Peter Godfrey‐smith
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3866277 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Peter Godfrey‐smith |
| NOMBRES | Peter |
| APELLIDO | Godfrey‐smith |
| FIRMA | SMITH P G |
| AFILIACIONES | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1519-3661 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 34 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 105 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 34 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1992 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Simulation scenarios and philosophy
Integration, lateralization, and animal experience
Many vertebrate animals approximate, to various degrees, the “split‐brain” condition that results from surgery done in humans to treat severe epilepsy, with very limited connection between the left and right sides of the upper parts of the brain. The split‐brain condition has been the topic of extensive philosophical discussion, because it appears, in some circumstances, to give rise to two minds within one body. Is the same true of these animals…
Theory and Reality
Gradualism and the Evolution of Experience
In evolution, large-scale changes that involve the origin of complex new traits occur gradually, in a broad sense of the term. This principle applies to the origin of subjective or felt experience. I respond to difficulties that have been raised for a gradualist view in this area, and sketch a scenario for the gradual evolution of subjective experience, drawing on recent research into early nervous system evolution
In the beginning there was information
The Dual Landscape Model of Adaptation and Niche Construction
Wright’s “adaptive landscape” has been influential in evolutionary thinking but controversial, especially because the landscape that organisms encounter is altered by the evolutionary process itself and the effects organisms have on their environments. Lewontin offered a mathematical heuristic describing the coupling of niche construction and adaptive evolution. Here, we propose a “dual landscape” model to view these relationships. Our model repr…
Varieties of Subjectivity
In human conscious experience, many features are present in combination: objects are presented through the senses, information from different sensory modalities is integrated, events are marked with value, and we have a sense of our own location and state. Which of these might come before others in plausible evolutionary trajectories, or do they form a tight package of correlated features that cannot readily be dissociated? I take a comparative a…
Communication and representation understood as sender–receiver coordination
Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of David Lewis's 1969 model of signaling. The latter can now be understood as a minimal model of communication in all its forms. In this article, we explain how the Lewis model has been generalized, and consider how it and its variants contribute to ongoing debates in several areas. Specifically, we consider connections between the models and four topics…
Tolerance
Content in Simple Signalling Systems
Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of…
Mind, Matter, and Metabolism
Complex Life Cycles and the Evolutionary Process
Problems raised by complex life cycles for standard summaries of evolutionary processes, and for concepts of individuality in biology, are described. I then outline a framework that can be used to compare life cycles. This framework treats reproduction as a combination of production and recurrence and organizes life cycles according to the distribution of steps in which multiplication, bottlenecks, and sex occur. I also discuss fitness and its me…
Common Interest and Signaling Games
We present a dynamic model of the evolution of communication in a Lewis signaling game while systematically varying the degree of common interest between sender and receiver. We show that the level of common interest between sender and receiver is strongly predictive of the amount of information transferred between them. We also discuss a set of rare but interesting cases in which common interest is almost entirely absent, yet substantial informa…
Pragmatism
Sender-Receiver Systems within and between Organisms
Drawing on models of communication due to Lewis and Skyrms, I contrast sender-receiver systems as they appear within and between organisms, and as they function in the bridging of space and time. Within the organism, memory can be seen as the sending of messages over time, communication between stages as opposed to spatial parts. Psychological memory and genetic memory are compared with respect to their relations to a sender-receiver model. Some …
Philosophy of Biology
Preface ix CHAPTER ONE Philosophy and Biology 1 CHAPTER TWO Laws, Mechanisms, and Models 11 CHAPTER THREE Evolution and Natural Selection 28 CHAPTER FOUR Adaptation, Construction, Function 50 CHAPTER FIVE Individuals 66 CHAPTER SIX Genes 81 CHAPTER SEVEN Species and the Tree of Life 100 CHAPTER EIGHT Evolution and Social Behavior 120 CHAPTER NINE Information 144 References 159 Index 179
Gestalt-Switching and the Evolutionary Transitions
Formal methods developed for modeling levels of selection problems have recently been applied to the investigation of major evolutionary transitions. We discuss two new tools of this kind. First, the ‘near-variant test’ can be used to compare the causal adequacy of predictively equivalent representations. Second, ‘state-variable gestalt-switching’ can be used to gain a useful dual perspective on evolutionary processes that involve both higher and…
Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection
In 1859 Charles Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called 'natural selection', a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success. He argued that this mechanism was the key to explaining the most puzzling features of the natural world, and science and philosophy were changed forever as a result. The exact nature of the Darwinian process has been controversial ever since, however. The author draws on new develop…
Knowledge, Trade‐Offs, and Tracking Truth
Varieties of Population Structure and the Levels of Selection
Group-structured populations, of the kind prominent in discussions of multilevel selection, are contrasted with ‘neighbor-structured’ populations. I argue that it is a necessary condition on multilevel description of a selection process that there should be a nonarbitrary division of the population into equivalence classes (or an approximation to this situation). The discussion is focused via comparisons between two famous problem cases involving…
The strategy of model-based science
Theory and Reality
What makes different from other ways of investigating the world? In Theory and Reality Peter Godfrey-Smith uses debates - such as the problem of confirmation, the new riddle of induction, and the problem of realism - as a way to introduce, in a completely accessible way, the main themes in the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory and Reality starts by surveying the l…
Dewey on Naturalism, Realism and Science
An interpretation of John Dewey's views about realism, science, and naturalistic philosophy is presented. Dewey should be seen as an unorthodox realist, with respect to both general metaphysical debates about realism and with respect to debates about the aims and achievements of science
Group Selection, Pluralism, and the Evolution of Altruism
Information, Arbitrariness, and Selection
Maynard Smith is right that one of the most striking features of contemporary biology is the ever-increasing prominence of the concept of information, along with related concepts like representation, programming, and coding. Maynard Smith is also right that this is surely a phenomenon which philosophers of science should examine closely. We should try to understand exactly what sorts of theoretical commitment (if any) are made when biological sys…
On the Theoretical Role of “Genetic Coding”
The role played by the concept of genetic coding in biology is discussed. I argue that this concept makes a real contribution to solving a specific problem in cell biology. But attempts to make the idea of genetic coding do theoretical work elsewhere in biology, and in philosophy of biology, are probably mistaken. In particular, the concept of genetic coding should not be used (as it often is) to express a distinction between the traits of whole …
Indication and adaptation
Theory and Reality
Content in Simple Signalling Systems
Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of…
Varieties of Population Structure and the Levels of Selection
Group-structured populations, of the kind prominent in discussions of multilevel selection, are contrasted with ‘neighbor-structured’ populations. I argue that it is a necessary condition on multilevel description of a selection process that there should be a nonarbitrary division of the population into equivalence classes (or an approximation to this situation). The discussion is focused via comparisons between two famous problem cases involving…
Communication and representation understood as sender–receiver coordination
Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of David Lewis's 1969 model of signaling. The latter can now be understood as a minimal model of communication in all its forms. In this article, we explain how the Lewis model has been generalized, and consider how it and its variants contribute to ongoing debates in several areas. Specifically, we consider connections between the models and four topics…
Sender-Receiver Systems within and between Organisms
Drawing on models of communication due to Lewis and Skyrms, I contrast sender-receiver systems as they appear within and between organisms, and as they function in the bridging of space and time. Within the organism, memory can be seen as the sending of messages over time, communication between stages as opposed to spatial parts. Psychological memory and genetic memory are compared with respect to their relations to a sender-receiver model. Some …
Common Interest and Signaling Games
We present a dynamic model of the evolution of communication in a Lewis signaling game while systematically varying the degree of common interest between sender and receiver. We show that the level of common interest between sender and receiver is strongly predictive of the amount of information transferred between them. We also discuss a set of rare but interesting cases in which common interest is almost entirely absent, yet substantial informa…
Dewey on Naturalism, Realism and Science
An interpretation of John Dewey's views about realism, science, and naturalistic philosophy is presented. Dewey should be seen as an unorthodox realist, with respect to both general metaphysical debates about realism and with respect to debates about the aims and achievements of science
The Dual Landscape Model of Adaptation and Niche Construction
Wright’s “adaptive landscape” has been influential in evolutionary thinking but controversial, especially because the landscape that organisms encounter is altered by the evolutionary process itself and the effects organisms have on their environments. Lewontin offered a mathematical heuristic describing the coupling of niche construction and adaptive evolution. Here, we propose a “dual landscape” model to view these relationships. Our model repr…
Complex Life Cycles and the Evolutionary Process
Problems raised by complex life cycles for standard summaries of evolutionary processes, and for concepts of individuality in biology, are described. I then outline a framework that can be used to compare life cycles. This framework treats reproduction as a combination of production and recurrence and organizes life cycles according to the distribution of steps in which multiplication, bottlenecks, and sex occur. I also discuss fitness and its me…
Gestalt-Switching and the Evolutionary Transitions
Formal methods developed for modeling levels of selection problems have recently been applied to the investigation of major evolutionary transitions. We discuss two new tools of this kind. First, the ‘near-variant test’ can be used to compare the causal adequacy of predictively equivalent representations. Second, ‘state-variable gestalt-switching’ can be used to gain a useful dual perspective on evolutionary processes that involve both higher and…
Varieties of Subjectivity
In human conscious experience, many features are present in combination: objects are presented through the senses, information from different sensory modalities is integrated, events are marked with value, and we have a sense of our own location and state. Which of these might come before others in plausible evolutionary trajectories, or do they form a tight package of correlated features that cannot readily be dissociated? I take a comparative a…
Tolerance
The Dimensions of Selection
Proponents of genic selectionism have claimed that evolutionary processes normally viewed as selection on individuals can be “represented” as selection on alleles. This paper discusses the relationship between mathematical questions about the formal requirements upon state spaces necessary for the representation of different types of evolutionary processes and causal questions about the units of selection in such processes
Group Selection, Pluralism, and the Evolution of Altruism
Explanatory Symmetries, Preformation, and Developmental Systems Theory
Some central ideas associated with developmental systems theory (DST) are outlined for non-specialists. These ideas concern the nature of biological development, the alleged distinction between “genetic” and “environmental” traits, the relations between organism and environment, and evolutionary processes. I also discuss some criticisms of the DST approach
Indication and adaptation
The Dimensions of Selection
Proponents of genic selectionism have claimed that evolutionary processes normally viewed as selection on individuals can be “represented” as selection on alleles. This paper discusses the relationship between mathematical questions about the formal requirements upon state spaces necessary for the representation of different types of evolutionary processes and causal questions about the units of selection in such processes
Reconstructing the Past
Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature
This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to …
Meaning, Models and Selection
This is a book which tries to put it all together. Papineau begins with topics central to contemporary naturalistic philosophy, but then he moves on. By the end of the book we reach issues that naturalists often avoid: modality, morality and mathematical truth. This is an admirable venture, and I expect that many readers will, like myself, benefit a great deal from tracing out some of the more remote consequences of familiar naturalistic commitme…
Author’s response
The place of function in a world of mechanisms
Information, Arbitrariness, and Selection
Maynard Smith is right that one of the most striking features of contemporary biology is the ever-increasing prominence of the concept of information, along with related concepts like representation, programming, and coding. Maynard Smith is also right that this is surely a phenomenon which philosophers of science should examine closely. We should try to understand exactly what sorts of theoretical commitment (if any) are made when biological sys…
Explanatory Symmetries, Preformation, and Developmental Systems Theory
Some central ideas associated with developmental systems theory (DST) are outlined for non-specialists. These ideas concern the nature of biological development, the alleged distinction between “genetic” and “environmental” traits, the relations between organism and environment, and evolutionary processes. I also discuss some criticisms of the DST approach
On the Theoretical Role of “Genetic Coding”
The role played by the concept of genetic coding in biology is discussed. I argue that this concept makes a real contribution to solving a specific problem in cell biology. But attempts to make the idea of genetic coding do theoretical work elsewhere in biology, and in philosophy of biology, are probably mistaken. In particular, the concept of genetic coding should not be used (as it often is) to express a distinction between the traits of whole …
Dewey on Naturalism, Realism and Science
An interpretation of John Dewey's views about realism, science, and naturalistic philosophy is presented. Dewey should be seen as an unorthodox realist, with respect to both general metaphysical debates about realism and with respect to debates about the aims and achievements of science
Group Selection, Pluralism, and the Evolution of Altruism
Theory and Reality
What makes different from other ways of investigating the world? In Theory and Reality Peter Godfrey-Smith uses debates - such as the problem of confirmation, the new riddle of induction, and the problem of realism - as a way to introduce, in a completely accessible way, the main themes in the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory and Reality starts by surveying the l…
The strategy of model-based science
Varieties of Population Structure and the Levels of Selection
Group-structured populations, of the kind prominent in discussions of multilevel selection, are contrasted with ‘neighbor-structured’ populations. I argue that it is a necessary condition on multilevel description of a selection process that there should be a nonarbitrary division of the population into equivalence classes (or an approximation to this situation). The discussion is focused via comparisons between two famous problem cases involving…
Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection
In 1859 Charles Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called 'natural selection', a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success. He argued that this mechanism was the key to explaining the most puzzling features of the natural world, and science and philosophy were changed forever as a result. The exact nature of the Darwinian process has been controversial ever since, however. The author draws on new develop…
Knowledge, Trade‐Offs, and Tracking Truth
Philosophy of Biology
Preface ix CHAPTER ONE Philosophy and Biology 1 CHAPTER TWO Laws, Mechanisms, and Models 11 CHAPTER THREE Evolution and Natural Selection 28 CHAPTER FOUR Adaptation, Construction, Function 50 CHAPTER FIVE Individuals 66 CHAPTER SIX Genes 81 CHAPTER SEVEN Species and the Tree of Life 100 CHAPTER EIGHT Evolution and Social Behavior 120 CHAPTER NINE Information 144 References 159 Index 179
Gestalt-Switching and the Evolutionary Transitions
Formal methods developed for modeling levels of selection problems have recently been applied to the investigation of major evolutionary transitions. We discuss two new tools of this kind. First, the ‘near-variant test’ can be used to compare the causal adequacy of predictively equivalent representations. Second, ‘state-variable gestalt-switching’ can be used to gain a useful dual perspective on evolutionary processes that involve both higher and…
Sender-Receiver Systems within and between Organisms
Drawing on models of communication due to Lewis and Skyrms, I contrast sender-receiver systems as they appear within and between organisms, and as they function in the bridging of space and time. Within the organism, memory can be seen as the sending of messages over time, communication between stages as opposed to spatial parts. Psychological memory and genetic memory are compared with respect to their relations to a sender-receiver model. Some …
Pragmatism
Mind, Matter, and Metabolism
Complex Life Cycles and the Evolutionary Process
Problems raised by complex life cycles for standard summaries of evolutionary processes, and for concepts of individuality in biology, are described. I then outline a framework that can be used to compare life cycles. This framework treats reproduction as a combination of production and recurrence and organizes life cycles according to the distribution of steps in which multiplication, bottlenecks, and sex occur. I also discuss fitness and its me…
Common Interest and Signaling Games
We present a dynamic model of the evolution of communication in a Lewis signaling game while systematically varying the degree of common interest between sender and receiver. We show that the level of common interest between sender and receiver is strongly predictive of the amount of information transferred between them. We also discuss a set of rare but interesting cases in which common interest is almost entirely absent, yet substantial informa…
Content in Simple Signalling Systems
Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of…
Philosophy (25 obras) · Epistemology (24 obras) · Computer Science (22 obras) · Philosophy and History of Science (17 obras) · Psychology (17 obras) · Biology (14 obras) · Cognitive science (11 obras) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (11 obras) · Sociology (11 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (10 obras)