About

Daniel W. McShea is a Professor of Biology at Duke University, with a primary research interest in hierarchy theory, particularly the causal relationship between higher-level wholes and their components. His work explores how large-scale processes within multicellular organisms influence the smaller-scale processes within their component cells. Currently, his research investigates how emotions in mammals, and potentially other animals, act to initiate and control conscious thought and behavior. McShea draws on philosophical insights, notably from Hume, to argue that emotions, rather than reason, drive conscious decision-making, as reason is considered value-neutral and incapable of motivating action. He has held positions as an Associate Professor of Philosophy and is affiliated with the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, reflecting his interdisciplinary approach to understanding complex biological and philosophical questions.

Research topics

• Epistemology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Philosophy
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Mathematics
• Genetics
• Psychology
• Management science
• Economics
• Physics
• History
• Biology
• Cognitive psychology
• Evolutionary biology
• Law
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Evolving systems and directionality

  Interface Focus · 2025-12-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Evolving systems in both the life and physical sciences are often thought to be directional. The processes that drive the evolution of systems are diverse, ranging from natural selection to thermodynamics. However, in many treatments of these processes, the different kinds of directionality and types of ends that evolving systems trend towards are often either poorly specified or implicitly assumed. This paper aims to provide a classification of ends and directional processes that can be used to identify and characterize directionality in evolving systems. Specifically, we propose that directional evolution can be either terminal or perpetual, with perpetual further divided into targeted or open-ended. Additionally, we caution against conflating organization, order, and complexity, as each tracks different properties of a directional system.

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• Persistence selection between simulated biogeochemical cycle variants for their distinct effects on the Earth system

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-02-12 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  The average long-term impact of Darwinian evolution on Earth's habitability remains extremely uncertain. Recent attempts to reconcile this uncertainty by "Darwinizing" nonreplicating biogeochemical processes subject to persistence-based selection conform with the historicity of the geochemical record but lack mechanistic clarity. Here, we present a theoretical framework showing how: 1) A biogeochemical "cycle-biota-variant" (CBV) can be defined non-arbitrarily as one biologically facilitated pathway for net recycling of an essential element, plus the genotypes driving the relevant interconversion reactions. 2) Distinct CBVs can be individuated if they have climatic or geochemical side effects that feed-back on relative persistence. 3) The separation of spatial/temporal scales between the dynamics of such effects and those of conventional Darwinian evolution can introduce a degree of randomness into the relationship between CBVs and their Earth system impact properties, loosely analogous to that between the biochemical causes and evolutionary effects of genetic mutation. 4) Threshold behavior in climate feedback can accentuate biotic impacts and lead to CBV-level "competitive exclusion". 5) CBV-level persistence selection is observationally distinguishable from genotype-level selection by strong covariance between "internal" CBV properties (genotypes and reactions) and "external" climatic effects, which we argue is analogous to the covariance between fitness and traits under conventional Darwinian selection. These factors cannot circumvent the basic fact that local natural selection will often favor phenotypes that ultimately destabilize large-scale geochemical/climatic properties. However, we claim that our results nevertheless demonstrate the theoretical coherence of persistence-selection between non-replicating life-environment interaction patterns and therefore have broad biogeochemical applicability.

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• Agency as Internal Control

  2024-06-21 · 3 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter provides an overview of field theory and the notion of agency that the theory entails. Field theory offers an account of how goal-directed systems work by noting how goal-directed entities are guided by upper-level fields that are structured hierarchically. Following field theory, we show that while all agential entities are goal-directed, the presence of goal directedness does not necessarily entail agency. Rather, agency comes about when a goal-directed entity has the right kind of internal, hierarchical organization, and as a result of that organization, the entity has some degree of control over its internal processes and gross behavior. In this view, control is independent of determinism. An entity that is completely determined, whether by external or internal processes, can nevertheless be agential. This view of agency has several unintuitive consequences. In particular, it shows that an entity can be maximally agential when it lacks all external guidance, even when it moves randomly or behaves maladaptively. Agency means doing what you want, not what you should.

  PublisherDOI

• Four false dichotomies in the study of teleology

  Ratio · 2024-08-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The study of teleology is challenging in many ways, but there is a particular challenge that makes matters worse, distorting the conceptual space that has set the terms of debate. And that is the tendency to think about teleology in terms of certain long‐established dichotomies. In this paper, we examine four such dichotomies prevalent in the literature on teleology, the notions that: 1) Teleological explanations are opposed to mechanistic explanations; 2) teleology must arise from processes operating either internal to an organism or external to it; 3) systems are either alive and teleological, or nonliving and not teleological; 4) humans are teleological, on account of our ability to intend, seek, prefer, etc., while other systems without these capacities are not. Here, we use our own view of goal directedness, field theory, to show for each dichotomy that there is an alternative, a view of teleology that either violates these dichotomies or demands revision of them. What this reveals is not only the dangers of dichotomous thinking, but a widespread lack of clarity about what teleology is.

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• Four reasons for scepticism about a human major transition in social individuality

  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2023-01-23 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The 'major transitions in evolution' are mainly about the rise of hierarchy, new individuals arising at ever higher levels of nestedness, in particular the eukaryotic cell arising from prokaryotes, multicellular individuals from solitary protists and individuated societies from multicellular individuals. Some lists include human societies as a major transition, but based on a comparison with the non-human transitions, there are reasons for scepticism. (i) The foundation of the major transitions is hierarchy, but the cross-cutting interactions in human societies undermine hierarchical structure. (ii) Natural selection operates in three modes-stability, growth and reproductive success-and only the third produces the complex adaptations seen in fully individuated higher levels. But human societies probably evolve mainly in the stability and growth modes. (iii) Highly individuated entities are marked by division of labour and commitment to morphological differentiation, but in humans differentiation is mostly behavioural and mostly reversible. (iv) As higher-level individuals arise, selection drains complexity, drains parts, from lower-level individuals. But there is little evidence of a drain in humans. In sum, a comparison with the other transitions gives reasons to doubt that human social individuation has proceeded very far, or if it has, to doubt that it is a transition of the same sort. This article is part of the theme issue 'Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions'.

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• Goal Directedness and the Field Concept

  Philosophy of Science · 2023-10-04 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract A long-standing problem in understanding goal-directed systems has been the insufficiency of mechanistic explanations to make sense of them. This article offers a solution to this problem. It begins by observing the limitations of mechanistic decompositions when it comes to understanding physical fields. We argue that introducing the field concept, as it has been developed in field theory , alongside mechanisms is able to provide an account of goal directedness in the sciences.

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• Evolutionary trends and goal directedness

  Synthese · 2023-05-08 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evolutionary Success

  2023-03-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract “Success” is a value term, but which values are relevant to evolutionary success? This chapter presents a conceptual scheme identifying six alternative value bases, six alternative sources of value in the world: God, reason, nature, the unique human individual, culture, and human nature. Only two are relevant to a contemporary discussion of evolutionary success. One is the human nature basis in which success is understood in terms of things that all humans value, commonalities in our values arising from our shared affective profile. The other is a value basis rooted in nature, in the tendencies present in the evolutionary process—in other words, what the process favors or “values,” with value understood in a metaphorical sense. The chapter offers a list of possible variables that might be favored by the process, along with some suggestions for how to investigate them empirically (and warnings about how not to).

  PublisherDOI

• Applying the Prigogine view of dissipative systems to the major transitions in evolution

  Paleobiology · 2022-04-06 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Ilya Prigogine's trinomial concept is, he argued, applicable to many complex dissipative systems, from physics to biology and even to social systems. For Prigogine, this trinomial— functions , structure , fluctuations —was intended to capture the feedback-rich relations between upper and lower levels in these systems. The main novelty of his vision was his view of causation, in which the causal arrow runs downward from dissipative structures to their components or functions. Following this insight, some physicists and biophysicists are beginning to apply terms formerly used mainly in biology, such as evolution , adaptation , learning , and life-like behavior , to physical and chemical nonequilibrium systems. Here, instead, we apply Prigogine's view to biology, in particular to evolution, and especially the major transitions in evolution (MTE), arguing that at least the hierarchical transitions—the transitions in individuality—follow a trajectory anticipated by the trinomial. In this trajectory, formerly free-living organisms are transformed into “functions” within a larger organic “structure.” The Prigogine view also predicts that, consistent with available data, the increase in number of hierarchical levels in organisms should accelerate over time. Finally, it predicts that, on geological timescales, ecosystems and Gaia in particular will tend to “de-Darwinize” or “machinify” their component organisms.

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• Resolving teleology’s false dilemma

  Biological Journal of the Linnean Society · 2022-07-23 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This paper argues that the account of teleology previously proposed by the authors is consistent with the physical determinism that is implicit across many of the sciences. We suggest that much of the current aversion to teleological thinking found in the sciences is rooted in debates that can be traced back to ancient natural science, which pitted mechanistic and deterministic theories against teleological ones. These debates saw a deterministic world as one where freedom and agency is impossible. And, because teleological entities seem to be free to either reach their ends or not, it was assumed that they could not be deterministic. Mayr’s modern account of teleonomy adheres to this basic assumption. Yet, the seeming tension between teleology and determinism is illusory because freedom and agency do not, in fact, conflict with a deterministic world. To show this, we present a taxonomy of different types of freedom that we see as inherent in teleological systems. Then we show that our taxonomy of freedom, which is crucial to understanding teleology, shares many of the features of a philosophical position regarding free will that is known in the contemporary literature as ‘compatibilism’. This position maintains that an agent is free when the sources of its actions are internal, when the agent itself is the deterministic cause of those actions. Our view shows that freedom is not only indispensable to teleology, but also that, contrary to common intuitions, there is no conflict between teleology and causal determinism.

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Frequent coauthors

• S. Kathleen Lyons

  University of Nebraska–Lincoln

  10 shared

• Steve C. Wang

  Swarthmore College

  10 shared

• Michał Kowalewski

  University of Florida

  9 shared

• Seth Finnegan

  University of California, Berkeley

  9 shared

• Felisa A. Smith

  University of New Mexico

  8 shared

• Jonathan L. Payne

  Stanford University

  8 shared

• Philip M. Novack‐Gottshall

  Benedictine University

  8 shared

• Gunnar Babcock

  New York State College of Agriculture & Life Sciences

  6 shared

Education

• PhD, Committee on Evolutionary Biolgoy

  The University of Chicago

  1990