Denis M. Walsh

Denis M. Walsh is a Canadian academic and writer. He holds the Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Biology and is a member of the Department of Philosophy at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Department for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. His current research focuses on the concept of natural agency, referring to any system that can maintain its viability, react, and innovate by mounting adaptive responses to its conditions.

Walsh received his PhD in biology from McGill University. He later studied philosophy at King's College, Cambridge, and then on to King's College London, where he completed the MPhil and PhD (modal logic and modal metaphysics). He was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) Post-doctoral fellowship, which he took at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, under the supervision of Professor Elliott Sober.

In 2010 Walsh became a professor at the University of Toronto's Department of Philosophy. In 2014, with University of Toronto colleague R. Paul Thompson, he co-edited the book Evolutionary Biology: Conceptual, Ethical, and Religious Issues which was published by Cambridge University Press. Walsh's book, Organisms, Agency, and Evolution was published in 2015 by Cambridge University Press. It was reviewed by John Dupré who concluded that "Philosophers of biology, evolutionary theorists, and anyone interested in the state of the field and with a reasonable grasp of the specialist vocabulary, will need to read this book." He co-edited with Philippe Huneman the book Challenging the Modern Synthesis: Adaptation, Development, and Inheritance which was published in 2017, and in it he takes the core issue to be a tension between chance and purposefulness, and explicitly raises the question of whether the privileging of chance (i.e., blind variation and selection) is a metaphysical commitment or a methodological artifact.