Agential thinking

Essential tensions in archaeological …, 2003

1992

Artificial Life is, by its nature, an interdisciplinary research programme; it will involve biologists, of course, but also philosophers, mathematicians, chemists, computer scientists-and perhaps even (as in my case) engineers. Success in our endeavours will require some of us, at least, to venture into foreign territory. This essay is a log of my personal expedition into evolutionary biology. I attempt to provide a comprehensive review of Darwinism in the biological world, and to do so as an outsider-a non-professional in the field. My purpose is twofold. Firstly, I hope that real biologists may take this opportunity to correct at least the worst of my errors. Secondly, I offer this to other non-specialists as a sort of map-a record of my particular exploration. I hope it might at least provide some insight into the kinds of questions which need to be asked, even if the particular answers suggested here are less than satisfactory. Above all, I want to convince any who may be in doubt that Darwinism encompasses a complex and subtle system of interrelated theories, whose substantive transplantation to any artificial medium will be very far from easy. This essay draws on abstract concepts introduced in a previous essay (McMullin 1992); the two essays are therefore best read in conjunction.

Relations, vol. 3 (1), 2015

Reply to Stijn Bruers' ‘The Predation and Procreation Problems: Persistent Intuitions Gone Wild’ [2015. Relations, vol. 3 (1)]. There he presents an axiology which includes well-being and biodiversity. On his account, however, the latter has much more importance than the former. Tremendous gains in well-being are proscribed when they can only be obtained through a great loss in biodiversity. That is why we should not phase out predation by genetically reprogramming predators. I argue that, even if we value biodiversity, it cannot be that important. This is shown, first, by considering the results of Bruers’ account regarding the sacrifice of both nonhuman and human interests. Second, I suggest how rejecting Bruers’ view on biodiversity has acceptable implications regarding his two other worries, r-selection and the inadvertent killing of sentient invertebrates.

Philosophy in review, 2019

This excellent collection focuses on three major approaches in current academic philosophy to the question of the relationship between ethics and human evolution. Perhaps a bit more than is usual in edited volumes of this type, it is constructed around the particular interests and philosophical proclivities of editors Michael Ruse and Robert J. Richards. This is a strength in that Ruse and Richards can afford the space to provide an historical perspective of how the debate in which both are avid participants came to take shape, and to present different arguments by multiple philosophers defending a limited set of competing positions. It is a weakness in that the contributors too often refer to each other, and thus allow themselves to neglect too many important contemporary philosophical perspectives on this topic, as well as the insights and discoveries of many scientists and scholars outside of philosophy departments which could (and should) inform their arguments. Part I traces how the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species (in 1859) and The Descent of Man (in 1871) affected academic moral philosophy. With the exception of Naomi Beck's discussion of Friedrich von Hayek (Chapter 4), this section directly addresses the interests of the editors and thus works effectively as a springboard to what comes after. Lillihammer (Chapter 1) shows that Anglophone philosophers through much of the twentieth century 'explicitly responded to' evolutionary approaches to ethics and, for the most part, 'turned away from them on the basis of what they thought of as decisive arguments' (15). Several of these arguments are revived and updated in Part III. In the meantime Jeffrey O'Connell (Chapter 2) explores Friedrich Nietzsche's loathing of evolutionary theory, while Trevor Pearce (Chapter 3) wades through the more ambivalent reception Darwin's ideas found among American pragmatic philosophers. Pearce and Abraham Gibson (Chapter 5) pay special attention to the competition between Darwin's and Herbert Spencer's very different conceptions of evolution. Unlike Darwinism, which is decidedly non-teleological, the Spencerian view highlights the 'correspondence between organism and environment' and envisions an ever-improving natural world in which '[m]ore evolved species … are able to meet a wider and more complicated set of environmental challenges' (45). Spencer was, as Gibson points out, 'the most widely read philosopher in the United States through the second half of the nineteenth century' (74). Yet, 'mastery of the atom' and the discovery of DNA 'accelerated the biological sciences' wholesale shift towards reductionism' (80) and with it Darwinism's rise to hegemonic supremacy. As Ruse points out in his contribution (Chapter 6), which opens Part II of the book, Spencer's ideas remain influential among ecologists such as Rachel Carson and James Lovelock (89), as well as many philosophers, writers, and artists. He even taunts his coeditor Richards for being a Spencerian (90), a charge that Richards good-humoredly rejects as 'the product of a long day in the sun' (5). Yet the question is of paramount importance to metaethical debates about moral justification and indeed about the nature of morality itself. 'The world after Darwin,' declares Ruse, all too rightly, 'is very different from the world before Darwin' (89). If one accepts Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection as fact-and how can one not, given the heaps of extant evidence in support of it, not least of which is the entire field of genetics?-then one must confront its implications: evolution is purposeless and directionless, a product of uncountable random mutations and fortuitous, transient conjunctions between species and environments.

Public understanding of science, 2002

American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1988

2009

Rather astonishing is our confirmatory evidence for neurologist J. Z. Young’s conclusion that we are [Mankind is] the only species which constructs models for survival outside the brain and outside the genetic system. This confirmatory evidence takes the form of a unifying description of three biological model-building processes: (I) chemico-genetic; (II) chemico-neural; and (III) the extra-corporeal, this last being unique to Mankind. The unifying connection is that each of these “Three Worlds” — an allusion to one of philosopher Karl Popper’s notions — is “conducted” via a single sixstage model-building process containing two major (and a third, less major) corrective feedback loops.

BioScience, 2007

Philosophy and Theory in Biology, 2010

Alberch (Pere) • Conditions of (for) existence • Consequence etiology • Cuvier (George) • Darwin-Wallace principle • Evo-devo • Fitness • Functions (biological) • Natural selection • Teleology DEPEW, D. -EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND TELEOLOGY 2