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| Acknowledgements | |
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| Introduction: what is the philosophy of biology? | |
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| Philosophy asks two kinds of questions | |
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| Philosophy and language | |
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| The agenda of the philosophy of biology | |
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| Darwin makes a science | |
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| Overview | |
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| Teleology and theology | |
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| Making teleology safe for science | |
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| Misunderstandings about natural selection | |
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| Is Darwinism the only game in town? | |
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| Philosophical problems of Darwinism | |
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| Summary | |
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| Suggestions for further reading | |
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| Biological laws and theories | |
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| Overview | |
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| Causation, laws, and biological generalizations | |
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| Could there be laws about species? | |
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| Models in biology: Mendel's laws, Fisher's sex ratios, the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium | |
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| Fitness and the principle of natural selection | |
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| Darwinism as a historical research program | |
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| Summary | |
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| Suggestions for further reading | |
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| Further problems of Darwinism: constraint, drift, function | |
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| Overview | |
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| Adaptationism-for and against | |
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| Constraint and adaptation | |
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| What is genetic drift? | |
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| Central tendencies, subjective probabilities, and theism | |
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| Function, homology, and homoplasy | |
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| Summary | |
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| Suggestions for further reading | |
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| Reductionism about biology | |
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| Overview | |
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| Reduction, eliminativism, and physicalism | |
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| Arguments for reductionism | |
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| Antireductionist arguments from molecular biology | |
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| Reductionist rejoinders | |
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| Multiple realizability, supervenience, and antireductionism | |
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| Self-organization and reductionism | |
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| Natural selection and reduction | |
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| Summary | |
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| Suggestions for further reading | |
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| Complexity, directionality, and progress in evolution | |
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| Overview | |
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| What is progress, and is it (or could it be) a scientific concept? | |
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| What does theory predict? | |
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| Some more specific proposals and their problems | |
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| Trends versus tendencies | |
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| Complexity and intelligent design | |
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| Summary | |
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| Suggestions for further reading | |
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| Genes, groups, teleosemantics, and the major transitions | |
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| Overview | |
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| Levels and units of selection | |
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| Kin selection and selection within and between groups | |
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| Macroevolution and the major trends: is group selection rare or frequent? | |
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| Genocentrism and genetic information | |
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| Teleosemantics: philosophy of biology meets the philosophy of psychology | |
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| Summary | |
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| Suggestions for further reading | |
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| Biology, human behavior, social science, and moral philosophy | |
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| Overview | |
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| Functionalism in social science | |
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| Evolutionary game theory and Darwinian dynamics | |
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| Evolutionary psychology and the argument for innateness | |
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| What is wrong with genetic determinism? | |
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| Darwinism without genes | |
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| Darwinism and ethics | |
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| Summary | |
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| Suggestions for further reading | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Index | |