Back cover: This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. (...) Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author’s analysis of reductive explanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in the philosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reduction becomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the concept of a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results of these five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases her final chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation. (shrink)

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures. Re-orientation is also needed by the relevant sciences, traditionally siloed in their disciplines (...) and without adequate attention paid to how the food system problem is variously framed by diverse stakeholders according to their values. From the transdisciplinary perspective of food ethics, we argue that a post-pandemic scheme focused on bottom-up, regional, cross-sectoral and non-partisan deliberation may provide the re-orientation and benchmarks needed for not only more sustainable, but also more ethical food futures. (shrink)

The mind is not structured anatomically, as emphasized by modern pathology. Instead, it is expanded as a whole in a subtle form behind the physical body. In the Indian system of medical philosophy, the mind is considered as the astral nerves made third body, which identified as the ‘Manomaya-sharira’ (subconscious mind). The mind is composed of millions of astralnadis, through which Pranic-energies circulate freely into the astral anatomy of mind. Seven-chakras are found parallel to the spine, serving as the major (...) seven innovation centres in the body. These Chakras facilitate the connection of the mind with the seven dimensions of the inner world. From these dimensions the Pranic-energies including Sattva, Raja, Tama are exported to the mind and its Nadi-tantras, influencing both the outer and inner subconscious minds. Subsequently, these elements, viz., Sattva, Raja and Tama are thrown from the mind to the outer world through the seven sense organs, manifesting as either constructive or destructive activities. Thus the mind exists due to ‘Prana’, (energy of Omkara) which increases through deeper meditation, sound sleep, and breathing exercises (O2). The positional behaviour of the mind shifts according to the physical and mental temperament, namely Triguna and Tridosha, or Panchavikara. The negative energy (Tama-guna) of the fourth dimension enters the astral Nadis-system of the mind via the interspace of the solar plexus, which crushes the mind’s structures, and consequently, all the Chakras are corrupted and the Nadis are blocked, so it generates a break in the circulation of ‘Prana’ into the Nadis. As a result, many socio-economic challenges and psychosomatic disorders occur. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Marja Heimonen, “Justifying the Right to Music Education”Hermann J. KaiserFirst of all I would like to thank Marja Heimonen for her paper on a central problem not only for music education as practice but also for the theory of music education. She gives a very clear and convincing answer to a permanently irritating question: How do we justify music education within an ensemble of competing subjects (...) struggling to get a place within the school curriculum. And she does it in a rather uncommon way, that is, by means of legal philosophy. I think her arguments provoke several questions worthy of serious discussion. Some of these questions I shall try to indicate.The first question relates to the right to (music) education. Referring to the Nordic countries she states, "Their legal systems are based on enacted acts and statutes not only protecting the citizens against criminal acts but also securing their rights to receive a certain amount and standard of services the state is obliged to provide" and she continues: "Education is one of the basic rights in Nordic societies." I am interested very much in the wording by which these constitutions declare the right to education respectively to music education. The German constitution, for example, says only, but very bluntly that the entire schooling system stands under control of the state. That means, in connection with compulsory schooling, education at school means no right but a compulsion. (I shall come back to this point later.)The second question relates to the issue of internal versus external goods or instrumental versus self-justifying aims. In her attempt to justify music education Heimonen makes a distinction between internal and external goods, instrumental and self-justifying aims. I wonder if this distinction—though it is very common in theories of action and of value—really refers to different facts; perhaps [End Page 213] it is only a difference in perspectives. I will transform this problem into a question thus: Are aims and values emphasizing a person's well-being really not instrumental with regard to this person? The well-being aims look to me to be necessarily connected to self-justifying aims. Aims, values, activities, facts, situations, and so on, generating well-being, are always instrumental with regard to a person's well-being. What else should they be?On the other hand, are so-called external goods and instrumental aims not self-justifying aims as well, again from the point of view of the person concerned? Are not aims which favor the training of a future professional (so called instrumental aims) self-justifying with regard to this person since they contribute very much to his or her well-being? Thus music educators should not hesitate to demonstrate the real individual, social, economical, and so on, benefit of music education to the society concerned very energetically.The third question arises around the implicit theories of the teacher, the school, and the function of music education as set forth by Heimonen in her paper. Heimonen compares the structure of the (music) teacher's situation with that of a judge. She says:The judge has to operate between the tensions of different interests in the framework of the law consisting of written regulations and the tradition of previous cases that have been solved.... The judge works within a "legal puzzle" just as the music teacher operates in a "musical puzzle": both of them have to think holistically as they try to achieve the best possible solutions in a particular situation, and both of them have to act innovatively and creatively in their practice.Here the question arises as to whether the "musical puzzle" is really the corresponding moment to the "legal puzzle" or whether it is the "music-pedagogical puzzle." I think it is the latter. But the teacher does not have—like the judge "his" legal system—a framework of written regulations and he never is in the situation just to apply rules on different cases. That is to say, one cannot reduce educational activities to making decisions on the basis of right or wrong, good or bad. But even if one would acknowledge an identical structure of the... (shrink)

Cultural forces such as film create and reinforce rigidly-defined images of a doctor's identity for both the public and for medical students. The authoritarian and hierarchical institution of medical school also encourages students to adopt rigidly-defined professional identities. This restrictive identity helps to perpetuate the power of the patriarchy, limits uniqueness, squelches inquisitiveness, and damages one's self-confidence. This paper explores the construction of a physician's identity using cultural theorists' psychoanalytic analyses of gender and race as a framework of analysis. Cultural (...) theorists' politically-motivated work provides an excellent point of departure for destabilizing parts of the authoritarian medical hierarchy that can damage a student's professional development. Drawing on such discourse, this paper examines the processes by which a doctor's identity becomes rigidly defined and fixed by daily training. It finally proposes a way for a medical student to extrapolate himself from the current definitions of this identity and create a broader, more malleable concept of professional identity by defining himself from outside of, rather than through, difference. (shrink)

The hendiadys of technology and ethics is neither novel nor what we really need. Even though dialogue between ethicsEthicsand technology, namely the humanitiesHumanities / human scientistand the social sciencesSocial sciences / social scientist, on the one hand, and science and engineeringEngineering / engineer, on the other hand, is explicitly encouraged in various ways, doing this effectively remains difficult. Obstacles to an authentic dialogue are many, ranging from scientific reasons to research policy reasons to institutional reasons. After reviewing these various obstacles, (...) we propose to pursue the following suggestion in order to overcome these difficulties: we do not just need more ethics, we need a qualitative shift. That is to say, rather than delegating the task of evaluating technological outcomes to moral philosophers and social scientistsSocial sciences / social scientist, we need to make the technological system capable of designing technology through ethicsEthics. This is precisely illustrated by the contributions collected in this volume, which are the result of a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Politecnico di Milano. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how the Conservative system of social protection in Germany has been converging toward the Liberal American model during the past two decades, focusing on social protection for the unemployed and pensioners. In addition to public/statutory provisions, occupational welfare is also covered. Despite an overall process of convergence, we continue to witness stark dissimilarities in the arrangements for social protection outsiders: whereas Germany continues to constitutionally guarantee a legal entitlement to minimum social protection for all citizens, such a (...) guarantee does not exist in the United States. The lack of such legal entitlement for poor people of working age, combined with the criminalization of the "dangerous class," is a key differentiating characteristic of the US model at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The findings confirm but also qualify Franz-Xaver Kaufmann's analysis of the United States as "capitalism," which lacks collective welfare responsibility for all citizens, as compared to Germany's "welfare state.". (shrink)

Biological individuality is a notoriously thorny topic for biologists and philosophers of biology. In this paper we argue that biological individuality presents multiple, interconnected questions for biologists and philosophers that together form a problem agenda. Using a case study of an interdisciplinary research group in ecology, behavioral and evolutionary biology, we claim that a debate on biological individuality that seeks to account for diverse practices in the biological sciences should be broadened to include and give prominence to questions about uniqueness (...) and temporality. We show that broadening the problem agenda of biological individuality draws attention to underrecognized philosophical issues and discussions and thereby organizes and enriches the existing debate. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis (...) of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option 5 Conclusion. (shrink)

In an era of fiscal austerity and dualization of social protection, has organized labor become increasingly split along skill and industry lines? Against recent political science accounts of trade union involvement in social policymaking, this paper argues that, in the specific area of pensions, unions representing high-skilled workers and the core industrial sectors of the economy have paradoxically been led to increase their cooperation with unions representing the less privileged segments of labor, in order to improve coverage of private pensions (...) across the board. These unions’ motivations for doing so and the strategies they have employed have nonetheless differed according to the preexisting institutional design of domestic pension systems. The argument is supported with case studies of British, French, German, and Belgian unions’ involvement in contemporary pension reform. (shrink)

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

Mechanisms are said to consist of two kinds of components, entities and activities. In the first half of this chapter, I examine what entities and activities are, how they relate to well-known ontological categories, such as processes or dispositions, and how entities and activities relate to each other (e.g., can one be reduced to the other or are they mutually dependent?). The second part of this chapter analyzes different criteria for individuating the components of mechanisms and discusses how real the (...) boundaries of mechanisms are. (shrink)

Individuals of many animal species are said to have a personality. It has been shown that some individuals are bolder than other individuals of the same species, or more sociable or more aggressive. In this paper, we analyse what it means to say that an animal has a personality. We clarify what an animal personality is, that is, its ontology, and how different personality concepts relate to each other, and we examine how personality traits are identified in biological practice. Our (...) analysis shows that biologists often study specific personality traits, such as boldness, sociability or aggressiveness, rather than personalities in general. We claim that personality traits are best understood as dispositions and that they are operationally defined in terms of certain sets of behaviours, which are studied in specific experimental set-ups. Furthermore, we develop an integrative philosophical account that specifies and formalises three criteria for identifying personality traits, which are used in biological practice. For an individual animal to have a personality trait it must, first, behave differently than others. Second, these behavioural differences must be stable over a certain time, and third, they must be consistent in different contexts. (shrink)

Modeling mechanisms is central to the biological sciences – for purposes of explanation, prediction, extrapolation, and manipulation. A closer look at the philosophical literature reveals that mechanisms are predominantly modeled in a purely qualitative way. That is, mechanistic models are conceived of as representing how certain entities and activities are spatially and temporally organized so that they bring about the behavior of the mechanism in question. Although this adequately characterizes how mechanisms are represented in biology textbooks, contemporary biological research practice (...) shows the need for quantitative, probabilistic models of mechanisms, too. In this paper we argue that the formal framework of causal graph theory is well-suited to provide us with models of biological mechanisms that incorporate quantitative and probabilistic information. On the ba-sis of an example from contemporary biological practice, namely feedback regulation of fatty acid biosynthesis in Brassica napus, we show that causal graph theoretical models can account for feedback as well as for the multi-level character of mechanisms. However, we do not claim that causal graph theoretical representations of mechanisms are advantageous in all respects and should replace common qualitative models. Rather, we endorse the more balanced view that causal graph theoretical models of mechanisms are useful for some purposes, while being insufficient for others. (shrink)

The contributors to _The Anomie of the Earth_ explore the convergences and resonances between Autonomist Marxism and decolonial thinking. In discussing and rejecting Carl Schmitt's formulation of the nomos—a conceptualization of world order based on the Western tenets of law and property—the authors question the assumption of universal political subjects and look towards politics of the commons divorced from European notions of sovereignty. They contrast European Autonomism with North and South American decolonial and indigenous conceptions of autonomy, discuss the legacies (...) of each, and examine social movements in the Americas and Europe. Beyond orthodox Marxism, their transatlantic exchanges point to the emerging categories disclosed by the collapse of the colonial and capitalist frameworks of Western modernity. Contributors. Joost de Bloois, Jodi A. Byrd, Gustavo Esteva, Silvia Federici, Wilson Kaiser, Mara Kaufman, Frans-Willem Korsten, Federico Luisetti, Sandro Mezzadra, Walter D. Mignolo, Benjamin Noys, John Pickles, Alvaro Reyes, Catherine Walsh, Gareth Williams, Zac Zimmer. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

This paper examines the adequacy of causal graph theory as a tool for modeling biological phenomena and formalizing biological explanations. I point out that the causal graph approach reaches it limits when it comes to modeling biological phenomena that involve complex spatial and structural relations. Using a case study from molecular biology, DNA-binding and -recognition of proteins, I argue that causal graph models fail to adequately represent and explain causal phenomena in this field. The inadequacy of these models is due (...) to their failure to include relevant spatial and structural information in a way that does not render the model non-explanatory, unmanageable, or inconsistent with basic assumptions of causal graph theory. (shrink)

This article presents results from the national survey conducted in 2018 for the project Research Integrity in Norway. A total of 31,206 questionnaires were sent out to Norwegian researchers by e-mail, and 7291 responses were obtained. In this paper, we analyse the survey data to determine attitudes towards and the prevalence of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism and contrast this with attitudes towards and the prevalence of the more questionable research practices surveyed. Our results show a relatively low percentage of self-reported (...) FFPs, while the number of researchers who report having committed one of the QRPs during the last three years reached a troublesome 40%. The article also presents a ranking of the perceived severity of FFP and QRPs among Norwegian researchers. Overall, there is a widespread normative consensus, where FFP is considered more troublesome than QRPs. (shrink)

This paper examines various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary. It aims to provide a map of relations between philosophy and sciences, some of which are interdisciplinary. Such a map should also inform discussions concerning the question “How much philosophy is there in the philosophy of science?” In Sect. 1, we distinguish between synoptic and collaborative interdisciplinarity. With respect to the latter, we furthermore distinguish between two kinds of reflective forms of collaborative interdisciplinarity. We also briefly explicate (...) how complexity triggers interdisciplinarity. In Sect. 2, we apply the distinctions of Sect. 1 to philosophy of science and analyze in which sense different styles of philosophy of science are interdisciplinary. The styles that we discuss are a synoptic-general, a reflective-general, a reflective-particular, a particular-embedded and a descriptive or normative style. (shrink)

Only six men have written a major work on Old Testament ethics in the last hundred years, and only two of these works, both written before 1900, are in English.

This book deals with the ethics of technology and addresses specific ethical problems related to some emerging technologies, mainly in the field of computer science (from machine learning models to extracting value from data to human–robot interaction). The contributions are authored mainly by scholars in ICT and other engineering fields who reflect on ethical and societal issues emerging from their own research activity. Thus, rather uniquely, the work overcomes the traditional divide between pure ethical theory that disregards what practitioners do (...) and mere R&D practice that ignores what theorists conceptualize. Conversely, the reader is enabled to understand what ethics means when it is actually put into work by engineering researchers. The book arises from a joint program between MIT and Politecnico di Milano aimed at training early career researchers in addressing the ethical issues of technology and critically reflecting on the social impacts of the emerging, and even disruptive, technologies they are currently developing through their novel research. Overall, it aims at spreading the task of developing technologies that, from the beginning, are designed to be responsible for human life, society, and nature. (shrink)

The development of photodynamic therapy and anti-vascular endothelial growth factor agents have revolutionized the treatment of retinal diseases, transforming the retina subspecialty by ushering in an age of pharmacological treatments for a wide range of diseases, including age-related macular degeneration.