This bibliography gathers publications over many years from a variety of researchers exploring topics of agency, directionality, and function (among others) with a special emphasis on CASP members. It began with work from teams within the initial Agency, Directionality and Function project and continues to be populated with papers and articles from diverse researchers looking to further develop and expand ways of working interdisciplinarily on the complex theme of teleology.
Included in the bibliography are entries for publications and books that many scholars involved in the Agency, Directionality and Function project recommended as foundational texts in their field of study. We welcome suggestions for additions to the bibliography from CASP members.
Formal models of agency and cooperation
Oderberg, D. S. (2023). Who’s afraid of reverse mereological essentialism? Philosophical Studies.
Okasha, S. (2018). Agents and Goals in Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Queller, D.C. and Strassman, J.E. (2009). “Beyond society: the evolution of organismality.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Part B: Biological Sciences 364:3143–3155.
Schulz, A. W. (2022). What’s the Point? A Presentist Social Functionalist Account of Institutional Purpose. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 52(1–2), 53–80.
Sterelny, K. and Calcott, B. (2011). The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.
Su, Q., & Plotkin, J. B. (2022). Evolution of cooperation with asymmetric social interactions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(1), e2113468118.
Su, Q., McAvoy, A., & Plotkin, J. B. (2023). Strategy evolution on dynamic networks. Nature Computational Science, 3(9), 763–776.
Virenque, L., & Mossio, M. (2023). What is Agency? A View from Autonomy Theory. Biological Theory.
W. Schulz, A. (2022). Tools of the trade: the bio-cultural evolution of the human propensity to trade. Biology & Philosophy, 37(2), 8.
West, S.A., Fisher, R.M., Gardner, A. and Toby Kiers, E. (2015). “Major evolutionary transitions in individuality.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States of America 112:10112–10119.
Wilson, R. A. (2022). Why kinship is progeneratively constrained: Extending anthropology. Synthese, 200(2), 175.
Function and Teleology
Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Allen, C. and J. Neal (2020). “Teleological notions in biology.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Version). Edited by E.N. Zalta: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/.
Allen, C., M. Bekoff and G. Lauder, eds. (1998). Nature's Purposes: Analyses Of Function and Design in Biology. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.
Amundson, R. and G.V. Lauder (1994). "Function without purpose: the uses of causal role function in evolutionary biology." Biology and Philosophy 9(4): 443–470.
Ayala, F.A. (1970). “Teleological explanations in evolutionary biology.” Philosophy of Science 37:1–15.
Beckner, M. (1958). The Biological Way of Thought. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bertalanffy, L. (1952). Problems of Life: An Evaluation of Modern Biological Thought. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Bourrat, F. (2021). “Function, persistence and selection: generalizing the selected-effect account of function adequately.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part A 90:61–67.
Bourrat, P. (2021). Function, persistence, and selection: Generalizing the selected-effect account of function adequately. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 90, 61–67.
Brandon, R. (1981). “Biological teleology: questions and explanations.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 12:91–105.
Breitenbach, A. (2006). “Mechanical explanation of nature and its limits in Kant’s Critique of judgment.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 37(4): 694–711.
Breitenbach, A. (2014). “Biological purposiveness and analogical reflection.” In Kant’s Theory of Biology. Edited by I. Goy and E. Watkins. De Gruyter, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110225792.131
Bruno, M. and S. Nichols (2010) “Intuitions About Personal Identity: An Empirical Study”, Philosophical Psychology 23:293–312.
Bye, A. P., Kriek, N., Sage, T., Rawlings, S. J., Prodger, C., Kesavan, M., Lees, C., Booth, S., Cowen, L. G., Shefferd, K., Desborough, M. J., Gibbins, J. M., & Eyre, T. A. (2022). Pirtobrutinib results in reversible platelet dysfunction compared to ibrutinib and acalabrutinib. Haematologica, 108(5), 1429–1435.