Standard philosophical discussions of theory-ladeness assume that observational evidence consists of perceptual outputs (or reports of such outputs) that are sentential or propositional in structure. Theory-ladeness is conceptualized as having to do with logical or semantical relationships between such outputs or reports and background theories held by observers. Using the recent debate between Fodor and Churchland as a point of departure, we propose an alternative picture in which much of what serves as evidence in science is not perceptual outputs or (...) reports of such outputs and is not sentential in structure. (shrink)

This paper presents a counterfactual account of what a mechanism is. Mechanisms consist of parts, the behavior of which conforms to generalizations that are invariant under interventions, and which are modular in the sense that it is possible in principle to change the behavior of one part independently of the others. Each of these features can be captured by the truth of certain counterfactuals.

As a disabled activist, I much prefer Aristotle's concept of ‘eu zen’, or ‘living well’ to that of ‘well-being’. ‘Eu zen’ is part of Aristotle's treatise on ‘eudaimonia’, which Grayling describes as: ‘…. a strong and satisfying sense of well-being and well-doing, of flourishing as only a rational and feeling human individual can flourish when his life and relationships are good’ (emphasis added). Aristotle's concepts are preferable because they promote ‘well-being’ through familial, social and civic activity, whilst recognising that such (...) activity requires resources, both human and material. These concepts are akin to those advocated by disabled people within the ‘independent living movement’; i.e. that the individual's ‘choice’, ‘control’, ‘dignity’ and ‘freedom’, over their lives and lifestyles, are supported by an inclusive community. However, both sets of principles are now being undermined by neoliberal managerial social work practice, which not only deny basic human rights which underpin ‘eu zen’, but lead to fear and a sense of ‘commodification’ or de-personalisation among disabled recipients. Relevant examples will come from experience, both personal as well as that from other disabled people. (shrink)

Interventionist Theories of Causation in Psychological Perspective.

Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125—Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USA Journal Metascience (...) Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1. (shrink)

'IRS' is our term for the logical empiricist idea that the best way to understand the epistemic bearing of observational evidence on scientific theories is to model it in terms of Inferential Relations among Sentences representing the evidence, and sentences representing hypotheses the evidence is used to evaluate. Developing ideas from our earlier work, including 'Saving the Phenomena'(Phil Review 97, 1988, p.303-52 )we argue that the bearing of observational evidence on theory depends upon causal connections and error characteristics of the (...) processes by which data is produced and used to detect features of phenomena. Neither of these depends upon, or is greatly illuminated by a consideration of, formal relations among observation and theoretical sentences or propositions. By taking causal structures and error characteristics, you too can evade the IRS. In doing so, you can gain insight into Hempel’s raven paradox, theory loading, and other issues from the standard philosophical literature on confirmation theory. (shrink)

This paper makes use of recent empirical results, mainly from experimental economics, to expore the conditions under which people will cooperate and to assess competing explantions of this cooperation. It is argued that the evidence supports the claim that people differ in type, with some being conditional cooperators and others being motivated by more or less sophisticated forms of self-interest. Stable cooperation requires, among other things, rules and institutions that protect conditional cooperators from myopically self-interested types. Additional empirical features of (...) the behavior of conditional cooperators also imply that rules and institutions are required to produce stable cooperation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The DN Model The SR Model The Causal Mechanical Model Unificationist Models Conclusion and Directions for Future Work.

Using Jim Woodward's Counterfactual Dependency account as an example, I argue that causal claims about indeterministic systems cannot be satisfactorily analysed as including counterfactual conditionals among their truth conditions because the counterfactuals such accounts must appeal to need not have truth values. Where this happens, counterfactual analyses transform true causal claims into expressions which are not true.

This essay uses Györgi Buzsáki's use of EEG data to draw conclusions about brain function as an example to show that investigators sometimes draw conclusions from noisy data by analyzing the noise rather than by extracting a signal from it. The example makes vivid some important differences between McAllister's, Woodward's, and my ideas about how data are interpreted.

This paper compares the relative merits of two alternatives to traditional accounts of causal explanation: Jim Woodward's counterfactual invariance account, and the Mechanistic account of Machamer, Darden, and Craver. Mechanism wins (a) because we have good causal explanations for chaotic effects whose production does not exhibit the counterfactual regularities Woodward requires, and (b)because arguments suggested by Belnap's and Green's discussion of prediction (in'Facing the Future' chpt 6)show that the relevant counterfactuals about ideal interventions on non-deterministic and deterministic systems (...) lack truth value. (shrink)

This paper provides a restatement and defense of the data/ phenomena distinction introduced by Jim Bogen and me several decades ago (e.g., Bogen and Woodward, The Philosophical Review, 303–352, 1988). Additional motivation for the distinction is introduced, ideas surrounding the distinction are clarified, and an attempt is made to respond to several criticisms.

This is one of a pair of discussion notes comparing some features of the account of causation in Wolfgang Spohn’s Laws of Belief with the “interventionist” account in James Woodward’s Making Things Happen. This note locates the core difference of the accounts in the fact that Woodward’s account follows an epistemological order, while Spohn’s follows a conceptual order. This unfolds in five further differences: type- versus token-level causation, reference to time, actual/counterfactual intervention versus epistemic/suppositional wiggling, a circular versus (...) a circle-free conception of the circumstances of a direct causal relation, and absolute versus model-relative causation. (shrink)

In his influential book 'Making Things Happen' and in other places, Jim Woodward has noted some affinities between his own account of causation and that of Menzies and Price, but argued that the latter view is implausibly ‘subjective’. In this piece I discuss Woodward’s criticisms. I argue that the Menzies and Price view is not as different from Woodward’s own account as he believes, and that in so far as it is different, it has some advantages whose (...) importance Woodward misses; but also that the Menzies and Price view lacks some elements whose importance Woodward rightly stresses. When properly characterized, however, the ‘subjectivity’ survives unscathed. (shrink)

What is the relationship between, on the one hand, the sorts of causal claims found in the special sciences (and in common sense) and, on the other hand, the world as described by physics? A standard picture goes like this: the fundamental laws of physics are causal laws in the sense that they can be interpreted as telling us that realizations of one set of physical factors or properties “causes” realizations of other properties. Causal claims in the special sciences are (...) then true (to the extent that they are) in virtue of “instantiating” these underlying causal laws; as it is often put, the latter serve as “truth-makers” for the former. The picture is thus one according to which the notion of cause, as it occurs in the special sciences, is reflected or “grounded” in a fairly straightforward and transparent way in a similar notion that occurs in fundamental physics. This paper explores some alternatives to this picture. (shrink)

"Shepard may be the best lesser-known film critic." —The New York Times Book Review The first book of nonfiction from one of our great fiction writers. Given that most Americans proudly consider themselves non-political, where do our notions of collective responsibility come from? Which self-deceptions, when considering ourselves as actors on the world stage, do we cling to most tenaciously? Why do we so stubbornly believe, for example, that our country always means well when intervening abroad? The Tunnel at the (...) End of the Light argues that some of our most persistent and destructive assumptions, in that regard, might come from the movies. In these ten essays Jim Shepard weaves close readings of film with cultural criticism to explore the ways in which movies work so ubiquitously to reflect how Americans think and act. Whether assessing the “high-spirited glee of American ruthlessness” captured in GoodFellas, or finding in Lawrence of Arabia a “portrait of the lunatic serenity of our leaders’ conviction in the face of all evidence and their own lack of knowledge,” he explores how we enter into conversations with specific genres and films—Chinatown, The Third Man, and Badlands among others—in order to construct and refine our most cherished illusions about ourselves. (shrink)

This paper briefly addresses questions of confirmation and disconfirmation in psychoanalysis. It argues that psychoanalysis enjoys Bayesian support as an interpretive extension of commonsense psychology that provides the best explanation of a large range of empirical data. Suggestion provides no such explanation, and recent work in attachment, developmental psychology, and neuroscience accord with this view.

It is intuitive that free action depends on consciousness in some way, since behavior that is unconsciously generated is widely regarded as un-free. But there is no clear consensus as to what such dependence comes to, in part because there is no clear consensus about either the cognitive role of consciousness or about the essential components of free action. I divide the space of possible views into four: the Constitution View (on which free actions metaphysically consist, at least in part, (...) in phenomenally conscious episodes of a special sort), the Causal-Dependence View (on which free actions are necessarily caused by conscious episodes), the Counterfactaul-Dependence View (on which free actions necessarily counterfactually dependent on conscious episodes of certain types), and the Independence View (on which there are no necessary dependence-relations that hold between free action and conscious episodes). After surveying recent empirical literature that purports to show that consciousness plays a smaller role in generating action than is usually supposed, I conclude that it is plausible that free action depends on consciousness in two ways. First, free action causally depends on consciousness control. Second, free action counterfactually depends on the agent's being responsive to certain reasons. (shrink)

This paper argues that psychoanalysis enables us to see mental disorder as rooted in emotional conflicts, particularly concerning aggression, to which our species has a natural liability. These can be traced in development, and seem rooted in both parent-offspring conflict and in-group cooperation for out-group conflict. In light of this we may hope that work in psychoanalysis and neuroscience will converge in indicating the most likely paths to a better neurobiological understanding of mental disorder.

Participants in the cognitive phenomenology debate have proceeded by (a) proposing a bifurcation of theoretical options into inflationary and non-inflationary theories, and then (b) providing arguments for/against one of these theories. I suggest that this method has failed to illuminate the commonalities and differences among conscious intentional states of different types, in the absence of a theory of the structure of these states. I propose such a theory. In perception, phenomenal-intentional properties combine with somatosensory properties to form P-I property clusters (...) that serve as phenomenal modes of presentations of particulars. In imagination, somatosensory properties are replaced with phenomenal-intentional properties whose intentional objects are somatosensory properties, thus resulting in imaginative facsimiles of perceptual P-I property clusters. Such structures can then be used as phenomenal prototypes that pick out individuals and kinds. Sets of such prototypes constitute a subject’s conception of individuals and kinds. Combined with a few additional elements, these imaginative P-I property clusters serve as the building-blocks of conscious cognitive states. Different ways of carving up theoretical space classify my theory either as inflationary or as non-inflationary. I conclude that the theory is anti-inflationary in letter but inflationary in spirit. (shrink)

This paper considers clinical psychoanalysis together with developmental psychology (particularly attachment theory), evolution, and neuroscience in the context a Bayesian account of confirmation and disconfrimation. -/- In it I argue that these converging sources of support indicate that the combination of relatively low predictive power and broad explanatory scope that characterise the theories of both Freud and Darwin suggest that Freud's theory, like Darwin's, may strike deeply into natural phenomena. -/- The same argument, however, suggests that conclusive confirmation for Freudian (...) hypotheses, as in the case of Darwin's, will come from outside the original domain of explanation sketched out by Freud. As in Darwin's case conclusive confirmation came from understanding the physical mechanisms or reproduction, in Freud's case it will come from understanding the neural mechanisms that realise the phenomena described in psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of mind are dominated by the presupposition of naturalism. Arguing against this established convention, Jim Slagle offers a thorough defence of Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (EAAN) and in doing so, reveals how it shows that evolution and naturalism are incompatible. Charting the development of Plantinga's argument, Slagle asserts that the probability of our cognitive faculties reliably producing true beliefs is low if ontological naturalism is true, and therefore all other beliefs produced (...) by these faculties, including naturalism itself, are self-defeating. He critiques other well-known epistemological approaches, including those of Descartes and Quine, and deftly counters the many objections against the EAAN to conclude that epistemological naturalism should be rejected on the grounds of self-defeat. By situating Plantinga's argument within a wider context and showing that science and evolution cannot entail naturalism, Slagle renders this most common metaphysical view irrational. As such, the book advocates an important reconsideration of contemporary thought at the intersection of philosophy, science and religion. (shrink)

This book offers a unique perspective on meaning in language, broadening the scope of existing understanding of meaning by introducing a comprehensive and cohesive account of meaning which draws on a wide range of linguistic approaches.

This chapter explores Lyotard’s aesthetics in relation to the artist Yves Klein. Through the different activities of philosophy and art, Lyotard and Klein both explore the nature of sensibilité through an investigation of matter. Both paradoxically conclude that matter is in a sense immaterial. Lyotard understands matter as that part of an artwork which is diverse, unstable, and evanescent: in music, this corresponds to nuance and timbre, and in painting, to colour. Following Kant’s aesthetics, Lyotard interprets matter as that which (...) defies conceptual grasp or rational calculation. From the point of view of the concept, then, matter appears as immaterial – it is nothing at all. Klein develops his meditation on matter firstly through his monochrome “propositions,” calling attention to pure colour (in particular, blue), which he theorises as stabilisations of energy. Beyond this, Klein invents “immaterial” works, such as the famous Void exhibition (an empty room in a gallery), and his Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility. Klein understands these immaterial works as presenting matter in its “prime state,” as energy diffused in space. This chapter develops the confluences between Lyotard’s and Klein’s reflections on “immaterial matter,” and seeks to show how the results achieved in each area of activity (philosophy and art) can contribute to the other. Lyotard’s aesthetic theory provides the basis for a new interpretation of Klein which provides an alternative to his common reception as a Conceptual artist. Klein’s work, on the other hand, not only acts as a profound example of Lyotard’s theory, but functions as a corrective to Lyotard’s emphasis on the negative and privative nature of sensitivity to matter by demonstrating the creative and life-affirmative potential of such sensitivity. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders explanations of ‘popular’ Buddhism in Thailand initiated in mid-twentieth century anthropological definitions of vernacular articulations of religiosity in village settings. Buddhist localism, in its various manifestations, is seen to contrast with a doctrinal or literate ‘great’ monastic tradition. In this persisting ethnographic argument, an actor may draw randomly on various syncretic elements of their religiosity according to circumstances (an historical complexity which is sourced in a mix of Sinhalese-sourced Buddhism, animism including magic, and folk Brahmanism). It is (...) therefore not wholly or consistently one, but substantively divided into several strands. This long-standing position is problematic as the paper shows. There are multiple coextensive Buddhism/s (plural) within the Greater Theravada tradition, which emerge from an identification of the actors themselves with the one, not the many, as one-unitary-Buddhists. I theorise using a general framework of Meillassoux’s discussion on contingency and, by way of contrast, taking Deleuzian ideas on multiplicity. It is grounded on an understanding of popular or organic lived religion sourced in the early counter-enlightenment or radical enlightenment thinking of Giambattista Vico. Here, it is argued that in Thailand villagers would identify cosmologically as the one, not as the many (in a sense as in the assemblages or varieties of religious practices detached from the totality of the cosmological unitary one). Understanding the creative processes behind cosmological multiplicities is a starting point, with the notion that within specific cultural forms we are faced with a multiplicity of definitions and things to observe, as in an understanding of the varieties of lived Buddhism. The essay is based on an ethnographic assessment from over three decades of field research among ethnic Thai Buddhists at various modalities and settings, and in framing these vernacular religious practices and their ontologies. My gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The essay does not deal directly with specific ethnographic case studies; instead, it is intended as retheorising representations of ‘Popular Buddhism’ in Thailand as based on early scholarship since the 1960s (where Buddhism is constituted as three or more distinctive but intertwined religious strands). (shrink)

A comparison of African grammars written in French, and bilingual Franco-African or Franco-Caribbean dictionaries, allows us to discern a common myth concerning “family” ties between French and African Languages.Missionaries consider two means of conversion: by the introduction of the God-Word to his children, which predetermines the foreign society to be encountered; the other demands an ethno- graphic study (to discover the meaning of language) in oral societies (African, Caribbean) to whom an alphabetical language is superimposed (with Latin characters). This effort (...) of transcription presupposes the harmonious compatibility of all oral languages with French. Thus the missionaries breathe the Word and transcendence into the colonies in order to recover in “Word incarnate”, instrument and symbol for the conversion process. (The theologian would speak here of the “verticality of transcendence”.) But the missionary enterprise meets with the resistances of written language and of foreign societies endowed with complex structures and syntaxes. Thus, the so-called “verticality” crumbles along with missionary hopes, resulting in a trite approximate translation which could be characterized as “horizontal”. (shrink)

A startling look at one of this century's most influential philosophers, the book chronicles every stage of Foucault's personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.

In this chapter, we outline the interdisciplinary contributions that philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have provided in the understanding of the self and identity, focusing on one specific line of burgeoning research: the importance of morality to perceptions of self and identity. Of course, this rather limited focus will exclude much of what psychologists and neuroscientists take to be important to the study of self and identity (that plethora of self-hyphenated terms seen in psychology and neuroscience: self-regulation, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-concept, self-perception, (...) and more). We will likewise not engage with many canonical philosophical treatments of self and identity. But we will lay out a body of research that brings together classic themes in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to raise empirically tractable philosophical questions, and philosophically rigorous empirical questions about self and identity. More specifically, in section 4.2, we will review some recent research that has treated traditional philosophical questions about self and identity as empirical questions. Within this body of work, we will be primarily concerned with the finding that morality (more so than memory) is perceived to be at the core of self and identity. Then, in section 4.3, we raise and respond to a variety of questions and criticisms: first, about the operationalization of identity concepts in the empirical literature; second, about the generalizability of the moral self effect; third, about the direction of change; fourth, about connections with recent work in neuroscience; and fifth, about the target of evaluation. Finally, in section 4.4, we consider a variety of implications and applications of this work on the moral self. Throughout, we aim to highlight connections between classical themes in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, while also suggesting new directions for interdisciplinary collaboration. (shrink)

The late C. Vann Woodward was one of America's most prominent historians. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Parkman Prizes--and he has served as president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. The Future of the Past collects two decades worth of Woodward's most significant essays, addresses, and major book reviews, including two important presidential addresses--"The Future of the Past" and "Clio with Soul" --as well as essays (...) on changing historical concerns of the past decades, the value of comparative history, the South in Reconstruction times and the South today, and the use of fiction in history. Woodward has written illuminating introductory comments on each section and offers an incisive general introduction about history and the direction the profession is taking today. Whether reviewing William Safire's novel Freedom or evaluating Henry Adam's portrait of Jefferson, Woodward's essays reflect a lifetime of thought on history and historical writing, and are essential reading for anyone concerned with either. (shrink)

When we start with the wrong question, no matter how good an answer we get, it won’t give us the results we want. Rather than joining the throngs who are asking, When will this economic crisis be over? Jim Wallis says the right question to ask is How will this crisis change us? The worst thing we can do now, Wallis tells us, is to go back to normal. Normal is what got us into this situation. We need a new (...) normal, and this economic crisis is an invitation to discover what that means. Some of the principles Wallis unpacks for our new normal are . . . • Spending money we don’t have for things we don’t need is a bad foundation for an economy or a family. • It’s time to stop keeping up with the Joneses and start making sure the Joneses are okay. • The values of commercials and billboards are not the things we want to teach our children. • Care for the poor is not just a moral duty but is critical for the common good. • A healthy society is a balanced society in which markets, the government, and our communities all play a role. • The operating principle of God’s economy says that there is enough if we share it. • And much, much more . . . In the pages of this book, Wallis provides us with a moral compass for this new economy—one that will guide us on Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street. Embracing a New Economy Getting back to "the way things were" is not an option. It is time we take our economic uncertainty and use it to find some moral clarity. Too often we have been ruled by the maxims that greed is good, it’s all about me, and I want it now. Those can be challenged only with some of our oldest and best values—enough is enough, we are in it together, and thinking not just for tomorrow but for future generations. Jim Wallis shows that the solution to our problems will be found only as individuals, families, friends, churches, mosques, synagogues, and entire communities wrestle with the question of values together. (shrink)

A Green Beret's profound spiritual transformation from PTSD to awakening and from military warrior to spiritual warrior.

This highly original book calls for, and suggests, a new way of considering war and warfare.