Course Description
Philosophy of Biology is the upper-division course that turns philosophical attention on the concepts biology actually runs on — gene, species, fitness, function, adaptation, selection — and asks what they mean, whether they do the work biologists need them to do, and what follows. In the Florida statewide course numbering system it sits at PHI3452.
The statewide description names the centre of gravity and three representative questions: the course "focuses on evolutionary theory, examining such questions as 'what is a gene?', 'what does natural selection select?', and 'what are the moral/social implications of evolutionary theory?'"
⚠ Those three questions are not a random sample. They correspond to the field's three main areas: the conceptual foundations of genetics, the units-of-selection debate, and the boundary where biology meets ethics and social theory.
Both carriers agree on the subject — and one of them is not an independent source
| University of West Florida | Florida State University |
|---|
| Its description | ⚠ the statewide description verbatim | "the major debates in philosophy of biology, including those surrounding the extended evolutionary synthesis, laws of evolution, units of selection, adaptationism, speciation" |
| Method stated | not stated | ⚠ "the tools of analytic philosophy", brought together with the biological sciences |
| Ethics component | ✅ explicit — "moral/social implications of evolutionary theory" | ⚠ not mentioned |
⚠ UWF's description and the statewide description are the same text, which means UWF almost certainly supplied it — so the statewide record does not independently corroborate UWF here; it repeats it. Florida State's description is clearly its own wording, so it is the genuine second source, and on the core subject the two agree: this is a course about evolutionary theory's conceptual foundations.
⚠⚠ The one real difference: does your section include the ethics?
UWF's third question — the moral and social implications of evolutionary theory — has no counterpart in Florida State's description, which lists only theoretical problems. That is a modest difference and both are legitimate, but it changes what you leave with:
| The theoretical version | The version including implications |
|---|
| Units of selection, adaptationism, speciation, the gene concept, laws of evolution | All of that, plus sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and their critics |
| Reading centred on philosophy of science journals | Reading extends to the social and ethical literature |
| ⚠ Explicitly analytic in method (FSU states this) | Method not stated |
⚠ Worth asking about, because the implications half is where students most often expect the course to go. The naturalistic fallacy, the misuse of evolutionary argument in social policy, and the history of eugenics are the material a lot of people assume "philosophy of biology" means — and a purely theoretical section may not cover them at all. Read the syllabus.
⚠⚠ The Gordon Rule designation differs between the two carriers
UWF records this course as Gordon Rule designated on the writing half ("Meets College-Level Communication Skills Requirement"). Florida State records no such designation.
⚠⚠⚠ Same number, same subject, same 3 credits — and it satisfies a state writing requirement at one institution and not at the other. Where designated, a grade of C or higher is required for it to count. The designation is made by the institution, not the course number: check your own institution's list.
⚠ You do not need to be a biology major — but you do need the biology
Neither the statewide record nor either carrier lists a prerequisite. The course is open. ⚠⚠ But the statewide description assumes a working grasp of evolutionary theory that the gate does not require, and this is the standard way students come unstuck here: the arguments are about what selection acts on and whether a trait is an adaptation, and you cannot follow them without knowing what selection, drift, fitness and inheritance are.
What actually prepares you: a general biology sequence, or serious independent reading. What does not: a general interest in evolution. ⚠ If you are coming from philosophy with no biology, read a short evolution primer before the term starts — it is a few hours and it changes the course from impossible to rewarding.
Learning Outcomes
Required Outcomes
- Analyse the gene concept and explain why "what is a gene?" is a live question rather than a settled definition.
- State the units-of-selection debate precisely — gene, organism, group — and evaluate the arguments on each side.
- Explain what natural selection is and is not, and identify common misstatements of it.
- Analyse adaptationism and the objections to explaining every trait as an adaptation.
- Evaluate whether biology has laws in the sense physics does, and what follows either way.
- Analyse the species problem — the competing species concepts and why no one wins.
- Analyse function and teleology in biological explanation without smuggling in purpose.
- Reconstruct arguments from the primary literature in philosophy of biology accurately.
- Construct and defend a written philosophical argument about a biological concept.
Optional Outcomes
- Evaluate the extended evolutionary synthesis and the case for and against revising the standard framework (explicit at Florida State).
- ⚠ Analyse the moral and social implications of evolutionary theory, including sociobiology and evolutionary psychology and their critics (explicit at UWF).
- Examine reductionism — whether biology reduces to chemistry and physics.
- Analyse race and human variation as a biological and philosophical question.
- Consider developmental systems theory and the nature/nurture dichotomy's collapse.
- Examine philosophical questions in ecology, medicine or synthetic biology.
Major Topics
Required Topics
- The structure of evolutionary theory — variation, inheritance, differential reproduction.
- The gene — classical, molecular and developmental gene concepts, and why they come apart.
- Units and levels of selection — the selfish gene, organismal selection, group and multilevel selection.
- Fitness — what it means, and the charge that natural selection is a tautology.
- Adaptationism — Gould and Lewontin's spandrels critique and the replies to it.
- Function and teleology — the aetiological account and its rivals.
- The species problem — biological, phylogenetic and ecological species concepts.
- Laws, models and explanation in biology; drift and chance.
- Reading primary philosophical literature and writing argumentative papers.
Optional Topics
- The extended evolutionary synthesis — niche construction, epigenetic inheritance, plasticity.
- Speciation mechanisms as a philosophical problem.
- Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology — the arguments, and the methodological objections.
- ⚠ The naturalistic fallacy and the misuse of evolutionary reasoning in social argument; the history of eugenics as a cautionary case.
- Altruism and cooperation — kin selection, reciprocity, and whether biological altruism is altruism.
- Race, human variation and biological classification.
- Creationism and intelligent design treated as a demarcation problem in philosophy of science.
Resources & Tools
- Philosophy of Biology, Peter Godfrey-Smith (Princeton Foundations) — the standard modern introduction, short and outstanding.
- Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology, Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths — the fuller survey, and the most widely assigned.
- The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History, Marjorie Grene and David Depew, for historical context.
- Primary papers you will almost certainly meet: Gould and Lewontin, "The Spandrels of San Marco"; Sober and Wilson on group selection; Dawkins's gene's-eye view and the replies to it.
- ⚠ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is free and unusually strong in this area — its entries on units of selection, the gene, species and biological function are the best starting point for every paper topic in the course.
- Journals: Biology & Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.
- ⚠ If your biology is thin, a short evolution primer — Zimmer's Evolution: Making Sense of Life or the relevant chapters of any general biology text — is the highest-value preparation you can do.
Career Pathways
⚠ This course's distinctive value is that it sits on a boundary very few graduates can work across — it trains someone who can follow a technical argument in biology and analyse the concepts it rests on. That combination is rarer than either half alone.
- Postsecondary Teacher (SOC 25-1121) — philosophy of science is a standard graduate route, and philosophy of biology is among its more active subfields.
- Medical Scientists (SOC 19-1042) and Biological Scientists — for students combining this with a science degree; conceptual clarity about models and evidence is a real research skill.
- ⚠ Bioethicist — ordinarily reached through graduate study; hospital ethics committees, IRBs and research-ethics offices are the working settings, and Florida's large hospital systems and research institutes all maintain them.
- Lawyers (SOC 23-1011) — biotechnology, patent and health law; philosophy majors post among the highest LSAT averages of any discipline.
- Technical Writers (SOC 27-3042) and science journalism (SOC 27-3023) — explaining contested science accurately is exactly this training.
- Secondary School Teacher (SOC 25-2031) in biology — ⚠ and this course is unusually good preparation for teaching evolution in a school setting, because it equips you to explain what the theory does and does not claim, and to handle objections on their merits rather than defensively.
- Management Analysts (SOC 13-1111) in science policy and research administration.
- Florida context: the state has a substantial life-science research base — the research institutes of the Jupiter and Port St. Lucie corridor, university research at UF, FSU, USF, FAU and FIU, and very large hospital systems — all of which employ research administrators, ethics staff and science communicators alongside bench scientists.
Special Information
Course format and hours
A reading-and-discussion seminar assessed by written argument. 3 credits and 45 contact hours; both carriers list 3 credits, and 45 follows Florida's 1:15 convention. No institution publishes a contact-hour figure anywhere in the PHI prefix, so the number is derived.
⚠⚠ The reading is dense in two directions at once — philosophical argument about technical biology — and that is the specific difficulty of this course. Expect to read papers twice: once for the biology and once for the argument.
Offering Notes
Two Florida public institutions carry it, both at 3 credits, with matching titles. Neither publishes contact hours.
- University of West Florida (UWF) — Philosophy of Biology, 3 credits, Department of History and Philosophy. Description is the statewide text verbatim, including "the moral/social implications of evolutionary theory." ⚠⚠ Gordon Rule writing designation — C or higher required. May not be repeated.
- Florida State University (FSU) — Philosophy of Biology, 3 credits. "Introduces the major debates in philosophy of biology, including those surrounding the extended evolutionary synthesis, laws of evolution, units of selection, adaptationism, speciation… brings together the biological sciences and the tools of analytic philosophy to better understand some of the theoretical problems in biology." ⚠ No Gordon Rule designation recorded, and no ethics component stated.
The statewide record lists no prerequisite, and neither carrier adds one.
Transfer
Guaranteed transfer to an institution offering the same course — narrow with two carriers, but this is one of the cleaner numbers in the catalogue: identical titles, identical credits, and two independently worded descriptions that agree on the subject.
⚠ Send the reading list, which in philosophy is the course. ⚠⚠ And confirm the Gordon Rule designation if you are relying on it — the two carriers differ, so it cannot be assumed.
Position in the curriculum
Upper division with no prerequisite. It belongs after a general biology sequence for anyone who has one, and after an introductory philosophy course for anyone who does not — but neither is required. ⚠ It is one of the best bridge courses in either department's catalogue, and a biology major with a philosophy minor, or the reverse, should treat it as the obvious place the two meet.
Dual enrolment and general education
⚠ The Gordon Rule designation above is the general-education fact that matters, and it differs between carriers. Dual-enrolment markings are uniform across the entire PHI prefix, so they say nothing about this course.
AI Integration
This course sits at the junction of two things these tools handle very differently: general scientific exposition, which they do reasonably, and philosophical argument about it, which they do badly.
Where they genuinely help: explaining the biology when a paper assumes more than you have — what linkage disequilibrium is, how a phylogenetic tree is built; summarising the empirical background to a debate; checking that your reconstruction of an argument is accurate; and asking for the strongest objection to a position you intend to defend.
Where they fail, and it is the assessment:
- ⚠⚠⚠ The characteristic output is a balanced survey, and this course is graded on taking a position. Ask about units of selection and you get an even-handed account of gene, organism and group. The paper has to say which view is better supported and answer the best objection to it. Fluent neutrality is the most recognisable tell in a philosophy paper.
- ⚠⚠ Models reproduce the popular framing of these debates, which is frequently the one the field has moved past. The selfish-gene picture, the tautology objection to natural selection, and a crude nature/nurture split all come back in their textbook-simplified forms — and correcting exactly those framings is a large part of what the course does.
- Biological facts are stated confidently and are sometimes wrong, which in a course where the philosophy depends on the biology being right is not a minor problem. Check against a real source.
- Citations are frequently invented. Verify that every paper exists and says what you attribute to it.
⚠ Two places where the course's own subject matter meets these tools, and a good section will notice: machine learning is now central to working biology — protein structure prediction, genomics, phylogenetics — which raises a genuine philosophy-of-science question the course is equipped to ask: if a model predicts a structure accurately but supplies no mechanism, has it explained anything? That is the explanation-versus-prediction debate with a new and concrete example. ⚠⚠ And the ethics half connects directly: evolutionary claims about human difference have a documented history of misuse in social policy, and models trained on the whole internet reproduce both the science and its distortions with the same confidence.
Academic integrity: follow your instructor's stated policy and disclose tool use. The standard is the philosophical one — you can defend every sentence, out loud, without notes — and here it has a second half: you can also explain the biology it rests on.