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Scientific Essentialism

Philosophical Review 111 (4):589-594 (2002)

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  1. Natural Kinds in Philosophy and in the Life Sciences: Scholastic Twilight or New Dawn? [REVIEW]Miles MacLeod & Thomas A. C. Reydon - 2013 - Biological Theory 7 (2):89-99.
    This article, which is intended both as a position paper in the philosophical debate on natural kinds and as the guest editorial to this thematic issue, takes up the challenge posed by Ian Hacking in his paper, “Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight.” Whereas a straightforward interpretation of that paper suggests that according to Hacking the concept of natural kinds should be abandoned, both in the philosophy of science and in philosophy more generally, we suggest that an alternative and less (...)
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  • Dispositional Essentialism and the Nature of Powerful Properties.William A. Bauer - 2013 - Disputatio 5 (35):1-19.
    Dispositional essentialism maintains that all sparse properties are essentially powerful. Two conceptions of sparse properties appear compatible with dispositional essentialism: sparse properties as pure powers or as powerful qualities. This paper compares the two views, criticizes the powerful qualities view, and then develops a new theory of pure powers, termed Point Theory. This theory neutralizes the main advantage powerful qualities appear to possess over pure powers—explaining the existence of powers during latency periods. The paper discusses the relation between powers and (...)
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  • Armstrong and van Fraassen on Probabilistic Laws of Nature.Duncan Maclean - 2012 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42 (1):1-13.
    In What is a Law of Nature? (1983) David Armstrong promotes a theory of laws according to which laws of nature are contingent relations of necessitation between universals. The metaphysics Armstrong develops uses deterministic causal laws as paradigmatic cases of laws, but he thinks his metaphysics explicates other sorts of laws too, including probabilistic laws, like that of the half-life of radium being 1602 years. Bas van Fraassen (1987) gives seven arguments for why Armstrong’s theory of laws is incapable of (...)
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  • A Dispositional Theory of Love.Hichem Naar - 2013 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (3):342-357.
    On a naive reading of the major accounts of love, love is a kind of mental event. A recent trend in the philosophical literature on love is to reject these accounts on the basis that they do not do justice to the historical dimension of love, as love essentially involves a distinctive kind of temporally extended pattern. Although the historicist account has advantages over the positions that it opposes, its appeal to the notion of a pattern is problematic. I will (...)
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  • New Essentialism in Biology.Olivier Rieppel - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (5):662-673.
    The architects of the modern synthesis banned essentialism from evolutionary theory. This rejection of essentialism was motivated by Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and the continuity of evolutionary transformation. Contemporary evolutionary biology witnesses a renaissance of essentialism in three contexts: “origin essentialism” with respect to species and supraspecific taxa, the bar coding of species on the basis of discontinuities of DNA variation between populations, and the search for laws of evolutionary developmental biology. Such “new essentialism” in contemporary biology must be (...)
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  • Functionalism and The Independence Problems.Darren Bradley - 2013 - Noûs 47 (1):545-557.
    The independence problems for functionalism stem from the worry that if functional properties are defined in terms of their causes and effects then such functional properties seem to be too intimately connected to these purported causes and effects. I distinguish three different ways the independence problems can be filled out – in terms of necessary connections, analytic connections and vacuous explanations. I argue that none of these present serious problems. Instead, they bring out some important and over-looked features of functionalism.
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  • The Pitfalls of Microphysical Realism.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (5):1156-1164.
    Microphysical realism is the position that the only real entities and properties are found at the most fundamental level of nature. In this article, I challenge microphysical realism concerning properties and natural kinds. One argument for microphysical realism about entities, the “nothing-but argument,” does not apply to properties and kinds. Another argument, the “causal exclusion argument,” cannot be sustained in light of modern physics. Moreover, this argument leads to an objection against microphysical realism, based on the “illusoriness of macroproperties.” Another (...)
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  • A Dispositional Account of Conflicts of Obligation.Luke Robinson - 2012 - Noûs 47 (2):203-228.
    I address a question in moral metaphysics: How are conflicts between moral obligations possible? I begin by explaining why we cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question simply by positing that such conflicts are conflicts between rules, principles, or reasons. I then develop and defend the “Dispositional Account,” which posits that conflicts between moral obligations are conflicts between the manifestations of obligating dispositions (obligating powers, capacities, etc.), just as conflicts between physical forces are conflicts between the manifestations of (certain) (...)
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  • The Essence of Dispositional Essentialism.David Yates - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (1):93-128.
    Dispositional essentialists argue that physical properties have their causal roles essentially. This is typically taken to mean that physical properties are identical to dispositions. I argue that this is untenable, and that we must instead say that properties bestow dispositions. I explore what it is for a property to have such a role essentially. Dispositional essentialists argue for their view by citing certain epistemological and metaphysical implications, and I appeal to these implications to place desiderata on the concept of essence (...)
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  • Structuralism and the New Way of Worlds: A Sellarsian Argument for Necessitarianism about Laws.Zanja Yudell - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (4):678-695.
    This article presents and argues for modal structuralism, which is loosely derived from a position described by Wilfrid Sellars. Modal structuralism holds that a fundamental property is identified by the role it plays in the structure of possibilities. It implies necessitarianism about laws, which holds that at least some laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. The argument for these positions derives from the following assumptions: the principle of the identity of indiscernible properties and a modest antiquidditism. These assumptions are weaker (...)
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  • The problem of natural evil I: General theistic replies.Luke Gelinas - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (3):533-559.
    I examine different strategies involved in stating anti-theistic arguments from natural evil, and consider some theistic replies. There are, traditionally, two main types of arguments from natural evil: those that purport to deduce a contradiction between the existence of natural evil and the existence of God, and those that claim that the existence of certain types or quantities of natural evil significantly lowers the probability that theism is true. After considering peripheral replies, I state four prominent theistic rebutting strategies: skeptical (...)
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  • Could the laws of nature change?Marc Lange - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (1):69-92.
    After reviewing several failed arguments that laws cannot change, I use the laws' special relation to counterfactuals to show how temporary laws would have to differ from eternal but time-dependent laws. Then I argue that temporary laws are impossible and that neither Lewis's nor Armstrong's analyses of law nicely accounts for the laws' immutability. *Received September 2006; revised September 2007. ‡Many thanks to John Roberts and John Carroll for valuable comments on earlier drafts, as well as to several anonymous referees (...)
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  • Evolutionary essentialism.Denis Walsh - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2):425-448.
    According to Aristotelian essentialism, the nature of an organism is constituted of a particular goal-directed disposition to produce an organism typical of its kind. This paper argues—against the prevailing orthodoxy—that essentialism of this sort is indispensable to evolutionary biology. The most powerful anti-essentialist arguments purport to show that the natures of organisms play no explanatory role in modern synthesis biology. I argue that recent evolutionary developmental biology provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Developmental biology shows that one must appeal to (...)
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  • Counterlegals and necessary laws.By Toby Handfield - 2004 - Philosophical Quarterly 54 (216):402–419.
    Necessitarian accounts of the laws of nature have an apparent difficulty in accounting for counterlegal conditionals because, despite appearing to be substantive, on the necessitarian thesis they are vacuous. I argue that the necessitarian may explain the apparently substantive content of such conditionals by pointing out the presuppositions of counterlegal discourse. The typical presupposition is that a certain conceptual possibility has been realized; namely, that necessitarianism is false. (The idea of conceptual possibility is explicated in terms of recent work in (...)
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  • (1 other version)A dispositional theory of possibility.Andrea Borghini & Neil E. Williams - 2008 - Dialectica 62 (1):21–41.
    – The paper defends a naturalistic version of modal actualism according to which what is metaphysically possible is determined by dispositions found in the actual world. We argue that there is just one world—this one—and that all genuine possibilities are anchored by the dispositions exemplified in this world. This is the case regardless of whether or not those dispositions are manifested. As long as the possibility is one that would obtain were the relevant disposition manifested, it is a genuine possibility. (...)
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  • Can Dispositions Replace Laws in the Description of the Physical World?Joanna Luc - 2024 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 55 (3):347-376.
    In this paper, it is argued that, contrary to some suggestions in the philosophical literature, dispositions cannot replace laws in the description of the physical world. If for a certain type of physical situation a well-working law-based account is available, then it is not possible to describe that situation equally well in terms of dispositions. Using an example consisting of four laws (Coulomb’s law, Newton’s law of gravitation, the rule for the composition of forces and Newton’s second law), it is (...)
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  • Less Work for Theories of Natural Kinds.Matthew H. Slater - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    What sort of philosophical work are natural kinds suited for? Scientific realists often contend that they provide the ‘aboutness’ of successful of scientific classification and explain their epistemic utility (among other side hustles). Recent history has revealed this to be a tricky job — particularly given the present naturalistic climate of philosophy of science. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of different sorts of theories. This phenomenon that has suggested to some that philosophical theorizing about natural kinds has reached (...)
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  • The problem of chemical laws.Hernan Lucas Accorinti - forthcoming - Foundations of Chemistry:1-11.
    In this paper, we will address a recurring problem in the field of the general philosophy of science but one that takes on particular relevance in the context of chemistry: the problem surrounding scientific laws. The main challenge is that the laws of chemistry are not universal; moreover, in practice, they are stated alongside numerous exceptions. Given that there are exceptions, we could argue that what the laws assert is neither universally true nor necessary. But if that's the case, are (...)
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  • Having a Disposition and Making a Contribution.Marc Johansen - forthcoming - Acta Analytica:1-21.
    Dispositional accounts of various phenomena have claimed that dispositions can be intrinsically masked. In cases of intrinsic masking, something has a disposition while also having an intrinsic property that would prevent that disposition from manifesting in the face of its stimulus. This paper develops a theory of disposition ascriptions capable of recognizing such dispositions. The theory is modeled on the view that dispositions are powers. I propose that having a disposition is a matter of exerting a corresponding kind of influence. (...)
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  • Why use generic language in science?Olivier Lemeire - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Scientists often communicate using generic generalizations, which are unquantified generalizations such as ‘Americans overestimate social class mobility’ or ‘sound waves carry gravitational mass’. In this paper, I explain the role of such generic generalizations in science, based on a novel theory about their characteristic meaning. According to this theory, a scientific generalization of the form ‘Ks are F’ says that F is one property based on which category K qualifies as a scientific kind. Because what it takes to qualify as (...)
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  • An Inverted Qualia Argument for Direct Realism.Justin Donhauser - 2024 - Topoi 43 (1):211-219.
    This essay extends my “invisible disagreement” argument for Color Realism (2017) to formulate an argument for Direct Realism. It uses a variation of an “inverted qualia” thought experiment to show that successes in intersubjectively validating empirical claims about colors is proof that a nuanced version of Direct Realism is correct.
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  • (1 other version)Are Acids Natural Kinds?Pieter Thyssen - 2024 - Foundations of Chemistry 26 (2):225-253.
    Are acids natural kinds? Or are they merely relevant kinds? Although acidity has been one of the oldest and most important concepts in chemistry, surprisingly little ink has been spilled on the natural kind question. I approach the question from the perspective of microstructural essentialism. After explaining why both Brønsted acids and Lewis acids are considered functional kinds, I address the challenges of multiple realization and multiple determination. Contra Manafu and Hendry, I argue that the stereotypical properties of acids are (...)
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  • Are all laws of nature created equal? Meta-laws versus more necessary laws.Salim Hirèche, Niels Linnemann & Robert Michels - 2023 - Erkenntnis:1-19.
    Two approaches to elevating certain laws of nature over others have come to prominence recently. On the one hand, according to the meta-laws approach, there are meta-laws, laws which relate to laws as those laws relate to particular facts. On the other hand, according to the modal, or non-absolutist, approach, some laws are necessary in a stricter sense than others. Both approaches play an important role in current research, questioning the ‘orthodoxy’ represented by the leading philosophical theories of natural laws—Humeanism, (...)
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  • A defense of placeholder essentialism.Safia Bano - 2023 - Foundations of Chemistry 25 (3):393-404.
    Kripke-Putnam argument for natural kind essentialism can be said to depend on placeholder essentialist intuitions. But some argue that such philosophical intuitions are merely preschooler cognitive biases which are not supported by scientific knowledge of natural kinds. Chemical substances, for instance, whether elements or compounds do not have such privileged set of underlying properties (‘same substance’ relation) which are present in all members of the kind and which provide necessary and sufficient condition for kind membership. In this paper, I argue (...)
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  • Constructivist Set-Theoretic Analysis: An Alternative to Essentialist Social Science.James Mahoney - 2023 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 53 (4):327-366.
    Psychological essentialism is a cognitive bias through which human beings conceive the entities around them as having inner essences and basic natures. Social scientists routinely generate flawed inferences because their methods require the truth of psychological essentialism. This article develops set-theoretic analysis as a scientific-constructivist approach that overcomes the bias of psychological essentialism. With this approach, the “sets” of set-theoretic analysis are mental phenomena that establish boundaries and identify similarities and differences among entities whose natural kind composition is not known. (...)
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  • William Whewell, Cluster Theorist of Kinds.Zina B. Ward - 2023 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 13 (2):362-386.
    A dominant strand of philosophical thought holds that natural kinds are clusters of objects with shared properties. Cluster theories of natural kinds are often taken to be a late twentieth-century development, prompted by dissatisfaction with essentialism in philosophy of biology. I will argue here, however, that a cluster theory of kinds had actually been formulated by William Whewell (1794-1866) more than a century earlier. Cluster theories of kinds can be characterized in terms of three central commitments, all of which are (...)
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  • Dispositional essentialism and the necessity of laws: a deflationary account.Alan Sidelle - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-22.
    Two related claims have lately garnered currency: dispositional essentialism—the view that some or all properties, or some or all fundamental properties, are essentially dispositional; and the claim that laws of nature (or again, many or the fundamental ones) are metaphysically necessary. I have argued elsewhere (On the metaphysical contingency of laws of nature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002) that the laws of nature do not have a mind-independent metaphysical necessity, but recent developments on dispositions have given these ideas a new (...)
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  • Against relationalism about modality.Carlos Romero - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (8):2245-2274.
    On a highly influential way to think of modality, that I call ‘relationalism’, the modality of a state is explained by its being composed of properties, and these properties being related by a higher-order and primitively modal relation. Examples of relationalism are the Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong account of natural necessity, many dispositional essentialist views, and Wang’s incompatibility primitivism. I argue that relationalism faces four difficulties: that the selection between modal relations is arbitrary, that the modal relation cannot belong to any logical order, (...)
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  • Grounding, Necessity, and Relevance.Salim Hireche - 2023 - Philosophical Studies:1-22.
    Grounding necessitarianism (GN) is the view that full grounds necessitate what they ground. Although GN has been rather popular among philosophers, it faces important counterexamples: For instance, A=[Socrates died] fully grounds C=[Xanthippe became a widow]. However, A fails to necessitate C: A could have obtained together with B=[Socrates and Xanthippe were never married], without C obtaining. In many cases, the debate essentially reduces to whether A indeed fully grounds C – as the contingentist claims – or if instead C is (...)
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  • Natural Kind Semantics for a Classical Essentialist Theory of Kinds.Javier Belastegui - 2024 - Review of Symbolic Logic 17 (2).
    The aim of this paper is to provide a complete Natural Kind Semantics for an Essentialist Theory of Kinds. The theory is formulated in two-sorted first order monadic modal logic with identity. The natural kind semantics is based on Rudolf Willes Theory of Concept Lattices. The semantics is then used to explain several consequences of the theory, including results about the specificity (species–genus) relations between kinds, the definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences and the existence of (...)
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  • New powers for Dispositionalism.Giacomo Giannini - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1):2671-2700.
    Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: (i) showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and (ii) offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de (...)
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  • Natural kinds, chemical practice, and interpretive communities. [REVIEW]Clevis Headley - 2023 - Foundations of Chemistry 25 (1):167-187.
    Many philosophers attribute extraordinary importance to the idea of natural kinds seemingly intimating that the very possibility of certain kinds of activity are ontologically beholden to the existence of kinds. Specifically, regarding chemistry, Brian Ellis intimated that the success of any plausible metaphysical essentialism depends upon its “reliance on examples from chemistry.” Ellis’s view is representative of a tradition in analytic philosophy that has utilized chemical examples as paradigmatic natural kinds. In this regard, Kripke and Putnam emerge as the architects (...)
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  • How to be a powers theorist about functional laws, conservation laws and symmetries.Samuel Kimpton-Nye - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 180 (1):317-332.
    This paper defends an account of the laws of nature in terms of irreducibly modal properties (aka powers) from the threat posed by functional laws, conservation laws and symmetries. It thus shows how powers theorists can avoid ad hoc explanations and resist an inflated ontology of powers and governing laws. The key is to understand laws not as flowing from the essences of powers, as per Bird (2007), but as features of a description of how powers are possibly distributed, as (...)
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  • Relational Troubles Structuralist Worries for an Epistemology of Powers-Based Modality.Giacomo Giannini & Tom Schoonen - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4):1162-1182.
    Dispositionalism is the theory of modality that grounds all modal truths in powers: all metaphysically possible and necessary truths are to be explained by pointing to some actual power, or absence thereof. One of the main reasons to endorse dispositionalism is that it promises to deliver an especially desirable epistemology of modality. However, so far this issue has not be fully investigated with the care it is due. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. We will cast (...)
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  • Events and the regress of pure powers: Reply to Taylor.Ashley Coates - 2022 - Analysis 82 (4):647-654.
    Taylor has recently argued that adopting either the standard Kimian or Davidsonian approaches to the metaphysics of events quite directly solves the regress of pure powers. I argue, though, that on closer inspection Taylor’s proposal does not succeed, given either the Kimian or the Davidsonian account of events.
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  • Extended Dispositionalism and Determinism.Jonas Werner - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9.
    Modal dispositionalists hold that dispositions provide the foundation of metaphysical necessity and possibility. According to the kind of modal dispositionalism that can be found in the present literature, a proposition p is possible just in case some things are disposed to be such that p. In the first part of this paper I show that combining this classic form of dispositionalism with the assumptions that the laws of nature are necessary and deterministic and that all dispositions are forward-looking in time (...)
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  • Can Causal Powers Cause Their Effects?Andrea Raimondi - 2022 - Metaphysica 23 (2):455-473.
    Causal Dispositionalism provides an account of causation based on an ontology of causal powers, properties with causal essence. According to the account, causation can be analysed in terms of the interaction of powers and its subsequent production of their effect. Recently, Baltimore, J. A. has raised a challenge against two competing approaches, the compositional view and the mutual manifestation view, to explain what makes powers interactive – the interaction gap. In this paper, we raise the challenge of explaining what makes (...)
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  • On being a lonely brain‐in‐a‐vat: Structuralism, solipsism, and the threat from external world skepticism.Grace Helton - 2024 - Analytic Philosophy 65 (3):353-373.
    David Chalmers has recently developed a novel strategy of refuting external world skepticism, one he dubs the structuralist solution. In this paper, I make three primary claims: First, structuralism does not vindicate knowledge of other minds, even if it is combined with a functionalist approach to the metaphysics of minds. Second, because structuralism does not vindicate knowledge of other minds, the structuralist solution vindicates far less worldly knowledge than we would hope for from a solution to skepticism. Third, these results (...)
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  • Is the Macro Grounded in the Micro?Martin Glazier - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1):105-116.
    Let a priority micro pluralist be someone who holds that particles or other microscopic objects are fundamental. Rivals to priority micro pluralism include priority monism (the view that the only fundamental concrete object is the entire cosmos) as well as the Aristotelian view that some ordinary macroscopic objects are fundamental. Although priority micro pluralism is popular, I show that it encounters great difficulty in even the most straightforward cases. For example, this tennis ball is spherical; how is this fact to (...)
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  • Nominalist dispositional essentialism.Lisa Vogt - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2).
    Dispositional Essentialism, as commonly conceived, consists in the claims that at least some of the fundamental properties essentially confer certain causal-nomological roles on their bearers, and that these properties give rise to the natural modalities. As such, the view is generally taken to be committed to a realist conception of properties as either universals or tropes, and to be thus incompatible with nominalism as understood in the strict sense. Pace this common assumption of the ontological import of Dispositional Essentialism, the (...)
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  • Process epistemology in the COVID-19 era: rethinking the research process to avoid dangerous forms of reification.John Dupré & Sabina Leonelli - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1):1-22.
    Whether we live in a world of autonomous things, or a world of interconnected processes in constant flux, is an ancient philosophical debate. Modern biology provides decisive reasons for embracing the latter view. How does one understand the practices and outputs of science in such a dynamic, ever-changing world - and particularly in an emergency situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where scientific knowledge has been regarded as bedrock for decisive social interventions? We argue that key to answering this question (...)
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  • On Unexplained (Modal) Patterns.Harjit Bhogal - 2022 - Erkenntnis:1-18.
    Some patterns call out for explanation, in the sense that we have a pro tanto reason to reject theories that do not give them an appropriate explanation. I argue that certain modal patterns call out for explanation in this way—and this provides a reason to reject certain theories of modality that fail to explain such patterns. However, I also consider a response to this argument, which claims that the modal patterns do not need explanation. This response might be viable but (...)
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  • Laws of Nature as Constraints.Emily Adlam - 2022 - Foundations of Physics 52 (1):1-41.
    The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, ‘all-at-once,’ retrocausal, or in some other way not well-suited to the standard dynamical time evolution paradigm. Laws of this kind can be accommodated within a Humean approach to lawhood, but many extant non-Humean approaches face significant challenges when we try to apply them to laws outside (...)
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  • Laws, melodies, and the paradox of predictability.Dorst Chris - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-21.
    If the laws of nature are deterministic, then it seems possible that a Laplacean intelligence that knows the initial conditions and the laws would be able to accurately predict everything that will ever happen. However, it would be easy to construct a counterpredictive device that falsifies any revealed prediction about its future behavior. What would then occur if a Laplacean intelligence encountered a counterpredictive device? This is the paradox of predictability. A number of philosophers have proposed solutions to it, though (...)
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  • Teleological powers.Michele Paolini Paoletti - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy 62 (4):336-358.
    Analytic Philosophy, Volume 62, Issue 4, Page 336-358, December 2021.
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  • Varieties of Humeanism: an introduction.László Kocsis, Tamás Demeter & Iulian D. Toader - 2021 - Synthese 199 (Humeanisms):15069-15086.
    An introduction to the Synthese topical collection "Humeanisms".
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  • Metaphysical Foundations of Causation: Powers or Laws of Nature?Dmytro Sepetyi - 2021 - Metaphysica 22 (2):295-309.
    In this article, I discuss Richard Swinburne’s case for the conception of substance causation, identified with the substances-powers-liabilities account of causation, versus the conception of event causation, identified with alternative accounts. I specify the place of Swinburne’s argument in the debates about agent causation, and uncover reasons to be sceptical about the claims that substance causation is a genuine alternative to event causation, and that it helps to comprehend the specifics of the causation involved in free agency. I also advance (...)
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  • Explanatory dispositionalism: What anti-humeans should say.Barbara Vetter - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2051-2075.
    Inspired both by our ordinary understanding of the world and by reflection on science, anti-Humeanism is a growing trend in metaphysics. Anti-Humeans reject the Lewisian doctrine of Humean supervenience that the world is “just one little thing and then another”, and argue instead that dispositions, powers, or capacities provide connection and activity in nature. But how exactly are we to understand the shared commitment of this anti-Humean movement? I argue that this kind of anti-Humeanism, at its most general level, is (...)
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  • Disentangling Dispositions from Powers.Andrei A. Buckareff - 2022 - Dialogue 61 (1):107-121.
    Many powers-realists assume that the powers of objects are identical with the dispositions of objects and, hence, that ‘power’ and ‘disposition’ are interchangeable. In this article, I aim to disentangle dispositions from powers with the goal of getting a better sense of how powers and dispositions relate to one another. I present and defend a modest realism about dispositions built upon a standard strong realism about powers. I argue that each correct disposition-ascription we can make of an object is made (...)
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  • Two approaches to natural kinds.Judith K. Crane - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):12177-12198.
    Philosophical treatments of natural kinds are embedded in two distinct projects. I call these the philosophy of science approach and the philosophy of language approach. Each is characterized by its own set of philosophical questions, concerns, and assumptions. The kinds studied in the philosophy of science approach are projectible categories that can ground inductive inferences and scientific explanation. The kinds studied in the philosophy of language approach are the referential objects of a special linguistic category—natural kind terms—thought to refer directly. (...)
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