Neven Sesardić

In his first 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 (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".

In his article "Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, IQ and Heritability" Sesardic argues 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. According to him the prevalence of this view among philosophers of science is based on the gap between them and experimental scientists. 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." He elaborated upon those arguments in his 2005 book, Making Sense of Heritability.

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."

In his 2007 article "Homosexual marriage: The Victory of Political Correctness and Bad Arguments" he argues that the conservative arguments against homosexual marriage are not actually damaged by the most frequent liberal critiques against them.[2]

In 2008, Sesardić published the paper "Guilt by Statistical Association: Revisiting the Prosecutor's Fallacy and the Interrogator's Fallacy" in the Journal of Philosophy under the pseudonym "Carmen de Macedo".[3] He revealed that this was a pseudonym, and that he was the true author, in a 2011 Inside Higher Education article.[4] After philosopher M. V. Dougherty wrote to the Journal, they published a corrigendum in 2017 acknowledging that de Macedo's name was a pseudonym, and that Sesardić was the actual author.[5]

• When Reason Goes on Holiday: Philosophers in Politics, New York: Encounter Books, 2016.
• 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)

• "Women in Philosophy: Problems with the Discrimination Hypothesis", Academic Questions 27 (4): 461–473.
• "Race: a social destruction of a biological concept", Biology and Philosophy
• “Sudden Infant Death or Murder? A Royal Confusion about Probabilities“, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2007 58(2):299-329
• “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 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.