Evolution's Eye by Susan Oyama, focusing on developmental systems theory primarily in relation to the nature-nurture debates and the explanation of behaviour.

Varieties of Representation in Evolved and Embodied Neural Networks

Abstract: In this paper I discuss one of the key issuesin the philosophy of neuroscience:neurosemantics. The project of neurosemanticsinvolves explaining what it means for states ofneurons and neural systems to haverepresentational contents. Neurosemantics thusinvolves issues of common concern between thephilosophy of neuroscience and philosophy ofmind. I discuss a problem that arises foraccounts of representational content that Icall ``the economy problem'': the problem ofshowing that a candidate theory of mentalrepresentation can bear the work requiredwithin in the causal economy of a mind and anorganism. My approach in the current paper isto explore this and other key themes inneurosemantics through the use of computermodels of neural networks embodied and evolvedin virtual organisms. The models allow for thelaying bare of the causal economies of entireyet simple artificial organisms so that therelations between the neural bases of, forinstance, representation in perception andmemory can be regarded in the context of anentire organism. On the basis of thesesimulations, I argue for an account ofneurosemantics adequate for the solution of theeconomy problem.

The Integrative Biology of Phenotypic Plasticity

Abstract: Gene-environment interactions are of interest not only for the study of human behavior but have also become a focus of research on other species. Recent developments in the field of plasticity studies, which examines such interactions, are given a thorough survey in Pigliucci’s new book. The first in a series of monographs on integrative biology edited by Samuel Scheiner, Phenotypic Plasticity summarizes the results of research in many disciplines, giving equal time to plants and animals. Following a discussion of the definition and history of plasticity, there are chapters on the genetics of plasticity and the significance of phenotypic plasticity in molecular and developmental biology and ecology, each of which can be read independently and provides an informative review of the field with which it deals. This project is motivated in part by recent debates about the influences of nature and nurture on human behavior. Genetic determinists such as Jensen maintain that the human intelligence quotient depends on genotype whereas Gould, Lewontin, and others have emphasized the importance of environmental factors. Pigliucci presents phenotypic plasticity as a way of moving beyond the gene-environment dichotomy because in many cases plasticity results from non-additive interactions between genotype and environment.

Philosophy of Science Today

Abstract: Introduction 1 The Logic of Success 2 The Theory of Knowledge: Saving Epistemology from the Epistemologists 3 The Present State of the Scientific Realism Debate 4 'New Age' Philosophies of Science: Constructivism, Feminism, and Postmodernism 5 Causation and Pre-emption 6 Philosophy of Mind 7 Philosophy of Biology 8 Philosophy of Mathematics 9 Geometry and Motion 10 Indeterminacy and Entanglement: The Challenge of Quantum Mechanics 11 Philosophical Foundations of Quantum Field Theory 12 Interpreting Theories: The Case of Statistical Mechanics Index

Thinking about Biology

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Facts? 2 Reductionism 3 Evolution 4 Biology and animals 5 Controversies in Biology 6 Making sense of genes 7 Biology and politics 8 Research ethics Index