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  • Articles  (13)
  • Animals
  • Chemical Engineering
  • Electron microscopy
  • Electronic structure and strongly correlated systems
  • Evolution
  • Springer  (13)
  • ANU Press
  • Philosophy  (13)
  • 1
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Animal Consciousness and Ethics in Asia and the Pacific (1997)
    Springer
    Journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 10 (1997), S. 249-267 
    Details
    ISSN: 1573-322X
    Keywords: Animals ; Asia ; consciousness ; Australia ; Hong Kong ; India ; Israel ; Japan ; New Zealand ; The Philippines ; Russia ; Singapore ; Thailand
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract The interactions between humans, animals and the environment have shaped human values and ethics, not only the genes that we are made of. The animal rights movement challenges human beings to reconsider interactions between humans and other animals, and maybe connected to the environmental movement that begs us to recognize the fact that there are symbiotic relationships between humans and all other organisms. The first part of this paper looks at types of bioethics, the implications of autonomy and the value of being alive. Then the level of consciousness of these relationships are explored in survey results from Asia and the Pacific, especially in the 1993 International Bioethics Survey conducted in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, The Philippines, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. Very few mentioned animal consciousness in the survey, but there were more biocentric comments in Australia and Japan; and more comments with the idea of harmony including humans in Thailand. Comparisons between questions and surveys will also be made, in an attempt to describe what people imagine animal consciousness to be, and whether this relates to human ethics of the relationships.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1007774409131
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  • 2
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    On the nature of the evolutionary process: The correspondence between Theodosius Dobzhansky and John C. Greene (1996)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 11 (1996), S. 445-491 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Th. Dobzhansky ; J.C. Greene ; Evolution ; Progress ; Christianity ; Teilhard de Chardin
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract This is the correspondence (1959–1969), on the nature of the evolutionary process, between the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky and the historian John C. Greene.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00138328
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  • 3
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Gibbard's evolutionary theory of rationality and its ethical implications (1995)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 10 (1995), S. 129-180 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Evolution ; explanation ; morality ; rationality ; normative communication ; fact/value distinction ; utilitarianism
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Gibbard's theory of rationality is “evolutionary” in terms of its result as well as its underpinning argument. The result is that judgments about what is “rational” are analyzed as being similar to judgments of morality — in view of what Darwin suggests concerning the latter. According to the Darwinian theory, moral judgments are based on sentiments which evolve to promote the survival and welfare of human societies. On Gibbard's theory, rationality judgments should be similarly regarded as expressing emotional attachments to behavioral norms which originate and function to coordinate social interaction. Consequently, Gibbard's theory of rationality might be used to illuminate Darwin's theory of morality, and vice versa. Additionally, as argued in the present essay, both can be further elaborated, and defended, by developing related themes in philosophical ethics: viz., connected with Hume and 20th-century emotivists. The main problem is that this general Darwinian approach faces widespread opposition nowadays, not only in ethics but in philosophy of science. The purpose of this essay is to analyze Gibbard's theory, critically and constructively, with emphasis on the pertinent commonalities in Darwin, Hume and the emotivists, while also critically addressing their common enemies. The pervasive methodological orientation is to relate this analysis to (philosophy of) science in general, and biological science in particular.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00852243
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  • 4
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Towards welfare biology: Evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering (1995)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 10 (1995), S. 255-285 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Animal ; Biology ; Consciousness ; Economics ; Evolution ; Natural Selection ; Suffering ; Welfare
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Welfare biology is the study of living things and their environment with respect to their welfare (defined as net happiness, or enjoyment minus suffering). Despite difficulties of ascertaining and measuring welfare and relevancy to normative issues, welfare biology is a positive science. Evolutionary economics and population dynamics are used to help answer basic questions in welfare biology: Which species are affective sentients capable of welfare? Do they enjoy positive or negative welfare? Can their welfare be dramatically increased? Under plausible axioms, all conscious species are plastic and all plastic species are conscious (and, with a stronger axiom, capable of welfare). More complex niches favour the evolution of more rational species. Evolutionary economics also supports the common-sense view that individual sentients failing to survive to mate suffer negative welfare. A kind of God-made (or evolution-created) fairness between species is also unexpectedly found. The contrast between growth maximization (as may be favoured by natural selection), average welfare, and total welfare maximization is discussed. It is shown that welfare could be increased without even sacrificing numbers (at equilibrium). Since the long-term reduction in animal suffering depends on scientific advances, strict restrictions on animal experimentation may be counter-productive to animal welfare.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00852469
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  • 5
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Science and selection (1994)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 9 (1994), S. 45-62 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Evolution ; evolutionary epistemology ; Hull ; interactor ; progress ; replicator ; selection theory ; vehicle
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract In this paper I consider the view that scientific change is the result of a selection process which has the same structure as that which drives natural selection. I argue that there are important differences between organic evolution and scientific growth. First, natural selection is much more constrained than scientific change; for example it is hard to populations of organisms to escape local maxima. Science progresses; it may not even make sense to say that biological evolution is progressive. Second, natural selection depends for its power on the specifics of its domain, so I doubt that there is much point in seeing a selective regime in science as an instance of a more general family of selective regimes. Third, the replicator/interactor distinction fits scientific change much less well than biological evolution. But a family of selective theories of science can be identified ranging from the very ambitious to the very modest. Though the very ambitious programs of evolutionary epistemology are in trouble, there is space for one which is not a trivial redescription of what everyone already knows, but which is sensitive to the peculiarities of its domain. That selective theory explains important aspects of the community organization of science, an organization which is central to scientific progress.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00849913
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  • 6
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    The semantic approach to evolutionary theory (1991)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 6 (1991), S. 59-80 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Evolution ; semantic approach ; theory
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Paul Thompson, John Beatty, and Elisabeth Lloyd argue that attempts to resolve certain conceptual issues within evolutionary biology have failed because of a general adherence to the received view of scientific theories. They maintain that such issues can be clarified and resolved when one adopts a semantic approach to theories. In this paper, I argue that such conceptual issues are just as problematic on a semantic approach. Such issues arise from the complexity involved in providing formal accounts of theoretical laws and scientific explanations. That complexity is due to empirical and pragmatic considerations, not one's adherence to a particular formal approach to theories. This analysis raises a broader question. How can any formal account properly represent the complex nature of empirical phenomena?
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02426826
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  • 7
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    What is this stuff called fitness? (1991)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 6 (1991), S. 81-92 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Evolution ; fitness ; natural selection
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract This paper considers a variety of attempts to define fitness in such a way as to defend the theory of evolution by natural selection from the criticism that it is a circular argument. Each of the definitions is shown to be inconsistent with the others. The paper argues that the environment in which an animal evolves can be defined only with respect to the properties of the phenotype of the animal and that it is therefore not illuminating to try to explain the phenotypic properties of the animal in terms of adaptation to an environment that is defined by those very properties. Furthermore, since there is no way that the environment can be defined independently of the presence of the animal there is no way that the quality of an animal can be assessed; and there can be no objective criteria by whichany form of selection can be carried out, therefore there can be no criteria by whichnatural selection can be carried out. It is proposed that fitness is nothing more than the production of offspring, that this is a phenotypic property like all the others, and if it is heritable then the offspring of the parents that produce the most offspring will themselves produce the most offspring, and that in principle it is impossible to account for this in terms of the other phenotypic properties of the fittest animals except by circular argument. Differential rates of reproduction are the causes of evolution and the phenotypic causes are strictly inexplicable.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02426827
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  • 8
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Die biotheoretischen Mängel der Evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie (1990)
    Springer
    Journal for general philosophy of science 21 (1990), S. 309-328 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8587
    Keywords: Evolution ; evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie ; Organismus ; Autonomie ; Abbildungskritik
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Philosophy , Nature of Science, Research, Systems of Higher Education, Museum Science
    Notes: Summary The concept of evolutionary epistemology has been critically discussed by philosophers who have mainly pointed to unacceptable philosophical tenets (cf. Vittorio Hösle, this Journal, Vol. 19 (1988), pp. 348–377). However, as most philosophers are extremely reluctant to critically treat the biological theories on which the ideas of evolutionary epistemology are based, the invalid concepts of adaption escaped their critical scrutiny. Therefore the influence of preconceived biological theories on the biological basis of evolutionary epistemology and the distorting consequences on the philosophical level could not be elaborated. The following context sketches a new view of organismic reasoning and its impact on evolutionary aspects of epistemology. The basic theorem of adaptation is shown to be unacceptable and invalid if organisms are conceived as autonomous entities which can only evolve according to their specific internal organismic properties.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01801041
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  • 9
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    The non-existence of a principle of natural selection (1989)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 4 (1989), S. 255-273 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Natural Selection ; Evolution ; Principle ; Probability ; Propensity
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract The theory of natural selection is a rich systematization of biological knowledge without a first principle. When formulations of a proposed principle of natural selection are examined carefully, each is seen to be exhaustively analyzable into a proposition about sources of fitness and a proposition about consequences of fitness. But whenever the fitness of an organic variety is well defined in a given biological situation, its sources are local contingencies together with the background of laws from disciplines other than the theory of natural selection; and the consequences of fitness for the long range fate of organic varieties are essentially applications of probability theory. Hence there is no role and no need for a principle of the theory of natural selection, and any generalities that may hold in that theory are derivative rather than fundamental.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02426626
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  • 10
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Does evolutionary biology contribute to ethics? (1989)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 4 (1989), S. 287-301 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Evolution ; Incest Taboo ; Ethics ; Behavioral Development
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Human propensities that are the products of Darwinian evolution may combine to generate a form of social behavior that is not itself a direct result of such pressure. This possibility may provide a satisfying explanation for the origin of socially transmitted rules such as the incest taboo. Similarly, the regulatory processes of development that generated adaptations to the environment in the circumstances in which they evolved can produce surprising and sometimes maladaptive consequences for the individual in modern conditions. These combinatorial aspects of social and developmental dynamics leave a subtle but not wholly uninteresting role for evolutionary biology in explaining the origins of human morality.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02426629
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  • 11
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    How evolutionary biology challenges the classical theory of rational choice (1989)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 4 (1989), S. 457-481 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Evolution ; evolutionary biology ; fitness ; decision theory ; theory of choice ; rationality ; rational behavior ; reductionism
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract A fundamental philosophical question that arises in connection with evolutionary theory is whether the fittest patterns of behavior are always the most rational. Are fitness and rationality fully compatible? When behavioral rationality is characterized formally as in classical decision theory, the question becomes mathematically meaningful and can be explored systematically by investigating whether the optimally fit behavior predicted by evolutionary process models is decision-theoretically coherent. Upon investigation, it appears that in nontrivial evolutionary models the expected behavior is not always in accord with the norms of the standard theory of decision as ordinarily applied. Many classically irrational acts, e.g. betting on the occurrence of one event in the knowledge that the probabilities favor another, can under certain circumstances constitute adaptive behavior. One interesting interpretation of this clash is that the criterion of rationality offered by classical decision theory is simply incorrect (or at least incomplete) as it stands, and that evolutionary theory should be called upon to provide a more generally applicable theory of rationality. Such a program, should it prove feasible, would amount to the logical reduction of the theory of rational choice to evolutionary theory.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00162590
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  • 12
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) and the reality of natural groups (1988)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 3 (1988), S. 29-47 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Louis Agassiz ; Empiricism ; Cladism ; Evolution
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract The philosophy of “pattern cladism” has been variously explained by reference to the work of Louis Agassiz. The present study analyzes Agassiz's attempt to combine an empirical approach to the study of nature with an idealistic philosophy. From this emerges the problem of empiricism and of the isomorphy between the order of nature and human thinking. The analysis of the writings of Louis Agassiz serves as the basis for discussion of the “reality” of natural groups as postulated by pattern cladists.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00127627
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  • 13
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Assessing evolutionary epistemology (1986)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 1 (1986), S. 401-459 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Evolution ; epistemology ; selection ; analogy ; metaphor ; norms
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract There are two interrelated but distinct programs which go by the name “evolutionary epistemology.” One attempts to account for the characteristics of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans by a straightforward extension of the biological theory of evolution to those aspects or traits of animals which are the biological substrates of cognitive activity, e.g., their brains, sensory systems, motor systems, etc. (EEM program). The other program attempts to account for the evaluation of ideas, scientific theories and culture in general by using models and metaphors drawn from evolutionary biology (EET program). The paper begins by distinguishing the two programs and discussing the relationship between them. The next section addresses the metaphorical and analogical relationship between evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary biology. Section IV treats the question of the locus of the epistemological problem in the light of an evolutionary analysis. The key questions here involve the relationship between evolutionary epistemology and traditional epistemology and the legitimacy of evolutionary epistemology as epistemology. Section V examines the underlying ontological presuppositions and implications of evolutionary epistemology. Finally, section VI, which is merely the sketch of a problem, addresses the parallel between evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00140962
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