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Author: Marie I. Kaiser
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319253107
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author’s analysis of reductive explanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in the philosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reduction becomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the concept of a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results of these five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases her final chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation.
Author: Marie I. Kaiser
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319253107
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author’s analysis of reductive explanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in the philosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reduction becomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the concept of a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results of these five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases her final chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation.
Author: Gregory R. Bock
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 047051549X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
A comprehensive volume examining the fundamental questions raised by reductionists' theory about levels of explanation necessary to understand biological systems. The book evaluates the enormously powerful techniques of molecular biology, and analyzes precisely how molecular information has improved our understanding of fundamental biological processes.
Author: Alexander Rosenberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226727319
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
After the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, scientists working in molecular biology embraced reductionism—the theory that all complex systems can be understood in terms of their components. Reductionism, however, has been widely resisted by both nonmolecular biologists and scientists working outside the field of biology. Many of these antireductionists, nevertheless, embrace the notion of physicalism—the idea that all biological processes are physical in nature. How, Alexander Rosenberg asks, can these self-proclaimed physicalists also be antireductionists? With clarity and wit, Darwinian Reductionism navigates this difficult and seemingly intractable dualism with convincing analysis and timely evidence. In the spirit of the few distinguished biologists who accept reductionism—E. O. Wilson, Francis Crick, Jacques Monod, James Watson, and Richard Dawkins—Rosenberg provides a philosophically sophisticated defense of reductionism and applies it to molecular developmental biology and the theory of natural selection, ultimately proving that the physicalist must also be a reductionist.
Author: Alex Rosenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108605117
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140
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Book Description
Reductionism is a widely endorsed methodology among biologists, a metaphysical theory advanced to vindicate the biologist's methodology, and an epistemic thesis those opposed to reductionism have been eager to refute. While the methodology has gone from strength to strength in its history of achievements, the metaphysical thesis grounding it remained controversial despite its significant changes over the last 75 years of the philosophy of science. Meanwhile, antireductionism about biology, and especially Darwinian natural selection, became orthodoxy in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology. This Element expounds the debate about reductionism in biology, from the work of the post-positivists to the end of the century debates about supervenience, multiple realizability, and explanatory exclusion. It shows how the more widely accepted 21st century doctrine of 'mechanism' - reductionism with a human face - inherits both the strengths and the challenges of the view it has largely supplanted.
Author: Robert S. Cohen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9789027706478
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 747
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Book Description
For this book, we have selected papers from symposia and contributed sessions at the fourth biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, held at the University of Notre Dame on November 1-3, 1974. The meeting was lively and well-attended, and we regret that there was no way to record here the many stimulating discussions after the papers and during the informal hours. We also regret that we had in sufficient space for all the contributed papers. Even more, some of the symposia were not available: those on systems and decision theory (c. W. Churchman, P. Suppes, I. Levi), and on the Marxist philosophy of science (M. W. Wartofsky, R. S. Cohen, E. N. Hiebert). Unhappily several individual contributions to other symposia were likewise not available: I. Velikovsky in the session on his own work and the politics of science, D. Finkelstein in the session on quantum logic. Memorial minutes were read for Alan Ross Anderson (prepared by Nuel Belnap) and for Imre Lakatos (prepared by Paul Feyerabend). They initiate this volume of philosophy of science in the mid-seventies.
Author: Marc H. V. Van Regenmortel
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470854170
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
Reductionism as a scientific methodology has been extraordinarily successful in biology. However, recent developments in molecular biology have shown that reductionism is seriously inadequate in dealing with the mind-boggling complexity of integrated biological systems. This title presents an appropriate balance between science and philosophy and covers traditional philosophical treatments of reductionism as well as the benefits and shortcomings of reductionism in particular areas of science. Discussing the issue of reductionism in the practice of medicine it takes into account the holistic and integrative aspects that require the context of the patient in his biological and psychological entirety. The emerging picture is that what first seems like hopeless disagreements turn out to be differences in emphasis. Although genes play an important role in biology, the focus on genetics and genomics has often been misleading. The consensus view leads to pluralism: both reductionst methods and a more integrative approach to biological complexity are required, depending on the questions that are asked. * An even balance of contributions from scientists and philosophers of science - representing a unique interchange between both communities interested in reductionism
Author: David Livingstone Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107055830
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
A collection of original essays by major thinkers, addressing how the biological sciences inform and inspire philosophical research.
Author: Miguel García-Valdecasas
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319305026
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Some may consider that the language and concepts of philosophy will eventually be superseded by those of neuroscience. This book questions such a naïve assumption and through a variety of perspectives and traditions, the authors show the possible contributions of philosophy to non-reductive forms of neuroscientific research. Drawing from the full range and depth of philosophical thought, from hylomorphism to ethics, by way of dynamical systems, enactivism and value theory, amongst other topics, this edited work promotes a rich form of interdisciplinary exchange. Chapters explore the analytic, phenomenological and pragmatic traditions of philosophy, and most share a common basis in the Aristotelian tradition. Contributions address one or more aspects of subjectivity in relation to science, such as the meaning and scope of naturalism and the place of consciousness in nature, or the relation between intentionality, teleology, and causality. Readers may further explore the nature of life and its relation to mind and then the role of value in mind and nature. This book shows how philosophy might contribute to real explanatory progress in science while remaining faithful to the full complexity of the phenomena of life and mind. It will be of interest to both philosophers and neuroscientists, as well as those engaged in interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophy and science.
Author: Melinda Bonnie Fagan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198
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Book Description
Author: Jakob Hohwy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199211531
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
Is the mind nothing but neural firings in the brain? Are we just a bunch of neurons? If the mind is just the brain, then how can we act as genuine, responsible agents in the world? Being Reduced attempts to understand these questions.
