Online research in philosophy

Following important work by Pizarro, Uhlmann and Salovey (2003) on moral judgments of uncontrolled/impulsive versus controlled/ deliberate action, we focus on the related issue of the moral evaluation of emotion-motivated versus principle-driven behavior. We examine: (a) the potential lesser blameworthiness of antisocial acts perceived as driven by emotion as opposed to principle; (b) how factors governing the moral evaluation of antisocial acts might extend to the evaluation of prosocial acts; and (c) how overriding a moral emotion in favor of a moral principle affects moral attributions.

I present an attempt at an explication of the ecological theory of interspecific competition, including its explanatory role in community ecology and evolutionary biology. The account given is based on the idea that law-like statements play an important role in scientific theories of this kind. I suggest that the principle of competitive exclusion is such a law, and that it is evolutionarily invariant. The principle's empirical status is defended and implications for the ongoing debates on the existence of biological laws are discussed.

Rolls uses evolutionary theory and behavioral learning theory in his analysis of emotion. We believe that both theories are greatly underutilized, leaving an incomplete description of the nature of emotion and its neural foundation.

Microeconomic theory and the theory of natural selection share salient features. This has encouraged economics to appeal to the character of evolutionary theory in defending the adequacy of microeconomics, despite its evident weaknesses as an explanatory or predictive theory. This paper explores the differences and similarities between these two theories and the phenomena they treat in order to assess the force of the economist's appeal to evolutionary theory as a model for how economic theory should proceed.

The principle of natural selection is stated. It connects fitness values (actual reproductive success) with expected fitness values. The term 'adaptedness' is used for expected fitness values. The principle of natural selection explains differential fitness in terms of relative adaptedness. It is argued that this principle is absolutely central to Darwinian evolutionary theory. The empirical content of the principle of natural selection is examined. It is argued that the principle itself has no empirical biological content, but that the presuppositions of its applicability are empirical. They form the empirical biological core of evolutionary theory.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role that the distinction between principle and constructive theories have in the question of the explanatory power of Special Relativity. We show how the distinction breaks down at the explanatory level. We assess Harvey Brown’s (2005) claim that, as a principle theory, Special Relativity lacks of explanatory power and criticize it, as, we argue, based upon an unrealistic picture of the kind of explanations provided by principle (and constructive) theories. Finally, we claim that the structural account of explanation (Hughes 1989b) captures the explanatory success of Special Relativity.

Common formulations of the principle of charity in translation seem to undermine attributions of irrationality in social scientific accounts that are otherwise unexceptionable. This I call the problem of irrationality. Here I resolve the problem of irrationality by developing two complementary views of the principle of charity. First, I develop the view (ill-developed in the literature at present) that the principle of charity is preparatory, being needed in the construction of provisional first-approximation translation manuals. These serve as the basis for explanatory accounts and associated refinements in the translation manual. In developing such explanatory accounts, the principle of charity is no longer constraining. Thus, the principle of charity applies only in the early stages of constructing translation manuals, and there is no problem of irrationality in the later stages of constructing translation manuals. Second, I reduce the principle of charity, where it does apply, to a special case of what I call the principle of explicability: so translate as to attribute explicable beliefs and practices to the speakers of the source-language. I show that the appropriate formulation of the principle of charity counsels just what the principle of explicability requires in the early stages of social scientific investigation.

Evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making predictions, let alone predictions that are dangerous, surprising, and correct. I build on work by Deborah Mayo, Elliot Sober, and John Worrall to develop an account of the conditions necessary for a theory to make predictions. This account is applied to two cases from evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in *E. coli*, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis. Selectionist evolutionary theory can thus express the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to the virtues of explanatory unification and model-fitting.

This paper suggests a new principle for confirmation theory which is called the principle of explanatory surplus. This principle is shown to be non-Bayesian in character, and to lead to a treatment of simplicity in science. Two cases of the principle of explanatory surplus are considered. The first (number of parameters) is illustrated by curve-fitting examples, while the second (number of theoretical assumptions) is illustrated by the examples of Newton's Laws and Adler's Theory of the Inferiority Complex.

Ausonio Marras has argued that Jaegwon Kim's principle of explanatory exclusion depends on an implausibly strong interpretation of explanatory realism that should be rejected because it leads to an extensional criterion of individuation for explanations. I examine the role explanatory realism plays in Kim's justification for the exclusion principle and explore two ways in which Kim can respond to Marras's criticism. The first involves separating criteria for explanatory truth from questions of explanatory adequacy, while the second appeals to Kim's fine-grained theory of events. I argue that the first response is unconvincing on its own but when coupled with the second might provide a viable way for Kim to avoid Marras's criticism. However, I show that the second strategy is weak from a polemical point of view because Kim's theory of events already assumes what the principle of explanatory exclusion was introduced to establish: the falsity of nonreductive physicalism.