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Articles 91 - 120 of 159
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Regarding Scientific Significance, P.D. Magnus
Regarding Scientific Significance, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
In Science, Truth, and Democracy, Philip Kitcher introduces significance graphs (structures that illustrate how and which questions are significant) and well ordered science (a norm defined by an imagined process of ideal deliberation). Jeremy Simon has argued that these two parts of Kitcher's account are intimately connected. In this paper, I argue that the connection between significance graphs and well-ordered science is rather more complicated. I survey three objections to Kitcher's account, two from Simon and a third by analogy with similar positions in ethics. This paper aims to show that Kitcher's account relies on some questions being ones about …
Inductions, Red Herrings, And The Best Explanation For The Mixed Record Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Inductions, Red Herrings, And The Best Explanation For The Mixed Record Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Kyle Stanford has recently claimed to offer a new challenge to scientific realism. Taking his inspiration from the familiar Pessimistic Induction (PI), Stanford proposes a New Induction (NI). Contra Anjan Chakravartty’s suggestion that the NI is a ‘red herring’, I argue that it reveals something deep and important about science. The Problem of Unconceived Alternatives, which lies at the heart of the NI, yields a richer anti-realism than the PI. It explains why science falls short when it falls short, and so it might figure in the most coherent account of scientific practice. However, this best account will be antirealist …
The Identical Rivals Response To Underdetermination, P.D. Magnus, Greg Frost-Arnold
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 …
Empirical Evidence And The Case For Foreign Aid, Nicole Hassoun
Empirical Evidence And The Case For Foreign Aid, Nicole Hassoun
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
This paper addresses an important methodological question for a recent debate in global justice: What types of data are necessary for settling normative debates about foreign aid? Recently, several philosophers have considered the case for foreign aid and have concluded that foreign aid is either ineffective or counter-productive. This paper considers what kinds of evidence those doing applied philosophy must use to support different claims about aid’s efficacy. Then, using some of the best available data, this paper makes a strong case for at least some foreign aid. This paper’s methodological lessons, however, are quite general. It considers what types …
Wrongful Life And Procreative Decisions, Bonnie Steinbock
Wrongful Life And Procreative Decisions, Bonnie Steinbock
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
This paper defends and refines the claim that procreation can be wrongful. Procreation is wrongful first when the "nonexistence condition" is met: the person's life will be filled with suffering that cannot be ameliorated or empty of all the things that make life worth living. Recognizing that this condition is rarely met, the paper then argues that it is wrong to create a person in less extreme circumstances: when the person is likely not to have a minimaly decent life, one in which certain important interests cannot be satisfied. Although we must be very cautious about concluding that any particular …
Citizenship And Participation In Government In Ancient Greek Political Thought, Anthony Preus
Citizenship And Participation In Government In Ancient Greek Political Thought, Anthony Preus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Sections cover a historical account of citizenship, comments on Plato's account of citizenship, the political motivation of Aristotle's definition of citizenship, and the historical consequences of Aristotle's definition of citizenship.
Free Trade And The Environment, Nicole Hassoun
Free Trade And The Environment, Nicole Hassoun
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
What should environmentalists say about free trade? Many environmentalists object to free trade by appealing the “Race to the Bottom Argument.” This argument is inconclusive, but there are reasons to worry about unrestricted free trade’s environmental effects nonetheless; the rules of trade embodied in institutions such as the World Trade Organization may be unjustifiable. Programs to compensate for trade-related environmental damage, appropriate trade barriers, and consumer movements may be necessary and desirable. At least environmentalists should consider these alternatives to unrestricted free trade if they do not prevent the achievement of other important moral objectives, can efficiently reduce environmental problems, …
Meeting Need, Nicole Hassoun
Meeting Need, Nicole Hassoun
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
This article considers the question ‘How should institutions enable people to meet their needs in situations where there is no guarantee that all needs can be met?’ After considering and rejecting several simple principles for meeting needs, it suggests a new effectiveness principle that (1) gives greater weight to the needs of the less well off and (2) gives weight to enabling a greater number of people to meet their needs. The effectiveness principle has some advantage over the main competitors including a principle suggested by David Miller in Principles of Social Justice. Miller argues that his principle accounts …
Swarms, Schools, Flocks, And Colonies: Exploring The Ontology Of Collective Individuals, Brian G. Henning
Swarms, Schools, Flocks, And Colonies: Exploring The Ontology Of Collective Individuals, Brian G. Henning
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Trusting In The 'Efficacy Of Beauty': A Kalocentric Approach To Moral Philosophy, Brian G. Henning
Trusting In The 'Efficacy Of Beauty': A Kalocentric Approach To Moral Philosophy, Brian G. Henning
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Although debates over carbon taxes and trading schemes, over carbon offsets and compact fluorescents are important, our efforts to address the environmental challenges that we face will fall short unless and until we also set about the difficult work of reconceiving who we are and how we are related to our processive cosmos. What is needed, I argue, are new ways of thinking and acting grounded in new ways of understanding ourselves and our relationship to the world, ways of understanding that recognize our fundamental interdependence and interconnection with everyone and everything in the cosmos, ways of understanding that recognize …
From Despot To Steward: The Greening Of Catholic Social Teaching, Brian G. Henning
From Despot To Steward: The Greening Of Catholic Social Teaching, Brian G. Henning
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Demonstrative Induction And The Skeleton Of Inference, P.D. Magnus
Demonstrative Induction And The Skeleton Of Inference, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
It has been common wisdom for centuries that scientific inference cannot be deductive; if it is inference at all, it must be a distinctive kind of inductive inference. According to demonstrative theories of induction, however, important scientific inferences are not inductive in the sense of requiring ampliative inference rules at all. Rather, they are deductive inferences with sufficiently strong premises. General considerations about inferences suffice to show that there is no difference in justification between an inference construed demonstratively or ampliatively. The inductive risk may be shouldered by premises or rules, but it cannot be shirked. Demonstrative theories of induction …
Early Response To False Claims In Wikipedia, P.D. Magnus
Early Response To False Claims In Wikipedia, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
A number of studies have assessed the reliability of entries in Wikipedia at specific times. One important difference between Wikipedia and traditional media, however, is the dynamic nature of its entries. An entry assessed today might be substantially extended or reworked tomorrow. This study paper assesses the frequency with which small, inaccurate changes are quickly corrected.
Reid's Defense Of Common Sense, P.D. Magnus
Reid's Defense Of Common Sense, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Thomas Reid is often misread as defending common sense, if at all, only by relying on illicit premises about God or our natural faculties. On these theological or reliabilist misreadings, Reid makes common sense assertions where he cannot give arguments. This paper attempts to untangle Reid's defense of common sense by distinguishing four arguments: (a) the argument from madness, (b) the argument from natural faculties, (c) the argument from impotence, and (d) the argument from practical commitment. Of these, (a) and (c) do rely on problematic premises that are no more secure than claims of common sense itself. Yet (b) …
Fibs In The Wikipedia (Supplemental Data), P.D. Magnus
Fibs In The Wikipedia (Supplemental Data), P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
These are details of research conducted in November and December 2007. The file is meant as a supplement to publication, and I have not attempted here to provide any analysis of the results
Review Of "Goodness And Justice: A Consequentialist Moral Theory", Brian G. Henning
Review Of "Goodness And Justice: A Consequentialist Moral Theory", Brian G. Henning
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
A review of Joseph Mendola's Goodness and Justice: A Consequentialist Moral Theory, published by Cambridge University Press in 2006.
Alfred North Whitehead And Yi Yulgok: Toward A Process-Confucian Spirituality In Korea, Brian G. Henning
Alfred North Whitehead And Yi Yulgok: Toward A Process-Confucian Spirituality In Korea, Brian G. Henning
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Distributed Cognition And The Task Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Distributed Cognition And The Task Of Science, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton's sociology of scientific norms, Philip Kitcher's 20th-century account of cognitive labor, and Kitcher's 21st-century notion of well-ordered science. Problems that …
Trading Quality For Quantity, Christopher Morgan-Knapp
Trading Quality For Quantity, Christopher Morgan-Knapp
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
This paper deals with problems that vagueness raises for choices involving evaluative tradeoffs. I focus on a species of such choices, which I call ‘qualitative barrier cases.’ These are cases in which a qualitatively significant tradeoff in one evaluative dimension for a given improvement in another dimension could not make an option better all things considered, but a merely quantitative tradeoff for the given improvement might. Trouble arises, however, when one of the options constitutes a borderline case of an evaluative kind. I argue that in such cases we can neither affirm nor deny that trading off losses in one …
Moral Status, Moral Value, And Human Embryos: Implications For Stem Cell Research, Bonnie Steinbock
Moral Status, Moral Value, And Human Embryos: Implications For Stem Cell Research, Bonnie Steinbock
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Human embryonic stem cells (ES cells) are of scientific and medical interest because of their ability to develop into different tissue types and because of their ability to be propagated for many generations in laboratory culture. Grown in a laboratory, they might one day be used in the treatment of degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. They could provide bone cells for the treatment of osteoporosis, eye cells for macular degeneration, blood cells for cancer, insulinproducing cells for diabetes, heart muscle cells for heart disease, nerve cells for spinal cord injury. The potential for benefit to so many people …
Review Of "Representative Democracy: Principles And Genealogy", Brian G. Henning
Review Of "Representative Democracy: Principles And Genealogy", Brian G. Henning
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
A review of Nadia Urbinati's Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy, published by University of Chicago Press in 2006.
Epistemology And The Wikipedia, P.D. Magnus
Epistemology And The Wikipedia, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that is written and edited entirely by visitors to its website. I argue that we are misled when we think of it in the same epistemic category with traditional general encyclopedias. An empirical assessment of its reliability reveals that it varies widely from topic to topic. So any particular claim found in it cannot be relied on based on its source. I survey some methods that we use in assessing specific claims and argue that the structure of the Wikipedia frustrates them
Designer Babies: Choosing Our Children's Genes, Bonnie Steinbock
Designer Babies: Choosing Our Children's Genes, Bonnie Steinbock
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
The phrase “designer babies” refers to genetic interventions into pre-implantation embryos in the attempt to influence the traits the resulting children will have. At present, this is not possible, but many people are horrified by the mere thought that parents might want to choose their children’s genes, especially for non-disease traits. I want to argue that the objections are usually not well articulated, and that even when they are, it’s far from obvious that such interventions would be wrong.
The Morality Of Killing Human Embryos, Bonnie Steinbock
The Morality Of Killing Human Embryos, Bonnie Steinbock
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Embryonic stem cell research is morally and politically controversial because the process of deriving the embryonic stem (ES) cells kills embryos. If embryos are, as some would claim, human beings like you and me, then ES cell research is clearly impermissible. If, on the other hand, the blastocysts from which embryonic stem cells are derived are not yet human beings, but rather microscopic balls of undifferentiated cells, as others maintain, then ES cell research is probably morally permissible. Whether the research can be justified depends on such issues as its cost, chance of success, and numbers likely to benefit. But …
What’S New About The New Induction?, P.D. Magnus
What’S New About The New Induction?, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
The problem of underdetermination is thought to hold important lessons for philosophy of science. Yet, as Kyle Stanford has recently argued, typical treatments of the offer only restatements of familiar philosophical problems. Following suggestions in Duhem and Sklar, Stanford calls for a New Induction from the history of science. It will provide proof, he thinks, of “the kind of underdetermination that the history of science reveals to be a distinctive and genuine threat to even our best scientific theories” [Sta01, p. S12]. This paper examines Stanford’s New Induction and argues that it— like the other forms of underdetermination that he …
Hume On Promises And The Peculiar Act Of The Mind, Rachel Cohon
Hume On Promises And The Peculiar Act Of The Mind, Rachel Cohon
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Background Theories And Total Science, P.D. Magnus
Background Theories And Total Science, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Background theories in science are used both to prove and to disprove that theory choice is underdetermined by data. The alleged proof appeals to the fact that experiments to decide between theories typically require auxiliary assumptions from other theories. If this generates a kind of underdetermination, it shows that standards of scientific inference are fallible and must be appropriately contextualized. The alleged disproof appeals to the possibility of suitable background theories to show that no theory choice can be timelessly or noncontextually underdetermined: Foreground theories might be distinguished against different backgrounds. Philosophers have often replied to such a disproof by …
Reciprocity, Justice, And Disability, Lawrence C. Becker
Reciprocity, Justice, And Disability, Lawrence C. Becker
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Hormone Research As An Exemplar Of Underdetermination, P.D. Magnus
Hormone Research As An Exemplar Of Underdetermination, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
Debates about the underdetermination of theory by data often turn on specific examples. Many cases are invoked often enough that they become familiar, even well-worn. Here I consider one such commonplace: the connection between prenatal hormone levels and gender-linked childhood behavior. Since Helen Longino's original discussion of this case a decade-and-a-half ago, it has become become one of the stock examples of underdetermination. However, the case is not genuinely underdetermined. We can easily imagine a possible experiment to decide the question. The fact that we would not perform this experiment is a moral, rather than epistemic, point. Further, I argue …
Reckoning The Shape Of Everything: Underdetermination And Cosmotopology, P.D. Magnus
Reckoning The Shape Of Everything: Underdetermination And Cosmotopology, P.D. Magnus
Philosophy Faculty Scholarship
This paper offers a general characterization of underdetermination and gives a prima facie case for the underdetermination of the topology of the universe. A survey of several philosophical approaches to the problem fails to resolve the issue: the case involves the possibility of massive reduplication, but Strawson on massive reduplication provides no help here; it is not obvious that any of the rival theories are to be preferred on grounds of simplicity; and the usual talk of empirically equivalent theories misses the point entirely. (If the choice is underdetermined, then the theories are not empirically equivalent!) Yet the thought experiment …