Organisms as natural purposes: The contemporary evolutionary perspective
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 37 (4):771-791 (2006)
| Abstract | I argue that recent advances in developmental biology demonstrate the inadequacy of suborganismal mechanism. The category of the organism, construed as a ’natural purpose’ should play an ineliminable role in explaining ontogenetic development and adaptive evolution. According to Kant the natural purposiveness of organisms cannot be demonstrated to be an objective principle in nature, nor can purposiveness figure in genuine explain. I attempt to argue, by appeal to recent work on self-organization, that the purposiveness of organisms is a natural phenomenon and, by appeal to the apparatus of invariance explanation, that biological purposiveness provides genuine, ineliminable biological explanations. (edited) | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,709 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesDenis M. Walsh (2006). Evolutionary Essentialism. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2):425-448.
Denis M. Walsh (2003). Fit and Diversity: Explaining Adaptive Evolution. Philosophy of Science 70 (2):280-301.
Jerry Fodor (2008). Against Darwinism. Mind and Language 23 (1):1–24.
Andreas Weber & Francisco J. Varela (2002). Life After Kant: Natural Purposes and the Autopoietic Foundations of Biological Individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1 (2):97-125.
Paul S. Agutter & Denys N. Wheatley (1999). Foundations of Biology: On the Problem of “Purpose” in Biology in Relation to Our Acceptance of the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection. Foundations of Science 4 (1):3-23.
Kim Sterelny (2003). Last Will and Testament: Stephen Jay Gould's the Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Philosophy of Science 70 (2):255-263.
Joel Pust (2004). Natural Selection and the Traits of Individual Organisms. Biology and Philosophy 19 (5):765-779.
Robert A. Wilson & Matthew J. Barker, The Biological Notion of Individual. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Francisco J. Ayala (1970). Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology. Philosophy of Science 37 (1):1-15.
Sabina Leonelli & Rachel Ankeny (2011). What’s so Special About Model Organisms? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 42 (2):313-323.
Arthur E. Falk (1981). Purpose, Feedback, and Evolution. Philosophy of Science 48 (2):198-217.
Thomas W. Polger (2007). Rethinking the Evolution of Consciousness. In Susan Schneider & Max Velmans (eds.), Companion to Consciousness. Blackwell.
Hannah Ginsborg (2004). Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle. Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (1):33-65.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-08-30Total downloads22 ( #56,255 of 549,662 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,425 of 549,662 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
