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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Clay Fabric And Mass Physical Properties Of Surficial Marine Sediment Near The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Andrew Head, Richard H. Bennett, Jessica R. Douglas, Kenneth J. Curry Feb 2012

Clay Fabric And Mass Physical Properties Of Surficial Marine Sediment Near The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Andrew Head, Richard H. Bennett, Jessica R. Douglas, Kenneth J. Curry

Kenneth J. Curry

Surficial sediment was obtained on the RV Cape Hatteras Cruise (2010) from the seafloor at a water depth of 1570 meters located at latitude 28°44'20.16"N and longitude 88°20'24.96"W in close proximity to the Deepwater Horizon well, Gulf of Mexico. Preliminary clay nano- and microfabric observation using a transmission electron microscope (TEM) depicted a sediment rich in clays and organic matter (OM) especially in the upper 2 cm subbottom. Initial analysis of TEM micrographs depicted a high porosity clay sediment. Initial study of the mass physical properties revealed water content ωt = 67.32 – 67.28% (percent total mass), porosity n= 84.1 …


Kant On Teleology, Georgia Rae Rainer, Kenneth J. Curry Feb 2012

Kant On Teleology, Georgia Rae Rainer, Kenneth J. Curry

Kenneth J. Curry

Immanuel Kant was born (1724) into a society that largely embraced a mechanical universe in which matter theory rested on material properties of size, shape, solidity, and motion. But the development of organisms from undifferentiated matter could not be explained by the properties of matter alone. The ontogeny of organisms appeared to have a goal toward which matter was organized, and the parts of organisms seemed in so many instances to play both cause and effect of each other. Kant argued that human artefacts were explained in part by the intention of the designer and in part by the mechanics …


Science: World Under Construction, Georgia Rae Rainer Feb 2012

Science: World Under Construction, Georgia Rae Rainer

Kenneth J. Curry

Society naively accepts the position of scientific realism, which grants that science has an epistemic advantage in providing true theories about a mind-independent natural world. For realists, there is no distinction made between observable and unobservable entities in that both have the same ontological status that aid in the discovery of facts about the natural world. The opposing position, scientific anti-realism, traditionally denies the existence of a mind independent world and claims that the explanatory value of scientific theories is based not on truth or correlation to the perceived world, but rather how well the theory works within the paradigm …


Probable Causes And The Distinction Between Subjective And Objective Chance, Stuart M. Glennan Jan 1997

Probable Causes And The Distinction Between Subjective And Objective Chance, Stuart M. Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In this paper I present both a critical appraisal of Humphreys' probabilistic theory of causality and a sketch of an alternative view of the relationship between the notions of probability and of cause. Though I do not doubt that determinism is false, I claim that the examples used to motivate Humphreys' theory typically refer to subjective rather than objective chance. Additionally, I argue on a number of grounds that Humphreys' suggestion that linear regression models be used as a canonical form for the description of causal relations is untenable. I conclude by exploring the variety of ways in which probabilistic …


Computationalism And The Problem Of Other Minds, Stuart M. Glennan Jan 1995

Computationalism And The Problem Of Other Minds, Stuart M. Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In this paper I discuss Searle's claim that the computational properties of a system could never cause a system to be conscious. In the first section of the paper I argue that Searle is correct that, even if a system both behaves in a way that is characteristic of conscious agents (like ourselves) and has a computational structure similar to those agents, one cannot be certain that that system is conscious. On the other hand, I suggest that Searle's intuition that it is “empirically absurd” that such a system could be conscious is unfounded. In the second section I show …