Biology & Philosophy最新文献

According to the standard formulation, natural selection requires variation, differential fitness, and heritability. I argue that this formulation is inadequate because it fails to distinguish natural selection from artificial selection, intelligent design, forward-looking orthogenetic selection, and adaptation via the selection of nonrandom variation. I suggest adding a no teleology condition. The no teleology condition says that the evolutionary process is not guided toward an endpoint represented in the mind of an agent, variation is produced randomly with respect to adaptation, and selection pressures are not forward looking.

Minimal residual disease (MRD), a measure of residual cancer cells, is a concept increasingly employed in precision oncology, touted as a key predictive biomarker to guide treatment decisions. This paper critically analyzes the expanding role of MRD as a predictive biomarker in hematologic cancers. I outline the argument for MRD as a predictive biomarker, articulating its premises and the empirical conditions that must hold for them to be true. I show how these conditions, while met in paradigmatic cases of MRD use in cancer, may not hold across other cancers where MRD is currently being applied, weakening the argument that MRD serves as an effective predictive biomarker across cancer medicine.

This essay review explores Steven Mithen’s interdisciplinary approach to the origins and evolution of language in The Language Puzzle (2024). It focuses mainly on what I call his iconic vocal origins hypothesis. Mithen challenges the prevalent gestural origins hypothesis, suggesting instead that early prehistoric languages were predominantly vocal and iconic, with conventionalization – as characteristic of symbol use – emerging later. The Language Puzzle draws on research from archaeology, philosophy, computer science, developmental psychology, and many other fields, thus assembling a wealth of insights from various disciplines. While intriguing, Mithen’s suggestion that prehistoric languages may have relied on iconicity instead of conventionalization faces substantial problems, which are discussed in this review essay. In the final section, I also briefly review the important conclusion chapter of Mithen’s book, which contains an imaginative outline of how language evolved from the last common ancestor up until modern H. sapiens. My criticisms of the iconic vocal origins hypothesis notwithstanding, The Language Puzzle is a valuable resource for anyone interested in language evolution, and once again showcases Mithen’s wide-ranging expertise and masterful writing.

Machine metaphors abound in life sciences: animals as automata, mitochondria as engines, brains as computers. Philosophers have criticized machine metaphors for implying that life functions mechanically, misleading research. This approach misses a crucial point in applying machine metaphors to biological phenomena: their reciprocity. Analogical modeling of machines and biological entities is not a one-way street where our understanding of biology must obey a mechanical conception of machines. While our understanding of biological phenomena undoubtedly has been shaped by machine metaphors, the resulting insights have likewise altered our understanding of what machines are and what they can do.

Are plants sentient? Several researchers argue that plants might be sentient. They do so on the grounds that plants exhibit cognitive behaviour similar to that of sentient organisms and that they possess a vascular system which is functionally equivalent to the animal nervous system. This paper will not attempt to settle the issue of plant sentience. Instead, the paper has two goals. First, it provides a diagnosis of the current state of the debate on plant sentience. It is argued that the current state of the debate on plant sentience cannot yield any progress because the behavioural and physiological similarities pointed to as a way of inferring consciousness are not, in themselves, indicative of consciousness. Second, the paper proposes we adopt the theory-light approach proposed by Birch (Noûs 56(1):133–153, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12351) whereby we start to test for clusters of cognitive abilities facilitated by consciousness in plants. Currently, there are no such tests and therefore no evidence for plant sentience. The paper proposes that the task for future research on plants be in line with the tests outlined in the theory-light approach.

This paper analyzes three multiscale modeling techniques that are commonly used in biology and physics and uses those cases to construct a normative framework for tailoring multiscale modeling techniques to specific modeling contexts. I argue that the selection of a multiscale modeling technique ought to focus on degrees of relative autonomy between scales, the measurable macroscale parameters of interest, indirect scaling relationships mediated by mesoscale features, and the degree of heterogeneity of the system’s mesoscale structures. The unique role that these features play in multiscale modeling reveals several important methodological, epistemological, and metaphysical questions for future philosophical investigations into multiscale modeling.

To better understand the knowledge of language we study how it interacts with other kinds of knowledge in the performance of different abilities and their corresponding knowledge structures, for example in reading and writing or in comparing prose and singing. The more difficult study is to gain a better understanding of how language emerged in our species. Comparative research with other species focused on communication, especially when expression is vocal and reception is auditory, may help us to formulate the right questions. In the comparisons in which the mechanisms of communication and aspects of the underlying knowledge are learned, another dimension of the research program presents itself. A recent survey of the field by Nicolas Mathevon maps out some of the main results of this research in The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate (2023). The following review essay will be selective, as the survey is wide-ranging and covers related topics that will take us too far, even though they are, ultimately, related.

In this paper, I plan to show that the use of a specific population concept—Millstein’s Causal Interactionist Population Concept (CIPC)—has interesting and counter-intuitive ramifications for discussions of the reality of biological race in human beings. These peculiar ramifications apply to human beings writ large and to individuals. While this in and of itself may not be problematic, I plan to show that the ramifications that follow from applying Millstein’s CIPC to human beings complicates specific biological racial realist accounts—naïve or otherwise. I conclude with the notion that even if biological races do exist—by fulfilling all of the criteria needed for Millstein’s population concept (which, given particular worries raised by Gannett (Synthese 177:363–385, 2010), and Winther and Kaplan (Theoria 60:54–80, 2013) may not)—the lower-bound limit for the scope of biological racial realism is at the level of populations, and as such they cannot say anything about whether or not individual organisms themselves have races.

In this paper, I aim to explore whether fitness, understood as a causal disposition, can be characterized as an emergent property of organisms, or if it is reducible to the anatomical, physiological, and environmentally relative properties that characterize them. In doing so, I refer to Jessica Wilson’s characterization of ontological emergence and examine if fitness meets her criteria for ontological emergent properties (dependence and autonomy); and, if so, to what degree (weak or strong).

Justin Garson has recently argued that proper functions are proximal activities of traits selected by phylogenetic or ontogenetic selection processes, and that traits are dysfunctional only if they cannot perform their proper functions for constitutional reasons. We partially agree with Garson, but reject the view that functions are proximal activities, as well as his account of dysfunctions. Instead, we propose our own theory that biological functions are selected dispositions and that a trait is dysfunctional in virtue of not having the dispositions for which it was selected. This account can explain both defects (or dysfunctions in Garson’s sense) and dysfunctions due to environmental factors. Moreover, it offers a neat way to explain the graduality of dysfunction.