Philosophy of Science Commons^™

The Names Of The Leviathan, Fernando Estrada

Fernando Estrada

This book is designed to offer an interpretation of armed conflict in Colombia using analytical tools from the philosophy of language (Perelman, Lakoff Facounnier). It addresses the civil war in Colombia taking into account the work of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan

Quantum Mechanics And Ethical Antirealism: A Counter-Analogy To Boyd, Justin Lawson

Philosophy

In his paper How to Be a Moral Realist Boyd attempts to show how cases of ethical indeterminacy can be accounted for from an ethical realist’s standpoint. Boyd describes cases of extensional vagueness in the life-sciences which arise from knowable and definite underlying structures and draws an analogy to ethics to argue his case. This paper argues that an equally compelling analogy can be drawn between another type of scientific indeterminacy – that in quantum mechanics – and the related ethical cases. Because quantum mechanical uncertainty (on the Copenhagen interpretation) is a real and not merely epistemic limitation on physical …

La « Technesthétique » : Répétition, Habitude Et Dispositif Technique Dans Les Arts Romantiques, John Tresch

Departmental Papers (HSS)

Français

En 1843, le physicien André-Marie Ampère décrit une nouvelle science, la « technesthétique », qui porte sur les « moyens par lesquels l’homme agit sur l’intelligence ou la volonté des autres hommes ». Cette nouvelle science correspond à la recherche des artistes romantiques pour des nouveaux effets et à leur fascination pour la puissance transformatrice de l’industrie. Comme une traduction théorique de ces obsessions, les lecteurs « mineurs » du philosophe Maine de Biran – y compris Ampère, Alexandre Bertrand, Moreau du Tours et Félix Ravaisson – ont avancé des analyses des interactions dynamiques entre le mouvement et la …

The Ontological Status Of Systems At The Juncture Of Quantum Mechanics And Relativity, Juan Ferret

Juan Ferret

No abstract provided.

Ontological Status Of Relational Quantum Mechanics, Juan Ferret

Juan Ferret

No abstract provided.

Equations Without Equations: Challenges On A Way To A More Adequate Formalization Of Causality Reasoning In Physics, Juan Ferret

Juan Ferret

No abstract provided.

Darwinian Populations And Natural Selection, Grant Ramsey, Hope Hollocher, Agustín Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Edwin Siu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

God And Time: Relative Timelessness Reconsidered, Alan G. Padgett

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Identical Rivals Response To Underdetermination, P.D. Magnus, Greg Frost-Arnold

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The underdetermination of theory by data obtains when, inescapably, evidence is insufficient to allow scientists to decide responsibly between rival theories. One response to would-be underdetermination is to deny that the rival theories are distinct theories at all, insisting instead that they are just different formulations of the same underlying theory; we call this the identical rivals response. An argument adapted from John Norton suggests that the response is presumptively always appropriate, while another from Larry Laudan and Jarrett Leplin suggests that the response is never appropriate. Arguments from Einstein for the special and general theories of relativity may …

Dispositions, Propensities And The Change Of Conditions, Alejandra Olivas-Davila

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to draw a clear line that allows us to thoroughly differentiate dispositions from propensities as well as the big problem that clouds both views. I will attempt to offer an account of the main issues that this properties face. I start by offering a general account of dispositions. In this account I offer a brief analysis of what it is to be a disposition. The distinction between categorical and dispositional property is explored. I move on to explain the evolution of the conditional analysis, as well as the problems it faces. The next point …

On Relational Quantum Mechanics, Oscar Acosta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A problem facing quantum mechanics is that there are a number of views or interpretations available that purport to 'explain' quantum mechanics. In this paper I discuss and analyze the view of relational quantum mechanics by Carlo Rovelli in the context of theoretical underdetermination. I will show that even though Rovelli offers a view that consolidates some of the aspects of competing theories it still falls short of breaking out of the theoretical underdetermination. The criteria that I have used to consider a theory successful in this context is one that increases the predictive output of quantum theory. Lacking an …

Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, And Their Aftermath, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Developments in Anglo-American philosophy during the first half of the 20^th Century closely tracked developments that were occurring in continental philosophy during this period. This should not surprise us. Aside from the fertile communication between these ostensibly separate traditions, both were responding to problems associated with the rise of mass society. Rabid nationalism, corporate statism, and totalitarianism (Left and Right) posed a profound challenge to the idealistic rationalism of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian philosophies. The decline of the individual – classically conceived by the 18th-century Enlightenment as a self-determining agent – provoked strong reactions. While some philosophical tendencies sought to …

A Planet By Any Other Name . . ., Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

Scientific discoveries about Pluto and the rest of the universe led scientists to question Pluto’s status and ultimately to strip Pluto of its standing among planets. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s The Pluto Files masterfully weaves together the empirical, conceptual, and cultural questions surrounding Pluto’s demotion. The problem, for scientists and spectators alike, was this: there was no scientific definition of planet. This review systematizes the Pluto puzzle presented in the book and reveals its relevance for law. The questions presented by The Pluto Files – how man relates to the world, how man understands its conceptual categories, and how man …

Aristotle On Pure And Simple Stuff, Tiberiu Popa

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

A view that has been entertained traditionally by Aristotelian scholars is that the four simple bodies in the sublunary world (earth, water, air, and fire) cannot exist independently; a consequence of this view is the general belief that all homoeomers or uniform bodies have to be compounds. i would like to suggest that, while Aristotle consistently maintains that the four basic opposites (hot, cold, moist, dry) cannot exist independently, this is not always the case with the four simple bodies. My central claim is that Meteorology IV – Aristotle’s ‘chemical treatise’ – provides evidence that, contrary to the traditional interpretation …

Mechanisms, Causes, And The Layered Model Of The World, Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide an account of the causal relevance of higher-level properties. I do this by critiquing one prominent model of higher-level properties – Kim’s functional model of reduction – and contrasting it …

Mechanisms (Oxford), Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Mechanism is undoubtedly a causal concept, in the sense that ordinary definitions and philosophical analyses explicate the concept in terms of other causal concepts such as production and interaction. Given this fact, many philosophers have supposed that analyses of the concept of mechanism, while they might appeal to philosophical theories about the nature of causation, could do little to inform such theories. On the other hand, methods of causal inference and explanation appeal to mechanisms. Discovering a mechanism is the gold standard for establishing and explaining causal connections. This fact suggests that it might be possible to provide an analysis …

The American Grotesque: Free-Thought Idealism In Edward Bliss Foote's "Science In Story", Lita M. Tirak

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Incidental Causation, Spontaneous Generation, And Homonymous Predication In Aristotle’S Physics Ii And Other Texts, David Depew

David J Depew

How did Aristotle, the founder of scientific biology, define life? In this volume, which collects the contributions to a conference held in 2006, philologists, philosophers and biologists approach this question. They study how Aristotle's concept of the soul relates to his perception of life; how he evaluates the different criteria that, according to him, constitute life; how he uses those criteria to define different organic structures; whether there exists a unified definition of life in Aristotle's philosophy; aspects of procreation and ontogenesis; the relationship between individuals and species; the reception of Aristotle's theories. German text.

Indirect Reciprocity And The Evolution Of "Moral Signals", Rory Smead

Rory Smead

Signals regarding the behavior of others are an essential element of human moral systems and there are important evolutionary connections between language and large-scale cooperation. In particular, social communication may be required for the reputation tracking needed to stabilize indirect reciprocity. Additionally, scholars have suggested that the benefits of indirect reciprocity may have been important for the evolution of language and that social signals may have coevolved with large-scale cooperation. This paper investigates the possibility of such a coevolution. Using the tools of evolutionary game theory, we present a model that incorporates primitive "moral signaling" into a simple setting of …

Proceedings For The Minisymposium On The Nature Of Time: Lessons From The Foundations Of Relativity And Quantum Physics, Juan Ferret, Alexis De Saint-Ours

Juan Ferret

No abstract provided.