Arno Wouters

philosophy of biology / philosophy of action

Current Job

From 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2012, I work as postdoc philosophy of action at the Department of Philosophy of the Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands), in the context of the VIDI-project of Maureen Sie, titled "Conscious Control, Deliberative Awareness, and Moral Agency". This project aims to think through the implications of the paradigm of adaptive unconsciousness in social and moral psychology for philosophical action theory.

Office:

Woudestein, room H05-28
Burg. Oudlaan 50
3062 PA Rotterdam

Address:

Department of Philosophy
P.O. Box 1738
3000 DR Rotterdam
The Netherlands

Phone:

+31 (0)10 40 88 987

E-mail:

Fax:

+31 (0)10 408 90 30

Personal info

I live in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

A short CV

• I studied biology at Wageningen University (1974-1980).
• I studied philosophy at Groningen University (1980-1986).
• I did research in philosophy of science at Utrecht University (1989-1994).
• I taught a variety of courses in theoretical philosophy at several universities (Groningen, Utrecht, Nijmegen) (1995-1997).
• I worked three years as a researcher in computer science (1998-2000).
• I obtained a PhD in philosophy of science from Utrecht University (1999).
• I worked 2 years as lecturer philosophy of the life sciences at the Institute Biology Leiden (2001-2002).
• I worked 10 months as a staff member for the Centre for Society and Genomics (2004).
• I worked 2 years as postdoc Neuroscience and Personhood at the Heyendaal Institute Nijmegen (2005-2007).
• I taught philosophy of biology at the Institute for History and Foundations of Science (Utrecht) (2007, 2008, 2009).
• I taught philosophy of mind and action at the Radboud University Nijmegen (2007-2008).
• I taught philosophy of cognitive science at Utrecht University (2008).

An elaborate CV can be found here.

Jobs in the recent past

From 5 June 2005 to 31 December 2007, I worked as postdoc at the Heyendaal Institute of the Radboud University Nijmegen on a project titled "Neuroscience and Personhood". (The Heyendaal Institute was involved in theological and philosophical research into the relation between religion, science and culture. The Institute was axed on 31 December 2007).

From 1 January 2008 up to 30 June 2008, I worked part-time as teacher philosophy of cognition at the Department of Philosophy of the Radboud University Nijmegen.

From 1 February 2008 up to 31 July 2008, I worked part-time as researcher at the Department of Religious Studies of the Radboud University Nijmegen.

From 25 April 2008 up to 27 June 2008, I worked part-time as lecturer at the Institute of History and Foundations of Science of Utrecht University

From 1 September 2008 up to 1 February 2009, I worked as teacher 'philosophy of mind' at the Department of Philosophy of Utrecht University.

Philosophy

My philosophical research interests include:

• philosophy of action in connection with moral psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology,
• explanation and understanding in biology,
• the relation between the different levels of organization,
• the philosophical aspects of the recent trend towards systems biology,
• teleology and structuralism, Darwin, D'Arcy Thompson, 19th and 20th century morphology,
• mechanisms, causality, counterfactuals, laws of nature.

Workshops on Moral Agency, Deliberative Awareness, and Conscious Control

Our research group organizes a series of three workshops on Moral Agency, Deliberative Awareness, and Conscious Control. In this series of workshops we explore fundamental issues concerning moral agency (free will, personal responsibility, acting for reasons) in relation to relevant research in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences:

• Friday and Saturday 15-16 October 2010: Strawsonian and Consequentialist Views on Personal Responsibility
• Friday to Sunday 21-23 October 2011: Everyday Reason Talk
• Friday to Sunday 19-22 October 2012: Narrativity, interpretation and responsibility

Upcoming Talks

• "Did evolution make us moral?", What makes us moral?, 23-24 June 2011, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Past talks

Selected publications

A more complete list of publications is here.

BCN-science and responsibility (neuroethics)

• Arno Wouters "Neurowetenschap en mensbeeld" (lezing gehouden voor het symposium De (ir)relevantie van de neurowetenschap voor sociale wetenschappen, filosofie en religiewetenschappen, Heyendaal Institute Nijmegen, 4 October 2005 (in Dutch).
• Arno G. Wouters "Ontoerekeningsvatbaarheid: een achterhaalde notie?" Neuropraxis 10(5): 136-139 (2006). The manuscript is available from my website.
• Arno G. Wouters "Woont de persoon tussen de neuronen?" Filosofie, jrg. 17, nr. 4 (themanummer "De geest als natuurverschijnsel"), pp. 22-25.
• Maureen Sie & Arno Wouters "The real challenge to free will and responsibility" Trends in Cognitive Science 12(1): 3-4 (2008). (A final draft is available from my website.)
• Maureen Sie & Arno Wouters "The BCN-challenge to compatibilist free will and personal responsibility". Neuroethics 3(2): 121-133.
• Arno Wouters Vrije wil en verantwoordelijkheid in evolutionair perspectief, in: Maureen Sie (red.) Hoezo vrije wil? Perspectieven op een heikele kwestie (Uitgeverij Lemniscaat, 2011), hoofdstuk 10, pp. 190-209.

Explanation in biology (philosophy of science)

• Wouters, Arno G. (1995) "Viability Explanation", Biology & Philosophy 10: 435-457.
• Wouters, Arno G. (1999) Explanation Without A Cause. Ph.D. thesis, Utrecht University.
• Wouters, Arno G. (2003) "Four Notions of Biological Function". Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Science 34(4): 633-668.
• Wouters, Arno G. "The Functional Perspective of Organismal Biology". In: T.A.C. Reydon and L. Hemerik (eds.), Current Themes in Theoretical Biology: A Dutch Perspective (Springer, Dordrecht, 2005), p. 33-69.
• Wouters, Arno G. "The Function Debate in Philosophy". Acta Biotheoretica 53(2): 123-151 (2005).
• Wouters, Arno G. "Functional explanation in biology". In: R. Festa, A. Aliseda, and J. Peijnenburg, Cognitive Structures in Scientific Inquiry: Essays In Debate With Theo Kuipers vol. 2 (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 84), p. 269-293, Rodopi, Amsterdam & Atlanta (Ga.), 2005.
• Wouters, Arno G. "Design Explanation: determining the constraints on what can be alive". Erkenntnis 67(1): 65-80 (2007). (A final draft is available at my website, the original publication is at www.springerlink.com).

Computer science

• A.G. Wouters (2001) Manual for the mCRL tool set (version 2.8.2). CWI Research Report SEN-R0130; CWI, The Netherlands, 2001.
• J.F. Groote, J. Pang & A.G. Wouters (2003) "Analysis of a Distributed System for Lifting Trucks", Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming, 55:21 - 56.

Recommended information and links

Especially for philosophy students, but many others may profit from it.

Computers and internet

• Tips voor efficiënt e-mailgebruik (Arno Wouters, in Dutch)
• Hoe mail je een docent: de buitenkant en de binnenkant (Arno Wouters, in Dutch).
• Basic concepts of Microsoft Word (Shauna Kelly). Do not use MS Word if you do not have the time, energy and patience to understand and tame it. It takes several days to understand Word -- it costs you years, your face and your health, if you use it without understanding it. If you know already how to type in a word processor, start with concept 3: use styles to format text and read on -- you will always have problems with Word if you do not use styles consciously and consistently!
• Stop AutoFormat and its Evil Cousins (Daiya Mitchell). You will never be happy with MS Word if you do not disable all the irritating features Microsoft put there to impress first-time users. Don't hesitate. Do it. NOW!
• Bend Word to Your Will (Clive Huggan). The ultimate guide to using Word. Especially written for the Mac -- Windows users will equally profit, if they make a few mental adjustments when reading (the guide provides tips for making these adjustments).
• MS-Word is Not a document exchange format (Jeff Goldberg) -- "MS-Word is appropriate for document exchange among co-authors of a document who are all developing it and have agreed before hand to use MS-Word". Don't exchange Word documents in any other case!
• PDF Online converts Word Documents and many other formats to PDF for free. No need to send anyone Word documents anymore.

Philosophy

• How to do philosophy (Jeff McLaughlin) -- useful tips about following lectures, reading and writing
• The Pink Guide to Taking Philosophy Classes (Helena de Bres) -- more extensive guide on the same subjects (pdf)
• Guidelines on Reading Philosophy and Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper (Jim Pryor) -- two brief guides
• Tips On How To Write Philosophy Essays (Richard Price) -- notwithstanding its title, this paper is mostly about developing your own thoughts on the basis of the papers you are reading. Highly recommended.
• Writing a philosophy paper (Carla Bagnoli) -- a concise guide
• Undergraduate philosophical writing (Martin Young) -- a detailed guide

  From the introduction: Most students have no idea how to write for a philosophy class. The smart students realize this and try to do something about it. The dumb ones think that what got "A"s in high school will get "A"s in college, and if they get an "F" it's the instructor's fault. This manual is for the smart students. The basic rule of writing for a philosophy class is to take a position and support it with arguments. This means taking a position that can be supported. Leave your usual way of thinking at the door. You don't have to agree with anyone else. You do have to be able to support what you say with evidence and argument. The rest of this manual is an attempt to help you to be able to do that. The basic principle of this book is to take mistakes that students have made, explain why it's a mistake, and tell you what to do instead. Most of it is simple, and some people will find that it makes writing philosophy much easier and less stressful.

• Tips on writing a philosophy paper (Douglas Portmore) -- another detailed guide (pdf)
• Writing tutor for introductory philosophy courses (Joe Cruz) -- these tutorials trace the development of undergraduate philosophy papers, one on Berkeley's Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, the other on Plato's Republic, from the first idea to the final version.

Other pages of my hand

• My contributions to Spongia (blog of the Erasmus University's philosophy department)
• Apple Macintosh Links - a list of sites of interest to academic users of Apple MacIntosh computers (especially those at Dutch universities)
• HTML and Web publishing links - annotated links of interest to people at the university who want to use the web to publish information about teaching and research.
• Arno Wouters' productivity software - an annotated list of the software I use to get my work done, with links to information about using this software.
• Werken met styles en templates in MS Word - handout of my presentation on working with styles and templates (pdf, in Dutch)
• Mijn ervaringen met de iLiad en het NRC ePaper (my experience with the iLiad and the NRC ePaper, in Dutch with an English summary - zie ook de NRC ePaper wiki op MobileRead)
• Pictures from New Zealand (Summer 2005)
• Pictures from the Netherlands (scenery, animals and plants)
• Nederlandse index bij de Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guide to Butterflies (pdf)

This page was made by Arno Wouters.
E-mail:
Last Updated: 21 Feb 2011.