"Modality" refers to the concepts (and surrounding controversies) of "possibility" and "necessity." Recently, a great deal of attention paid to these concepts in metaphysics. Not surprisingly, this literature has not been adopted in the field of philosophy of biology. In this work, I ague that there is a need to understand how modal concepts function in biology. Biologists already employ modal concepts in a variety of contexts. However, they do not explain how these concepts function or ought to function within the biological domain. From a philosophical perspective, there is a framework for how modal concepts operate in physics. But this framework cannot be adopted by the biological sciences. Since work on modality is relatively new to philosophy of biology, I spend the first three chapters justifying, defining, and restricting the project of creating a modal framework in biology. In the penultimate chapter, I present and criticize the single account of "biological possibility" found in the literature, which is offered by Daniel Dennett. Finally, I provide a positive account of how we should apply modal concepts in the biological sciences. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2007. / Date of Defense: May 2, 2007. / Modality, Evolution / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael Ruse, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joseph Travis, Outside Committee Member; Piers Rawling, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_168618 |
| Contributors | Zinser, Jason (authoraut), Ruse, Michael (professor directing dissertation), Travis, Joseph (outside committee member), Rawling, Piers (committee member), Department of Philosophy (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
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