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Publications (38)
In this paper we articulate a characterization of the concept of disease as a social problem. We argue that, from a social ontology point of view, diseases are problems that are identified and addressed within the framework of concrete social institutions and practices (those that shape medicine). This approach allows us to overcome the classical d...
From a naturalistic approach, several attempts have been made to justify teleological explanations by appealing to the action of selective mechanisms. In philosophy of biology, natural selection has often been assumed to be the paradigmatic case of selective mechanism, and, on this basis, different generalized biological selective explanations have...
Evolutionary biologists today debate whether it is convenient to revise the standard theory of evolution, or if an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is necessary. However, the conceptual relationship between the standard theory of evolution (also known as the Modern Synthesis) and a putative Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is not clear. One concept i...
Selected-effects theories provide the most popular account of biological teleology. According to these theories, the purpose of a trait is to do whatever it was selected for. The vast majority of selected-effects theories consider biological teleology to be introduced by natural selection. We want to argue, however, that natural selection is not th...
In this paper, we bring together the concepts of affordance from ecological psychology and function from the organizational approach to philosophy of biology into a single integrative framework. This integration allows us to account for the biological basis of the notion of affordance, offering theoretical tools to address the normative interrelati...
In the philosophical debate on aging, it is common to raise the question of the theoretical definition of aging in terms of its possible characterization as a disease. Understanding aging as a disease seems to imply its medicalization, which has important practical consequences. In this paper, we analyze the question of whether aging is a disease b...
Los conceptos de evolución y cambio evolutivo son a la vez laxos y polisémicos: se aplican a fenómenos muy diferentes y no siempre se definen con precisión. La aplicación extendida del paradigma neo-darwinista clásico, además, suele imponer un esquema adaptacionista al análisis de los hechos evolutivos, en el cual las funciones juegan un papel lógi...
The definitions and conceptualizations of health, and the management of healthcare have been challenged by the current global scenarios (e.g., new diseases, new geographical distribution of diseases, effects of climate change on health, etc.) and by the ongoing scholarship in humanities and science. In this paper we question the mainstream definiti...
In this paper, we analyze the debate between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis in light of the concept of incommensurability developed by Thomas Kuhn. In order to do so, first we briefly present both the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Then, we clarify the meaning and interpretations of incommens...
El proyecto del ‘Darwinismo Formal’ de Alan Grafen propone una formulación matemática de la teoría de Darwin que pretende demostrar que la selección natural moldea los rasgos fenotípicos a través de la maximización de la eficacia (fitness). El proyecto de Grafen reposa sobre tres premisas: (1) la selección natural es la única fuerza que moldea los...
Usually, the organization of living systems is explained by appealing to an intrinsic purpose that is based on the biological survival. However, paradigmatically, it is inevitable to observe that the final destiny of all living organisms is death. In this work, we defend that, from an organizational approach, there is a form of death—Regulatory Cel...
Usually, the organization of living systems is explained by appealing to an intrinsic purpose that is based on the biological survival. However, paradigmatically, it is inevitable to observe that the final destiny of all living organisms is death. In this work, we defend that, from an organizational approach, there is a form of death—Regulatory Cel...
En este trabajo analizamos críticamente el enfoque mecanicista de explicación científica centrándonos principalmente en la forma en la que este da cuenta de los fenómenos biológicos. Nos proponemos complementar esta perspectiva con una concepción de nivel como intervalo de cuasi-descomponibilidad que nos permite fundamentar metafísicamente las prop...
In this paper, we critically analyze the mechanicist approach to scientific explanation and propose to complement this view with a conception of level as interval of quasi-decompositionality. This conception allows us to metaphysically base the mechanicist proposals on characteristic systemic features. By means of concrete examples, we claim that t...
La afirmación de Darwin de que la Selección Natural, gracias a la optimización de la eficacia, explica la complejidad del diseño biológico carece por el momento de una formalización canónica. El Proyecto del Darwinismo Formal de Alan Grafen pretende ofrecerla mediante un marco teórico coherente con los resultados de la Genética de Poblaciones. En e...
La noción de emergencia acompaña a la Filosofía de la Biología desde finales del siglo XIX, afirmando que las propiedades de los sistemas biológicos no pueden deducirse de las de sus componentes. A lo largo del siglo XX las caracterizaciones de este concepto se han apoyado en cuatro pilares, impredecibilidad, novedad, restricción y causación descen...
The notion of emergence has accompanied philosophy of science since the late XIX century, claiming that in some systems there are properties in certain levels that cannot be deduced from properties of their components as seen in more fundamental levels. Throughout the XX century, emergence has been characterized by four pillars: unpredictability, n...
We reply to Artiga and Martinez’s claim according to which the organizational account of cross-generation functions implies a backward looking interpretation of etiology, just as standard etiological theories of function do. We argue that Artiga and Martinez’s claim stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about the notion of “closure”, on which t...
In this paper we develop a systemic-organizational account of the notion of biological malfunction and present the implications of this theoretical model for the philosophy of medicine. We try to ground the theoretical notion of biological normativity, interpreting it as an inherent feature of biological systems. We then develop a theoretical accou...
De un modo u otro, la práctica científica implica la categorización de los objetos del mundo y la clasificación de los sujetos de estudio en diferentes agrupaciones. La tabla periódica de los elementos, la taxono-mía linneana o el DSM-5 son ejemplos de clasificaciones científicas que buscan ordenar, de una forma más o menos ajustada, los fenómenos...
Our goal in this paper is to articulate a precise concept of at least a certain kind of disease-mongering, showing how pharmaceutical marketing can commercially exploit certain diseases when their best definition is given through the success of a treatment in a clinical trial. We distinguish two types of disease-mongering according to the way they...
In contrast to the "normativist" view, "naturalist" theorists claim that the concept of health refers to natural or normal states and propose different characterizations of healthy and diseased conditions that are meant to be objectivist and biologically grounded. In this article, we examine the core concept of these naturalist accounts of disease,...
In this paper, I present a new “taxonomy of functions” that reviews the different theories on functional explanations which can be found in the current debate in philosophy of biology. I begin by presenting a critical survey of the classical ways of interpreting the notion of function (the “causal-role” and the “evolutionary” approaches) under the...
Más de cincuenta aportaciones que, mediante cauces tradicionales, como una especie de oxímoron, sacan al saber académico y universitario de su tendencia a refugiarse en un sueño dogmático tras otro. Theoria cum praxi renovada, desde la que se analizan a través de una perspectiva crítica las relaciones de la filosofía con diversas manifestaciones de...
RESUMENEn este trabajo abordo el problema de la fundamentación teórica de la noción de normatividad natural desde una perspectiva naturalista. Presento el debate actual sobre las funciones biológicas en filosofía de la biología, en el cual pueden encontrarse algunos intentos de fundamentar las normas naturales a través del concepto de función bioló...
In this paper I consider the problem of the theoretical grounding of the notion of natural nor-mativity for the naturalistic perspective. I present the current debate on biological functions in philosophy of biology in which there are some attempts to ground natural norms through the notion of biological function. I argue that the mainstream accoun...
The organizational account of biological functions interprets functions as contributions of a trait to the maintenance of the organization that, in turn, maintains the trait. As has been recently argued, however, the account seems unable to provide a unified grounding for both intra- and cross-generation functions, since the latter do not contribut...
In between applied ethics and cultural studies of popular representations of science in the media, this paper proposes a concept of «bioethical culture» and applies it to House, M.D., the successful TV medical drama. Our analysis of the series shows that the current tension between paternalism and autonomy — both in bioethical theory and health car...
Most of current theoretical analyses on biological functions can be classified as etiological or dispositional, depending on how they deal with the teleological dimension. In this paper, we propose a critical survey of these two perspectives, and we argue that some recent studies have set the basis of a new approach which grounds the teleological d...
Most of current theoretical analyses on biological functions can be classified as etiological or dispositional, depending on how they deal with the teleological dimension. In this paper, we propose a critical survey of these two perspectives, and we argue that some recent studies have set the basis of a new approach which grounds the teleological d...
In between applied ethics and cultural studies of popular representations of science in the media, this paper proposes a concept of «bioethical culture» and applies it to House, M.D., the successful TV medical drama. Our analysis of the series shows that the current tension between paternalism and autonomy - both in bioethical theory and health car...
In this paper, we develop an organizational account that defines biological functions as causal relations subject to closure in living systems, interpreted as the most typical example of organizationally closed and differentiated self-maintaining systems. We argue that this account adequately grounds the teleological and normative dimensions of fun...
