Considered together, Butler and Whitehead draw from a wide palette of disciplines to develop distinctive theories of becoming, of syntactical violence, and creative opportunities of limitation. The contributors of this volume offer a unique contribution to and for the humanities in the struggles of politics, economy, ecology, and the arts.

We propose that the ontic understanding of quantum mechanics can be extended to a fully realistic theory that describes the evolution of the wavefunction at all times, including during a measurement. In such an approach the wave equation should reduce to the standard wave equation when there is no measurement, and describe state reduction when the system is measured. The general wave equation must be nonlinear and nonlocal, and we require it to be time-symmetric; consequently, this approach is not a (...) new interpretation but a new theory. The wave equation is an integrodifferential equation (IDE). The time symmetry requirement leads to a retrocausal approach, in which the wave equation is solved subject to initial and final conditions to determine history at intermediate times. We propose that different outcomes from (apparently) identically prepared experiments may result from uncontrolled parameters; both the nonlocality and the retrocausality of the theory imply that Bell’s Theorem cannot rule out such “hidden variables.” Beginning with Hamilton’s principle, we demonstrate the construction of such a theory by replacing the action with a functional designed to give rise to a nonlinear, nonlocal IDE as the wave equation. This IDE reduces to the standard wave equation (a differential equation) in the absence of a measurement, but exhibits state reduction to a single eigenvalue when the system interacts with another system with the properties of a measurement apparatus. We demonstrate several desirable features of this theory; for other properties we indicate their plausibility and possible avenues to a proof. (shrink)

We present an exegesis of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics, and defend it against the critique in Fine. (1) We contend,contra Fine, that it compares favorably with an argument reconstructed by him from a letter by Einstein to Schrödinger; and also with one given by Einstein in a letter to Popper. All three arguments turn on a dubious assumption of “separability,” which accords separate elements of reality to space-like separated systems. We discuss how this assumption figures (...) in the literature spawned by the Bell inequalities. (shrink)

The dissertation's primary task is to discern to what extent the investigations contained in Aristotle's Metaphysics conform to the model of science developed in the Posterior Analytics. It concludes that the Metaphysics substantially follows the model of the Analytics in studying the causes and attributes of a specific nature, although it makes significant departures especially in its conception of the principles of being and substance. ;Two introductory chapters discuss respectively Aristotle's conception of science in the Analytics and the problems one (...) is likely to face in attempting to apply this conception to the Metaphysics . Chapter 3 clarifies the meaning of the phrase "science of being qua being" by reference to the Posterior Analytics, and introduces the concept of pro&d13;v 3&d3;n equivocity. Chapter 4 considers the role of dialectic in metaphysics with particular reference to the principle of noncontradiction. Chapter 5 argues that the second part of Meta. 4.2 introduces a demonstrative science of the per se attributes of being and unity. ;Chapter 6 introduces the investigation into the principles and causes of being and reviews the aporias about the principles . Chapter 7 offers a hypothesis to explain Aristotle's identification of the science of being with first philosophy. The last two chapters argue that Aristotle is pursuing this investigation in the central books of Melaphysics, but his pursuit of the investigation there is incomplete. ;This interpretation provides an alternative to those of T. H. Irwin and Walter Leszl, who argue that metaphysics is a second-order discipline and not a science after the model of the Analytics. It finds explicit support in recent work by Robert Bolton and Alan Code, while widening the range of issues to include the attributes of being and the importance of first philosophy for understanding the nature of being. It supports many of the conclusions of Joseph Owens's, Urbain Dhondt's, and Frede and Patzig's work on the object of metaphysics. There are also substantial discussions of the contributions of G. E. L. Owen, J. G. Stevenson, Theodore Scaltsas, and John Thorp. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.4 (2005) 483-484 [Access article in PDF] Société d'études platoniciennes. Études Platoniciennes. Vol. 1, Annuaire européen d'études platoniciennes. Edited by Luc Brisson and Jean-François Pradeau. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2004. Pp. 348, e 35,00. This is the first volume in what is projected to be an annual series published under the auspices of the Société d'études platoniciennes, with sponsorship in France, italy, and (...) Spain. The introductory editorial note by Jean-François Pradeau (7) states the Society's intention for the series to publish in five languages (German, English, Spanish, French, and italian), sometimes on a particular theme or particular work, but always to contribute to the knowledge of Plato's works and the Platonic tradition. Here one can only briefly indicate the range of contents of this first volume.There are three parts. The first, entitled "Platon," includes six articles on Plato. Anne Merker, "Corps et châtiment chez Platon" (11–50), reviews relevant sections of Gorgias, Timaeus, and Laws and argues that, in fact, the body has most significantly both a semantic and a cosmological function in Plato's view. Klaus Schöpsdau, "Richten und Strafen. Zum Strafrecht in Platons Nomoi" (51–72), offers a more general explanation of judgment and punishment in Plato and thus might more usefully have preceded Merkur's article. For Francisco Lisi, "El mito del Politico" (73–90), the myth, perhaps paradoxically, turns out to reveal Plato as a philosopher of history. Francesco Gregorio, elements pour une métacritique de l'interprétation de la République de Platon" (91–112) examines in detail the reading of Plato's text that can be extrapolated from Aristotle's criticisms of it. Among the surprises, he finds an Aristotelian irony which he considers a sure sign that Aristotle [End Page 483] read Plato well (111). Walter Leszl's long article, "Plato's Attitude to poetry and the fine arts, and the origins of aesthetics" (113–98), is, in fact, only part i of a longer discussion, the second part of which will appear in volume ii of this series (asterisked note to 199) in which he tries to replace Kristeller's view that the system of "fine arts" is a distinctively modern idea and hence absent in ancient authors. The weakness of the case as stated thus far is that Leszl fails to recognize the important distinction between concepts explicitly articulated and those which later scholars find "implied" by what ancients "must have" thought and confirmed by certain "traces" in what they write. Like Leszl's article, Francesco Bearzi's "il contesto noetico del Simposio" (199–251) is part of a much longer connected study of the four passages—Diotima's speech in the Symposium, Republic, excursus in Seventh Letter, and Phaedrus 247–50—in which intellectual intuition is treated. Despite its seemingly mysterious language, he sees the view presented as rigorously rational.The second part, "Tradition platonicienne," contains only two articles, and thus is not in balance with part one. Francesco Fronterotta's "La genèse et la succession des réalités atemporelles. Un argument paradoxal chez Plotin (Ennéades V 1 [10] 6, 19–22)" (255–70) finds that Plotinus's argument leads to the paradoxical conclusion, reminiscent of certain conclusions in the Parmenides, that a truly atemporal reality could be neither thought nor spoken. in "La doctrine des degrés de vertus chez les néo-platoniciens. Une analyse de la Sentence 32 de Porphyre, de ses antecedents et de ses consequences" (271–86), Luc Brisson introduces the views of virtue in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, before expounding the four types in Porphyry, who, he claims, first makes possible the idea of degrees of virtue, and looking briefly at some later Neoplatonic formulations.The third part, "Notes et lectures critiques," includes a review article by Francisco Fronterrota, "L'unità del Platonismo : Alcuni studi sulla tradizione medioplatonica e neoplatonica" (289–98) and a "Bibliographie des études... (shrink)

I live just off of Bell Road outside of Newburgh, Indiana, a small town of 3,000 people. A mile down the street Bell Road intersects with Telephone Road not as a modern reminder of a technology belonging to bygone days, but as testimony that this technology, now more than a century and a quarter old, is still with us. In an age that prides itself on its digital devices and in which the computer now equals the telephone as (...) a medium of communication, it is easy to forget the debt we owe to an era that industrialized the flow of information, that the light bulb, to pick a singular example, which is useful for upgrading visual information we might otherwise overlook, nonetheless remains the most prevalent of all modern day information technologies. Edison’s light bulb, of course, belongs to a different order of informational devices than the computer, but not so the telephone, not entirely anyway. Alan Turing, best known for his work on the Theory of Computation (1937), the Turing Machine (also 1937) and the Turing Test (1950), is often credited with being the father of computer science and the father of artificial intelligence. Less well-known to the casual reader but equally important is his work in computer engineering. The following lecture on the Automatic Computing Engine, or ACE, shows Turing in this different light, as a mechanist concerned with getting the greatest computational power from minimal hardware resources. Yet Turing’s work on mechanisms is often eclipsed by his thoughts on computability and his other theoretical interests. This is unfortunate for several reasons, one being that it obscures our picture of the historical trajectory of information technology, a second that it emphasizes a false dichotomy between “hardware” and “software” to which Turing himself did not ascribe but which has, nonetheless, confused researchers who study the nature of mind and intelligence for generations.. (shrink)

Bilim ve felsefe, gerçekliğin doğasını anlamlandırma araştırması olarak betimlenebilir. Hatta bazen bu iki alan karşı karşıya getirilerek, bilimin başarısının felsefenin geçerliliğini baltaladığını öne sürerler. Ancak aranılan türden bir anlayış veya açıklama ile ilgilenmek farklı bir tablo sunar: Uygulandığı şekliyle çağdaş fizik bazen dünyanın net bir fiziksel açıklamasını sağlamakta başarısız olur. Einstein, Schrödinger ve John Bell tarafından ifade edilen standart kuantum teorisine yönelik memnuniyetsizliğin temelinde bu yatmaktadır. Bir örnek olarak, Schrödinger’in ünlü kedi örneğinin yakından incelenmesi fizikçilerin genellikle onun asıl (...) amacını kaçırdığını göstermektedir. Felsefi bir eğilimin katkıda bulunabileceği şey, alternatif fizik değil, matematiksel bir biçimcilikten fiziksel bir resim çıkarmak için gerekli olan argümana gösterilen özendir. (shrink)

Reviewed Works:Murray G. Bell, J. Streprans, S. Watson, Spaces of Ideals of Partial Functions.Alan Dow, Compact Spaces of Countable Tightness in the Cohen Model.Peter J. Nyikos, Classes of Compact Sequential Spaces.Franklin D. Tall, Topological Problems for Set-Theorists.

Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science? Scientific Pluralism demonstrates the viability of the view that some phenomena require multiple accounts. Pluralists observe that scientists present various—sometimes even incompatible—models of the world and argue that this is due to the complexity of the world and representational limitations. Including investigations in biology, physics, economics, psychology, and mathematics, this work provides (...) an empirical basis for a consistent stance on pluralism and makes the case that it should change the ways that philosophers, historians, and social scientists analyze scientific knowledge. Contributors: John Bell, U of Western Ontario; Michael Dickson, U of South Carolina; Carla Fehr, Iowa State U; Ronald N. Giere, U of Minnesota; Geoffrey Hellman, U of Minnesota; Alan Richardson, U of British Columbia; C. Wade Savage, U of Minnesota; Esther-Mirjam Sent, U of Nijmegen. Stephen H. Kellert is professor of philosophy at Hamline University and a fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. Helen E. Longino is professor of philosophy at Stanford University. C. Kenneth Waters is associate professor of philosophy and director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

Kolmogorov''s axiomatization of probability includes the familiarratio formula for conditional probability: 0).$$ " align="middle" border="0">.

I argue that most counterfactuals are false.

Alan Sidelle's Necessity, Essence, and Individuation is a sustained defense of empiricism—or, more generally, conventionalism—against recent attacks by realists. Sidelle focuses his attention on necessity a posteriori, a kind of necessity which contemporary realists have taken to support realism over empiricism. Turning the tables against the realists, Sidelle argues that if there are in fact truths necessary a posteriori, it is not realism, but rather empiricism which provides the best explanation for them.

This book is a major contribution to the history of analytic philosophy in general and of logical positivism in particular. It provides the first detailed and comprehensive study of Rudolf Carnap, one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century philosophy. The focus of the book is Carnap's first major work: Der logische Aufbau der Welt. It reveals tensions within the context of German epistemology and philosophy of science in the early twentieth century. Alan Richardson argues that Carnap's move to (...) philosophy of science in the 1930s was largely an attempt to dissolve the tension in his early epistemology. This book fills a significant gap in the literature on the history of twentieth-century philosophy. It will be of particular importance to historians of analytic philosophy, philosophers of science, and historians of science. (shrink)

The reference class problem arises when we want to assign a probability to a proposition (or sentence, or event) X, which may be classified in various ways, yet its probability can change depending on how it is classified. The problem is usually regarded as one specifically for the frequentist interpretation of probability and is often considered fatal to it. I argue that versions of the classical, logical, propensity and subjectivist interpretations also fall prey to their own variants of the reference (...) class problem. Other versions of these interpretations apparently evade the problem. But I contend that they are all “no-theory” theories of probability - accounts that leave quite obscure why probability should function as a guide to life, a suitable basis for rational inference and action. The reference class problem besets those theories that are genuinely informative and that plausibly constrain our inductive reasonings and decisions. I distinguish a “metaphysical” and an “epistemological” reference class problem. I submit that we can dissolve the former problem by recognizing that probability is fundamentally a two-place notion: conditional probability is the proper primitive of probability theory. However, I concede that the epistemological problem remains. (shrink)

The first book length study of property-owning democracy, Republic of Equals argues that a society in which capital is universally accessible to all citizens is uniquely placed to meet the demands of justice. Arguing from a basis in liberal-republican principles, this expanded conception of the economic structure of society contextualizes the market to make its transactions fair. The author shows that a property-owning democracy structures economic incentives such that the domination of one agent by another in the market is structurally (...) impossible. The result is a renovated form of capitalism in which the free market is no longer a threat to social democratic values, but is potentially convergent with them. It is argued that a property-owning democracy has advantages that give it priority over rival forms of social organization such as welfare state capitalism and market socialist institutions. The book also addresses the currently high levels of inequality in the societies of the developed West to suggest a range of policies that target the "New Inequality" of our times. For this reason, the work engages not only with political philosophers such as John Rawls, Philip Pettit and John Tomasi, but also with the work of economists and historians such as Anthony B. Atkinson, François Bourguignon, Jacob S. Hacker, Lane Kenworthy, and Thomas Piketty. (shrink)

"When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educators and deplored by conservatives, but universally acknowledged as his country's intellectual voice. Many things conspired to give Dewey an extraordinary intellectual eminence: He was immensely long-lived and immensely prolific; he died in his ninety-third year, and his intellectual productivity hardly slackened until his eighties." "Professor Alan Ryan offers new insights into Dewey's many achievements, his character, and the era in which his (...) scholarship had a remarkable impact. He investigates the question of what an American audience wanted from a public philosopher - from an intellectual figure whose credentials came from his academic standing as a philosopher, but whose audience was much wider than an academic one." "Ryan argues that Dewey's "religious" outlook illuminates his politics much more vividly than it does the politics of religion as ordinarily conceived. He examines how Dewey fit into the American radical tradition, how he was and was not like his transatlantic contemporaries, why he could for so long practice a form of philosophical inquiry that became unfashionable in England after 1914 at the latest."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Bayesianism is our leading theory of uncertainty. Epistemology is defined as the theory of knowledge. So “Bayesian Epistemology” may sound like an oxymoron. Bayesianism, after all, studies the properties and dynamics of degrees of belief, understood to be probabilities. Traditional epistemology, on the other hand, places the singularly non-probabilistic notion of knowledge at centre stage, and to the extent that it traffics in belief, that notion does not come in degrees. So how can there be a Bayesian epistemology?

Four important arguments for probabilism—the Dutch Book, representation theorem, calibration, and gradational accuracy arguments—have a strikingly similar structure. Each begins with a mathematical theorem, a conditional with an existentially quantified consequent, of the general form: if your credences are not probabilities, then there is a way in which your rationality is impugned. Each argument concludes that rationality requires your credences to be probabilities. I contend that each argument is invalid as formulated. In each case there is a mirror-image theorem and (...) a corresponding argument of exactly equal strength that concludes that rationality requires your credences not to be probabilities. Some further consideration is needed to break this symmetry in favour of probabilism. (shrink)

It is a common complaint that antireductionist arguments are primarily negative. Here I describe an alternative nonreductionist epistemology based on considerations taken from multidisciplinary research in biology. The core of this framework consists in seeing investigation as coordinated around sets of problems (problem agendas) that have associated criteria of explanatory adequacy. These ideas are developed in a case study, the explanation of evolutionary innovations and novelties, which demonstrates the applicability and fruitfulness of this nonreductionist epistemological perspective. This account also bears (...) on questions of conceptual change and theory structure in philosophy of science. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota, 831 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55455; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

So-called “traditional epistemology” and “Bayesian epistemology” share a word, but it may often seem that the enterprises hardly share a subject matter. They differ in their central concepts. They differ in their main concerns. They differ in their main theoretical moves. And they often differ in their methodology. However, in the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to build bridges between the two epistemologies. Indeed, many would say that there is just one branch of philosophy (...) here—epistemology. There is a common subject matter after all. In this paper, we begin by playing the role of a “bad cop,” emphasizing many apparent points of disconnection, and even conflict, between the approaches to epistemology. We then switch role, playing a “good cop” who insists that the approaches are engaged in common projects after all. We look at various ways in which the gaps between them have been bridged, and we consider the prospects for bridging them further. We conclude that this is an exciting time for epistemology, as the two traditions can learn, and have started learning, from each other. (shrink)

This is the sequel to my “Fifteen Arguments Against Finite Frequentism” ( Erkenntnis 1997), the second half of a long paper that attacks the two main forms of frequentism about probability. Hypothetical frequentism asserts: The probability of an attribute A in a reference class B is p iff the limit of the relative frequency of A ’s among the B ’s would be p if there were an infinite sequence of B ’s. I offer fifteen arguments against this analysis. I (...) consider various frequentist responses, which I argue ultimately fail. I end with a positive proposal of my own, ‘hyper-hypothetical frequentism’, which I argue avoids several of the problems with hypothetical frequentism. It identifies probability with relative frequency in a hyperfinite sequence of trials. However, I argue that this account also fails, and that the prospects for frequentism are dim. (shrink)

Two objects of valuation are said to be incommensurable if neither is better than the other, nor are they equally good. This negative, coarse-grained characterization fails to capture the nuanced structure of incommensurability. We argue that our evaluative resources are far richer than orthodoxy recognizes. We model value comparisons with the corresponding class of permissible preference orderings. Then, making use of our model, we introduce a potentially infinite set of degrees of approximation to better, worse, and equally good, which we (...) interpret as degrees of commensurability.One payoff is the solution our approach provides to a paradox in population ethics, generated by Parfit's “Continuum Argument”. Parfit imagines a sequence of populations, starting with one consisting of excellent lives and, by a sequence of apparent improvements, reaching a much larger population of lives barely worth living. What he dubs “the Repugnant Conclusion” is that the final population is better than the first. Developing Parfit's response, we argue that some of the populations in the sequence are merely almost better than their immediate predecessors. Almost better is not transitive (unlike better). We offer analogies to other ‘spectrum arguments’, Condorcet's paradox, and to developments in formal epistemology. (shrink)

“Functional homology” appears regularly in different areas of biological research and yet it is apparently a contradiction in terms—homology concerns identity of structure regardless of form and function. I argue that despite this conceptual tension there is a legitimate conception of ‘homology of function’, which can be recovered by utilizing a distinction from pre-Darwinian physiology (use versus activity) to identify an appropriate meaning of ‘function’. This account is directly applicable to molecular developmental biology and shares a connection to the theme (...) of hierarchy in homology. I situate ‘homology of function’ within existing definitions and criteria for structural assessments of homology, and introduce a criterion of ‘organization’ for judging function homologues, which focuses on hierarchically interconnected interdependencies (similar to relative position and connection for skeletal elements in structural homology). This analysis of biological concepts has at least three broad philosophical consequences: (1) it provides the grounds for the study of behavior and psychological categories as homologues; (2) it demonstrates that philosophers who take selected effect function as primary effectively ignore large portions of comparative, structural, and experimental research, thereby misconstruing biological reasoning and knowledge; and, (3) it underwrites causal generalizations, which illuminates inferences made from model organisms in experimental biology. (shrink)

In 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature' Richard Rorty presented his provocation and influential vision of the post-philosophical culture, calling upon professional philosophers to accept that epistemology is dead, that the analytic method is a myth, and that philosophy and science are merely forms of literature.

One foundational question in contemporarybiology is how to `rejoin evolution anddevelopment. The emerging research program(evolutionary developmental biology or`evo-devo) requires a meshing of disciplines,concepts, and explanations that have beendeveloped largely in independence over the pastcentury. In the attempt to comprehend thepresent separation between evolution anddevelopment much attention has been paid to thesplit between genetics and embryology in theearly part of the 20th century with itscodification in the exclusion of embryologyfrom the Modern Synthesis. This encourages acharacterization of evolutionary developmentalbiology as the marriage (...) of evolutionary theoryand embryology via developmental genetics. Butthere remains a largely untold story about thesignificance of morphology and comparativeanatomy (also minimized in the ModernSynthesis). Functional and evolutionarymorphology are critical for understanding thedevelopment of a concept central toevolutionary developmental biology,evolutionary innovation. Highlighting thediscipline of morphology and the concepts ofinnovation and novelty provides an alternativeway of conceptualizing the `evo and the `devoto be synthesized. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to encourage a reconfiguration of the discussion about typology in biology away from the metaphysics of essentialism and toward the epistemology of classifying natural phenomena for the purposes of empirical inquiry. First, I briefly review arguments concerning ‘typological thinking’, essentialism, species, and natural kinds, highlighting their predominantly metaphysical nature. Second, I use a distinction between the aims, strategies, and tactics of science to suggest how a shift from metaphysics to epistemology might be accomplished. Typological (...) thinking can be understood as a scientific tactic that involves representing natural phenomena using idealizations and approximations, which facilitates explanation, investigation, and theorizing via abstraction and generalization. Third, a variety of typologies from different areas of biology are introduced to emphasize the diversity of this representational reasoning. One particular example is used to examine how there can be epistemological conflict between typology and evolutionary analysis. This demonstrates that alternative strategies of typological thinking arise due to the divergent explanatory goals of researchers working in different disciplines with disparate methodologies. I conclude with several research questions that emerge from an epistemological reconfiguration of typology. (shrink)

We argue that indeterminate probabilities are not only rationally permissible for a Bayesian agent, but they may even be rationally required . Our first argument begins by assuming a version of interpretivism: your mental state is the set of probability and utility functions that rationalize your behavioral dispositions as well as possible. This set may consist of multiple probability functions. Then according to interpretivism, this makes it the case that your credal state is indeterminate. Our second argument begins with our (...) describing a world that plausibly has indeterminate chances. Rationality requires a certain alignment of your credences with corresponding hypotheses about the chances. Thus, if you hypothesize the chances to be indeterminate, your will inherit their indeterminacy in your corresponding credences. Our third argument is motivated by a dilemma. Epistemic rationality requires you to stay open-minded about contingent matters about which your evidence has not definitively legislated. Practical rationality requires you to be able to act decisively at least sometimes. These requirements can conflict with each other-for thanks to your open-mindedness, some of your options may have undefined expected utility, and if you are choosing among them, decision theory has no advice to give you. Such an option is playing Nover and Hájek’s Pasadena Game , and indeed any option for which there is a positive probability of playing the Pasadena Game. You can serve both masters, epistemic rationality and practical rationality, with an indeterminate credence to the prospect of playing the Pasadena game. You serve epistemic rationality by making your upper probability positive-it ensures that you are open-minded. You serve practical rationality by making your lower probability 0-it provides guidance to your decision-making. No sharp credence could do both. (shrink)

This volume explores questions about conceptual change from both scientific and philosophical viewpoints by analyzing the recent history of evolutionary developmental biology. It features revised papers that originated from the workshop "Conceptual Change in Biological Science: Evolutionary Developmental Biology, 1981-2011" held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in July 2010. The Preface has been written by Ron Amundson. In these papers, philosophers and biologists compare and contrast key concepts in evolutionary developmental biology and their (...) development since the original, seminal Dahlem conference on evolution and development held in Berlin in 1981. Many of the original scientific participants from the 1981 conference are also contributors to this new volume and, in conjunction with other expert biologists and philosophers specializing on these topics, provide an authoritative, comprehensive view on the subject. Taken together, the papers supply novel perspectives on how and why the conceptual landscape has shifted and stabilized in particular ways, yielding insights into the dynamic epistemic changes that have occurred over the past three decades. This volume will appeal to philosophers of biology studying conceptual change, evolutionary developmental biologists focused on comprehending the genesis of their field and evaluating its future directions, and historians of biology examining this period when the intersection of evolution and development rose again to prominence in biological science. (shrink)

‘If I were to toss a coin 1000 times, then it would land heads exactly n times’. Is there a specific value of n that renders this counterfactual true? According to an increasingly influential view, there is. A precursor of the view goes back to the Molinists; more recently it has been inspired by Stalnaker, and versions of it have been advocated by Hawthorne, Bradley, Moss, Schulz, and Stefánsson. More generally, I attribute to these authors what I call Counterfactual Plenitude:For (...) any antecedent A, there is a world wisuch that A ☐→ wiis true.Moreover, some of these authors are also committed to Primitive Counterfacts Realism:There exist primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims.Call the conjunction of these italicized theses counterfactism. I clarify it and suggest some of its virtues, while ultimately rejecting it.Stefánsson’s counterfactism is motivated by and targeted at my “counterfactual skepticism”—I argue that most counterfactuals are false—and counterfactism has various other sources of support. I briefly defend that skepticism, and I seek to undercut those sources of support. I then argue more directly against counterfactism, especially on grounds of its ontological profligacy, and its leading to another kind of skepticism about counterfactuals that I believe is more problematic than my kind. In the process, I discuss how Bradley’s multidimensional semantics bears on counterfactism; I offer some new considerations against some central theses regarding conditionals ; and I reflect more generally on the epistemology of modality and the choice of primitives in our theorizing. (shrink)

More than any other figure, Friedrich Nietzsche is cited as the philosopher who anticipates and previews the philosophical themes that have dominated French theory since structuralism. Informed by the latest developments in both contemporary French philosophy and Nietzsche scholarship, Alan Schrift's Nietzsche's French Legacy provides a detailed examination and analysis of the way the French have appropriated Nietzsche in developing their own critical projects. Using Nietzsche's thought as a springboard, this study makes accessible the ideas of some of the (...) most important and difficult of contemporary French poststructuralist theorists including Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Helene Cixous. Through a careful analysis and close reading of the texts of Nietzsche and French poststructuralism, Schrift illuminates the ways in which Nietzsche's thought prefigures certain poststructuralist motifs. He demonstrates how several dominant themes in contemporary Frenchphilosophy emerge out of Nietzsche's own thinking. As one of the first books to critically examine the work of the new French anti-Nietzschean's, Schrift defends the value of poststructuralism and Nietzsche as critical resources for confronting the present. (shrink)

Start with an ordinary disposition ascription, like ‘the wire is live’ or ‘the glass is fragile’. Lewis gives a canonical template for what he regards as the analysandum of such an ascription:“Something x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s”.For example, the wire is disposed at noon to conduct electrical current when touched by a conductor.What Lewis calls “the simple conditional analysis” gives putatively necessary and sufficient conditions for the analysandum in terms of a counterfactual:“if (...) x were to undergo stimulus s at time t, x would give response r”.Call this the counterfactual analysans. For example: If the wire were to be touched by a conductor at noon, the wire would conduct electricity.So we have three things in play: the ordinary disposition ascription ; the canonical template that is supposed to formalize this disposition ascription; and the counterfactual analysans that is supposed to provided an analysis of the canonical template.Finkish dispositions have been widely regarded as counterexamples to the adequacy of as an analysis of. I will argue that they are not. They succeed, however, as counterexamples to the adequacy of as an analysis of. That said, the classic cases are somewhat contrived. I will introduce the notion of a minkish disposition: a disposition that something has, even though it might not display it in response to the relevant stimulus. Cases of minkish dispositions are entirely familiar. They refute the adequacy of both as an analysis of and of. I will argue that they also refute Lewis’s own, more complicated counterfactual analysis of dispositions, and bring out an internal tension in his views. (shrink)

In this essay I will argue, as does Bernard Williams, that lying and misleading are both commonly wrong because they involve an aim to breach a trust. I will also argue, contrary to Williams, that lying and misleading threaten trust differently, and that when they are wrong, they are wrong differently. Indeed, lying may be wrong when misleading is not.

Although natural philosophers have long been interested in individuality, it has been of interest to contemporary philosophers of biology because of its role in different aspects of evolutionary biology. These debates include whether species are individuals or classes, what counts as a unit of selection, and how transitions in individuality occur evolutionarily. Philosophical analyses are often conducted in terms of metaphysics (“what is an individual?”), rather than epistemology (“how can and do researchers conceptualize individuals so as to address some of (...) their scientific goals?”). We review several philosophical distinctions in order to shift attention from metaphysics to epistemology. Many controversies involve epistemological differences rather than metaphysical disagreement. This implies that a pluralist stance about individuality in biology is warranted and has metaphysical consequences because the pluralism emerges from the diversity of scientific interests that investigate the complexity of living phenomena. (shrink)

What is law? How is legal responsibility defined? How does law reflect moral judgment? Why are law's definitions uncertain and conflicted? Basic questions for liberal law and criminal justice - what could they have to do with the forgotten historical figure of the Beautiful Soul? Starting from concrete legal issues, Alan Norrie develops a critical vision of law in its relation to morality and socio-historical context. Liberal law, he argues, is marked by splits and contradictions (antinomies), signs of something (...) missed. Traced historically, such conflicts can be read today in law's treatment of legality and justice, judgment and responsibility. A critical understanding must also be self-critical. From splits in law, Norrie moves to the split in critique: between its socio-historical and ethical forms. Drawing on critical realism and deconstruction, on the dialectics of Hegel, Adorno and Bhaskar, he argues for a form of critical thought that is at once historical and ethical. Thinking critically about critique finally leads to the Beautiful Soul, and its unexpected relation to law. These essays will be of interest to academics and advanced students of legal theory; criminal law, criminology and criminal justice; law and social theory; and critical legal studies. (shrink)

There is a traditional conception of sensory experience on which the experiences one has looking at, say, a cat could be had by someone merely hallucinating a cat. Disjunctivists take issue with this conception on the grounds that it does not enable us to understand how perceptual knowledge is possible. In particular, they think, it does not explain how it can be that experiences gained in perception enable us to be in ‘cognitive contact’ with objects and facts. I develop this (...) challenge to the traditional conception and then show that it is possible to accommodate an adequate account of cognitive contact in keeping with the traditional conception. One upshot of the discussion is that experiences do not bear the explanatory burden placed upon them by disjunctivists. (shrink)

An explanation is given of why it is in the nature of inquiry into whether or not p that its aim is fully achieved only if one comes to know that p or to know that not-p and, further, comes to know how one knows, either way. In the absence of the latter one is in no position to take the inquiry to be successfully completed or to vouch for the truth of the matter in hand. An upshot is that (...) although knowledge matters because truth matters this should not be understood to mean that knowledge matters because true belief matters. (shrink)

The so-called ‘Adams’ Thesis’ is often understood as the claim that the assertibility of an indicative conditional equals the corresponding conditional probability—schematically: $${({\rm AT})}\qquad\qquad\quad As(A\rightarrow B)=P({B|A}),{\rm provided}\quad P(A)\neq 0.$$ The Thesis is taken by many to be a touchstone of any theorizing about indicative conditionals. Yet it is unclear exactly what the Thesis is . I suggest some precise statements of it. I then rebut a number of arguments that have been given in its favor. Finally, I offer a new (...) argument against it. I appeal to an old triviality result of mine against ‘Stalnaker’s Thesis’ that the probability of a conditional equals the corresponding conditional probability. I showed that for all finite-ranged probability functions, there are strictly more distinct values of conditional probabilities than there are distinct values of probabilities of conditionals, so they cannot all be paired up as Stalnaker’s Thesis promises. Conditional probabilities are too fine-grained to coincide with probabilities of conditionals across the board. If the assertibilities of conditionals are to coincide with conditional probabilities across the board, then assertibilities must be finer-grained than probabilities. I contend that this is implausible—it is surely the other way round. I generalize this argument to other interpretations of ‘ As ’, including ‘acceptability’ and ‘assentability’. I find it hard to see how any such figure of merit for conditionals can systematically align with the corresponding conditional probabilities. (shrink)

Current models of auditory verbal hallucinations tend to focus on the mechanisms underlying their occurrence, but often fail to address the content of the auditory experience. In other words, they tend to ask why there are AVHs at all, instead of asking why, given that there are AVHs, they have the properties that they have. One such property, which has been largely overlooked and which we will focus on here, is why the voices are often experienced as coming from agents, (...) and often specific, individualised agents. In this article, we argue not only that the representation of agents is important in accurately describing many cases of AVH, but also that deeper reflection on what is involved in the representation of agents has potentially vital consequences for our aetiological understanding of AVH, namely, for understanding how and why AVHs come about. (shrink)