Science And Rationality For One And All,
2014
University at Albany, State University of New York
Science And Rationality For One And All, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
A successful scientific community might require different scientists to form different beliefs even when faced with the same evidence. The standard line is that this would create a conflict between the demands of collective rationality which scientists face as members of the community and the demands of individual rationality which they face as epistemic agents. This is expressed both by philosophers of science (working on the distribution of cognitive labor) and by epistemologists (working on the epistemology of disagreement). The standard line fails to take into account the relation between rational belief and various epistemic risks, values of which are …
The Early History Of Chance In Evolution,
2014
Louisiana State University
The Early History Of Chance In Evolution, Charles H. Pence
Faculty Publications
Work throughout the history and philosophy of biology frequently employs ‘chance’, ‘unpredictability’, ‘probability’, and many similar terms. One common way of understanding how these concepts were introduced in evolution focuses on two central issues: the first use of statistical methods in evolution (Galton), and the first use of the concept of “objective chance” in evolution (Wright). I argue that while this approach has merit, it fails to fully capture interesting philosophical reflections on the role of chance expounded by two of Galton's students, Karl Pearson and W.F.R. Weldon. Considering a question more familiar from contemporary philosophy of biology—the relationship between …
All At One Point: The New Physics Of Italo Calvino And Jorge Luis Borges,
2014
CUNY Graduate Center
All At One Point: The New Physics Of Italo Calvino And Jorge Luis Borges, Mark Thomas Rinaldi
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This work of comparative literary criticism focuses on the presence of mathematical and scientific concepts and imagery in the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, beginning with an historical overview of scientific philosophy and an introduction to the most significant scientific concepts of the last several centuries, before shifting to deep, scientifically-driven analyses of numerous individual fictions, and finally concluding with a meditation on the unexpectedly fictive aspects of science and mathematics. The close readings of these authors' fictions are contextualized with thorough explanations of the potential literary implications of theories from physics, mathematics, neuroscience and chaos theory. …
A Hermeneutic Exploration Of And Proposed Solution To The Schism Between Researchers And Clinicians In Psychology,
2014
Indiana State University
A Hermeneutic Exploration Of And Proposed Solution To The Schism Between Researchers And Clinicians In Psychology, Mark S. Green
All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Fragmentation in the field of psychology has persisted throughout its history (Slife, 2000). One example of this fragmentation is the gap between researchers and clinicians (Teachman, Drabick, Hershenberg, Vivian, & Wolfe 2012). Although many attempts have been made to bridge this gap, there is still no consensus regarding its resolution. This dissertation provides an explanation for the gap at the philosophical level and provides a method for communicating across potentially incommensurable philosophies, based on Gadamer’s (1960/1989) hermeneutic opus: Truth and Method.
Methodology And Ontology In Microbiome Research,
2014
The University of Akron
Methodology And Ontology In Microbiome Research, John E. Huss
Philosophy Faculty Research
Research on the human microbiome has generated a staggering amount of sequence data, revealing variation in microbial diversity at the community, species (or phylotype), and genomic levels. In order to make this complexity more manageable and easier to interpret, new units—the metagenome, core microbiome, and enterotype—have been introduced in the scientific literature. Here, I argue that analytical tools and exploratory statisti- cal methods, coupled with a translational imperative, are the primary drivers of this new ontology. By reducing the dimensionality of variation in the human microbiome, these new units render it more tractable and easier to interpret, and hence serve …
Carl F. Craver And Lindley Darden: In Search Of Mechanisms: Discoveries Across The Life Sciences,
2014
Butler University
Carl F. Craver And Lindley Darden: In Search Of Mechanisms: Discoveries Across The Life Sciences, Stuart Glennan
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
Carl Craver and Lindley Darden are two of the foremost proponents of a recent approach to the philosophy of biology that is often called the New Mechanism. In this book they seek to make available to a broader readership insights gained from more than two decades of work on the nature of mechanisms and how they are described and discovered. The book is not primarily aimed at specialists working on the New Mechanism, but rather targets scientists, students and teachers who are looking for a broad, philosophically and historically informed image of discovery in the life sciences.
Enframing The Flesh: Heidegger, Transhumanism, And The Body As "Standing Reserve",
2014
Sacred Heart University
Enframing The Flesh: Heidegger, Transhumanism, And The Body As "Standing Reserve", Jesse I. Bailey
Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications
I argue that Heidegger's account of technology as "enframing" is a helpful lens through which to understand the possible effects and dangers of transhumanism. Without resorting to nebulous concepts such as "dignity," Heidegger's analysis can help us understand how new technologies employed to modify the body, brain, and consciousness will enframe our own bodies and identities as something akin to "standing reserve." Under transhumanism, the body is enframed as an external, technologically modifiable product. I indicate some of the problems that might arise when our own bodies no longer appear as central to our identity as embodied beings. Further, I …
Schrödinger And Nietzsche And Life: Eternal Recurrence And The Conscious Now,
2014
Fordham University
Schrödinger And Nietzsche And Life: Eternal Recurrence And The Conscious Now, Babette Babich
Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections
The phenomenological question of consciousness usually associated with Husserl (although there are echoes of this in Augustine as in Marcus Aurelius, Kant and Schopenhauer), is the consciousness of the now, the present moment. I explore this consciousness for Erwin Schrödinger, which for him included reference to the Upaniṣads together with Nietzsche’s central teaching or “thinking” of the eternal recurrence of the same.
On The Relation Between Quantum Mechanical And Neo-Mechanistic Ontologies And Explanatory Strategies,
2014
Bielefeld University
On The Relation Between Quantum Mechanical And Neo-Mechanistic Ontologies And Explanatory Strategies, Meinard Kuhlmann, Stuart Glennan
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
Advocates of the New Mechanicism in philosophy of science argue that scientific explanation often consists in describing mechanisms responsible for natural phenomena. Despite its successes, one might think that this approach does not square with the ontological strictures of quantum mechanics. New Mechanists suppose that mechanisms are composed of objects with definite properties, which are interconnected via local causal interactions. Quantum mechanics calls these suppositions into question. Since mechanisms are hierarchical it appears that even macroscopic mechanisms must supervene on a set of “objects” that behave non- classically. In this paper we argue, in part by appeal to the theory …
Scientism, Satire, And Sacrificial Ceremony In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" And C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength",
2014
Liberty University
Scientism, Satire, And Sacrificial Ceremony In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" And C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", Jonathan Smalt
Masters Theses
Though the nineteenth-century Victorian belief that science alone could provide utopia for man weakened in the epistemological uncertainty of the postmodern era, this belief still continues today. In order to understand our current scientific milieu--and the dangers of propagating scientism--we must first trace the rise of scientism in the nineteenth-century. Though removed, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in Notes From Underground (1864), and C.S. Lewis, in That Hideous Strength (1965), are united in their critiques of scientism as a conceptual framework for human residency. For Dostoevsky, the Crystal Palace of London's Great Exhibition (1862) embodied the nineteenth-century goal to found utopia through the …
Contesting Faith, Truth, And Religious Language At The Creation Museum: A Historical-Theological Reflection,
2014
Butler University
Contesting Faith, Truth, And Religious Language At The Creation Museum: A Historical-Theological Reflection, Brent A. R. Hege
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, attempts to demonstrate the flaws in contemporary science and to offer an alternative explanation of human origins and biological complexity rooted in a specific reading of the biblical narrative. This effort, however, is paradoxically rooted in the worldview of modern science and the Enlightenment. This article will examine the Creation Museum’s definitions of faith, truth, and religious language and will compare these definitions to those of mainline Protestant Christianity to uncover the historical and theological presuppositions of Creationist and mainline Protestant engagements with contemporary science.
The Problem Of Confirmation In The Everett Interpretation,
2014
Chapman University
The Problem Of Confirmation In The Everett Interpretation, Emily Adlam
Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research
I argue that the Oxford school Everett interpretation is internally incoherent, because we cannot claim that in an Everettian universe the kinds of reasoning we have used to arrive at our beliefs about quantum mechanics would lead us to form true beliefs. I show that in an Everettian context, the experimental evidence that we have available could not provide empirical confirmation for quantum mechanics, and moreover that we would not even be able to establish reference to the theoretical entities of quantum mechanics. I then consider a range of existing Everettian approaches to the probability problem and show that they …
It's About Time: Dynamics Of Inflationary Cosmology As The Source Of The Asymmetry Of Time,
2014
University of South Florida
It's About Time: Dynamics Of Inflationary Cosmology As The Source Of The Asymmetry Of Time, Emre Keskin
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This project is about the asymmetry of time. The main source of discontent for physicists and philosophers alike is that even though in every physical theory we developed and/or discovered for explaining how the universe functions, the laws are time reversal invariant; there seems to be a very genuine asymmetry between the past and the future. The aim of this project is to examine several attempts to solve this friction between the laws of physics and the asymmetry and provide a new proposal that makes use of modern cosmology. In the recent history of physics and in contemporary philosophy of …
Aesthetic Mediation And The Politics Of Technology: (Re)New(Ed) Strategies For A Critical Social Theory,
2014
Sacred Heart University
Aesthetic Mediation And The Politics Of Technology: (Re)New(Ed) Strategies For A Critical Social Theory, Andrew J. Pierce
Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications
There is a rich history in early critical theory of attempting to harness the power of aesthetic imagination for the purposes of political liberation. But this approach has largely faded to the background of contemporary critical theory, eclipsed lately by attempts to reconstruct and apply norms of rationality to processes of democratic will formation a` la Habermas. This paper represents a small attempt to return the aesthetic element to its proper place within critical theory, by investigating the aesthetic aspects of certain forms of resistance to technological domination, forms of resistance that become ‘‘embodied’’ in technologies themselves. The phenomena of …
The Mechanistic Approach Of 'The Theory Of Island Biogeography' And Its Current Relevance,
2014
University of Dayton
The Mechanistic Approach Of 'The Theory Of Island Biogeography' And Its Current Relevance, Viorel Pâslaru
Philosophy Faculty Publications
Philosophers of science have examined The Theory of Island Biogeography by Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson (1967) mainly due to its important contribution to modeling in ecology, but they have not examined it as a representative case of ecological explanation. In this paper, I scrutinize the type of explanation used in this paradigmatic work of ecology. I describe the philosophy of science of MacArthur and Wilson and show that it is mechanistic. Based on this account and in light of contributions to the mechanistic conception of explanation due to Craver (2007), and Bechtel and Richardson (1993), I argue that …
Hobbes, Definitions, And Simplest Conceptions,
2014
University at Albany, State University of New York
Hobbes, Definitions, And Simplest Conceptions, Marcus P. Adams
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Several recent commentators argue that Thomas Hobbes’s account of the nature of science is conventionalist. Engaging in scientific practice on a conventionalist account is more a matter of making sure one connects one term to another properly rather than checking one’s claims, e.g., by experiment. In this paper, I argue that the conventionalist interpretation of Hobbesian science accords neither with Hobbes’s theoretical account in De corpore and Leviathan nor with Hobbes’s scientific practice in De homine and elsewhere. Closely tied to the conventionalist interpretation is the deductivist interpretation, on which it is claimed that Hobbes believed sciences such as optics …
The Universality Of Hermeneutics In Joseph Kockelmans’S Version Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology,
2014
Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"
The Universality Of Hermeneutics In Joseph Kockelmans’S Version Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Dimitri Ginev
Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections
There is in Professor Kockelmans’s works from the 1950s a gradual transition from Nikolai Hartmann’s theory of the ontological modalities and categories (addressed in its capacity to serve as a prerequisite for reconstructing the ontological assumptions of basic scientifi c theories) to a kind of hermeneutic ontology. This transition is especially palpable in his reading of Hartmann’s “Philosophy of Nature.” In Hartmann’s categorial metaphysics of knowledge Dasein and Sosein (as ways of being) are subordinated to the modes and spheres of being. The transition was by no means accomplished via a direct borrowing of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein . It …
Consciousness, Quantum Physics, And Hermeneutical Phenomenology,
2014
Georgetown University
Consciousness, Quantum Physics, And Hermeneutical Phenomenology, Patrick A. Heelan Sj
Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections
Two hundred years ago Friedrich Schleiermacher modified Kant’s notion of anthropology—‘hermeneutically,’ as he said — so as to make it inclusive of the tribes that Captain Cook found in the South Sea Islands. This paper honors the late Joseph J. Kockelmans for making a similar hermeneutic move to update Kant’s notion of natural science so as to make it inclusive of the phenomenological lifeworld (For ‘lifeworld,’ see Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, 1954, 121–148, and the ‘lifeworld’ theme throughout the Crisis. ) syntheses of classical, relativity, and quantum physics. The new synthesis is in fact …
The Multidimensionality Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology: From Philology Through Science And Technology To Theology,
2014
Fordham University
The Multidimensionality Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology: From Philology Through Science And Technology To Theology, Babette Babich
Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections
No abstract provided.
Investigating The Lay And Scientific Norms For Using ‘Explanation’,
2014
West Virginia University
Investigating The Lay And Scientific Norms For Using ‘Explanation’, Jonathan Waskan, Ian Harmon, Andrew Higgins, Joseph Spino
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
In the mid-twentieth century, Hempel (1962, 1965) bucked posit ivist ort hodoxy and proposed that explanations have a legitimate role to play in science. Yet, when it came time to offer up a model of explanation, Hempel held fast to the positivist tendency of abstracting both from facts about human psychology and from the specific contents of claims (i.e., in favor of bare logical form). At the broadest level, he proposed that explanations are sets of true statements arranged into formally acceptable arguments. That such arguments count as explanations has, Hempel thought, nothing to do with what anyone thinks or …
