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- 7Philosophy of Science
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Roger Saylor and Michel Ferrari (eds): Epistemology and Science Education: Understanding the Evolution vsntelligent Design Controversy
Download2012
Introduction: For decades the creationist movement has threatened the teaching of evolution in the United States, even in public schools. Similar worrisome trends have started in other Western countries. Beyond the major importance of reacting to attempts to undermine the proper teaching of...
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Scientific reasoning is material inference: Combining confirmation, discovery, and explanation
Download2010
Whereas an inference (deductive as well as inductive) is usually viewed as being valid in virtue of its argument form, the present paper argues that scientific reasoning is material inference, i.e., justified in virtue of its content. A material inference is licensed by the empirical content...
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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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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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2015-10-14
SSHRC Awarded IG 2016: Where philosophy of science has traditionally construed and studied science in terms of representations of the natural world (eg: data and theories), this project will study scientists' values, explanatory and investigative aims, and methodological and explanatory...
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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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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...
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The homeopathy of kin selection: An evaluation of van den Berghe’s sociobiological approach to ethnicity
Download2001
The present discussion of sociobiological approaches to ethnic nepotism takes van den Berghe’s theory as a starting point. Two points, which have not been addressed in former analyses, are considered to be of particular importance. It is argued that the behavioral mechanism of ethnic nepotism—as...