Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. Plato: Moral and Political Ideals by Adela Marion Adam, first printed in 1913, deals with the main substance of Plato's philosophy of ethics and politics, set within the context of (...) his intellectual debt to Socrates. (shrink)

Policies to combat climate change should be supported by evidence regarding their effectiveness. But what kind of evidence is that? And what tools should one use to gather such evidence? Many argue that randomized controlled trials are the gold standard when it comes to evaluating the effects of policies. As a result, there has been a push for climate change policies to be evaluated using RCTs. We argue that this push is misguided. After explaining why RCTs are thought to be (...) the gold standard, we use examples of mitigation and adaptation policies to show that RCTs provide, at best, one piece of the evidential puzzle one needs to assemble for well-supported decisions regarding climate change policies. (shrink)

In much recent work, invariance under intervention has become a hallmark of the correctness of a causal-law claim. Despite its importance this thesis generally is either simply assumed or is supported by very general arguments with heavy reliance on examples, and crucial notions involved are characterized only loosely. Yet for both philosophical analysis and practicing science, it is important to get clear about whether invariance under intervention is or is not necessary or sufficient for which kinds of causal claims. Furthermore, (...) we need to know what counts as an intervention and what invariance is. In this paper I offer explicit definitions of two different kinds for the notions intervention, invariance, and causal correctness. Then, given some natural and relatively uncontroversial assumptions, I prove two distinct sets of theorems showing that invariance is indeed a mark of causality when the concepts are appropriately interpreted. (shrink)

"... some very serious critiques of French existential phenomenology and post-structuralism... the contributors offer some refreshingly new insights into some tried and 'true' philosophical texts and more recent works of literary theory." -- Philosophy and Literature "By bridging the gap between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy, the authors of The Thinking Muse: Feminism and the Modern French Philosophy largely overcome the cultural polarity between 'male thinker' and 'female muse'." -- Ethics "These engaging essays by American Feminists bring toether feminist philosophy, existential (...) phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. The editors provide an excellent introductory overview, making this an ideal book for courses in feminist theory and philosophy and modern French thought." -- Philosopher's Index "The concerns raised in this volume are substantial.... a solid addition to the canon of American feminist philosophy." -- Philosophy and Literature "... a forum for feminist appropriations of existential and post-structuralist philosophy." -- Canadian Philosophical Reviews Marking a radical shift in the traditional philosophical separation between muse (female) and thinker (male), The Thinking Muse revises the scope and methods of philosophical reflection. These engaging essays by American feminists bring together feminist philosophy, existential phenomenology, and recent currents in French poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

Objective The establishment of patient-centered measures capable of empirically determining meaningful cognitive change after surgery can significantly improve the medical care of epilepsy patients. Thus, this study aimed to develop reliable change indices (RCIs) and standardized regression-based (SRB) change norms for a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery in the German language. Methods Forty-seven consecutive patients with temporal lobe epilepsy underwent neuropsychological assessments, both before and 12 months after surgery. Practice-effect-adjusted RCIs and SRB change norms for each test score were computed. To (...) assess their usefulness, the presented methods were applied to a clinical sample, and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to model the odds of achieving improvement in quality of life (QOL) after surgery. Results The determined RCIs at 90% confidence intervals and the SRB equations for each test score included in the test battery are provided. Cohen’s kappa analyses revealed a moderate mean agreement between the two measures, varying from slight to almost perfect agreement across test scores. Using these measures, a negative association between improvement in QOL and decline in verbal memory functions after surgery was detected (adjusted odds ratio = 0.09, p = 0.006). Significance To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to develop RCIs and SRB change norms necessary for the objective determination of neuropsychological change in a comprehensive test battery in the German language, facilitating the individual monitoring of improvement and decline in each patients’ cognitive functioning and psychosocial situations after epilepsy surgery. The application of the described measures revealed a strong negative association between improvement in QOL and decline in verbal memory functions after surgery. (shrink)

Both arguments are based on the breakdown of normal criteria of identity in certain science-fictional circumstances. In one case, normal criteria would support the identity of person A with each of two other persons, B and C; and it is argued that, in the imagined circumstances, A=B and A=C have no truth value. In the other, a series or spectrum of cases is tailored to a sorites argument. At one end of the spectrum, persons A and B are such that (...) A=B is clearly true; at the other end, A and B are such that the identity is clearly false. In between, normal criteria of identity leave the truth or falsehood of A=B undecided, and it is argued that in these circumstances A=B has no truth value.These arguments are to be understood counterfactually. My claim is that, so understood, neither establishes its conclusion. The first involves a pair of counterfactual situations that are equally possible or tied. If A=B and A=C have no truth value, a counterfactual conditional with one of them as consequent and an antecedent that is true in circumstances in which either is true should have no truth value. Intuitively, however, any such counterfactual is false. The second argument can be seen to invite an analogous response. If this is right, however, there is an important disanalogy between this and the classical paradox of the heap. If the disanalogy is only apparent, the argument shows at most that the existence of persons can be indeterminate. (shrink)

The debate between Glymour and Fine hinges in part on a comparison of the width of the incoming wave packet in momentum space with the angles intercepted by the detectors in the Cross-Ramsey experiment. As Fine argues, it follows from the quantum formalism that the initial dispersion will be conserved in Compton scattering, and he allows that the Sum Rule is constrained by the statistical results of quantum mechanics. The Sum Rule may fail, but it will not fail in any (...) way that violates quantum mechanics. Thus most of the time the individual momentum value does not change more than the width of the initial wave packet: usually the value of Qγe at t must equal the value of Qγ at t′ plus the value of Qe at t′ ± Δp/2, where Δp represents the dispersion in momentum for the initial gamma ray. Thus in order to refute Fine's thesis, the detectors must discriminate finely enough to pick out changeovers of individual values within Δp. (shrink)

This paper, I am afraid, advocates the philosophy of technology without actually doing it. It can best be seen as a plea for the philosophical importance of technology; in this case, importance to one of the most widely discussed problems in philosophy of physics—the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. What I want to do here is to lay out a point of view that takes the measurement problem out of the abstract mathematical structure of theory, where we discuss questions about (...) unitary operators or conditions for the disappearance of certain inner products supposed to represent interference terms, and locate it elsewhere. Where is the measurement problem? Answer: It had better be found in the quantum technology or it is not to be found at all. My view in many respects follows ideas I have learned from Willis Lamb. (shrink)

R. P. de Lamanon was trained in theology and philosophy, but he chose the career of a self-taught geologist/naturalist, later adding experimental physics to his skills. Recommended by Condorcet, Secretary to the Académie Royale des Sciences, for the post of ‘Naturaliste’ on La Pérouse's expedition, he carried out delicate measurements at sea requested by the Académie and made two important discoveries: the barometric tide at the equator, and the variation of magnetic intensity with latitude. Killed by natives of Samoa in (...) 1787, his reports were long delayed in publication, inadequately presented, and some even lost. Except for brief recognition by von Humboldt many years later, Lamanon's pioneering measurements have been largely ignored or forgotten. This paper revives his memory. (shrink)

This volume contains thirteen papers that were presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques, which was held at Ryerson University in Toronto. It showcases rigorously reviewed modern scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. A series of chapters all set in the eighteenth century consider topics such as John Marsh’s techniques (...) for the computation of decimal fractions, Euler’s efforts to compute the surface area of scalene cones, a little-known work by John Playfair on the practical aspects of mathematics, and Monge’s use of descriptive geometry. After a brief stop in the nineteenth century to consider the culture of research mathematics in 1860s Prussia, the book moves into the twentieth century with an examination of the historical context within which the Axiom of Choice was developed and a paper discussing Anatoly Vlasov’s adaptation of the Boltzmann equation to ionized gases. The remaining chapters deal with the philosophy of twentieth-century mathematics through topics such as an historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits; a reexamination of Mary Leng’s defenses of mathematical fictionalism through an alternative, anti-realist approach to mathematics; and a look at the reasons that mathematicians select specific problems to pursue. Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible to not only mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also anyone with a general interest in mathematics. (shrink)

The nature of moral values has occupied philosophers and educationalists for centuries and a variety of claims have been made about their origin and status. One tradition suggests they may be thoughts in the mind of God; another that they are eternal truths to be reached by rational reflection (much like the truths of mathematics) or alternatively through intuition; another that they are social conventions; and another (from the logical positivists) that they are not verifiable facts but simply the expression (...) of emotional likes and dislikes. Standard introductory texts (e.g., Bowie 2004; Vardy and Grosch 1999) on the subject of ethics rarely mention Darwin or Darwinism (Mepham 2005 is a useful exception) possibly mindful of the fact that the relationship of evolutionary biology to moral questions has had a troublesome history. The effect of this has been that whole generations of moral philosophers have given the biological sciences a wide berth and consequently often remain poorly informed about recent advances in evolutionary thought and the neurosciences. On the other hand, scientists have developed interesting models of the evolution of the moral sentiments and are using new imaging techniques to explore the centres of the brain associated with emotion and motivation, but many have been fearful of committing the naturalistic fallacy and so have steered clear of extrapolating their findings to ethical questions. No one after all wants to be seen to be committing an elementary logical blunder. But in the last 20 years, evolutionary biologists have regained the confidence to explore the implications of evolution for the study of ethics (de Waal 1996; Wilson 1998; Wright 1994; Greene 2003). This paper is designed to encourage those entrusted with the teaching of ethics to be open to the potential of Darwinism as a source of ideas on the origins and status of ethical thought and behaviour. It is also hoped that it will illustrate for science educators the enormous explanatory power inherent in Darwinian thought. (shrink)

Hunting Causes and Using Them argues that causation is not one thing, as commonly assumed, but many. There is a huge variety of causal relations, each with different characterizing features, different methods for discovery and different uses to which it can be put. In this collection of new and previously published essays, Nancy Cartwright provides a critical survey of philosophical and economic literature on causality, with a special focus on the currently fashionable Bayes-nets and invariance methods - and it (...) exposes a huge gap in that literature. Almost every account treats either exclusively how to hunt causes or how to use them. But where is the bridge between? It's no good knowing how to warrant a causal claim if we don't know what we can do with that claim once we have it. This book will interest philosophers, economists and social scientists. (shrink)

In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

The volume brings together for the first time original essays by leading philosophers working on powers in relation to metaphysics, philosophy of natural and social science, philosophy of mind and action, epistemology, ethics and social and political philosophy. In each area, the concern is to show how a commitment to real causal powers affects discussion at the level in question. In metaphysics, for example, realism about powers is now recognized as providing an alternative to orthodox accounts of causation, modality, properties (...) and laws. Dispositional realist philosophers of science, meanwhile, argue that a powers ontology allows for a proper account of the nature of scientific explanation. In the philosophy of mind there is the suggestion that agency is best understood in terms of the distinctive powers of human beings. Those who take virtue theoretic approaches in epistemology and ethics have long been interested in the powers that allow for knowledge and/or moral excellence. In social and political philosophy, finally, powers theorists are interested in the powers of sociological phenomena such as collectivities, institutions, roles and/or social relations, but also in the conditions of possibility for the cultivation of the powers of individuals. The book will be of interest to philosophers working in any of these areas, as well as to historians of philosophy, political theorists and critical realists. (shrink)

It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the world from the way modern science works - as empiricism teaches us we should - we end up with a world where some features are precisely ordered, others are given to rough regularity and still others behave (...) in their own diverse ways. This patchwork makes sense when we realise that laws are very special productions of nature, requiring very special arrangements for their generation. Combining classic and newly written essays on physics and economics, The Dappled World carries important philosophical consequences and offers serious lessons for both the natural and the social sciences. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright; XII*—Fundamentalism vs. the Patchwork of Laws, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 279–292, https.

We currently have on offer a variety of different theories of causation. Many are strikingly good, providing detailed and plausible treatments of exemplary cases; and all suffer from clear counterexamples. I argue that, contra Hume and Kant, this is because causation is not a single, monolithic concept. There are different kinds of causal relations imbedded in different kinds of systems, readily described using thick causal concepts. Our causal theories pick out important and useful structures that fit some familiar cases—cases we (...) discover and ones we devise to fit. (shrink)