PHL323 Philosophy of Biology, current assignments
Current Assignments
May 9
Our exam slot is 10:30 am - 12:30 pm, in our room of
Campus Center 210. This is when your final paper will be due.
But I'll take them till 2:00. Final papers can be either:
- A revision of your first paper.
- A revision of your teleofunctions paper.
- A defense of, or criticism of, any work in
evolutionary psychology. Your defense or criticism
should take into account some of the philosophical
criticisms of evolutionary psychology.
- A defense of, or criticism of, meme theory. You
should pick a particular example and pressure test it if
you want to defend meme theory.
I will look at drafts any time up to and including May 4.
Aim for 8-10 pages in a revision, or 6 pages in a new paper.
I will be eager to recommend other readings, if you write
and tell me your topic. Use the
guideline for analytic philosophy paper format.
I was asked for additional resources. Here are some:
- Teleofunctions: The recent effects version is in
Bigelow & Pargetter (1987) "Functions." The Journal of
Philosophy, 84: 181-196. For goal theory, sources
include Boorse (1976), "Wright on Functions", The
Philosophical Review 85: 70-86; and Wimsatt (1972),
"Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function
Statements", Studies in the History and Philosophy of
Science 3: 1-80. You should be able to get any of these
via jStor.
- The short-lived journal of mimetics has stuff on
memes. It's at
http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/all.html. The paper by Rose
might be a good one to look at, or the paper by Wilkins
(at
http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1998/vol2/wilkins_js.html).
- A good place to start for criticisms or concerns for
evolutionary psych is sections 4 and 5 of the Stanford
Encyclopedia entry. It cites important papers of
interest. That's at:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-psychology/
.
Tentative/expected Assignments (subject to revision)