Ulrich Stegmann

Biography

My initial training was in the biological sciences. I received a MSc in biology (University of Bremen) and a PhD in zoology (University of Würzburg). For my MSc thesis I worked on the anatomy of a group of insects whose behavioural ethology, life history, and taxonomy I later studied in various rainforest locations in Malaysia. I then completed an MA and a PhD in philosophy at King’s College London. My dissertation defended the use of informational notions in genetics, arguing that genetic information is a scientifically and philosophically respectable concept (see abstract).

Following the PhD in 2006, I was awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship to investigate the epistemology and metaphysics of animal communication (http://www.britac.ac.uk/funding/awards/posts/pdf2006.html). The first year of the Fellowship was spent at the University of Cambridge (HPS), where I focused on the applicability of teleosemantic theories of mental content to animal signals. In 2007-2008, I intermitted the Fellowship to become a Teaching Associate at the Department of Philosophy in Bristol.

As of summer 2008, I am now based at the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, where I have resumed my British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Selected Publications (August 2008)

Forthcoming
- ‘A Consumer-Based Teleosemantics for Animal Signals’. PSA Proceedings.
- 'DNA, Inference, and Information’. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

2005
- ‘Genetic information as instructional content’. Philosophy of Science, 72: 425-443.
- ‘John Maynard Smith’s notion of animal signals’. Biology and Philosophy, 20: 1011-1025.

2004
- ‘The arbitrariness of the genetic code’. Biology and Philosophy, 19: 205-222.

2002
- (with K. E. Linsenmair) ‘Assessing the semelparity hypothesis: Egg-guarding and fecundity in an iteroparous treehopper’. Ethology, 108 (10): 857-869.
- (with M. D. Webb and K. E. Linsenmair) ‘New species, synonymies, and life-histories of the Southeast Asian treehopper genus Pyrgauchenia Breddin (Homoptera: Membracidae: Centrotinae)’. Journal of Natural History, 36: 279-303.

1998
‘An ‘exaggerated’ trait in insects: the prothoracic skeleton of Stictocephala bisonia (Homoptera: Membracidae)’. Journal of Morphology, 238: 157-178.

PhD Dissertation Abstract

‘The Nature and Explanatory Role of Genetic Information’
The molecule of heredity, DNA, is widely regarded as carrying information that is used in development to build, correctly or incorrectly, the various features of an organism. Genetic information is believed to be a semantic property and, as such, it has become a cornerstone of molecular biology. Yet it poses two interconnected challenges: to justify the attribution of semantic content to a chemical compound and, more generally, to provide a viable metaphysics of semantic content. In this thesis, I defend the legitimacy of genetic information against growing scepticism from historians and philosophers of biology and I provide a naturalistic account of the semantic properties of DNA.

The first chapter introduces the biological concept of genetic information and distinguishes it from several closely related ideas. In the second chapter, I discuss naturalistic theories of mental content, especially informational and teleosemantic approaches, in order to draw lessons for explicating genetic information. The third chapter reviews the current debate about genetic information. I argue that the case for eliminativism, which denies genetic information in the semantic sense, has not been made. But I also reject the realist positions on offer. Chapter 4 investigates a particular line of reasoning in favour of genetic information, i.e., the argument from the arbitrariness of the genetic code. I propose an account of arbitrariness that applies to the genetic code, but I argue that arbitrariness is no justification for positing genetic information. In chapter 5, I reconsider the adequacy conditions for theories of genetic information. Based on these considerations, I then present my own account. I defend a realist position that construes semantic information not in terms of representation but rather in terms of the ability to instruct. The final chapter addresses potential difficulties for my account and explores its implications.