Reductionism and holism, that is, antireductionism, are two of the prevailing paradigms within the philosophy of biology. Reductionists strive to understand biological phenomena by reducing them to a series of levels of complexity with each lower level forming the foundation for the subsequent level, by mapping such biological phenomena inasmuch as possible to the principal phenomena within the fundamental sciences of chemistry and physics. In this way, complex phenomena can be reduced to assemblages of more elementary explananda. Holism, in counterpart, (...) claims that there independently exist phenomena arising from ordered levels of complexity that have intrinsic causal power and cannot be reduced in this way. When dealing with the nature of biology and its unique foundations of essentialism, determinism and ethics, the pedagogical lens through which these foundations are conveyed to learners could provide a limited perspective if only the reductive approach is followed as it would not sensitise learners to the true complexity of the phenomenon of life and the study thereof, and it is the purpose of this article to frame the reductionist–antireductionist debate in order to illustrate this.Contribution: This article contributes new knowledge to the field of the philosophy of science; more specifically, the philosophy of biology by critically evaluating the pervasive dialectic between the theoretical frameworks of reductionism and antireductionism and alluding to the pedagogical consequences thereof. (shrink)

Modern biology is ambivalent about the notion of evolutionary progress. Although most evolutionists imply in their writings that they still understand large-scale macroevolution as a somewhat progressive process, the use of the term “progress” is increasingly criticized and avoided. The paper shows that this ambivalence has a long history and results mainly from three problems: (1) The term “progress” carries historical, theoretical and social implications which are not congruent with modern knowledge of the course of evolution; (2) An incongruence exists (...) between the notion of progress and Darwin’s theory of selection; (3) It is still not possible to give more than a rudimentary definition of the general patterns that were generated during the macroevolution of organisms. The paper consists of two parts: the first is a historical overview of the roots of the term “progress” in evolutionary biology, the second discusses epistemological, ontological and empirical problems. It is stated that the term has so far served as a metaphor for general patterns generated amongst organisms during evolution. It is proposed that a reformulation is needed to eliminate historically imported implications and that it is necessary to develop a concept for an appropriate empirical description of macroevolutionary patterns. This is the third way between, on the one hand, using the term indiscriminately and, on the other hand, ignoring the general patterns that evolution has produced. (shrink)

This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as _computational phenomenology_ because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, etc.). The first section presents a brief review of the overall project to naturalize phenomenology. The second section presents and evaluates (...) philosophical objections to that project and situates our version of computational phenomenology with respect to these projects. The third section reviews the generative modelling framework. The final section presents our approach in detail. We conclude by discussing how our approach differs from previous attempts to use generative modelling to help understand consciousness. In summary, we describe a version of computational phenomenology which uses generative modelling to construct a computational model of the inferential or interpretive processes that best explain this or that kind of lived experience. (shrink)

The consensus among evolutionists seems to be that the morphological complexity of organisms increases in evolution, although almost no empirical evidence for such a trend exists. Most studies of complexity have been theoretical, and the few empirical studies have not, with the exception of certain recent ones, been especially rigorous; reviews are presented of both the theoretical and empirical literature. The paucity of evidence raises the question of what sustains the consensus, and a number of suggestions are offered, including the (...) possibility that certain cultural and/or perceptual biases are at work. In addition, a shift in emphasis from theoretical to empirical inquiry is recommended for the study of complexity, and guidelines for future empirical studies are proposed. (shrink)

The comprehension of living organisms in all their complexity poses a major challenge to the biological sciences. Recently, systems biology has been proposed as a new candidate in the development of such a comprehension. The main objective of this paper is to address what systems biology is and how it is practised. To this end, the basic tools of a systems biological approach are explored and illustrated. In addition, it is questioned whether systems biology ‘revolutionizes’ molecular biology and ‘transcends’ its (...) assumed reductionism. The strength of this claim appears to depend on how molecular and systems biology are characterised and on how reductionism is interpreted. Doing credit to molecular biology and to methodological reductionism, it is argued that the distinction between molecular and systems biology is gradual rather than sharp. As such, the classical challenge in biology to manage, interpret and integrate biological data into functional wholes is further intensified by systems biology’s use of modelling and bioinformatics, and by its scale enlargement. (shrink)

The Red Queen hypothesis, or the ability organisms have to control and regulate the available trophic energy, is a recently proposed parameter for measuring fitness. Firstly, this hypothesis is analysed in terms of its heuristic power. Secondly, the claimed causal dependence between this parameter and a, still controversial, law of constant extinction is judged to be unjustified, however reasonable such a claim appears to be. Finally, the ubiquity of competition in nature which is seemingly required by the Red Queen and (...) supposedly realized at the expense of a mutualistic alternative, is deemed to be a questionable assumption. (shrink)

The question whether ethical behavior is biologically determined may refer either to the capacity for ethics (i.e., the proclivity to judge human actions as either right or wrong), or to the moral norms accepted by human beings for guiding their actions. I herein propose: (1) that the capacity for ethics is a necessary attribute of human nature; and (2) that moral norms are products of cultural evolution, not of biological evolution. Humans exhibit ethical behavior by nature because their biological makeup (...) determines the presence of three necessary conditions for ethical behavior: (i) the ability to anticipate the consequences of one’s own actions; (ii) the ability to make value judgments; and (iii) the ability to choose between alternative courses of action. Ethical behavior came about in evolution not because it is adaptive in itself, but as a necessary consequence of man’s eminent intellectual abilities, which are an attribute directly promoted by natural selection. That is, morally evolved as an exaptation, not as an adaptation. Since Darwin’s time there have been evolutionists proposing that the norms of morality are derived from biological evolution. Sociobiologists represent the most recent and most subtle version of that proposal. The sociobiologists' argument is that human ethical norms are sociocultural correlates of behaviors fostered by biological evolution. I argue that such proposals are misguided and do not escape the naturalistic fallacy. The isomorphism between the behaviors promoted by natural selection and those sanctioned by moral norms exist only with respect to the consequences of the behaviors; the underlying causations are completely disparate. (shrink)

In On the Origin of Autonomy; A New look at the Major Transitions in Evolution, Bernd Rosslenbroich argues that an increase of the relative autonomy of individual organisms is one of the central large-scale patterns in evolution. I begin by presenting how Rosslenbroich understands the notion of autonomy in biology and how he correlates its increase to different sets of morphological, physiological, and behavioral characteristics of various biological systems. I briefly discuss his view of directionality in evolution with respect to (...) its ontological and epistemological status. Then, I discuss the advantages of his thesis, and especially the emphasis on the organism as the subject rather than the object of evolution. I argue in detail that his account could benefit from a more exact conception of autonomy, and I discuss six problems related to the operationalization of his concept as applied to various theoretical issues. (shrink)