Hull et al. make a direct connection between selection and replication. My view is that selection, at its causal crux, is not inherently connected to replication. I make plain the causal crux of selection, distinguishing it from replication. I discuss implications of my results for Hull et al.'s critique of Darden and Cain (1989).

The dissertation is a critical examination of theory evaluation in population genetics. There are three main philosophical approaches to theory evaluation in philosophy of science: confirmation and hypothesis testing, scientific change, and experimentation. Accounts that champion each of the main philosophical approaches to scientific theory evaluation are represented in philosophy of biology: confirmation and hypothesis testing by Elisabeth A. Lloyd, scientific change by Lindley Darden, and experimentation by David W. Rudge. I argue that each of the main approaches is insufficient (...) for evaluating population genetics theories. However, the accounts I critique are not fundamentally incompatible. I modify, unify, and extend them into a comprehensive account of theory evaluation for population genetics. ;My philosophical analysis is driven by a complex, important, and ongoing controversy in population genetics, viz., the R. A. Fisher-Sewall Wright controversy in population genetics. I use my historical case study to assess the adequacy of both the extant philosophical analyses of theory evaluation and my own account. Between 1929 and 1962 Fisher and Wright debated the main differences emanating from their alternative approaches to evolutionary theorizing. The debates between Fisher and Wright functionally ended with Fisher's death. However, Wright continued to clarify his position in the controversy until his death in 1988, and other biologists have continued work on the core debates. ;Recently, four scientific papers led by biologists Jerry A. Coyne and Michael J. Wade have been key in revisiting and rekindling the Fisher-Wright controversy with analyses of old theoretical and empirical issues as well as new developments that have spun off the older work. Four decades after the debates between Fisher and Wright, these papers have staked out, with substantial disagreement, claims about the evaluative status of the two predominant population genetics approaches to evolution in the field. A further task of this dissertation is to provide a non-partisan evaluation of the last 40 years of work on the controversy, i.e., the controversy since Fisher's death in 1962. It is hoped that such a critical analysis of the controversy will advance it to some extent. (shrink)

Tocqueville pessimistically predicted that liberty and equality would be incompatible ideas. Robert Dahl, author of the classic _A Preface to Democratic Theory,_ explores this alleged conflict, particularly in modern American society where differences in ownership and control of corporate enterprises create inequalities in resources among Americans that in turn generate inequality among them as citizens. Arguing that Americans have misconceived the relation between democracy, private property, and the economic order, the author contends that we can achieve a society of (...) real democracy and political equality without sacrificing liberty by extending democratic principles into the economic order. Although enterprise control by workers violates many conventional political and ideological assumptions of corporate capitalism as well as of state socialism. Dahl presents an empirically informed and philosophically acute defense of "workplace democracy." He argues, in the light of experiences here and abroad, that an economic system of worker-owned and worker-controlled enterprises could provide a much better foundation for democracy, political equality, and liberty than does our present system of corporate capitalism. (shrink)

You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain , neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control (...) and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know. Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain , will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason. ROBERT BURTON, M.D. graduated from Yale University and University of California at San Francisco medical school, where he also completed his neurology residency. At age 33, he was appointed chief of the Division of Neurology at Mt. Zion-UCSF Hospital, where he subsequently became Associate Chief of the Department of Neurosciences. His non-neurology writing career includes three critically acclaimed novels. He lives in Sausalito, California. Visit his website at http://www.rburton.com/ “What do we do when we recognize that a false certainty feels the same as certainty about the sky being blue? A lesser guide might get bogged down in nail-biting doubts about the limits of knowledge. Yet Burton not only makes clear the fascinating beauty of this tangled terrain, he also brings us out the other side with a clearer sense of how to navigate. It's a lovely piece of work; I'm all but certain you'll like it. “ --David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness; Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral “Burton has a great talent for combining wit and insight in a way both palatable and profound.” --Johanna Shapiro PhD, professor of Family Medicine at UC Irvine School of Medicine “A new way of looking at knowledge that merits close reading by scientists and general readers alike.” -- Kirkus “This could be one of the most important books of the year. With so much riding on ‘certainty,’ and so little known about how people actually reach a state of certainty about anything, some plain speaking from a knowledgeable neuroscientist is called for. If Gladwell's Blink was fascinating but largely anecdotal, Burton's book drills down to the real science behind snap judgments and other decision-making.” -- Howard Rheingold, futurist and author of Smart Mobs “A fascinating read. Burton’s engaging prose takes us into the deepest corners of our subconscious, making us question our most solid contentions. Nobody who reads this book will walk away from it and say ‘I know this for sure’ ever again.” --Sylvia Pagán Westphal, science reporter, The Wall Street Journal “Burton provides a compelling and though-provoking case that we should be more skeptical about our beliefs. Along the way, he also provides a novel perspective on many lines of research that should be of interest to readers who are looking for a broad introduction to the cognitive sciences.” -- Seed Magazine. (shrink)

The Law of Inertia plays a key role in the scheme of constructive axioms for the General Theory of Relativity. A new formulation of this law which avoids the circularity problems inherent in previous formulations is presented. The empirical status of this law and the manner in which it provides a non-conventional foundation for the Law of Motion and the definition of physical forces is established. First, quite general path structures are discussed which are not defined at the outset in (...) terms of geodesic paths and which require for their description only the local differential topological structure. Secondly, a number of theorems are presented which serve as purely local differential topological criteria for singling out from among the general path structures the geodesic ones that represent the inertial structure of spacetime. (shrink)

Humour is a funny thing. Everyone knows what humour is but no-one knows exactly how it works. This book addresses the question 'What is humour?' -/- Consulting a dictionary on this question reveals an uninformative circle of definitions that goes from 'humour', to 'amusement', to 'funny' and back to 'humour'. Hence the book starts by untangling this circle of definitions to avoid being tied in conceptual knots. The remainder of the book is then free to lucidly provide a new theory (...) of humour which draws on cutting-edge research in psychology, linguistics and neuroscience. -/- Humour is important to people and so then are philosophical questions about humour. This book provides an understanding of what our sense of humour reveals about us and elucidates joking matters from the dinner table to the comedy club. (shrink)

Johann Georg Hamann was a German philosopher who offered in his writings a radical critique of the Enlightenment's reverence for reason. A pivotal figure in the Sturm und Drang movement, his thought influenced such writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder. As a friend of Immanuel Kant, Hamann was the first writer to comment on the Critique of Pure Reason, and his work foreshadows the linguistic turn in philosophy as well as numerous elements of twentieth century hermeneutics (...) and existentialism. Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project addresses Hamann's oeuvre from the perspective of political philosophy, focusing on his views concerning the public use of reason, social contract theory, autonomy, aesthetic morality and the politics of 'taste, ' and the technocratic ideal of enlightened despotism. Robert Alan Sparling situates Hamann's work historically, elucidates his somewhat difficult writing, and argues for his relevance in the ongoing culture wars over the merits of the Enlightenment project. (shrink)

The claim that distant simultaneity with respect to an inertial observer is conventional arose in the context of a space-and-time rather than a spacetime ontology. Reformulating this problem in terms of a spacetime ontology merely trivializes it. In the context of flat space, flat time, and a linear inertial structure (a purely space-and-time formalism), we prove that the hyperplanes of space for a given inertial observer are determined by a purely spatial criterion that depends for its validity only on the (...) two-way light principle, which is universally regarded as empirically verified. All (empirically determined) “spacetime” entities, such as the conformal structure or light surface equation, are used in a purely mathematical manner that is independent of and hence isneutral with respect to the ontological status that is ascribed to them. In this regard, our criterion is significantly stronger than thespacetime criterion recently advanced by D. Malament, which appeals explicitly to the conformal orthogonality of spacetime vectors and to the invariance of the conformal-orthogonal structure of spacetime under the causal automorphisms of spacetime. Once the hyperplanes of space for a given inertial observer have been determined by our empirical and purely spatial criterion, the following holds: there exists one and only one $\vec \varepsilon $ -synchronization procedure, namely the standard procedure proposed by Einstein, such that the planes of common time are thesame as the nonconventional hyperplanes of space for the inertial observer. It follows that our criterion provides an empirical even if indirect method for determining that the one-way speed of light is the same as the average two-way speed of light. In addition, two inertial observers that are not at rest with respect to each other necessarily havedifferent hyperplanes of space, and consequently their respective spatial views cannot be encompassed in a single three-dimensional space. Hence, our purely spatial criterion provides an empirical motivation for adopting the more comprehensive spacetime ontology. (shrink)

The book investigates distinctions between independent individuality and interactive relationality in physical phenomena. This is a common topic for investigation in modern physics and philosophy of science, and the topic is explored using contemporary research in those disciplines. Additionally, it is common for Buddhism to focus on relationships, and it proposes that independent individual things do not exist. In the context of physical reality, I take this Buddhist view as a hypothesis and examine it critically. We evaluate its arguments and (...) find them generally to be problematic when evaluated against modern standards for logic and physics. However, its fundamental principle—emptiness, or shunyata—is still worthy of being tested. -/- Contrary to many books on Buddhism and science, this one takes a very positive view of science. Yet, this depends on how we define ‘science’. Hence, the book begins with an examination of that topic, informed by philosophy of science and the author’s experience and training as physicist and philosopher. While we discuss, explain and justify many standard views of science, and present the standard elements of science, physics and physics theories, the book argues extensively for one perspective: pluralism in a synthesis of the author’s design. -/- I will show shunyata to be quite consistent with the knowledge framework of Physics Pluralism. When we test Buddhist emptiness against the results of physics—interpreting both within that knowledge framework—we discover the relevance, importance, and some truth in the relationality ideas of shunyata. -/- Robert Alan Paul has studied physics, had a career as a physicist, and both studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics, and separate master’s degrees in philosophy; philosophy of science & mathematics; and physics (abd). He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in four disciplines: philosophy of science, Western analytic metaphysics, Buddhist philosophy, and physics. His Ph.D. dissertation was the foundation of this book. (shrink)

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Aesthetic Pursuits: Essays in Philosophy of ArtLevinsonJerrold OUP. 2016. pp. 208. £35.00.

Humour is a source of moral concern because some jokes contain both elements of immorality and funniness. This raises the question of whether jokes can be funny despite moral flaws and, more generally, how immorality affects funniness. One answer to this question is comic moralism; the position that immorality negatively affects funniness. Berys Gaut has given a merited-response argument in defence of comic moralism, but Noël Carroll has criticised this argument. In this paper, I defend Gaut's argument from Carroll's criticism. (...) Specifically, I argue that benign appraisal is a necessary condition for amusement, which is a commonly proposed claim across many disciplines. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of how immoral elements in instances of humour affect funniness. Comic ethicism is the position that each immoral element negatively affects funniness and if their cumulative effect is sufficient, then funniness is eliminated. I focus on Berys Gaut’s central argument in favour of comic ethicism; the merited response argument. In this journal, Noël Carroll has criticized the merited response argument as illegitimately conflating comic merit with moral merit. I argue that the merited response argument, and (...) hence comic ethicism more generally, is vulnerable to Carroll’s criticism only if the comic ethicist fails to distinguish between three closely-related but distinct concepts; humour, amusement and funniness. By providing separate accounts of these three concepts, I explain how Carroll’s criticism is unsuccessful. In summary, accepting my distinctions between humour, amusement and funniness makes it clear that comic ethicism is the right position. (shrink)

Humour has been a surprisingly neglected topic in philosophy. However, Noah Greenstein has recently given an intuitive schema for modelling the logical structure of puns. Having this logical structure is indeed what makes a pun punny, but I argue that it is not what makes a pun funny. In order for a pun to be funny, the components comprising its logical structure must be related to one another such that certain conditions are satisfied. By using Graeme Ritchie's linguistic model of (...) jokes, I give these conditions in terms of those components. (shrink)

Humour is a funny thing. Everyone knows what humour is but no-one knows exactly how it works. This is the reason why I decided to write a PhD on the philosophy of humour. Some may see this as an odd mix – after all, philosophy is a weighty discipline and humour a light topic. -/- But humour is a phenomenon that anthropologists have discovered in every known human culture and the average person laughs around 17 times a day. Moreover, although (...) primatologists have observed laughter in apes (and rats), the mental sophistication required for full-blown humour seems to be exclusively human. Surely this makes it a legitimate topic to furrow a few philosophical brows. -/- So humour is human – but plenty of us have not perfected the art quite yet. For those still struggling, here are four rules of thumb for being more humorous. (shrink)

In this thesis, I address the metaphysical question `What is humour?' and the ethical question `When is humour immoral?' Consulting a dictionary reveals a circle of definitions between `amusement', `funniness', and `humour'. So I split the metaphysical question `What is humour?' into three questions: `What is amusement?', `What is funniness?' and `What is humour?' By critically analysing then synthesising recent research in philosophy, psychology and linguistics, I give the following answers: x amuses y if and only if: y is in (...) a non-serious, non-threatened, non-goal-directed state. y simultaneously activates two incompatible interpretations of x via unsound logic. sufficiently increases the psychological arousal of y. x is funny if and only if x merits amusement. x is humour if and only if the function of x is to merit or elicit amusement. Similarly, I split the ethical question `When is humour immoral?' into three questions: `When is amusement immoral?', `How does immorality affect funniness?' and `When is humour immoral?' By using, and, I give the following answers: Amusement is immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines, or to be immoral. Immorality negatively affects funniness. Humour-types are not subject to moral evaluation. Humour-tokens are immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines them to be immoral. This thesis contributes to the knowledge of the subject in two ways. First, by critically analysing and synthesising recent inter-disciplinary research, provides a more precisely specified definition of amusement than that in the philosophical literature. Second, research on humour, across all disciplines, conflates the three closely related but distinct concepts of humour, amusement and funniness. By providing a linear sequence of definitions,, and avoid the conceptual confusions that commonly occur. (shrink)

Aesthetic Pursuits is Jerrold Levinson’s newest collection of essays and is marketed as a complement to his 2015 volume Musical Concerns. Whereas Musical Concerns was comprised exclusively of essays on music, Aesthetic Pursuits consists of essays on a variety of topics. As the broad title suggests, these topics are relatively disparate and wide-ranging, including issues of film, humour, literature, beauty and the emotions. All the essays, with one exception, were written after 2006 and offer a view into Levinson’s thinking over (...) the last decade. As a result, the collection features a more critical engagement with contemporary aestheticians than his previous volumes. (shrink)

In a small handful of papers in theoretical population genetics, John Gillespie (2000a, 2000b, 2001) argues that a new stochastic process he calls "genetic draft" is evolutionarily more significant than genetic drift. This case study of chance in evolution explores Gillespie's proposed stochastic evolutionary force and sketches the implications of Gillespie's argument for philosophers' explorations of genetic drift.

According to Philip Kitcher, scientific unification is achieved via the derivation of numerous scientific statements from economies of argument schemata. I demonstrate that the unification of selection phenomena across domains in which it is claimed to occur--evolutionary biology, immunology and, speculatively, neurobiology--is unattainable on Kitcher's view. I then introduce an alternative method for rendering the desired unification based on the concept of a mechanism schema. I conclude that the gain in unification provided by the alternative account suggests that Kitcher's view (...) is defective. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Roots of the Blues in Trauma, Loss, and Adversity Transforming Trauma, Loss, and Adversity The Blues as Living Oral History Transformation through Music Emotional Regulation in the Blues The Creative Reverberation of Traumatic Loss The Blues as a Living, Evolving Legacy Notes.

This paper explores whether natural selection, a putative evolutionary mechanism, and a main one at that, can be characterized on either of the two dominant conceptions of mechanism, due to Glennan and the team of Machamer, Darden, and Craver, that constitute the “new mechanistic philosophy.” The results of the analysis are that neither of the dominant conceptions of mechanism adequately captures natural selection. Nevertheless, the new mechanistic philosophy possesses the resources for an understanding of natural selection under the rubric.

Sewall Wright's adaptive landscape is the most influential heuristic in evolutionary biology. Wright's biographer, Provine, criticized Wright's adaptive landscape, claiming that its heuristic value is dubious because of deep flaws. Ruse has defended Wright against Provine. Ruse claims Provine has not shown Wright's use of the landscape is flawed, and that, even if it were, it is heuristically valuable. I argue that both Provine's and Ruse's analyses of the adaptive landscape are defective and suggest a more adequate understanding of it.

’For each case against advertising, there is a stronger offsetting argument.’Dr Hyman is Visiting Professor of Marketing at Limburg University, Holland, and guest editor of a forth coming special issue of The Journal of Advertising on advertising ethics. Dr Skipper is Instructor of Philosophy at Southwest Texas State University.

This paper considers recent heated debates led by Jerry A. Coyne andMichael J. Wade on issues stemming from the 1929–1962 R.A. Fisher-Sewall Wrightcontroversy in population genetics. William B. Provine once remarked that theFisher-Wright controversy is central, fundamental, and very influential.Indeed,it is also persistent. The argumentative structure of therecent (1997–2000) debates is analyzed with the aim of eliminating a logicalconflict in them, viz., that the two sides in the debates havedifferent aims and that, as such, they are talking past each other. (...) Given aphilosophical analysis of the argumentative structure of the debates,suggestions supportive of Wade's work on the debate are made that areaimed, modestly, at putting the persistent Fisher-Wright controversy on thecourse to resolution. (shrink)

: This paper explores the calibration of laboratory models in population genetics as an experimental strategy for justifying experimental results and claims based upon them following Franklin (1986, 1990) and Rudge (1996, 1998). The analysis provided undermines Coyne et al.'s (1997) critique of Wade and Goodnight's (1991) experimental study of Wright's (1931, 1932) Shifting Balance Theory. The essay concludes by further demonstrating how this analysis bears on Diamond's (1986) claims regarding the weakness of laboratory experiments as evidence, and further how (...) the calibration strategy fits within Lloyd's (1987, 1988) account of the confirmation of ecological and evolutionary models. (shrink)

Population genetics attempts to measure the influence of the causes of evolution, viz., mutation, migration, natural selection, and random genetic drift, by understanding the way those causes change the genetics of populations. But how does it accomplish this goal? After a short introduction, we begin in section (2) with a brief historical outline of the origins of population genetics. In section (3), we sketch the model theoretic structure of population genetics, providing the flavor of the ways in which population genetics (...) theory might be understood as incorporating causes. In sections (4) and (5) we discuss two specific problems concerning the relationship between population genetics and evolutionary causes, viz., the problem of conceptually distinguishing natural selection from random genetic drift, and the problem of interpreting fitness. In section (6), we briefly discuss the methodology and key epistemological problems faced by population geneticists in uncovering the causes of evolution. Section (7) of the essay contains concluding remarks. (shrink)

: Where there are cases of underdetermination in scientific controversies, such as the case of the molecular clock, scientists may direct the course and terms of dispute by playing off the multidimensional framework of theory evaluation. This is because assessment strategies themselves are underdetermined. Within the framework of assessment, there are a variety of trade-offs between different strategies as well as shifting emphases as specific strategies are given more or less weight in assessment situations. When a strategy is underdetermined, scientists (...) can change the dynamics of a controversy by making assessments using different combinations of evaluation strategies and/or weighting whatever strategies are in play in different ways. Following an underdetermination strategy does not end or resolve a scientific dispute. Consequently, manipulating underdetermination is a feature of controversy dynamics and not controversy closure. (shrink)

We critique a series of recent papers in which Reidenbach and Robin developed a multidimensional ethics scale. Our critique raises four problems for the scale. First, it is not clear what the scale measures. Second, the semantic differential items used in the scale seem problematic. Third, the scale omits several important ethical rationales. Finally, no caveats accompany the scale to alert managers about its proper and improper use.

Some people believe that there is an “explanatory gap” between the facts of physics and certain other facts about the world—for example, facts about consciousness. The gap is presented as a challenge to any thoroughgoing naturalism or physicalism. We believe that advocates of the explanatory gap have some reasonable expectations that cannot be merely dismissed. We also believe that naturalistic thinkers have the resources to close the explanatory gap, but that they have not adequately explained how and why these resources (...) work. In this paper we isolate the legitimate explanatory demands in the gap reasoning, as it is defended by Chalmers and Jackson . We then argue that these demands can be met. Our solution involves a novel proposal for understanding the relationship between theories, explanations, and scientific identities. (shrink)