Natural Selection and Multiple Realisation: A Closer Look

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 27 (1):73 - 83 (2013)
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Abstract

The target of this article is the claim that natural selection accounts for the multiple realisation of biological and psychological kinds. I argue that the explanation actually offered does not provide any insight about the phenomenon since it presupposes multiple realisation as an unexplained premise, and this is what does all the work. The purported explanation mistakenly invokes the ?indifference? of selection to structure as an additional explanatorily relevant factor. While such indifference can be explanatory in intentional contexts, it is not a causal factor at all in non-intentional nature. The upshot is that, once the necessary initial assumption about heterogeneity is accepted, there is no further explanation to do

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Björn Brunnander
Stockholm University

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References found in this work

Psychological predicates.Hilary Putnam - 1967 - In William H. Capitan & Daniel Davy Merrill (eds.), Art, mind, and religion. [Pittsburgh]: University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 37--48.
What psychological states are not.Ned Block & Jerry A. Fodor - 1972 - Philosophical Review 81 (April):159-81.
Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1994 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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