The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

SummaryThe main argument for scientific realism is that our present theories in science are so successful empirically that they can't have got that way by chance ‐ instead they must somehow have latched onto the blueprint of the universe. The main argument against scientific realism is that there have been enormously successful theories which were once accepted but are now regarded as false. The central question addressed in this paper is whether there is some reasonable way to have the (...) class='Hi'>best of both worlds: to give the argument from scientific revolutions its full weight and yet still adopt some sort of realist attitude towards presently accepted theories in physics and elsewhere. I argue that there is such a way ‐ through structural realism, a position adopted by Poincare, and here elaborated and defended. (shrink)

Although discussions of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice generally refer to Rawls’ two principles of justice, and although Rawls himself labels his principles “the two principles of justice”, Rawls actually sets forth three distinct principles in the following lexical order: the liberty principle, the fair equality of opportunity principle, and the difference principle. Rawls argues at some length for the priority of the liberty principle over the other two. On the other hand, Rawls offers hardly any argument at (...) all for the priority of the fair equality of opportunity principle over the difference principle. In this article I will argue that making the fair equality of opportunity principle separate from and lexically prior to the difference principle is both intuitively unattractive and inconsistent with Rawls’ method of deriving principles of justice from the choices of rational contractors in the original position. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument for realism and the pessimistic meta-induction for anti-realism pull in opposite directions. Structural Realism---the position that the mathematical structure of mature science reflects reality---relieves this tension.

Controversies about optimality models and adaptationist methodologies have animated the discussions of evolutionary theory in recent years. The sociobiologists, following the lead of E. O. Wilson, have argued that if Darwinian natural selection can be reliably expected to produce the best possible type of organism - one that optimizes the value of its genetic contribution to future generations - then evolution becomes a powerfully predictive theory as well as an explanatory one. The enthusiastic claims of the sociobiologists for the (...) predictability and applicability that the optimalist approach engenders have been met with severe criticism by Richard C. Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould, and other biologists and philosophers of biology. These original essays take up both sides of the controversy over the role of optimality models in evolutionary biology, providing a refreshingly insightful and balanced discussion of optimality issues by an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers of biology, biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and an economist. They focus on the current state of adaptationist and optimalist methodology in evolutionary theory, and on the possibility of extending such methodology to the human sciences, especially those of psychology and anthropology. Introduction / John Dupre -- Part 1. Methodological questions. Simple models of complex phenomena: the case of cultural evolution / Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd -- Natural selection and the null hypothesis / John Beatty -- Why not the best? / Philip Kitcher -- Part 2. Evolution and optimality. What is adaptationism? / Elliot Sober -- How to model evolution / John Maynard Smith -- Comments on Maynard Smith’s "How to Model Evolution" / Elliot Sober -- Reply to Sober / John Maynard Smith -- The shape of optimality / Richard C. Lewontin -- Part 3. Applications. Evolutionary ecology and the optimality assumption / John M. Emlen -- Optimality theory and behavior / John E.R. Staddon -- Part 4. Applications to human behavior. Optimization theory in anthropology: applications and critiques / Eric Alden Smith -- Evolution of a mesh between principles of the mind and regularities of the world / Roger N. Shepard -- From evolution to behavior: evolutionary psychology as the missing link / Leda Cosmides and John Tooby -- On the emotions as guarantors of threats and promises / Jack Hirschleifer -- Human kinds / John Dupre. (shrink)

This article provides an understanding and defence of ‘best interests’. The analysis is performed in the context of, and is informed by, English law. The understanding that develops allows for differences in values, and is thus argued to be appropriate in a pluralist liberal system. When understood properly, it is argued, best interests provides the best means of decision-making for people deemed incompetent to decide for themselves. It is accepted that some commentators are cynical of best (...) interests in practice. Following an assessment of some of their principal concerns, it is suggested that best interests in fact provides a construct that is both defensible and desirable. (shrink)

The book is a defence of scientific realism. Its primary aim is to argue that it is possible to establish scientific realism without Inference to the Best Explanation. The idea that plays the central role in the book is an "Eddington-inference". Arthur Eddington once considered a hypothetical ichthyologist who concluded from the fact that his net contained no fish smaller than the holes in his net that there were in the sea no fish smaller than the holes in his (...) net. Although Eddington himself defended the inference, the author of the present volume argues on probabilistic grounds that it is likely such an inference is flawed. He generalises the argument to develop a probabilistic justification for scientific realist claims about the existence of unobservable entities. (shrink)

John Dewey’s pragmatism and naturalism are grounded on metaphysical tenets describing how mind’s intelligence is thoroughly natural in its activity and productivity. His worldview is best classified as Organic Realism, since it descended from the German organicism and Naturphilosophie of Herder, Schelling, and Hegel which shaped the major influences on his early thought. Never departing from its tenets, his later philosophy starting with Experience and Nature elaborated a philosophical organon about science, culture, and ethics to fulfill his particular (...) version of Organic Realism. (shrink)

David Lewis's best-system analysis of laws of nature is perhaps the best known sophisticated regularity theory of laws. Its strengths are widely recognized, even by some of its ablest critics. Yet it suffers from what appears to be a glaring weakness: It seems to grant an arbitrary privilege to the standards of our own scientific culture. I argue that by reformulating, or reinterpreting, Lewis's exposition of the best-system analysis, we arrive at a view that is free of (...) this weakness. The resulting theory of laws has the surprising consequence that the term "law of nature" is indexical. (shrink)

Earthcare: Readings and Cases in Environmental Ethics presents a diverse collection of writings from a variety of authors on environmental ethics, environmental science, and the environmental movement overall. Exploring a broad range of world views, religions and philosophies, David W. Clowney and Patricia Mosto bring together insightful thoughts on the ethical issues arising in various areas of environmental concern.

What should be the Christian's attitude toward society? When so much of our contemporary culture is at odds with Christian beliefs and mores, it may seem that serious Christians now have only two choices: transform society completely according to Christian values or retreat into the cloister of sectarian fellowship. In this book, John Stackhouse argues that, rather than trying to root up the weeds in the cultural field, or trying to shun them, Christians should practice persistence in gardening God's (...) world and building toward the New Jerusalem. (shrink)

August 16, 1997 David Lewis2 has long defended an account of scientific law acceptable even to an empiricist with significant metaphysical scruples. On this account, the laws are defined to be the consequences of the best system for axiomitizing all occurrent fact. Here "best system" means the set of sentences which yields the best combination of strength of descriptive content 3 with simplicity of exposition. And occurrent facts, the facts to be systematized, are roughly the particular facts (...) about a localized space-time region that are non-modal, non-dispositional, and non-causal. Scientists providing or attempting to provide laws are plausibly seen as giving general principles that unify a body of data. Thus they organize or systematize the arrangement of occurrences. For this reason, Lewis's account has the important merits of providing contact with actual scientific practice while making sense of the standard philosophical conception that laws should be general but more than mere accidental generalizations. However, Lewis has long known about a potential problem with this account, a problem involving chance and credence.4 In a recent series of articles he, Michael Thau, and Ned Hall have developed a new formulation of the relationship between chance and credence which solves the problem. However, I will argue that these articles leave untouched and even exacerbate a closely related and more fundamental problem with the best system account, the problem of nomic necessity. Laws are supposed to be more than true; in some sense they must be true. Yet a principle's membership in the best systematization for one world seems to say nothing about its necessity, i.e., its truth at other worlds. I close by briefly describing how an alternative empiricist account may remove both problems. (shrink)

Given Quine's views on philosophical methodology, he should not have taken the axioms of classical mereology to be "self-evident", or "analytic"; but rather, he should have set out to justify them by what might be broadly called an "inference to the best explanation". He does very little to this end. In particular, he does little to examine alternative theories, to see if there might be anything they could explain better than classical mereology can. I argue that there is something (...) important that needs to be explained, namely, the way that properties "travel around in clusters" (eg. we often know that "when and where there is something with such-and-such property, there is also something with so-and-so other property", and so on). I argue that these clusterings of properties can be given various subtle (broadly "commonsense") explanations using a version of mereology that denies the classical axiom of "extensionality" (that is, denying that two distinct things must have distinct parts). I offer a challenge to the Quinean metaphysics: to show that these "non-extensional" explanations can be replaced by better explanations that use only classical, extensional mereology and set theory. (shrink)

John Evelyn (1620-1706) is best remembered for Sylva - his magnum opus - and his Diary . Alongside Pepys' diary, Evelyn's is as well known now as anything else written in their time. A connoisseur of architecture, painting, music, coins, and sermons, Evelyn was renowned for his practical knowledge on horticulture and arboriculture, and he was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society. His Diary begins with an account of his early life and travels in Europe. (...) In addition to his own jottings of events, Evelyn drew on contemporary newspapers and pamphlets. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the lawfulness of a proposal to provide elective ventilation to incompetent patients who are potential organ donors. Under the current legal framework, this depends on whether the best interests test could be satisfied. It might be argued that, because the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (UK) (and the common law) makes it clear that the best interests test is not confined to the patient's clinical interests, but extends to include the individual's own values, wishes (...) and beliefs, the proposal will be in the patient's best interests. We reject this claim. We argue that, as things currently stand, the proposal could not lawfully be justified as a blanket proposition by reference to the best interests test. Accordingly, a modification of the law would be necessary to render the proposal lawful. We conclude with a suggestion about how that could be achieved. (shrink)

Few contemporary philosophers have made as wide-ranging and insightful a contribution to philosophical debate as John Cottingham. This collection brings together friends, colleagues and former students of Cottingham, to discuss major themes of his work on moral philosophy. Presented in three parts the collection focuses on the debate on partiality, impartiality and character; the role of emotions and reason in the good life; the meaning of a worthwhile life and the place of theistic considerations in it. The original contributions (...) to this volume celebrate Cottingham’s work by embracing and furthering his arguments and, at times, in the best spirit of philosophical engagement, challenging and confronting them. The volume concludes with Cottingham’s specially commissioned responses to the contributions. (shrink)

The debate over compensation packages for top executives is discussed. Particular emphasis is placed on the decoupling of CEO pay and organizational performance. A contrast is drawn between firms that are owner-controlled and those that are manager-controlled. Owner-controlled firms tend to be more market-driven. In manager-controlled firms, however, ownership can become diluted to the point where decisions may not always be in the best interest of shareholders. The process of determining CEO compensation packages is examined, and special attention is (...) given to the handling of stock options. In order to stem the threat of increased government intervention, suggestions are made for increasing the leverage of compensation committees and of shareholders in general. (shrink)

(Tye 2006) presents us with the following scenario: John and Jane are both stan- dard human visual perceivers (according to the Ishihara test or the Farnsworth test, for example) viewing the same surface of Munsell chip 527 in standard conditions of visual observation. The surface of the chip looks “true blue” to John (i.e., it looks blue not tinged with any other colour to John), and blue tinged with green to Jane.¹ Tye then in effect poses a (...) multiple choice question. (shrink)

Sir John Hicks is one of the most important and influential economists of the twentieth century. Awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1972, he has made contributions across a wide range of economic theory, writing some twenty books. Arguably the most important of these, _Value and Capital_, is seen as the roots of modern microeconomics and general equilibrium theory. Hicks possessed an unusual ability to synthesize the ideas of other economists – something that is evident in his invention (...) of the ‘IS-LM’ diagram to expound Keynes’ General Theory, and is perhaps what he is best known to present day economists for. This two volume set is the second collection on Hicks in this series and includes new assessments of his contributions, covering the last fifteen years. With a new introduction by the editor, this comprehensive and scholarly collection provides students and scholars immediate access to Sir John Hicks’ contributions. (shrink)

Sir John Hicks is one of the highest-regarded contemporary economists, and it is fitting that the new series of _Critical Assessments of Contemporary Economists_ should commence with his work. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1972, Sir John Hicks’ work is extremely wide-ranging, with the list of topics reading almost like an agenda for the whole of modern economics: general equilibrium theory, welfare economics, problems of index numbers, trade cycles, wages and many others. He may, however, be (...) best known to present day economists for having introduced IS-LM curves, now a standard means of Keynesian analysis. A comprehensive, scholarly work, this four-volume set gives students of economics and economic thought immediate access to Sir John Hicks' contributions and shows how his work has been received and modified by others. (shrink)

Linking theses of Plato, Wittgenstein, and Weber, section I argues that identification of central cases and settling of focal meanings depend upon the theorist's purpose and, in the case of theory about human affairs—theory adequately attentive to the four irreducible orders in which human persons live and act—upon the purposes for which we intelligibly and intelligently act. Among these purposes, primacy is to be accorded to purposes which are, as best the theorist can judge, reasonable and fit to be (...) adopted by anyone, the theorist included. Section II defends the reasonableness of practical and moral judgments, against Michael Perry's ultimately nihilist claims that egoism's challenge to moral normativity has gone unanswered and that “reason for A” does not entail “reason for” anyone else. Section III takes up Steven Smith's suggestion that such subjectivism is encouraged by the talk in Natural Law and Natural Rights of “pursuing goods,” talk which is individualistic and neglectful of persons, inimical to an understanding of friendship, and impotent in the face of egoism. Here as elsewhere the key is to grasp that understanding any basic or intrinsic human good is to understand it as good for anyone like me and thus—since as I instantiate and embody a universal, viz. human being—as a good common to anyone and everyone. Section IV argues that common good gives reason for exercise and acceptance of authority, and for allegiance, even in time of breakdown. Section V argues that natural law theory is no more dependent on affirming God's existence than any other theory is, in any of the four orders of theory, but equally that is not safe for atheists. For, like any other sound theory, it suggests and is consistent with questions and answers about its grounds, in this case about the source of its normativity and of the human nature that its normative universals presuppose and affirm; and the answers are those argued for, too abstemiously, in the last chapter of NLNR and, more adequately, in the equivalent chapter of Aquinas. (shrink)

The present research seeks to better understand research conditions in laboratory research, with special attention paid to the informed consent process and experimenter characteristics. The first study tested the impact of language perspective and experimenter demeanor upon participant retention of the informed consent information, attitudes toward the research project, and performance on experimental tasks. The second study examined the impact of experimenter attire. Across the two studies, our results suggest that there was no impact of language perspective, whereas the number (...) of other participants in the laboratory, experimenter attire, and experimenter demeanor influence participant behaviors in the laboratory. (shrink)

John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is among the most important books in philosophy ever written. It is a difficult work dealing with many themes, including the origin of ideas; the extent and limits of human knowledge; the philosophy of perception; and religion and morality. This volume focuses on the last two topics and provides a clear and insightful survey of these overlooked aspects of Locke's best-known work. Four eminent Locke scholars present authoritative discussions of Locke's view on (...) the ethics of belief, personal identity, free will and moral theory. (shrink)

Reams of empirical studies and a century or two of social theory have noticed that modernity produces increasingly shallow and instrumental relationships. Where bonds of mutuality, based on face-to-face connection, once survived, we now tend to exist in a depthless, dematerialized technoculture. This is the trajectory of industrial mass society: not transcending itself through technology, but instead becoming ever more fully realized. In this context, it is striking to note that the original usage of “virtual” was as the adjectival form (...) of “virtue.” Virtual reality (VR) is not only the creation of a narcissistic subculture; it represents a much wider…. (shrink)