The supervenience of biological concepts
Philosophy of Science 45 (3):368-386 (1978)
| Abstract | In this paper the concept of supervenience is employed to explain the relationship between fitness as employed in the theory of natural selection and population biology and the physical, behavioral and ecological properties of organisms that are the subjects of lower level theories in the life sciences. The aim of this analysis is to account simultaneously for the fact that the theory of natural selection is a synthetic body of empirical claims, and for the fact that it continues to be misconstrued, even by biologists, for a tautological system. The notion of supervenience is then employed to provide a new statement of the relation of Mendelian predicates to molecular ones in order to provide for the commensurability and potential reducibility of Mendelian to molecular genetics in a way that circumvents the theoretical complications which appear to stand in the way of such a reduction | |||||||||
| 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: 5,631 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesAlexander Rueger (2000). Robust Supervenience and Emergence. Philosophy of Science 67 (3):466-491.
John Divers (1996). Supervenience for Operators. Synthese 106 (1):103-12.
Harold Kincaid (1987). Supervenience Doesn't Entail Reducibility. Southern Journal of Philosophy 25 (3):343-56.
Jaegwon Kim (1984). Concepts of Supervenience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (December):153-76.
Brian P. McLaughlin (1995). Varieties of Supervenience. In Elias E. Savellos & U. Yalcin (eds.), Supervenience: New Essays. Cambridge University Press.
Bradford Petrie (1987). Global Supervenience and Reduction. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (September):119-30.
Xiaoping Chen (2011). Various Concepts of “Supervenience” and Their Relations: A Comment on Kim's Theory of Supervenience. Frontiers of Philosophy in China 6 (2):316-333.
John Bacon (1986). Supervenience, Necessary Coextensions, and Reducibility. Philosophical Studies 49 (March):163-76.
Vera Hoffmann & Albert Newen (2007). Supervenience of Extrinsic Properties. Erkenntnis 67 (2):305 - 319.
Marcel Weber (1996). Fitness Made Physical: The Supervenience of Biological Concepts Revisited. Philosophy of Science 63 (3):411-431.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads22 ( #56,076 of 548,972 )Recent downloads (6 months)4 ( #19,222 of 548,972 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
