Richard Pettigrew
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198732716
- eISBN:
- 9780191797019
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732716.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology, Philosophy of Science
This book explores a particular way of justifying the rational principles that govern credences (or degrees of belief). The main principles that the book justifies are the central tenets of Bayesian ...
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This book explores a particular way of justifying the rational principles that govern credences (or degrees of belief). The main principles that the book justifies are the central tenets of Bayesian epistemology, though many other related principles are met along the way. These are: Probabilism, the claims that credences should obey the laws of probability; the Principal Principle, which says how credences in hypotheses about the objective chances should relate to credences in other propositions; the Principle of Indifference, which says that, in the absence of evidence, credences should be distributed equally over all possibilities that are entertained; and Conditionalization, the Bayesian account of how responses are planned when new evidence is received. Ultimately, then, the book is a study in the foundations of Bayesianism. To justify these principles, the book looks to decision theory. An agent’s credences are treated as if they were a choice she makes. The book appeals to the principles of decision theory to show that, when epistemic utility is measured in this way, the credences that violate the principles listed above are ruled out as irrational. The account of epistemic utility given is the veritist’s: the sole fundamental source of epistemic utility for credences is their accuracy. Thus, this is an investigation of the version of epistemic utility theory known as accuracy-first epistemology.Less
This book explores a particular way of justifying the rational principles that govern credences (or degrees of belief). The main principles that the book justifies are the central tenets of Bayesian epistemology, though many other related principles are met along the way. These are: Probabilism, the claims that credences should obey the laws of probability; the Principal Principle, which says how credences in hypotheses about the objective chances should relate to credences in other propositions; the Principle of Indifference, which says that, in the absence of evidence, credences should be distributed equally over all possibilities that are entertained; and Conditionalization, the Bayesian account of how responses are planned when new evidence is received. Ultimately, then, the book is a study in the foundations of Bayesianism. To justify these principles, the book looks to decision theory. An agent’s credences are treated as if they were a choice she makes. The book appeals to the principles of decision theory to show that, when epistemic utility is measured in this way, the credences that violate the principles listed above are ruled out as irrational. The account of epistemic utility given is the veritist’s: the sole fundamental source of epistemic utility for credences is their accuracy. Thus, this is an investigation of the version of epistemic utility theory known as accuracy-first epistemology.
Daniel Steel
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195331448
- eISBN:
- 9780199868063
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331448.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The biological and social sciences often generalize causal conclusions from one context to others that may differ in some relevant respects, as is illustrated by inferences from animal models to ...
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The biological and social sciences often generalize causal conclusions from one context to others that may differ in some relevant respects, as is illustrated by inferences from animal models to humans or from a pilot study to a broader population. Inferences like these are known as extrapolations. How and when extrapolation can be legitimate is a fundamental question for the biological and social sciences that has not received the attention it deserves. This book argues that previous accounts of extrapolation are inadequate and proposes a better approach that is able to answer methodological critiques of extrapolation from animal models to humans.Less
The biological and social sciences often generalize causal conclusions from one context to others that may differ in some relevant respects, as is illustrated by inferences from animal models to humans or from a pilot study to a broader population. Inferences like these are known as extrapolations. How and when extrapolation can be legitimate is a fundamental question for the biological and social sciences that has not received the attention it deserves. This book argues that previous accounts of extrapolation are inadequate and proposes a better approach that is able to answer methodological critiques of extrapolation from animal models to humans.
Neil Levy (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199862580
- eISBN:
- 9780199369638
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199862580.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Moral Philosophy
Addiction seems to involve a significant degree of loss of control over behaviour, yet it remains mysterious how such a loss of control occurs and how it can be compatible with the retention of ...
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Addiction seems to involve a significant degree of loss of control over behaviour, yet it remains mysterious how such a loss of control occurs and how it can be compatible with the retention of agency. This collection, which arose out of a conference held at the University of Oxford, brings together philosophers, neuroscientists and psychologists with the aim of understanding this loss of control from a perspective informed by cutting-edge science and philosophical reflection. Individual chapters, by well-established names in philosophy of action, moral philosophy, neuroscience and psychology, illuminate the mechanisms involved in the loss of control and link these mechanisms to our understanding of agency and the moral responsibility of addicts.Less
Addiction seems to involve a significant degree of loss of control over behaviour, yet it remains mysterious how such a loss of control occurs and how it can be compatible with the retention of agency. This collection, which arose out of a conference held at the University of Oxford, brings together philosophers, neuroscientists and psychologists with the aim of understanding this loss of control from a perspective informed by cutting-edge science and philosophical reflection. Individual chapters, by well-established names in philosophy of action, moral philosophy, neuroscience and psychology, illuminate the mechanisms involved in the loss of control and link these mechanisms to our understanding of agency and the moral responsibility of addicts.
Philip Kitcher
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195096538
- eISBN:
- 9780199833351
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195096533.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The Advancement of Science attempts to understand the notions of scientific progress, scientific objectivity, and the growth of knowledge by taking up the challenges that have been ...
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The Advancement of Science attempts to understand the notions of scientific progress, scientific objectivity, and the growth of knowledge by taking up the challenges that have been issued by scholars in the history and sociology of science. Begins from an outline of classical views in philosophy of science and explains how those views were confronted with apparently problematic examples from scientific practice past and present. Then builds an account of science that emphasizes the ways in which socially situated scientists can gain objective understanding of the world.Less
The Advancement of Science attempts to understand the notions of scientific progress, scientific objectivity, and the growth of knowledge by taking up the challenges that have been issued by scholars in the history and sociology of science. Begins from an outline of classical views in philosophy of science and explains how those views were confronted with apparently problematic examples from scientific practice past and present. Then builds an account of science that emphasizes the ways in which socially situated scientists can gain objective understanding of the world.
Samir Okasha
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- July 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198815082
- eISBN:
- 9780191852909
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198815082.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Mind
In evolutionary biology, there is a mode of thinking which is quite common, and philosophically significant. This is ‘agential thinking’. In its paradigm case, agential thinking involves treating an ...
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In evolutionary biology, there is a mode of thinking which is quite common, and philosophically significant. This is ‘agential thinking’. In its paradigm case, agential thinking involves treating an evolved organism as if it were an agent pursuing a goal, such as survival and reproduction, and treating its phenotypic traits, including its behaviours, as strategies for achieving this goal. Less commonly, the entities that are treated as agent-like are genes or groups, rather than individual organisms. Agential thinking is related to the familiar Darwinian point that organisms’ evolved traits are often adaptive, but it goes beyond this. For it involves deliberately transposing a set of concepts—goals, interests, strategies—whose original application is to rational human agents, to the biological world at large. There are two possible attitudes towards agential thinking in biology. The first sees it as mere anthropomorphism, an instance of the psychological bias which leads humans to see intention and purpose in places where they do not exist. The second sees agential thinking as a natural and justifiable way of describing or reasoning about Darwinian evolution and its products. The truth turns out to lie in between these extremes, for agential thinking is not a monolithic whole. Some forms of agential thinking are problematic, but others admit of a solid justification, and when used carefully, can be a source of insight.Less
In evolutionary biology, there is a mode of thinking which is quite common, and philosophically significant. This is ‘agential thinking’. In its paradigm case, agential thinking involves treating an evolved organism as if it were an agent pursuing a goal, such as survival and reproduction, and treating its phenotypic traits, including its behaviours, as strategies for achieving this goal. Less commonly, the entities that are treated as agent-like are genes or groups, rather than individual organisms. Agential thinking is related to the familiar Darwinian point that organisms’ evolved traits are often adaptive, but it goes beyond this. For it involves deliberately transposing a set of concepts—goals, interests, strategies—whose original application is to rational human agents, to the biological world at large. There are two possible attitudes towards agential thinking in biology. The first sees it as mere anthropomorphism, an instance of the psychological bias which leads humans to see intention and purpose in places where they do not exist. The second sees agential thinking as a natural and justifiable way of describing or reasoning about Darwinian evolution and its products. The truth turns out to lie in between these extremes, for agential thinking is not a monolithic whole. Some forms of agential thinking are problematic, but others admit of a solid justification, and when used carefully, can be a source of insight.
Brian Epstein
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199381104
- eISBN:
- 9780199381128
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199381104.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics/Epistemology
We live in a world of crowds and corporations, legislatures and languages, money and markets. These are all social objects—they are made, at least in part, by people and communities. But what exactly ...
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We live in a world of crowds and corporations, legislatures and languages, money and markets. These are all social objects—they are made, at least in part, by people and communities. But what exactly are these things? How are they made, and what is the role of people in making them? This book aims to rewrite our understanding of the nature of the social world and the foundations of the social sciences. The book challenges the three prevailing traditions about how the social world is made. One tradition takes the social world to be built out of people, much as traffic is built out of cars. A second tradition also takes people to be the building blocks of the social world, but focuses on the attitudes we have toward one another. The third tradition takes the social world to be a collective projection onto the physical world. The book shows that these share critical flaws. Most fundamentally, all three traditions overestimate the role of people in building the social world: they are overly anthropocentric. In the place of traditional theories, the book introduces a model based on a new distinction between the grounding and the anchoring of social facts, and illustrates the model with a study of the nature of law. It studies social groups and their constitution, and what it means for groups to take an action or have an intention. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus, these often depend on more than the actions and intentions of group members.Less
We live in a world of crowds and corporations, legislatures and languages, money and markets. These are all social objects—they are made, at least in part, by people and communities. But what exactly are these things? How are they made, and what is the role of people in making them? This book aims to rewrite our understanding of the nature of the social world and the foundations of the social sciences. The book challenges the three prevailing traditions about how the social world is made. One tradition takes the social world to be built out of people, much as traffic is built out of cars. A second tradition also takes people to be the building blocks of the social world, but focuses on the attitudes we have toward one another. The third tradition takes the social world to be a collective projection onto the physical world. The book shows that these share critical flaws. Most fundamentally, all three traditions overestimate the role of people in building the social world: they are overly anthropocentric. In the place of traditional theories, the book introduces a model based on a new distinction between the grounding and the anchoring of social facts, and illustrates the model with a study of the nature of law. It studies social groups and their constitution, and what it means for groups to take an action or have an intention. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus, these often depend on more than the actions and intentions of group members.
Stephen Davies
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199658541
- eISBN:
- 9780191746253
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199658541.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Science
This book explores the idea that our aesthetic responses and art behaviors are connected to our evolved human nature. Our humanoid forerunners displayed aesthetic sensibilities hundreds of thousands ...
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This book explores the idea that our aesthetic responses and art behaviors are connected to our evolved human nature. Our humanoid forerunners displayed aesthetic sensibilities hundreds of thousands of years ago and the art standing of prehistoric cave paintings is virtually uncontested. After introducing the topic, Part I analyzes the key concepts of the aesthetic, art, evolution, and how they might be related. Among other issues, there is consideration of whether animals have aesthetic tastes and whether art is not only universal but cross-culturally comprehensible. Part II is on aesthetics. The many aesthetic interests that humans take in animals and how these reflect our biological interests are examined, as is the idea that our environmental and landscape preferences are rooted in the experiences of our distant ancestors. In considering the controversial subject of human beauty, evolutionary psychologists focus on female physical attractiveness in the context of mate selection, but here a broader view decouples human beauty from mate choice and explains why it goes more with social performance and self-presentation. Part III asks if the arts, together or singly, are biological adaptations, incidental by-products of nonart adaptations, or so removed from biology that they rate as purely cultural technologies. None of the many positions examined is conclusively supported, but there are grounds, nevertheless, for seeing art as part of human nature. It serves as a powerful and complex signal of human fitness, and so cannot be incidental to biology. Indeed, such behaviors are the touchstones of our humanity.Less
This book explores the idea that our aesthetic responses and art behaviors are connected to our evolved human nature. Our humanoid forerunners displayed aesthetic sensibilities hundreds of thousands of years ago and the art standing of prehistoric cave paintings is virtually uncontested. After introducing the topic, Part I analyzes the key concepts of the aesthetic, art, evolution, and how they might be related. Among other issues, there is consideration of whether animals have aesthetic tastes and whether art is not only universal but cross-culturally comprehensible. Part II is on aesthetics. The many aesthetic interests that humans take in animals and how these reflect our biological interests are examined, as is the idea that our environmental and landscape preferences are rooted in the experiences of our distant ancestors. In considering the controversial subject of human beauty, evolutionary psychologists focus on female physical attractiveness in the context of mate selection, but here a broader view decouples human beauty from mate choice and explains why it goes more with social performance and self-presentation. Part III asks if the arts, together or singly, are biological adaptations, incidental by-products of nonart adaptations, or so removed from biology that they rate as purely cultural technologies. None of the many positions examined is conclusively supported, but there are grounds, nevertheless, for seeing art as part of human nature. It serves as a powerful and complex signal of human fitness, and so cannot be incidental to biology. Indeed, such behaviors are the touchstones of our humanity.
Joseph Rouse
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226293677
- eISBN:
- 9780226293707
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226293707.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The most difficult challenge for naturalists in philosophy is accounting for scientific understanding of nature as itself a scientifically intelligible natural phenomenon. This book advances ...
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The most difficult challenge for naturalists in philosophy is accounting for scientific understanding of nature as itself a scientifically intelligible natural phenomenon. This book advances naturalism with a novel response to this challenge, drawing upon the philosophy of scientific practice and interdisciplinary science studies, philosophical work on the normativity of conceptual understanding, and new developments in evolutionary biology. The book’s two parts develop complementary, mutually supporting revisions to familiar accounts of conceptual understanding and of Sellars’s “scientific image” of ourselves-in-the-world. The first part shows how language and scientific practices exemplify the evolutionary process of niche construction. Conceptual capacities arise from the normativity of discursive practice within an evolving developmental niche, in place of familiar naturalistic appeals to a functional teleology of cognitive or linguistic representations. The second part treats scientific understanding (“the scientific image”) as situated within the ongoing practice of scientific research rather than as an established body of scientific knowledge. Scientific work does not culminate in a single, comprehensive image within the Sellarsian “space of reasons”; the sciences instead expand and reconfigure the entire space of reasons, in ways that are prospectively directed toward further revision in research. The first part thereby situates our conceptual capacities within a scientific conception of nature, while the second part explicates a scientific conception of nature in terms of that account of conceptual understanding.Less
The most difficult challenge for naturalists in philosophy is accounting for scientific understanding of nature as itself a scientifically intelligible natural phenomenon. This book advances naturalism with a novel response to this challenge, drawing upon the philosophy of scientific practice and interdisciplinary science studies, philosophical work on the normativity of conceptual understanding, and new developments in evolutionary biology. The book’s two parts develop complementary, mutually supporting revisions to familiar accounts of conceptual understanding and of Sellars’s “scientific image” of ourselves-in-the-world. The first part shows how language and scientific practices exemplify the evolutionary process of niche construction. Conceptual capacities arise from the normativity of discursive practice within an evolving developmental niche, in place of familiar naturalistic appeals to a functional teleology of cognitive or linguistic representations. The second part treats scientific understanding (“the scientific image”) as situated within the ongoing practice of scientific research rather than as an established body of scientific knowledge. Scientific work does not culminate in a single, comprehensive image within the Sellarsian “space of reasons”; the sciences instead expand and reconfigure the entire space of reasons, in ways that are prospectively directed toward further revision in research. The first part thereby situates our conceptual capacities within a scientific conception of nature, while the second part explicates a scientific conception of nature in terms of that account of conceptual understanding.
Jonathan Pugh
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198858584
- eISBN:
- 9780191890741
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198858584.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Personal autonomy is often lauded as a key value in contemporary Western bioethics, and the claim that there is an important relationship between autonomy and rationality is often treated as an ...
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Personal autonomy is often lauded as a key value in contemporary Western bioethics, and the claim that there is an important relationship between autonomy and rationality is often treated as an uncontroversial claim in this sphere. Yet, there is also considerable disagreement about how we should cash out the relationship between rationality and autonomy. In particular, it is unclear whether a rationalist view of autonomy can be compatible with legal judgments that enshrine a patient’s right to refuse medical treatment, regardless of whether ‘… the reasons for making the choice are rational, irrational, unknown or even non-existent’. This book brings recent philosophical work on the nature of rationality to bear on the question of how we should understand autonomy in contemporary bioethics. In doing so, the author develops a new framework for thinking about the concept, one that is grounded in an understanding of the different roles that rational beliefs and rational desires have to play in personal autonomy. Furthermore, the account outlined here allows for a deeper understanding of different forms of controlling influence, and the relationship between our freedom to act, and our capacity to decide autonomously. The author contrasts his rationalist account with other prominent accounts of autonomy in bioethics, and outlines the revisionary implications it has for various practical questions in bioethics in which autonomy is a salient concern, including questions about the nature of informed consent and decision-making capacity.Less
Personal autonomy is often lauded as a key value in contemporary Western bioethics, and the claim that there is an important relationship between autonomy and rationality is often treated as an uncontroversial claim in this sphere. Yet, there is also considerable disagreement about how we should cash out the relationship between rationality and autonomy. In particular, it is unclear whether a rationalist view of autonomy can be compatible with legal judgments that enshrine a patient’s right to refuse medical treatment, regardless of whether ‘… the reasons for making the choice are rational, irrational, unknown or even non-existent’. This book brings recent philosophical work on the nature of rationality to bear on the question of how we should understand autonomy in contemporary bioethics. In doing so, the author develops a new framework for thinking about the concept, one that is grounded in an understanding of the different roles that rational beliefs and rational desires have to play in personal autonomy. Furthermore, the account outlined here allows for a deeper understanding of different forms of controlling influence, and the relationship between our freedom to act, and our capacity to decide autonomously. The author contrasts his rationalist account with other prominent accounts of autonomy in bioethics, and outlines the revisionary implications it has for various practical questions in bioethics in which autonomy is a salient concern, including questions about the nature of informed consent and decision-making capacity.
Colin McGinn
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199841103
- eISBN:
- 9780199919529
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199841103.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, General
This book deals with questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind from the vantage point of physics. Combining general philosophy with physics, it covers such topics as the ...
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This book deals with questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind from the vantage point of physics. Combining general philosophy with physics, it covers such topics as the definition of matter, the nature of space, motion, gravity, electromagnetic fields, the character of physical knowledge, and consciousness and meaning. Throughout, the book maintains an historical perspective and seeks to determine how much we really know of the world described by physics. It defends a version of “structuralism”: the thesis that our knowledge is partial and merely abstract, leaving a large epistemological gap at the center of physics. The book then connects this element of mystery to parallel mysteries in relation to the mind. Consciousness emerges as just one more mystery of physics. A theory of matter and space is developed, according to which the impenetrability of matter is explained as the deletion of volumes of space. The book proposes a philosophy of science that distinguishes physics from both psychology and biology, explores the ontology of energy, and considers the relevance of physics to seemingly remote fields such as the theory of meaning. In the form of a series of aphorisms, this book presents a metaphysical system that takes laws of nature as fundamental.Less
This book deals with questions of metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind from the vantage point of physics. Combining general philosophy with physics, it covers such topics as the definition of matter, the nature of space, motion, gravity, electromagnetic fields, the character of physical knowledge, and consciousness and meaning. Throughout, the book maintains an historical perspective and seeks to determine how much we really know of the world described by physics. It defends a version of “structuralism”: the thesis that our knowledge is partial and merely abstract, leaving a large epistemological gap at the center of physics. The book then connects this element of mystery to parallel mysteries in relation to the mind. Consciousness emerges as just one more mystery of physics. A theory of matter and space is developed, according to which the impenetrability of matter is explained as the deletion of volumes of space. The book proposes a philosophy of science that distinguishes physics from both psychology and biology, explores the ontology of energy, and considers the relevance of physics to seemingly remote fields such as the theory of meaning. In the form of a series of aphorisms, this book presents a metaphysical system that takes laws of nature as fundamental.
Jan Sprenger and Stephan Hartmann
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- October 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199672110
- eISBN:
- 9780191881671
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199672110.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
“Bayesian Philosophy of Science” addresses classical topics in philosophy of science, using a single key concept—degrees of beliefs—in order to explain and to elucidate manifold aspects of scientific ...
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“Bayesian Philosophy of Science” addresses classical topics in philosophy of science, using a single key concept—degrees of beliefs—in order to explain and to elucidate manifold aspects of scientific reasoning. The basic idea is that the value of convincing evidence, good explanations, intertheoretic reduction, and so on, can all be captured by the effect it has on our degrees of belief. This idea is elaborated as a cycle of variations about the theme of representing rational degrees of belief by means of subjective probabilities, and changing them by a particular rule (Bayesian Conditionalization). Partly, the book is committed to the Carnapian tradition of explicating essential concepts in scientific reasoning using Bayesian models (e.g., degree of confirmation, causal strength, explanatory power). Partly, it develops new solutions to old problems such as learning conditional evidence and updating on old evidence, and it models important argument schemes in science such as the No Alternatives Argument, the No Miracles Argument or Inference to the Best Explanation. Finally, it is explained how Bayesian inference in scientific applications—above all, statistics—can be squared with the demands of practitioners and how a subjective school of inference can make claims to scientific objectivity. The book integrates conceptual analysis, formal models, simulations, case studies and empirical findings in an attempt to lead the way for 21th century philosophy of science.Less
“Bayesian Philosophy of Science” addresses classical topics in philosophy of science, using a single key concept—degrees of beliefs—in order to explain and to elucidate manifold aspects of scientific reasoning. The basic idea is that the value of convincing evidence, good explanations, intertheoretic reduction, and so on, can all be captured by the effect it has on our degrees of belief. This idea is elaborated as a cycle of variations about the theme of representing rational degrees of belief by means of subjective probabilities, and changing them by a particular rule (Bayesian Conditionalization). Partly, the book is committed to the Carnapian tradition of explicating essential concepts in scientific reasoning using Bayesian models (e.g., degree of confirmation, causal strength, explanatory power). Partly, it develops new solutions to old problems such as learning conditional evidence and updating on old evidence, and it models important argument schemes in science such as the No Alternatives Argument, the No Miracles Argument or Inference to the Best Explanation. Finally, it is explained how Bayesian inference in scientific applications—above all, statistics—can be squared with the demands of practitioners and how a subjective school of inference can make claims to scientific objectivity. The book integrates conceptual analysis, formal models, simulations, case studies and empirical findings in an attempt to lead the way for 21th century philosophy of science.
Marc Lange
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190269487
- eISBN:
- 9780190269500
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190269487.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, General
The way some scientific explanations work is not by describing causal connections between events or by describing the world’s overall causal structure. Furthermore, mathematicians regard some proofs ...
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The way some scientific explanations work is not by describing causal connections between events or by describing the world’s overall causal structure. Furthermore, mathematicians regard some proofs as not merely proving some theorems but also explaining why those theorems hold—and these explanations do not work by supplying information about causes. This book proposes philosophical accounts of many kinds of non-causal explanations in science and mathematics. One important kind of non-causal scientific explanation is termed “explanation by constraint.” These explanations work by providing information about what makes certain facts especially inevitable—that is, what makes them possess greater necessity than ordinary laws of nature (connecting causes to their effects) do. This book presents an original account of explanations by constraint, offering many examples from classical physics and special relativity. This book also offers original accounts of several other varieties of non-causal scientific explanation. “Dimensional explanations” work by showing how some law of nature arises merely from the dimensions of the quantities involved. “Really statistical explanations” include explanations that appeal to regression toward the mean and other canonical manifestations of chance. This book also provides an original account of what makes certain mathematical proofs but not others explanatory, thereby connecting mathematical explanation to a host of other important but underexplored mathematical ideas, including coincidences in mathematics, the importance of giving multiple proofs of the same result, impure proofs that explain, and natural properties in mathematics.Less
The way some scientific explanations work is not by describing causal connections between events or by describing the world’s overall causal structure. Furthermore, mathematicians regard some proofs as not merely proving some theorems but also explaining why those theorems hold—and these explanations do not work by supplying information about causes. This book proposes philosophical accounts of many kinds of non-causal explanations in science and mathematics. One important kind of non-causal scientific explanation is termed “explanation by constraint.” These explanations work by providing information about what makes certain facts especially inevitable—that is, what makes them possess greater necessity than ordinary laws of nature (connecting causes to their effects) do. This book presents an original account of explanations by constraint, offering many examples from classical physics and special relativity. This book also offers original accounts of several other varieties of non-causal scientific explanation. “Dimensional explanations” work by showing how some law of nature arises merely from the dimensions of the quantities involved. “Really statistical explanations” include explanations that appeal to regression toward the mean and other canonical manifestations of chance. This book also provides an original account of what makes certain mathematical proofs but not others explanatory, thereby connecting mathematical explanation to a host of other important but underexplored mathematical ideas, including coincidences in mathematics, the importance of giving multiple proofs of the same result, impure proofs that explain, and natural properties in mathematics.
Kenneth F. Schaffner
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780195171402
- eISBN:
- 9780190464103
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171402.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Moral Philosophy
This book provides an overview of the recent history and methodology of behavioral genetics and psychiatric genetics. The perspective is primarily philosophical and addresses a wide range of issues, ...
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This book provides an overview of the recent history and methodology of behavioral genetics and psychiatric genetics. The perspective is primarily philosophical and addresses a wide range of issues, including genetic reductionism and determinism, "free will," and quantitative and molecular genetics. The latter covers newer genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that have produced a "paradigm shift" in the subject and generated the problem of "missing heritability." Cases involving genetic testing for IQ and for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are presented. This text examines the nature-nurture controversy and developmental systems theory using C. elegans or "worm" studies as a test case, concluding that genes are special and provide powerful tools, including "deep homology," for investigating behavior. A novel account of biological knowledge emphasizing the importance of models, mechanisms, pathways, and networks is offered that clarifies how partial reductions provide explanations of traits and disorders. The book examines personality genetics and schizophrenia and its etiology, including quotes from a number of prominent researchers interviewed in recent years. Caspi and Moffitt's research and critiques of their "candidate gene" approach are discussed. It is noted that thousands of genes are likely to influence human personality. The book concludes with additional philosophical implications of the genetic analyses raised in the earlier text, some major worries about "free will," and arguments pro and con about why genes and DNA are so special. A pessimistic view of the current state of the field, but optimism for the future of the subject, is proposed.Less
This book provides an overview of the recent history and methodology of behavioral genetics and psychiatric genetics. The perspective is primarily philosophical and addresses a wide range of issues, including genetic reductionism and determinism, "free will," and quantitative and molecular genetics. The latter covers newer genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that have produced a "paradigm shift" in the subject and generated the problem of "missing heritability." Cases involving genetic testing for IQ and for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are presented. This text examines the nature-nurture controversy and developmental systems theory using C. elegans or "worm" studies as a test case, concluding that genes are special and provide powerful tools, including "deep homology," for investigating behavior. A novel account of biological knowledge emphasizing the importance of models, mechanisms, pathways, and networks is offered that clarifies how partial reductions provide explanations of traits and disorders. The book examines personality genetics and schizophrenia and its etiology, including quotes from a number of prominent researchers interviewed in recent years. Caspi and Moffitt's research and critiques of their "candidate gene" approach are discussed. It is noted that thousands of genes are likely to influence human personality. The book concludes with additional philosophical implications of the genetic analyses raised in the earlier text, some major worries about "free will," and arguments pro and con about why genes and DNA are so special. A pessimistic view of the current state of the field, but optimism for the future of the subject, is proposed.
Jakob Hohwy and Jesper Kallestrup (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199211531
- eISBN:
- 9780191705977
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199211531.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science
There are few more unsettling philosophical questions than this: ‘what happens in attempts to reduce some properties to some other more fundamental properties?’ Reflection on this question inevitably ...
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There are few more unsettling philosophical questions than this: ‘what happens in attempts to reduce some properties to some other more fundamental properties?’ Reflection on this question inevitably touches on very deep issues about ourselves, our own interactions with the world and each other, and our very understanding of what there is and what goes on around us. If we cannot command a clear view of these deep issues, then very many other debates in contemporary philosophy seem to lose traction — think of causation, laws of nature, explanation, consciousness, personal identity, intentionality, normativity, freedom, responsibility, justice, and so on. Reduction can easily seem to unravel our world. This book aims to answer this question. Its chapters span a number of current debates in philosophy and cognitive science: what is the nature of reduction, of reductive explanation, of mental causation? The chapters range from approaches in analytical metaphysics, over philosophy of the special sciences and physics, to interdisciplinary studies in psychiatry and neurobiology. The chapters connect strands in contemporary philosophy that are often treated separately, and in combination they show how issues of reduction, explanation, and causation mutually constrain each other.Less
There are few more unsettling philosophical questions than this: ‘what happens in attempts to reduce some properties to some other more fundamental properties?’ Reflection on this question inevitably touches on very deep issues about ourselves, our own interactions with the world and each other, and our very understanding of what there is and what goes on around us. If we cannot command a clear view of these deep issues, then very many other debates in contemporary philosophy seem to lose traction — think of causation, laws of nature, explanation, consciousness, personal identity, intentionality, normativity, freedom, responsibility, justice, and so on. Reduction can easily seem to unravel our world. This book aims to answer this question. Its chapters span a number of current debates in philosophy and cognitive science: what is the nature of reduction, of reductive explanation, of mental causation? The chapters range from approaches in analytical metaphysics, over philosophy of the special sciences and physics, to interdisciplinary studies in psychiatry and neurobiology. The chapters connect strands in contemporary philosophy that are often treated separately, and in combination they show how issues of reduction, explanation, and causation mutually constrain each other.
Kevin McCain and Ted Poston (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198746904
- eISBN:
- 9780191809125
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198746904.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Explanatory reasoning is quite common. Not only are rigorous inferences to the best explanation used pervasively in the sciences, explanatory reasoning is virtually ubiquitous in everyday life. ...
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Explanatory reasoning is quite common. Not only are rigorous inferences to the best explanation used pervasively in the sciences, explanatory reasoning is virtually ubiquitous in everyday life. Despite its widespread use, inference to the best explanation is still in need of precise formulation, and it remains controversial. On the one hand, supporters of explanationism take inference to the best explanation to be a justifying form of inference—some even take all justification to be a matter of explanatory reasoning. On the other hand, critics object that inference to the best explanation is not a fundamental form of inference, and some argue that we should be skeptical of inference to the best explanation in general. This volume brings together top epistemologists and philosophers of science to explore various aspects of inference to the best explanation and the debates surrounding it. The newly commissioned chapters in this volume constitute the cutting edge of research on the role explanatory considerations play in epistemology and philosophy of science.Less
Explanatory reasoning is quite common. Not only are rigorous inferences to the best explanation used pervasively in the sciences, explanatory reasoning is virtually ubiquitous in everyday life. Despite its widespread use, inference to the best explanation is still in need of precise formulation, and it remains controversial. On the one hand, supporters of explanationism take inference to the best explanation to be a justifying form of inference—some even take all justification to be a matter of explanatory reasoning. On the other hand, critics object that inference to the best explanation is not a fundamental form of inference, and some argue that we should be skeptical of inference to the best explanation in general. This volume brings together top epistemologists and philosophers of science to explore various aspects of inference to the best explanation and the debates surrounding it. The newly commissioned chapters in this volume constitute the cutting edge of research on the role explanatory considerations play in epistemology and philosophy of science.
Martin Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198755333
- eISBN:
- 9780191816635
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198755333.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology, Philosophy of Science
According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one’s evidence. In the present book this view is ...
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According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one’s evidence. In the present book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one’s evidence must normically support it–roughly, one’s evidence must make the falsity of that proposition abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond, including the relation between justification and knowledge, the force of statistical evidence, the problem of scepticism, the lottery and preface paradoxes, the viability of multiple premise closure, the internalist/externalist debate, the psychology of human reasoning, and the relation between belief and degrees of belief. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here.Less
According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one’s evidence. In the present book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one’s evidence must normically support it–roughly, one’s evidence must make the falsity of that proposition abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond, including the relation between justification and knowledge, the force of statistical evidence, the problem of scepticism, the lottery and preface paradoxes, the viability of multiple premise closure, the internalist/externalist debate, the psychology of human reasoning, and the relation between belief and degrees of belief. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here.
Gillian Barker
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231171885
- eISBN:
- 9780231540391
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171885.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Beyond Biofatalism is a response to the idea that evolutionary psychology reveals human beings to be incapable of building a more inclusive, cooperative, and egalitarian society. Considering the ...
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Beyond Biofatalism is a response to the idea that evolutionary psychology reveals human beings to be incapable of building a more inclusive, cooperative, and egalitarian society. Considering the pressures of climate change, unsustainable population growth, increasing income inequality, and religious extremism, this attitude promises to stifle the creative action we require before we even try to meet these threats. Beyond Biofatalism provides the perspective we need to understand that better societies are not only possible but actively enabled by human nature. Gillian Barker appreciates the methods and findings of evolutionary psychologists, but she considers their work against a broader background to show human nature is surprisingly open to social change. Like other organisms, we possess an active plasticity that allows us to respond dramatically to certain kinds of environmental variation, and we engage in niche construction, modifying our environment to affect others and ourselves. Barker uses related research in social psychology, developmental biology, ecology, and economics to reinforce this view of evolved human nature, and philosophical exploration to reveal its broader implications. The result is an encouraging foundation on which to build better approaches to social, political, and other institutional changes that could enhance our well-being and chances for survival.Less
Beyond Biofatalism is a response to the idea that evolutionary psychology reveals human beings to be incapable of building a more inclusive, cooperative, and egalitarian society. Considering the pressures of climate change, unsustainable population growth, increasing income inequality, and religious extremism, this attitude promises to stifle the creative action we require before we even try to meet these threats. Beyond Biofatalism provides the perspective we need to understand that better societies are not only possible but actively enabled by human nature. Gillian Barker appreciates the methods and findings of evolutionary psychologists, but she considers their work against a broader background to show human nature is surprisingly open to social change. Like other organisms, we possess an active plasticity that allows us to respond dramatically to certain kinds of environmental variation, and we engage in niche construction, modifying our environment to affect others and ourselves. Barker uses related research in social psychology, developmental biology, ecology, and economics to reinforce this view of evolved human nature, and philosophical exploration to reveal its broader implications. The result is an encouraging foundation on which to build better approaches to social, political, and other institutional changes that could enhance our well-being and chances for survival.
Anthony O'Hear
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198250043
- eISBN:
- 9780191598111
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198250045.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The theory of evolution may be successful in explaining natural history, but it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and rationality, as embodied in ...
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The theory of evolution may be successful in explaining natural history, but it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and rationality, as embodied in language, we give ourselves ideals that cannot be justified in terms of survival‐promotion or reproductive advantage. Evolutionary theory is unable to give satisfactory accounts of such distinctive features of human life as the quest for knowledge, our moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty. At most, it can account for their prefiguration at some earlier stage of development than the human. In all these areas we transcend our biological origins, and such mechanisms as genetic survival, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and sexual selection. But because of our rationality we can also transcend our cultural inheritance explanation of which in terms of memes is both hollow and misleading. We are rooted both in our biology and in our cultural inheritance; but, sociobiology and sociology notwithstanding, we are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal journey through life.Less
The theory of evolution may be successful in explaining natural history, but it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and rationality, as embodied in language, we give ourselves ideals that cannot be justified in terms of survival‐promotion or reproductive advantage. Evolutionary theory is unable to give satisfactory accounts of such distinctive features of human life as the quest for knowledge, our moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty. At most, it can account for their prefiguration at some earlier stage of development than the human. In all these areas we transcend our biological origins, and such mechanisms as genetic survival, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and sexual selection. But because of our rationality we can also transcend our cultural inheritance explanation of which in terms of memes is both hollow and misleading. We are rooted both in our biology and in our cultural inheritance; but, sociobiology and sociology notwithstanding, we are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal journey through life.
Carsten Strathausen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781517900755
- eISBN:
- 9781452957715
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9781517900755.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Bio-Aesthetics. A Critique examines the rising influence of evolutionary theory across academic disciplines today. Empowered by neo-Darwinian theory and recent advances in neuroscientific research, ...
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Bio-Aesthetics. A Critique examines the rising influence of evolutionary theory across academic disciplines today. Empowered by neo-Darwinian theory and recent advances in neuroscientific research, nascent academic fields have particularly challenged the Humanities’ non-empirical and largely speculative approach to modern art, culture, and aesthetic theory. In its stead, evolutionary scholars advocate a strict biological functionalism that effectively reduces mind to brain and art to science. Unfortunately, Humanities’ scholars so far have been slow to respond to this challenge. Bio-Aesthetics remedies this problem by providing the first comprehensive account of current evolutionary and neuroscientific approaches to art and human culture to demonstrate both the need for and the limits of interdisciplinary research in the Humanities. Above all, Bio-Aesthetics is A Critique in the Kantian sense of the term: it works through a critical appraisal of neo-Darwinian reductionism in order to develop a more germane and balanced methodology for future collaborative research across disciplines. Bio-Aesthetics central argument contends that Kant’s transcendentalism amounts to the “structural coupling” of organism and environment, which also applies to our knowledge of the (phenomenological) world we come to inhabit as living beings. Scientific reductionism and neo-Darwinian theory ignore the self-constructed nature of reason and culture for genetic laws and evolutionary principles that allegedly determine human behaviour. Hence the overriding goal of Bio-Aesthetics is to provide the Humanities with a self-critical, historically nuanced and epistemologically up-to-date counter-paradigm to what E. O Wilson called “sociobiology,” that is the reductionist view of human cultural evolution dominant in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory today.Less
Bio-Aesthetics. A Critique examines the rising influence of evolutionary theory across academic disciplines today. Empowered by neo-Darwinian theory and recent advances in neuroscientific research, nascent academic fields have particularly challenged the Humanities’ non-empirical and largely speculative approach to modern art, culture, and aesthetic theory. In its stead, evolutionary scholars advocate a strict biological functionalism that effectively reduces mind to brain and art to science. Unfortunately, Humanities’ scholars so far have been slow to respond to this challenge. Bio-Aesthetics remedies this problem by providing the first comprehensive account of current evolutionary and neuroscientific approaches to art and human culture to demonstrate both the need for and the limits of interdisciplinary research in the Humanities. Above all, Bio-Aesthetics is A Critique in the Kantian sense of the term: it works through a critical appraisal of neo-Darwinian reductionism in order to develop a more germane and balanced methodology for future collaborative research across disciplines. Bio-Aesthetics central argument contends that Kant’s transcendentalism amounts to the “structural coupling” of organism and environment, which also applies to our knowledge of the (phenomenological) world we come to inhabit as living beings. Scientific reductionism and neo-Darwinian theory ignore the self-constructed nature of reason and culture for genetic laws and evolutionary principles that allegedly determine human behaviour. Hence the overriding goal of Bio-Aesthetics is to provide the Humanities with a self-critical, historically nuanced and epistemologically up-to-date counter-paradigm to what E. O Wilson called “sociobiology,” that is the reductionist view of human cultural evolution dominant in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory today.
Tim Lewens
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198712657
- eISBN:
- 9780191781001
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712657.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Moral Philosophy
Much work in bioethics, and also work in mainstream ethics and in political philosophy, is committed to substantive positions regarding the interpretation of biology. Sometimes these commitments are ...
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Much work in bioethics, and also work in mainstream ethics and in political philosophy, is committed to substantive positions regarding the interpretation of biology. Sometimes these commitments are quite obvious, as when ethicists rely on robust notions of species natures to ground their views of enhancement. At other times ethicists espouse more covert positions regarding (for example) proper biological development, ‘species design’, the alleged distinction between the natural and the social, the nature of evolutionary processes, or the causal pre-eminence of genes. This book examines a series of bioethical debates concerning human enhancement, synthetic biology, the ethical significance of species natures, the moral import of evolutionary history, genes and justice, and reproductive ethics, and offer a critical assessment of their biological foundations. It shows how the philosophy of science, and more specifically the philosophy of biology, can illuminate bioethics, political philosophy and ethics more generally.Less
Much work in bioethics, and also work in mainstream ethics and in political philosophy, is committed to substantive positions regarding the interpretation of biology. Sometimes these commitments are quite obvious, as when ethicists rely on robust notions of species natures to ground their views of enhancement. At other times ethicists espouse more covert positions regarding (for example) proper biological development, ‘species design’, the alleged distinction between the natural and the social, the nature of evolutionary processes, or the causal pre-eminence of genes. This book examines a series of bioethical debates concerning human enhancement, synthetic biology, the ethical significance of species natures, the moral import of evolutionary history, genes and justice, and reproductive ethics, and offer a critical assessment of their biological foundations. It shows how the philosophy of science, and more specifically the philosophy of biology, can illuminate bioethics, political philosophy and ethics more generally.