133 found
Order:
  1.  46
    Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 2019 - Johns Hopkins University Press.
    Although largely conceptual, the book is an unequivocal defense of this new theory in the explanation of human behavior.
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   129 citations  
  2.  63
    The Structure of Biological Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1985 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This book provides a comprehensive guide to the conceptual methodological, and epistemological problems of biology, and treats in depth the major developments in molecular biology and evolutionary theory that have transformed both biology and its philosophy in recent decades. At the same time the work is a sustained argument for a particular philosophy of biology that unifies disparate issues and offers a framework for expectations about the future directions of the life sciences. The argument explores differences between autonomist and anti-autonomist (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   264 citations  
  3.  86
    Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1994 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Do the sciences aim to uncover the structure of nature, or are they ultimately a practical means of controlling our environment? In Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science, Alexander Rosenberg argues that while physics and chemistry can develop laws that reveal the structure of natural phenomena, biology is fated to be a practical, instrumental discipline. Because of the complexity produced by natural selection, and because of the limits on human cognition, scientists are prevented from uncovering the basic structure of (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   122 citations  
  4. Economics: mathematical politics or science of diminishing returns?Alexander Rosenberg - 1992 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Economics today cannot predict the likely outcome of specific events any better than it could in the time of Adam Smith. This is Alexander Rosenberg's controversial challenge to the scientific status of economics. Rosenberg explains that the defining characteristic of any science is predictive improvability--the capacity to create more precise forecasts by evaluating the success of earlier predictions--and he forcefully argues that because economics has not been able to increase its predictive power for over two centuries, it is not a (...)
  5. The Structure of Biological Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1):119-121.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   186 citations  
  6. Darwinian reductionism, or, How to stop worrying and love molecular biology.Alexander Rosenberg - 2006 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    After the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, scientists working in molecular biology embraced reductionism—the theory that all complex systems can be understood in terms of their components. Reductionism, however, has been widely resisted by both nonmolecular biologists and scientists working outside the field of biology. Many of these antireductionists, nevertheless, embrace the notion of physicalism—the idea that all biological processes are physical in nature. How, Alexander Rosenberg asks, can these self-proclaimed physicalists also be antireductionists? With clarity and (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 citations  
  7.  62
    Microeconomic Laws: A Philosophical Analysis.Alexander Rosenberg - 1976 - University of Pittsburgh Press.
    Rosenberg applies current thinking in philosophy of science to neoclassical economics in order to assess its claims to scientific standing. Although philosophers have used history and psychology as paradigms for the examination of social science, there is good reason to believe that economics is a more appropriate subject for analysis: it is the most systematized and quantified of the social sciences; its practitioners have reached a measure of consensus on important aspects of their subject; and it encompasses a large number (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   66 citations  
  8. Philosophy of social science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1988 - Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
    This is an expanded and thoroughly revised edition of the widely adopted introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences. Ranging from cultural anthropology to mathematical economics, Alexander Rosenberg leads the reader through behaviorism, naturalism, interpretativism about human action, and macrosocial scientific perspectives, illuminating the motivation and strategy of each.Rewritten throughout to increase accessibility, this new edition retains the remarkable achievement of revealing the social sciences’ enduring relation to the fundamental problems of philosophy. It includes new discussions of positivism, (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations  
  9. Instrumental Biology or the Disunity of Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1997 - Philosophical Quarterly 47 (186):120-122.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   133 citations  
  10. The Structure of Biological Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1986 - Journal of the History of Biology 19 (1):161-162.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   124 citations  
  11.  19
    Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction.Alexander Rosenberg & Daniel W. McShea - 2007 - New York, NY: Routledge. Edited by Daniel W. McShea.
    Is life a purely physical process? What is human nature? Which of our traits is essential to us? In this volume, Daniel McShea and Alex Rosenberg – a biologist and a philosopher, respectively – join forces to create a new gateway to the philosophy of biology; making the major issues accessible and relevant to biologists and philosophers alike. Exploring concepts such as supervenience; the controversies about genocentrism and genetic determinism; and the debate about major transitions central to contemporary thinking about (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  12. Hume and the problem of causation.Tom L. Beauchamp & Alexander Rosenberg - 1981 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Alexander Rosenberg.
  13. In defense of convergent realism.Clyde L. Hardin & Alexander Rosenberg - 1982 - Philosophy of Science 49 (4):604-615.
    Many realists have maintained that the success of scientific theories can be explained only if they may be regarded as approximately true. Laurens Laudan has in turn contended that a necessary condition for a theory's being approximately true is that its central terms refer, and since many successful theories of the past have employed central terms which we now understand to be non-referential, realism cannot explain their success. The present paper argues that a realist can adopt a view of reference (...)
    Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   99 citations  
  14. Fitness, probability and the principles of natural selection.Frederic Bouchard & Alexander Rosenberg - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (4):693-712.
    We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken two at a time, and so vitiates the interpretation (...)
    Direct download (10 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   91 citations  
  15. The supervenience of biological concepts.Alexander Rosenberg - 1978 - Philosophy of Science 45 (3):368-386.
    In this paper the concept of supervenience is employed to explain the relationship between fitness as employed in the theory of natural selection and population biology and the physical, behavioral and ecological properties of organisms that are the subjects of lower level theories in the life sciences. The aim of this analysis is to account simultaneously for the fact that the theory of natural selection is a synthetic body of empirical claims, and for the fact that it continues to be (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  16. Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction.Alexander Rosenberg - 2000 - New York: Routledge.
    This user-friendly text covers key issues in the philosophy of science in an accessible and philosophically serious way. It will prove valuable to students studying philosophy of science as well as science students. Prize-winning author Alex Rosenberg explores the philosophical problems that science raises by its very nature and method. He skilfully demonstrates that scientific explanation, laws, causation, theory, models, evidence, reductionism, probability, teleology, realism and instrumentalism actually pose the same questions that Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant and their successors (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   37 citations  
  17.  45
    Philosophy of biology: a contemporary introduction.Alexander Rosenberg - 2008 - New York, NY: Routledge. Edited by Daniel W. McShea.
    EM Music Education /EM is a collection of thematically organized essays that present an historical background of the picture of education first in Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, then Early-Modern Europe. The bulk of the book focuses on American education up to the present. This third edition includes readings by Orff, Kodály, Sinichi Suzuki, William Channing Woodbridge, Allan Britton, and Charles Leonhard. In addition, essays include timely topics on feminism, diversity, cognitive psych, testing (the Praxis exam) and the No (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  18. Fitness.Alexander Rosenberg - 1983 - Journal of Philosophy 80 (8):457-473.
    The diversity, complexity and adaptation of the biological realm is evident. Until Darwin, the best explanation for these three features of the biological was the conclusion of the “argument from design.” Darwin's theory of natural selection provides an explanation of all three of these features of the biological realm without adverting to some mysterious designing entity. But this explanation's success turns on the meaning of its central explanatory concept, ‘fitness’. Moreover, since Darwinian theory provides the resources for a purely causal (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 citations  
  19. Empirical equivalence, underdetermination, and systems of the world.Carl Hoefer & Alexander Rosenberg - 1994 - Philosophy of Science 61 (4):592-607.
    The underdetermination of theory by evidence must be distinguished from holism. The latter is a doctrine about the testing of scientific hypotheses; the former is a thesis about empirically adequate logically incompatible global theories or "systems of the world". The distinction is crucial for an adequate assessment of the underdetermination thesis. The paper shows how some treatments of underdetermination are vitiated by failure to observe this distinction, and identifies some necessary conditions for the existence of multiple empirically equivalent global theories. (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   53 citations  
  20. Coefficients, effects, and genic selection.Alexander Rosenberg - 1983 - Philosophy of Science 50 (2):332-338.
  21. Normative naturalism and the role of philosophy.Alexander Rosenberg - 1990 - Philosophy of Science 57 (1):34-43.
    The prescriptive force of methodological rules rests, I argue, on the acceptance of scientific theories; that of the most general methodological rules rests on theories in the philosophy of science, which differ from theories in the several sciences only in generality and abstraction. I illustrate these claims by reference to methodological disputes in social science and among philosophers of science. My conclusions substantiate those of Laudan except that I argue for the existence of transtheoretical goals common to all scientists and (...)
    Direct download (10 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  22. If Economics Isn't Science, What Is It?Alexander Rosenberg - 1983 - Philosophical Forum 14 (3):296.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  23. Fitness.Alexander Rosenberg - 1983 - Journal of Philosophy.
    The diversity, complexity and adaptation of the biological realm is evident. Until Darwin, the best explanation for these three features of the biological was the conclusion of the “argument from design.” Darwin's theory of natural selection provides an explanation of all three of these features of the biological realm without adverting to some mysterious designing entity. But this explanation's success turns on the meaning of its central explanatory concept, ‘fitness’. Moreover, since Darwinian theory provides the resources for a purely causal (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  24. Intentional psychology and evolutionary biology, part II: The crucial disanalogy.Alexander Rosenberg - 1986 - Behaviorism 14 (2):125-138.
    No categories
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  25.  65
    On the propensity definition of fitness.Alexander Rosenberg - 1982 - Philosophy of Science 49 (2):268-273.
    In the insightful and searching paper of Mills and Beatty the following definition of ‘fitness’, as the term figures in the theory of natural selection, is offered:The [individual] fitness of an organism x in environment E equals n =dfn is the expected number of descendants which x will leave in E.
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  26. Can There be A Priori Causal Models of Natural Selection?Marc Lange & Alexander Rosenberg - 2011 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (4):591-599.
    Sober 2011 argues that, contrary to Hume, some causal statements can be known a priori to be true—notably, some ‘would promote’ statements figuring in causal models of natural selection. We find Sober's argument unconvincing. We regard the Humean thesis as denying that causal explanations contain any a priori knowable statements specifying certain features of events to be causally relevant. We argue that not every ‘would promote’ statement is genuinely causal, and we suggest that Sober has not shown that his examples (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  27.  75
    Lakatosian Consolations for Economics.Alexander Rosenberg - 1986 - Economics and Philosophy 2 (1):127.
    The F-twist is giving way to the methodology of scientific research programs. Milton Friedman's “Methodology for Economics” is being supplanted as the orthodox rationale for neoclassical economics by Imre Lakatos' account of scientific respectability. Friedman's instrumentalist thesis that theories are to be judged by the confirmation of their consequences and not the realism of their assumptions has long been widely endorsed by economists, under Paul Samuelson's catchy rubric “the F-twist.” It retains its popularity among economists who want no truck with (...)
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  28. Fitness as primitive and propensity.Alexander Rosenberg & Mary Williams - 1986 - Philosophy of Science 53 (3):412-418.
    In several places we have argued that ‘fitness’ is a primitive term with respect to the theory of evolution properly understood. These arguments have relied heavily on the axiomatization of the theory provided by one of us. In contrast, both John Beatty and Robert Brandon have separately argued for a “propensity“ interpretation of “fitness” ; and in Brandon and Beatty they attack our view that “fitness“ is a primitive term in evolutionary theory, concluding that a definition by way of propensities (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  29.  23
    Is the Theory of Natural Selection a Statistical Theory?Alexander Rosenberg - 1988 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (sup1):187-207.
    In The Structure of Biological Science I argued that the theory of natural selection is a statistical theory for reasons much like those which makes thermodynamics a statistical theory. In particular, the theory claims that fitness differences are large enough and the life span of species long enough for increases in average fitness always to appear in the long run; and this claim, I held, is of the same form as the statistical version of the second law of thermodynamics.For the (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  30. 2 Disenchanted Naturalism.Alexander Rosenberg - 2013 - In Bana Bashour Hans Muller (ed.), Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and its Implications. Routledge. pp. 13--17.
  31.  15
    Is the Theory of Natural Selection a Statistical Theory?Alexander Rosenberg - 1988 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 14:187-207.
    In The Structure of Biological Science I argued that the theory of natural selection is a statistical theory for reasons much like those which makes thermodynamics a statistical theory. In particular, the theory claims that fitness differences are large enough and the life span of species long enough for increases in average fitness always to appear in the long run; and this claim, I held, is of the same form as the statistical version of the second law of thermodynamics.For the (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  32.  96
    Review symposium : Can economic theory explain everything?Alexander Rosenberg - 1979 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 9 (4):509-529.
  33. Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science.Alexander Rosenberg & Peter Singer - 1981 - Ethics 93 (3):603-606.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  34.  30
    Genes, Mind and Culture by Charles Lumsden and E. O. Wilson. [REVIEW]Alexander Rosenberg - 1983 - Journal of Philosophy 80 (5):304-311.
  35.  41
    On the very idea of ideal theory in political philosophy.Alexander Rosenberg - 2016 - Social Philosophy and Policy 33 (1-2):55-75.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  36. The Biological Justification of Ethics: A Best-Case Scenario.Alexander Rosenberg - 1990 - Social Philosophy and Policy 8 (1):86.
    Social and behavioral scientists - that is, students of human nature - nowadays hardly ever use the term ‘human nature’. This reticence reflects both a becoming modesty about the aims of their disciplines and a healthy skepticism about whether there is any one thing really worthy of the label ‘human nature’.
    Direct download (6 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  37.  21
    The philosophy of science: a contemporary introduction.Alexander Rosenberg - 2005 - New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Edited by Lee C. McIntyre.
    Any serious student attempting to better understand the nature, methods, and justification of science will value Alex Rosenberg's and Lee McIntyre's updated and substantially revised Fourth Edition of Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction. Weaving lucid explanations with clear analyses, the volume is as a much-used, thematically-oriented introduction to the field.
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  38.  7
    Methodology, Theory and the Philosophy of Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 66 (3-4):377-393.
  39. Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings.Yuri Balashov & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.) - 2001 - New York: Routledge.
    This comprehensive anthology draws together writings by leading philosophers on the philosophy of science. Each section is prefaced by an introductory essay from the editors, guiding students gently into the topic. Accessible and wide-ranging, the text draws on both contemporary and twentieth century sources. The readings are designed to complement Alex Rosenberg's textbook, _Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction_, but can also serve as a stand-alone volume in any philosophy of science course. Includes readings from the following leading philosophers: Achinstein, (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  40.  49
    Reductionism (and antireductionism) in biology.Alexander Rosenberg - 2007 - In David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Cambridge University Press. pp. 349--368.
  41.  66
    Darwinism in philosophy, social science, and policy.Alexander Rosenberg - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    A collection of essays by Alexander Rosenberg, the distinguished philosopher of science. The essays cover three broad areas related to Darwinian thought and naturalism: the first deals with the solution of philosophical problems such as reductionism, the second with the development of social theories, and the third with the intersection of evolutionary biology with economics, political philosophy, and public policy. Specific papers deal with naturalistic epistemology, the limits of reductionism, the biological justification of ethics, the so-called 'trolley problem' in moral (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  42.  38
    A skeptical history of microeconomic theory.Alexander Rosenberg - 1980 - Theory and Decision 12 (1):79-93.
  43.  79
    Is Lewis's `genuine modal realism' magical too?Alexander Rosenberg - 1989 - Mind 98 (391):411-421.
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  44.  26
    Is there an evolutionary biology of play.Alexander Rosenberg - 1996 - In Colin Allen & D. Jamison (eds.), Readings in Animal Cognition. MIT Press. pp. 217--228.
  45.  46
    The biological justification of ethics: A best-case scenario: Alexander Rosenberg.Alexander Rosenberg - 1990 - Social Philosophy and Policy 8 (1):86-101.
    Social and behavioral scientists — that is, students of human nature — nowadays hardly ever use the term ‘human nature’. This reticence reflects both a becoming modesty about the aims of their disciplines and a healthy skepticism about whether there is any one thing really worthy of the label ‘human nature’. For some feature of humankind to be identified as accounting for our ‘nature’, it would have to reflect some property both distinctive of our species and systematically influential enough to (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  46.  8
    Why does the nature of species matter?Alexander Rosenberg - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (2):192-7.
  47.  70
    Economics is Too Important to Be Left to the Rhetoricians.Alexander Rosenberg - 1988 - Economics and Philosophy 4 (1):129.
  48.  7
    Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature.Alexander Rosenberg - 1986 - Philosophy of Science 53 (4):607-608.
  49.  42
    Are generic predictions enough?Alexander Rosenberg - 1989 - Erkenntnis 30 (1-2):43 - 68.
    I have argued not that economics has no predictive content, but that it is limited, or at least has so far been limited to generic predictions. Now this is an important kind of prediction, and almost certainly a necessary preliminary to specific or quantitative predictions. But if the sketch of an important episode in the twentieth century history of the subject I have given is both correct and representative, then economics seems pretty well stuck at the level of generic prediction. (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  50.  41
    Content and consciousness versus the International stance.Alexander Rosenberg - 1983 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (3):375-376.
1 — 50 / 133