Normativity concerns what we ought to think or do and the evaluations we make. For example, we say that we ought to think consistently, we ought to keep our promises, or that Mozart is a better composer than Salieri. Yet what philosophical moral can we draw from the apparent absence of normativity in the scientific image of the world? For scientific naturalists, the moral is that the normative must be reduced to the nonnormative, while for nonnaturalists, the moral is that (...) there must be a transcendent realm of norms. _Naturalism and Normativity_ engages with both sides of this debate. Essays explore philosophical options for understanding normativity in the space between scientific naturalism and Platonic supernaturalism. They articulate a liberal conception of philosophy that is neither reducible to the sciences nor completely independent of them—yet one that maintains the right to call itself naturalism. Contributors think in new ways about the relations among the scientific worldview, our experience of norms and values, and our movements in the space of reason. Detailed discussions include the relationship between philosophy and science, physicalism and ontological pluralism, the realm of the ordinary, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and justification, and the liberal naturalisms of Donald Davidson, John Dewey, John McDowell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This book covers the overlap between informatics, computer science, philosophy of causation, and causal inference in epidemiology and population health research. Key concepts covered include how data are generated and interpreted, and how and why concepts in health informatics and the philosophy of science should be integrated in a systems-thinking approach. Furthermore, a formal epistemology for the health sciences and public health is suggested. -/- Causation in Population Health Informatics and Data Science provides a detailed guide of the latest thinking (...) on causal inference in population health informatics. It is therefore a critical resource for all informaticians and epidemiologists interested in the potential benefits of utilising a systems-based approach to causal inference in health informatics. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, we (...) will first criticize the main current view of phronesis and its bearer (the phronimos), then offer another view of the nature of phronesis and of its relation to the other ethical virtues. Our proposal should not be intended as an interpretation of Aristotle’s own view; rather, it should be seen as a broadly Aristotelian theoretical proposal, which we believe can satisfyingly address most of the problems that afflict the more traditional accounts of practical wisdom. In section 2 of this paper, after criticizing first-nature naturalistic views of moral virtue, we take practical reason to be the cornerstone of second-nature naturalistic views; in section 3, we will outline criticisms to which, in our view, the traditional views of phronesis are ill-suited to respond, and, in section 4, we will outline our view of phronesis as ethical expertise – a view which in our view is immune to the above-mentioned criticisms – by spelling out the three main tenets of phronesis as ethical expertise: a conceptual thesis, an epistemic thesis, and the educational implications of the two. Finally, we will support our proposal with some empirical evidence taken from cognitive science. (shrink)

Thinking about illness causation has a long and rich history in medicine. After a hiatus in the 1990s, the last one-and-a-half decades have seen a surge of publications on causality in the biomedical sciences. Interestingly, this surge is visible not only in the medical, epidemiological, bioinformatics, and public health literatures, but also among philosophical publications. In this essay, I review and discuss one most recent addition to the literature, "Causality: Philosophical Theory Meets Scientific Practice" written by philosophers Phyllis Illari and (...) Federica Russo about causality in the sciences, and particularly about the health sciences. (shrink)

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this (...) book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions - analogism, pantheism, and naturalism - found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice. (shrink)

Theory of illness causation is an important issue in all biomedical sciences, and solid etiological explanations are needed in order to develop therapeutic approaches in medicine and preventive interventions in public health. Until now, the literature about the theoretical underpinnings of illness causation research has been scarce and fragmented, and lacking a convenient summary. This interdisciplinary book provides a convenient and accessible distillation of the current status of research into this developing field, and adds a personal flavor to the discussion (...) by proposing the etiological stance as a comprehensive approach to identify modifiable causes of illness. (shrink)

Mit rein rationalen Mitteln können wir keine Entscheidung über die transzendenten Sätze der Religion herbeiführen; ob es außerhalb unseres physischen Universums einen Gott gibt oder ob wir nach dem Tod erlöst werden, muss rein naturwissenschaftlich offenbleiben. Daher suche ich nach Zugkräften, die im Leben des religiös Unentschiedenen einen Umschwung bewirken könnten. Wer seine Überzeugungen und Gefühle in eine harmonische Balance bringen will, ist gut beraten, mit bestimmten Erlebnissen (die wir alle kennen) nicht allzu rabiat umzuspringen. Diese Erlebnisse scheinen auf Gott (...) zu verweisen; und statt sie fortzuwischen, könnten wir versuchen auszuprobieren, was mit uns geschieht, wenn wir sie zulassen. Was das heißen kann, springt besonders deutlich bei unserem Umgang mit großer religiöser Musik ins Ohr. Während dem hartgesottenen Atheisten der Zugang zu wichtigen Schichten dieser Musik (etwa der Matthäuspassion) versperrt bleibt, könnte darin für den religiös Unentschiedenen mehr stecken, als man gemeinhin denkt. (shrink)

Resumen: La tolerancia es un privilegio de los poderosos. Una persona puede tolerar sólo si tiene el poder para interferir con aquello que objeta. En este artículo analizaré las circunstancias en las que alguien tiene el poder para tolerar. Argumentaré que la respuesta debe incorporar consideraciones tanto prácticas como metafísicas. Específicamente, defenderé que alguien tiene el poder para tolerar cuando sus propiedades fundan tal poder en la situación práctica en que ella se encuentra, según es caracterizada por sus intereses prácticos. (...) Al hacerlo criticaré el análisis del mencionado poder realizado por Glen Newey. (shrink)

Se trata de un libro que no está hecho para el gran público, puesto que no se trata de una novela. Es un estudio concienzudo de la posición de la obra de Anselm Desing en el siglo XVIII.

In this article the authors focus on the emergence, or disappearance, of notions of responsibility in social dynamic processes. Hence, the starting point in this article is concrete behavior within organisational settings. This article presents a systematic overview of mechanisms related to acting upon a sense of moral responsibility. Some of these mechanisms are based on individual characteristics, others are embedded in the social context wherein responsible behaviour emerges or disappears. In this article, various mechanisms are identified and labelled in (...) order to analyse what types of processes are behind the mechanisms. In this way, the article yields important understandings for the conscious use of these mechanisms to strengthen responsible behavior within organisations. (shrink)

The first comprehensive survey of the criticisms of Leibniz's philosophical optimism in the first half of the eighteenth century, when what has been called the ‘debacle of the perfect world’ first began.

In this essay, I argue that Ted Poston's theory of explanatory coherentism is well-suited as a tool for causal explanation in the health sciences, particularly in epidemiology. Coherence has not only played a role in epidemiology for more than half a century as one of Hill's viewpoints, it can also provide background theory for the development of explanatory systems by integrating epidemiologic evidence with a diversity of other error-independent data. I propose that computational formalization of Hill's viewpoints in an explanatory (...) coherentist framework would provide an excellent starting point for a formal epistemological (knowledge-theoretical) project designed to improve causal explanation in the health sciences. As an example, I briefly introduce Paul Thagard's ECHO system and offer my responses to possible objections to my proposal. (shrink)

Microphotography was one of the earliest applications of photography in science: The first monograph on tissue organization illustrated with microphotographs was published in 1845. In the 1860s, a large number of introductions to scientific microphotography were published by anatomists. They argued that microphotography was a means of documenting the results of microscopic analysis, uncontaminated by the subjectivity of the observer. In the early decades of the 19th century, before the general acceptance of cell theory, such a technique was of special (...) importance, as no criteria were available to distinguish between important and superficial characters in the description of tissue microstructures. Microphotography was praised as the method of choice for documenting the scientific observations of microscopic material. Some of the microphotographic practices described in these early manuals, however, did not conform with the idea of a purely mechanical process of documentation. The authors of these manuals saw photography not as a technique which produced artifacts, but as a complete and reliable substitute for the original preparations. Thus, according to these authors, the artificial world of photography was seen as the actual representation of the microworld. Consequently, they tried to understand the microcosm by analyzing photographs instead of the microscopic preparation themselves. Such attitudes discredited the use of microphotography in the sciences. Consequently, the definitive breakthrough of scientific microphotography was delayed until the 1880s and was largely due to the efforts of Robert Koch, who made microphotography a central tool of bacteriology. (shrink)

Today most philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to “naturalist” credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism.

Models of illness causation play a crucial role in medicine and public health. In their recent paper on this topic, Michael Kelly, Rachel Kelly, and Federica Russo state that the integration of social, biological, and behavioral causes in one and the same etiologic mechanism remains to be clarified. In particular, they think that current models of illness causation do not appreciate "the truly integrated nature of bio-social-behavioral pathogenesis". In brief, Kelly, Kelly, and Russo suggest that two levels of explanation are (...) at work in medicine and public health, biological and social; that integration is difficult because of resistance to including social determinants of disease in both the... (shrink)

Practical wisdom eliminativism has recently been proposed in both philosophy and psychology, on the grounds of the alleged redundancy of practical wisdom (Miller 2021 ) and its purported developmental/psychological implausibility (Lapsley 2021 ). Here we respond to these challenges by drawing on an improved version of a view of practical wisdom, the “Aretai model”, that we have presented elsewhere (De Caro et al. 2021 ; Vaccarezza et al. 2023 ; De Caro et al. forthcoming ). According to this model, practical (...) wisdom is conceptualized: (i) as virtuousness _tout court_, i.e., as the _ratio essendi_ of the virtues, and (ii) as a form of ethical expertise. By appealing to the first thesis, we counter the charge of psychological implausibility, while we rely on the second thesis to address the accusation of redundancy. In conclusion we argue that the Aretai model implies a significant paradigm shift in virtue ethics. Practical wisdom emerges as both necessary and sufficient for virtuousness, thereby downsizing – without eliminating entirely – the role that individual virtues play in our ethical lives. (shrink)

In vielen Debatten werden spezifische Vorstellungen über die Geschichte, Kultur oder Werteordnung ›Europas‹ für die Erklärung oder Legitimierung politischer Verhältnisse und Projekte herangezogen. Die vorliegende Studie prüft die Berechtigung solcher Konstruktionen, indem sie der Frage nachgeht, seit wann und warum überhaupt von ›Europa‹ gesprochen wird. Die Analyse der historischen Semantik des Europabegriffs muss, um identitätspolitisch motivierte Anachronismen zu vermeiden, seine materiellen, kulturellen und diskursiven Konstitutionsbedingungen einbeziehen. ›Europa‹ verliert dadurch seinen transhistorischen Charakter, den es erhält, wenn man ihm im Bestreben, es (...) als politische und kulturelle Entität auszuzeichnen und fungibel zu machen, eine mythische Geschichte und Struktur zuschreibt. Demgegenüber zeigt die kritische Analyse: Als politische und kulturelle ›Idee‹ wie als gelebte und erfahrene ›Wirklichkeit‹ gründet Europa nicht in Antike oder Mittelalter, sondern ist das Produkt der Entstehung der modernen Welt seit der frühen Neuzeit. (shrink)

Scientific naturalism—the conception according to which the natural sciences, and possibly physics alone, set the limits of ontology and epistemology—is characterized by a strong monistic tendency. For this reason, all versions of scientific naturalism face the so-called “placement problem”, which concerns the features of the ordinary view of the world that, at least prima facie, do not fit into the scientific view of the world (think of consciousness, moral properties, free will, and intentionality). To address this problem, scientific naturalists use (...) three strategies: reductionism, eliminativism, and mysterianism—none of which, it is argued, produces satisfying results. Liberal naturalism opts instead for a pluralistic attitude in both ontology and epistemology but accepts a constraint according to which one should accept no entity or explanation that is incompatible with the scientific worldview. Liberal naturalism faces the “reconciliation problem”, which concerns the relationship between the scientific and the ordinary views of the world once one denies ontological and epistemological priority to either of them. Three strategies for addressing this problem are presented: according to the first, the ordinary worldview and the scientific world are categorically distinct; according to the second, the former emerges from the latter; according to the third, between them there is a relation of global supervenience. Other objections to liberal naturalism are finally presented and addressed. (shrink)

The critical concern of the present volume is contemporary naturalism, both in its scientific version and as represented by newly emerging hopes for another, philosophically more liberal, naturalism.1 The papers collected here are state-of-the-art discussions that question the appeal, rational motivations, and presuppositions of scientific naturalism across a broad range of philosophical topics. As an alternative to scientific naturalism, we offer the outlines of a new non- reductive form of naturalism and a more inclusive conception of nature than any provided (...) by the natural sciences. Our authors collectively believe that holding scientific naturalism up for philosophical scrutiny and challenging its misconceptions is of the first importance both for understanding ourselves and our place in the world; and, also, for the future direction of philosophy itself. (shrink)

Bradford Hill (1965) highlighted nine aspects of the complex evidential situation a medical researcher faces when determining whether a causal relation exists between a disease and various conditions associated with it. These aspects are widely cited in the literature on epidemiological inference as justifying an inference to a causal claim, but the epistemological basis of the Hill aspects is not understood. We offer an explanatory coherentist interpretation, explicated by Thagard's ECHO model of explanatory coherence. The ECHO model captures the complexity (...) of epidemiological inference and provides a tractable model for inferring disease causation. We apply this model to three cases: the inference of a causal connection between the Zika virus and birth defects, the classic inference that smoking causes cancer, and John Snow’s inference about the cause of cholera. (shrink)

Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus' volume Writing Culture, this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that ...

This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a ...

Basándome en la interpretación de Frederick Neuhouser 2014, examino varios aspectos usualmente no desarrollados en la literatura secundaria sobre una de las herramientas metódicas de la cual se sirve Rousseau en su _Discurso sobre el Origen de la Desigualdad entre los Hombres_ : la así llamada “historia conjetural”. En concreto, examino las respuestas que daría Rousseau a las siguientes tres preguntas: 1) ¿cuáles son los criterios de éxito de tal artefacto metódico? 2) ¿hasta qué punto Rousseau puede estar seguro de (...) la superioridad de su posición frente a teorías alternativas? 3) ¿hasta qué punto es admisible sin objeciones la imagen que Rousseau nos presenta del estado puro de naturaleza? Respecto a la primera pregunta, ofrezco dos criterios cuya inspiración es el falsacionismo de Karl Popper. Respecto a la segunda pregunta, discuto principalmente con la interpretación de Nicholas Dent 2005. Finalmente, en la tercera pregunta considero tanto una objeción kantiana como una objeción hegeliana al _DI_, mostrando al mismo tiempo que estas objeciones no aplican si entendemos con mayor precisión el proyecto del _DI_. (shrink)

The article discusses the origin of the split between common sense and the scientific view of the world, which took lace at the beginning of the modern age. More specifically, it shows how Galileo...

It is shown that the method of operationaldefinition of theoretical terms applied inphysics may well support constructivist ideasin cognitive sciences when extended toobservational terms. This leads to unexpectedresults for the notion of reality, inductionand for the problem why mathematics is sosuccessful in physics.A theory of cognitive operators is proposedwhich are implemented somewhere in our brainand which transform certain states of oursensory apparatus into what we call perceptionsin the same sense as measurement devicestransform the interaction with the object intomeasurement results. Then, (...) perceivedregularities, as well as the laws of nature wewould derive from them can be seen asinvariants of the cognitive operators concernedand are by this human specific constructsrather than ontologically independent elements.. So, reality in so far it isrepresented by the laws of nature has no longeran independent ontological status. This isopposed to Campbell's `natural selectionepistemology'. From this it is shown that thereholds an incompleteness theorem for physicallaws similar to Gödels incompletenesstheorem for mathematical axioms, i.e., there isno definitive or object `theory of everything'.This constructivist approaches to cognitionwill allow a coherent and consistent model ofboth cognitive and organic evolution. Whereasthe classical view sees the two evolutionrather dichotomously. (shrink)