This seminar aims at providing an introduction to the philosophy of biology. We will focus on fundamental notions in biology, how to understand them, and the role they play in the biological sciences. We will tackle questions such as: what is an organism? What is a species? How to understand the notions of adaptation and fitness in evolutionary theory? What are the units of selection? What is a biological function? We will moreover be concerned with the nature of biological explanation, as well as with the contributions that the biological sciences may make to understanding the nature of cognition and intelligence.
