Research | Mysite

Current Research Projects

1. Ancestry and Lineages in Complex Evolution and Classification - The concepts of "ancestry" and “lineages” are taken for granted in many biological and philosophical discussions, but a closer look suggests that they have different meanings, scientific roles, and ontological assumptions depending on the context. These differences have significant ramifications for biology and philosophy. Additionally, complex cases of micro and macroevolution challenge the role of lineages, ancestry, and related concepts in evolution and classification.

2. Race and Values - Are races real? Social values influence the answer of philosophers, scientists, and citizens to this question. For instance, recent defenses of biological racial realism are pluralistic: one accepts that more than one concept of race is legitimate. But how can we distinguish legitimate from illegitimate concepts of race? I consider how social values should play a role in answering this question. In particular, I investigate how philosophical argumentation (about race) itself depends on social values.

Publications

Neto, C., & Meynell, L (2023) Scaffold: A Causal Concept for Evolutionary Explanations Philosophy of Science https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2023.14

Neto, C., Meynell, L., & Jones, T. C (2023) Scaffolds and Scaffolding: An Explanatory Strategy in Evolutionary Biology. Biology & Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-023-09897-y

Jones, Christopher, Meynell, L., Neto, C., et al. (2023) The role of the ecological scaffold in the origin and maintenance of whole-group trait altruism in microbial populations. BMC Ecology and Evolution.

Neto, C., & Doolittle, F (2022) The Chemostat Model of Evolution by Persistence, and its Relevance to Clade Selection Philosophy of Science https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2022.11

Neto, C (2021) From Idealizations to Social Practices in Science: The case of Phylogenetic Trees Synthese Online First DOI 10.1007/s11229-021-03271-9

Neto, C (2020) When Imprecision is a Good Thing, or How Imprecise Concepts promote Integration in Biology Biology & Philosophy 35 (6); 1-21

Neto, C (2019) What is a Lineage? Philosophy of Science 86 (5): 1099-1110