This paper argues that conceptualizing unity as "interconnection" (rather than reduction) provides a more fruitful and versatile framework for the philosophical study of scientific unification. Building on the work of Darden and Maull, Kitcher, and Kincaid, I treat unity as a relationship between fields: two fields become more integrated as the number and/or significance of interfield connections grow. Even when reduction fails, two theories or fields can be unified (integrated) in significant ways. I highlight two largely independent dimensions of unification. (...) Fields are theoretically unified to the extent that we understand how the ontologies, concepts, and generalizations of these fields are connected. (Reductionism is one form of theoretical unity, but not the only form). Fields are practically unified through heuristic connections (e.g., using the heuristics of one field to generate hypotheses in another field) and by the development of methods for integrating the qualitatively distinct bodies of data generated by the two fields. I discuss the relationship between paleontological and neontological systematics to illustrate the utility of conceptualizing unity as interconnection. (shrink)

Localizing the self in the brain has been the goal of consciousness research for centuries. Recently, there has been an increase in attention to the localization of the self. Here we present data from patients suffering from a loss of self in an attempt to understand the neural correlates of consciousness. Focusing on delusional misidentification syndrome , we find that frontal regions, as well as the right hemisphere appear to play a significant role in DMS and DMS related disorders. These (...) data are placed in the context of neuroimaging findings. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is no genuine puzzle of ‘imaginative resistance’. In part 1 of the paper I argue that the imaginability of fictional propositions is relative to a range of different factors including the ‘thickness’ of certain concepts, and certain pre-theoretical and theoretical commitments. I suggest that those holding realist moral commitments may be more susceptible to resistance and inability than those holding non-realist commitments, and that it is such realist commitments that ultimately motivate the problem. However, I (...) argue that the relativity of imaginability is not a particularly puzzling feature of imagination. In part 2, I claim that it is the so-called ‘alethic’ puzzle, concerning fictional truth, which generates a real puzzle about imaginative resistance. However, I argue that the alethic puzzle itself depends on certain realist assumptions about the nature of fictional truth which are implausible and should be rejected in favour of an interpretive view of fictional truth. Once this is done, I contend, it becomes evident that the supposed problem of imaginative resistance as it has hitherto been discussed in the literature is not puzzling at all. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of data manipulation in scientific experiments. It will be shown that in many cases raw, unprocessed data is not produced, but rather a form of processed data that will be referred to as a data model. The language of data models will be used to provide a framework within which to understand a recent debate about the status of data and data manipulation. It will be seen that a description in terms of data models allows (...) one to understand cases in which data acquisition and data manipulation cannot be separated into two independent activities. (shrink)

Abstract We propose a metaethical view that combines the cognitivist idea that moral judgments are genuine beliefs and moral utterances express genuine assertions with the idea that such beliefs and utterances are nondescriptive in their overall content. This sort of view has not been recognized among the standard metaethical options because it is generally assumed that all genuine beliefs and assertions must have descriptive content. We challenge this assumption and thereby open up conceptual space for a new kind of metaethical (...) view. In developing our brand of nondescriptivist cognitivism we do the following: (1) articulate a conception of belief (and assertion) that does not require the overall declarative content of beliefs (and assertions) to be descriptive content; (2) make a case for the independent plausibility of this conception of belief and assertion; and (3) argue that our view, formulated in a way that draws upon the proposed conception of belief, has significant comparative advantages over descriptivist forms of cognitivism. (shrink)

In this article I examine the status of putative aesthetic judgements in science and mathematics. I argue that if the judgements at issue are taken to be genuinely aesthetic they can be divided into two types, positing either a disjunction or connection between aesthetic and epistemic criteria in theory/proof assessment. I show that both types of claim face serious difficulties in explaining the purported role of aesthetic judgements in these areas. I claim that the best current explanation of this role, (...) McAllister's 'aesthetic induction' model, fails to demonstrate that the judgements at issue are genuinely aesthetic. I argue that, in light of these considerations, there are strong reasons for suspecting that many, and perhaps all, of the supposedly aesthetic claims are not genuinely aesthetic but are in fact 'masked' epistemic assessments. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of "explanatory pluralism" (i.e., the view that some events can be correctly explained in two distinct ways). To defend pluralism, I identify two distinct (but compatible) styles of explanation in paleobiology. The first approach ("actual sequence explanation") traces out the particular forces that affect each species. The second approach treats the trend as "passive" or "random" diffusion away from a boundary in morphological space. I argue that while these strategies are distinct, some trends are correctly (...) explained in both ways. Further, since neither strategy can be reduced or eliminated from paleobiology, we should accept that both strategies can provide correct explanations for a single trend. (shrink)

This volume considers formalisations of love in the 21st century. Engaging with the Slovenian School of Philosophy, the book contends that psychoanalysis is the one line of thought that exposes the role that love plays in all knowledge, emphasising the importance of love in these unsettled times.

P. Kitcher's unification theory of explanation appears to endorse a reductionistic view of scientific explanation that is inconsistant with scientific practice. In this paper, I argue that this appearance is illusory. The existence of multiply realizable generalizations enable the unification theory to also count many high-level accounts as explanatory.

Philological background information is presented on the origin and composition of the text generally known as Kant's Logic. The text, which was not in the strict sense of the word written by Kant himself, but rather assembled by another writer whom Kant had authorized to do so on his behalf, is a mixture of materials, not all of which originate directly from Kant, and cannot claim full authenticity.

Consequentialist theories of virtue and vice, such as the theories of Jeremy Bentham and Julia Driver, characterize virtue and vice in terms of the consequential, or instrumental, properties of these character traits. There are two problems with theories of this sort. First they imply that, under the right circumstances, paradigmatic virtues, such as benevolence, are vices and paradigmatic vices, such as maliciousness, are virtues. This is conceptually problematic. Second, they say nothing about the intrinsic nature of the virtues and vices, (...) which is less than we could hope for from a theory of virtue and vice. Thus, we have reason to reject consequentialist theories in favour of theories that characterize virtue and vice in terms of the intrinsic properties of these character traits. Aristotle and Thomas Hurka have theories this sort. (shrink)

My primary aim in this paper is to outline a quasi-realist theory of aesthetic judgement. Robert Hopkins has recently argued against the plausibility of this project because he claims that quasi-realism cannot explain a central component of any expressivist understanding of aesthetic judgements, namely their supposed ‘autonomy’. I argue against Hopkins’s claims by contending that Roger Scruton’s aesthetic attitude theory, centred on his account of the imagination, provides us with the means to develop a plausible quasi-realist account of aesthetic judgement. (...) Finally, I respond to two recent attempts to discredit the validity of the notion of aesthetic autonomy. I claim that both fail adequately to address the underlying non-realist motivations and justifications for maintaining the principle. (shrink)

There is a problem about the compatibility of Reid's commitment to both a sign theory of sensations and also direct realism. I show that Reid is committed to three different senses of the claim that mind independent bodies and their qualities are among the immediate objects of perception, and I then argue that Reid's sign theory conflicts with one of these. I conclude by advocating one proposal for reconciling Reid's claims, deferring a thorough development and defence of the proposal to (...) another paper. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bob Dylan’s “Highway Shoes” The Hobo-Hero’s Road through ModernityTodd Kennedy (bio)In the final verse of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (1963), the speaker proclaims, “I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe / where I’m bound, I can’t tell.” With no destination in sight, he seems content to remain on a perpetual, isolated journey on what he terms “the dark side of the road.” Such an ethos (...) of movement, which permeates Dylan’s corpus, mirrors a dissident strain of American culture that seeks to find a Jeffersonian, individualistic freedom via movement through space outside of mainstream society. As early as Bringing It All Back Home (1965), peaking with Blood on the Tracks (1975), and persisting into his most recent work, Dylan has consistently merged aspects of blues, country, and literary traditions, to invoke images of mobility that examine individual freedom in a world where technology, fragmentation, and homogeneity seem to result in a destructive dehumanizing of individuals. In so doing, Dylan uses an intensely innovative aesthetic as he ambivalently romanticizes uprooted wandering in a manner that both mirrors and expands upon what I term an ontology of the hobo-hero that permeates American letters from Walt Whitman to John Dos Passos (and beyond) as it glorifies those who remain in constant motion in order to maintain a sense of integrated self in the face of crushing modernity.Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari similarly identify such an ontology within American culture when they, in A Thousand Plateaus, declare America a “special case” defined by its ceaseless search for a “rhizome,” or a “space in which two things that have nothing to do with one another form a parallel constructed by the mind. It is not imitation or resemblance, but becoming” (10). For Deleuze, Guattari, and, as I argue, Bob Dylan, the rhizome occupies a singular place within American letters. In other words, Deleuze and Guattari admit that America “is not immune from [...] the search for roots” in its “quest for a national identity or even for a European ancestry or genealogy (Kerouac going off in search for his ancestors),” yet they adamantly assert,every thing important that has happened or is happening takes the route of the American rhizome [...]. American books are different from European books, even when Americans set off in search of trees. The conception of the book is different. Leaves of Grass. And directions in America are different: the search for arborescence and the return to the Old World occur in the East. But there is the rhizomatic West, with its Indians without ancestry, its ever-receding limit, its shifting and displaced frontiers.(19) [End Page 37]Such an assertion should come as no surprise, I would argue, since, beginning with the earliest attempts to define “America,” Americans have seen their identity linked to mobility. In fact, the lone commonality that Americans share is descent from immigrants who came to the United States from a “home” or “homeland” where cultural identity was not far removed from national identity. It would stand to reason, therefore, that a group of uprooted individuals thrust into a self-declared melting pot would begin to define themselves by their dislocation. For instance, eighteenth-century French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur claimed that, within the American continent, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men” (44) as America represents, for Crèvecœur, an “asylum” in which “the poor of Europe have by some means met together” (42). Crèvecœur proceeded to privilege those people, such as farmers, who planted “roots” as they helped to build and improve their society, but Crèvecœur’s assertion that we are united by our mutual uprootedness proves indicative of what critic Robert James Butler has observed as a recurrent American “quest for pure motion” (80, emphasis in original). Or, one encounters what the novelist John Steinbeck claimed he perceived in “nearly every American”: a “burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here” (10). It is such an attempt for perennial rebirth through movement, a rhizomatic selfhood, that... (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Science provides an expert guide to the major twentieth-century French and German philosophical thinking on science. A comprehensive introduction by the editor provides a unified interpretative survey of continental work on philosophy of science. Interpretative essays are complemented by key primary-source selections. Includes previously untranslated texts by Bergson, Bachelard, and Canguilhem and new translations of texts by Hegel and Cassirer. Contributors include Terry Pinkard, Jean Gayon, Richard Tieszen, Michael Friedman, Joseph Rouse, Mary Tiles, Hans-Jöerg Rheinberger, Linda (...) Alcoff, Todd May, Axel Honneth, and Penelope Deutscher. (shrink)

One of the principal difficulties in assessing Science as aProcess (Hull 1988) is determining the relationship between the various elements of Hull's theory. In particular, it is hard to understand precisely how conceptual selection is related to Hull's account of the social dynamics of science. This essay aims to clarify the relation between these aspects of his theory by examining his discussion of the``demic structure'' of science. I conclude that the social account cando significant explanatory work independently of the selectionistaccount. (...) Further, I maintain that Hull's treatment of the demicstructure of science points us toward an important set of issues insocial epistemology. If my reading of Science as a Process iscorrect, then most of Hull's critics (e.g., those who focus solelyon his account of conceptual selection) have ignored promisingaspects of his theory. (shrink)

Gould's Structure ofEvolutionary Theory argues that Darwinism hasundergone significant revision. Although Gouldsucceeds in showing that hierarchicalapproaches have expanded Darwinism, hiscritique of adaptationism is less successful. Gould claims that the ubiquity of developmentalconstraints and spandrels has forced biologiststo soften their commitment to adaptationism. Iargue that Gould overstates his conclusion; hisprincipal claims are compatible with at leastsome versions of adaptationism. Despite thisweakness, Gould's discussion of adaptationism –particularly his discussions of the exaptivepool and cross-level spandrels – shouldprovoke new work in evolutionary theory and (...) thephilosophy of biology. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion are indebted to Nancy Frankenberry for a trail of important papers and books in which she scouts the line between philosophical and religious thinking. Robert Neville has already conveyed some sense of the breadth and scope of her work—of the difficult landscape through which she has guided us. So I am going to go small. I am going to focus on two clusters of issues that have been central to her thinking. I have had the good fortune (...) over the years to think with Frankenberry about these issues. With this paper I am, as it were, reporting in on where I am at the moment in our continuing conversation. The first cluster of issues centers on a different kind of conversation: the one.. (shrink)

It is suggested that a connection between neurogenesis and brain part size is unsurprising. It is argued that neurogenesis cannot, however, be the only factor contributing to brain size. Highly individual post-natal experience radically shapes individual brains, leading to dramatic increases in brain size. The role of comparatively coarse statistical techniques in addressing these subtle biological issues is questioned.

The conference entitled ‘Best Practices in Clinical Ethics Consultation and Decision-Making’, held in London 8–9 July 2010, was the first of its kind dedicated to identifying best practices in clinical ethics consultation and decision-making. Academics, health and social care professionals, clinical ethics committee members, lawyers, service users and carers from the UK, USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia attended lectures, workshops, parallel paper sessions and clinical ethics case discussions across adult, maternity, children's, older persons, mental health and learning disabilities settings. (...) Seventy-eight best-practice points impacting on the quality of clinical ethics consultations and subsequent decisions were identified and grouped into eight themes: who tells the story; how the story is told; how the analysis, discussion and subsequent decisions are made; how values are weighted and balanced against one another; who decides; how the decision is made; how group dynamics and conflict are handled; how decisions are recorded. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Professor Goodman was correct in thinking that there is a problem concerning counterfactual conditionals, but that it is somewhat different from the problem he thought it to be, and is one that is even more basic. I will also try to show that this problem is distinct from Hume's "problem" of induction, and that additional assumptions have to be made for counterfactual induction beyond those required for other kinds of induction.

Many social scientists and journalists attempt to explain events in recent or distant history by uncovering hidden beliefs and desires held by groups. Such ascriptions are problematic in that beliefs are attributed to groups rather than individuals, and, in that being “hidden,” they cannot be attributed using ordinary everyday methods. In this paper, I try to sort out what is sensible and what is muddled in this unusual but very common type of belief ascription.

Daniel Steel argues that a causal theory of explanation can account for Ferguson's anthropological theory of Yanomami warfare but that a unification theory of explanation cannot. I argue that a unification theory can explain such an account, in a manner similar to Hempel's view of explanation in history. I go on to argue that the unification theory allows for different explanations of specific and general social circumstances.

This paper examines the moral significance of guilt in the context of how students confront the suffering of another. Within social-justice education, such confrontations are often staged in pedagogical efforts to encourage students to assume social responsibility. Frequently, however, the guilt that students claim to endure as a result of these pedagogical encounters is not perceived to be of much ethical import. By exploring the psychoanalytic work of Melanie Klein and the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this essay argues that (...) guilt arises out of our susceptibility to another’s pain and that it plays a crucial role both in ‘making reparation’ (Klein) and in the very formation of responsibility itself (Levinas). (shrink)

Globalization is resulting in complex decisions by businesses as to where and what to produce, while free trade is resulting in a greater menu of choices for consumers, often with the blending of products and goods from various cultures, called ‘glocalization.’ This paper reviews the theories and practices behind these current happenings, which are each economic, politicaleconomic, institutional, and sociological, first by looking at the supply side of why certain countries produce the goods that they do, and then at the (...) demand side, why consumers have particular, cultural tastes and preferences for goods. It also proffers theories to explain firm location and that of intra-industry trade. This occus when countries trade similar products rather than differentiating, as economic theory would suggest. After reviewing the literature, through numerous examples of political-economy and culture, it argues somewhat normatively that differences in culture and goods are a strength to the world community, and that globalization in the end will not likely result in a singular global culture with a uniformity of exactly identical economic goods anytime in the near future. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, (...) relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to evidence E is an essential property of B–E; and (iii) mentalist evidentialism is “unmotivated”. I object to each argument. The argument for (i) begs the question. The argument for (ii) suffers from the fact that mentalist evidentialists are not committed to the consequences claimed for them; nevertheless, I show that there is, in the neighborhood, a substantive dispute concerning the nature of doxastic epistemic fittingness. That dispute involves what I call “Necessary Fittingness”, the view that, necessarily, exactly one (at most) doxastic attitude ( belief , or disbelief , or suspension of judgment ) toward a proposition is epistemically fitting with respect to a person’s total evidence at any time. Reflection on my super-blooper epistemic design counterexamples to Bergmann’s proper function theory reveals both the plausibility of Necessary Fittingness and a good reason to deny (iii). Mentalist evidentialism is thus vindicated against the objections. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to argue that we are not vulnerableto inescapable wrongdoing occasioned by tragic dilemmas. I directmy argument to those who are most inclined to accept tragicdilemmas: those of broadly Nietzschean inclination who reject``modern moral philosophy'''' in favor of the ethical ideas of theclassical Greeks. Two important features of their project are todeny the usefulness of the ``moral/nonmoral distinction,'''' and todeny that what are usually classified as moral reasons always oreven characteristically ``trump'''' nonmoral reasons in anadmirable (...) agent''s deliberations.I show critics of modern moral philosophy such as BernardWilliams that their acceptance of tragic dilemmas underminestheir project of denying the moral/nonmoral distinction and thepriority of moral reasons. The possibility of tragic dilemmasrequires an account of practical deliberation in which moralreasons appear as already in-force obligations, with blame andguilt ready to be invoked, while nonmoral reasons appear as merereasons. This makes moral reasons importantly different fromnonmoral reasons in how they achieve their deliberative weight,and also makes them characteristically weightier. Thus,accommodating tragic dilemmas reinforces the moral/nonmoraldistinction and the priority of moral reasons, the very thingsthese critics want to deny. By accepting the possibility oftragic dilemmas, these critics are undermining their own project.The standard normative theories are dead set against tragicdilemmas, and the critics of modern moral philosophy shouldreject tragic dilemmas for the good of their project. Thus we allshould reject tragic dilemmas. (shrink)