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Biological functions and dysfunctions: a selected dispositions approach Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-16 Fabian Hundertmark, Marlene van den Bos
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Does nature learn? Information integration and rare events in systems of increasing complexity Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Juan Carlos Jaimes-Martínez, Leandro Lopes Loguercio
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Making sense of ‘genetic programs’: biomolecular Post–Newell production systems Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Mihnea Capraru
The biomedical literature makes extensive use of the concept of a genetic program. So far, however, the nature of genetic programs has received no satisfactory elucidation from the standpoint of computer science. This unsettling omission has led to doubts about the very existence of genetic programs, on the grounds that gene regulatory networks lack a predetermined schedule of execution, which may
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Commitment: From Hunting to Promising Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Saira Khan
Humans are extremely prosocial and there are many possible explanations for how we came to be this way. Some have suggested that commitments explain the evolution of human prosociality. Commitments can serve to secure mutually beneficial interaction in the face of short-term incentives to cheat. In this paper, I have two aims. First, I argue that commitment not only applies to familiar practices such
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What is foraging? Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-12
Abstract Foraging is a central competence of all mobile organisms. Models and concepts from foraging theory have been applied widely throughout biology to the search for many kinds of external resources, including food, sexual encounters, minerals, water, and the like. In cognitive science and neuroscience, the tools of foraging theory are increasingly applied to a wide range of other types of search
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Neutral and niche theory in community ecology: a framework for comparing model realism Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Katie H. Morrow
Ecological neutral theory has been controversial as an alternative to niche theory for explaining community structure. Neutral theory, which explains community structure in terms of ecological drift, is frequently charged with being unrealistic, but commentators have usually not provided an account of theory or model realism. In this paper, I propose a framework for comparing the “realism” or accuracy
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Phylogenetically distant animals sleep: why do sleep researchers care? Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 William Bechtel
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Epistemic enhancement, pastism, and fossil anomalies in paleontology and ichnology Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-19 Ali Mirza
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The role of social reinforcement in norm transmission and cultural evolution Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-24 Haggeo Cadenas
Work on cultural evolution, especially that of Boyd, Richerson, and Henrich, has said little about the role of reinforcement in cultural learning. This is surprising, for reinforcement is an old system, it is found across a diverse array of organisms, and it is a successful concept in various scientific disciplines. The main claim of this paper is that social forms of reinforcement play a role in cultural
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From depressed mice to depressed patients: a less “standardized” approach to improving translation Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-17 Monika Piotrowska
Depression is a widespread and debilitating disorder, but developing effective treatments has proven challenging. Despite success in animal models, many treatments fail in human trials. While various factors contribute to this translational failure, standardization practices in animal research are often overlooked. This paper argues that certain standardization choices in behavioral neuroscience research
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An account of conserved functions and how biologists use them to integrate cell and evolutionary biology Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Beckett Sterner, Steve Elliott, Jeremy G. Wideman
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An operational definition of biological development Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-07 Pavlos Silvestros
Despite the undeniable epistemic progress of developmental biology from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day, there still is widespread disagreement on defining the biological term of ‘development’. This scientific field epistemologically is neither unsuccessful nor immature, thus the persistent lack of agreement on its most central concept raises some important questions: is
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Pandemic and infodemic: the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 from a cultural evolutionary perspective Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Lara Häusler, Karim Baraghith
In this paper, we critically consider the analogy between “infodemic” and “pandemic”, i.e. the spread of fake news about COVID-19 as a medial virus and the infection with the biological virus itself from the perspective of cultural evolutionary theory (CET). After confronting three major shortcomings of the ‘infodemic’ concept, we use CET as a background framework to analyze this phenomenon. To do
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What is the nature of stem cells? A unified dispositional framework Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Javier Suárez
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The evolution of multispecies populations: a multilevel selection perspective Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-24 Christopher H. Lean, Christopher J. Jones
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An argument for global realism about the units of selection Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Sandy C. Boucher
This paper defends global realism about the units of selection, the view that there is always (or nearly always) an objective fact of the matter concerning the level at which natural selection acts. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, it is argued that global conventionalist-pluralism is false. This is established by identifying plausible sufficient conditions for irreducible selection at a
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An oak is an oak, or not? Understanding and dealing with confusion and disagreement in biological classification Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-23 Vincent Cuypers, Thomas A. C. Reydon
Human interaction with the living world, in science and beyond, always involves classification. While it has been a long-standing scientific goal to produce a single all-purpose taxonomy of life to cater for this need, classificatory practice is often subject to confusion and disagreement, and many philosophers have advocated forms of classificatory pluralism. This entails that multiple classifications
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Justifying nature-based solutions Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Kate Nicole Hoffman
Nature-based solutions (NbS) have in recent years occupied a central position in conservation and climate discussions among both scientists and policy makers. NbS generally identify a set of strategies which use nature, or natural objects, to address societal (human) issues while simultaneously supporting the broader environment. Rather than criticize NbS on the grounds that the concept is too vague
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Ecosystem health and malfunctions: an organisational perspective Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Emiliano Sfara, Charbel N. El-Hani
A recent idea of “ecosystem health” was introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to draws attention to the fact that ecosystems can become ill because of a reduction of properties such as primary productivity, functions and diversity of interactions among system components. Starting from the 1990s, this idea has been deeply criticized by authors who argued that, insofar as ecosystems show many differences
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What if worms were sentient? Insights into subjective experience from the Caenorhabditis elegans connectome Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-23 Oressia Zalucki, Deborah J. Brown, Brian Key
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A coarse-graining account of individuality: how the emergence of individuals represents a summary of lower-level evolutionary processes Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Pierrick Bourrat
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DNA barcoding and the changing ontological commitments of taxonomy Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-12 James W. E. Lowe, David S. Ingram
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Precis of A Better Ape Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Victor Kumar, Richmond Campbell
A Better Ape covers the evolution of morality from the birth of our ape family through the evolution of human species and all the way up to the development of modern societies. In this summary, we highlight several main elements of this account: the co-evolution of morality with intelligence and complex sociality; the role of social institutions and religious morality in the cultural evolution of behaviorally
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Moral progress for better apes Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-07 Joshua May
The evolutionary model of moral progress developed in A Better Ape is nuanced and illuminating. Kumar and Campbell use their view of the evolved moral mind to analyze clear cases of increased inclusivity and equality (at least in Western society). Their analyses elucidate the psychological and social mechanisms that can drive moral progress (or regress). In this commentary, I raise three main concerns
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Response to critics Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-07 Victor Kumar , Richmond Campbell
We respond to four sets of criticisms of our book, A Better Ape. Against Kristin Andrews, we argue that human normativity is more than just the social maintenance of behavioral conformity, and that one of its functions is to enable humans to adapt to changing environments. Against Jay Odenbaugh, we argue that sympathy, loyalty, trust, and respect are emotions, and that norms are capable of motivating
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An even better ape? Comments on a better ape Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-07 Jay Odenbaugh
Richmond Campbell and Victor Kumar’s A Better Ape is very plausible accout of how the “moral mind” evolved. In my commentary, I raise questions and objections regarding their views on the units of selection, the emotions, the intrinsic motivation of moral norms, and the nature of moral progress.
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Animal sentience and the Capabilities Approach to justice Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-07-23 eva read, Jonathan Birch
Martha Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals calls upon humanity to secure for all sentient beings the central capabilities they need to flourish. This essay review critically examines the ethical and scientific foundations of Nussbaum’s position. On the ethical side, we explore the tension between a robust defence of animal rights and political liberalism, which requires tolerance of a range of reasonable
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Caring animals and the ways we wrong them Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-27 Judith Benz-Schwarzburg, Birte Wrage
Many nonhuman animals have the emotional capacities to form caring relationships that matter to them, and for their immediate welfare. Drawing from care ethics, we argue that these relationships also matter as objectively valuable states of affairs. They are part of what is good in this world. However, the value of care is precarious in human-animal interactions. Be it in farming, research, wildlife
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In praise of animals Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-20 Rhys Borchert, Aliya R. Dewey
Reasons-responsive accounts of praiseworthiness say, roughly, that an agent is praiseworthy for an action just in case the reasons that explain why they acted are also the reasons that explain why the action is right. In this paper, we argue that reasons-responsive accounts imply that some actions of non-human animals are praiseworthy. Trying to exclude non-human animals, we argue, risks neglecting
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The case of poor postpartum mental health: a consequence of an evolutionary mismatch – not of an evolutionary trade-off Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Orli Dahan
Postpartum mood disorders develop shortly after childbirth in a significant proportion of women and have severe effects. Two evolutionary explanations are currently available. The first is that poor postpartum mental health is a consequence of an evolutionary trade-off – a compromise of neurological changes in the maternal brain during pregnancy which, on the one hand, maintain pregnancy, and on the
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The epistemological and conservation value of biological specimens Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-06-05 Derek Halm
Natural history specimens were collected for diverse reasons, but modern, and likely future, uses often diverge from why they were collected. For example, specimens are sometimes integrated into conservation decision-making, where some practitioners claim that specimens may be necessary or extremely important for conservation in general. This is an overstatement. To correct this, I engage with the
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Social norms and superorganisms Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-22 Rachell Powell
Normativity is widely regarded as the ability to make evaluative judgments based on a shared system of social norms. When normativity is viewed through the cognitively demanding lens of human morality, however, the prospect of finding social norms innonhuman animals rapidly dwindles and common causal structures are overlooked. In this paper, I develop a biofunctionalist account of social normativity
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On conserving or remaking the natural world Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Rita Elizabeth Risser
In the last decades of the twentieth century nature writing lost some of its enchantment with the idea of wilderness. It was criticized for its remoteness, separating the natural world from human life, for being out of step with the interests of Indigenous peoples, and for holding an otherwise dynamic natural world, static. Recently, however, writers have begun to rehabilitate the idea of wilderness
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Reliability models in cultural phylogenetics Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Rafael Ventura
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What is cognitive about ‘plant cognition’? Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Jonny Lee
There is growing evidence that plants possess abilities associated with cognition, such as decision-making, anticipation and learning. And yet, the cognitive status of plants continues to be contested. Among the threats to plant cognitive status is the ‘Representation Demarcation Challenge’ which points to the absence of a seemingly defining aspect of cognition, namely, computation over representation
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Great ape enculturation studies: a neglected resource in cognitive development research Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-04-06 Leda Berio, Richard Moore
Disagreement remains about whether particular human socio-cognitive traits arose primarily as a result of biological adaptations, or because of changing cultural practices. Heyes argues that uniquely human traits, including imitation and theory of mind, are the product of cultural learning. In contrast, Tomasello argues that they are, in key respects, part of a suite of adaptations for ‘shared intentionality’
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Gradualism, natural selection, and the randomness of mutation–fisher, Kimura, and Orr, connecting the dots Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-28 Matthew J. Maxwell, Elliott Sober
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The two faces of risk Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-20 Bengt Autzen
The relationship between decision theory and the theory of natural selection in evolutionary biology offers a fertile ground for philosophical inquiry. A topic that has recently been addressed in the philosophical literature is the connection between decision-theoretic and biological discussions of risk. The paper adds to this literature by drawing attention to a distinction between two different notions
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Sex by design: a new account of the animal sexes Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-12 Maximiliana Jewett Rifkin, Justin Garson
What is it for an animal to be female, or male? An emerging consensus among philosophers of biology is that sex is grounded in some manner or another on anisogamy, that is, the ability to produce either large gametes (egg) or small gametes (sperm), though the exact nature of this grounding remains contentious. Here we argue for a new conception of this relation. In our view, one’s sex doesn’t depend
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Positive Wild Animal Welfare Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-12 Heather Browning, Walter Veit
With increasing attention given to wild animal welfare and ethics, it has become common to depict animals in the wild as existing in a state dominated by suffering. This assumption is now taken on board by many and frames much of the current discussion; but needs a more critical assessment, both theoretically and empirically. In this paper, we challenge the primary lines of evidence employed in support
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Biolinguistics and biological systems: a complex systems analysis of language Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-03-06 Ryan M. Nefdt
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Cleaning, sculpting or preparing? Scientific knowledge in Caitlin Wylie’s preparing dinosaurs Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-26 Adrian Currie
Caitlin Wylie’s “Preparing Dinosaurs: the work behind the scenes” (MIT Press 2021) provides a rich ethnographic analysis of the work of fossil preparators. On her account, knowledge in vertebrate paleontology is mediated through a three-way division of labour between paleontologists, preparators and volunteers, each with their own role, expertise and responsibility. In this review, I develop her notion
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Demographic explanations of neanderthal extinction: a reply to Currie and Meneganzin Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-25 Krist Vaesen
In a recent paper, Currie and Meneganzin (Biol Phil, 2022, 37, 50) critically engage with a recent demographic explanation of the demise of Neanderthals (Vaesen et al. 2019). Currie and Meneganzin suggest that, contrary to how it is (supposedly) presented, Vaesen et al.’s explanation is not (and in fact, could never be) ‘stand-alone’, i.e., competition and environmental factors always interfere with
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Scaffolds and scaffolding: an explanatory strategy in evolutionary biology Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Celso Neto, Letitia Meynell, Christopher T. Jones
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Understanding immunity: an alternative framework beyond defense and strength Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Martin Zach, Gregor P. Greslehner
In this paper we address the issue of how to think about immunity. Many immunological writings suggest a straightforward option: the view that the immune system is primarily a system of defense, which naturally invites the talk of strong immunity and strong immune response. Despite their undisputable positive role in immunology, such metaphors can also pose a risk of establishing a narrow perspective
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Affordances and organizational functions Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Cristian Saborido, Manuel Heras-Escribano
In this paper, we bring together the concepts of affordance from ecological psychology and function from the organizational approach to philosophy of biology into a single integrative framework. This integration allows us to account for the biological basis of the notion of affordance, offering theoretical tools to address the normative interrelations between organisms and their environments.
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Reciprocal causation and biological practice Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-02-07 Caleb Hazelwood
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Standard aberration: cancer biology and the modeling account of normal function Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-23 Seth Goldwasser
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Logical fallacies persist in invasion biology and blaming the messengers will not improve accountability in this field: a response to Frank et al. Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Radu Cornel Guiaşu, Christopher W. Tindale
We analyze the “Logical fallacies and reasonable debates in invasion biology: a response to Guiaşu and Tindale” article by Frank et al., and also discuss this work in the context of recent intense debates in invasion biology, and reactions by leading invasion biologists to critics of aspects of their field. While we acknowledge the attempt by Frank et al., at least in the second half of their paper
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The minimal role of the higher categories in biology Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-28 Michael Devitt
Talk of higher categories (ranks) like Genus and Family is ubiquitous in biology. Yet there is widespread skepticism about these categories. We can locate the source of this skepticism in the lack of “robust concepts” for these categories, robust theories of what it is to be in a certain category. A common defense of category talk is that its virtues are “just pragmatic and not theoretic”. But this
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Cognitive science meets the mark of the cognitive: putting the horse before the cart Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-17 Joe Gough
Among those living systems, which are cognizers? Among the behaviours of, and causes of behaviour in, living systems, which are cognitive? Such questions sit at the heart of a sophisticated, ongoing debate, of which the recent papers by Corcoran et al. (2020) and Sims and Kiverstein (2021) serve as excellent examples. I argue that despite their virtues, both papers suffer from flawed conceptions of
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Darwin and the golden rule: how to distinguish differences of degree from differences of kind using mechanisms Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Paul Thagard
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Skepticism, the critical standpoint, and the origin of birds: a partial critique of Havstad and Smith (2019) Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 John A. Pourtless IV
Havstad and Smith (2019) argue that Lakatos’ “methodology of scientific research programs” (MSRP) is a promising philosophical framework for explaining the perceived empirical success of the hypothesis that birds are maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs, and the perceived empirical failures or stagnation of alternatives to that hypothesis. These conclusions are rejected: Havstad and Smith’s account of the
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Evolutionary anamnesis Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 James Toomey
In the Meno, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, Plato outlines the controversial thesis of a priori knowledge that all learning is a form of recollection—anamnesis. He uses this as an argument for the immortality of the soul via reincarnation. Because of this latter claim, the thesis is widely mocked by contemporary evolutionarily-informed materialists. But we can safely reject the metaphysical claim without abandoning
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Introduction to niches and mechanisms in ecology and evolution Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-12-06 Rose Trappes, Behzad Nematipour, Ulrich Krohs
Niches and mechanisms are two important but contested elements in the study of organism-environment interactions. Although they are closely interrelated, with niches playing a crucial role in theorizing about ecological and evolutionary mechanisms such as niche construction, facilitation, and species invasion, philosophical discussions about each issue have been largely disconnected. This collection
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Dosis sola facit venenum: reconceptualising biological realism Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-11 Majid D. Beni
Richard Levins’s (Am Sci 54(4):421–431, 1966) paper sets a landmark for the significance of scientific model-making in biology. Colombo and Palacios (Biol Philos 36(5):1–26. 10.1007/S10539-021-09818-X, 2021) have recently built their critique of the explanatory power of the Free Energy Principle on Levins’s insight into the relationship between generality, realism, and precision. This paper addresses
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Circadian clocks signal future states of affairs Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Brant Pridmore
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Empirical adaptationism revisited: is it testable and is it worth testing? Biol. Philos. (IF 2.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Mingjun Zhang
Empirical adaptationism is often said to be an empirical claim about nature, which concerns the overall relative causal importance of natural selection in evolution compared with other evolutionary factors. Philosophers and biologists who have tried to clarify the meaning of empirical adaptationism usually share, explicitly or implicitly, two assumptions: (1) Empirical adaptationism is an empirical