Unificationism for limited beings

Synthese · 2026-03-12

I-O psychology should not be extended to animals

Industrial and Organizational Psychology · 2025-12-01

Hernandez et al. (2025) propose that I-O psychology should include animals as workers.We agree with Hernandez et al. on several points, including that some animals engage in work alongside humans and/or in place of humans, and like humans, animals have KSAOs that make animals suited to complete some tasks and not others.However, we disagree with Hernandez et al. that applying an approach to studying human work (i.e., I-O psychology) to animals will yield particularly interesting insights into working animals or into I-O psychology.This commentary has two main sections.First, we discuss philosophy of science principles relative to the application of one scientific project to another.Second, we examine two key differences between animals and humans to demonstrate that it is unlikely that I-O psychology will be a productive framework for understanding animal work. Applying a scientific framework to another phenomenonFrom a philosophy of science perspective, frameworks are general and highly flexible perspectives that typically can be applied to a broad range of phenomena.Disciplines in science (like I-O psychology) include a collection of similar and related frameworks, often called theories.Frameworks make scientists describe phenomena in a particular way and thereby direct the scientist to particular kinds of questions.Different frameworks lead to different research questions about the same phenomenon.For example, an economics framework would see a worker as an item that has costs and benefits to their employer (e.g., training costs, compensation, widgets produced) and leads inevitably to the question: does this worker produce a good return on investment?Hernandez et al. want I-O psychology to be extended to working animals.They draw parallels between their efforts and Bergman and Jean's (2016) paper that criticizes I-O psychology's overreliance on POSH (professional, office-based, safe from harm, in high-income countries) workers and underrepresenting employees who are earning wages, first-line, contract or gig, and low-to-medium skill.However, Hernandez et al.'s project is completely different from Bergman and Jean's.Hernandez et al. want to extend I-O psychology to what it has not previously covered to describe phenomena in new ways.In contrast, Bergman and Jean argued that a phenomenon (non-POSH workers) have always been within I-O psychology's framework, they were just underrepresented in empirical and theoretical work.Bergman and Jean argued that increased study of non-POSH workers would improve how much we know about them, including how they differ from POSH workers, thereby teaching us more about POSH workers too, resulting in a more robust and effective I-O psychology.

There's nothing so testable as a strong theory

Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2025-12-09

APOE gene testing in FH referrals – the story so far

Atherosclerosis Plus · 2021

• Medicine
• Psychology

Asymmetry in the unificationist theory of causal explanation

Synthese · 2016-10-17 · 2 citations

What are the implications of evolvable molecules?

Biology & Philosophy · 2014-04-03

Ingenious genes: how gene regulation networks evolve to control development

Choice Reviews Online · 2012-07-01 · 7 citations

Each of us is a collection of more than ten trillion cells, busy performing tasks crucial to our continued existence. Gene regulation networks, consisting of a subset of genes called transcription factors, control cellular activity, producing the right gene activities for the many situations that the multiplicity of cells in our bodies face. Genes working together make up a truly ingenious system. In this book, Roger Sansom investigates how gene regulation works and how such a refined but simple system evolved. Sansom describes in detail two frameworks for understanding gene regulation. The first, developed by the theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, holds that gene regulation networks are fundamentally systems that repeat patterns of gene expression. Sansom finds Kauffman's framework an inadequate explanation for how cells overcome the difficulty of development. Sansom proposes an alternative: the connectionist framework. Drawing on work from artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind, he argues that the key lies in how multiple transcription factors combine to regulate a single gene, acting in a way that is qualitatively consistent. This allows the expression of genes to be finely tuned to the variable microenvironments of cells. Because of the nature of both development and its evolution, we can gain insight into the developmental process when we identify gene regulation networks as the controllers of development. The ingenuity of genes is explained by how gene regulation networks evolve to control development.

Kauffman’s Framework for Gene Regulation

The MIT Press eBooks · 2011-09-30

The Problem of the Evolvability of Gene Regulation Networks

The MIT Press eBooks · 2011-09-30

Abstract This chapter discusses the superb engineering of organisms, which was the foundation of the argument from design for the existence of God. This argument was most famously presented by the natural theologian William Paley, who used the analogy of a watch and its maker. If we can reason from the design of a watch to the existence of its designer, Paley argued, we can certainly reason from the design of an organism, which is finer than that of a watch “in a degree which exceeds all computation,” to the existence of its designer: God. A number of thinkers would challenge this conventional wisdom, and some of them are introduced here, not as elements of a complete history of evolutionary theory, but rather as elements of a narrative that ultimately leads to the problem this book addresses: The problem of the evolvability of gene regulation networks.

Why Gene Regulation Networks Are the Controllers of Development

The MIT Press eBooks · 2011-09-30