Philosophy of Science Commons^™

Vol 7 No 2 Information Page

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 7 No 2 Cover Page

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

On How To Approach The Approach To Equilibrium, Joshua Luczak

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article highlights the limitations of typicality accounts of thermodynamic behavior so as to promote an alternative line of research: understanding and accounting for the success of the techniques and equations physicists use to model the behavior of systems that begin away from equilibrium. This article also takes steps in this promising direction. It examines a technique commonly used to model the behavior of an important kind of system: a Brownian particle that has been introduced to an isolated fluid at equilibrium. It also accounts for the success of the model, by identifying and grounding the technique's key assumptions.

Aristotle, The Pythagoreans, And Structural Realism, Owen Goldin

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Aristotle’s main objection to Pythagorean number ontology is that it posits as a basic subject what can exist only as inherent in a subject. I then show how contemporary structural realists posit an ontology much like that of Aristotle’s Pythagoreans. Both take the objects of knowledge to be structure, not the subject of structure. I discuss both how pancomputationalists such as Edward Fredkin approach the Pythagorean account insofar as on their account all reality can in principle be expressed as one (very big) number, made up of discrete units, and even more moderate varieties of structural realism, like that of …

An Ecological Critique Of Capitalism, Macauley Berg

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I will be addressing the broad set of impacts generally referred to as "the environmental crisis.” I argue that this environmental crisis is truly an ecological one, insofar as humans are its primary drivers as well as its primary victims. I then investigate the structural cause (or structural causes) which produce this multitude of effects. In turn, this leads me to seek out and address the social underpinnings of this problem. I identify capitalism (specifically, its current form of global neoliberal economics) as a major driver of the ecological crisis and explore the relationship between capitalism and environmental practice. As …

Producing Knowledge: The Social Made Visible In The Division Of Environmental Biology Of The National Science Foundation, Patrick Southern

Capstone Collection

This inquiry explores how knowledge is produced in the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) of the National Science Foundation. Beginning from a poststructuralist understanding of science as firmly embedded in the unequal relations of society, this study sought to examine how the policies and procedures of funding research proposals in DEB influence and are influenced by those relations. Using an institutional ethnography approach to analysis, data were collected from analyzing publicly available texts from the division, NSF, Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and the research community. The analysis demonstrates how the activities of DEB could maintain or exacerbate …

Oh Sinnerman, Where You Gonna Run To?, Semein Washington

Theses & Honors Papers

Semein Washington. OH SINNERMAN, WHERE YOU GONNA RUN TO? (Under the direction of Mary Carroll Hackett, MFA) Department of English and Modern Language, April 2016.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the growth of personal identity via poetry. “Oh Sinnerman,” is a run of thirty-eight poems in which the speaker learns survival through experience, and the underpinning ideas, whether traditional or modern, for which life is preserved. In theme, the poems tend to separate his experience into personal and social humanity. In poems such as “No Good Being,” “Sunday Tennis” and “How One Loves,” personal humanity shows through …

Fundamental Awareness: A Framework For Integrating Science, Philosophy And Metaphysics, Neil D. Theise, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The ontologic framework of Fundamental Awareness proposed here assumes that non-dual Awareness is foundational to the universe, not arising from the interactions or structures of higher level phenomena. The framework allows comparison and integration of views from the three investigative domains concerned with understanding the nature of consciousness: science, philosophy, and metaphysics. In this framework, Awareness is the underlying reality, not reducible to anything else. Awareness and existence are the same. As such, the universe is non-material, self-organizing throughout, a holarchy of complementary, process driven, recursive interactions. The universe is both its own first observer and subject. Considering the world …

Stimulacra: The Accident And The Identity Crisis, Grant C. Gallo

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

An in-depth analysis and criticism of J.G. Ballards’s 1971 novel, Crash, is conducted. The qualities of the novel that place it within the genre of science fiction are presented and contested. Ballard’s own commentary on his novel is taken into account, as well as that of the French hyperrealist Jean Baudrillard. Both of their positions are then updated and reworked into theory of symbolic exchange for the digital age. Ultimately, the worth of J.G. Ballard’s Crash is weighed against the words of his critics and determined to defy the definitions of the science fiction genre itself.

Deontological Ethical System For Google's Self-Driving Car, Edgard Alejandro Arroliga Jr.

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Google's Self-Driving Car is a revolutionary product that is riddled with ethical conundrums. It is able to accurately scan and drive through densely populated roads without much difficulty. However, there are some situations where the car will likely have to make decisions that affect, maybe even take, the lives of those on the road. Issues such as the Trolley Problem and the Rear-End Dilemma describe situations where there seems to be no single ethical answer as to how the car should act. In order to solve these issues, I propose that a Deontological Ethical System should be implemented because it …

A Case For Monistic Idealism: Connecting Idealistic Thoughts From Leibniz To Kant With Support In Quantum Physics, Erik Haynes

Masters Theses

Through the analysis of idealistic arguments and evidence from physics, it will be demonstrated that monistic idealism has a great deal of explanatory power as a metaphysical system for the reality that one experiences. Some of the arguments that support this claim include the inadequateness of Cartesian matter, the seemingly infinite divisibility of atoms, matter being reducible to sensations, the unnecessary aspect of matter, and simplicity. Evidence from quantum physics includes such factors as the necessary role of an observer in the collapse of a quantum wave function and the element of nonlocality. Psychological experiments including nonlocal communication, the power …

Leibniz's More Fundamental Ontology: From Overshadowed Individuals To Metaphysical Atoms, Marin Lucio Mare

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I aim to offer an innovative interpretation of Leibniz’s philosophy, first by examining how the various views that make up his ontology of individual substance involve a persistent rejection of atomism in natural philosophy and secondly, by exploring the significance of this rejection in the larger context of Seventeenth-century physics. My thesis is structured as a developmental story, each chapter analyzing the discontinuities or changes Leibniz makes to his views on individuation and atomism from his early to late years. The goal is to illuminate underrepresented views on individuals and atoms throughout Leibniz’s works and thus bring a clearer understanding …

Evotext: A New Tool For Analyzing The Biological Sciences, Grant Ramsey, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

We introduce here evoText, a new tool for automated analysis of the literature in the biological sciences. evoText contains a database of hundreds of thousands of journal articles and an array of analysis tools for generating quantitative data on the nature and history of life science, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. This article describes the features of evoText, presents a variety of examples of the kinds of analyses that evoText can run, and offers a brief tutorial describing how to use it.

Tests For Intrinsicness Tested, Kelvin J. Mcqueen, René Van Woudenberg

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Various tests have been proposed as helps to identify intrinsic properties. This paper compares three prominent tests (we call them Perfect Duplication, Real Change, and Lonely) and shows that they fail to pass adequate verdicts on a set of three properties. The paper examines whether improved versions of the tests can reduce or remove these negative outcomes. We reach the sceptical conclusion that whereas some of the tests must be discarded as inadequate because they don’t yield definite results, the remaining tests depend for their application on the details of fundamental particle physics so much so that they cannot be …

Explanatory Proofs And Beautiful Proofs, Marc Lange

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper concerns the relation between a proof’s beauty and its explanatory power – that is, its capacity to go beyond proving a given theorem to explaining why that theorem holds. Explanatory power and beauty are among the many virtues that mathematicians value and seek in various proofs, and it is important to come to a better understanding of the relations among these virtues. Mathematical practice has long recognized that certain proofs but not others have explanatory power, and this paper offers an account of what makes a proof explanatory. This account is motivated by a wide range of examples …

Christian Faith And The Scientific Explanation Of Religion, Donald H. Wacome

Northwestern Review

The cognitive theory of religion seems to threaten to debunk religion, including Christianity, as irrational. The cognitive theory explains human religiosity as an accident, a mere byproduct, of the interaction of mental mechanisms evolved for other purposes. The threat to religion can be neutralized by finding good reasons for religious beliefs which can be identified independent of the operation of the cognitive mechanisms the theory posits. Christian faith should be understood not as sub-rational belief, but as trust in the God who resurrected Jesus Christ. Our natural religiosity, like our natural morality, has no necessary connection to God, but God …

Book Review: Philosophy Of Science: Key Concepts, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book Philosophy of Science: Key Concepts.

The Physicist - Philosophers: The Legacy Of James Clerk Maxwell And Herrmann Von Helmholtz, Peter Skiff

Faculty Books & Manuscripts

One of the most effective, and most mysterious, tools of modern theoretical physics is a mathematical method including what is here called “field theory.” The success of this procedure in unraveling the “zoology” of fundamental particles and their behavior is a marvel. The philosophical context of this marvel is the source of endless academic controversy. The core of the method is a blend of mathematics and description created by “physicist-philosophers,” from Maxwell and Helmholtz to Einstein and Schrödinger. This book tries to unravel the mystery, or at least chronicle it.

The Confluence Of Philosophy And Biology: An Excavation Of Philosophical Issues In Molecular And Developmental Biology, Patrick Johnson Mendie, Emmanuel Bassey Eyo (Ph.D)

Journal of Health Ethics

Philosophical evaluations have played an influential role in the growth and development of molecular and developmental biology to ensure that every individual is born healthy, born wanted and has the privilege to fulfil his or her potentials for a life free from disease and disability. This is why it becomes necessary for biologists to carefully understand human genes, evolution, cells and general human anatomy to fulfil this project. During this process, they are faced with challenges where they also lack the foundation on how to solve them. This challenge gave birth to a philosophical excavation of molecular and developmental biology. …

Mechanistic Abstraction, Worth Boone, Gualtiero Piccinini

Philosophy Faculty Works

We provide an explicit taxonomy of legitimate kinds of abstraction within constitutive explanation. We argue that abstraction is an inherent aspect of adequate mechanistic explanation. Mechanistic explanations—even ideally complete ones—typically involve many kinds of abstraction and therefore do not require maximal detail. Some kinds of abstraction play the ontic role of identifying the specific complex components, subsets of causal powers, and organizational relations that produce a suitably general phenomenon. Therefore, abstract constitutive explanations are both legitimate and mechanistic.