Several alleged counterexamples to the definition of ‘intrinsic’ proposed in Rae Langton and David Lewis, ‘Defining “Intrinsic”’, are unconvincing. Yet there are reasons for dissatisfaction, and room for improvement. One desirable change is to raise the standard of non-disjunctiveness, thereby putting less burden on contentious judgements of comparative naturalness. A second is to deal with spurious independence by throwing out just the disjunctive troublemakers, instead of throwing out disjunctive properties wholesale, and afterward reinstating those impeccably intrinsic disjunctive properties that (...) are not troublemakers. (The second of these changes makes the first more affordable.) A third, suggested by Brian Weatherson, would be to invoke the general principle that the intrinsic and the extrinsic characters of things are independent, rather than relying just on one special case of this principle; but it is none too obvious how to do this. (shrink)

Several alleged counterexamples to the definition of ‘intrinsic’ proposed in Rae Langton and David Lewis, ‘Defining “Intrinsic”’, are unconvincing. Yet there are reasons for dissatisfaction, and room for improvement. One desirable change is to raise the standard of non-disjunctiveness, thereby putting less burden on contentious judgements of comparative naturalness. A second is to deal with spurious independence by throwing out just the disjunctive troublemakers, instead of throwing out disjunctive properties wholesale, and afterward reinstating those impeccably intrinsic disjunctive properties that (...) are not troublemakers. A third, suggested by Brian Weatherson, would be to invoke the general principle that the intrinsic and the extrinsic characters of things are independent, rather than relying just on one special case of this principle; but it is none too obvious how to do this. (shrink)

Several alleged counterexamples to the definition of ‘intrinsic’ proposed in Rae Langton and David Lewis,‘Defining “Intrinsic”’, are unconvincing. Yet there are reasons for dissatisfaction, and room for improvement. One desirable change is to raise the standard of non‐disjunctiveness, thereby putting less burden on contentious judgements of comparative naturalness. A second is to deal with spurious independence by throwing out just the disjunctive troublemakers, instead of throwing out disjunctive properties wholesale, and afterward reinstating those impeccably intrinsic disjunctive properties that are (...) not troublemakers. (The second of these changes makes the first more affordable.) A third, suggested by Brian Weatherson, would be to invoke the general principle that the intrinsic and the extrinsic characters of things are independent, rather than relying just on one special case of this principle; but it is none too obvious how to do this. (shrink)

Tn this paper I explore and to an extent defend HS. The main philosophical challenges to HS come from philosophical views that say that nomic concepts-laws, chance, and causation-denote features of the world that fail to supervene on non-nomic features. Lewis rejects these views and has labored mightily to construct HS accounts of nomic concepts. His account of laws is fundamental to his program, since his accounts of the other nomic notions rely on it. Recently, a number of philosophers have (...) criticized Lewis's account, and Humean accounts of laws generally, for delivering, at best, a pale imitation ofthe genuine item. These philosophers think that the notion of law needed by science requires laws-if there are any-to be fundamental features of our world that are completely distinct from and not supervenient on the particular facts that they explain. I side with Lewis against these philosophers. Here I will argue that although Lewis-laws don't fulfill all our philosophical expectations, they do play the roles that science needs laws to play. The metaphysics and epistemology of Humean laws, and more specifically, Lewis-laws, are in much better shape than the metaphysics and epistemology of the main anti-Humean alternatives. However, I do have inisgivings about Lewis's account. Both he and his critics assume that the basic properties are so individuated so that the laws are not metaphysically necessary. If this assumption is rejected, then the question of Humean supervenience lapses. I conclude with a brief discussion of this position. (shrink)

The intuitive distinction between natural and unnatural properties (e.g., green vs. grue) informs our theorizing not only in fundamental physics, but also in non-fundamental domains. This paper develops a reductive account of this broad notion of naturalness that covers non-fundamental properties: for a property to be natural, I propose, is for it to figure in a law of nature. After motivating the account, I defend it from a potential circularity charge. I argue that a suitably broad notion of (...) lawhood can be defined independently of naturalness, if we help ourselves to the notion of a fundamental physical property. I end by showing how the notions of naturalness and lawhood that my account delivers help illuminate a number of other important philosophical notions, like causation, reference/meaning, and rational induction. (shrink)

It is common in the history of science to try to extend an idea first demonstrated in one domain into others. Sometimes the extension is literal, and sometimes it is frankly metaphorical. Sometimes, however, when an extension is claimed to be literal, it is far from easy to see that it is. If an extension does not make use of entities and mechanisms involved in the original domain, and introduces novel entities and mechanisms, then it is not unreasonable to doubt (...) the claim of its authors that it is a literal extension of a well-established theory. IT is, therefore, not surprising that many who accept that the cultural transmission of information is unique to out species nevertheless balk at Dawkins's and Dennett's contention that there are units of cultural evolution, called 'memes', which can be used to explain the development and diversity of human culture, and whose survival is explicable in terms of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Our aim in this paper is to argue that scepticism about Dawkins's and Dennett's proposal is indeed justified; though it of course does not follow that there is not another way of explaining human culture in evolutionary terms. (shrink)

Matter and Form explores the relationship between natural science and political philosophy from the classical to contemporary eras, taking an interdisciplinary approach to the philosophic understanding of the structure and process of the natural world and its impact on the history of political philosophy. It illuminates the importance of philosophic reflection on material nature to moral and political theorizing, mediating between the sciences and humanities and making a contribution to ending the isolation between them.

First published in 1985, D. M. Armstrong's original work on what laws of nature are has continued to be influential in the areas of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Presenting a definitive attack on the sceptical Humean view, that laws are no more than a regularity of coincidence between stances of properties, Armstrong establishes his own theory and defends it concisely and systematically against objections. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Marc (...) Lange, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work is available for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

Are the special sciences autonomous from physics? Those who say they are need to explain how dependent special science properties could feature in irreducible causal explanations, but that’s no easy task. The demands of a broadly physicalist worldview require that such properties are not only dependent on the physical, but also physically realized. Realized properties are derivative, so it’s natural to suppose that they have derivative causal powers. Correspondingly, philosophical orthodoxy has it that if we want (...) class='Hi'>special science properties to bestow genuinely new causal powers, we must reject physical realization and embrace a form of emergentism, in which such properties arise from the physical by mysterious brute determination. In this paper, I argue that contrary to this orthodoxy, there are physically realized properties that bestow new causal powers in relation to their realizers. The key to my proposal is to reject causal-functional accounts of realization and embrace a broader account that allows for the realization of shapes and patterns. Unlike functional properties, such properties are defined by qualitative, non-causal specifications, so realizing them does not consist in bestowing causal powers. This, I argue, allows for causal novelty of the strongest kind. I argue that the molecular geometry of H2O—a qualitative, multiply realizable property—plays an irreducible role in explaining its dipole moment, and thereby bestows novel powers. On my proposal, special science properties can have the kind of causal novelty traditionally associated with strong emergence, without any of the mystery. (shrink)

The homeostatic property cluster theory is widely influential for its ability to account for many natural-kind terms in the life sciences. However, the notion of homeostatic mechanism has never been fully explicated. In 2009, Carl Craver interpreted the notion in the sense articulated in discussions on mechanistic explanation and pointed out that the HPC account equipped with such notion invites interest-relativity. In this paper, we analyze two recent refinements on HPC: one that avoids any reference to the causes of (...) the clustering of properties and one that replaces homeostatic mechanisms with causal networks represented by causal graphs. We argue that the former is too slender to account for some inductive inference in science and the latter, thicker account invites interest-relativity, as the original HPC does. This suggests that human interest will be an un-eliminative part of a satisfactory account of natural kindness. We conclude by discussing the implication of interest-relativity to the naturalness, reality, or objectivity of kinds and indicating an overlooked aspect of natural kinds that requires further studies. (shrink)

Many people argue that history makes a special difference to the subjects of biology and psychology, and that history does not make this special difference to other parts of the world. This paper will show that historical properties make no more or less of a difference to biology or psychology than to chemistry, physics, or other sciences. Although historical properties indeed make a certain kind of difference to biology and psychology, this paper will show that historical properties make (...) the same kind of difference to geology, sociology, astronomy, and other sciences. Similarly, many people argue that nonhistorical properties make a special difference to the nonbiological and the nonpsychological world. This paper will show that nonhistorical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their causal behavior and that historical properties make the same difference to all things in the world when it comes to their distributions. Although history is special, it is special in the same way to all parts of the world. (shrink)

The authors explicate Aquinas's conception of mathematics. They show that in his work the Aristotelian conception is prevalent, according to which this discipline is—together with physics and metaphysics—a theoretical science, whose subject is the study of real quantity and its necessary properties. But, alongside this dominant and prevalent conception, Aquinas's work contains a number of indications that cast doubt. These sparse and rather marginal reflections lead the authors to conclude that Aquinas's texts contain a "constructivist" conception of mathematics in rudimentary (...) form. According to this approach, mathematics is not a theoretical science examining real quantity but, rather, a special kind of "art" by means of which mathematical objects are "created." From a constructivist point of view the authors then attempt to formulate a conception of mathematics that would accord with the basic Aristotelian assumptions of Aquinas's thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume and the Lockean Background: Induction and the Uniformity Principle David Owen Introduction What has come to be called Hume's problem of induction is special in many ways. It is arguably his most important and influential argument, especially when seen in its overall context of the more general argument about causaUty. It has come to be one of the great "standard problems" ofphilosophyandyetis,by most accounts, (...) almost unique in having no ancient precursor. Interestingly, the argument is frequently presented in terms that the author never used. Itis difficult for us not to think of the problem in terms of the contrast between deductive vs. inductive reasoning (or logic, or whatever). But this is a contrast nowhere to be found in Hume: he talks of demonstrative vs. probable (or moral) reasoning. Hume uses the word "induction" only twice in the Treatise1 and in neither case is it clear that the word is used toreportapieceofprobablereasoning.2One ofthefewoccurrences of"deduce" or "deducing" occurs in the second Enquiry, where he talks about "following the experimental method, and deducing general maximsfrom acomparisonofparticularinstances,"3hardlyaparadigm of what we would call deductive reasoning.4 Many modern studies of Hume that make a real attempt to understand what Hume meant by demonstration and probability, in the context of his argument about induction, tend towards the ahistorical,6 treating Hume's writings as contemporary texts. But failure to take into account some of the background concerning the nature of demonstrative and probable reason makes it unlikely, I think, that we can understand Hume's argument. Part ofthe problem is the failure to identify Hume's targets in that famous negative argument about induction (vague reference is sometimes made to the "rationalists") and part of the problem is identifying the role the uniformity principle plays in Hume's famous argumentand thelightitsheds on the conception ofprobablereasoning Hume was attacking. In this paper I want to argue that a careful look at Locke solves some ofthese problems: he has a well developed view ofdemonstrative and probable reasoning, his confidence in conformity as a ground of probability is a Ukely target of Hume's attack and his Volume XVIII Number 2 179 DAVID OWEN accountshedsmuchlightonwhatrole the principleofuniformitymight play in Hume's account.6 Of course, at a certain level of philosophical abstraction it is irrelevant whether we have understood what Hume "really meant." Theproblemofinductionhas emergedas a central onein epistemology, philosophical logic, and philosophy of science. It would be an interesting question in philosophical historiography to trace the development ofthe "problem" from Hume's time to our own but that is not my task here. I trust one needs no justification for taking an historical look at a famous problem rather than tackling the problem head-on in one's own terms. But if one is needed, here is mine: sometimes, by looking at a problem from a different, historical perspective, one sees a different problem or afamiliar problem in a new light. One's philosophical horizons are broadened. Furthermore, one may make an interesting historical discovery, or at least draw some interesting historical connections. I take it as uncontroversial that Locke, following Descartes, rejected a formal, logical account of demonstrative reasoning. Instead ofusing a formal, syllogistic account ofhow two propositions can entail a third, Locke concentrated on the relation two ideas bear one to another.7 Thus a demonstration, for Locke, getsits force, notfrom what we would call a deductive relation between one set of propositions (.the premises) and anotherproposition (the conclusion), butrather from the relation one idea bears to another, either directly, or via a chain of intermediate ideas. It is true that Locke frequently talks of inferring one proposition from another, but this is always cashed out in terms of relations ofideas via a chain ofintermediate ideas.8 It is also true that Locke occasionally uses the terms "deduce" and "deduction." But these are never used in our sense that has to do with formal deductive validity. Rather, they are simply used loosely in the informal sense of "argue" or "infer," and "argument" or "inference."9 In the rest of this paper, all uses ofthe word"deduction" andits cognates shouldbe taken as having the modern sense, unless flagged as having "Locke... (shrink)

People are adept at inferring novel causal relations, even from only a few observations. Prior knowledge about the probability of encountering causal relations of various types and the nature of the mechanisms relating causes and effects plays a crucial role in these inferences. We test a formal account of how this knowledge can be used and acquired, based on analyzing causal induction as Bayesian inference. Five studies explored the predictions of this account with adults and 4-year-olds, using tasks in (...) which participants learned about the causal properties of a set of objects. The studies varied the two factors that our Bayesian approach predicted should be relevant to causal induction: the prior probability with which causal relations exist, and the assumption of a deterministic or a probabilistic relation between cause and effect. Adults’ judgments (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) were in close correspondence with the quantitative predictions of the model, and children’s judgments (Experiments 3 and 5) agreed qualitatively with this account. (shrink)

JOHN RAWLS IN A Theory of Justice attempts to deduce "the principles of justice" from the idea of a "contract" among free and equal persons. The factor which obviously distinguishes Rawls’ contract doctrine from the teachings of the great social contract philosophers who preceded him is that it does not rest on any examination of what the character of an actual nonpolitical condition or "state of nature" among men would be. Rawls’ procedure is in fact the opposite of that followed (...) by his predecessors: instead of inferring the principles of the contract from what men, given their nature, would be likely to agree upon in the absence of an already existing government and set of laws, he freely constructs the character and circumstances of the parties to his "purely hypothetical" "original position of equality" in order "to lead to a certain conception of justice". That conception is to consist of. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses the “procedural” accounts of political justice set forth by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) and Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). I argue that the areas of agreement between Rawls and Nozick are more significant than their disagreements. Even though Nozick offers trenchant criticisms of Rawls's argument for economic redistribution (the “difference principle”), Nozick's own economic libertarianism is undermined by his “principle of rectification,” which he offers as a possible ground in (...) practice for the application of something like the difference principle. Both Rawls's and Nozick's accounts of justice fail because of their abstraction from human nature as a ground of right. At the same time the libertarianism on which they agree in the non-economic sphere would deprive a free society of its necessary moral underpinning. Rawls and Nozick err, finally, by demanding that the policies pursued by a just society conform to theoretical formulas concocted by philosophy professors, rather than leaving room (as Lockean liberalism does) for the adjustment of policies to particular circumstances based on statesmen's prudential judgment and the consent of the governed. Particularly troubling from the perspective of a citizen seriously concerned with the advancement of justice and freedom is both thinkers' shrill denunciations of existing liberal societies for failing to conform to their particular strictures. (shrink)

A feature is central to a concept to the extent that other features depend on it. Four studies tested the hypothesis that people will project a feature from a base concept to a target concept to the extent that they believe the feature is central to the two concepts. This centrality hypothesis implies that feature projection is guided by a principle that aims to maximize the structural commonality between base and target concepts. Participants were told that a category has two (...) or three novel features. One feature was the most central in that more properties depended on it. The extent to which the target shared the feature's dependencies was manipulated by varying the similarity of category pairs. Participants' ratings of the likelihood that each feature would hold in the target category support the centrality hypothesis with both natural kind and artifact categories and with both well-specified and vague dependency structures. (shrink)

The specialist field of intellectual disability nursing has been subjected to a number of changes since the move towards deinstitutionalisation from the 1970s. Government policies sought to change the nature of the disability workforce from what was labelled as a medicalised approach, towards a more socially oriented model of support. Decades on however, many nurses who specialise in the care of people with intellectual disability are still employed. In Australia, the advent of the National Disability Insurance Scheme offers an apt (...) moment to reflect upon these decades of specialised nursing care as the context of this nursing care will continue to evolve. A review of the published literature was conducted to explore what has shaped the field in the past and how this might inform the future of this speciality area under new policy and service contexts. People with intellectual disability have specific health and support needs that require a specialised workforce. Specialist nurses continue to be needed for people with intellectual disability. (shrink)

Dan Marshall and Josh Parsons note, correctly. that the property of being either a cube or accompanied by a cube is incorrectly classified as intrinsic under the definition we have given unless it turns out to be disjunctive. Whether it is disjunctive, under the definition we gave, turns on certain judgements of the relative naturalness of properties. They doubt the judgements of relative naturalness that would classify their property as disjunctive. We disagree. They also suggest that the whole idea of (...) judging relative naturalness is a dubious business. We reply that, like them or not, such judgements cannot easily be avoided. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Between 1920 and 1922, the University of Bristol biochemist, Maximilian Nierenstein, published four papers in a series exploring the structure of catechin in the Journal of the Chemical Society. The Society then abruptly refused to accept any more of his papers on catechin, or any other subject. It provided him with no reasons for the embargo until 1925. It then transpired that Nierenstein was boycotted because it was deemed that he had not responded adequately to criticisms of his work (...) made by his rival in catechin research, the German natural products chemist, Karl Freudenberg. It was not until 1929 that, as a result of a petition by a group of his former Bristol pupils and friends, that Nierenstein was again permitted to publish in the Society’s journal. The paper explores the Chemical Society’s treatment of Nierenstein in detail, sheds new light on his career and his reaction to the Society’s unprecedented boycott, examines some of the structural chemistry involved in the disputes, and discusses whether Nierenstein’s research deserves the label of ‘bad science’. (shrink)

We extend in a natural way the operation of Turing machines to infinite ordinal time, and investigate the resulting supertask theory of computability and decidability on the reals. Everyset. for example, is decidable by such machines, and the semi-decidable sets form a portion of thesets. Our oracle concept leads to a notion of relative computability for sets of reals and a rich degree structure, stratified by two natural jump operators.

Infinite time Turing machines extend the operation of ordinary Turing machines into transfinite ordinal time. By doing so, they provide a natural model of infinitary computability, a theoretical setting for the analysis of the power and limitations of supertask algorithms.

Hume’s Science of Human Nature is an investigation of the philosophical commitments underlying Hume's methodology in pursuing what he calls ‘the science of human nature’. It argues that Hume understands scientific explanation as aiming at explaining the inductively-established universal regularities discovered in experience via an appeal to the nature of the substance underlying manifest phenomena. For years, scholars have taken Hume to employ a deliberately shallow and demonstrably untenable notion of scientific explanation. By contrast, Hume’s Science of Human Nature sets (...) out to update our understanding of Hume’s methodology by using a more sophisticated picture of science as a model. (shrink)

My theme is thought experiment in natural science, and its relation to real experiment. I shall defend the thesis that thought experiments that do not lead to theorizing and to a real experiment are generally of much less value that those that do so. To illustrate this thesis I refer to three examples, from three very different periods, and with three very different kinds of status. The first is the classic thought experiment in which Galileo imagined that he had, (...) by pure thought, demolished Aristoteles' dogma that heavier bodies fall more quickly than light ones. I will show that he was mistaken. The second is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper purporting to show that quantum mechanics must be incomplete in its domain of application. This thought experiment is a very good one, not because its conclusions are correct, but precisely because it was fruitful, leading to theory and, above all, to a real experiment. Finally I discuss the modern string theory of everything, which, while it is regarded as a physical theory by its instigators, shares some properties of the least successful sort of thought experiment. (shrink)

Basic human rights are supposed to protect people from abuse and harm. They are the means whereby we protect our humanity. One would expect, therefore, that basic human rights would be valid and sacred in any context, including industrial relations. However, the complexity of the employee–employer relationship obscures this issue, and it is not clear whether such rights can be protected or whether they are valid in the context of industrial relations. Since rights are relational, they are preconditioned on the (...) special nature of the relationship between employee and employer. Hence, the specific meaning that these rights have in industrial relations cannot be grounded in the notion of human rights as such, but rather depends on the special relationships between employers and employees. Though much legislation has been passed to regulate the relationship between employees and employers, the issues surrounding this relationship remain one of the most debated topics in business ethics. Our paper focuses specifically on the right to equal pay and the right to privacy. With respect to the right to property, the paper examines whether there is a conflict between general human rights and the fundamental right of employers to their property. The Israeli legislature has responded to this conflict by enacting ‘protective laws’ that legally outline and mandate certain human rights. Under these laws, employees are prevented and prohibited from waiving the rights granted to them by law, even if employed in private industries. Despite this legislative effort, market forces are at times stronger, and consequently some basic rights are not fully applied or implemented. (shrink)

In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s and 1970s but a positive literature began (...) to grow during the 1970s and is rapidly expanding today. We review this recent literature and its implications for human evolutionary biology. We show that the rejection of group selection was based on a misplaced emphasis on genes as “replicators” which is in fact irrelevant to the question of whether groups can be like individuals in their functional organization. The fundamental question is whether social groups and other higher-level entities can be “vehicles” of selection. When this elementary fact is recognized, group selection emerges as an important force in nature and what seem to be competing theories, such as kin selection and reciprocity, reappear as special cases of group selection. The result is a unified theory of natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units.The vehicle-based theory makes it clear that group selection is an important force to consider in human evolution. Humans can facultatively span the full range from self-interested individuals to “organs” of group-level “organisms.” Human behavior not only reflects the balance between levels of selection but it can also alter the balance through the construction of social structures that have the effect of reducing fitness differences within groups, concentrating natural selection (and functional organization) at the group level. These social structures and the cognitive abilities that produce them allow group selection to be important even among large groups of unrelated individuals. (shrink)

Philosophers and historians of science have tended to denigrate the status and usefulness of the practice of natural history. The development of biology in this century is seen as the replacement of an older, descriptive and speculative method with a quantitative, experimental and well-founded science. This account embodies a philosophical view about the nature of science, which deems certain kinds of evidence and certain ways of producing knowledge appropriate. Natural history is seen as inadequate, providing insufficient support for (...) establishing theory. ;I develop a case study which shows this account to be incorrect. The case study concerns the debate over the role of geographical isolation in speciation between 1905 and 1907. After some preliminary historical background to the debate, I present a detailed discussion of the arguments made by naturalist David Starr Jordan . The debate that ensued centered on the kinds of evidence one should use in doing science--fieldwork versus experiments. Thus, this case study offers excellent subject matter for understanding natural history. ;After examining the debate and its participants in some detail, we can see that at the heart of this debate is an epistemological issue over what virtues are central to science. In particular, while natural historians like Jordan were advocating an approach which emphasized the consilience of inductions--and hence a variety of kinds of evidence--a more experimentally oriented group of biologists were advocating the centrality of replication and hence argued that all non-experimental forms of evidence should be abandoned. Contrary to expectations, the naturalists had the better theory. (shrink)

This is a study of a crucial and controversial topic in metaphysics and the philosophy of science: the status of the laws of nature. D. M. Armstrong works out clearly and in comprehensive detail a largely original view that laws are relations between properties or universals. The theory is continuous with the views on universals and more generally with the scientific realism that Professor Armstrong has advanced in earlier publications. He begins here by mounting an attack on the orthodox and (...) sceptical view deriving from Hume that laws assert no more than a regularity of coincidence between instances of properties. In doing so he presents what may become the definitive statement of the case against this position. Professor Armstrong then goes on to establish his own theory in a systematic manner defending it against the most likely objections, and extending both it and the related theory of universals to cover functional and statistical laws. This treatment of the subject is refreshingly concise and vivid: it will both stimulate vigorous professional debate and make an excellent student text. (shrink)

Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction explores the core topics of philosophy of physics through three key themes: the nature of space and time; the origin of irreversibility and probability in the physics of large systems; how we can make sense of quantum mechanics. Central issues discussed include: the scientific method as it applies in modern physics; the distinction between absolute and relative motion; the way that distinction changes between Newton's physics and special relativity; what spacetime is and (...) how it relates to the laws of physics; how fundamental physics can make no distinction between past and future and yet a clear distinction exists in the world we see around us; why it is so difficult to understand quantum mechanics, and why doing so might push us to change our fundamental physics, to rethink the nature of science, or even to accept the existence of parallel universes. (shrink)

The theory of space-time developed in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is connected to Leonhard Euler’s proof of invariance under Galilean transformations in the “On Motion in General” of the latter’s 1736 Analytical Mechanics. It is argued that Kant, by using the Principle of Relativity that is the output of Euler’s proof as an input to his own proof of the kinematic parallelogram law, makes essential use of absolute simultaneity. This is why, (...) in the Transcendental Aesthetic, he observes that “our theory of time explains as much a priori knowledge as the general theory of motion displays.” In conclusion, it is shown that the same proof-method, under a different definition of simultaneity, leads to the parallelogram law of the “Kinematic Part” of Einstein’s 1905 “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”. (shrink)

Tomasello's characterization of obligation as demanding and coercive is not an implication of the centrality of collaborative commitment. Not only is this characterization contentious, it appears to be falsified in some cases of personal conviction. The theory would be strengthened if the nature of obligation's force and collaborative commitment were directly linked, possibly through Tomasello's notions of identity and identification.

Many theories assimilate the idioms of modality to those of quantification; they hold that so-and-so is possible iff there is a "world" at which it is true that so-and-so. "Modal realism" identifies worlds with certain concrete particulars, and truth at a world with what is true of it. Rival "ersatz" theories identify worlds with certain abstract entities and identify what is true at them with what they represent. ;David Lewis argues that pre-theoretic modal intuitions are best explained by modal (...) realism. I try to make a case for ersatzism. ;First, I argue that modal realism is flawed on the grounds that it entails the impossibility of certain intuitively possible spatiotemporal structures; it fails to explain fully even those intuitions with which it is compatible; and it renders the origin of modal knowledge mysterious. ;Next, I argue that objections to ersatzism are not conclusive. ;Lewis objects that even a generic version of ersatzism requires an unnameable and maybe unintelligible primitive relation. I suggest that the problems with naming are perfectly general; they have nothing to do with metaphysical theories of modality in particular. And I suggest a solution taken from Lewis himself. I also argue that any purported unintelligibility is due to illegitimately assimilating the relation to spatiotemporal relations. ;Finally, I consider some difficulties with a version of ersatzism that aims to reduce modality to impure set-theory. One concerns the accommodation of intuitions about properties that are not, but might have been, instantiated. Another concerns accommodation of intuitions about relations of exclusion and entailment among properties. I suggest that these difficulties are due to faulty assumptions about the nature of properties rather than any fundamental flaws in this ersatz approach. So I propose an account of properties that when incorporated into ersatzism circumvents these difficulties and allows it to claim the advantages of modal realism without its drawbacks. Unlike traditional accounts, this takes the essence of a property to consist in its role in imposing a certain classificational structure on the particulars that instantiate it, rather than in any unique and irreducible "quiddity". (shrink)

This precis explains that _Philosophical naturalism contains three parts. Part I examines arguments for physicalism and maintains I) that all causally relevant special science properties must be realized by physical ones, and II) that all special science laws must reduce to physical ones, apart from the significant category of special laws that result from selection processes. Part II defends a teleological theory of representation and an identity theory of consciousness. Part III defends reliabilism and applies it to (...) inductive scepticism and also defends a fictionalist account of mathematics. (shrink)

Cognitive modules are internal mental structures. Some theorists and empirical researchers hypothesise that the human mind is either partially or massively comprised of structures that are modular in nature. Is the massive modularity of mind hypothesis a cogent view about the ontological nature of human mind or is it, rather, an effective/ineffective adaptationist discovery heuristic for generating predictively successful hypotheses about both heretofore unknown psychological traits and unknown properties of already identified psychological traits? Considering the inadequacies of the case in (...) favour of massive modularity as an ontological hypothesis, I suggest approaching and valuing massive modularity as an adaptationist discovery heuristic. (shrink)

Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts (...) in the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of object-boundaries at different scales. (shrink)

Current controversies about knowledge integration reflect conflicting ideas of what it means to “take Indigenous knowledge seriously”. While there is increased interest in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge in various disciplines such as anthropology and ethnobiology, integration projects are often accused of recognizing Indigenous knowledge only insofar as it is useful for Western scientists. The aim of this article is to use tools from philosophy of science to develop a model of both successful integration and integration failures. On the (...) one hand, I argue that cross-cultural recognition of property clusters leads to an ontological overlap that makes knowledge integration often epistemically productive and socially useful. On the other hand, I argue that knowledge integration is limited by ontological divergence. Adequate models of Indigenous knowledge will therefore have to take integration failures seriously and I argue that integration efforts need to be complemented by a political notion of ontological self-determination. (shrink)

Musicians and theorists such as the radiophonic pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, view the products of new audio technologies as devices whereby the experience of sound can be displaced from its causal origins and achieve new musical or poetic resonances. Accordingly, the listening experience associated with sonic art within this perspective is ‘acousmatic’; the process of sound generation playing no role in the description or understanding of the experience as such. In this paper I shall articulate and defend a position according to (...) which an adequate phenomenology of auditory experience must refer to mechanisms of sound generation. This position is shown to follow from a phenomenology of sounds as located events and a physicalist account of auditory properties as features of the temporal development of such events. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds on the basis of contemporary ethnobiological research. I argue that ethnobiological accounts of taxonomic convergence-divergence patters challenge common philosophical models of the relation between folk concepts and natural kinds. Furthermore, I outline a positive model of taxonomic convergence-divergence patterns that is based on Slater's [2014] notion of “stable property clusters” and Franklin-Hall's [2014] discussion of natural kinds as “categorical bottlenecks.” Finally, I argue that (...) this model is not only helpful for understanding the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds but also makes substantial contributions to contemporary debates about natural kinds.to contemporary debates about natural kinds. (shrink)

Recent work in the Philosophy of Mind has suggested that alternatives to reduction are required in order to explain the relationship between psychology and biology or physics. Emergence has been proposed as one such alternative. In this paper, I propose a precise definition of emergence, and I argue that chaotic systems provide concrete examples of properties that meet this definition. In particular, I suggest that being in the basin of attraction of a strange attractor is an emergent property of any (...) chaotic nonlinear dynamical system. This shows that non-reductive accounts of inter-theoretic relations are necessary, and that non-reductive accounts of the mental are possible. Moreover, this work provides a foundation for future work investigating the nature of explanation, prediction, and scientific understanding of non-reductive phenomena. (shrink)

There is a fundamental subsets–partitions duality that runs through the exact sciences. In more concrete terms, it is the duality between elements of a subset and the distinctions of a partition. In more abstract terms, it is the reverse-the-arrows of category theory that provides a major architectonic of mathematics. The paper first develops the duality between the Boolean logic of subsets and the logic of partitions. Then, probability theory and information theory (as based on logical entropy) are shown to start (...) with the quantitative versions of subsets and partitions. Some basic universal mapping properties in the category of Sets are developed that precede the abstract duality of category theory. But by far the main application is to the clarification and interpretation of quantum mechanics. Since classical mechanics illustrates the Boolean worldview of full distinctness, it is natural that quantum mechanics would be based on the indefiniteness of its characteristic superposition states, which is modeled at the set level by partitions (or equivalence relations). This approach to interpreting quantum mechanics is not a jury-rigged or ad hoc attempt at the interpretation of quantum mechanics but is a natural application of the fundamental duality running throughout the exact sciences. (shrink)

This book attempts to provide an ethical foundation with which to address the question, 'Should we spread life beyond Earth?' It examines the material conditions of the solar system, the limits of consciousness, the limits of society, and the long term possibilities of sending human life out into the universe. The author delineates the ethical criteria of sentient life and considers justifications of space travel for the purpose of human expansion. Duemler gives special attention to the utilitarian explanation which (...) concludes that if life did [gnyad throughout the solar system, or even the galaxy, then this would serve to increase the amount of sentient life and, if life in the new world is a balanced positive, is therefore a positive event. Three main issues, drawing upon both science and philosophy, fall at the center of the discussion: supporting evidence not based on questionable dogma nor requiring huge intuitive leaps of faith; it must square with natural selection and have biological plausibility; and it must have inherent value, not requiring underlying conditions for a judgement to pass. (shrink)

These are exciting times for philosophical theorizing about propositions, with the last 15 years seeing the development of new approaches and the emergence of new theorists. Propositions have been invoked to explain thought and cognition, the nature and attribution of mental states, language and communication, and in philosophical treatments of truth, necessity and possibility. According to Frege and Russell, and their followers, propositions are structured mind- and language-independent abstract objects which have essential and intrinsic truth-conditions. Some recent theorizing doubts whether (...) propositions really exist and, if they do, asks how we can grasp, entertain and know them? But most of the doubt concerns whether the abstract approach to propositions can really explain them. Are propositions really structured, and if so where does their structure come from? How does this structure form a unity, and does it need to? Are the representational and structural properties of propositions really independent of those of thinking and language? What does it mean to say that an object occurs in or is a constituent of a proposition? The volume takes up these and other questions, both as they apply to the abstract object approach and also to the more recently developed approaches. While the volume as a whole does not definitively and unequivocally reject the abstract objection approach, for the most part, the papers explore new critical and constructive directions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the _Canadian Journal of Philosophy. _. (shrink)

The nature of concepts -- Generalizations as hierarchical -- Perceiving first-level causal connections -- Conceptualizing first-level causal connections -- The structure of inductive reasoning -- Galileo's kinematics -- Newton's optics -- The methods of difference and agreement -- Induction as inherent in conceptualization -- The birth of celestial physics -- Mathematics and causality -- The power of mathematics -- Proof of Kepler's theory -- The development of dynamics -- The discovery of universal gravitation -- Discovery is proof -- Chemical (...) elements and atoms -- The kinetic theory of gases -- The unification of chemistry -- The method of proof -- Misapplying the inductive method -- Abandoning the inductive method -- Physics as inherently mathematical -- The science of philosophy -- An end-and a new beginning. (shrink)

In an enumerative induction we project a property found in all the examined members of a class to a hitherto unexamined member of that class. I consider an unresolved disagreement between Stephen Thomas and John Nolt about how likely the conclusion of one example of such reasoning is, given the premisses. Reflection on their controversy, and on the example, indicates that many textbook commonplaces about enumerative inductions are false. In particular, uniformity of the examined members of a class does (...) not necessarily make it highly likely that the next member will have the target property; this proposition may still be unlikely, or on the other hand be quite definite, depending on our background knowledge. Also, enumerative induction need not rely on any general assumption about the uniformity of nature or the resemblance of the future to the past. (shrink)

Like many discussions on the pros and cons of epistemic foundationalism, the debate between C. I. Lewis and H. Reichenbach dealt with three concerns: the existence of basic beliefs, their nature, and the way in which beliefs are related. In this paper we concentrate on the third matter, especially on Lewis’s assertion that a probability relation must depend on something that is certain, and Reichenbach’s claim that certainty is never needed. We note that Lewis’s assertion is prima facie ambiguous, but (...) argue that this ambiguity is only apparent if probability theory is viewed within a modal logic. Although there are empirical situations where Reichenbach is right, and others where Lewis’s reasoning seems to be more appropriate, it will become clear that Reichenbach’s stance is the generic one. We conclude that this constitutes a threat to epistemic foundationalism.Keywords: Epistemic foundationalism; Probability; Clarence Irving Lewis; Hans Reichenbach. (shrink)

Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds and his theory of laws of nature.

_A powerful treatise that demonstrates the existence of altruism in nature, with surprising implications for human society_ Does altruism exist? Or is human nature entirely selfish? In this eloquent and accessible book, famed biologist David Sloan Wilson provides new answers to this age-old question based on the latest developments in evolutionary science. From an evolutionary viewpoint, Wilson argues, altruism is inextricably linked to the functional organization of groups. “Groups that work” undeniably exist in nature and human society, although (...) class='Hi'>special conditions are required for their evolution. Humans are one of the most groupish species on earth, in some ways comparable to social insect colonies and multi-cellular organisms. The case that altruism evolves in all social species is surprisingly simple to make. Yet the implications for human society are far from obvious. Some of the most venerable criteria for defining altruism aren’t worth caring much about, any more than we care much whether we are paid by cash or check. Altruism defined in terms of thoughts and feelings is notably absent from religion, even though altruism defined in terms of action is notably present. The economic case for selfishness can be decisively rejected. The quality of everyday life depends critically on people who overtly care about the welfare of others. Yet, like any other adaptation, altruism can have pathological manifestations. Wilson concludes by showing how a social theory that goes beyond altruism by focusing on group function can help to improve the human condition. (shrink)

_A powerful treatise that demonstrates the existence of altruism in nature, with surprising implications for human society_ Does altruism exist? Or is human nature entirely selfish? In this eloquent and accessible book, famed biologist David Sloan Wilson provides new answers to this age-old question based on the latest developments in evolutionary science. From an evolutionary viewpoint, Wilson argues, altruism is inextricably linked to the functional organization of groups. “Groups that work” undeniably exist in nature and human society, although (...) class='Hi'>special conditions are required for their evolution. Humans are one of the most groupish species on earth, in some ways comparable to social insect colonies and multi-cellular organisms. The case that altruism evolves in all social species is surprisingly simple to make. Yet the implications for human society are far from obvious. Some of the most venerable criteria for defining altruism aren’t worth caring much about, any more than we care much whether we are paid by cash or check. Altruism defined in terms of thoughts and feelings is notably absent from religion, even though altruism defined in terms of action is notably present. The economic case for selfishness can be decisively rejected. The quality of everyday life depends critically on people who overtly care about the welfare of others. Yet, like any other adaptation, altruism can have pathological manifestations. Wilson concludes by showing how a social theory that goes beyond altruism by focusing on group function can help to improve the human condition. (shrink)

Discovering high-level causal relations from low-level data is an important and challenging problem that comes up frequently in the natural and social sciences. In a series of papers, Chalupka etal. (2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017) develop a procedure forcausal feature learning (CFL) in an effortto automate this task. We argue that CFL does not recommend coarsening in cases where pragmatic considerations rule in favor of it, and recommends coarsening in cases where pragmatic considerations rule against it. We propose a new (...) technique, pragmatic causal feature learning (PCFL), which extends the original CFL algorithm in useful and intuitive ways. We show that PCFL has the same attractive measure-theoretic properties as the original CFL algorithm. We compare the performance of both methods through theoretical analysis and experiments. (shrink)

The Moral Twin Earth challenge to ethical naturalism threatens to undermine an otherwise promising metaethical view by showing that typical, naturalist-friendly theories of reference determination predict diverging reference in Twin Earth scenarios, making it difficult to account for substantive moral disagreement. Several theorists have recently invoked David Lewis’s doctrine of reference magnetism as a solution, claiming that a highly elite moral property—a moral “joint in nature”—could secure shared reference between ourselves and our twins on Twin Earth, despite our diverging (...) usages of moral terms. This paper argues that this move has significant methodological implications: namely, it entails that a certain sort of simplicity is truth-conducive. Consequently, when applied to moral theories, this gives certain views, specifically monist ones like utilitarianism and contractualism, an advantage over their more complicated rivals, forms of pluralism and particularism. Thus, ethical naturalists cannot invoke reference magnetism without a substantial impact on first-order theorizing. (shrink)