Journal Articles (Philosophy)
Items in this Collection
- 21Brigandt, Ingo
- 12Koslicki, Kathrin
- 10Linsky, Bernard
- 10Morin, Marie-Eve
- 10Pelletier, Francis J.
- 8Wilson, Robert A.
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1985
In this paper we explore a class of belief update operators, in which the definition of the operator is compositional with respect to the sentence to be added. The goal is to provide an update operator that is intuitive, in that its definition is based on a recursive decomposition of the update...
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Social values influence the adequacy conditions of scientific theories: Beyond inductive risk
Download2015
The ‘death of evidence’ issue in Canada raises the spectre of politicized science, and thus the question of what role social values may have in science and how this meshes with objectivity and evidence. I first criticize philosophical accounts that have to separate different steps of research to...
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2000
This paper points to some problems for the position that D.M. Walsh calls \"alternative individualism,\" and argues that in defending this view Walsh has omitted an important part of what separates individualists and externalists in psychology. Walsh's example of Hox gene complexes is discussed...
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2003
Marc Ereshefsky argues that pluralism about species suggests that the species concept is not theoretically useful. It is to be abandoned in favor of several concrete species concepts that denote real categories. While accepting species pluralism, the present paper rejects eliminativism about the...
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Systems biology and the integration of mechanistic explanation and mathematical explanation
Download2013
The paper discusses how systems biology is working toward complex accounts that integrate explanation in terms of mechanisms and explanation by mathematical models—which some philosophers have viewed as rival models of explanation. Systems biology is an integrative approach, and it strongly...
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2014
In various texts (e.g., Met. Z.17), Aristotle assigns priority to form, in its role as a principle and cause, over matter and the matter-form compound. Given the central role played by this claim in Aristotle's search for primary substance in the Metaphysics, it is important to understand what...
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2003
Introduction: How do the familiar concrete objects of common-sense –houses, trees, people, cars and the like-- persist through time? According to the position known as ‘four-dimensionalism’ or ‘the doctrine of temporal parts’, ordinary concrete objects persist through time by perduring, i.e., by...
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The epistemic goal of a concept: accounting for the rationality of semantic change and variation
Download2010
The discussion presents a framework of concepts that is intended to account for the rationality of semantic change and variation, suggesting that each scientific concept consists of three components of content: (1) reference, (2) inferential role, and (3) the epistemic goal pursued with the...