Preface

Abstract

This volume contains a selection of the contributed papers from the 27th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, PSA 2021, which will be memorable as the PSA that was postponed for the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of completing this volume, the postponed meeting is planned to occur in Baltimore, Maryland, November 11-14, 2021-rescheduled from November 2020. A second proceedings volume containing selected symposium papers and Alison Wylie's presidential address will be published next year.Many people deserve thanks for their significant contributions to the production of this volume. Thank you, first, to the many people who submitted papers. PSA 2021 received 343 contributed papers, from which the program committee selected 171 (50%) for presentation at the meeting and just 42 (12.5%) for publication in this volume. The excellent and wide-ranging work contributed to this meeting is a testament to the current strength of our discipline.I am also extremely grateful to the members of the PSA 2021 Program Committee for their enormous investment of time and effort spent reading and evaluating contributed papers and the advice they provided throughout the review process. It is worth noting that the most intense period of our review coincided with the global stress, disruption, illnesses, and losses of March-May 2020.

What are the ‘levels’ in levels of selection?

“…First, there are local particlecollective levels, which are sufficient for capturing the notion of levels that is relevant for theories of multilevel selection. Second, there is the more general notion of levels of biological organization, which has been under fire in recent years (e.g., Eronen [2015]; Potochnik and McGill [2012]; Potochnik [2021]). In the context of multilevel selection, questions related to these levels of organization (e.g., at which levels of organization do we find the entities that are involved in multilevel selection in the first sense?)…”

“…The debate over levels of organization is far from settled (see Eronen and Brooks 2018 for a review): Many authors have even argued that the whole concept of levels of organization is deeply problematic or useless (e.g., Guttman [1976]; Ladyman and Ross [2007]; Potochnik and McGill [2012]; Potochnik [2021]), whereas others still see potential in further developing and studying the concept (Brooks [2017]; Brooks and Eronen [2018], DiFrisco [2017]). We do not want to take stance on the future prospects of the concept of levels of organization in biology.…”