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  1.  45
    Gravity and Newton’s Substance Counting Problem.Hylarie Kochiras - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (3):267-280.
    A striking feature of Newton’s thought is the very broad reach of his empiricism, potentially extending even to immaterial substances, including God, minds, and should one exist, a non-perceiving immaterial medium. Yet Newton is also drawn to certain metaphysical principles—most notably the principle that matter cannot act where it is not—and this second, rationalist feature of his thought is most pronounced in his struggle to discover ‘gravity’s cause’. The causal problem remains vexing, for he neither invokes primary causation, nor accepts (...)
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  2. Spiritual Presence and Dimensional Space beyond the Cosmos.Hylarie Kochiras - 2012 - Intellectual History Review 22 (1):41-68.
    This paper examines connections between concepts of space and extension on the one hand and immaterial spirits on the other, specifically the immanentist concept of spirits as present in rerum natura. Those holding an immanentist concept, such as Thomas Aquinas, typically understood spirits non-dimensionally as present by essence and power; and that concept was historically linked to holenmerism, the doctrine that the spirit is whole in every part. Yet as Aristotelian ideas about extension were challenged and an actual, infinite, dimensional (...)
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  3.  37
    Gravity’s cause and substance counting: contextualizing the problems.Hylarie Kochiras - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1):167-184.
    This paper considers Newton’s position on gravity’s cause, both conceptually and historically. With respect to the historical question, I argue that while Newton entertained various hypotheses about gravity’s cause, he never endorsed any of them, and in particular, his lack of confidence in the hypothesis of robust and unmediated distant action by matter is explained by an inclination toward certain metaphysical principles. The conceptual problem about gravity’s cause, which I identified earlier along with a deeper problem about individuating substances, is (...)
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  4. The Mechanical Philosophy and Newton’s Mechanical Force.Hylarie Kochiras - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (4):557-578.
    How does Newton approach the challenge of mechanizing gravity and, more broadly, natural philosophy? By adopting the simple machine tradition’s mathematical approach to a system’s co-varying parameters of change, he retains natural philosophy’s traditional goal while specifying it in a novel way as the search for impressed forces. He accordingly understands the physical world as a divinely created machine possessing intrinsically mathematical features, and mathematical methods as capable of identifying its real features. The gravitational force’s physical cause remains an outstanding (...)
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  5.  73
    Newton and the mechanical philosophy: Gravitation as the balance of the heavens.Peter Machamer, J. E. Mcguire & Hylarie Kochiras - 2012 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):370-388.
    We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was defined by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophy's slogan “matter and motion” in reference (...)
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  6. Locke's Philosophy of Science.Hylarie Kochiras - 2009 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This article examines questions connected with the two features of Locke's intellectual landscape that are most salient for understanding his philosophy of science: (1) the profound shift underway in disciplinary boundaries, in methodological approaches to understanding the natural world, and in conceptions of induction and scientific knowledge; and (2) the dominant scientific theory of his day, the corpuscular hypothesis. Following the introduction, section 2 addresses questions connected to changing conceptions of scientific knowledge. What does Locke take science (scientia) and scientific (...)
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  7. Causal Language and the Structure of Force in Newton’s System of the World.Hylarie Kochiras - 2013 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 3 (2):210-235.
    Although Newton carefully eschews questions about gravity’s causal basis in the published Principia, the original version of his masterwork’s third book contains some intriguing causal language. “These forces,” he writes, “arise from the universal nature of matter.” Such remarks seem to assert knowledge of gravity’s cause, even that matter is capable of robust and distant action. Some commentators defend that interpretation of the text—a text whose proper interpretation is important since Newton’s reasons for suppressing it strongly suggest that he continued (...)
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  8. Belief Contexts and Epistemic Possibility.Hylarie Kochiras - 2006 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 10 (1):1-20.
    Although epistemic possibility figures in several debates, those debates have had relatively little contact with one another. G. E. Moore focused squarely upon analyzing epistemic uses of the phrase, ‘It’s possible that p’, and in doing so he made two fundamental assumptions. First, he assumed that epistemic possibility statements always express the epistemic position of a community, as opposed to that of an individual speaker. Second, he assumed that all epistemic uses of ‘It’s possible that p’ are analyzable in terms (...)
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  9.  23
    (1 other version)Freud Said – or Simon Says? Informed consent and the advancement of psychoanalysis as a science.Hylarie Kochiras - 2006 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 9 (2):227-241.
    Is it ever permissible to publish a patient’s confidences without permission? I investigate this question for the field of psychoanalysis. Whereas most medical fields adopted a 1995 recommendation for consent requirements, psychoanalysis continues to defend the traditional practice of nonconsensual publication. Both the hermeneutic and the scientific branches of the field justify the practice, arguing that it provides data needed to help future patients, and both branches advance generalizations and causal claims. However the hermeneutic branch embraces methods tending to undermine (...)
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  10.  17
    Belief Worlds and Epistemic Possibilities.Hylarie Kochiras - 1998 - The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 45:144-149.
    This paper develops an individualistic, belief-based account for a limited class of epistemic possibility statements. Section I establishes the need for such an account by reviewing a recent version of the majority view and contesting two key assumptions. I argue that some epistemic possibilities are belief-based-contra the assumption that all are knowledge-based. Against the assumption that all epistemic possibility statements are analyzable in terms of the speaker's "relevant community," I contend that the truth value of some statements is a function (...)
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  11.  11
    Newton’s General Scholium and the Mechanical Philosophy.Hylarie Kochiras - unknown
    This article pursues two objectives through a close reading of Newton’s 1713 General Scholium. First, it examines his relationship to the canonical mechanical philosophy, including his response to criticism of his own theory that that canonical philosophy’s requirements motivated. Second, it presents an interpretation of Newton’s own mechanical philosophy, glimpsed in draft material for the General Scholium: he takes the natural world to be a machine operating by causal principles that arise only within systems and that require mathematical methods because (...)
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