Is Actual Difference Making Actually Different?

Journal of Philosophy 106 (11):629-633 (2009)
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Abstract

This paper responds to Kenneth Waters’s account of actual difference making. Among other things, I argue that although Waters is right that researchers may sometimes be justified in focusing on genes rather than other causes of phenotypic traits, he is wrong that the apparatus of actual difference makers overcomes the traditional causal parity thesis.

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0022362X

DOI

10.5840/jphil20091061130

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Robert Northcott
Birkbeck, University of London

Citations of this work

Varieties of parity.Ulrich E. Stegmann - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (6):903-918.
Explaining individual differences.Zina B. Ward - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 101 (C):61-70.
Are Genetic Representations Read in Development?Ronald J. Planer - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4):997-1023.

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References found in this work

Causes That Make a Difference.C. Kenneth Waters - 2007 - Journal of Philosophy 104 (11):551-579.
Genes made molecular.C. Kenneth Waters - 1994 - Philosophy of Science 61 (2):163-185.
Causation and contrast classes.Robert Northcott - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 139 (1):111 - 123.

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