The key question in this three way debate is the role of the collectivity and of agency. Collins and Shrager debate whether cognitive psychology has, like the sociology of knowledge, always taken the mind to extend beyond the individual. They agree that irrespective of the history, socialization is key to understanding the mind and that this is compatible with Clark’s position; the novelty in Clark’s “extended mind” position appears to be the role of the material rather than the role of (...) other minds. Collins and Clark debate the relationship between self, agency, and the human collectivity. Collins argues that the Clark’s extended mind fails to stress the asymmetry of the relationship between the self and its material “scaffolding.” Clark accepts that there is asymmetry but that an asymmetrical ensemble is sufficient to explain the self. Collins says that we know too little about the material world to pursue such a model to the exclusion of other approaches including that both the collectivity and language have agency. The collectivity must be kept in mind! (Though what follows is a robust exchange of views it is also a cooperative effort, authors communicating “backstage” with each other to try to make the disagreements as clear and to the point as possible.). (shrink)

Jacques Derrida is the most famous philosopher of the late twentieth century. His philosophy is an array of rigorous tactics for destabilizing texts, meanings, and identities. "Introducing Derrida" introduces and explores his life and work and explains his influence within both philosophy and literature.

Abstract“Hypernormal science” has minimal potential for contestation on matters of principle and practice so that information exchange can be unproblematic. Sciences comprise hypernormal domains and more contestable “normal” domains where knowledge diffusion, like acquiring linguistic fluency, depends on face-to-face interaction. Hypernormal domains belonging to molecular biology are contrasted with normal domains in gravitational wave detection physics. Sciences as a whole should not be confused with their typical domains. The analysis has immediate implications for proposed transitions out of the Covid-19 lockdown, (...) proposed solutions to the replication crisis, and, perhaps, our understanding of the early development of social studies of science. (shrink)

This book reviews the facts and arguments surrounding Heidegger's politics, and situates them within critical political debates as we move into the 21st century.

This title is now available in a new format. Refer to Heidegger: A Graphic Guide 9781848311749.

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning (...) business activity with the broader public interest . This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR. (shrink)

It is widely held that propositions are structured entities. In The Nature and Structure of Content (2007), Jeff King argues that the structure of propositions is none other than the syntactic structure deployed by the speaker/hearers who linguistically produce and consume the sentences that express the propositions. The present paper generalises from King’s position and claims that syntax provides the best in-principle account of propositional structure. It further seeks to show, however, that the account faces severe problems pertaining to (...) the fine individuation of propositions that the account entails. The ‘fineness of cut’ problem has been raised by Collins (The unity of linguistic meaning, 2007) and others. King (Philos Stud 163(3):763–781, 2013) responds to these complaints in ways this paper rebuts. Thus, the very idea of structured propositions is brought into doubt, for the best in-principle account of such structure appears to fail. (shrink)

Review of: Finn Collin (2011), Science Studies as Naturalized Philosophy (Dordecht: Springer).

On the face of it, the directors of new large scientific projects have an impossible task. They have to make technical decisions about sciences in which they have never made a research contribution—sciences in which they have no contributory expertise. Furthermore, these decisions must be accepted and respected by the scientists who are making research contributions. The problem is discussed in two interviews conducted with two directors of large scientific projects. The paradox is resolved for the managers by their use (...) of interactional and referred expertise. The same analysis might be applicable to management in general. An Appendix, co-authored with Jeff Shrager, compares the notion of referred expertise with contributory expertise.Keywords: Management; Referred expertise; Interactional expertise; LIGO; Thirty Meter Telescope; Big science. (shrink)

Hubert L. Dreyfus's engagement with other thinkers has always been driven by his desire to understand certain basic questions about ourselves and our world. The philosophers on whom his teaching and research have focused are those whose work seems to him to make a difference to the world. The essays in this volume reflect this desire to "make a difference"--not just in the world of academic philosophy, but in the broader world.Dreyfus has helped to create a culture of reflection--of questioning (...) the deep premises that inform and shape work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He has also been the primary introducer and interpreter of Martin Heidegger's work to the world of information technology. The essays in this volume represent the fruitful application of deep philosophical analysis to the concerns of our modern technological world.The sections are Coping and Intentionality; Computers and Cognitive Science; and "Applied Heidegger." In addition to cognitive science and artificial intelligence, topics include everyday skills, religion, business practices, and medical care. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays.Contributors : Daniel Andler, Patricia Benner, Albert Borgmann, Harry Collins, George Downing, Fernando Flores, Sean Kelly, Joseph Rouse, Theodore R. Schatzki, John Searle, Robert C. Solomon, Charles Spinosa, David Stern, Charles Taylor, Terry Winograd, Mark Wrathall. (shrink)

Deprivation accounts of death's badness, such as Feldman’s (1992), that purport to avoid questionable life-death comparatives Silverstein warns against (1980) by comparing only the values of various alternative life-wholes, implicitly depend upon assigning greater comparative value to periods of these life-wholes (for the person who lives) than is assigned to periods when the person is not alive, and thus are simply special cases of the problematic life-death comparative. Life-death comparatives undermine any deprivation account if (1) there is no way things (...) are (good or bad) for one who does not exist, and (2) values are comparative in the way specified by VC. Rejecting VC is not an option for the standard deprivation account, since this account uses VC to show that since continued life is good for the person who continues to live, death must be worse for that person. The non-standard deprivation account, dubbed by McMahan the reconciliation strategy, does not employ VC, but it also fails to vindicate common sense attitudes towards matters of life and death, and is in the main a capitulation to the Epicurean position. The remaining option for one who wishes to defend the view that death is typically bad for the person who dies is to directly target the Epicurean starting point, that things cannot be good or bad for a person when he does not exist. (shrink)

Hubert L. Dreyfus's engagement with other thinkers has always been driven by his desire to understand certain basic questions about ourselves and our world. The philosophers on whom his teaching and research have focused are those whose work seems to him to make a difference to the world. The essays in this volume reflect this desire to "make a difference"—not just in the world of academic philosophy, but in the broader world. Dreyfus has helped to create a culture of reflection—of (...) questioning the deep premises that inform and shape work in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He has also been the primary introducer and interpreter of Martin Heidegger's work to the world of information technology. The essays in this volume represent the fruitful application of deep philosophical analysis to the concerns of our modern technological world. The sections are Coping and Intentionality; Computers and Cognitive Science; and "Applied Heidegger." In addition to cognitive science and artificial intelligence, topics include everyday skills, religion, business practices, and medical care. The book concludes with Dreyfus's responses to the essays. Contributors Daniel Andler, Patricia Benner, Albert Borgmann, Harry Collins, George Downing, Fernando Flores, Sean Kelly, Joseph Rouse, Theodore R. Schatzki, John Searle, Robert C. Solomon, Charles Spinosa, David Stern, Charles Taylor, Terry Winograd, Mark Wrathall. (shrink)

A prominent approach to scientific explanation and modeling claims that for a model to provide an explanation it must accurately represent at least some of the actual causes in the event's causal history. In this paper, I argue that many optimality explanations present a serious challenge to this causal approach. I contend that many optimality models provide highly idealized equilibrium explanations that do not accurately represent the causes of their target system. Furthermore, in many contexts, it is in virtue of (...) their independence of causes that optimality models are able to provide a better explanation than competing causal models. Consequently, our account of explanation and modeling must expand beyond the causal approach. (shrink)

This paper analyzes two ways idealized biological models produce factive scientific understanding. I then argue that models can provide factive scientific understanding of a phenomenon without providing an accurate representation of the features of their real-world target system. My analysis of these cases also suggests that the debate over scientific realism needs to investigate the factive scientific understanding produced by scientists’ use of idealized models rather than the accuracy of scientific models themselves.

This article discusses minimal model explanations, which we argue are distinct from various causal, mechanical, difference-making, and so on, strategies prominent in the philosophical literature. We contend that what accounts for the explanatory power of these models is not that they have certain features in common with real systems. Rather, the models are explanatory because of a story about why a class of systems will all display the same large-scale behavior because the details that distinguish them are irrelevant. This story (...) explains patterns across extremely diverse systems and shows how minimal models can be used to understand real systems. (shrink)

Biologists and economists use models to study complex systems. This similarity between these disciplines has led to an interesting development: the borrowing of various components of model-based theorizing between the two domains. A major recent example of this strategy is economists’ utilization of the resources of evolutionary biology in order to construct models of economic systems. This general strategy has come to be called evolutionary economics and has been a source of much debate among economists. Although philosophers have developed literatures (...) on the nature of models and modeling, the unique issues surrounding this kind of interdisciplinary model building have yet to be independently investigated. In this paper, we utilize evolutionary economics as a case study in the investigation of more general issues concerning interdisciplinary modeling. We begin by critiquing the distinctions currently used within the evolutionary economics literature and propose an alternative carving of the conceptual terrain. We then argue that the three types of evolutionary economics we distinguish capture distinctions that will be important whenever resources of model-based theorizing are borrowed across distinct scientific domains. Our analysis of these model-building strategies identifies several of the unique methodological and philosophical issues that confront interdisciplinary modeling. (shrink)

Modal epistemologists parse modal conditions on knowledge in terms of metaphysical possibilities or ways the world might have been. This is problematic. Understanding modal conditions on knowledge this way has made modal epistemology, as currently worked out, unable to account for epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths, and unable to characterise widely discussed issues such as the problem of religious diversity and the perceived epistemological problem with knowledge of abstract objects. Moreover, there is reason to think that this (...) is a congenital defect of orthodox modal epistemology. This way of characterising modal epistemology is however optional. It is shown that one can non-circularly characterise modal conditions on knowledge in terms of epistemic possibilities, or ways the world might be for the target agent. Characterising the anti-luck condition in terms of epistemic possibilities removes the impediment to understanding epistemic luck in the case of necessary truths and opens the door to using these conditions to shed new light on some longstanding epistemological problems. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism makes the case that the conjunction of evolutionary theory and naturalism cannot be rationally believed, as, if both evolutionary theory and naturalism were true, it would be highly unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable. I present Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism and survey a theory of meaning espoused by Robert Brandom, known as semantic inferentialism. I argue that if one accepts semantic inferentialism, as it is developed by Brandom, then Plantinga's motivation for the (...) evolutionary argument against naturalism is undermined. (shrink)

Concepts are the constituents of thoughts. Therefore, concepts are vital to any theory of cognition. However, despite their widely accepted importance, there is little consensus about the nature and origin of concepts. Thanks to the work of Lawrence Barsalou, Jesse Prinz and others concept empiricism has been gaining momentum within the philosophy and psychology literature. Concept empiricism maintains that all concepts are copies, or combinations of copies, of perceptual representations—that is, all concepts are couched in the codes of perceptual representation (...) systems. It is widely agreed that any satisfactory theory of concepts must account for how concepts semantically compose (the compositionality requirement) and explain how their intentional content is determined (the content determination requirement). In this paper, I argue that concept empiricism has serious problems satisfying these two requirements. Therefore, although stored perceptual representations may facilitate some traditionally conceptual tasks, concepts should not be identified with copies of perceptual representations. (shrink)

Philosophe, l'auteur tente de resituer le mouvement de la pensée d'Hannah Arendt, ses grandes articulations et ce qui fait d'elle un auteur majeur et précurseur.

Modal ontological arguments argue from the possible existence of a perfect being to the actual (necessary) existence of a perfect being. But modal ontological arguments have a problem of symmetry; they can be run in both directions. Reverse ontological arguments argue from the possible nonexistence of a perfect being to the actual (necessary) nonexistence of a perfect being. Some familiar points about the necessary a posteriori, however, show that the symmetry can be broken in favour of the ontological argument.

Among the various methods of deceit, lying is often thought to be a special affront on the grounds that it invites the victim’s trust. Such an explanation is incomplete without an account of the moral significance of trust. This article distinguishes two morally problematic relations to trust, betrayals and abuses, and, appealing to the idea that we should be grateful to be trusted, attempts to explain these wrongs as violations of distinct demands of gratitude for trust. Only the wrong of (...) abuse, not betrayal, is useful for distinguishing methods of deceit. Although lying commits an abuse of trust, it turns out that it is really the broader category of deceit by means of communication that is special in this way. -/- . (shrink)

If we think of artistic creation as a basic dimension of humanity we need to question the absence of female artists in history. We should also look at their gradual emergence in the late 20th century, an emergence that coincides with the feminist movement and a change in the conception of art itself, revealed chiefly by Duchamp. But does art by women have some specificity? Without giving a definite answer as far as subject matter is concerned, we note that the (...) conditions suited to both history and the history of art may affect their creation but without specifying it ontologically. If, moreover, some women artists define their work as feminist, it is through an act that combines artistic and political transgression. The exhibition currently arranged by the Georges Pompidou Centre, elles@ beaubourg, provides new resources for these complex questions. (shrink)

In the debate between internalists and externalists in philosophy of language and philosophy of psychology, internalists such as Jerry Fodor have invoked a strong a priori argument to show that externalist descriptions can play no role in a science of the human mind and of human action. Shifting the ground of the debate from psychology to social science, I try to undermine Fodor's reasoning. I also point to a role for externalist theorising in the area where the socio-semantic theory of (...) the 'division of linguistic labour' makes contact with traditional micro-sociological theorising. (shrink)

S’il est une « révolution » sociale contemporaine dont les effets directs ou indirects constituent un enjeu majeur de ce début de XXIe siècle, ce n’est pas – comme on aurait pu l’attendre – celle des classes qui a occupé la conscience politique internationale et nationale pendant plusieurs décennies, mais celle des sexes. Chaque jour, certains des thèmes propres au..

We have not to choose between Marx and Kant. Kant’s ethics is not an abstract thought to which one could oppose Marx’s practical thought. In addition, a normative dimension appears constantly in Marx’s works, legitimating the communist prospect, as an achievement and a liberation of mankind, forming an effective community. Lastly, the old historical materialism, conceived as both a scientific method of analysis and a teleological philosophy, cannot be accepted any more. The power of Marx’s scientific analysis invites us to (...) reconsider the standards of justice and law in conformity with his emancipatory objectives. (shrink)

Introduction: I lay out the broad contours of my thesis: a defence of mathematical nominalism, and nominalism more generally. I discuss the possibility of metaphysics, and the relationship of nominalism to naturalism and pragmatism. Chapter 2: I delineate an account of abstractness. I then provide counter-arguments to claims that mathematical objects make a di erence to the concrete world, and claim that mathematical objects are abstract in the sense delineated. Chapter 3: I argue that the epistemological problem with abstract objects (...) is not best understood as an incompatibility with a causal theory of knowledge, or as an inability to explain the reliability of our mathematical beliefs, but resides in the epistemic luck that would infect any belief about abstract objects. To this end, I develop an account of epistemic luck that can account for cases of belief in necessary truths and apply it to the mathematical case. Chapter 4: I consider objections, based on metaphysical considerations and linguistic data, to the view that the existential quantifier expresses existence. I argue that these considerations can be accommodated by an existentially committing quantifier when the pragmatics of quantified sentences are properly understood. I develop a semi-formal framework within which we can define a notion of nominalistic adequacy. I show how our notion of nominalistic adequacy can show why it is legitimate for the nominalist to make use of platonistic “assumptions” in inference-making. Chapter 5: I turn to the application of mathematics in science, including explanatory applications, and its relation to a number of indispensability arguments. I consider also issues of realism and anti-realism, and their relation to these arguments. I argue that abstraction away from pragmatic considerations has acted to skew the debate, and has obscured possibilities for a nominalistic understanding of mathematical practices. I end by explaining the notion of a pragmatic meta-vocabulary, and argue that this notion can be used to carve out a new way of locating our ontological commitments. Chapter 6: I show how the apparatus developed in earlier chapters can be utilised to roll out the nominalist project to other domains of discourse. In particular, I consider propositions and types. I claim that a unified account of nominalism across these domains is available. Conclusion: I recapitulate the claims of my thesis. I suggest that the goal of mathematical enquiry is not descriptive knowledge, but understanding. (shrink)

Do pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to expand access to investigational drugs to patients outside the clinical trial? One reason for thinking they do not is that expanded access programs might negatively affect the clinical trial process. This potential impact creates dilemmas for practitioners who nevertheless acknowledge some moral reason for expanding access. Bioethicists have explained these reasons in terms of beneficence, compassion, or a principle of rescue, but their arguments have been limited to questions of moral permissibility, leaving (...) for future research the question of whether expanded access is morally obligatory. We take up this further question and argue that pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to expand access. Our defense is not based on beneficence, compassion, or rescue, but instead on a reciprocal moral expectation resulting from existing social commitments that help ensure a robust pharmaceutical practice within the broader healthcare system. Our aim is to give this obligation, along with several others, a coherent and plausible structure within the wider clinical trial process so that one might better explain the sources of the dilemmas and their possible resolutions. (shrink)

Le printemps austral au Chili a été le théâtre d’un grand soulèvement qui a mis fin à la politique néolibérale de Piñera tout en critiquant le cadre constitutionnel, héritage de l’époque Pinochet. Au départ, le mouvement était une grève métropolitaine contre l’augmentation du prix du ticket des transports publics. Face à la répression qui a suivi la grève s’est transformée en un soulèvement des multitudes pour la démocratie et un nouveau système de protection sociale. Même les tentatives de médiation institutionnelles (...) ne semblent ne pas avoir de succès pour bloquer le mouvement qui tout de même rentre en hibernation à cause de la pandémie. Mais le résultat du plébiscite pour une nouvelle constituante qui montre que le pays s’émancipe du cadre pinochetiste. (shrink)

Deception is a useful methodological device for studying attitudes and behavior, but deceptive studies fail to fulfill the informed consent requirements in the U.S. federal regulations. This means that before they can be approved by Institutional Review Boards, they must satisfy the four regulatory conditions for a waiver or alteration of these requirements. To illustrate our interpretation, we apply the conditions to a recent study that used deception to show that subjects judged the same wine as more enjoyable when they (...) believed it had a higher price. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bioethics Inside the BeltwayNHGRI’s Intramural Ethics ExperimentRonald M. Green (bio)Early in 1995, the National Human Genome Research Institute (then known as the National Center for Human Genome Research) began a novel experiment. It established the Office of Genome Ethics in its Division of Intramural Research (DIR). An extramural “ELSI” funding program for research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of the Human Genome Project had been in existence (...) since 1990, and a joint Department of Energy, NIH Working Group to consider larger policy issues raised by the genome project had also been in existence since that date. But the establishment of the Office of Genome Ethics was the first effort to provide an in-house ethics service for the several hundred NHGRI genetic researchers working on the NIH campus.The experiment was also novel by NIH standards. The Clinical Center, which serves all NIH research institutes as a patient-care facility, has long had a bioethics program, but, to my knowledge, none of the 23 other institutes, centers, or divisions of the NIH had ever developed an ethics program to assist its on-campus researchers in identifying and addressing the ethical issues arising from their research. Behind this initiative lay the commitment to ethics in genetic research shared by Francis Collins, Director of NHGRI, Jeff Trent, Scientific Director of the Division of Intramural Research, and other senior scientists and administrators of the Institute.I was fortunate to be asked to serve as Director of this office. My previous experience in the federal context was limited. I had served on many NIH study sections and for a nine-month period had been a member of the Human Embryo Research Panel, but none of this amounted to an “insider’s view” of government bioethics. The preponderance of my bioethics career had transpired in the university and medical school/medical center environment.Because I had to continue to fulfill many Dartmouth commitments, I agreed to serve on an interim and half-time basis (one week in Bethesda; one week at home) for an 18-month period. I was assisted in maintaining this schedule by the appointment of a deputy, Mathew Thomas, a recent bioethics graduate of Duke University, who would serve on a full-time basis and provide continuity for our [End Page 181] work. Our objectives, established in consultation with NHGRI personnel, were to learn which functions would be most useful, to set up a program to provide them, and, eventually, to aid in the process of determining how an office like this might fit into NHGRI’s future.As this 18-month stint draws to a close, I can report that it has been an exhilarating experience. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with outstanding scientists in an area of growing importance and interest. I believe we have pioneered in the provision of bioethics education and counsel to a diverse group of genetic researchers. We have helped to “open the doors and windows” of the Genome Institute, facilitating two-way communication between NHGRI researchers and others interested in genetic and ethics. We have assisted with some knotty problems in genetic research while building a base of knowledge about highly specialized issues that is useful to researchers inside and outside NHGRI. What follows is an abbreviated overview and evaluation of our activities during this period.Main ActivitiesWorking with a core of interested supporters from every branch of the DIR, our office quickly established a roster of activities aimed at meeting identified needs. These included: (1) a consult service able to help investigators address urgent problems arising in their research or in the IRB review process; (2) a program of workshops and discussion groups dealing with challenging ethical issues raised by genetic research; (3) a program of public seminars bringing together NHGRI researchers and other clinicians, scientists, and scholars in the greater Washington area who are interested in genetic ethics; (4) a course on science research ethics to be offered to all NHGRI personnel; and (5) an ongoing program of research activities in genetics and ethics designed to provide depth and substance to the office’s work.ConsultationsIn an institute with scores of... (shrink)

In his article, “The Strong Program and Asymmetrical Explanation of the History of Science: A Reply to Collin” (Shahryari 2022b), Shahram Shahryari responds to my comments (in Collin 2022) upon his original article, “A Tension in the Strong Program: The Relation between the Rational and the Social” (Shahryari 2022a). I believe that in this new contribution, Shahryari changes the subject as compared to our original discussion. Hence, before I comment upon his recent contribution, I want to recapitulate briefly (...) the content of that discussion. (shrink)

Highly idealized models, such as the Hawk-Dove game, are pervasive in biological theorizing. We argue that the process and motivation that leads to the introduction of various idealizations into these models is not adequately captured by Michael Weisberg’s taxonomy of three kinds of idealization. Consequently, a fourth kind of idealization is required, which we call hypothetical pattern idealization. This kind of idealization is used to construct models that aim to be explanatory but do not aim to be explanations.

Logic is the study of the validity of arguments, which is to say the study of when a conclusion follows or does not follow from a set of premises. Logic is an ancient discipline pioneered by Aristotle and developed by some of the greatest thinkers in the Middle Ages. However, in the nineteenth century logic underwent a remarkable transformation into a precise branch of mathematics that changed the nature of logic, and the study of religion, forever. Both religious adherents and (...) critics of religion have sometimes claimed that logic and religion do not mix, but this is a puzzling claim since logic itself is not a set of substantive premises about the world which may come into conflict with religious claims, but a means of testing mathematically which premises come into conflict with which other premises. In fact, sense can be made of whether logic and religion mix, but the question, and the answer, turn out to be more complex than many have thought. (shrink)

Shapiro and Sober claim that Walsh, Ariew, Lewens, and Matthen give a mistaken, a priori defense of natural selection and drift as epiphenomenal. Contrary to Shapiro and Sober’s claims, we first argue that WALM’s explanatory doctrine does not require a defense of epiphenomenalism. We then defend WALM’s explanatory doctrine by arguing that the explanations provided by the modern genetical theory of natural selection are ‘autonomous-statistical explanations’ analogous to Galton’s explanation of reversion to mediocrity and an explanation of the diffusion ofgases. (...) We then argue that whereas Sober’s theory of forces is an adequate description of Darwin’s theory, WALM’s explanatory doctrine is required to understand how themodern genetical theory of natural selection explains large-scale statistical regularities. 1 Introduction2 Shapiro and Sober’s ‘Epiphenomenalism Do’s and Don’ts’3 WALM’s Explanatory Doctrine4 Galton’s Autonomous-Statistical Explanation5 A Second Example: The Statistical Explanation of the Diffusion of Gases6 Distinguishing Two Theories of Evolution by Natural Selection7 A Possible Objection: Are Statistical Laws Sufficient for Explanation?8 Conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper I ask how we should treat other beings in cases of uncertainty about sentience. I evaluate three options: an incautionary principle that permits us to treat other beings as non-sentient, a precautionary principle that requires us to treat other beings as sentient, and an expected value principle that requires us to multiply our subjective probability that other beings are sentient by the amount of moral value they would have if they were. I then draw three conclusions. First, (...) the precautionary and expected value principles are more plausible than the incautionary principle. Second, if we accept a precautionary or expected value principle, then we morally ought to treat many beings as having at least partial moral status. Third, if we morally ought to treat many beings as having at least partial moral status, then morality involves more cluelessness and demandingness than we might have thought. (shrink)

In order to delimit the field of theoretical biology, the author distinguishes in empirical biology a substructure and a superstructure. Empirical biology cannot be constituted without a minimum of reference to philosophical ideas such as the principle of identity ; having regard to its objective, which is explanation by means of physico-chemical models, it does not easily avoid ontological aspirations. Further, experimental research makes great use of scientific theories. Finally, the elaboration of the empirical data of biology may find its (...) fulfilment in an ontological science, philosophical biology, which is a branch of the philosophy of nature. Philosophical biology, superstructure of experimental biology, is a discipline intermediate between the special sciences of life, defined in an empirical sense, and metaphysics.Um den Bereich der theoretischen Biologie abzugrenzen, unterscheidet der Autor in der positiven Biologie eine “Infrastruktur” und eine “Suprastruktur”. Die positive Biologie kann nicht ohne ein Minimum von Beziehungen zu den philosophischen Begriffen aufgebaut werden, wie z.B. zu dem Prinzip der Identität ; ihrem Ziele nach betrachtet, welches in der Erklärung durch physiko-chemische Grundbegriffe besteht, kann sie sich nicht gut den ontologischen Ansprüchen entziehen. Darüber hinaus bedient sich die experimentelle Forschung weitgehend der wissenschaftlichen Theorien. Zum Schluss kann die Bearbeitung der empirischen Erkenntnisse in der Biologie ihre Vollendung in einer ontologischen Wissenschaft, die philosophische Biologie, welche ein Zweig der Philosophie der Natur ist, finden. Die philosophische Biologie, die der experimentellen übergeordnet ist, steht als Disziplin zwischen den besonderen Wissenschaften vom Leben, verstanden im empirischen Sinne, und der Metaphysik. (shrink)