Course Description

Here are some things "we all know" about genetic causation:  1) that the possession of particular genes can cause organisms to exhibit particular phenotypic traits, 2) that genes aren't the only or even the systematically most important things that matter in this process, 3) that the only right answer to nature vs. nurture is always "both", and (but?) 4) that genes and environment cannot sensibly be assigned relative degrees of causal influence (such as a trait's being determined 60% by genes and only 40% by the environment).  Collectively, this received wisdom seems to hover somewhere between useless and incoherent.  In this course we will try to sort these matters out, paying special attention to the question of what sort of causes of phenotypic traits genes are, must be, or even could coherently be.  In the process, I hope to assess how (or whether) philosophical work on causation can help philosophers of biology to clarify the distinctive causal role of the genetic material and whether the case of genes has anything to teach philosophers about the nature of causation.  We will also touch on questions about reductionism in biology, the idea of genetic information, the challenge of Developmental Systems Theory, and the integration of evolutionary and developmental biology (evo-devo).