Shapiro and Sober claim that Walsh, Ariew, Lewens, and Matthen give a mistaken, a priori defense of natural selection and drift as epiphenomenal. Contrary to Shapiro and Sober’s claims, we first argue that WALM’s explanatory doctrine does not require a defense of epiphenomenalism. We then defend WALM’s explanatory doctrine by arguing that the explanations provided by the modern genetical theory of natural selection are ‘autonomous-statistical explanations’ analogous to Galton’s explanation of reversion to mediocrity and an explanation of the diffusion ofgases. (...) We then argue that whereas Sober’s theory of forces is an adequate description of Darwin’s theory, WALM’s explanatory doctrine is required to understand how themodern genetical theory of natural selection explains large-scale statistical regularities. 1 Introduction2 Shapiro and Sober’s ‘Epiphenomenalism Do’s and Don’ts’3 WALM’s Explanatory Doctrine4 Galton’s Autonomous-Statistical Explanation5 A Second Example: The Statistical Explanation of the Diffusion of Gases6 Distinguishing Two Theories of Evolution by Natural Selection7 A Possible Objection: Are Statistical Laws Sufficient for Explanation?8 Conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that rather than exclusively focusing on trying to determine if an idealized model fits a particular account of scientific explanation, philosophers of science should also work on directly analyzing various explanatory schemas that reveal the steps and justification involved in scientists’ use of highly idealized models to formulate explanations. We develop our alternative methodology by analyzing historically important cases of idealized statistical modeling that use a three-step explanatory schema involving idealization, mathematical operation, and explanatory interpretation.

This book explores the nature and implications of positive, creative, and loving mimesis and brings together the interdisciplinary fields of Girardian studies and creativity studies in new and original ways. Scientists, philosophers, psychologists, theologians and ancient thinkers are brought into thought provoking and insightful dialogue with Girardian conceptions of mimetic desire, scapegoating, and hominization.

: The Newman programs established at secular colleges and universities provided an opportunity for intellectual, spiritual, and social growth among the Catholic student population. As a young physician and junior medical faculty member, André Hellegers took part in the early organization and ongoing work of Carroll House, the Newman Center at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Hellegers's experience at Carroll House enabled him to develop a clear blueprint of an academic center of excellence for the scientific, theological, and philosophical (...) exploration of the many problems that he had seen and foresaw in medicine. That center would become Georgetown's Kennedy Institute of Ethics. (shrink)

This article reframes our understanding of French structural anthropology by considering the work of André Leroi-Gourhan alongside that of Claude Lévi-Strauss. These two anthropologists worked at opposite poles of the discipline, Lévi-Strauss studying cultural objects, like myths and kinship relations; Leroi-Gourhan looking at material artifacts, such as stone tools, bones, arrowheads, and cave paintings. In spite of their difference in focus, these thinkers shared a similar approach to the interpretation of their sources: Each individual object was meaningful only as (...) part of a larger whole. For Lévi-Strauss, structuralism was designed to unlock features of the human mind; for Leroi-Gourhan, to uncover the material processes that underlay human life. Again, in spite of their difference in orientation, both structuralisms produced similar theories of human society. Whether ‘primitive’ or ‘advanced’, all societies functioned the same way: Their institutions worked harmoniously, beyond the intentions of any individual actors, to preserve the stability of the group. This eliminated the basis for thinking one society was superior to another. Finally, the article argues that both Lévi-Strauss and Leroi-Gourhan believed that structural anthropology could found a ‘new humanism’, and thereby rescue modernity from moral degeneration. This ‘new humanism’ could not only produce a universal description of human nature, but also help rethink French colonialism, broker new geopolitical alliances, and prevent the erasure of world cultures. Structural anthropology thus imagined a tight relationship between its social-scientific work and its political-moral mission. (shrink)

This book is a readers' companion to Simone Weil's The Need for Roots. It includes comprehensive and illuminating essays from recognized Weil scholars from the United States, Canada, England, France, and Germany, addressing the most pressing historical and contemporary aspects of Weil's thought and striking proposals. These include her substituting obligations for rights as the moral basis of society, her critique of our uprootedness and her proposals for rootedness, her critique of our dangerous understanding of greatness, the importance of work (...) for society, and her critique of modern science. This companion reader relies on the latest and most reliable work on the history of the Weil manuscript as provided by French scholars. It is unique in its thorough examination of the book's issues, which center around a spiritual renewal, first of France, but more broadly of western democracies. It includes a comprehensive introduction to the issues important to understanding The Need for Roots. Also included in the appendices are a new translation of Weil's preliminary study of obligations that was meant as an introduction to her work (but always published separately) as well as a translation of an address by Free French leader Andre Philippe-an address that helped set the moral issues that Weil would come to address. The book is both a scholarly contribution to understanding Weil's book and a striking set of conversations about many of the most pressing contemporary issues surrounding the possibilities of a spiritual and moral renewal of Western norms. The ultimate point of this companion is to stress the importance of Weil's The Need for Roots. In a time of clashing ideologies, politics of identity, and a desire, somehow in all that, to find a path to community and a way of respecting all human beings, The Need for Roots is now, more than ever, a timely book and one that needs careful examination and reflection. (shrink)

Highly idealized models, such as the Hawk-Dove game, are pervasive in biological theorizing. We argue that the process and motivation that leads to the introduction of various idealizations into these models is not adequately captured by Michael Weisberg’s taxonomy of three kinds of idealization. Consequently, a fourth kind of idealization is required, which we call hypothetical pattern idealization. This kind of idealization is used to construct models that aim to be explanatory but do not aim to be explanations.

Within the modeling literature, there is often an implicit assumption about the relationship between a given model and a scientific explanation. The goal of this article is to provide a unified framework with which to analyze the myriad relationships between a model and an explanation. Our framework distinguishes two fundamental kinds of relationships. The first is metaphysical, where the model is identified as an explanation or as a partial explanation. The second is epistemological, where the model produces understanding that is (...) related to the explanation of interest. Our analysis reveals that the epistemological relationships are not always dependent on the metaphysical relationships, contrary to what has been assumed by many philosophers of science. Moreover, we identify several importantly different ways that scientific models instantiate these relationships. We argue that our framework provides novel insights concerning the nature of models, explanation, idealization, and understanding. (shrink)

This article discusses minimal model explanations, which we argue are distinct from various causal, mechanical, difference-making, and so on, strategies prominent in the philosophical literature. We contend that what accounts for the explanatory power of these models is not that they have certain features in common with real systems. Rather, the models are explanatory because of a story about why a class of systems will all display the same large-scale behavior because the details that distinguish them are irrelevant. This story (...) explains patterns across extremely diverse systems and shows how minimal models can be used to understand real systems. (shrink)

We offer an alternative to two influential accounts of virtue epistemology: Robust Virtue Epistemology and Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology. We argue that while traditional RVE does offer an explanation of the distinctive value of knowledge, it is unable to effectively deal with cases of epistemic luck; and while ALVE does effectively deal with cases of epistemic luck, it lacks RVE’s resources to account for the distinctive value of knowledge. The account we provide, however, is both robustly virtue-theoretic and anti-luck, having the (...) respective benefits of both rival accounts without their respective shortcomings. We describe this view here. (shrink)

When a patient lacks sufficient capacity to make a certain treatment decision, whether because of deficits in their ability to make a judgement that reflects their values or to make a decision that reflects their judgement or both, the decision must be made by a surrogate. Often the best way to respect the patient’s autonomy, in such cases, is for the surrogate to make a ‘substituted’ judgement on behalf of the patient, which is the decision that best reflects the patient’s (...) values and identity-infused beliefs as they were when the patient last possessed capacity. It is by now well-known that there is troubling evidence that surrogates do only slightly better than chance at making accurate substituted judgements. The use of a patient preference predictor, an algorithm that predicts patient preferences based on characteristics like the patient’s age, gender, socioeconomic status and education level, could help. Rid and Wendler have done important work making a moral case for using the PPP.1 If it were shown to enhance accuracy, it is not at all obvious what objections there could be to its use. Yet several subtle criticisms of the PPP have emerged in the literature. In their feature article, Jardas, Wasserman and Wendler select six of the most prominent objections to the PPP in the literature and defend the PPP against them.2 Along the way they make significant contributions to broader issues concerning the proper uses of statistical evidence and limits on the kinds of preferences there can be reasons of autonomy to respect. Since I found the authors’ answers to the final two objections—that the PPP relies on naked statistical evidence and that it uses non-endorsed reasons—to be especially interesting and provocative, I will examine those answers and raise a few questions about …. (shrink)

Modal epistemologists parse modal conditions on knowledge in terms of metaphysical possibilities or ways the world might have been. This is problematic. Understanding modal conditions on knowledge this way has made modal epistemology, as currently worked out, unable to account for epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths, and unable to characterise widely discussed issues such as the problem of religious diversity and the perceived epistemological problem with knowledge of abstract objects. Moreover, there is reason to think that this (...) is a congenital defect of orthodox modal epistemology. This way of characterising modal epistemology is however optional. It is shown that one can non-circularly characterise modal conditions on knowledge in terms of epistemic possibilities, or ways the world might be for the target agent. Characterising the anti-luck condition in terms of epistemic possibilities removes the impediment to understanding epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths and opens the door to using these conditions to shed new light on some longstanding epistemological problems. (shrink)

Modal ontological arguments argue from the possible existence of a perfect being to the actual (necessary) existence of a perfect being. But modal ontological arguments have a problem of symmetry; they can be run in both directions. Reverse ontological arguments argue from the possible nonexistence of a perfect being to the actual (necessary) nonexistence of a perfect being. Some familiar points about the necessary a posteriori, however, show that the symmetry can be broken in favour of the ontological argument.

The phenomenon of regression toward the mean is notoriously liable to be overlooked or misunderstood; regression fallacies are easy to commit. But even when regression phenomena are duly recognized, it remains perplexing how they can feature in explanations. This article develops a philosophical account of regression explanations as “statistically autonomous” explanations that cannot be deepened by adducing details about causal histories, even if the explananda as such are embedded in the causal structure of the world. That regression explanations have statistical (...) autonomy was first suggested by Ian Hacking and has recently been defended and elaborated by André Ariew, Yasha Rohwer, and Collin Rice. However, I will argue that these analyses fail to capture what regression’s statistical autonomy consists in and how it sets regression explanations apart from other kinds of explanation. The alternative account I develop also shows what is amiss with a recent denial of regression’s statistical autonomy. Marc Lange has argued that facts that can be explained as regression phenomena can in principle also be explained by citing a conjunction of causal histories. The account of regression explanation developed here shows that his argument is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of statistical autonomy. (shrink)

Trust not only disposes us to feel betrayed, trust can be betrayed. Understanding what a betrayal of trust is requires understanding how trust can ground an obligation on the part of the trusted person to act specifically as trusted. This essay argues that, since trust cannot ground an appropriate obligation where there is no prior obligation, a betrayal of trust should instead be conceived as the violation of a trust-based obligation to respect an already existing obligation. Two forms of trust (...) are evaluated for their potential to ground such a second-order obligation. One form counts as a gift to the trusted person only because it does not involve an expectation of trustworthiness; the other form cannot count as a gift but confers an honor because it does include an expectation of trustworthiness. Only trust that confers an honor generates a second-order obligation whose violation would be a betrayal of trust. -/- . (shrink)

Social reality is a key problem in the philosophy of social science. Outlining the major historical and contemporary issues raised by the social reality and social facts, this book has something to offer both philosophers and social scientists. To the former is shows how the well-worn topic of realism versus anti-realism assumes new and interestingly varied forms when social reality is substituted for physical reality. For the social scientist, the book offers conceptual clarification of key issues in recent social science (...) which are really philosophical issues. (shrink)

Among the various methods of deceit, lying is often thought to be a special affront on the grounds that it invites the victim’s trust. Such an explanation is incomplete without an account of the moral significance of trust. This article distinguishes two morally problematic relations to trust, betrayals and abuses, and, appealing to the idea that we should be grateful to be trusted, attempts to explain these wrongs as violations of distinct demands of gratitude for trust. Only the wrong of (...) abuse, not betrayal, is useful for distinguishing methods of deceit. Although lying commits an abuse of trust, it turns out that it is really the broader category of deceit by means of communication that is special in this way. -/- . (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism makes the case that the conjunction of evolutionary theory and naturalism cannot be rationally believed, as, if both evolutionary theory and naturalism were true, it would be highly unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable. I present Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism and survey a theory of meaning espoused by Robert Brandom, known as semantic inferentialism. I argue that if one accepts semantic inferentialism, as it is developed by Brandom, then Plantinga's motivation for the (...) evolutionary argument against naturalism is undermined. (shrink)

Deception is a useful methodological device for studying attitudes and behavior, but deceptive studies fail to fulfill the informed consent requirements in the U.S. federal regulations. This means that before they can be approved by Institutional Review Boards, they must satisfy the four regulatory conditions for a waiver or alteration of these requirements. To illustrate our interpretation, we apply the conditions to a recent study that used deception to show that subjects judged the same wine as more enjoyable when they (...) believed it had a higher price. (shrink)

In Romans 5, St. Paul claims that death came into the world through Adam's sin. Many have taken this to foist on us a fundamentalist reading of Genesis. If death is the result of human sin, then, apparently, there cannot have been death in the world prior to human sin. This, however, is inconsistent with contemporary evolutionary biology, which requires that death predates the existence of modern humans. Although the relationship between Romans 5, Genesis, and contemporary science has been much (...) discussed—often with goal of dissipating the idea that the two are in conflict—the specific issue of death entering the world through sin has remained difficult to resolve. I argue that the Eastern Orthodox tradition has the resources to respect both Romans 5 and contemporary science. Appealing to a broadly Irenaean notion of soul‐making, and to the idea of theosis, opens up space for an understanding of these passages that is both scientifically informed and Orthodox. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores how literary study engages readers’ moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of moral perception and imagination in literary study. Reading with others, the article contends, can involve an ethic focused on the good of knowing one’s ways of seeing make a difference (...) to others. The article defends social practices of reading by arguing they can broaden and complicate students’ moral perception and imagination by making students accountable to texts, one another, and the wider world. (shrink)

Do pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to expand access to investigational drugs to patients outside the clinical trial? One reason for thinking they do not is that expanded access programs might negatively affect the clinical trial process. This potential impact creates dilemmas for practitioners who nevertheless acknowledge some moral reason for expanding access. Bioethicists have explained these reasons in terms of beneficence, compassion, or a principle of rescue, but their arguments have been limited to questions of moral permissibility, leaving (...) for future research the question of whether expanded access is morally obligatory. We take up this further question and argue that pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to expand access. Our defense is not based on beneficence, compassion, or rescue, but instead on a reciprocal moral expectation resulting from existing social commitments that help ensure a robust pharmaceutical practice within the broader healthcare system. Our aim is to give this obligation, along with several others, a coherent and plausible structure within the wider clinical trial process so that one might better explain the sources of the dilemmas and their possible resolutions. (shrink)

Philosophe, l'auteur tente de resituer le mouvement de la pensée d'Hannah Arendt, ses grandes articulations et ce qui fait d'elle un auteur majeur et précurseur.

In his article, “The Strong Program and Asymmetrical Explanation of the History of Science: A Reply to Collin” (Shahryari 2022b), Shahram Shahryari responds to my comments (in Collin 2022) upon his original article, “A Tension in the Strong Program: The Relation between the Rational and the Social” (Shahryari 2022a). I believe that in this new contribution, Shahryari changes the subject as compared to our original discussion. Hence, before I comment upon his recent contribution, I want to recapitulate briefly (...) the content of that discussion. (shrink)

Despite its intrinsic plausibility, the sensitivity principle has remained deeply unpopular on the grounds that it violates an even more plausible closure principle. Here we show that sensitivity does not, in general, violate closure. Sensitivity only violates closure when combined with further auxiliary premises—regarding which of an agent’s commitments constitute that agent’s beliefs—which are optional for the sensitivity theorist.

We use recent developments within philosophy of science and within certain strands of linguistic research to throw light on each other. According to Ronald Giere's perspectivist philosophy of science, the scientific understanding of reality must proceed along different, mutually irreducible lines of approach. Giere's proposal, however, leaves unresolved the problem of how to integrate the ever‐growing multitude of highly diverse scientific accounts of what is, after all, one and the same world. We propose a technique for the alignment of different (...) perspectives that will permit cross‐perspectival explanation, and thus allow for a more holistic picture of reality to emerge. With respect to modern linguistics, however, Giere's perspectivism merely legalises a de facto state of affairs, as this discipline displays the peaceful coexistence of a multitude of different theoretical perspectives. Still, this makes it all the more important to show how the different aspects of language picked out by these different perspectives combine to form one single complex reality. During our investigation, a largely overlooked type of reduction within linguistics comes to light, prevalent in classical as well as current work within speech act theory and politeness theory. We suggest how a more holistic understanding of language can be attained through our technique for integrating different perspectives. (shrink)

Les réformes économiques néolibérales, suite à la crise financière de 1991, ont provoqué des mutations dans l’économie indienne, son développement industriel et agricole. Celles-ci ont touché l’ensemble de la population mais particulièrement, les groupes sociaux classés comme les plus vulnérables, telles que les communautés autochtones adivasi. Du point de vue des politiques publiques, ce qui caractérise les Adivasis, c’est leur désavantage économique et social. Ils font donc partie d’une catégorie sociale ciblée par différents programmes nationaux de développement et de réduction (...) de la pauvreté, notamment par l’intermédiaire du Dongria Kondh Development Agency (DKDA pour son acronyme anglais), département gouvernemental de médiation entre le gouvernement central indien et le groupe autochtone Dongria Kondh. C’est sur ce groupe que porte notre enquête anthropologique. Le présent article, dont les résultats s’appuient sur neuf mois de travail sur le terrain entre 2011 et 2015, vise à mettre en évidence la manière dont les politiques publiques nationales visant les communautés de dongria ont des impacts environnementaux et sociaux significatifs. (shrink)

La critique de la religion est pour l'essentiel terminée : voilà ce que Marx écrivait en 1843. Le début du XXIe siècle semble lui donner tort. Fondamentalistes de tous poils qui relèvent la tête veulent imposer leurs brigades des moeurs et réglementer la liberté de la parole, djihadistes qui font régner la terreur au Levant, terroristes qui manient la AK47 au nom d'Allah, camions qui foncent dans des foules pacifiques et tuent des dizaines de personnes : ceux qui pensaient que (...) nous étions définitivement entrés dans un monde désenchanté en sont pour leurs frais. Denis Collin s'inscrit dans cette tradition philosophique pour laquelle vivre sous la conduite de la raison, c'est s'émanciper de la servitude religieuse et défendre le libre esprit et le libre examen. Il s'agit donc ici de revenir aux principes afin d'examiner ce qu'il en est du fait religieux aujourd'hui et de proposer quelques lignes d'une bataille à mener sur le terrain des idées. (shrink)

This article explores the philosopher Alice Crary’s ideas about ethics, literature, and nonhuman animals. Through studying certain works of literature, Crary writes, readers can see aspects of animals’ moral characteristics that are difficult to perceive outside of literary study. To illustrate and extend Crary’s argument, the article presents a reading of John Steinbeck’s (1937/1993) Of Mice and Men, a novella that is taught frequently in secondary schools and that has been re-evaluated by critics as offering insights into social inequality and (...) animal welfare. Drawing upon and adapting Crary’s work, which does not address questions of pedagogy, the article describes forms of instruction that enable students reading Of Mice and Men and other works of literature to explore the moral lives of animals. Thus, a key contribution of this project is its explanation of how educators can use philosophy to open pedagogy to new ways of seeing and assessing animals’ moral characteristics. (shrink)

The semantic inferentialist account of the social institution of semantic meaning can be naturally extended to account for social ontology. I argue here that semantic inferentialism provides a framework within which mathematical ontology can be understood as social ontology, and mathematical facts as socially instituted facts. I argue further that the semantic inferentialist framework provides resources to underpin at least some aspects of the objectivity of mathematics, even when the truth of mathematical claims is understood as socially instituted.

In my article "berkeley's master argument" I attempt to show that an argument berkeley uses in the 'dialogues' and 'principles' to support his contention that whatever is perceivable is perceived can be seen as an illuminating attempt to relate conceptualizing, Imaging and perceiving. In consequence it cannot be dismissed as resting on an elementary fallacy, But reflects on the conditions for the self ascription of experience.

This article addresses two areas of continuing controversy about consent in clinical research: the question of when consent to low risk research is necessary, and the question of when consent to research is valid. The article identifies a number of considerations relevant to determining whether consent is necessary, chief of which is whether the study would involve subjects in ways that would (otherwise) infringe their rights. When consent is necessary, there is a further question of under what conditions consent is (...) valid or successful in waiving a right. The most influential account of validity conditions is non-moralized, in the sense that the conditions make no essential reference to whether the researcher soliciting consent has obtained it in a way that wrongs the subject. The article examines the implications of this account, and compares it with recent accounts that moralize some of the validity conditions. -/- . (shrink)

This paper examines the often overlooked parallels between the critical theory of the German Frankfurt School and Science and Technology Studies in Britain, as an attempt to articulate a critique of science as a social phenomenon. The cultural aspect of the German and British arguments is in focus, especially the role attributed to the humanities in balancing cultural and techno-scientific values in society. Here, we draw parallels between the German argument and the Two Cultures debate in Britain. The third and (...) final purpose of the paper is to explain why these efforts in support of the humanities would in the end prove fruitless, even somewhat self-defeating. The key factor is the instrumentalist analysis of science adopted in both arguments, which played into the hands of the emergent “entrepreneurial university” with its strengthened emphasis upon the economico-technological aspect of science and consequent neglect of the humanities. (shrink)

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning (...) business activity with the broader public interest . This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR. (shrink)