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Carol E. Cleland [28]Carol Cleland [5]Carole E. Cleland [1]Carol Edith Cleland [1]
  1. Methodological and epistemic differences between historical science and experimental science.Carol E. Cleland - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (3):447-451.
    Experimental research is commonly held up as the paradigm of "good" science. Although experiment plays many roles in science, its classical role is testing hypotheses in controlled laboratory settings. Historical science is sometimes held to be inferior on the grounds that its hypothesis cannot be tested by controlled laboratory experiments. Using contemporary examples from diverse scientific disciplines, this paper explores differences in practice between historical and experimental research vis-à-vis the testing of hypotheses. It rejects the claim that historical research is (...)
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  2. Prediction and Explanation in Historical Natural Science.Carol E. Cleland - 2011 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (3):551-582.
    In earlier work ( Cleland [2001] , [2002]), I sketched an account of the structure and justification of ‘prototypical’ historical natural science that distinguishes it from ‘classical’ experimental science. This article expands upon this work, focusing upon the close connection between explanation and justification in the historical natural sciences. I argue that confirmation and disconfirmation in these fields depends primarily upon the explanatory (versus predictive or retrodictive) success or failure of hypotheses vis-à-vis empirical evidence. The account of historical explanation that (...)
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  3. Defining 'life'.Carol E. Cleland - unknown
    There is no broadly accepted definition of ‘life.’ Suggested definitions face problems, often in the form of robust counter-examples. Here we use insights from philosophical investigations into language to argue that defining ‘life’ currently poses a dilemma analogous to that faced by those hoping to define ‘water’ before the existence of molecular theory. In the absence of an analogous theory of the nature of living systems, interminable controversy over the definition of life is inescapable.
     
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  4. Life without definitions.Carol E. Cleland - 2012 - Synthese 185 (1):125-144.
    The question ‘what is life?’ has long been a source of philosophical debate and in recent years has taken on increasing scientific importance. The most popular approach among both philosophers and scientists for answering this question is to provide a “definition” of life. In this article I explore a variety of different definitional approaches, both traditional and non-traditional, that have been used to “define” life. I argue that all of them are deeply flawed. It is my contention that a scientifically (...)
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  5.  92
    The nature of life: classical and contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science.Mark Bedau & Carol Cleland (eds.) - 2010 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...)
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  6. Is the church-Turing thesis true?Carol E. Cleland - 1993 - Minds and Machines 3 (3):283-312.
    The Church-Turing thesis makes a bold claim about the theoretical limits to computation. It is based upon independent analyses of the general notion of an effective procedure proposed by Alan Turing and Alonzo Church in the 1930''s. As originally construed, the thesis applied only to the number theoretic functions; it amounted to the claim that there were no number theoretic functions which couldn''t be computed by a Turing machine but could be computed by means of some other kind of effective (...)
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  7. Historical science, experimental science, and the scientific method.Carol Cleland - 2001
    Many scientists believe that there is a uniform, interdisciplinary method for the prac- tice of good science. The paradigmatic examples, however, are drawn from classical ex- perimental science. Insofar as historical hypotheses cannot be tested in controlled labo- ratory settings, historical research is sometimes said to be inferior to experimental research. Using examples from diverse historical disciplines, this paper demonstrates that such claims are misguided. First, the reputed superiority of experimental research is based upon accounts of scientific methodology (Baconian inductivism (...)
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  8. The possibility of alternative microbial life on Earth.Carol E. Cleland - unknown
    : Despite its amazing morphological diversity, life as we know it on Earth today is remarkably similar in its basic molecular architecture and biochemistry. The assumption that all life on Earth today shares these molecular and biochemical features is part of the paradigm of modern biology. This paper examines the possibility that this assumption is false, more specifically, that the contemporary Earth contains as yet unrecognized alternative forms of microbial life. The possibility that more than one form of life arose (...)
     
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  9.  30
    Events and their Names.Carol E. Cleland - 1994 - Noûs 28 (1):103-109.
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  10. On the individuation of events.Carol Cleland - 1991 - Synthese 86 (2):229 - 254.
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  11.  88
    Space: An abstract system of non-supervenient relations.Carol E. Cleland - 1984 - Philosophical Studies 46 (1):19 - 40.
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  12. Recipes, algorithms, and programs.Carol E. Cleland - 2001 - Minds and Machines 11 (2):219-237.
    In the technical literature of computer science, the concept of an effective procedure is closely associated with the notion of an instruction that precisely specifies an action. Turing machine instructions are held up as providing paragons of instructions that "precisely describe" or "well define" the actions they prescribe. Numerical algorithms and computer programs are judged effective just insofar as they are thought to be translatable into Turing machine programs. Nontechnical procedures (e.g., recipes, methods) are summarily dismissed as ineffective on the (...)
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  13.  84
    Effective procedures and computable functions.Carole E. Cleland - 1995 - Minds and Machines 5 (1):9-23.
    Horsten and Roelants have raised a number of important questions about my analysis of effective procedures and my evaluation of the Church-Turing thesis. They suggest that, on my account, effective procedures cannot enter the mathematical world because they have a built-in component of causality, and, hence, that my arguments against the Church-Turing thesis miss the mark. Unfortunately, however, their reasoning is based upon a number of misunderstandings. Effective mundane procedures do not, on my view, provide an analysis of ourgeneral concept (...)
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  14. On effective procedures.Carol E. Cleland - 2002 - Minds and Machines 12 (2):159-179.
    Since the mid-twentieth century, the concept of the Turing machine has dominated thought about effective procedures. This paper presents an alternative to Turing's analysis; it unifies, refines, and extends my earlier work on this topic. I show that Turing machines cannot live up to their billing as paragons of effective procedure; at best, they may be said to provide us with mere procedure schemas. I argue that the concept of an effective procedure crucially depends upon distinguishing procedures as definite courses (...)
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  15. The difference between real change and mere cambridge change.Carol E. Cleland - 1990 - Philosophical Studies 60 (3):257 - 280.
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  16. Effective procedures and causal processes.Carol Cleland - forthcoming - Minds and Machines.
     
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  17.  19
    Philosophical Issues in Natural History and Its Historiography.Carol E. Cleland - 2008 - In Aviezer Tucker (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 44–62.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Scientific Method of Yore The Structure and Research Practices of Scientific Historiography of Nature Explanation and Confirmation in Scientific Historiography Narrative Explanation Common Cause Explanation References.
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  18.  71
    (3 other versions)Epistemological issues in the study of microbial life: alternative terran biospheres?Carol E. Cleland - 2007 - Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. And Biomed. Sci 38 (4):847-61.
    The assumption that all life on Earth today shares the same basic molecular architecture and biochemistry is part of the paradigm of modern biology. This paper argues that there is little theoretical or empirical support for this widely held assumption. Scientists know that life could have been at least modestly different at the molecular level and it is clear that alternative molecular building blocks for life were available on the early Earth. If the emergence of life is, like other natural (...)
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  19.  71
    Is a General Theory of Life Possible? Seeking the Nature of Life in the Context of a Single Example.Carol E. Cleland - 2013 - Biological Theory 7 (4):368-379.
    Is one of the roles of theory in biology answering the question “What is life?” This is true of theory in many other fields of science. So why should not it be the case for biology? Yet efforts to identify unifying concepts and principles of life have been disappointing, leading some (pluralists) to conclude that life is not a natural kind. In this essay I argue that such judgments are premature. Life as we know it on Earth today represents a (...)
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  20. Signatures of a Shadow Biosphere.Paul C. W. Davies, Carol E. Cleland & Christopher P. McKay - unknown
    Astrobiologists are aware that extraterrestrial life might differ from known life, and considerable thought has been given to possible signatures associated with weird forms of life on other planets. So far, however, very little attention has been paid to the possibility that our own planet might also host communities of weird life. If life arises readily in Earth-like conditions, as many astrobiologists contend, then it may well have formed many times on Earth itself, which raises the question whether one or (...)
     
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  21.  52
    Science and the Messy, Uncontrollable World of Nature.Carol E. Cleland & Sheralee Brindell - 2013 - In Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (eds.), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press. pp. 183.
    This chapter argues that doubts about the scientific status of the field sciences often rest on mistaken preconceptions about the nature of the evaluative relation between empirical evidence and hypothesis or theory, namely, that it is some sort of formal logical relation. It argues that there is a potentially more fruitful approach to understanding the nature of the support offered by empirical evidence to scientific hypotheses. The first part of the chapter briefly reviews the traditional philosophical take on the scientific (...)
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  22.  48
    Pluralism or unity in biology: could microbes hold the secret to life?Carol E. Cleland - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (2):189-204.
    Pluralism is popular among philosophers of biology. This essay argues that negative judgments about universal biology, while understandable, are very premature. Familiar life on Earth represents a single example of life and, most importantly, there are empirical as well as theoretical reasons for suspecting that it may be unrepresentative. Scientifically compelling generalizations about the unity of life must await the discovery of forms of life descended from an alternative origin, the most promising candidate being the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Nonetheless, (...)
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  23. Hidden Concepts in the History of Origins-of-Life Studies.Carlos Mariscal, Ana Barahona, Nathanael Aubert-Kato, Arsev Umur Aydinoglu, Stuart Bartlett, María Luz Cárdenas, Kuhan Chandru, Carol E. Cleland, Benjamin T. Cocanougher, Nathaniel Comfort, Athel Cornish-Boden, Terrence W. Deacon, Tom Froese, Donato Giovanelli, John Hernlund, Piet Hut, Jun Kimura, Marie-Christine Maurel, Nancy Merino, Alvaro Julian Moreno Bergareche, Mayuko Nakagawa, Juli Pereto, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski & H. James Cleaves Ii - 2019 - Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 1.
    In this review, we describe some of the central philosophical issues facing origins-of-life research and provide a targeted history of the developments that have led to the multidisciplinary field of origins-of-life studies. We outline these issues and developments to guide researchers and students from all fields. With respect to philosophy, we provide brief summaries of debates with respect to (1) definitions (or theories) of life, what life is and how research should be conducted in the absence of an accepted theory (...)
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  24.  34
    Causality, Chance and Weak Non-Super Venience.Carol E. Cleland - 1985 - American Philosophical Quarterly 22 (4):287 - 298.
  25.  16
    (1 other version)The Church–Turing Thesis. A Last Vestige of a Failed Mathematical Program.Carol E. Cleland - 2006 - In Adam Olszewski, Jan Wolenski & Robert Janusz (eds.), Church's Thesis After 70 Years. Ontos Verlag. pp. 119-146.
  26.  22
    Is Smolensky's treatment of connectionism on the level?Carol E. Cleland - 1988 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11 (1):27-28.
  27. 'Turing limit'. Some of them (Steinhart, Copeland) represent extensions of Tur-ing's account, whereas others defend alternatives notions of effective computability (Bringsjord and Zenzen, Wells).Carol E. Cleland - 2002 - Minds and Machines 12:157-158.
  28. Laws of Nature. [REVIEW]Carol E. Cleland - 1995 - Review of Metaphysics 49 (2):406-408.
    In recent years, an increasing number of philosophers have come to doubt the viability of the empiricist program of analyzing the concepts of lawhood and causation in terms of nonnomic or noncausal concepts. The central thesis of Carroll's book is that these concepts cannot be so analyzed. Carroll is quite liberal about what he is willing to count as a reductive analysis. He does not identify an analysis with a definition, as traditional empiricists have insisted upon. He is willing to (...)
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  29.  32
    (1 other version)Review of Parsons. [REVIEW]Carol E. Cleland - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (4):605-607.
  30.  25
    Lectures On Metaphysics 1934-1935. [REVIEW]Carol E. Cleland - 1995 - Review of Metaphysics 48 (3):671-673.
    This book consists of notes of lectures given by G. E. Moore at Cambridge during the three terms of 1934-35. They were compiled by the editor, Alice Ambrose, who was then Student of Newnham College, and the late Margaret Macdonald, who was then Fellow of Girton College. The lectures contain discussions of some material on which Moore published little or nothing, for example, types and tokens, propositional functions and their relation to common properties and relations, and the objects of false (...)
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