Biological Theory

ISSN: 1555-5542

29 found

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  1.  30
    Ancient Inner Feelings: Interoceptive Insights into the Evolution of Consciousness.Asier Arias Domínguez - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (4):246-266.
    The evolutionary emergence of consciousness is a research topic that has been attracting increasing attention in recent years. In a brief span of time, the debate surrounding various models in this area is driving the development of an increasingly specific research agenda. In this article, we examine the main available models of emergence. All the models we discuss assume, with varying degrees of caution, that consciousness emerged through convergent evolution in three distinct phyla within the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, they provide (...)
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  2.  30
    Homoplasy as an Evolutionary Process: An Optimistic View on the Recurrence of Similarity in Evolution.Marcelo Domingos de Santis - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (4):267-278.
    In the cladistic literature, there is a recurrent perspective that considers homoplasy as something undesirable. Homoplasy, according to this view, is believed to obscure homologies that may lead to synapomorphies. Some cladists often call homoplasies an ad hoc hypothesis or an “error in our preliminary assignment of homology.” Consequently, homoplasy is generally regarded negatively, hindering further investigations, because it matters little whether a character subject to homoplasy is a convergence, a parallelism, or a reversal, since they all fall within the (...)
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  3.  25
    Agency as an Inherent Property of Living Organisms.Bernd Rosslenbroich, Susanna Kümmell & Benjamin Bembé - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (4):224-236.
    A central characteristic of living organisms is their agency, that is, their intrinsic activity, both in terms of their basic life processes and their behavior in the environment. This aspect is currently a subject of debate and this article provides an overview of some of the relevant publications on this topic. We develop the argument that agency is immanent in living organisms. There is no life without agency. Even the basic life processes are an intrinsic activity, which we call the (...)
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  4.  17
    Developmental Axioms in Life History Evolution.Liam U. Taylor & Richard O. Prum - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (4):237-245.
    Life history theory is often invoked to make universal predictions about phenotypic evolution. For example, it is conventional wisdom that organisms should evolve older ages at first reproduction if they have longer lifespans. We clarify that life history theory does not currently provide such universal predictions about phenotypic diversity. Using the classic Euler–Lotka model of adaptive life history evolution, we demonstrate how predictions about optimal age at first reproduction depend on rarely acknowledged, prior theoretical assumptions (i.e., axioms) about organismal development. (...)
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  5.  15
    Paths of Purposiveness.Majid D. Beni - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):177-183.
    This article aims to challenge the prevailing dichotomous approaches to goal-directedness across diverse scientific disciplines. To that effect, it focuses on establishing the interconnectedness of diverse notions of purposiveness by examining the relationship between variational principles in physics and life sciences. Thus, the article aims to uncover a unifying aspect of goal-directedness that transcends the varying levels of complexity.
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  6.  57
    Richard Lewontin and Theodosius Dobzhansky: Genetics, Race, and the Anxiety of Influence.David Depew - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):151-167.
    I reconstruct the relationship between the evolutionary geneticists Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975) and Richard Lewontin (1929–2021). Using archival research and published texts, I show that Lewontin inherited his dissertation director’s research program as well as his “biology of democracy.” He did so in circumstances in which the molecular revolution in genetics was threatening both Dobzhansky’s science and his anti-racist social ideals. Lewontin’s sometimes rocky relationship with the person he called “my professor” sprang from his perception that Dobzhansky was not up to (...)
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  7.  43
    Rethinking Neuroscientific Methodology: Lived Experience in Behavioral Studies.Nedah Nemati - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):184-197.
    The role of experience in the process of behavioral refinement has been undertheorized by philosophers of neuroscience and neuroscientists. By examining sleep studies in behavioral neurobiology, I show that scientists frequently invoke a variety of lived experiences—what I call experientially derived notions—to refine the behavior under investigation. Of note, these behaviors must remain sufficiently fuzzy throughout experimentation to permit refinement. The aim of this article is to recognize that neuroscientists’ use of lived experience necessarily helps refine behaviors and render those (...)
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  8. What Animals Can Do: Agency, Mutuality, and Adaptation.Catherine Read & Agnes Szokolszky - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):198-208.
    The endeavor to naturalize the philosophy of biology brings the problem of agency to the forefront, along with renewed attention to the organism and organicism. In this article, we argue for a mutualist approach to agency that starts to unravel layers of this complex issue by focusing on perception and action at the core of all biological agency. The mutuality of animals and their surroundings is seen as distinct from the typical concepts of organism, preexisting environment, and their interactions. Mutuality (...)
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  9.  32
    What Is, and What Good Is, Fitness? Reflections on Takacs and Bourrat.Sahotra Sarkar - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):168-169.
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  10.  13
    Why Is the Frequency of a Risk More Important than Its Severity in Retaining Adaptive Information? A Multilevel Analysis of Human Evolution Using Snakes as Models.Gustavo Taboada Soldati, Alessandra Rezende Pereira, Risoneide Henriques da Silva, Joelson Moreno Brito de Moura, Henrique C. Costa & Leonardo da Silva Chaves - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):209-219.
    Human beings have a memory adapted to primarily retain and recall information that favors their survival and reproduction. We tested whether the frequency and severity of environmental challenges influence adaptive memory, i.e., the ability to retain and recall adaptive information. Therefore, in a community of family farmers, we verified whether the salience index of snakes (as a proxy for the distribution of local knowledge and organization in the recall process) is determined by (1) relative abundance; (2) synanthropic behavior (proxies of (...)
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  11.  36
    Context Matters: A Response to Autzen and Okasha’s Reply to Takacs and Bourrat.Peter Takacs & Pierrick Bourrat - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (3):170-176.
    In a recent reply to Takacs and Bourrat’s article (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022), Autzen and Okasha (Biol Philos 37:37, 2022) question our characterization of the relationship between the geometric mean and arithmetic mean measures of fitness. We here take issue with the claim that our characterization falls prey to the mistakes they highlight. Briefly revisiting what Takacs and Bourrat (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022) accomplished reveals that the key issue of difference concerns cases of deterministic but nonconstant growth. Restricting focus to (...)
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  12.  33
    A Discussion on Instinct, Paris, 1954.Gregory M. Kohn - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (2):137-149.
    The publication of Daniel Lehrman’s 1953 paper, “A Critique of Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior,” (_The Quarterly Review of Biology_ 28(4):337–363) exposed a gulf between comparative psychologists and ethologists regarding the concept of instincts. At the center of this debate was a rivalry between T. C. Schneirla—Lehrman’s doctoral advisor—and Konrad Lorenz. While Schneirla maintained that the concept of innate instincts mischaracterized developmental processes, Lorenz maintained that innateness was essential to understand the evolution of behavior. A year after the publication (...)
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  13.  32
    Revisiting T. C. Schneirla’s “Interrelationships of the ‘Innate’ and the ‘Acquired’ in Instinctive Behavior” (1956).Gregory M. Kohn - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (2):84-93.
    During the postwar period, the concept of instinct came to encapsulate the debate around the importance of nature versus nurture. The fact that animals show highly organized behavior early in development suggested the presence of an underlying fixity where behavior was “inbuilt” into an animal’s biology despite an individual’s experiences. This placed a discrete and exhaustive line between the innate and acquired that became a foundation for the European-dominated field of ethology. Across the Atlantic, a group of comparative psychologists led (...)
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  14.  55
    Normativity, Autonomy, and Agency: A Critical Review of Three Essays on Agency in Nature, and a Modest Proposal for the Road Ahead.Lenny Moss - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (2):73-83.
    Has the renewal of interest in the ostensible agency of living beings signaled an advance from a merely heuristic Kantian sense of purposiveness to an unequivocally, empirically grounded research program or are there as yet hidden tensions or contradictions in, for example, the organizational autonomy approach to natural agency? Can normativity be found to be immanent in nature but only beginning with the living cell or must a thoroughgoing naturalism find the seeds of normativity immanent throughout abiotic as well as (...)
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  15.  31
    Biological Codes: A Field Guide for Code Hunters.Robert Prinz - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (2):120-136.
    This article presents an update on known and unknown biological codes. While the genetic code has been recognized as a code for decades, most other codes were hidden in the shadow of this hallmark discovery. It was the dawn of the new millennium when the histone language and code were proclaimed in the years 2000 and 2001, respectively, marking the start of an explosion in the number of published codes across all biological disciplines since then. Actually, there are hundreds to (...)
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  16.  55
    Charles Peirce’s Philosophy and the Intersection Between Biosemiotics and the Philosophy of Biology.Claudio Rodríguez Higuera - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (2):94-104.
    Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of signs, generally construed as the foundation of current semiotic theory, offers a theory of general perception with significant implications for the notion of subjectivity in organisms. In this article, we will discuss Peirce’s primary claims in semiotic theory, particularly focusing on their relevance to biosemiotics. We argue that these claims align with certain areas of the philosophy of biology, specifically epistemological and ontological considerations, despite the limited formal interaction between disciplines. This article serves as a (...)
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  17. The Two Fundamental Problems of Epistemology, Their Resolution, and Relevance for Life Science.Harry Smit - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (2):105-119.
    Among the many fundamental problems Wittgenstein discussed, two are especially relevant for evolutionary theory. The first one is the problem of negation and its relation to the intentionality of thought. Its resolution answers the question of how thought can anticipate reality though what is thought may not exist, and explains how empirical propositions are distinguishable from mathematical, logical, and conceptual (or what are traditionally called metaphysical) propositions. The second is the problem of the grounds of sensory experience. Wittgenstein’s resolution of (...)
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  18.  23
    Revisiting Edward D. Cope’s “The Relation of Animal Motion to Animal Evolution” (1878).George R. McGhee - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):37-43.
    In 1878 evolutionary theoretician Edward D. Cope published an eight-page paper filled with prescient ideas that clearly anticipated theoretical evolutionary topics that are actively being debated some 145 years later. An examination of these ideas and their modern counterparts is the primary objective of this essay. A proposal is also made to provide an answer to Cope’s Puzzle concerning the sequences of events involved in the evolution of adaptive animal structures. This article revisits Cope’s “The Relation of Animal Motion to (...)
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  19.  28
    Concepts of Agency: Introduction to the Thematic Section.Lenny Moss - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):3-5.
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  20.  73
    The Concept of Agent in Biology: Motivations and Meanings.Samir Okasha - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):6-10.
    Biological agency has received much attention in recent philosophy of biology. But what is the motivation for introducing talk of agency into biology and what is meant by “agent”? Two distinct motivations can be discerned. The first is that thinking of organisms as agents helps to articulate what is distinctive about organisms vis-à-vis other biological entities. The second is that treating organisms as agent-like is a useful heuristic for understanding their evolved behavior. The concept of agent itself may be understood (...)
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  21.  79
    What Is Agency? A View from Science Studies and Cybernetics.Andrew Pickering - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):16-21.
    The first part of this essay relates a minimal and primordial concept of agency to be found in science and technology studies to an overall ontology of liveliness. The second part explores the relation between minimal and higher-level conceptions of agency concerning goal-orientedness and adaptation, and moves towards specifically biological concerns via a discussion of cybernetic machines.
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  22.  29
    George McGhee—Visionary Scientist and Pioneer in Evo-Devo.Isabella Sarto-Jackson, Gerd B. Müller & Stuart A. Newman - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):1-2.
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  23.  43
    The Microbiome Function in a Host Organism: A Medical Puzzle or an Essential Ecological Environment?Tamar Schneider - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):44-55.
    The dual role of microbial communities as either beneficial/functional or harmful/pathogenic involves two issues concerning causality in physiology and medicine, etiology of disease, and the notion of function in biology. Causal explanation formulated by the germ theory of disease and the Koch postulates connects the existence of a specifically identified microbe to disease by the isolation and identification of a pathogen from an organism with the disease and the successful infection of a healthy individual. Similarly, microbiome research in medicine centers (...)
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  24.  66
    Neuroepigenetics in Philosophical Focus: A Critical Analysis of the Philosophy of Mechanisms.Antonella Tramacere & John Bickle - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):56-71.
    Epigenetics investigates the dynamics of gene expression in various cells, and the signals from the internal and external environment affecting these dynamics. Neuroepigenetics extends this research into neurons and glia cells. Environmental-induced changes in gene expression are not only associated with the emerging structure and function of the nervous system during ontogeny, but are also fundamental to the wiring of neural circuitries responsible for learning and memory. Yet philosophers of science and neuroscience have so far paid little attention to these (...)
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  25.  82
    What is Agency? A View from Autonomy Theory.Louis Virenque & Matteo Mossio - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):11-15.
    The theory of biological autonomy provides a naturalized characterization of agency, understood as a general biological phenomenon that extends beyond the domain of intentionality and causation by mental states. Agency refers to the capacity of autonomous living beings (roughly speaking: organisms) to purposively and functionally control the interactions with the environment, and to adaptively modulate their own self-determining organization and behavior so as to maintain their own existence, construed as their intrinsic telos. We mention some crucial strengths of the autonomist (...)
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  26.  49
    Agency, Goal-Directed Behavior, and Part-Whole Relationships in Biological Systems.Richard Watson - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (1):22-36.
    In this essay we aim to present some considerations regarding a minimal but concrete notion of agency and goal-directed behavior that are useful for characterizing biological systems at different scales. These considerations are a particular perspective, bringing together concepts from dynamical systems, combinatorial problem-solving, and connectionist learning with an emphasis on the relationship between parts and wholes. This perspective affords some ways to think about agents that are concrete and quantifiable, and relevant to some important biological issues. Instead of advocating (...)
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  27.  96
    The Conceptual Ecology of “Dysbiosis”.David Kelley - 2024 - Biological Theory (4).
    “Dysbiosis” is a common but vague term featured in the microbiome literature, often invoked to indicate some kind of imbalance among microbiota. There is no agreement on how to define or even characterize dysbiotic microbiomes. Building on the work of Morar and Bohannan, who explore five interpretations of “microbiome,” I offer a short supplemental analysis of what plausibly counts as “dysbiosis” according to each of the five distinct conceptions. My aim is to provide a more nuanced basis for interpreting claims, (...)
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  28. Eating and Cognition in Two Animals without Neurons: Sponges and Trichoplax.William Bechtel & Leonardo Bich - 2024 - Biological Theory:1-14.
    Eating is a fundamental behavior in which all organisms must engage in order to procure the material and energy from their environment that they need to maintain themselves. Since controlling eating requires procuring, processing, and assessing information, it constitutes a cognitive activity that provides a productive domain for pursuing cognitive biology as proposed by Ladislav Kováč. In agreement with Kováč, we argue that cognition is fundamentally grounded in chemical signaling and processing. To support this thesis, we adopt Cisek’s strategy of (...)
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  29. Mismatch Resistance and the Problem of Evolutionary Novelty.Jonathan Egeland - 2024 - Biological Theory (4):279-291.
    In evolutionary medicine and other related fields, the concept of evolutionary mismatch is used to explain phenomena whereby traits reduce in adaptive value and eventually become maladaptive as the environment changes. This article argues that there is a similar problem of persistent adaptivity—what has been called the problem of evolutionary novelty—and it introduces the concept of mismatch resistance in order to explain phenomena whereby traits retain their adaptive value in novel environments that are radically different from the organisms’ environment of (...)
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