Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
- Institution
- Keyword
-
- Time (3)
- Metaphysics (2)
- Motion (2)
- Philosophy (2)
- Popular philosophy (2)
-
- Space (2)
- Absolutism (1)
- American (1)
- Anticipation (1)
- Causal nexus (1)
- Covariance (1)
- Determinism (1)
- Edwards (1)
- Emerson (1)
- Ephemeral (1)
- Historical explanation (1)
- Information Theory (1)
- Invariance (1)
- Kolmogorov (1)
- Literature (1)
- Maya (1)
- Mechanisms (1)
- Melville (1)
- Mind and body (1)
- Narratives (1)
- Natural history (1)
- Organic philosophy (1)
- Perspectivalism (1)
- Prediction (1)
- Science (1)
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy of Science
Ecological Explanation Between Manipulation And Mechanism Description, Viorel Pâslaru
Ecological Explanation Between Manipulation And Mechanism Description, Viorel Pâslaru
Philosophy Faculty Publications
James Woodward offers a conception of explanation and mechanism in terms of interventionist counterfactuals. Based on a case from ecology, I show that ecologists’ approach to that case satisfiesWoodward’s conditions for explanation and mechanism, but his conception does not fully capture what ecologists view as explanatory. The new mechanistic philosophy likewise aims to describe central aspects of mechanisms, but I show that it is not sufficient to account for ecological mechanisms. I argue that in ecology explanation involves identification of invariant and insensitive causal relationships and descriptions of the mechanistic characteristics that make these relations possible.
Brain‐Mind And Structure‐Function Relationships: A Methodological Response To Coltheart, Adina L. Roskies
Brain‐Mind And Structure‐Function Relationships: A Methodological Response To Coltheart, Adina L. Roskies
Dartmouth Scholarship
In some recent papers, Max Coltheart has questioned the ability of neuroimaging techniques to tell us anything interesting about the mind and has thrown down the gauntlet before neuroimagers, challenging them to prove he is mistaken. Here I analyze Coltheart’s challenge, show that as posed its terms are unfair, and reconstruct it so that it is addressable. I argue that, so modified, Coltheart’s challenge is able to be met and indeed has been met. In an effort to delineate the extent of neuroimaging’s ability to address Coltheart’s concerns, I explore how different brain structure‐function relationships would constrain the ability of …
A Mage In Motion - Metaphysical Riddles Of Space, Time, And Motion, Juan Ferret
A Mage In Motion - Metaphysical Riddles Of Space, Time, And Motion, Juan Ferret
Selected Works Temporary Series
No abstract provided.
A Mage In Motion - Metaphysical Riddles Of Space, Time, And Motion, Ferret
A Mage In Motion - Metaphysical Riddles Of Space, Time, And Motion, Ferret
Departmental Papers (Philosophy)
No abstract provided.
Knowing With Images: Medium And Message*, John Kulvicki
Knowing With Images: Medium And Message*, John Kulvicki
Dartmouth Scholarship
Problems concerning scientists’ uses of representations have received quite a bit of attention recently. The focus has been on how such representations get their contents and on just what those contents are. Less attention has been paid to what makes certain kinds of scientific representations different from one another and thus well suited to this or that epistemic end. This article considers the latter question with particular focus on the distinction between images and graphs on the one hand and descriptions and related representations on the other.
Analysis Of The Problem Of Prediction In Physics From A Computational And Foundational Approach, Juan Ferret
Analysis Of The Problem Of Prediction In Physics From A Computational And Foundational Approach, Juan Ferret
Selected Works Temporary Series
In this paper, we analyze the problem of prediction in physics from a computational and foundational viewpoint. Besides showing that assumptions like Laplace determinism, statistical determinism, etc., can be naturally explained by this computational analysis, we use the concepts of Kolmogorov complexity and algorithmic randomness from Algorithmic Information Theory, as well as the novel more physics-oriented variants of these notions, to show that the dynamical evolution of a system can be practically predicted with the dynamical laws, the initial, and final conditions of the system.
Anticipatory Systems In Physics, Juan Ferret
Anticipatory Systems In Physics, Juan Ferret
Selected Works Temporary Series
The aim of this paper is to clarify the role of anticipation of systems in physics. Previous work on the subject (DuBois, 2000) selected certain types of systems as anticipatory, but the argument here establishes that all dynamical systems in physics are necessarily anticipatory.
The Power Of Flowers: The Philosophy Of Organism Of The Maya, Juan Ferret
The Power Of Flowers: The Philosophy Of Organism Of The Maya, Juan Ferret
Selected Works Temporary Series
No abstract provided.
Ephemeral Mechanisms And Historical Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Ephemeral Mechanisms And Historical Explanation, Stuart Glennan
Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS
While much of the recent literature on mechanisms has emphasized the superiority of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation over laws and nomological explanation, paradigmatic mechanisms—e.g., clocks or synapses – actually exhibit a great deal of stability in their behavior. And while mechanisms of this kind are certainly of great importance, there are many events that do not occur as a consequence of the operation of stable mechanisms. Events of natural and human history are often the consequence of causal processes that are ephemeral and capricious. In this paper I shall argue that, notwithstanding their ephemeral nature, these processes deserve to be …
Invariance: A Tale Of Intellectual Migration, Steven Gimbel
Invariance: A Tale Of Intellectual Migration, Steven Gimbel
Philosophy Faculty Publications
The plotline of the standard story told about the development of intellectual history at the end of the 19th/turn of the 20th century follows the move from absolutism to perspectivalism. The narrative takes us, on the one hand, from the scientism of late Enlightenment writers like Voltaire, Mill, D’Alebert, and Comte and the historical determinism of Hegel, all of which were based upon a universal picture of rationality, to, on the other hand, the relativistic physics of Einstein, the perspectival art of Picasso, and the individualism of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard leading to the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger to and …
A Natural History Of The Mind : Edwards, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Michael Edmund Jonik
A Natural History Of The Mind : Edwards, Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Michael Edmund Jonik
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
This project examines how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American writers drew on European natural science and philosophy - specifically in terms of concepts of form, perception, and experience - to open new possibilities for thinking the relationship between the mind and the physical world. In each of the moments of American intellectual history here considered - the natural theology of Calvinism, the idealistic natural history of Transcendentalism, and the movement towards an evolutionary process-philosophy of Pragmatism - "place" becomes not only geographical location, but a dynamic field of interactions of natural historical, literary, theological, and philosophical knowledge. I trace this through …