The concept of wild food does not play a significant role in contemporary nutritional science and it is seldom regarded as a salient feature within standard dietary guidelines. The knowledge systems of wild edible taxa a...The concept of wild food does not play a significant role in contemporary nutritional science and it is seldom regarded as a salient feature within standard dietary guidelines. The knowledge systems of wild edible taxa are indeed at risk of disappearing. However, recent scholarship in ethnobotany, field biology, and philosophy demonstrated the crucial role of wild foods for food biodiversity and food security. The knowledge of how to use and consume wild foods is not only a means to deliver high-end culinary offerings, but also a way to foster alternative models of consumption. Our aim in this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for wild foods, which can account for diversified wild food ontologies. In the first section of the paper, we survey the main conception of wild foods provided in the literature, what we call the Nature View. We argue that this view falls short of capturing characteristics that are core to a sound account of wilderness in a culinary sense. In the second part of the paper, we provide the foundation for an improved model of wild food, which can countenance multiple dimensions and degrees connoting wilderness in the culinary world. In the third part of the paper we argue that thanks to a more nuanced ontological analysis, the gradient framework can serve ethnobiologists, philosophers, scientists, and policymakers to represent and negotiate theoretical conflicts on the nature of wild food.
Communication can arise when the interests of speaker and listener diverge if the cost of signaling is high enough that it aligns their interests. But what happens when the cost of signaling is not sufficient to align th...Communication can arise when the interests of speaker and listener diverge if the cost of signaling is high enough that it aligns their interests. But what happens when the cost of signaling is not sufficient to align their interests? Using methods from experimental economics, we test whether theoretical predictions of a partially informative system of communication are borne out. As our results indicate, partial communication can occur even when interests do not coincide.
Ecology arguably has roots in eighteenth-century natural histories, such as Linnaeus's economy of nature, which pressed a case for holistic and final-causal explanations of organisms in terms of what we'd now call their...Ecology arguably has roots in eighteenth-century natural histories, such as Linnaeus's economy of nature, which pressed a case for holistic and final-causal explanations of organisms in terms of what we'd now call their environment. After sketching Kant's arguments for the indispensability of final-causal explanation merely in the case of individual organisms, and considering the Linnaean alternative, this paper examines Kant's critical response to Linnaean ideas. I argue that Kant does not explicitly reject Linnaeus's holism. But he maintains that the indispensability of final-causal explanation depends on robust modal connections between types of organism and their functional parts; relationships in Linnaeus's economy of nature, by contrast, are relatively contingent. Kant's framework avoids strong metaphysical assumptions, is responsive to empirical evidence, and can be fruitfully compared with some contemporary approaches to biological organization.
Ethnobiology has emerged as an important transdisciplinary field that addresses the epistemic and political value of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) through an integration of biological and social sciences. In Nor...Ethnobiology has emerged as an important transdisciplinary field that addresses the epistemic and political value of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) through an integration of biological and social sciences. In North and Latin America, ethnobiology encompasses a diversity of approaches towards TEK but there is no consensus on how TEK relates to biological and anthropological research. The aim of this article is to develop an account that helps to map integration strategies in ethnobiological approaches in North and Latin America that jointly embrace biology, anthropology, and TEK. Borrowing the notion of 'styles of reasoning' and the framework of integrative pluralism from philosophy of science, we argue that ethnobiologists across the Americas have developed heterogeneous research programs. At the same time, we argue that these styles of reasoning tend to converge in prioritizing biological perspectives and are often limited in their understandings of cultural practices due to a lack of substantive ethnographic methods.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci
· 2020 Oct · PMID 32513474
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In the philosophy of medicine, great attention has been paid to defining disease, yet less attention has been paid to the classification of clinical conditions. These include conditions that look like diseases but are no...In the philosophy of medicine, great attention has been paid to defining disease, yet less attention has been paid to the classification of clinical conditions. These include conditions that look like diseases but are not; conditions that are diseases but that (currently) have no diagnostic criteria; and other types, including those relating to risk for disease. I present a typology of clinical conditions by examining factors important for characterizing clinical conditions. By attending to the types of clinical conditions possible on the basis of these key factors (symptomaticity, dysfunction, and the meeting of diagnostic criteria), I draw attention to how diseases and other clinical conditions as currently classified can be better categorized, highlighting the issues pertaining to certain typology categories. Through detailed analysis of a wide variety of clinical examples, including Alzheimer disease as a test case, I show how nosology, research, and decisions about diagnostic criteria should include normative as well as naturalistically describable factors.
Theory-free characterizations of experimental systems miss normative and conceptual components that sometimes are crucial to understanding their historical development. In the following paper, we show that these componen...Theory-free characterizations of experimental systems miss normative and conceptual components that sometimes are crucial to understanding their historical development. In the following paper, we show that these components may be part of the intrinsic capacities of experimental systems themselves. We study a case of non-exploratory and theory-oriented research in experimental neuroscience that concerns the construction of free-viewing as an experimental system to test one particular pre-existing hypothesis, the Temporal Correlation Hypothesis (TCH), at a laboratory in Santiago de Chile, during 2002-2008. We show that the system does not take well-formulated pre-existing predictions or hypotheses to test them directly, but re-creates them and re-signifies them in terms that are not implied by the theoretical background from which they originally derived. Therefore, we conclude that there is a sui generis way in which experimental systems produce proper theoretical knowledge.
In the late 19th century, physiologists such as David Ferrier, Eduard Hitzig, and Hermann Munk argued that cerebral brain functions are localized in discrete structures. By the early 20th century, this became the dominan...In the late 19th century, physiologists such as David Ferrier, Eduard Hitzig, and Hermann Munk argued that cerebral brain functions are localized in discrete structures. By the early 20th century, this became the dominant position. However, another prominent physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, rejected theories of cerebral localization and argued against these physiologists until his death in 1902. I argue in this paper that previous historical accounts have failed to comprehend why Goltz rejected cerebral localization. I show that Goltz adhered to a falsificationist methodology, and I reconstruct how he designed his experiments and weighted different kinds of evidence. I then draw on the exploratory experimentation literature from recent philosophy of science to trace one root of the debate to differences in how the German localizers designed their experiments and reasoned about evidence. While Goltz designed his experiments to test hypotheses about the functions of predetermined cerebral structures, the localizers explored new functions and structures in the process of constructing new theories. I argue that the localizers relied on untested background conjectures to justify their inferences about functional organization. These background conjectures collapsed a distinction between phenomena they produced direct evidence for (localized symptoms) and what they reached conclusions about (localized functions). When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
In 1948, American ornithologist Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee began publishing what would be the most complete list of birds from Colombia that had ever been printed up to that time. His work was called The Birds of the R...In 1948, American ornithologist Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee began publishing what would be the most complete list of birds from Colombia that had ever been printed up to that time. His work was called The Birds of the Republic of Colombia (TBRC), and at the invitation of Armando Dugand, the director of the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and of the Caldasia journal, this work was exclusively published in the journal in five installments spanning four years. This paper analyzes the publishing aspects that particularly influenced the process of carrying out this work, with the objective of showing that scientific practices and publishing practices are not two absolutely separate domains. The circuit of communication present in TBRC's development is analyzed, specifically the efforts of the editor, printer and author to bring this work to fruition. This analysis demonstrates the following: (i) how the scientific interests of Meyer and the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales converge, (ii) the contradictions between scientific interests that promoted the publication of TBRC and the publishing rationale of a journal and (iii) how unforeseen publishing issues of the time, such as the increase in printing costs due to inflation, influenced the final structure of the work.
An analysis of arguments for pain eliminativism reveals two significant points of divergence between assumptions underlying biomedical research on pain and assumptions typically endorsed by eliminativist accounts. The fi...An analysis of arguments for pain eliminativism reveals two significant points of divergence between assumptions underlying biomedical research on pain and assumptions typically endorsed by eliminativist accounts. The first concerns the status of the term 'pain,' which is a description of a phenomenon, rather than an explanatory construct. The second concerns reductive explanation: pain is explained causally, in terms of mechanisms or factors that produce or determine it, rather than by identifying it with a physical structure, process or mechanism. These discrepancies undermine several arguments for pain eliminativism.
There has recently been an explosion of formal models of signaling, which have been developed in order to learn about different aspects of meaning. This paper discusses whether that success can also be used to provide an...There has recently been an explosion of formal models of signaling, which have been developed in order to learn about different aspects of meaning. This paper discusses whether that success can also be used to provide an original naturalistic theory of meaning in terms of information or some related notion. In particular, it argues that, although these models can teach us a lot about different aspects of content, at the moment they fail to support the idea that meaning just is some kind of information. As an alternative, I suggest a more modest approach to the relationship between the informational notions used in models and semantic properties in the natural world.
How is scientific data used to represent phenomena and as evidence for claims about phenomena? In this paper, I propose that a specific type of claims - evidential claims - is involved in data practices to define and res...How is scientific data used to represent phenomena and as evidence for claims about phenomena? In this paper, I propose that a specific type of claims - evidential claims - is involved in data practices to define and restrict the representational and evidential content of a dataset. I present an account of data practices in the epidemiology of the exposome based on the notion of evidential claims, which helps unpack the approaches, assumptions and warrants that connect different stages of research. I identify three different strategies to generate different types of evidential claims in this case. The macro strategy, which individuates the dataset that serves as the initial evidential space for research. The micro strategy, which is used to generate evidential claims about the microscopic and individual component of target phenomena. The association strategy, that uses evidence from the other strategies to identify a dataset as representation of the different levels and relations of exposure and disease. Differentiating between these strategies sheds light on the multi-faceted landscape of biomedical research on environment and health; and the roles of data and evidence in the process of inquiry.
In recent years there have been several attempts to examine Ethnobiology from an evolutionary perspective. I discuss several potential sources of confusion in applying Evolutionary concepts to Ethnobiology. Ethnobiologic...In recent years there have been several attempts to examine Ethnobiology from an evolutionary perspective. I discuss several potential sources of confusion in applying Evolutionary concepts to Ethnobiology. Ethnobiological discussions of evolution have focused more on changes in human populations, or on human impacts upon plants used by humans for a variety of purposes, than on the processes typically emphasized in discussions by biologists studying evolution. There has been little acknowledgment of how the field of biological evolution is changing in the 21st Century. In this article I focus on recent developments in evolutionary thinking that could be effectively integrated into Ethnobiological concepts. These include: 1) The increased importance of individual organisms in understanding both population dynamics and microevolutionary change (i.e. natural selection). This change in focus creates the potential for incorporating understandings from Indigenous people who recognize a different set of dynamics that govern how both plant and animal populations are regulated, leading to new insights into how conservation practices should be enacted; 2) Niche Construction, which is a 21st century concept that argues that organisms shape their own environments and those of other species. This approach creates a new way of looking at how Natural Selection can act upon a wide range of organisms; and finally, 3) Reticulate Evolution, in which different species exchange genetic material as a result of behavioral or physiological interactions with major evolutionary consequences. These concepts relate strongly to fundamental Indigenous conceptions of ecosystem functioning, including the ideas that All Things are Connected and that All Life Forms are Related. I argue that Ethnobiology and Indigenous Knowledge are strongest in dealing with phenomena linked to behavior and ecology, which are fields being neglected by many contemporary molecular approaches to understanding evolution. Attempts to deal with Conservation in a world subject to climate change would be greatly improved by working closely with Indigenous peoples and incorporating concepts from these traditions into practices on a global scale.
This paper poses a problem for traditional phylogenetics: The identity of organisms that reproduce through fission can be understood in several different ways. This prompts questions about how to differentiate parent org...This paper poses a problem for traditional phylogenetics: The identity of organisms that reproduce through fission can be understood in several different ways. This prompts questions about how to differentiate parent organisms from their offspring, making vertical gene transfer unclear. Differentiating between parents and offspring stems from what I call the identity problem. How the problem is resolved has implications for phylogenetic groupings. If the identity of a particular asexual organism persists through fission, the vertical lineage on a phylogenetic tree will split differently than if the identity of an organism does not survive the fission process.
Although concepts of disease have received much scrutiny, the benefits of distinguishing between theoretical and clinical disease-and what is meant by those terms-may not be as readily apparent. One way of characterizing...Although concepts of disease have received much scrutiny, the benefits of distinguishing between theoretical and clinical disease-and what is meant by those terms-may not be as readily apparent. One way of characterizing the distinction between theoretical and clinical conceptions of disease is by relying on Boorse's biostatistical theory (BST) for a conception of theoretical disease. Clinical disease could then be defined as theoretical disease that is diagnosed. Explicating this distinction provides a useful extension of the BST. The benefits of this approach are clearly and non-normatively demarcating disease from non-disease, while allowing for values and purpose to determine what criteria are used in clinical practice to represent a disease's underlying dysfunction. Through discussion of a variety of medical conditions, including polycystic ovary syndrome and type 2 diabetes mellitus, I explore how the relationship between BST-based theoretical and clinical disease could make sense of various features of clinical practice and medical theory. It could do this by lending focus to a nuanced understanding of the pathophysiological defects present in disease and the means by which they are assessed. This could contribute to making sense of revised nosologies and diagnostic criteria.
The paper discusses the metaphorical nature and meaning of a concept, inhibition, ubiquitous in physiological, psychological and everyday descriptions of the controlling organization of human conduct. There are three par...The paper discusses the metaphorical nature and meaning of a concept, inhibition, ubiquitous in physiological, psychological and everyday descriptions of the controlling organization of human conduct. There are three parts. The first reviews the established argument in the theory of knowledge that metaphor is not 'merely' figure of speech but intrinsic to language use. The middle section provides an introduction to the history of inhibition as a concept in nervous physiology and in psychology. This emphasizes the conjoined descriptive and normative character the concept has had, integrating science and the ordinary person's understanding of the achievement of top-down control in organized systems. The last section introduces a different dimension to the history and logic of control, pointing out that 'economic', as opposed to hierarchical, models of control also exist. The conclusion asserts the flexible, particular character of metaphor, encompassing mental and bodily realms - and hence the importance of historical work for its comprehension.
The ENCODE project has made important new estimates of human genome functionality, now revising the percentage considered functional to more than 80%, which is in stark contrast to the received view, which estimated that...The ENCODE project has made important new estimates of human genome functionality, now revising the percentage considered functional to more than 80%, which is in stark contrast to the received view, which estimated that less than 10% of the conserved parts of the human genome are functional. ENCODE's unorthodox use of the notion of biological function has stirred the so-called ENCODE controversy, involving conflicting views about the correct notion of function in postgenomics. The debate hinges on the traditional philosophical contrast between the causal role (CR) and selected effects (SE) approaches. In this paper, we examine the ENCODE controversy in terms of the distinction between function monism and pluralism. We propose to apply a weak etiological account to genomic function ascriptions. In this approach, we can ascribe a function to a genomic structure of an organism if and only if performing the function persists in causally contributing to the organism's and its ancestors' fitness. In comparison to the strong etiological (i.e., the selected effects) approach, the present account does not require there to be selection for the structure in question. This is a monistic approach that enables us to avoid the main difficulties of CR, as well as SE's overdependence on natural selection, while still preserving an evolutionary-constrained notion of biological functions. Our proposal is much more moderate in accommodating the estimates of the functionality of the human genome than both ENCODE's proposal itself and the views of the critics relying on a version of the SE account of functions.
Contingency-theorists have put forth differing accounts of evolutionary contingency. The bulk of these accounts abstractly refer to certain causal structures in which an evolutionarily contingent outcome is supposedly em...Contingency-theorists have put forth differing accounts of evolutionary contingency. The bulk of these accounts abstractly refer to certain causal structures in which an evolutionarily contingent outcome is supposedly embedded. For example, an outcome is evolutionarily contingent if it is at the end of a 'path-dependent' or 'causally dependent' causal chain. However, this paper argues that many of these proposals fail to include a desideratum - the notion of biological evitability or that evolutionary outcomes could have been otherwise - that for good theoretical reasons ought to be part of an account of evolutionary contingency. Although an inclusion of this desideratum might seem obvious enough, under some existing accounts, an outcome can be contingent yet inevitable all the same. In my diagnosis of this issue, I develop the idea of trajectory propensity to highlight the fact that there are plausible biological scenarios in which causal structures, alone, fail to exhaustively determine the biological evitability of evolutionary forms. In the second half of the paper, I present two additional desiderata of an account of evolutionary contingency and, subsequently, proffer a novel account of evolutionary contingency as non-trivial objective probability, which overcomes the shortcomings of some previous proposals. According to this outcome-based account, contingency claims are probabilistic statements about an evolutionary outcome's objective probability of evolution within a specifically defined modal range: an outcome, O, is evolutionarily contingent in modal range, R, to the degree of objective probability, P (where P is in between 1 and 0).