A historical episode of evolutionary theory, which has lead to the Red Queen theory of the evolutionary maintenance of sex, includes two striking contingencies. These are used to explore alternative what-if scenarios, in order to test some common opinions about such counterfactuals. This sheds new light on the nature of science and its historiography. One counterfactual leads to an unexpected convergence of its result to that of the actual science but, nevertheless, differs in its causal structure. The other diverges towards (...) an incompatible alternative, but this requires further contingent choices that also diverge from actual science. -/- The convergence in the first counterfactual is due to a horizontal transfer of knowledge. Similar transfers of knowledge are typical for innovations of actual science. This suggests that contingent choices can merge as well as fork research traditions both in actual research and counterfactual history. Neither the paths of the actual history of science nor those of its counterfactual alternatives will form a tree of exclusively diverging bifurcations, but a network instead. Convergencies in counterfactuals may, therefore, be due to the web-structure of science as much as to the aims of the historians in question. Furthermore, the difference in causal structure between the actual science and its convergent counterfactual might become diagnostic for external factors rather than internal aims forcing a historian towards convergence. (shrink)

Since intelligent design (ID) advocates claimed the ubiquitous mouse trap as an example of systems that cannot have evolved, mouse trap history is doubly relevant to studying material culture. On the one hand, debunking ID claims about mouse traps and, by implication, also about other irreducibly complex systems has a high educational value. On the other hand, a case study of mouse trap history may contribute insights to the academic discussion about material culture evolution. Michael Behe argued that mouse traps (...) cannot trap mice with any part missing; therefore, they cannot have a precursor with one part less, therefore, cannot have a continuous history, and therefore, cannot have evolved. The patented and seminal precursor of current flat snap traps, however, had one part less, because spring and striker were formed of one wire. Secondly, historical records that reach back into the Bronze Age suggest that its history continued for a very long time. Thirdly, all prerequisites for evolution (variation, transmission, and selection) abound in mouse trap populations. Hence, Behe’s triple-jump conclusion about mouse traps is false each step. There is no, in principle, impossibility for mouse traps to evolve. An evolutionary account of mouse trap history also has academic merits beyond its educational value. Three important conclusions can be drawn: (1) reticulate phylogenies of artifact systems may be resolvable as overlapping, but branching, phylogenies of parts; (2) homologous ideas may be realized by analogous material, that is, phylogenies of information do not necessarily coincide with those of material parts; (3) recombination of parts between different artifact systems increases the cumulative nature of cultural evolution. (shrink)

Discussions of the implications of sexual reproduction have appeared throughout the history of evolutionary biology, from Darwin to Weismann, Fisher, Muller, Maynard Smith, and Williams. The latest of these appearances highlighted an evolutionary paradox that had previously been overlooked. In many animal and plant species reproduction is obligately sexual and also half the offspring are male, yet the males contribute nothing but genes to reproduction. If asexual mutants of such a species were to produce as many asexual offspring on average (...) as sexual females in that species produce daughters and sons, the growth rate of their population would be twice as large. Whereas half the offspring of sexual females are noncontributory males, all the offspring of such an asexual mutant would contribute to growth rate. Nevertheless, sexual reproduction prevails in most species and is not lost evolutionarily. (shrink)

The group selection controversy largely focuses on altruism (e.g., Wilson 1983; Lloyd 2001; Shavit 2004; Okasha 2006, 173ff; Borrello 2010; Leigh 2010; Rosas 2010; Hamilton and Dimond in press). Multilevel selection theory is a resolution of this controversy. Whereas kin selection partitions inclusive fitness into direct and indirect components (via influencing the replication of copies of genes in other individuals), multilevel selection considers within-group and between-group components of fitness (Gardner et al. 2011; Lion et al. 2011). Two scenarios of multilevel (...) selection are often distinguished (Damuth and Heisler 1988; Okasha 2006; Pigliucci 2010): (1) group structure only divides individual fitnesses into within- and between-group components (MLS1); and, (2) groups get their own component of fitness and also, in most definitions, a group-level adaptation (MLS2). (shrink)

In 1935, A. G. Tansley, who was knighted later, proposed the ecosystem concept. Nevertheless, this concept was not without predecessors. Why did Tansley’s ecosystem prevail and not one of its competitors? The purpose of this article is to pin the distinguishing features of Tansley’s ecosystem down, as far as the published record allows. It is an exercise in finding the difference that made a difference. Besides being a pioneering ecologist, Tansley was an adept of psychoanalysis. His interest even led him (...) to visit Sigmund Freud in Vienna for a while. Psychologists had to regard the mind as an entity in its own right, while knowing that it truly was part of a larger whole (body + mind), because the causal relation between body and mind was unknown. This lead Tansley to conclude that psychologists must not objectify the system under study, have to search for causes within their own field, and must not speculate unless this serves a scientific purpose. In 1925, Tansley defended psychoanalysis in a prolonged controversy against a concerted attack criticizing its speculative content and poor scientific standing. This could have been the reason why Tansley kept his ecosystem free of speculative content and unscientific connotation. The competing ecosystem-like concepts, however, have contained philosophical speculation, non-deterministic properties like vitalism or entelechy, or have been burdened with unscientific connotations. Hence, rigorous restraint distinguished the ecosystem concept and made it ready for use by later researchers. (shrink)

This study sheds a light on economic roots of optimal foraging/mating theory. Two examples show graphical optimisation models of behavioural ecology that are identical to much older ones of economics. The knowledge transfer has been conscious and explicit in some cases, but also less visible in others. This does no imply plagiarism or misconduct but merely shows how knowledge can diffuse along obscure, sometimes unconscious, routes of non-public and private communication.

ABSTRACT While Joseph Hooker was considering his upcoming presentation on the geographical distribution of species, he asked Charles Darwin for help with some references. During the ensuing exchange of correspondence, Darwin seems to have contradicted himself, regarding his being aware of Leopold von Buch’s observation that distributed varieties become species, prior to writing On the Origin of Species. Literalists and conspiracists have interpreted this apparent self-contradiction as a sign of duplicity and fraud. However, when the correspondence and Hooker’s address are (...) analysed in context, there is a more compelling explanation. Simply that, in response to direct questioning by Hooker, Darwin conflated the two names of Von Baer and Von Buch, and made an honest mistake. (shrink)

Studie over het werk van de Duitse wijsgeer (1762-1814), met een beknopte levensbeschrijving.

We investigate the impact of informal arguments on judgments about thought experiment cases in light of Deutsch and Cappelen’s mischaracterization view, which claims that philosophers’ case judgments are primarily based on arguments and not intuitions. If arguments had no influence on case judgments, this would seriously challenge whether they are, or should be, based on arguments at all—and not on other cognitive sources instead, such as intuition. In Experiment 1, we replicated Wysocki’s (Rev Philos Psychol 8(2):477–499, 2017) pioneering study on (...) a Gettier-style case, and we confirmed that the informal arguments used by him had no significant effect. However, we also included an improved argument for ascribing knowledge, which did have a significant effect even in Wysocki’s original design. We therefore followed up with Experiment 2 on three Gettier-style cases, where we used a more natural dialogical format for presenting both case descriptions and informal arguments. Overall, we found a clear impact of prima facie good pro and con arguments on case judgments. The issue of argument impact is thus no obstacle to arguing about thought experiments. (shrink)

Algorithmic predictions are promising for insurance companies to develop personalized risk models for determining premiums. In this context, issues of fairness, discrimination, and social injustice might arise: Algorithms for estimating the risk based on personal data may be biased towards specific social groups, leading to systematic disadvantages for those groups. Personalized premiums may thus lead to discrimination and social injustice. It is well known from many application fields that such biases occur frequently and naturally when prediction models are applied to (...) people unless special efforts are made to avoid them. Insurance is no exception. In this paper, we provide a thorough analysis of algorithmic fairness in the case of insurance premiums. We ask what “fairness” might mean in this context and how the fairness of a premium system can be measured. For this, we apply the established fairness frameworks of the fair machine learning literature to the case of insurance premiums and show which of the existing fairness criteria can be applied to assess the fairness of insurance premiums. We argue that two of the often-discussed group fairness criteria, independence (also called statistical parity or demographic parity) and separation (also known as equalized odds), are not normatively appropriate for insurance premiums. Instead, we propose the sufficiency criterion (also known as well-calibration) as a morally defensible alternative that allows us to test for systematic biases in premiums towards certain groups based on the risk they bring to the pool. In addition, we clarify the connection between group fairness and different degrees of personalization. Our findings enable insurers to assess the fairness properties of their risk models, helping them avoid reputation damage resulting from potentially unfair and discriminatory premium systems. (shrink)

Forthcoming guide with brief introductions on methods in analytic philosophy by experts on the relevant topics. With sections on: formal methods, argumentation, inferential methods, thought experiments, intuition, ordinary language philosophy, conceptual analysis, conceptual engineering, naturalism, analytic feminism, experimental philosophy, and progress and disagreement in philosophy.

Mémoire de Mons. Lange contre cette philosophie -- Réponse préliminaire d'un auteur anonimeà ce mémoire -- Sommaire de la réponse de Mr. Wolf mȩme avec un avis au lecteur de l'histoire de ce nouveau différend.

'Philosophische Anthropologie' meint in dieser Studie nicht eine philosophische Subdisziplin, sondern eine besondere Theorierichtung in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, die mit den Namen Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Erich Rothacker, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann u.v.a. mehr verbunden ist. Der erste Teil erzählt die verwickelte, teils abenteuerliche Entstehungs-, Aufstiegs- und Entfaltungsgeschichte dieser Denkergruppe von 1919 bis 1975 - einschließlich ihrer beachtlichen Wirkungsgeschichte in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Soziologie, Psychologie, Biologie und der Philosophie selbst. Im zweiten Teil wird der philosophische Identitätskern (...) dieser Philosophischen Anthropologie als Denkansatz präzisiert. (shrink)

According to the ‘expertise defence’, experimental findings suggesting that intuitive judgments about hypothetical cases are influenced by philosophically irrelevant factors do not undermine their evidential use in (moral) philosophy. This defence assumes that philosophical experts are unlikely to be influenced by irrelevant factors. We discuss relevant findings from experimental metaphilosophy that largely tell against this assumption. To advance the debate, we present the most comprehensive experimental study of intuitive expertise in ethics to date, which tests five well- known biases of (...) judgment and decision-making among expert ethicists and laypeople. We found that even expert ethicists are affected by some of these biases, but also that they enjoy a slight advantage over laypeople in some cases. We discuss the implications of these results for the expertise defence, and conclude that they still do not support the defence as it is typically presented in (moral) philosophy. (shrink)

The extent to which machine metaphors are used in synthetic biology is striking. These metaphors contain a specific perspective on organisms as well as on scientific and technological progress. Expressions such as “genetically engineered machine”, “genetic circuit”, and “platform organism”, taken from the realms of electronic engineering, car manufacturing, and information technology, highlight specific aspects of the functioning of living beings while at the same time hiding others, such as evolutionary change and interdependencies in ecosystems. Since these latter aspects are (...) relevant for, for example, risk evaluation of uncontained uses of synthetic organisms, it is ethically imperative to resist the thrust of machine metaphors in this respect. In addition, from the perspective of the machine metaphor viewing an entity as a moral agent or patient becomes dubious. If one were to regard living beings, including humans, as machines, it becomes difficult to justify ascriptions of moral status. Finally, the machine metaphor reinforces beliefs in the potential of synthetic biology to play a decisive role in solving societal problems, and downplays the role of alternative technological, and social and political measures. (shrink)

'Philosophische Anthropologie' meint in dieser Studie nicht eine philosophische Subdisziplin, sondern eine besondere Theorierichtung in der deutschsprachigen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, die mit den Namen Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Erich Rothacker, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann u.v.a. mehr verbunden ist. Der erste Teil erzählt die verwickelte, teils abenteuerliche Entstehungs-, Aufstiegs- und Entfaltungsgeschichte dieser Denkergruppe von 1919 bis 1975 - einschließlich ihrer beachtlichen Wirkungsgeschichte in verschiedenen Disziplinen wie der Soziologie, Psychologie, Biologie und der Philosophie selbst. Im zweiten Teil wird der philosophische Identitätskern (...) dieser Philosophischen Anthropologie als Denkansatz präzisiert. (shrink)

“Philosophical Anthropology,” which is reconstructed here, does not deal with anthropology as a philosophical subdiscipline but rather as a particular philosophical approach within twentieth-century German philosophy, connected with thinkers such as Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen. This paper attempts a more precise description of the core identity of Philosophical Anthropology as a paradigm, observes the differences between the authors within the paradigm, and differentiates the paradigm as a whole from other twentieth-century philosophical approaches, such as transcendental philosophy, evolutionary (...) theory or naturalism, existentialism, and hermeneutic philosophy. In determining the human being as “excentric positionality,” Philosophical Anthropology arrives at unique categorical intertwinings between the biological, social and cultural sciences. (shrink)

If nature is by definition the object of the natural sciences, then the dichotomy ‘natural’ versus ‘chemical’, held by both chemists and nonchemists, suggests an idiosyncrasy of chemistry. The first part of the paper presents a selective historical analysis of the main notions of nature in chemistry, as developed in early Christian views of chemical crafts, alchemy, iatrochemistry, mechanical philosophy, organic chemistry, and contemporary drug research. I argue that the dichotomy as well as quasi-moral judgments of chemistry have been based (...) on static and teleological notions of nature throughout history and that chemists, unlike physicists, have neglected the dynamic notion of nature. The second part provides a philosophical criticism of the former notions and argues for the latter as well as for an explicit discourse about values in chemistry.Author Keywords: History and philosophy of chemistry; Notion of nature; Alchemy; Mechanical philosophy; Synthetic organic chemistry; Contemporary drug research. (shrink)

In this paper, I am going to offer a reconstruction of a challenge to intuition-based armchair philosophy that has been put forward by experimental philosophers of a restrictionist stripe, which I will call the 'master argument'. I will then discuss a number of popular objections to this argument and explain why they either fail to cast doubt on its first, empirical premise or do not go deep enough to make for a lasting rebuttal. Next, I will consider two more promising (...) objections, the grounding objection and the expertise objection, which aim at the second, epistemic premise of the argument. Against this background, I will then suggest what I call 'conservative restrictionism' as the most reasonable default reaction to the experimentalist challenge, which is a combination of the two views of local restrictionism and methodological conservativism. (shrink)

This paper reports research on the influence of corporate and individual characteristics on managers'' social orientation in Germany. The results indicate that mid-level managers expressed a significantly lower social orientation than low-level managers, and that job activity did not impact social orientation. Female respondents expressed a higher social orientation than male respondents. No impact of the political system origin (former East Germany versus former West Germany) on social orientation was shown. Overall, corporate position had a significantly higher impact on social (...) orientation than did the characteristics of the individuals surveyed. (shrink)

Experimental restrictionists have challenged philosophers’ reliance on intuitions about thought experiment cases based on experimental findings. According to the expertise defense, only the intuitions of philosophical experts count—yet the bulk of experimental philosophy consists in studies with lay people. In this paper, we argue that direct strategies for assessing the expertise defense are preferable to indirect strategies. A direct argument in support of the expertise defense would have to show: first, that there is a significant difference between expert and lay (...) intuitions; second, that expert intuitions are superior to lay intuitions; and third, that expert intuitions accord with the relevant philosophical consensus. At present, there is only little experimental evidence that bears on these issues. To advance the debate, we conducted two new experiments on intuitions about knowledge with experts and lay people. Our results suggest that the intuitions of epistemological experts are superior in some respects, but they also pose an unexpected challenge to the expertise defense. Most strikingly, we found that even epistemological experts tend to ascribe knowledge in fake-barn-style cases. This suggests that philosophy, as a discipline, might fail to adequately map the intuitions of its expert practitioners onto a disciplinary consensus. (shrink)

In this paper, we first briefly survey the main responses to the challenge that experimental philosophy poses to the method of cases, given the common assumption that the latter is crucially based on intuitive judgments about cases. Second, we discuss two of the most popular responses in more detail: the expertise defense and the mischaracterization objection. Our take on the expertise defense is that the available empirical data do not support the claim that professional philosophers enjoy relevant expertise in their (...) intuitive judgments about cases. In contrast, the mischaracterization objection seems considerably more promising than its largely negative reception has suggested. We argue that the burden of proof is thus on philosophers who still hold that the method of cases crucially relies on intuitive judgments about cases. Finally, we discuss whether conceptual engineering provides an alternative to the method of cases in light of the challenge from experimental philosophy. We argue that this is not clearly the case, because conceptual engineering also requires descriptive information about the concepts it aims to improve. However, its primarily normative perspective on our concepts makes it largely orthogonal to the challenge from experimental philosophy, and it can also benefit from the empirical methods of the latter. (shrink)

The notion of the highest good used to occupy a primary role in ethical theorising, but has largely disappeared from the contemporary landscape. The notion was central to both Aristotle's and Kant's ethical theories, however--a surprising observation given that their approaches to ethics are commonly conceived as being diametrically opposed. The essays in this collection provide a comprehensive treatment of the highest good in Aristotle and Kant and show that, even though there are important differences in terms of content, there (...) are also important similarities in terms of the structural features of Aristotle's and Kant's value theories. By carefully analysing Aristotle's and Kant's theories of the highest good, a team of experts in the field shed light on their respective ethical theories and highlight the richness, complexity, and fruitfulness of the notion of the highest good. (shrink)

BackgroundHealthcare is permeated by phenomena of vulnerability and their ethical significance. Nonetheless, application of this concept in healthcare ethics today is largely confined to clinical research. Approaches that further elaborate the concept in order to make it suitable for healthcare as a whole thus deserve renewed attention.MethodsConceptual analysis.ResultsTaking up the task to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole involves two challenges. Firstly, starting from the concept as it used in research ethics, a more detailed (...) characterization and systematization of the different realms of human abilities and the various ways in which these realms contain vulnerability is to be established. Secondly, at the same time, the sought-after concept of vulnerability should avoid picturing the relation between healthcare recipient and provider as a relation between a dependent individual in need and another individual capable of providing all the help necessary. An adequate concept of vulnerability should enable one to understand when and in which respects care providers may be vulnerable as well. Philosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to meet both of these challenges.ConclusionsPhilosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole. They come with a price, though. While the ethical role of vulnerability in medical ethics usually is to signify states of affairs that are to be diminished or overcome, philosophical accounts introduce forms of vulnerability that are regarded as valuable. Further analyzing and systematizing forms and degrees of vulnerability thus comprises the task to distinguish between amounts and types of vulnerability that can count as valuable, and amounts and types of vulnerability that are to be alleviated. (shrink)

Healthcare is permeated by phenomena of vulnerability and their ethical significance. Nonetheless, application of this concept in healthcare ethics today is largely confined to clinical research. Approaches that further elaborate the concept in order to make it suitable for healthcare as a whole thus deserve renewed attention. Conceptual analysis. Taking up the task to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole involves two challenges. Firstly, starting from the concept as it used in research ethics, a (...) more detailed characterization and systematization of the different realms of human abilities and the various ways in which these realms contain vulnerability is to be established. Secondly, at the same time, the sought-after concept of vulnerability should avoid picturing the relation between healthcare recipient and provider as a relation between a dependent individual in need and another individual capable of providing all the help necessary. An adequate concept of vulnerability should enable one to understand when and in which respects care providers may be vulnerable as well. Philosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to meet both of these challenges. Philosophical accounts of vulnerability can help to make the concept of vulnerability suitable for healthcare ethics as a whole. They come with a price, though. While the ethical role of vulnerability in medical ethics usually is to signify states of affairs that are to be diminished or overcome, philosophical accounts introduce forms of vulnerability that are regarded as valuable. Further analyzing and systematizing forms and degrees of vulnerability thus comprises the task to distinguish between amounts and types of vulnerability that can count as valuable, and amounts and types of vulnerability that are to be alleviated. (shrink)

The present article asks what lessons the empirical case of institutional change in post-Soviet Russia yields for the recent research on ideas and institutions. Its main point is that in post-Soviet Russia a clash between imported foreground ideas and deep domestic background ideas led to an ideational division among the elite of the country that became a main obstacle to the provision of coherent economic reforms. This story stands in some contrast to much of the newer literature on ideas and (...) institutions, which tends to see critical junctures as leading from one equilibrium to another. I argue that tensions between imported foreground ideas and deep domestic backgrounds are likely to occur in other cases of far-reaching processes of institutional change based on Western ideas but taking place beyond the realm of Western, industrialized countries. Therefore, I argue, some general lessons on the interplay between ideas and institutions might be drawn from this case study. (shrink)

Functioning markets require a state that will enforce property rights; contracts mediated by money; and the prevalence of a certain type of morality that prevents people from cheating in complex exchange relationships. Monetary exchange abstracts from the personal loyalties that bind small groups together, but at the same time it creates an overarching commitment to norms that bind people more loosely in national societies—as long as monetary exchanges are enforced by the state. In the Soviet Union, conversely, the abolition of (...) money as a universal medium of exchange led both to a deterioration of the norms of impersonal morality and to a loss of state capacity. The state lost control of the economy to informal, personally binding economic networks, and it lost its monopoly on violence in competition with sub-state, personal enforcers of impersonal economic commitments between these networks. Thus, capitalism can be seen as diverting people from norms of loyalty to the members of the relatively small groups of which they are a part toward loyalty to the abstract norms that make it possible for anonymous people to deal with each other reliably. (shrink)

Functioning markets require a state that will enforce property rights; contracts mediated by money; and the prevalence of a certain type of morality that prevents people from cheating in complex exchange relationships. Monetary exchange abstracts from the personal loyalties that bind small groups together, but at the same time it creates an overarching commitment to norms that bind people more loosely in national societies—as long as monetary exchanges are enforced by the state. In the Soviet Union, conversely, the abolition of (...) money as a universal medium of exchange led both to a deterioration of the norms of impersonal morality and to a loss of state capacity. The state lost control of the economy to informal, personally binding economic networks, and it lost its monopoly on violence in competition with sub-state, personal enforcers of impersonal economic commitments between these networks. Thus, capitalism can be seen as diverting people from norms of loyalty to the members of the relatively small groups of which they are a part toward loyalty to the abstract norms that make it possible for anonymous people to deal with each other reliably. (shrink)

Two crucial questions, if unanswered, impede our understanding of Aristotle’s account of pleasure inenx.4-5: What are the activities that pleasure is said to complete? In virtue of what does pleasurealwaysaccompany these activities? The answers fall in place if we read Aristotle as responding to the Delian challenge that the finest, best and most pleasant are not united in one and the same thing. I propose an ‘ethical’ reading ofenx.4 according to which the best activities in question are those integral to (...) the exercise of virtue. (shrink)