Neven Sesardic

"(Not to be confused with D. Sesardic from the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, London.)"

Infobox_Philosopher


region = Western Philosophy
era = 20th Century
color = #B0C4DE

name = Neven Sesardic
birth = 1949
death =
school_tradition = Analytic philosophy
main_interests = Philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, ethics
influences = Charles Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould, Thomas J. Bouchard Jr.
influenced =
notable_ideas = Heritability

Life and Employment History

Neven Sesardic is one of the most influential contemporary Croatian philosophers. The beginning of his academic career was marked by continuous polemics with marxist philosophers, who were dominant in the Croatian academic circles at that time.

From 1977-83 he worked as a lecturer at the University of Zagreb (Croatia), and, from then, until 1989 he was Assistant professor at the same university. From 1989 to 1991 he was Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Giessen. From 1991 to 1992 he worked as a Fellow of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, at the University of Bielefeld. The following two years (1992-94) he spent as an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb. The following academic year, 1994-1995, he worked as a Visiting Professor, University of Notre Dame, while the following year (1995-96) he became an NSF Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota. Following that, in 1996 he became Professor of Philosophy at the Miyazaki International College, Japan, where he worked until 1999 when he was appointed Research Fellow at King's College London. From 2000 until this year (2006) he worked as an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Today, he is Professor of Philosophy at the Lingnan University. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association (APA), the Croatian Philosophical Association and the Philosophy of Science Association.

During his academic career he has taught courses in Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mind, Logic, Probability and Scientific Method, Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, Critical Thinking, Introduction to Philosophy of Science and Social Science, Theory of Knowledge, Introduction to Philosophy, Morality and Evolution, Science and Society, Genetics and Psychology, Philosophy and Environmental Issues, and Ethics.

Work

Heritability and Causality

In his first influential article, "Heritability and Causality" (Sesardic 1993), Sesardic argues that the environmentalist criticism of hereditarianism greatly exaggerate in claiming that the explanation of human behavior in terms of genes is faced with methodological problems and flaws. He says on this (Sesardic 1993: 396): "They reject the idea that heritability estimates could lead to genetic explanations by pointing out that these estimates are strictly valid only for a given population and that they are exposed to the irremovable confounding effects of genotype-environment interaction and genotype-environment correlation".

Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, IQ and Heritability

In his article "Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, IQ and Heritability" Sesardic demonstrates that the rejection of most philosophers of the connection between the heritability of race and IQ, which is, according to them, based on methodological flaws, is ill-founded. This misconception, as he argues, is based on the gap between the philosophers of science on one brink, and the experimental scientists on the other. Sesardic argues (Sesardic 2000: 580): " [...] the discussion in philosophy of science about these matters is largely disconnected from the real, empirically complex issues debated in science."

Heritability and Indirect Causation

In his 2003 article, "Heritability and Indirect Causation" Sesardic argues that in spite of the possibility of genetic effects being changed by the environmental influences, heritability can still provide a well-founded causal explanation, since genetic differences can lead to their visible effects either directly or indirectly. In his words (Sesardic 2003: 1002): "Genetic differences can lead to phenotypic differences either directly or indirectly (via causing differences in external environments, which then affect phenotype). This possibility of genetic effects being mediated by environmental influences is often used by scientists and philosophers to argue that heritability is not a very helpful causal or explanatory notion."

Publications

Books

Making Sense of Heritability, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. (ISBN 0-521-82818-X)

Marxian Utopia? (with Domenico Settembrini), London: CRCE, 1985. (ISBN 0-948027-01-0)

Articles

“Sudden Infant Death or Murder? A Royal Confusion about Probabilities“, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (forthcoming).

“From Genes to Incest Taboos: The Crucial Step”, in W. H. Durham & A. P. Wolf (eds.), Incest, Inbreeding, and the Incest Taboo:The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, 109-120.

"Heritability and Indirect Causation", Philosophy of Science 70 (2003), 1002-1014.

“Evolution of Human Jealousy: A Just-So Story or a Just-So Criticism?", Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33 (2003), 427-443.

“Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, IQ and Heritability”, Philosophy of Science 67 (2000), pp.580-602.

“Altruism”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (1999), pp.457-466.

“From Biological Inhibitions to Cultural Prohibitions: How Not to Refute Edward Westermarck”, Biology and Philosophy 13, (1998), pp.413-426.

“Reductionism and Supervenience”, in P. Weingart et al. (eds.), Human by Nature: Between Biology and Social Sciences.Mahwah, N. J.: Erlbaum, 1997.

“Recent Work on Human Altruism and Evolution”, Ethics 106 (1995), pp.328-357.

“Heritability and Causality”, Philosophy of Science 60 (1993), pp.396-418.

“Egalitarianism and Natural Lottery”, Public Affairs Quarterly 7 (1993), pp.47-59.

“Clock Paradox Lost in Space”, Philosophia Naturalis 30 (1993), pp.72-83.

Book Reviews

Book review of D. J. Bartholomew, Measuring Intelligence: Facts and Fallacies, Intelligence 33 (2005), pp.325-327.

Book review of N. Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race, Philosophy of Science 70 (2003), pp. 447-449.

Book review of P. Danielson (ed.), Modeling Rationality, Morality and Evolution, Ethics 113 (2003), pp.402-405.

Quotations

"I will try to show that far from being so semantically perverse, the term "heritability," when properly understood, actually accords quite well with our common-sense etiological ascriptions." (Heritability and Indirect Causation, p. 1004)

Webpage

His official web page, where the digital versions of his papers may be found, is http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/index.html