Biobanks are currently archiving human materials for medical research at a hitherto unprecedented rate. These valuable resources will be essential for developing ‘personalized’ medicines and for a better understanding of disease susceptibilities. However, for such scientific advances to benefit everyone, it is crucial that biobanks recruit donations from all sections of the community. Unfortunately, other initiatives, such as transplant programmes, have clearly demonstrated that ethnic minorities are under-represented. Here we suggest that this issue deserves serious consideration to avoid biobanks evolving (...) into ethnically biased archives which unwittingly promote race-specific research. Specifically, this necessitates research ethics committees engaging in a re-assessment of the relative merits of individual personal sovereignty and the common good. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper, I examine the plausibility of Embodied Accounts of Social Cognition by finding fault with the most detailed and convincing version of such an account, as articulated by Daniel Hutto ( 2008 ). I argue that this account fails to offer a plausible ontogeny for folk psychological abilities due to its inability to address recent evidence from implicit false belief tasks that suggest a radically different timeline for the development of these abilities. Content Type Journal Article Pages (...) 1-18 DOI 10.1007/s11097-011-9213-3 Authors J. Robert Thompson, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Mississippi State University, P.O. Box JS, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA Journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Online ISSN 1572-8676 Print ISSN 1568-7759. (shrink)

The general concept of a trope – that of a non-shareable character-grounder – admits of a distinction between modifier tropes and module tropes. Roughly, a module trope is self-exemplifying whereas a modifier trope is not. This distinction has wide-ranging implications. Modifier tropes are uniquely eligible to be powers and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes are uniquely eligible to play a direct role in perception and causation. Moreover, each type of trope theory faces unique challenges concerning character- grounding. Modifier trope theory (...) faces challenges concerning the inscrutability of predication and the incompatibility with bundle theory, whereas module trope theory faces challenges concerning character overdetermination and a collapse into austere nominalism. These differences indicate that the modifier/module distinction divides the advantages of general trope theory and thus presents the trope theorist with a pivotal choice. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Michael Loux’s important distinction between “tropes” and “tropers”. First, I argue that the distinction throws into relief an ambiguity and discrepancy in the literature, revealing two fundamentally different versions of trope theory. Second, I argue that the distinction brings into focus unique challenges facing each of the resulting trope theories, thus calling into question an alleged advantage of trope theory—that by uniquely occupying the middle ground between its rivals, trope theory is able to recover and (...) preserve the insights of these views. Ultimately, the distinction suggests that trope theory is a divided house. (shrink)

Fourteen new essays by a distinguished team of authors offer a broad and stimulating re-examination of transcendental arguments. This is the philosophical method of arguing that what is doubted or denied by the opponent must be the case, as a condition for the possibility of experience, language, or thought.The line-up of contributors features leading figures in the field from both sides of the Atlantic; they discuss the nature of transcendental arguments, and consider their role and value. In particular, they consider (...) how successful such arguments are as a response to sceptical problems. The editor's introduction provides historical context and philosophical orientation for the discussions. This is the first major appraisal of transcendental arguments since the 1970s; they have continued to play a significant role in philosophy, and recent developments in epistemology and metaphysics have raised new questions and challenges for them. Transcendental Arguments will be essential reading for anyone interested in this area of philosophy, and the starting-point for future work. (shrink)

This essay assesses the rationale for regulating research administrators as carefully as they regulate researchers. The reasons for such regulation are identical: protecting scientific integrity, ensuring responsible use of public funds, addressing the lack of effective recourse for victims, creating negative consequences for misbehaving actors, and addressing high incentives for misconduct. Whereas the reasons compelling us to regulate research administrators are obvious, counterarguments to administrative oversight are based on suggestions that the incidence and prevalence of cases of administrative misconduct are (...) too low to warrant formal regulation. I briefly describe examples of the phenomenon drawn from publicly available records. My analysis suggests that the misconduct of research administrators is both serious and worthy of better oversight. Improved oversight of research administration will help steward tax dollars appropriately and enhance the overall integrity of the scientific record and of the free pursuit of knowledge more generally. (shrink)

Knowledge of causal laws is expensive and hard to come by. But we work hard to get it because we believe that it will reduce contingency in planning policies and in building new technologies: knowledge of causal laws allows us to predict reliably what the outcomes will be when we manipulate the factors cited as causes in those laws. Or do they? This paper will argue that causal laws have no special role here. As economists from JS Mill to (...) class='Hi'>Robert Lucas and David Hendry stress, along recently with philosophers like James Woodward and Sandra Mitchell, they can do the job only if they are invariant under the manipulations proposed. But then, I shall argue, anything that is invariant under the proposed manipulations will do this job equally well. There seems to be nothing special about causal-law knowledge in and of itself that makes it particularly valuable for policy and technology prediction. What seems to matter is invariance alone, not causality. But what guarantees invariance and how do we know when it will obtain? Here certain kinds of causal laws do have a special place – those underwritten either by what I have called ‘nomological machines’ or by what I have called ‘capacities’. Capacities and nomological machines have a double virtue that makes them invaluable for policy planning. First, the causal laws they give rise to will be invariant so long as they obtain; and second, they typically have visible markers we can come to recognize that tell us when they obtain. The markers for nomological machines are shakier than those for capacities, though, since capacities are often tied to markers by well-established empirical laws. Capacities have their own drawback however, which is the final topic of this paper: the causal laws that are guaranteed by a capacity connect the obtaining (or triggering) of a capacity with its exercise. But Hume argued (mistakenly I suggest) that no distinction can be made between the obtaining of a power and its exercise. (shrink)

Nozick argues, in “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”, correctly I think, that we can go from an equal distribution of wealth to an unequal one through just means. Nozick then asks: If people voluntarily move from a just distribution of wealth, D1, to a different distribution, D2, “isn’t D2 also just?” While Nozick thinks the new distribution of wealth, D2, is just, I think that it is at least possible to go from a just state of affairs to an un-just state (...) of affairs by just means. I then argue that any unequal distribution of wealth can not maximize the good derived from wealth. Therefore, on the basis of plausible utilitarian ideas, any distribution of wealth that isn’t at least roughly equal is un-just, even it was arrived at by just means from aa equal and just distribution of wealth. (shrink)

이 책자는 형식 논리의 일종인 양상논리에 입문하고 싶으신 분들을 위한 짧은 교재입니다. “양상논리 맛보기” 라는 말마따나, 이 책자는 양상논리에 관심은 있지만 아직 본격적으로 공부를 시작하진 않은 분들께서 ‘맛보기’를 하기에 적합한 안내 책자입니다. 아무쪼록 이 책자가 양상논리를 공부해나가시는데 유용한 첫 발판이 될 수 있기를 바랍니다. / This booklet is a Korean adaptation and translation of Part VIII of forall x: Calgary (Fall 2021 edition), which is intended to be introductory material for modal logic. The original text is based on Robert (...) Trueman's A Modal Logic Primer, which is revised and expanded by Richard Zach and Aaron Thomas-Bolduc in forall x: Calgary. (forall x: Calgary is based on forall x: Cambridge by Tim Button, which is in turn based on forall x by P. D. Magnus, and also includes material from forall x: Lorain County Remix by Cathal Woods and J. Robert Loftis.) This booklet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. (shrink)

In this paper I begin by explaining what epistemic injustice is and what ordinary language philosophy is. I then go on to ask why we might doubt the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in examining epistemic injustice. In the first place, we might wonder how ordinary language philosophy can be of use, given that many of the key terms used in discussing epistemic injustice, including ‘epistemic injustice’ itself, are not drawn from our ordinary language. We might also have doubts about (...) the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in this area, given ordinary language philosophers’ aversion to theory. Finally, we might have doubts about the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy due to the fact that the study of epistemic injustice is clearly a study of practical matters concerning the way the world is and has been historically. If ordinary language philosophy is just concerned with grammar, what use can it be to practical and social philosophy concerning current issues? In response to these worries, I demonstrate the usefulness of ordinary language philosophy in practice by applying the insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alan R. White to a problem that Miranda Fricker raises, but does not answer: about whether there is a confidence condition on knowledge. I also make use of Gilbert Ryle's distinction between ‘the use of ordinary language’ and ‘the ordinary use of an expression’ to show that the terminology used in examining epistemic injustice is ordinary in some sense. (shrink)

McGowan argues that everyday verbal bigotry makes a key contribution to the harms of discriminatory inequality, via a mechanism that she calls sneaky norm enactment. Part of her account involves showing that the characteristic of conversational interaction that facilitates sneaky norm enactment is in fact a generic one, which obtains in a wide range of activities, namely, the property of having conventions of appropriateness. I argue that her account will be better-able to show that everyday verbal bigotry is a key (...) factor in social inequality if it tries to isolate a more specific property of conversation as the thing that facilitates sneaky norm enactment. (shrink)

J. Willard Gibbs derived the following equation to quantify the maximum work possible for a chemical reaction$${\text{Maximum work }} = \, - \Delta {\text{G}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} = \, - \left( {\Delta {\text{H}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} {-}{\text{ T}}\Delta {\text{S}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} } \right) {\text{ constant T}},{\text{P}}$$ Maximum work = - Δ G rxn = - Δ H rxn - T Δ S rxn constant T, P ∆Hrxn is the enthalpy change of reaction as measured in a reaction calorimeter and ∆Grxn the change in Gibbs energy as measured, if (...) feasible, in an electrochemical cell by the voltage across the two half-cells. To Gibbs, reaction spontaneity corresponds to negative values of ∆Grxn. But what is T∆Srxn, absolute temperature times the change in entropy? Gibbs stated that this term quantifies the heating/cooling required to maintain constant temperature in an electrochemical cell. Seeking a deeper explanation than this, one involving the behaviors of atoms and molecules that cause these thermodynamic phenomena, I employed an “atoms first” approach to decipher the physical underpinning of T∆Srxn and, in so doing, developed the hypothesis that this term quantifies the change in “structural energy” of the system during a chemical reaction. This hypothesis now challenges me to similarly explain the physical underpinning of the Gibbs–Helmholtz equation$${\text{d}}\left( {\Delta {\text{G}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} } \right)/{\text{dT}} = - \Delta {\text{S}}_{{{\text{rxn}}}} \left( {\text{constant P}} \right)$$ d Δ G rxn / dT = - Δ S rxn constant P While this equation illustrates a relationship between ∆Grxn and ∆Srxn, I don’t understand how this is so, especially since orbital electron energies that I hypothesize are responsible for ∆Grxn are not directly involved in the entropy determination of atoms and molecules that are responsible for ∆Srxn. I write this paper to both share my progress and also to seek help from any who can clarify this for me. (shrink)

Drawing on a passage from Ramsey's Truth and Probability, we formulate a simple, plausible constraint on evaluating the accuracy of credences: the Calibration Test. We show that any additive, continuous accuracy measure that passes the Calibration Test will be strictly proper. Strictly proper accuracy measures are known to support the touchstone results of accuracy-first epistemology, for example vindications of probabilism and conditionalization. We show that our use of Calibration is an improvement on previous such appeals by showing how it answers (...) or sidesteps problems that have been raised for previous work in this area. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Preface: Virtual Entities in ScienceRobert Harlander, Jean-Philippe Martinez, Friedrich Steinle, and Adrian WüthrichIt is not only since the sudden increase of online communication due to the COVID-19 situation that the concept of the “virtual” has made its way into everyday language. In this context, it mostly denotes a digital substitute for a real object or process. Virtual reality is perhaps the best-known term in this respect. With these digital (...) connotations, “virtuality” has also been used in science and research: Chemists use virtual laboratories, biologists do virtual scanning of molecular structures, and geologists engage in virtual field trips. But the concept of the virtual has a much longer tradition, dating back to long before the dawn of the digital age. Virtual images and virtual displacements were introduced in classical physics already in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. They represent auxiliary objects or processes without instantiation, with the purpose of efficiently describing specific physical systems. In today’s physics, the term “virtual” is mostly associated with the quantum world, first and foremost with the “virtual particle” of quantum field theory. It has become such an integral part of modern high energy physics that its ontological character may be considered to go beyond the purely auxiliary, which is typically associated with the virtual. [End Page 263]In other disciplines, however, use of the term virtual without a digital connotation is much rarer. While concepts like “virtual adrenaline” show up in physiological research around 1940s, and Charles Darwin, in a private note in January 1840,1 spoke of “virtual change” in the context of embryology, these examples seem to be singular occurrences of entities that were explicitly called “virtual.” The basic idea behind the terminology of the virtual, however, might be much more common, even outside of physics. The “invisible hand” in economics, or the “vital force” in biology, for instance, may carry aspects of a virtual entity, even if they have not been referred to that way.These different observations raise several questions about the status of virtual entities in science. What has led scientists to call one entity “virtual” and not another? Do all virtual entities in science have the same roots and meet the same characteristics? Are they more than auxiliary objects or processes? Why does physics seem to occupy a specific position with respect to the use of the notion of virtuality? These are some points that led us to discuss virtual entities in science during a workshop, out of which grew the present collection. We invited contributions that addressed the historical formation and philosophical interpretation of concepts of virtual entities in physics and other disciplines—in whatever terms they may come. The main goal of the workshop was to bring to the fore similarities and differences in the meanings and functions of these concepts, so as to be able to precisely characterize why certain entities are considered virtual in specific contexts, why a different terminology was often used in each individual case, and in what sense the virtual entities relate to the real world.The organization of the workshop was part of our project “The formation and development of the concept of virtual particles,” a subproject of the Research Unit “The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider,” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Der Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF). The workshop took place online on four consecutive Fridays in March 2021. It brought together contributors who discussed the role of the concept of the virtual in theoretical as well as experimental activities, and investigated into the origins of the terminology of the virtual as it was applied to the various disciplines of natural science. Dealing with historical, philosophical, but also methodological questions, the presentations covered a wide time range, from the Middle Ages to the present day. While physics naturally emerged as the dominant field, natural philosophy, computer science and biology were also addressed. The papers in this volume were contributed by participants in this workshop and approach the subject from different angles. [End Page 264]First, Friedrich Steinle provides us with an introductory piece that reflects on the specific meaning of the use of the term ‘virtual’ in science. He highlights and... (shrink)

When polarization occurs on issues of race and gender, political boundaries are increasingly drawn along racial and gendered lines. One approach to improving the current political climate is by focusing on education for the civic virtues. While talk of citizenship or civic virtue might sound quaint or old-fashioned, the civic virtues are simply the habits that citizens need to support a healthy, well-functioning political community. These virtues are especially critical for liberal democracies, as democratic nations ultimately depend on the political (...) engagement of their citizens. (shrink)

Life, on a day to day basis, is a sequence of emotional states: hope, disappointment, irritation, anger, affection, envy, pride, embarrassment, joy, sadness and many more. We know intuitively that these states express deep things about our character and our view of the world. But what are emotions and why are they so important to us? In one of the most extensive investigations of the emotions ever published, Robert Roberts develops a novel conception of what emotions are and then (...) applies it to a large range of types of emotion and related phenomena. In so doing he lays the foundations for a deeper understanding of our evaluative judgments, our actions, our personal relationships and our fundamental well-being. Aimed principally at philosophers and psychologists, this book will certainly be accessible to readers in other disciplines such as religion and anthropology. (shrink)

The verb to legitimate is often used in political discourse in a way that is prima facie perplexing. To wit, it is often said that an actor legitimates a practice which is officially prohibited in the relevant context – for example, that a worker telling sexist jokes legitimates sex discrimination in the workplace. In order to clarify the meaning of statements like this, and show how they can sometimes be true and informative, we need an explanation of how something that (...) is officially illegitimate can have a kind of ersatz legitimacy conferred on it, and how this can occur even when the actor ‘doing the legitimating’ lacks formal authority. I examine one putative explanation centred around the phenomenon of normalization, and I highlight some advantages that this account has in comparison to an alternative explanation, one that makes reference to the phenomenon of licensed authority. (shrink)

In this significant contribution to Hegel scholarship, Robert Williams develops the most comprehensive account to date of Hegel's concept of recognition. Fichte introduced the concept of recognition as a presupposition of both Rousseau's social contract and Kant's ethics. Williams shows that Hegel appropriated the concept of recognition as the general pattern of his concept of ethical life, breaking with natural law theory yet incorporating the Aristotelian view that rights and virtues are possible only within a certain kind of community. (...) He explores Hegel's intersubjective concept of spirit as the product of affirmative mutual recognition and his conception of recognition as the right to have rights. Examining Hegel's Jena manuscripts, his _Philosophy of Right_, the _Phenomenology of Spirit_, and other works, Williams shows how the concept of recognition shapes and illumines Hegel's understandings of crime and punishment, morality, the family, the state, sovereignty, international relations, and war. A concluding chapter on the reception and reworking of the concept of recognition by contemporary thinkers including Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze demonstrates Hegel's continuing centrality to the philosophical concerns of our age. (shrink)

By “essentially embodied Kantian selves,” I mean necessarily and completely embodied rational conscious, self-conscious, sensible (i.e., sense-perceiving, imagining, and emoting), volitional or willing, discursive (i.e., conceptualizing, judging, and inferring) animals, or persons, innately possessing dignity, and fully capable not only of free agency, but also of a priori knowledge of analytic and synthetic a priori truths alike, with egocentric centering in manifestly real orientable space and time. The basic theory of essentially embodied Kantian selves was spelled out by Kant over (...) the course of slightly less than two decades, between 1768 and 1787, but above all, it flows from an empirical realist and metaphysical reading of the “Refutation of Idealism” that Kant inserted into the Postulates of Empirical Thought section in the 1787 edition of the first Critique. In my opinion, all rational but also “human, all-too-human” creatures like us are, synthetic a priori necessarily, essentially embodied Kantian selves. Let’s call that the essentially embodied Kantian selves thesis, or for short, EEKST. If EEKST is true, then it’s synthetic a priori impossible for the selves of creatures like us to exist independently of our own living organismic animal bodies or beyond the deaths of those bodies, whether temporarily or permanently, by any means whatsoever. Indeed, the very ideas of disembodied selves, their survival after death, and of human immortality, while minimally logically consistent, are in fact conceptually empty and incoherent, even over and above the synthetic a priori impossibility of such things, since the term “myself” indexically picks out an essentially embodied Kantian self, all of whose core features require grounding in a particular living organismic animal body. According to the recent and contemporary movement of transhumanism, the selves of creatures like us can not only exist independently of our bodies, as functional systems of representational content that are inherently able to be implemented or realized in digital-mechanical technology and uploadable to servers, but also to survive accidental or natural human death in server-limbo, then be downloaded into technologically enhanced partially mechanical humanoid bodies or even into wholly artificially-created completely mechanical non-humanoid bodies, survive in these new implementations or realizations for an indefinitely long time, repeat that process, and possibly even become immortal. Transhumanism is in fact metaphysically equivalent to Swedenborgianism, which Kant so effectively criticizes and wittily derides in his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics. Moreover, and more importantly, if EEKST is true, then, just like Swedenborgianism, transhumanism is not only conceptually empty and incoherent, but also synthetic a priori impossible. And what’s more, it’s also existentially and morally reprehensible. In short, then, the belief in transhuman selves is nothing but a reprehensible noumenal fantasy or Hirngespinst. (shrink)

Studies the books of Spinoza to clarify some of his central ideas on man, society, and government.

This book is an attempt to lead the way through the moral maze that is our relationship with nonhuman animals. Written by an author with an established reputation in this field, the book takes the reader step by step through the main parameters of the debate, demonstrating at each turn the different positions adopted. In the second part of the book, the implications of holding each position for the ethical permissibility of what is done to animals - in laboratories, farms, (...) the home and the wild - are explained. Garner starts by asking whether animals have any moral standing before moving on to assess exactly what degree of moral status ought to be accorded to them. It is suggested that whilst animals should not be granted the same moral status as humans, they are worthy of greater moral consideration than the orthodox animal welfare position allows. As a result, it is suggested that many of the ways we currently treat animals are morally illegitimate. In the final chapter, the issue of political praxis is tackled. How are reforms to the ways in which animals are treated to be achieved? This book suggests that currently dominant debates about insider status and direct action are less important than the question of agency. That is, the important question is not what is done to change the way animals are treated as much as whom is to be mobilised to join the cause. Students of philosophy, politics and environmental issues will find this an essential textbook. (shrink)

Eugenic thinking involves distinguishing between sorts or kinds of people in terms of the perceived desirable or undesirable traits that those people are likely to transmit to future generations. While eugenics itself is often thought of as an ideology that generated a social movement of global influence from roughly 1900 to 1945, eugenic thinking both pre-dates this period and continues to inform a range of contemporary debates and social policies, including those concerning prenatal screening, transhumanism, population control, and disability. Various (...) sciences, including the then-nascent sciences of psychology and psychiatry, played important roles in early twentieth-century eugenics, and their legacy is reflected in contemporary eugenic thinking and policies. Understanding the history of eugenics and the role of these early sciences of cognition in that history is useful in reflecting further on ongoing forms of eugenic thinking to which the contemporary cognitive sciences are relevant. (shrink)

Two distinct approaches to the incorporation of animal interests within democratic theory are identified. The first, anthropocentric, account suggests that animal interests ought to be considered within a democratic polity if and when enough humans desire this to be the case. Within this anthropocentric account, the relationship between democracy and the protection of animal interests remains contingent. An alternative account holds that the interests of animals ought to be taken into account because they have a democratic right that their interests (...) are considered. This alternative account is defended in this article by utilising democratic theory and, in particular, the all-affected principle. The interests of animals are affected by collective decisions and, therefore, they, or – more specifically – their representatives, have a democratic right to have some say in the making of those decisions. This approach is favourably contrasted with an alternative, citizenship, account which relies on contested, capacity-oriented, claims current within the field of animal ethics. (shrink)

We study a canonical modal logic introduced by Lemmon, and axiomatised by an infinite sequence of axioms generalising McKinsey’s formula. We prove that the class of all frames for this logic is not closed under elementary equivalence, and so is non-elementary. We also show that any axiomatisation of the logic involves infinitely many non-canonical formulas.

‘The following sentence is true only if numbers exist: The number of planets is eight. It is true; hence, numbers exist.’ So runs a familiar argument for realism about mathematical objects. But this argument relies on a controversial semantic thesis: that ‘The number of planets’ and ‘eight’ are singular terms standing for the number eight, and the copula expresses identity. This is the ‘Fregean analysis’.I show that the Fregean analysis is false by providing an analysis of sentences such as that (...) best explains the available linguistic data, and according to which no terms in purport to stand for numbers. (shrink)

This paper addresses an issue that has been studied from both scientific and art theoretical perspectives, namely the dichotomous nature of representational artworks. Representational artworks are dichotomous in that they present us with two distinct aspects at once. In one aspect we are aware of what is represented while in the other we are aware of the material from which the representation is composed. The dichotomy arises due the incompatibility, indeed contradiction, between these aspects of awareness, both of which must (...) be present if we are to fully appreciate the artwork. Examples from art history are given to show how artists have exploited this dichotomy in a way that conditions our response to their work. I hypothesize that the degree of manifest dichotomy in a work determines the strength of its aesthetic effect, and propose this could be experimentally tested. I conclude that scientific studies of aesthetic experience should take the dichotomous nature of artworks into account. (shrink)

Der Wandel der kulturellen Verhältnisse führt zu einer Zuspitzung des Verhältnisses von Gesellschaft und Rechtssystem. In diesem Prozess gestaltet New Political Ecology (NPE) Umwelt und Rechtssystem und ist zugleich evolutiv ausgerichtet. NPE erfährt Evolution in der Zeit als Überfluss und in eigenartiger Vernetzung als knappes Gut. Diese Verbindung basiert auf Zusammenhängen, die bisher noch nicht systematisch bearbeitet worden sind. Dabei geht es ganz wesentlich auch um das Verhältnis von Staat und moderner Risikogesellschaft. Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt erweist sich vor diesem Hintergrund selbst (...) als ein evolutiver Prozess. (shrink)

Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. Quite often too, development has been misunderstood as simply, or even primarily, a matter of gene activation and regulation. Nowadays a growing number of philosophers of science are focusing their analyses on the complexities of development, and in Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends in (...) biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution, an area of resurgent biological interest. Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Knowledge of causal laws is expensive and hard to come by. But we work hard to get it because we believe that it will reduce contingency in planning policies and in building new technologies: knowledge of causal laws allows us to predict reliably what the outcomes will be when we manipulate the factors cited as causes in those laws. Or do they? This paper will argue that causal laws have no special role here. As economists from JS Mill to (...) class='Hi'>Robert Lucas and David Hendry stress, along recently with philosophers like James Woodward and Sandra Mitchell, they can do the job only if they are invariant under the manipulations proposed. But then, I shall argue, anything that is invariant under the proposed manipulations will do this job equally well. There seems to be nothing special about causal-law knowledge in and of itself that makes it particularly valuable for policy and technology prediction. What seems to matter is invariance alone, not causality. But what guarantees invariance and how do we know when it will obtain? Here certain kinds of causal laws do have a special place – those underwritten either by what I have called ‘nomological machines’ or by what I have called ‘capacities’. Capacities and nomological machines have a double virtue that makes them invaluable for policy planning. First, the causal laws they give rise to will be invariant so long as they obtain; and second, they typically have visible markers we can come to recognize that tell us when they obtain. The markers for nomological machines are shakier than those for capacities, though, since capacities are often tied to markers by well-established empirical laws. Capacities have their own drawback however, which is the final topic of this paper: the causal laws that are guaranteed by a capacity connect the obtaining (or triggering) of a capacity with its exercise. But Hume argued (mistakenly I suggest) that no distinction can be made between the obtaining of a power and its exercise. (shrink)