I argue that scientific progress is precisely the accumulation of scientific knowledge.

This paper sketches a dispositionalist conception of laws and shows how the dispositionalist should respond to certain objections. The view that properties are essentially dispositional is able to provide an account of laws that avoids the problems that face the two views of laws (the regularity and the contingent nomic necessitation views) that regard properties as categorical and laws as contingent. I discuss and reject the objections that (i) this view makes laws necessary whereas they are contingent; (ii) this view (...) cannot account for certain kinds of laws of nature and their properties. (shrink)

Dispositional monism is the view that natural properties and relations are ‘pure powers’. It is objected that dispositional monism involves some kind of vicious or otherwise unpalatable regress or circularity. I examine ways of making this objection precise. The most pressing interpretation is that is fails to make the identities of powers determinate. I demonstrate that this objection is in error. It does however puts certain constraints on what the structure of fundamental properties is like. I show what a satisfactory (...) structure would be. (shrink)

In this paper I draw a connection between Kuhn and the empiricist legacy, specifically between his thesis of incommensurability, in particular in its later taxonomic form, and van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. I show that if it is the case the empirically equivalent but genuinely distinct theories do exist, then we can expect such theories to be taxonomically incommensurable. I link this to Hacking's claim that Kuhn was a nominalist. I also argue that Kuhn and van Fraassen do not differ as (...) much as might be thought as regards the claim that observation is theory laden. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it is not a priori that all the laws of nature are contingent. I assume that the fundamental laws are contingent and show that some non-trivial, a posteriori, non-basic laws may nonetheless be necessary in the sense of having no counterinstances in any possible world. I consider a law LS (such as 'salt dissolves in water') that concerns a substance S. Kripke's arguments concerning constitution show that the existence of S requires that a certain (...) deeper level law or variants thereof hold. At the same time, that law and its variants may each entail the truth of LS. Thus the existence of S entails LS. Consequently there is no world in which S exists and fails to obey LS. I consider the conditions concerning the fundamental laws that would make this phenomenon ubiquitous. I conclude with some consequences for metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper builds on the work of several exceptional scholars from the disciplines of philosophy, law, and history. My central aim is to introduce and explicate an idea closely related to (and derivative of) the concept of rights talk, a concept I call ‘constitutional emotivism’. By drawing upon scholars including Mary Ann Glendon, Jamal Greene, A.J. Ayer, and Alasdair MacIntyre, I aim to gather the conceptual threads that I trace through their work which together form the idea of constitutional emotivism. (...) In a sentence, constitutional emotivism is the conflation of moral disagreements with constitutional rights grievances. When this conflation occurs, rights conflicts that never needed to occur in the first place reinforce rights talk and its uncompromising nature. (shrink)

Do the sciences aim to uncover the structure of nature, or are they ultimately a practical means of controlling our environment? In Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science, Alexander Rosenberg argues that while physics and chemistry can develop laws that reveal the structure of natural phenomena, biology is fated to be a practical, instrumental discipline. Because of the complexity produced by natural selection, and because of the limits on human cognition, scientists are prevented from uncovering the basic structure (...) of biological phenomena. Consequently, biology and all of the disciplines that rest upon it--psychology and the other human sciences--must aim at most to provide practical tools for coping with the natural world rather than a complete theoretical understanding of it. (shrink)

In this paper I reconstruct and evaluate the validity of two versions of causal exclusion arguments within the theory of causal Bayes nets. I argue that supervenience relations formally behave like causal relations. If this is correct, then it turns out that both versions of the exclusion argument are valid when assuming the causal Markov condition and the causal minimality condition. I also investigate some consequences for the recent discussion of causal exclusion arguments in the light of an interventionist theory (...) of causation such as Woodward's (2003) and discuss a possible objection to my causal Bayes net reconstruction. (shrink)

This book presents a concise introduction to the epistemology and methodology of the Austrian School of economics as defended by Ludwig von Mises. The author provides an innovative interpretation of Mises’ arguments in favour of the a priori truth of praxeology, the received view of which contributed to the academic marginalisation of the Austrian School. The study puts forward a unique argument that Mises – perhaps unintentionally – defends a form of conventionalism. Chapters in the book include detailed discussions of (...) individualism, historicism, epistemological positions, and essentialism. The author goes on to discuss Mises’ justification of the fundamental axiom and proposes a conventionalist interpretation. By presenting praxeology as a conventionalist research programme, the author aims to reinvigorate the interaction between the Austrian School, mainstream economics, and the philosophy of science. This comprehensive reconstruction is suitable for economists interested in the history and philosophy of their discipline, as well as for philosophers of science. (shrink)

Writing a captivating book about a bureaucrat and his statistical modelling techniques is impossible? Erwin Dekker’s biography of Jan Tinbergen proves otherwise. As he has done before, Dekker tells the history of economic thought and methodology as part and parcel of general intellectual and cultural history. Nevertheless, he never downplays or neglects the analysis of inner-scientific problem situations. Drawing on rich archival material and conversations with Tinbergen’s family, students, and colleagues, Dekker vividly introduces us to an extraordinary personality and career. (...) Tinbergen of course was so much more than a Dutch bureaucrat and Nobel Prize winning econometrician. He became a key figure in transforming the discipline of economics. Perhaps even more sweeping – and reaching far beyond academia – is Tinbergen’s re-invention of the role played by economists in the modern nation state and in the international community. Ultimately, he spearheaded a shift in the public notion of how malleable “the economy” is by conscious policy efforts – or so Dekker convincingly exhibits and critically discusses. Anybody reflecting on the proper role of scientific experts in democratic societies, may want to pick up Dekker’s entertaining and thought-provoking study. (shrink)

In this paper we develop an analysis of dispositions by means of causal Bayes nets. In particular, we analyze dispositions as cause-effect structures that increase the probability of the manifestation when the stimulus is brought about by intervention in certain circumstances. We then highlight several advantages of our analysis and how it can handle problems arising for classical analyses of dispositions such as masks, mimickers, and finks.

Damn Great Empires! offers a new perspective on the works of William James by placing his encounter with American imperialism at the center of his philosophical vision. This book reconstructs James's overlooked political thought by treating his anti-imperialist Nachlass -- his speeches, essays, notes, and correspondence on the United States' annexation of the Philippines -- as the key to unlocking the political significance of his celebrated writings on psychology, religion, and philosophy. It shows how James located a craving for authority (...) at the heart of empire as a way of life, a craving he diagnosed and unsettled through his insistence on a modern world without ultimate foundations. Livingston explores the persistence of political questions in James's major works, from his writings on the self in The Principles of Psychology to the method of Pragmatism, the study of faith and conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the metaphysical inquiries in A Pluralistic Universe. Against the conventional view of James as a thinker who remained silent on questions of politics, this book places him in dialogue with a transatlantic critique of modernity, as well as with champions and critics of American imperialism, from Theodore Roosevelt to W. E. B. Du Bois, in order to excavate James's anarchistic political vision. Bringing the history of political thought into conversation with contemporary debates in political theory, Damn Great Empires! offers a fresh and original reexamination of the political consequences of pragmatism as a public philosophy. (shrink)

Despite its centrality and its familiarity, W. V. Quine's dispute with Rudolf Carnap over the analytic/synthetic distinction has lacked a satisfactory analysis. The impasse is usually explained either by judging that Quine's arguments are in reality quite weak, or by concluding instead that Carnap was incapable of appreciating their strength. This is unsatisfactory, as is the fact that on these readings it is usually unclear why Quine's own position is not subject to some of the very same arguments. A satisfying (...) and surprising account is here presented that stiches together the puzzling pieces of this important philosophical exchange and that in turn leads to an explanation of why it is so difficult to say whether anything of substance is at stake. (shrink)

Few studies have examined how trait emotion dysregulation relates to momentary affective experiences and the emotion regulation strategies people use in daily life. In the current study, 112 c...

Mental causation is notoriously threatened by the causal exclusion argument. A prominent strategy to save mental causation from causal exclusion consists in subscribing to an interventionist account of causation. This move has, however, recently been challenged by several authors. In this paper, we do two things: We (i) develop what we consider to be the strongest version of the interventionist causal exclusion argument currently on the market and (ii) propose a new way how it can in principle be overcome. In (...) particular, we propose to replace strict supervenience in the assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical by probabilistic supervenience and show how this move has the potential to license the inference to mental causation. Finally, we argue that probabilistic supervenience captures some of the most important intuitions that strict supervenience captures and discuss possible objections to weakening strict supervenience in the way we suggest. (shrink)

Some of the greatest writers on moral philosophy have claimed that their theories about morality do not run counter to the moral views of ordinary men, but on the contrary are an elucidation of such views, or provide them with a sound philosophical underpinning. Aristotle, for example, made it quite clear that he could not take seriously a moral view that was at odds with the heritage of moral wisdom deeply imbedded in his society. His doctrine of the mean was (...) based on a philosophical consideration of such wisdom. And Immanuel Kant thought that his moral philosophy articulated the moral views of ordinary men. (shrink)

The paper examines the political ideas of founding figures of West German political science by engaging with formative texts from the post-war period of neo-Aristotelian (Dolf Sternberger and Siegfried Landshut), Critical Theory (Arcadius R.L. Gurland and Franz L. Neumann), ordoliberal (Alexander Rüstow) and catholic (Ferdinand Hermens) perspective. It is argued that these early German political scientists coincided in the diagnosis of living in a thoroughly politicized post-liberal age. They rejected the separation between empirical and normative political science and (...) devised heterogeneous disciplinary approaches that can be classified as republican, power-realist, and expertocratic. Although democracy was an important point of reference for some of them, it is not tenable, contrary to older historiography and contemporary self-image, to describe early West-German political science as a Demokratiewissenschaft (science of democracy) in overall terms. (shrink)

What exactly do social scientists and biologists say when they make causal claims? This question is one of the central puzzles in philosophy of science. Alexander Reutlinger sets out to answer this question. He aims to provide a theory of causation in the special sciences (that is, a theory causation in the social sciences, the biological sciences and other higher-level sciences). According one recent prominent view, causation is that causation is intimately tied to manipulability and the possibility of intervene. (...) Reutlinger's main negative target is to argue interventionist account of causation is not adequate. Where do interventionist accounts go wrong? Reutlinger argues that the central concept of the interventionist theories – that is, the very concept of an intervention – is tremendously problematic. Reutlinger's main positive claim consists in replacing the interventionist approach by an alternative explication of causation in the special sciences, the comparative variability theory of causation. This alternative preserves many insights of the interventionist account without a commitment to the claim that causation and interventions are intimately tied together. (shrink)

In 2009 Larry Alexander and Kimberly Ferzan published Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law. The book set out a theory that those who deserve punishment should receive punishment commensurate with, but no greater than, that which they deserve. Reflections on Crime and Culpability: Problems and Puzzles expands on their innovative ideas on the application of punishment in criminal law. Theorists working in criminal law theory presuppose or ignore puzzles that lurk beneath the surface. Now those who wish (...) to examine these topics will have one monograph that combines the disparate puzzles in criminal law through a unified approach to culpability. Along with some suggestions as to how they might resolve the puzzles, Alexander and Ferzan lay out the arguments and analysis so future scholars can engage with questions about our understanding of culpability that very few have addressed. (shrink)

One of the most distinctive features of Fear and Trembling is Kierkegaard’s use of narrative variations in order to isolate, develop, and highlight the relevant features of his principal theme, the story of Abraham and Isaac, especially Abraham’s final test of faith. The book begins with a preface and ends with an epilogue; immediately within these, Kierkegaard has his pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, provide such variations in the “Attunement” or Stemning, just following the Preface, and in Problema III, just before (...) the Epilogue. What is the purpose of these narrative variations? How are they intended to prepare the reader to understand Abraham? How, in short, do they clarify the nature and difficulty of faith? I argue, on the basis of the account of "mood" given in Concept of Anxiety, that the variations of the Attunement function to modulate the "mood" of the work by converting a fixed narrative into a possibility field, thereby giving the work a mood of anguish or anxiety rather than a detached or scholarly mood, while the variations of Problema III function to callapse this mood into interested admiration. I conclude with some remarks about what this suggests for a reader that wishes to "go further" than Johannes de Silentio. (shrink)

We extend Gurevich-Harrington's Restricted Memory Determinacy Theorem), which served in their paper as a tool to give their celebrated “short proof” of Robin's decision method for S2S. We generalize the determinacy problem by attaching to the game two opposing strategies called restraints, and by asking “which player has a strategy which is a refinement of the restraint for the player and such that it wins the game against the restraint of the opponent?” We give a solution for the Determinacy with (...) Restraints Problem in the class of strategies with restricted memory for the GH games. The solution includes a criterion for the winning player and an explicit class of winning strategies. A determinacy result which includes similar information was first discovered by Büchi and Landweber and extended by Büchi . However, these pioneering works do not consider the determinacy with restraints. Also, the explicit presentation of winning strategies in these insightful papers does not emphasize their modular construction as do GH's and our proofs. In our view, this is a source of a difficulty in understanding these papers. Games with restraints and modular construction of winning strategies have applications to the semantics, development and verification of concurrent programs. A concurrent program can be viewed as a strategy in a certain game and a program specification can be regarded as a combination of a winning condition and restraints for the game , A. Yakhnis and V. Yakhnis ). The modularity of a winning strategyfor the game helps to generate a concurrent program from the strategy that satisfies the specification ). It turns out that such program specification requirements as mutual exclusion and an absence of a lockout or a deadlock are naturally represented as Büchi's or Gurevich-Harrington's winning conditions. The present paper can be read independently of the paper by Gurevich and Harrington. (shrink)

In a homogeneous jury, the votes are exchangeable correlated Bernoulli random variables. We derive the bounds on a homogeneous jury’s competence as the minimum and maximum probability of the jury being correct, which arise due to unknown correlations among the votes. The lower bound delineates the downside risk associated with entrusting decisions to the jury. In large and not-too-competent juries the lower bound may fall below the success probability of a fair coin flip—one half, while the upper bound may not (...) reach a certainty. We also derive the bounds on the voting power of an individual juror as the minimum and maximum probability of her/his casting a decisive vote. The maximum is less than one, while the minimum of zero can be attained for infinitely many combinations of distribution moments. (shrink)

Gerard of Abbeville's inception speech, which he delivered during the 1250s as a graduating master in theology at the University of Paris, stands out among the extant principia. While many thirteenth-century inception speeches drew clear distinctions between philosophy and theology, and metaphysics and revealed theology in particular, Gerard - who was the foremost secular master of his day - adopted a different strategy in order to establish the preeminence of theology with regard to all other sciences. Consciously avoiding to pit (...) theology against philosophy, he proposed to redefine the relations between both within the conceptual frame of sapiential knowledge. The article analyses how Gerard argues in favor of a supreme wisdom, capable of accommodating Aristotle's first philosophy and Christian theology. Showing that Gerard's approach did not remain uncontested, it traces the remarkable influence of his principium. (shrink)

Überwindet Technik das unheimlich Unbeherrschbare? Oder wird sie uns selbst unheimlich? Zwei scheinbar widersprüchliche Narrative prägen die Geschichte und auch die Theorie der Technik: Das Narrativ der Entzauberung beschreibt, wie eine als fremd und gefährlich erfahrene Natur durch Verwissenschaftlichung und Technisierung gezähmt wurde. Das Narrativ der Verzauberung schildert, wie uns Artefakte und technologische Möglichkeiten unheimlich werden, insbesondere wenn sie sich zu verselbständigen scheinen oder mit „autonomem“ Eigensinn gegenübertreten. In den heutigen Debatten um selbstlernende, ubiquitär verteilte, im Assistenzmodus unsichtbare, dabei opake (...) Techniken schwingt das unheimliche Moment einer „Verselbständigung“ von Technik mit – und trägt im Anschluss an die Mechanisierungs- und Automatisierungsdiskurse des 20. Jahrhunderts zur „Dämonisierung“ der Technik bei. Technik macht Welt einerseits vertraut und nachvollziehbar: Paradigmatisch wird dies in der Idee, dass etwas dann verstanden wird, wenn es technisch rekonstruiert werden kann. Andererseits wird die technische Reproduktion von Welt – oder deren radikale Umgestaltung zu einer entfremdeten – als etwas Verstörendes erlebt. Spätestens, wenn Artefakte zu tun scheinen, „was sie wollen“ oder technische Großsysteme die Lebenswelt nach ihren „Eigenlogiken“ prägen, ist eine schon von Freud benannte Grenze erreicht, an der wir verunsichert werden, ob wir überhaupt noch in der modernen Welt leben. (shrink)

Das Bild vom glaubwürdigen Wissenschaftler? vom Universalgelehrten der Renaissance zu modernen Laborspezialist*innen - ist ein kulturelles Konstrukt, das die Ansprüche seiner Zeit widerspiegelt. Wie es entsteht, wird im Galvanismusdiskurs um 1800 deutlich.Dieser Band beschäftigt sich mit den Fragen: Wer gilt um 1800 als Naturwissenschaftler? Wie findet man als junger Forscher Aufnahme in die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft? Und worin manifestieren sich die wissenschaftskulturellen Unterschiede in Deutschland und Großbritannien zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts? Anhand der frühen Publikationen der jungen aufstrebenden Naturforscher Alexander (...) von Humboldt, Johann Wilhelm Ritter und Christian Heinrich Pfaff sowie ihrer britischen Kollegen untersucht der Autor die Konstruktion vom modernen Naturwissenschaftler durch die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft. (shrink)

Causal Bayes nets (CBNs) can be used to model causal relationships up to whole mechanisms. Though modelling mechanisms with CBNs comes with many advantages, CBNs might fail to adequately represent some biological mechanisms because—as Kaiser (2016) pointed out—they have problems with capturing relevant spatial and structural information. In this paper we propose a hybrid approach for modelling mechanisms that combines CBNs and cellular automata. Our approach can incorporate spatial and structural information while, at the same time, it comes with all (...) the merits of a CBN representation of mechanisms. (shrink)

How do words mean? What is the nature of meaning? How can we grasp a word's meaning? The frame-semantic approach developed in this book offers some well-founded answers to such long-standing, but still controversial issues. Following Charles Fillmore's definition of frames as both organizers of experience and tools for understanding, the monograph attempts to examine one of the most important concepts of Cognitive Linguistics in more detail. The point of departure is Fillmore's conception of "frames of understanding" - an approach (...) to (cognitive) semantics that Fillmore developed from 1975 to 1985. The envisaged Understanding Semantics ("U-Semantics") is a semantic theory sui generis whose significance for linguistic research cannot be overestimated. In addition to its crucial role in the development of the theoretical foundations of U-semantics, corpus-based frame semantics can be applied fruitfully in the investigation of knowledge-building processes in text and discourse. (shrink)

The scaling of body parts is central to the evolution of morphology and shape. Most traits scale proportionally with each other and body size such that larger adults are essentially magnified versions of smaller ones. This pattern is so ubiquitous that departures from it – disproportionate scaling between trait and body size – pique interest because it can generate dramatically exaggerated traits. These extreme morphologies are frequently hypothesized to result from sexual selection and their study has a long history, with (...) several hypotheses seeking to explain their evolution. Despite this effort, surprisingly little progress has been made in demonstrating the forms of selection that produce different scaling patterns or in identifying the mechanisms that underlie the expression and evolution of scaling relationships. Here we review recent insights regarding the proximate mechanisms that regulate and integrate trait growth and that offer a new framework for studying the evolution of morphological scaling. (shrink)

Jacques Rancière, in his essay ‘Are Some Things Unrepresentable?’, puts forth a challenge that is ever more pertinent to our times. What constitutes the unrepresentable today? Rancière frames his answer in a very specific way: the question of unrepresentability leads directly to the way in which political violence may or may not be put into an image. Offering an alternative to Rancière’s approach, the present article turns instead to the information society, asking if and how something might be unrepresentable in (...) a world saturated by data and information. Thus one approaches the issue of transparency and secrecy here from the perspective of the relative perspicuity of data visualization. Two theses structure the argument, first that ‘data have no necessary visual form’ and, second, that ‘only one visualization has ever been made of an information network’. The tension between these two theses leads to a disconcerting conclusion, that the triumph of information aesthetics precipitates a decline in informatic perspicuity. One is obligated therefore to call for a strong reinvigoration of poetics and hermeneutics within the digital universe, so that representation as such can take place, perhaps for the first time. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende generar claridades sobre el planteamiento sistémico, llevado a los universos de la escuela y la familia. Se plantean lugares de encuentro entre estos dos sistemas interconexionados por el pensamiento sistémico y la comunicación, rescatando que la escuela y la familia han sido determinantes en la configuración de subjetividades y sociedades. Estas reflexiones permiten concluir que las manifestaciones recíprocas de la familia y la escuela esculpen maneras de ser y de estar en el mundo.

The recent proposition to eliminate eponyms from physical publications is discussed. The role of eponyms in research and education is analyzed. We show that eponyms constitute an integral part of physical texts and ensure the continuity of scientific research. Their proposed elimination is dangerous for science and the entire human culture and must be rejected.

This paper focuses on Gundissalinus’s particularly important contribution to metaphysics which it presents in three steps: firstly, a succinct overview of the history of the relevant metaphysical terminology from the Late Ancient period to the Middle Ages shows how, for the first time, Gundissalinus interpreted metaphysics as the name of a discipline ; in a second step, the paper analyzes the specific epistemological foundation of metaphysics as an autonomous science, namely as ontology, in the chapter on metaphysics in Gundissalinus’s De (...) divisione philosophiae, paying particular attention to his criticism of twelfth-century theology as this was developed in the School of Chartres; thirdly, the paper examines a crucial text from the treatise on the division of the sciences: in it, Gundissalinus included an otherwise unknown translation of a passage from Avicenna’s Book of Demonstration which discusses the thorny issue of the subordination of the philosophical disciplines to metaphysics. This subject is one which would continue to receive plenty of attention in later times, as the examples of Robert Kilwardby and John Duns Scotus demonstrate, both of which authors may be considered to have continued Gundissalinus’s metaphysical project. (shrink)