ABSTRACT: Biological prospecting is being undertaken in the Antarctic and, as novel material starts to yield significantly higher commercial rewards, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties might decide to regulate it through the Antarctic Treaty System. This will be problematic since activities are already being undertaken, patents have been filed and products developed. Furthermore, there are differing perceptions of the status of the Antarctic, with some considering it global commons and others considering it the common heritage of mankind. These (...) 2 doctrines can be inferred from the rhetoric of the Treaty and its subsequent legal instruments through which human activities, including the use of resources, are managed. However, the Antarctic Treaty System does not support either in practice because activities such as fishing and bioprospecting already return an exclusive reward for effort, with no benefit-sharing arrangements. Under the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the Parties determine allowable catches for a fishery based on scientific assessment, and this may discharge them from providing access and benefit-sharing arrangements to the international community potentially available through other international law (e.g. the Law of the Sea Convention or the Convention on Biological Diversity). The major turning point in Antarctica came when the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities—which acknowledged the rights of the international community—failed to enter into force. Today the international community is rewarded with a relatively healthy Antarctic environment and free access to some scientific information, which are benefiting all mankind. But the international community does not get direct financial reward from Antarctic activities because access is constrained by law and by a lack of capacity. There is no mechanism for disbursing compensation to all mankind in any case, although the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties could certainly rectify this if they had the will to do so. So far they have not. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is regarded as one of the key technosciences of the future. The goal of this paper is to present some fundamental considerations to enable procedures of a technology assessment of synthetic biology. To accomplish such an early “upstream” assessment of a not yet fully developed technology, a special type of TA will be considered: Prospective TA. At the center of ProTA are the analysis and the framing of “synthetic biology,” including a characterization and assessment of the technological core. (...) The thesis is that if there is any differentia specifica giving substance to the umbrella term “synthetic biology,” it is the idea of harnessing self-organization for engineering purposes. To underline that we are likely experiencing an epochal break in the ontology of technoscientific systems, this new type of technology is called “late-modern technology.” —I start this paper by analyzing the three most common visions of synthetic biology. Then I argue that one particular vision deserves more attention because it underlies the others: the vision of self-organization. I discuss the inherent limits of this new type of late-modern technology in the attempt to control and monitor possible risk issues. I refer to Hans Jonas’ ethics and his early anticipation of the risks of a novel type of technology. I end by drawing conclusions for the approach of ProTA towards an early societal shaping of synthetic biology. (shrink)

In recent decades, a growing number of biologists has testified to the priority of the whole organism with respect to its parts and protested against the dominance of mechanist and reductionist accounts of the organism in biological science. To see disinterested inquiry thus shaped “by constraint of facts” will delight, but cannot surprise, an Aristotelian. Taking this rediscovery of nature by biologists as an occasion for reflection, this essay considers, first, what is presupposed by any healthy biological inquiry, (...) second, the prospects of renewal for the science itself, and, finally, a good that could follow from such a renewal. Aristotelian biology is an invitation to consider the forms of living things. Since “philosophy claims to know” , philosophers are called to bear witness to the primacy of form and, like biologists, to be models of attentiveness to form. (shrink)

Marcello Barbieri has presented code biology as an alternative to the Peircean approach to biosemiotics. Some critics questioned the viability of code biology on grounds that Barbieri’s conception of science is limited. It has been argued that code biology’s mechanistic tendency is the cause of the allegedly limited conception of science. In this paper, I evaluate the scientific viability of the code model from the perspective of scientific realism in the philosophy of science. To be more precise, I draw on (...) resources of the mechanistic view in philosophy to argue that far from harbouring a limited conception of science, code biology could indeed improve the scientific prospects of biosemiotics. I show that the mechanistic and model-based tendency of the code model enhances its vigour as a full-blooded scientific approach to the study of meaning in living systems. To consolidate my claim, I draw on some recent debates in the mechanistic philosophy to argue that even relational approaches to understanding the meaning in living systems—such as an approach that is defended by Vega in a recent paper—could be underpinned by mechanistic processes at a foundational level. (shrink)

The structure and behaviour of the acetylcholine receptor (AChR) is described, and the evidence that it is an allosteric protein is discussed. The genes for the AChR subunits are subject to a complex set of spatio‐temporal transcriptional controls during development of the motor endplate, and these findings are reviewed here. Finally, the biotechnological prospects suggested by the new data are noted.

The conserved ribosomal protein uS3 in eukaryotes has long been known as one of the essential components of the small (40S) ribosomal subunit, which is involved in the structure of the 40S mRNA entry pore, ensuring the functioning of the 40S subunit during translation initiation. Besides, uS3, being outside the ribosome, is engaged in various cellular processes related to DNA repair, NF‐kB signaling pathway and regulation of apoptosis. This review is devoted to recent data opening new horizons in understanding the (...) roles of uS3 in such processes as the assembly and maturation of 40S subunits, ensuring proper structure of 48S pre‐initiation complexes, regulation of initiation and ribosome‐based RNA quality control pathways. Besides, we summarize novel results on the participation of the protein in processes beyond translation and consider biomedical implications of previously known and recently found extra‐ribosomal functions of uS3, primarily, in oncogenesis. (shrink)

not lie in the conceptual distinctions but in the perceived functions of metaphors and whether in the concrete case they are judged positive or negative. The ongoing debates reflect these concerns quite clearly~ namely that metaphors are judged on the basis of supposed dangers they pose and opportunities they offer. These are the criteria of evaluation that are obviously dependent on the context in which the transfer of meaning occurs. Our fundamental concern is indeed the transfer itself~ its prospects and (...) its limits. Looking at possible functions of metaphors is one approach to under standing and elucidating sentiments about them. The papers in this volume illustrate, by quite different examples, three basic functions of metaphors: illustrative, heuristic~ and constitutive. These functions rep resent different degrees of transfer of meaning. Metaphors are illustrative when they are used primarily as a literary device, to increase the power of conviction of an argument, for example. Although the difference between the illustrative and the heuristic function of metaphors is not great, it does exist: metaphors are used for heuristic purposes whenever "differences" of meaning are employed to open new perspectives and to gain new insights. In the case of "constitutive" metaphors they function to actually replace previous meanings by new ones. Sabine Maasen in her paper introduces the distinction between transfer and transforma tion. (shrink)

Three puzzles about self-deception make this mental phenomenon an intriguing explanatory target. The first relates to how to define it without paradox; the second is about how to make sense of self-deception in light of the interpretive view of the mental that has become widespread in philosophy; and the third concerns why it exists at all. In this paper I address the first and third puzzles. First, I define self-deception. Second, I criticize Robert Trivers’ attempt to use adaptionist evolutionary psychology (...) to solve the third puzzle (existence). Third, I sketch a theory to replace that of Trivers. Self-deception is not an adaptation, but a spandrel in the sense that Gould and Lewontin give the term: a byproduct of other features of human (cognitive) architecture.Self-deception is so undeniable a fact of human life that if anyone tried to deny its existence, the proper response would be to accuse this person of it. (Allen Wood, Citation 1988 ). (shrink)

The biological body has remained peripheral to much feminist theory which is the consequence of a legitimate critique of biologicaldeterminism. However, rejecting the biological body altogether runs the risk of treating the body as a sociopolitical effect. It is my argument that corporeal reality can be theorized without lapsing into the totalizing perspectives of essentialism or relativism. To do so Ipropose drawing upon Judith Butler’s analysis of the productive effect of power relations that materialize the body’s sex, and (...) Margaret Lock’s notion of local biology which introduces the notion that biological matter has dynamism of its own that is not reducible to discourse/power. Bringing together these two perspectives on the body holds the prospect of capturing the complex interrelationship between biology, culture, social structure, and power. (shrink)

Modern life sciences research is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to model biological systems, primarily centered around the use of machine learning (ML) models. Although ML is undeniably useful for identifying patterns in large, complex data sets, its widespread application in biological sciences represents a significant deviation from traditional methods of scientific inquiry. As such, the interplay between these models and scientific understanding in biology is a topic with important implications for the future of scientific research, (...) yet it is a subject that has received little attention. Here, we draw from an epistemological toolkit to contextualize recent applications of ML in biological sciences under modern philosophical theories of understanding, identifying general principles that can guide the design and application of ML systems to model biological phenomena and advance scientific knowledge. We propose that conceptions of scientific understanding as information compression, qualitative intelligibility, and dependency relation modelling provide a useful framework for interpreting ML-mediated understanding of biological systems. Through a detailed analysis of two key application areas of ML in modern biological research – protein structure prediction and single cell RNA-sequencing – we explore how these features have thus far enabled ML systems to advance scientific understanding of their target phenomena, how they may guide the development of future ML models, and the key obstacles that remain in preventing ML from achieving its potential as a tool for biological discovery. Consideration of the epistemological features of ML applications in biology will improve the prospects of these methods to solve important problems and advance scientific understanding of living systems. (shrink)

Three puzzles about self-deception make this mental phenomenon an intriguing explanatory target. The first relates to how to define it without paradox; the second is about how to make sense of self-deception in light of the interpretive view of the mental that has become widespread in philosophy; and the third concerns why it exists at all. In this paper I address the first and third puzzles. First, I define self-deception. Second, I criticize Robert Trivers' attempt to use adaptionist evolutionary psychology (...) to solve the third puzzle (existence). Third, I sketch a theory to replace that of Trivers. Self-deception is not an adaptation, but a spandrel in the sense that Gould and Lewontin give the term: a byproduct of other features of human (cognitive) architecture. Self-deception is so undeniable a fact of human life that if anyone tried to deny its existence, the proper response would be to accuse this person of it. (Allen Wood, 1988). (shrink)

Timothy Mahoney discovers and champions an ecologically benign account of Plato in opposition to my own critical analysis of the reason-centeredness, reason-nature dualism, and nature and body devaluation in the Platonic dialogues, in which multiple linked dualisms of reason and nature associated with systems of oppression provide major organizing principles for Platonic philosophy. I show first that Mahoney's criticisms of my interpretation involve some careless and mistaken readings of my own text. Second, I argue that Mahoney* s account of nature (...) is significantly different from Plato's. Mahoney's interpretation of Plato is an overly generous and idealized one which plays on the multiplicity and elasticity of the concept of nature and the notorious vagueness of the concept of participation to conflate, among other things, Plato's attitude to celestial nature with his attitude to biological nature. Mahoney's interpretation involves setting aside Plato's gender politics, playing down some of Plato's most offensive and revealing passages of earth disparagement, and ignoring the network of social meanings from which Plato's philosophy emerges. Finally, I give some reasons why Mahoney's accounts of participation and nature, even considered as a reworking of Plato, would be highly problematic as the foundation for an ecological philosophy. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is a cutting-edge area of research that holds the promise of unprecedented health benefits. However, in tandem with these large prospective benefits, synthetic biology projects entail a risk of catastrophic consequences whose severity may exceed that of most ordinary human undertakings. This is due to the peculiar nature of synthetic biology as a ‘threshold technology’ which opens doors to opportunities and applications that are essentially unpredictable. Fears about these potentially unstoppable consequences have led to declarations from civil society (...) groups calling for the use of a precautionary principle to regulate the field. Moreover, the principle is prevalent in law and international agreements. Despite widespread political recognition of a need for caution, the precautionary principle has been extensively criticized as a guide for regulatory policy. We examine a central objection to the principle: that its application entails crippling inaction and incoherence, since whatever action one takes there is always a chance that some highly improbable cataclysm will occur. In response to this difficulty, which we call the ‘precautionary paradox,’ we outline a deliberative means for arriving at threshold of probability below which potential dangers can be disregarded. In addition, we describe a Bayesian mechanism with which to assign probabilities to harmful outcomes. We argue that these steps resolve the paradox. The rehabilitated PP can thus provide a viable policy option to confront the uncharted waters of synthetic biology research. (shrink)

Reductionist explanations in biology generally assume that biological mechanisms are highly deterministic and basically similar between individuals. A contrasting view has emerged recently that takes into account the degeneracy of biological processes—the ability to arrive at a given endpoint by a variety of available paths, even within the same individual. This perspective casts significant doubt on the prospects for the ability to predict behavior accurately based on brain imaging or genotyping, and on the ability of neuroscience to stipulate (...) ethics. (shrink)

Biological sexes (male, female, hermaphrodite) are defined by different gametic strategies for reproduction. Sexes are regions of phenotypic space which implement those gametic reproductive strategies. Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes - one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic (...) or facultatively genetic sex determination systems. But the general point applies equally to humans. Assigning sexes to pre-reproductive life history stages involves ‘prospective narration’ – classifying the present in terms of its anticipated future. Assigning sexes to adult stages of non-reproductive castes or non-reproductive individuals is a complex matter whose biological meaning differs from case to case. The chromosomal and phenotypic ‘definitions’ of biological sex that are contested in philosophical discussions of sex are actually operational definitions which track gametic sex more or less effectively in some species or group of species. Neither ‘definition’ can be stated for species in general except by defining them in terms of gametic sex. The gametic definition of sex also features in widely accepted models which explain why two biological sexes – either in separate individuals or combined in hermaphroditic individuals - are almost universal in multicellular species. Finally, the fact that a species has only two biological sexes does not imply that every member of the species is either male, female or hermaphroditic, or that the sex of every individual organism is clear and determinate. The idea of biological sex is critical for understanding the diversity of life, but ill-suited to the job of determining the social or legal status of human beings as men or women. (shrink)

The notion of biological function is fraught with difficulties—intrinsically and irremediably so, we argue. The physiological practice of functional ascription originates from a time when organisms were thought to be designed and remained largely unchanged since. In a secularized worldview, this creates a paradox which accounts of functions as selected effect attempt to resolve. This attempt, we argue, misses its target in physiology and it brings problems of its own. Instead, we propose that a better solution to the conundrum (...) of biological functions is to abandon the notion altogether, a prospect not only less daunting than it appears, but arguably the natural continuation of the naturalisation of biology. (shrink)

Essential properties are usually thought as properties that things must always possess, whereas accidental properties are considered as changeable. In this paper, we challenge this traditional view. We argue that in some important cases, such as social or biological development, we face not only the change of accidents, but also the change of essences. To analyze this kind of change we propose an alternative view on the relations between the modalities and time. Some properties might be necessary or possible (...) for a thing in a classical sense throughout its existence, whereas others might be necessary or possible only for some restricted periods. We distinguish therefore absolute, prospective, retrospective, and relative modalities. As we argue, these non-classical concepts of modality are useful in analysis of some puzzling case of seemingly changing essences. (shrink)

Mental time travel refers to the ability of an organism to project herself backward and forward in time, using episodic memory and imagination to simulate past and future experiences. The evolution of mental time travel gives humans a unique capacity for prospection: the ability to pre-experience the future. Discussions of mental time travel treat it as an instance of explicit prospection. We argue that implicit simulations of past and future experience can also be used as a way of gaining information (...) about the future to shape preferences and guide behaviour. (shrink)

Direct neurological and especially imaging-driven investigations into the structures essential to naturally occurring cognitive systems in their development and operation have motivated broadening interest in the potential for artificial consciousness modeled on these systems. This first paper in a series of three begins with a brief review of Boltuc’s (2009) “brain-based” thesis on the prospect of artificial consciousness, focusing on his formulation of h-consciousness. We then explore some of the implications of brain research on the structure of consciousness, finding limitations (...) in biological approaches to the study of consciousness. Looking past these limitations, we introduce research in artificial consciousness designed to test for the emergence of consciousness, a phenomenon beyond the purview of the study of existing biological systems. (shrink)

This open access book assesses the prospects of (re)adopting organization as a pivotal concept in biology. It shows how organization can nourish biological thinking and practice, by reconnecting with the idea of biology as the science of organized systems. The book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art picture of the characterizations and uses of the concept of organization in both biological science and philosophy of biology. It also deals with a variety of themes – including evolution, organogenesis, heredity, cognition and (...) ecology – with respect to which the concept of organization can guide the elaboration of original models and new experimental protocols. It will be of interest to biologists and scholars working in philosophy of science alike. (shrink)

The journal Biosemiotics was envisioned by its founding editor, Marcello Barbieri, as a major periodical for interdisciplinary papers that integrate biology and semiotics. Since 2008 the journal has published 21 issues, including special issues on crucial problems such as the semiotics of perception, origins of mind, code biology, biohermeneutics, biosemiotic analysis of information and chance. The impact factor of the journal does not fully describe the significance of this journal, because the discipline of biosemiotics is young and remains in its (...) early phase of growth. As the new editorial team of Biosemiotics, we would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Barbieri for his excellent job as an editor, and ensure the readers that we are equally committed to maintain high standards and the scientific rigor of published papers. At the end of 2014 we reorganized the editorial board of the journal based on the credential and former activity of prospective members. The cu .. (shrink)

A common objection to adaptationist accounts of human emotions is that they ignore the influence of culture. If complex emotions like guilt, shame and romantic jealousy are largely culturally determined, how could they be biological adaptations? Dual inheritance models of gene/culture coevolution provide a potential answer to this question. If complex emotions are developmentally ‘scaffolded' by norms that are transmitted from parent to offspring with reasonably high fidelity, then these emotions can evolve to promote individual reproductive interests. This paper (...) draws on case studies of emotional development to illustrate how complex emotions satisfy these conditions. Many of the norms and parenting strategies influencing emotional development are absorbed during the early stages of life when a child is in primary contact with its parents and before the onset of complex cognition. These conditions make it likely that emotion-governing norms are transmitted vertically and with relatively little cognitive ‘contamination'. ‡Thanks to Mark Colyvan, Paul Griffiths, Alexander Rosenberg, and John Wilkins for helpful comments on previous drafts. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The discourse on the fundamental issues raised by synthetic biology, such as biosafety and biosecurity, intellectual property, environmental consequences and ethical and societal implications, is still open and controversial. This, coupled with the potential and risks the field holds, makes it one of the hottest topics in technology assessment today. How a new technology is perceived by the public influences the manner in which its products and applications will be received. Therefore, it is important to learn how people perceive synthetic (...) biology. This work gathers, integrates and discusses the results of three studies of public perceptions of synthetic biology: an analysis of existing research on how media portray synthetic biology across 13 European countries and in the USA, the Meeting of Young Minds, a public debate between prospective politicians and synthetic biologists in the Netherlands and the experiences of citizen panels and focus groups in Austria, the UK and the USA. The results show that the media are generally positive in their reports on synthetic biology, rather unbalanced in their view of potential benefits and risks, and also heavily influenced by the sources of the stories, namely scientists and stakeholders. Among the prospective Dutch politicians, there were positive expectations as well as very negative ones. Some of these positions are also shared by participants in public dialogue experiments, such as not only the demand for information, transparency and regulation but also a sense of resignation and ineluctability of scientific and technological progress. (shrink)

A causal approach to biological information is outlined. There are two aspects to this approach: information as determining a choice between alternative objects and information as determining the construction of a single object. The first aspect has been developed in earlier work to yield a quantitative measure of biological information that can be used to analyze biological networks. This article explores the prospects for a measure based on the second aspect and suggests some applications for such a (...) measure. These two aspects are not suggested to exhaust all the facets of biological information. (shrink)

Whole Brain Emulation has been championed as the most promising, well-defined route to achieving both human-level artificial intelligence and superintelligence. It has even been touted as a viable route to achieving immortality through brain uploading. WBE is not a fringe theory: the doctrine of Computationalism in philosophy of mind lends credence to the in-principle feasibility of the idea, and the standing of the Human Connectome Project makes it appear to be feasible in practice. Computationalism is a popular, independently plausible theory, (...) and Connectomics a well-funded empirical research program, so optimism about WBE is understandable. However, this optimism may be misplaced. This article argues that WBE is, at best, no more compelling than any of the other far-flung routes to achieving superintelligence. Similarly skeptical conclusions are found regarding immortality. The essay concludes with some positive considerations in favor of the Biological Theory of consciousness, as well as morals about the limits of Computationalism in both artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mind more generally. (shrink)

What are the prospects for a monistic view of biological individuality given the multiple epistemic roles the concept must satisfy? In this paper, I examine the epistemic adequacy of two recent accounts based on the capacity to undergo natural selection. One is from Ellen Clarke, and the other is by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Clarke’s position reflects a strong monism, in that she aims to characterize individuality in purely functional terms and refrains from privileging any specific material properties as important in (...) their own right. I argue that Clarke’s functionalism impairs the epistemic adequacy of her account compared to a middle-ground position taken by Godfrey-Smith. In comparing Clarke and Godfrey-Smith’s account, two pathways emerge to pluralism about biological individuality. The first develops from the contrast between functionalist and materialist approaches, and the second from an underlying temporal structure involved in using evolutionary processes to define individuality. (shrink)

I examine the ways in which the theological and philosophical debate surrounding transhumanism might profit by a detailed engagement with contemporary biology, in particular with the mainline accounts of species and speciation. After a short introduction, I provide a very brief primer on species concepts and speciation in contemporary biological taxonomy. Then in a third section I draw out some implications for the prospects of our being able intentionally to intervene in human evolution for the production of new species (...) out of Homo sapiens. In a fourth section Account of Human Nature? And Where Does This Leave Transhumanism?”) I bring in the debate over the proper relationship between biological and theological conceptions of human nature, laying out the major options available and considering their possible implications for our understanding of transhumanism. In a fifth section several concrete examples are drawn out pertaining to particular subdisciplines within theology. I conclude by briefly laying out some suggestions for future work, focusing on tasks that theologians specifically ought to pursue. (shrink)

It is by now commonly agreed that the proper study of consciousness requires a multidisciplinary approach which focuses on the varieties and dimensions of conscious experience from different angles. This book, which is based on a workshop held at the University of Skövde, Sweden, provides a microcosm of the emerging discipline of consciousness studies and focuses on some important but neglected aspects of consciousness. The book brings together philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive and computer science, biology, physics, art and (...) the new media. It contains critical studies of subjectivity vs objectivity, nonconceptuality vs conceptuality, language, evolutionary aspects, neural correlates, microphysical level, creativity, visual arts and dreams. It is suitable as a text-book for a third-year undergraduate or a graduate seminar on consciousness studies. (shrink)

People, as Aristotle said, are political animals. Mainstream political philosophy, however, has largely neglected humankind's animal nature as beings who are naturally equipped, and inclined, to reason and work together, create social bonds and care for their young. Stephen Clark, grounded in biological analysis and traditional ethics, probes into areas ignored in mainstream political theory and argues for the significance of social bonds which bypass or transcend state authority. Understanding the ties that bind us reveals how enormously capable we (...) are in achieving civil order as a species. Stephen Clark advocates that a properly informed political philosophy must take into account the role of women, children, animals, minorities and the domestic virtues at large. Living and comnducting our political lives like the animals we are is a more congenial prospect than is usually supposed. (shrink)

James V. Neel, one of the leading human geneticists of the 21st Century, has long been concerned about the consequences of human overpopulation and the accompanying destruction of the earth's ecosystem. His point of view, summarized in this paper, is contrasted with some recent optimistic projections presented by demographers and population biologists who believe the population bomb has been defused by evidence of a decrease in worldwide fertility along with a significant increase in food production. The authors of this paper (...) are not so optimistic and see a continuing need for concern rather than complacency based on ever increasing human wants and aspirations together with the minimal results of recent environmental summits. The case of HIV/aids is used to illustrate the evolutionary implications of the interaction between population dynamics and genetic change based on the concepts of population bottlenecks, genetic drift and founder effects. What becomes evident from this illustration is that epidemics by viral and other pathogens in the 21st Century can affect the size of human populations and thereby the course of the species' evolutionary makeup. The potential of evolutionary medicine and in particular molecular biology to improve our prediction capabilities and modulate some of the possible consequences is discussed. (shrink)

If emotion is not an arbitrary compilation of fixed types of (descriptive, conceptual, conative, prescriptive) content, nor a state that can be reduced to other types of pre-existing (perceptual, cognitive, behavioral) states, then what sort of thing is it really? Tom Cochrane has proposed that emotions are valent representations of situated concerns. Valent representation is a type of mental content whose function is to detect the presence or absence of certain conditions; what makes that type of content valent is that (...) without needing the mediation of any other state, a response is triggered that is disposed to increase or decrease the presence of the condition represented. I raise doubts about the plausibility of that account in light of recent work in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers claim that an external resource satisfying the following criteria counts as a memory: the agent has constant access to the resource; the information in the resource is directly available; retrieved information is automatically endorsed; information is stored as a consequence of past endorsement. Research on forgetting and metamemory shows that most of these criteria are not satisfied by biological memory, so they are inadequate. More psychologically realistic criteria generate a similar classification of standard putative external memories, (...) but the criteria still do not capture the function of memory. An adequate account of memory function, compatible with its evolution and its roles in prospection and imagination, suggests that external memory performs a function not performed by biological memory systems. External memory is thus not memory. This has implications for: extended mind theorizing, ecological validity of memory research, the causal theory of memory. (shrink)

Science and Society presents comments on some of the social and economic implications of the new biology. Here, Cao Tian‐qin presents a perspective from China on recent developments in biotechnology.

Theories of distributive justice tend to focus on the issue of what constitutes a fair division of 'external' goods and opportunities; things like wealth and income, opportunities for education and basic liberties and rights. However, rapid advances in the biomedical sciences have ushered in a new era, one where the 'genetic lottery of life' can be directly influenced by humans in ways that would have been considered science fiction only a few decades ago. How should theories of justice be modified (...) to take seriously the prospect of new biotechnologies, especially given the health challenges posed by global aging? Colin Farrelly addresses a host of topics, ranging from gene therapy and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, to an 'anti-aging' intervention and the creation and evolution of patriarchy. This book aims to foster the interdisciplinary dialogue needed to ensure we think rationally and cogently about science and science policy in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Teleosemantics is the view that mental content depends on etiological function. Moral adaptationism is the view that human morality is an evolved adaptation. Jointly, these two views offer new venues for naturalist metaethics. Several authors have seen, in the conjunction of these views, the promise of assigning naturalistically respectable descriptive content to moral judgments. One such author is Neil Sinclair, who has offered a blueprint for how to conduct teleosemantic metaethics with the help of moral adaptationism. In this paper, I (...) argue that the prospects for assigning descriptive content to moral judgments on the basis of teleosemantics are bad. I develop my argument in dialogue with Sinclair’s paper and argue that, although Sinclair’s account of the evolution of morality is plausible, the teleosemantic account of the descriptive content of moral judgments which he bases thereon suffers from crucial shortcomings. I argue further that, given some minimal plausible assumptions about the evolution of morality made by Sinclair, no assignment of descriptive content is possible. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, the combination of moral adaptationism and teleosemantics suggests that moral judgments lack descriptive content. (shrink)

Morphological engineering is an emerging research area in synthetic biology. In 2008 “synthetic morphology” was proposed as a prospective approach to engineering self-constructing anatomies by Jamie A. Davies of the University of Edinburgh. Synthetic morphology can establish a new paradigm, according to Davies, insofar as “cells can be programmed to organize themselves into specific, designed arrangements, structures and tissues.” It is obvious that this new approach will extrapolate morphology into a new realm beyond the traditional logic of morphological research. However, (...) synthetic morphology is a highly idealized vision of morphology which derives its visionary ideas from morphological engineering and mathematical idealizations in order to understand the principles of molecular morphology. Thus, the question is, if this approach will help to understand morphogenesis better or if it will just enable biologists to engineer morphogenesis. The paper investigates the development of synthetic morphology and its relation to synthetic biology as well as its epistemic gains. (shrink)

There are two opposing equally well-argued views on the emergence and development of all things: either the evolution of the world that led to the emergence of life and intelligence is something natural, or everything happened quite by accident and could have been different. It determines the aim and the tasks which are the emergence of intelligence can be considered as a certain stage of such a naturally unfolding evolutionary process, or it is the result of a coincidence. Research methods (...) are complex and is based on philosophicalanthropological and philosophical-cultural analysis of the problems of global evolutionism and the development of human intelligence in their dialectical unity.The principles of systematicity, objectivity, ascent from the abstract to the concrete, etc. are also used to solve specific research tasks. Research results: Analysis of the process of universal evolutionism shows that the general direction of the development of existence is the movement from the appearance of simple objects to the formation of the highest of the material structures known today, which are the bearer of intelligence in its biological forms. The author argues the position that further evolution, with a high probability, will occur as a transition from intelligence on organic carriers - the human mind - to artificial intelligence based on inorganics. Together or separately from the human mind, artificial intelligence has the ability to give a new impetus to the development of earthly civilization, penetration into deep space and the development of its limitless possibilities.Discussion. Opponents of the concept of global evolutionism were limited to the planetary scale and for the most part considered the universe as a whole infinite and stationary, and therefore devoid of history. However, it is more attractive to think that the development of the biosphere embodies a number of trends that affected long before the formation of the Earth and the solar system, and this direction is focused on creating an integrated theory of the past from the Big Bang to the present. Conclusion. The global evolution of all things moves in the direction from inorganics to organics - in the form of life and mind, and then - again to inorganics - in the form of artificial intelligence. There is a kind of denial of denial, the further steps of which, and even more so, the end result, can only be guessed. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe paper is divided into the two parts. In the first, I examine the relations among molecular biology, gene technology, and medicine as some aspect of the consequences of these relations with respect to the human genome project of the consequences of these relations with respect to the human genome project. I argue that the prevailing momentum of early molecular biology resided in argue that the prevailing momentum of relay molecular biology resided in crating the technical means for an (...) extracellular representation of intracellular configurations. Assuch, its medical impact was rather limited. With the advent of recombinant DNA technology is based on the prospects of an intracellular representation of extracellular projects—the “rewriting” of life. Its medical impact is potentially unlimited. In the second part, I question the very opposition between nature and culture that implicitly underlies the notion of medicine as a “cultural system.” I argue that both on a macroscopic level and on a microscopic level, the “natural” and the “social” are no longer to be seen as ontologically different.In its uncanny oscillation between retrospection and foresight, between description and proclamation, and between assertion and hesitation, this essay translates an uneasiness that I have not been able to overcome while writing it. The essay conveys the tangled views of a hybrid author who himself cannot but oscillate between the perspectives of an actor in the field of molecular biology, a participant in the field of science studies, and a citizen. (shrink)

This edited collection is the first of its kind to explore the view called perspectivism in philosophy of science. The book brings together an array of essays that reflect on the methodological promises and scientific challenges of perspectivism in a variety of fields such as physics, biology, cognitive neuroscience, and cancer research, just as a few examples. What are the advantages of using a plurality of perspectives in a given scientific field and for interdisciplinary research? Can different perspectives be integrated? (...) What is the relation between perspectivism, pluralism, and pragmatism? These ten new essays by top scholars in the field offer a polyphonic journey towards understanding the view called ‘perspectivism’ and its relevance to science. (shrink)

At the 1983 Summer Conference on the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, working groups chaired by the coauthors outlined some of the prospects for the use of somatic and germ line genetic engineering and related biological technologies to alleviate disease and to modify human behavior. They then offered a series of recommendations concerning the application of genetic engineering to persons and the monitoring of medical research and therapy.

The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their functionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adaptations, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimality assumptions), we argue they are limited in several important respects. In particular, the (...) analogy with human-made machines falters when we move down to the level of molecular biology and genetics. Living organisms are far more messy and less transparent than human-made machines. Notoriously, evolution is an opportunistic tinkerer, blindly stumbling on ‘‘designs’’ that no sensible engineer would come up with. Despite impressive technological innovation, the prospect of artificially designing new life forms from scratch has proven more difficult than the superficial analogy with ‘‘programming’’ the right ‘‘software’’ would suggest. The idea of applying straightforward engineering approaches to living systems and their genomes— isolating functional components, designing new parts from scratch, recombining and assembling them into novel life forms—pushes the analogy with human artifacts beyond its limits. In the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype, there is no straightforward way to implement novel biological functions and design new life forms. Both the developmental complexity of gene expression and the multifarious interactions of genes and environments are serious obstacles for ‘‘engineering’’ a particular phenotype. The problem of reverse-engineering a desired phenotype to its genetic ‘‘instructions’’ is probably intractable for any but the most simple phenotypes. Recent developments in the field of bio-engineering and synthetic biology reflect these limitations. Instead of genetically engineering a desired trait from scratch, as the machine/engineering metaphor promises, researchers are making greater strides by co-opting natural selection to ‘‘search’’ for a suitable genotype, or by borrowing and recombining genetic material from extant life forms. (shrink)

Thousands of candidate cancer biomarkers have been proposed, but so far, few are used in cancer screening. Failure to implement these biomarkers is attributed to technical and design flaws in the discovery and validation phases, but a major obstacle stems from cancer biology itself. Oncogenomics has revealed broad genetic heterogeneity among tumors of the same histology and same tissue (or organ) from different patients, while tumors of different tissue origins also share common genetic mutations. Moreover, there is wide intratumor genetic (...) heterogeneity among cells within any single neoplasm. These findings seriously limit the prospects of finding a single biomarker with high specificity for early cancer detection. Current research focuses on developing biomarker panels, with data assessment by machine‐learning algorithms. Whether such approaches will overcome the inherent limitations posed by tumor biology and lead to tests with true clinical value remains to be seen. (shrink)

We provide an introduction to network theory, evidence to support a connection between molecular network structure and neuropsychiatric disease, and examples of how network approaches can expand our knowledge of the molecular bases of these diseases. Without systematic methods to derive their biological meanings and inter‐relatedness, the many molecular changes associated with neuropsychiatric disease, including genetic variants, gene expression changes, and protein differences, present an impenetrably complex set of findings. Network approaches can potentially help integrate and reconcile these findings, (...) as well as provide new insights into the molecular architecture of neuropsychiatric diseases. Network approaches to neuropsychiatric disease are still in their infancy, and we discuss what might be done to improve their prospects. (shrink)