University of Texas at Austin
PHILOSOPHY 325C
Spring 1999
Philosophy of Biology
Paper Topics
The following are suggested paper topics for the course. You may also devise a topic of
your own but these must be cleared with me.
Most paper topics will involve some reading beyond the class. I will try to indicate the
most important readings along with the topic. However, after you have decided on a
topic, get in touch with me to get additional references.
Grading Policy:
(i) Topic appropriateness: 5 points. Guaranteed if you choose one of the topics
below. Otherwise: 5 points if your topic traverses 4 weekly subjects; 4
points if it traverses 3; 3 points if it traverses 2; 2 points if it traverses 1; 0
points if it has not been cleared by me;
(ii) Spelling and grammar: 5 points. I will deduct 1 point for each mistake. This
means that if you make 3 mistakes you get 2 points, if you make 4
mistakes you get 1 point and so on;
(iii) Clarity: 5 points. Can I understand what you are trying to say?;
(iv) Structure: 10 points. Say what you are going to do right at the beginning of
the paper and stick to it religiously;
(v) Reading: 10 points. Did you do the necessary reading? Did you understand
it?;
(vi) Content: 15 points. Have you successfully argued for the point that you are
trying to make? Have you really told the story you promised? This is the
most important consideration for grading the paper.
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1. The Human Genome Project.
What are the epistemological assumptions that underly the Human Genome Project
(HGP)? Are they justified? (What are our standards of justification?) What impact will
the HGP have on biology? On medicine? On the ethos of biological research?
2. Genes for a Mental trait.
Choose some mental trait (e. g., intelligence, or some disease trait such as
schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, bipolar affective disorder, etc.) and try to
answer the following questions: does it qualify as a “trait”? Why? What would it mean to
call the trait “genetic”? Is the trait “genetic” in that sense?
3. Inference to a Genetic Explanation.
When should we infer that a trait should be called “genetic”? What does such an
attribution say about the etiology of a trait? What are the different techniques that can
be used to try to infer such an explanation? How reliable is each? Why? (Discuss the
limitations of each technique in some detail.)
4. Adaptationism and the Mind.
What does it mean for a mental feature to be an adaptation? How would one go about
proving that such a feature is an adaptation? Discuss putative examples of adaptive
features and show why arttributions of adaptation for mental features are more
problematic than physical features. How may these problems be ameliorated?
5. The Epistemological Status of Evolutionary Psychology.
What is the program of evolutionary psychology? What is its current status? What hard
data supports any of its claims? To what extent is the entire field based on “just so”
stories? Can the evidence that would test its claims even be collected? If so, how? If
not, why? If your assessment of the last three questions is largely negative, what is the
value of evolutionary psychology? What possible psychological scenarios may it be
ignoring?
6. Units and Selection.
What is the “units of selection problem”? To what extent is it a conceptual problem adnt
to what extent is it empirical? Does the problem matter? To evolutionary biology? To the
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philosophy of science? How would you resolve the problem? Does it merit the amount
of attention that philosophers have given to it?
7. The Concept of Fitness.
What does “fitness” mean in evolutionary biology? Show how this definition avoids the
so-called tautology problem of evolutionary theory? Is fitness a probabilistic concept?
Analyze the relations between fitness and deterministic processes in evolutionary theory
on the one hand, and stochastic processes on the other.
8. Neutrality and the Power of Selection.
Explain the dispute between neutralists and selectionists in evolutionary theory. To what
extent is the dispute conceptual and to what extent is it empirical? Can the dispute be
resolved by the data? Why does molecular data lead to different intuitions than data at
other levels of biological organization? Which side is in a better position at present?
Why?
9. The Construction of Evolutionary Histories.
How are evolutionary histories reconstructed? How can we avoid mistaking an analogy
for a homology? What kinds of data, at what level of biological organization, are the best
to use for such reconstructions? What is the role of simplicity in a reconstruction? How
can we guard against simplicity leading us to an incorrect reconstruction?
10. Conservation Biology as a Normative Science.
How is conservation biology different from ecology? Why is the former a "normative"
discipline? What are the various types of normativity in it? How does it affect practice?
Does the normativity percolate downwards into the conceptual structure of conservation
biology? If so, how?
11. The Declining Population Approach to Conservation.
Suppose that, instead of population viability analysis, we adopt the declining population
approach to conservation programs. What practices would change? Why? Which is
better? Why?
12. Island Biogeography and the Design of Nature Reserves.
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What is a species-area curve? Why are islands appropriate as models for nature
reserves? How reliable is a species-area curve? Should these curves be used in the
design of a nature reserve system? Do the problems with species-area curves reflect a
general epistemological problem with ecology? What role should scientific ecology play
in conservation biology?
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