Conception and Causation: Selected Philosophical Papers

Conception and Causation: Selected Philosophical Papers PDF Author: John-Michael Kuczynski
Publisher: John-Michael Kuczynski
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
Papers on the philosophy of mind and philosophical logic. Topics covered include probabilistic causation, the nature of formal truth, the role of language in thought, conceptual atomism, simulated vs. actual intelligence, and the nature of emotion.

Conception and Causation: Selected Philosophical Papers

Conception and Causation: Selected Philosophical Papers PDF Author: John-Michael Kuczynski
Publisher: John-Michael Kuczynski
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
Papers on the philosophy of mind and philosophical logic. Topics covered include probabilistic causation, the nature of formal truth, the role of language in thought, conceptual atomism, simulated vs. actual intelligence, and the nature of emotion.

Evolutionary Causation

Evolutionary Causation PDF Author: Tobias Uller
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262039923
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
A comprehensive treatment of the concept of causation in evolutionary biology that makes clear its central role in both historical and contemporary debates. Most scientific explanations are causal. This is certainly the case in evolutionary biology, which seeks to explain the diversity of life and the adaptive fit between organisms and their surroundings. The nature of causation in evolutionary biology, however, is contentious. How causation is understood shapes the structure of evolutionary theory, and historical and contemporary debates in evolutionary biology have revolved around the nature of causation. Despite its centrality, and differing views on the subject, the major conceptual issues regarding the nature of causation in evolutionary biology are rarely addressed. This volume fills the gap, bringing together biologists and philosophers to offer a comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment of evolutionary causation. Contributors first address biological motivations for rethinking evolutionary causation, considering the ways in which development, extra-genetic inheritance, and niche construction challenge notions of cause and process in evolution, and describing how alternative representations of evolutionary causation can shed light on a range of evolutionary problems. Contributors then analyze evolutionary causation from a philosophical perspective, considering such topics as causal entanglement, the commingling of organism and environment, and the relationship between causation and information. Contributors John A. Baker, Lynn Chiu, David I. Dayan, Renée A. Duckworth, Marcus W Feldman, Susan A. Foster, Melissa A. Graham, Heikki Helanterä, Kevin N. Laland, Armin P. Moczek, John Odling-Smee, Jun Otsuka, Massimo Pigliucci, Arnaud Pocheville, Arlin Stoltzfus, Karola Stotz, Sonia E. Sultan, Christoph Thies, Tobias Uller, Denis M. Walsh, Richard A. Watson

Efficient Causation

Efficient Causation PDF Author: Tad M. Schmaltz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199782172
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
This volume is a collection of new essays by specialists that trace the concept of efficient causation from its discovery (or invention) in Ancient Greece, through its development in late antiquity, the medieval period, and modern philosophy, to its use in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science.

Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics

Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics PDF Author: Hsiang-Ke Chao
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400724543
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers of the life sciences and those of the social sciences, but also for sharing interdisciplinary research that combines both philosophical concepts in both fields. The book begins by defining the concepts of mechanism and causality in biology and economics, respectively. The second and third parts investigate philosophical perspectives of various causal and mechanistic issues in scientific practice in the two fields. These two sections include chapters on causal issues in the theory of evolution; experiments and scientific discovery; representation of causal relations and mechanism by models in economics. The concluding section presents interdisciplinary studies of various topics concerning extrapolation of life sciences and social sciences, including chapters on the philosophical investigation of conjoining biological and economic analyses with, respectively, demography, medicine and sociology.

Selected Philosophical Essays

Selected Philosophical Essays PDF Author: Max Scheler
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810106191
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Included are essays in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophical psychology by one of the most important twentieth-century continental philosophers.

Supervenience and Mind

Supervenience and Mind PDF Author: Jaegwon Kim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521439961
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This collection of essays presents the core of the work of influential philosopher Jaegwon Kim.

Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation

Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation PDF Author: Michele Paolini Paoletti
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317271440
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Downward causation plays a fundamental role in many theories of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It is strictly connected with many topics in philosophy, including but not limited to: emergence, mental causation, the nature of causation, the nature of causal powers and dispositions, laws of nature, and the possibility of ontological and epistemic reductions. Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation brings together experts from different fields—including William Bechtel, Stewart Clark and Tom Lancaster, Carl Gillett, John Heil, Robin F. Hendry, Max Kistler, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum —who delve into classic and unexplored lines of philosophical inquiry related to downward causation. It critically assesses the possibility of downward causation given different ontological assumptions and explores the connection between downward causation and the metaphysics of causation and dispositions. Finally, it presents different cases of downward causation in empirical fields such as physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences. This volume is both a useful introduction and a collection of original contributions on this fascinating and hotly debated philosophical topic.

The Concept of Reduction

The Concept of Reduction PDF Author: Raphael van Riel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319041622
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This volume investigates the notion of reduction. Building on the idea that philosophers employ the term ‘reduction’ to reconcile diversity and directionality with unity, without relying on elimination, the book offers a powerful explication of an “ontological”, notion of reduction the extension of which is (primarily) formed by properties, kinds, individuals, or processes. It argues that related notions of reduction, such as theory-reduction and functional reduction, should be defined in terms of this explication. Thereby, the book offers a coherent framework, which sheds light on the history of the various reduction debates in the philosophy of science and in the philosophy of mind, and on related topics such as reduction and unification, the notion of a scientific level, and physicalism. The book takes its point of departure in the examination of a puzzle about reduction. To illustrate, the book takes as an example the reduction of water. If water reduces to H2O, then water is identical to H2O – thus we get unity. Unity does not come at the price of elimination – claiming that water reduces to H2O, we do not thereby claim that there is no water. But what about diversity and directionality? Intuitively, there should be a difference between water and H2O, such that we get diversity. This is required for there to be directionality: in a sense, if water reduces to H2O, then H2O is prior to, or more basic than water. At least, if water reduces to H2O, then H2O does not reduce to water. But how can this be, if water is identical to H2O? The book shows that the application of current models of reduction does not solve this puzzle, and proposes a new coherent definition, according to which unity is tied to identity, diversity is descriptive in nature, and directionality is the directionality of explanation.

Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle

Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle PDF Author: Robert Boyle
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 9780872201224
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"The availability of a paperback version of Boyle's philosophical writings selected by M. A. Stewart will be a real service to teachers, students, and scholars with seventeenth-century interests. The editor has shown excellent judgment in bringing together many of the most important works and printing them, for the most part, in unabridged form. The texts have been edited responsibly with emphasis on readability. . . . Of special interest in connection with Locke and with the reception of Descarte's Corpuscularianism, to students of the Scientific Revolution and of the history of mechanical philosophy, and to those interested in the relations among science, philosophy, and religion. In fact, given the imperfections in and unavailability of the eighteenth-century editions of Boyle's works, this collection will benefit a wide variety of seventeenth-century scholars." --Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania

Content and Justification

Content and Justification PDF Author: Paul A. Boghossian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199292108
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Content and Justification presents a series of essays by Paul Boghossian on the theory of content and on its relation to the phenomenon of a priori knowledge.Part one comprises essays on the nature of rule-following and its relation to the problem of mental content; on the intelligibility of eliminativist views of the mental; on the prospects for a naturalistic reduction of mental content; and on the currently influential view that meaning is a normative notion.Part two includes three widely discussed papers on the phenomenon of self-knowledge and its compatibility with externalist conceptions of mental content.Part three concerns the classical but ill-understood phenomenon of knowledge that is based upon knowledge of meaning or conceptual competence.Finally, part four turns its attention from general issues about mental content to an account of a specific class of mental contents. It contains two widely discussed papers on the nature of colour concepts, and colour properties.