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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Review Of Sharon Anderson-Gold, Unnecessary Evil: History And Moral Progress In The Philosophy Of Immanuel Kant (2001), Harry Van Der Linden
Review Of Sharon Anderson-Gold, Unnecessary Evil: History And Moral Progress In The Philosophy Of Immanuel Kant (2001), Harry Van Der Linden
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
Harry van der Linden's review of: Unnecessary Evil: History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. By Sharon Anderson-Gold. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Pp. xiii, 138. ISBN 0-7914-4819-3 (hbk) $50.50; 0-7914-4820-7 (pbk) $17.95.
Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of mechanism, I show how the complex-systems approach avoids certain objections to Salmon's account of causal-mechanical explanation. I conclude by discussing how mechanistic explanations can provide understanding by unification.