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Arno Wouters

Utrecht University, Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and Humantities, Guesr

University of Groningen, Culture and Cognition, Adjunct

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I studied biology (Wageningen) and philosophy (Groningen). I obtained a PhD from Utrecht University in 1998 on a dissertation about explanation in functional biology. I had many temporary jobs as a teacher and researcher in philosophy. I also worked as a researcher in computer science. Initially I specialized in philosophy of biology. I aimed to develop a contemporary form of organicism. Since 2005 I am mainly involved in research into the implications of empirical sciences (especially neuroscience and moral psychology) for philosophical action theory (moral responsibility, free will, personhood, action, acting for reasons).

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Daniel D. Hutto

University of Wollongong

Kristen J Gremillion

Ohio State University

Université de Genève

University of Chicago

Kansas State University

University of Cologne

Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

University of Cagliari

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

University of York

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Papers by Arno Wouters

The real challenge to free will and responsibility

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Jan 1, 2008

Adina Roskies argues that recent developments in the neurosciences do not challenge our ideas of ... more Adina Roskies argues that recent developments in the neurosciences do not challenge our ideas of free will and personal responsibility. She limits her discussion, however, to 'libertarian free will', and her argument focuses on the idea that we are able to act differently from how we choose to act. She does not address the influential new compatibilist views of free will and responsibility (see Box 1). These views, we contend, are most significantly challenged by recent discoveries.

The BCN Challenge to Compatibilist Free Will and Personal Responsibility

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purpor... more Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the scientific findings indicate that it is not so obvious that our views of free will and responsibility can be grounded in the ability to act for reasons without introducing metaphysical obscurities. This poses a challenge to philosophers. We draw the conclusion that philosophers are wrong not to address the recent scientific developments and that scientists are mistaken in formulating their challenge in terms of the freedom to do otherwise

Biology's Functional Perspective: Roles, Advantages and Organization

This chapter discusses biology’s functional perspective: what it amounts to, why it is essential ... more This chapter discusses biology’s functional perspective: what it amounts to, why it is essential and how it differs from our everyday intuitions. Using an explanation of the emperor penguin’s two-voice system as an example, I outline the main characteristics of the functional approach: it views organisms as solutions to the problem to stay alive, it uses role functions to explain how organisms solve this problem, and explains an organism’s features by pointing to the advantages of these features in solving the problems of life. Such an approach is justified because the very existence of organisms depends on their ability to solve these problems and because this ability critically depends on the characteristics of the organism’s parts, their arrangement, and the order and timing of their activities. The functional perspective is the biologist’s way to take this organization into account. However, to deal with the problem of how organization and adaptation come about, pre-Darwinian functional biologists thought of functions not merely as roles in an organization, but as the purposes for which the parts and activities of an organism are generated. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection abolished the need to explain adaptation and, hence, the need for a teleological interpretation of the functional perspective. Functional explanations differ from evolutionary explanations in their concern with individual level relations (evolutionary explanations are population level explanations), and from both teleological and evolutionary explanations in their concern with what is needed to stay alive as opposed to how traits come about. Finally, I explain how the functional approach in biology differs from our intuitions about function by comparing functional reasoning in biology with the teleological notion of function developed by naturalistic philosophers at the end of the twentieth century. This construct is firmly grounded in evolutionary theory and accounts for the intuitions that functions are explanatory, normative and teleological, but doesn’t fit with the way in which biologists reason about function.

Functional explanation

Biological function

Explanation in biology

An explanation of a characteristic of a system is an account of why that system has that characte... more

Gedraag je! Over Auto's, Aansturing en Verantwoordelijkheid

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Wie de vrije wil ontkent doet veel stof opwaaien omdat die ontkenning grote gevolgen lijkt te heb... more Wie de vrije wil ontkent doet veel stof opwaaien omdat die ontkenning grote gevolgen lijkt te hebben voor de morele praktijk. Als we preciezer kijken naar wat wetenschappers als Dawkins en Lamme nu ontkennen (wat zij bedoelen met ‘de vrije wil’) en dit vergelijken met ons spreken over de vrije wil in de morele praktijk, blijkt dat het nog maar helemaal de vraag is of het die gevolgen heeft. Wij betogen dat de legitimiteit van onze praktijk van verantwoordelijkheid vooral gelegen is in de maatschappelijke functie die het vervult in het op elkaar afstemmen van verwachtingen en handelingen. Ook wanneer het determinisme juist is, is er geen reden te denken dat onze verantwoordelijkheidspraktijk deze functie niet kan vervullen. Ons spreken over vrije wil komt heel natuurlijk voort uit die praktijk. Het gaat in dat spreken om reflectieve zelfcontrole, niet om het vermogen ons aan ons brein en de invloeden die erop werken te ontrekken.

Vrije wil en verantwoordelijkheid in evolutionair perspectief

I improve on Dennett's account in *Freedom Evolves* of how the ability to act for reasons can exi... more I improve on Dennett's account in *Freedom Evolves* of how the ability to act for reasons can exist in social organisms involved in a Darwinian struggle for life. To this I add a functionalist (cum pragmatist, cum conseqentialist) argument for the thesis that acting for reasons is a good way to elaborate the notion of free will as what is required for moral responsibility (in Dutch)

The BCN challenge to compatibilist free will and personal responsibility

by Maureen Sie and Arno Wouters

Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purpor... more Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the scientific findings indicate that it is not so obvious that our views of free will and responsibility can be grounded in the ability to act for reasons without introducing metaphysical obscurities. This poses a challenge to philosophers. We draw the conclusion that philosophers are wrong not to address the recent scientific developments and that scientists are mistaken in formulating their challenge in terms of the freedom to do otherwise

The real challenge to free will and responsibility

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Adina Roskies has argued that worries that recent developments in the neurosciences challenge our... more Adina Roskies has argued that worries that recent developments in the neurosciences challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility are misguided. Her argument focuses on the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, according to a dominant view in contemporary philosophy, the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to our judgments of responsibility and free will. It rather is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that this view is most significantly challenged by the recent discoveries. Those discoveries show that it is not as obvious and uncontroversial that we act for reasons as it seems. Hence, we have to rethink our concept of reasons-responsiveness.

Woont de persoon tussen de neuronen?

morepork.demon.nl

Geleidelijk ontrafelen de gedragswetenschappen samen met de cognitie-en neurowetenschappen de mec... more Geleidelijk ontrafelen de gedragswetenschappen samen met de cognitie-en neurowetenschappen de mechanismen die ons maken tot wie we zijn: hoe we beslissen, hoe we ons gedrag reguleren, hoe we ons aanpassen aan onze sociale omgeving, etc. Sommige vrezen dat deze ontwikkeling het idee van de vrije wil ondermijnt, met als gevolg dat we niet langer verantwoordelijk gehouden kunnen worden voor wat we doen.

Ontoerekeningsvatbaarheid: een achterhaalde notie?

Neuropraxis, Jan 1, 2006

Steeds meer wetenschappers pleiten op neurowetenschappelijke gronden voor de afschaffing van de n... more

Neurowetenschap en mensbeeld

Design Explanation: determining the constraints on what can be alive

This paper is concerned with reasonings that purport to explain why certain organisms have certai... more This paper is concerned with reasonings that purport to explain why certain organisms have certain traits by showing that their actual design is better than contrasting designs. Biologists call such reasonings ‘functional explanations’. To avoid confusion with other uses of that phrase, I call them ‘design explanations’. This paper discusses the structure of design explanations and how they contribute to scientific understanding. Design explanations are contrastive and often compare real organisms to hypothetical organisms that cannot possibly exist. They are not causal but appeal to functional dependencies between an organism’s different traits. These explanations point out that because an organism has certain traits (e.g., it lives on land), it cannot be alive if the trait to be explained (e.g., having lungs) were replaced by a specified alternative (e.g., having gills). They can be understood from a mechanistic point of view as revealing the constraints on what mechanisms can be alive.

ELSA onderzoek in Nederland: Het Nederlandse onderzoek naar ethische, juridische en maatschappelijke aspecten van genomics

The Functional Perspective of Organismal Biology

Following Mayr (1961) evolutionary biologists often maintain that the hallmark of biology is its ... more Following Mayr (1961) evolutionary biologists often maintain that the hallmark of biology is its evolutionary perspective. In this view, biologists distinguish themselves from other natural scientists by their emphasis on why-questions. Why-questions are legitimate in biology but not in other natural sciences because of the selective character of the process by means of which living objects acquire their characteristics. For that reason, why-questions should be answered in terms of natural selection. Functional biology is seen as a reductionist science that applies physics and chemistry to answer how-questions but lacks a biological point of view of its own. In this paper I dispute this image of functional biology. A close look at the kinds of issues studied in biology and at the way in which these issues are studied shows that functional biology employs a distinctive biological perspective that is not rooted in selection. This functional perspective is characterized by its concern with the requirements of the life-state and the way in which these are met.

Functional Explanation in Biology

This paper evaluates Kuipers' account of functional explanation in biology in view of an example ... more This paper evaluates Kuipers' account of functional explanation in biology in view of an example of such an explanation taken from real biology. The example is the explanation of why electric fishes swim backwards (Lannoo and Lannoo 1993). Kuipers' account depicts the answer to a request for functional explanation as consisting only of statements that articulate a certain kind of consequence. It is argued that such an account fails to do justice to the main insight provided by the example explanation, namely the insight into why backwards swimming is needed by fishes that locate their food by means of an electric radar. The paper sketches an improved account that does justice to this kind of insight. It is argued that this account is consistent with and complementary to Kuipers' insight that function attributions are established by means of a process of hypothetico-deductive reasoning guided by a heuristic principle.

The Function Debate in Philosophy

This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation ... more This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation as this takes place in philosophy. It describes the different perspectives, issues, intuitions, theories and arguments that have emerged. The author shows that the debate has been too heavily influenced by the concerns of a naturalistic philosophy of mind and argues that in order to improve our understanding of biology the attention should be shifted from the study of intuitions to the study of the actual practice of biological inquiry.

Four Notions of Biological Function

I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term 'function' is used in conne... more I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term 'function' is used in connection with the study of living organisms, namely: (1) function as (mere) activity, (2) function as biological role, (3) function as biological advantage, and (4) function as selected effect. Notion (1) refers to what an item does by itself; (2) refers to the contribution of an item or activity to a complex activity or capacity of an organism; (3) refers to the value for the organism of an item having a certain character rather than another; (4) refers to the way in which a trait acquired and maintained its current share in the population. The recognition of a separate notion of function as biological advantage solves the problem of the indeterminate reference situation that has been raised against a counterfactual analysis of function, and emphasizes the importance of counterfactual comparison in the explanatory practice of organismal biology. This reveals a neglected problem in the philosophy of biology, namely to account for the insights provided by counterfactual comparison.

Verklaren zonder oorzaken te geven

Algemeen Nederlands tijdschrift voor wijsbegeerte, Jan 1, 2002

This paper addresses the question what functional explanations in biology add to scientific knowl... more This paper addresses the question what functional explanations in biology add to scientific knowledge. Most philosophers assume that functional explanations consist of a function attribution in answer to a why-question. The author shows, by means of an example taken from real biology (Beekman's (2000) explanation of the migratory behavior of the Tundra Swans), that this reconstruction leaves much out of sight of what is gained by a functional explanation. An improved reconstruction shows that such explanations deal with non-causal, synchronic interdependencies between the character of the behavior to be explained and the other characteristics of the organism and the environment in which it lives (in Dutch).

The real challenge to free will and responsibility

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Jan 1, 2008

Adina Roskies argues that recent developments in the neurosciences do not challenge our ideas of ... more Adina Roskies argues that recent developments in the neurosciences do not challenge our ideas of free will and personal responsibility. She limits her discussion, however, to 'libertarian free will', and her argument focuses on the idea that we are able to act differently from how we choose to act. She does not address the influential new compatibilist views of free will and responsibility (see Box 1). These views, we contend, are most significantly challenged by recent discoveries.

The BCN Challenge to Compatibilist Free Will and Personal Responsibility

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purpor... more Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the scientific findings indicate that it is not so obvious that our views of free will and responsibility can be grounded in the ability to act for reasons without introducing metaphysical obscurities. This poses a challenge to philosophers. We draw the conclusion that philosophers are wrong not to address the recent scientific developments and that scientists are mistaken in formulating their challenge in terms of the freedom to do otherwise

Biology's Functional Perspective: Roles, Advantages and Organization

This chapter discusses biology’s functional perspective: what it amounts to, why it is essential ... more This chapter discusses biology’s functional perspective: what it amounts to, why it is essential and how it differs from our everyday intuitions. Using an explanation of the emperor penguin’s two-voice system as an example, I outline the main characteristics of the functional approach: it views organisms as solutions to the problem to stay alive, it uses role functions to explain how organisms solve this problem, and explains an organism’s features by pointing to the advantages of these features in solving the problems of life. Such an approach is justified because the very existence of organisms depends on their ability to solve these problems and because this ability critically depends on the characteristics of the organism’s parts, their arrangement, and the order and timing of their activities. The functional perspective is the biologist’s way to take this organization into account. However, to deal with the problem of how organization and adaptation come about, pre-Darwinian functional biologists thought of functions not merely as roles in an organization, but as the purposes for which the parts and activities of an organism are generated. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection abolished the need to explain adaptation and, hence, the need for a teleological interpretation of the functional perspective. Functional explanations differ from evolutionary explanations in their concern with individual level relations (evolutionary explanations are population level explanations), and from both teleological and evolutionary explanations in their concern with what is needed to stay alive as opposed to how traits come about. Finally, I explain how the functional approach in biology differs from our intuitions about function by comparing functional reasoning in biology with the teleological notion of function developed by naturalistic philosophers at the end of the twentieth century. This construct is firmly grounded in evolutionary theory and accounts for the intuitions that functions are explanatory, normative and teleological, but doesn’t fit with the way in which biologists reason about function.

Functional explanation

Biological function

Explanation in biology

An explanation of a characteristic of a system is an account of why that system has that characte... more

Gedraag je! Over Auto's, Aansturing en Verantwoordelijkheid

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Wie de vrije wil ontkent doet veel stof opwaaien omdat die ontkenning grote gevolgen lijkt te heb... more Wie de vrije wil ontkent doet veel stof opwaaien omdat die ontkenning grote gevolgen lijkt te hebben voor de morele praktijk. Als we preciezer kijken naar wat wetenschappers als Dawkins en Lamme nu ontkennen (wat zij bedoelen met ‘de vrije wil’) en dit vergelijken met ons spreken over de vrije wil in de morele praktijk, blijkt dat het nog maar helemaal de vraag is of het die gevolgen heeft. Wij betogen dat de legitimiteit van onze praktijk van verantwoordelijkheid vooral gelegen is in de maatschappelijke functie die het vervult in het op elkaar afstemmen van verwachtingen en handelingen. Ook wanneer het determinisme juist is, is er geen reden te denken dat onze verantwoordelijkheidspraktijk deze functie niet kan vervullen. Ons spreken over vrije wil komt heel natuurlijk voort uit die praktijk. Het gaat in dat spreken om reflectieve zelfcontrole, niet om het vermogen ons aan ons brein en de invloeden die erop werken te ontrekken.

Vrije wil en verantwoordelijkheid in evolutionair perspectief

I improve on Dennett's account in *Freedom Evolves* of how the ability to act for reasons can exi... more I improve on Dennett's account in *Freedom Evolves* of how the ability to act for reasons can exist in social organisms involved in a Darwinian struggle for life. To this I add a functionalist (cum pragmatist, cum conseqentialist) argument for the thesis that acting for reasons is a good way to elaborate the notion of free will as what is required for moral responsibility (in Dutch)

The BCN challenge to compatibilist free will and personal responsibility

by Maureen Sie and Arno Wouters

Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purpor... more Many philosophers ignore developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences that purport to challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility. The reason for this is that the challenge is often framed as a denial of the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, most philosophers think that the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to responsibility and free will. Rather it is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that the scientific findings indicate that it is not so obvious that our views of free will and responsibility can be grounded in the ability to act for reasons without introducing metaphysical obscurities. This poses a challenge to philosophers. We draw the conclusion that philosophers are wrong not to address the recent scientific developments and that scientists are mistaken in formulating their challenge in terms of the freedom to do otherwise

The real challenge to free will and responsibility

by Arno Wouters and Maureen Sie

Adina Roskies has argued that worries that recent developments in the neurosciences challenge our... more Adina Roskies has argued that worries that recent developments in the neurosciences challenge our ideas of free will and responsibility are misguided. Her argument focuses on the idea that we are able to act differently than we do. However, according to a dominant view in contemporary philosophy, the ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to our judgments of responsibility and free will. It rather is our ability to act for reasons that is crucial. We argue that this view is most significantly challenged by the recent discoveries. Those discoveries show that it is not as obvious and uncontroversial that we act for reasons as it seems. Hence, we have to rethink our concept of reasons-responsiveness.

Woont de persoon tussen de neuronen?

morepork.demon.nl

Geleidelijk ontrafelen de gedragswetenschappen samen met de cognitie-en neurowetenschappen de mec... more Geleidelijk ontrafelen de gedragswetenschappen samen met de cognitie-en neurowetenschappen de mechanismen die ons maken tot wie we zijn: hoe we beslissen, hoe we ons gedrag reguleren, hoe we ons aanpassen aan onze sociale omgeving, etc. Sommige vrezen dat deze ontwikkeling het idee van de vrije wil ondermijnt, met als gevolg dat we niet langer verantwoordelijk gehouden kunnen worden voor wat we doen.

Ontoerekeningsvatbaarheid: een achterhaalde notie?

Neuropraxis, Jan 1, 2006

Steeds meer wetenschappers pleiten op neurowetenschappelijke gronden voor de afschaffing van de n... more

Neurowetenschap en mensbeeld

Design Explanation: determining the constraints on what can be alive

This paper is concerned with reasonings that purport to explain why certain organisms have certai... more This paper is concerned with reasonings that purport to explain why certain organisms have certain traits by showing that their actual design is better than contrasting designs. Biologists call such reasonings ‘functional explanations’. To avoid confusion with other uses of that phrase, I call them ‘design explanations’. This paper discusses the structure of design explanations and how they contribute to scientific understanding. Design explanations are contrastive and often compare real organisms to hypothetical organisms that cannot possibly exist. They are not causal but appeal to functional dependencies between an organism’s different traits. These explanations point out that because an organism has certain traits (e.g., it lives on land), it cannot be alive if the trait to be explained (e.g., having lungs) were replaced by a specified alternative (e.g., having gills). They can be understood from a mechanistic point of view as revealing the constraints on what mechanisms can be alive.

ELSA onderzoek in Nederland: Het Nederlandse onderzoek naar ethische, juridische en maatschappelijke aspecten van genomics

The Functional Perspective of Organismal Biology

Following Mayr (1961) evolutionary biologists often maintain that the hallmark of biology is its ... more Following Mayr (1961) evolutionary biologists often maintain that the hallmark of biology is its evolutionary perspective. In this view, biologists distinguish themselves from other natural scientists by their emphasis on why-questions. Why-questions are legitimate in biology but not in other natural sciences because of the selective character of the process by means of which living objects acquire their characteristics. For that reason, why-questions should be answered in terms of natural selection. Functional biology is seen as a reductionist science that applies physics and chemistry to answer how-questions but lacks a biological point of view of its own. In this paper I dispute this image of functional biology. A close look at the kinds of issues studied in biology and at the way in which these issues are studied shows that functional biology employs a distinctive biological perspective that is not rooted in selection. This functional perspective is characterized by its concern with the requirements of the life-state and the way in which these are met.

Functional Explanation in Biology

This paper evaluates Kuipers' account of functional explanation in biology in view of an example ... more This paper evaluates Kuipers' account of functional explanation in biology in view of an example of such an explanation taken from real biology. The example is the explanation of why electric fishes swim backwards (Lannoo and Lannoo 1993). Kuipers' account depicts the answer to a request for functional explanation as consisting only of statements that articulate a certain kind of consequence. It is argued that such an account fails to do justice to the main insight provided by the example explanation, namely the insight into why backwards swimming is needed by fishes that locate their food by means of an electric radar. The paper sketches an improved account that does justice to this kind of insight. It is argued that this account is consistent with and complementary to Kuipers' insight that function attributions are established by means of a process of hypothetico-deductive reasoning guided by a heuristic principle.

The Function Debate in Philosophy

This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation ... more This paper reviews the debate on the notion of biological function and on functional explanation as this takes place in philosophy. It describes the different perspectives, issues, intuitions, theories and arguments that have emerged. The author shows that the debate has been too heavily influenced by the concerns of a naturalistic philosophy of mind and argues that in order to improve our understanding of biology the attention should be shifted from the study of intuitions to the study of the actual practice of biological inquiry.

Four Notions of Biological Function

I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term 'function' is used in conne... more I argue that there are at least four different ways in which the term 'function' is used in connection with the study of living organisms, namely: (1) function as (mere) activity, (2) function as biological role, (3) function as biological advantage, and (4) function as selected effect. Notion (1) refers to what an item does by itself; (2) refers to the contribution of an item or activity to a complex activity or capacity of an organism; (3) refers to the value for the organism of an item having a certain character rather than another; (4) refers to the way in which a trait acquired and maintained its current share in the population. The recognition of a separate notion of function as biological advantage solves the problem of the indeterminate reference situation that has been raised against a counterfactual analysis of function, and emphasizes the importance of counterfactual comparison in the explanatory practice of organismal biology. This reveals a neglected problem in the philosophy of biology, namely to account for the insights provided by counterfactual comparison.

Verklaren zonder oorzaken te geven

Algemeen Nederlands tijdschrift voor wijsbegeerte, Jan 1, 2002

This paper addresses the question what functional explanations in biology add to scientific knowl... more This paper addresses the question what functional explanations in biology add to scientific knowledge. Most philosophers assume that functional explanations consist of a function attribution in answer to a why-question. The author shows, by means of an example taken from real biology (Beekman's (2000) explanation of the migratory behavior of the Tundra Swans), that this reconstruction leaves much out of sight of what is gained by a functional explanation. An improved reconstruction shows that such explanations deal with non-causal, synchronic interdependencies between the character of the behavior to be explained and the other characteristics of the organism and the environment in which it lives (in Dutch).

Van Rossums Rode Haring

Gert Korthof's evolutie blog, Feb 20, 2013

Joris van Rossum betoogt in het proefschrift waarop hij in december 2012 aan de VU promoveerde bi... more Joris van Rossum betoogt in het proefschrift waarop hij in december 2012 aan de VU promoveerde bij de faculteit wijsbegeerte dat “the theory of natural selection” ontoereikend (“insufficient”) is, ‘ontoereikend’ in de zin dat deze theorie niet alle biologische verschijnselen kan verklaren. Van Rossum pretendeert een nieuw en fundamenteel probleem m.b.t. het ontstaan van seksuele voortplanting naar voren te brengen: de “theorie van natuurlijke selectie” zou het bestaan van seksuele voortplanting veronderstellen en het ontstaan daarvan dus niet kunnen verklaren. In deze bijdrage laat ik zien dat Van Rossums argumentatie berust op een opeenstapeling van fundamentele misvattingen betreffende de evolutiebiologie. Tevens zal blijken dat de verklaring van het ontstaan van seksuele voortplanting irrelevant is voor het punt dat Van Rossum wil maken.

Review of Tim Lewens *Organisms and Artifacts* (2004)

Review of Peter McLaughlin *What Functions Explain* (2001)

Acta Biotheoretica, Jan 1, 2006

GDJ Dingemans, Deze Wereld en God: Modern wereldbeeld en christelijk geloof Kampen: Kok, 2005

TAC Reydon, Species as Units of Generalization in Biological Science (2005)

Review of Paul Sheldon Davies Norms of Nature: Naturalism and the Nature of Functions (2002)

Philosophy of Science 71(2): 220–222 , 2004

Philosophers on function

Acta biotheoretica, Jan 1, 2003

An Essay Review of A. Ariew, R. Cummins and M. Perlman (Eds) (2002)*Functions: New Essays in the ... more

Recensie van Rick C. Looijen *Holism and Reductionism in Biology and Ecology* (2000)

Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 2002

Brain science and personal responsibility: what is the problem?

There are worries that the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences will undermine our notion of ... more There are worries that the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences will undermine our notion of free will and the idea that people can be held responsible for what they do. In the course of history we find several responses to the perceived threat of determinism to our views of what it is to be a person. Libertarianists deny or downplay determinism. Hard determinists accept determinism and argue for a reform of our practices of holding people responsible. In this talk attention is drawn to the third response, called 'compatibilism,' according to which determinism does not exclude human freedom and personal responsibility.

Why-questions in functional biology

Van Rossum's Rode Haring

My criticism of Joris van Rossum's dissertation "On Sexual Reproduction as a New Critique of the ... more