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  1. Reconstituting Phenomena.Maria Kronfeldner - 2015 - In Mäki U., Votsis S., Ruphy S. & Schurz G. (eds.), Recent developments in the philosophy of science. Springer. pp. 169-182.
    In the face of causal complexity, scientists reconstitute phenomena in order to arrive at a more simplified and partial picture that ignores most of the 'bigger picture.' This paper will distinguish between two modes of reconstituting phenomena: one moving down to a level of greater decomposition (toward organizational parts of the original phenomenon), and one moving up to a level of greater abstraction (toward different differences regarding the phenomenon). The first aim of the paper is to illustrate that phenomena are (...)
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  • Robustness, Diversity of Evidence, and Probabilistic Independence.Jonah N. Schupbach - 2015 - In Uskali Mäki, Stéphanie Ruphy, Gerhard Schurz & Ioannis Votsis (eds.), Recent Developments in the Philosophy of Science. Cham: Springer. pp. 305-316.
    In robustness analysis, hypotheses are supported to the extent that a result proves robust, and a result is robust to the extent that we detect it in diverse ways. But what precise sense of diversity is at work here? In this paper, I show that the formal explications of evidential diversity most often appealed to in work on robustness – which all draw in one way or another on probabilistic independence – fail to shed light on the notion of diversity (...)
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  • (1 other version)Genetic Determinism and the Innate-Acquired Distinction in Medicine.Maria E. Kronfeldner - 2009 - Medicine Studies (2):167-181.
    This article illustrates in which sense genetic determinism is still part of the contemporary interactionist consensus in medicine. Three dimensions of this consensus are discussed: kinds of causes, a continuum of traits ranging from monogenetic diseases to car accidents, and different kinds of determination due to different norms of reaction. On this basis, this article explicates in which sense the interactionist consensus presupposes the innate?acquired distinction. After a descriptive Part 1, Part 2 reviews why the innate?acquired distinction is under attack (...)
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  • The Dispositional Genome: Primus Inter Pares.Christopher J. Austin - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (2):227-246.
    According to the proponents of Developmental Systems Theory and the Causal Parity Thesis, the privileging of the genome as “first among equals” with respect to the development of phenotypic traits is more a reflection of our own heuristic prejudice than of ontology - the underlying causal structures responsible for that specified development no more single out the genome as primary than they do other broadly “environmental” factors. Parting with the methodology of the popular responses to the Thesis, this paper offers (...)
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  • Choosing and rejecting cattle and sheep: changing discourses and practices of (de)selection in pedigree livestock breeding. [REVIEW]Lewis Holloway, Carol Morris, Ben Gilna & David Gibbs - 2011 - Agriculture and Human Values 28 (4):533-547.
    This paper examines the discourses and practices of pedigree livestock breeding, focusing on beef cattle and sheep in the UK, concentrating on an under-examined aspect of this—the deselection and rejection of some animals from future breeding populations. In the context of exploring how animals are valued and represented in different ways in relation to particular agricultural knowledge-practices, it focuses on deselecting particular animals from breeding populations, drawing attention to shifts in such knowledge-practices related to the emergence of “genetic” techniques in (...)
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  • Comorbidity: A network perspective.Angélique Oj Cramer, Lourens J. Waldorp, Han Lj van der Maas & Denny Borsboom - 2010 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3):137-150.
    The pivotal problem of comorbidity research lies in the psychometric foundation it rests on, that is, latent variable theory, in which a mental disorder is viewed as a latent variable that causes a constellation of symptoms. From this perspective, comorbidity is a (bi)directional relationship between multiple latent variables. We argue that such a latent variable perspective encounters serious problems in the study of comorbidity, and offer a radically different conceptualization in terms of a network approach, where comorbidity is hypothesized to (...)
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  • Murder on the development express: who killed nature/nurture?: Evelyn Fox Keller: The mirage of a space between nature and nurture. Duke University Press, 2010.Karola Stotz - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (6):919-929.
    Keller explains the persistence of the nature/nurture debate by a chronic ambiguity in language derived from classical and behavioral genetics. She suggests that the more precise vocabulary of modern molecular genetics may be used to rephrase the underlying questions and hence provide a way out of this controversy. I show that her proposal fits into a long tradition in which other authors have wrestled with the same problem and come to similar conclusions. - Review of 'The mirage of a space (...)
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  • Varieties of parity.Ulrich E. Stegmann - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (6):903-918.
    A central idea of developmental systems theory is ‘parity’ or ‘symmetry’ between genes and non-genetic factors of development. The precise content of this idea remains controversial, with different authors stressing different aspects and little explicit comparisons among the various interpretations. Here I characterise and assess several influential versions of parity.
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  • (1 other version)Units and levels of selection.Elisabeth Lloyd - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The theory of evolution by natural selection is, perhaps, the crowning intellectual achievement of the biological sciences. There is, however, considerable debate about which entity or entities are selected and what it is that fits them for that role. This article aims to clarify what is at issue in these debates by identifying four distinct, though often confused, concerns and then identifying how the debates on what constitute the units of selection depend to a significant degree on which of these (...)
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  • The inevitability of genetic enhancement technologies.Francoise Baylis & Jason Scott Robert - 2004 - Bioethics 18 (1):1–26.
    We outline a number of ethical objections to genetic technologies aimed at enhancing human capacities and traits. We then argue that, despite the persuasiveness of some of these objections, they are insufficient to stop the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. We contend that the inevitability of the technologies results from a particular guiding worldview of humans as masters of the human evolutionary future, and conclude that recognising this worldview points to new directions for ethical thinking about genetic enhancement (...)
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  • Genetically caused trait is an interactive kind.Riin Kõiv - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (3):1-25.
    In this paper I argue that the extent to which a human trait is genetically caused can causally depend upon whether the trait is categorized within human genetics as genetically caused. This makes the kindgenetically caused traitan interactive kind. I demonstrate that this thesis is both conceptually coherent and empirically plausible. I outline the core rationale of this thesis and demonstrate its conceptual coherence by drawing upon Waters’ (2007) analysis of genetic causation. I add empirical plausibility to the thesis by (...)
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  • Proportionality of single nucleotide causation.Gry Oftedal - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 93 (C):215-222.
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  • What Caused the Bhopal Gas Tragedy? The Philosophical Importance of Causal and Pragmatic Details.Brian J. Hanley - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (4):616-637.
    In cases in which many causes together bring about an effect, it is common to select some as particularly important. Philosophers since Mill have been pessimistic about analyzing this reasoning because of its variability and the multifarious causal and pragmatic details of how it works. I argue Mill was right to think these details matter but wrong that they preclude philosophical analysis of causal selection. I show that analyzing the pragmatic details of scientific debates about the important causes of the (...)
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  • Causal Social Construction.Riin Kõiv - 2019 - Journal of Social Ontology 5 (1):77-99.
    In the social constructionist literature, little has been said about what it means for social factors to cause X in such a way that X would count as causally socially constructed. In this paper, I argue that being caused by social factors – and thus being causally socially constructed – is best defined in terms of a contrastive counterfactual notion of causation. Unlike some plausible alternatives, this definition captures what is at stake in actual social constructionist debates. It makes transparent (...)
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  • Unifying diseases from a genetic point of view: the example of the genetic theory of infectious diseases.Marie Darrason - 2013 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 34 (4):327-344.
    In the contemporary biomedical literature, every disease is considered genetic. This extension of the concept of genetic disease is usually interpreted either in a trivial or genocentrist sense, but it is never taken seriously as the expression of a genetic theory of disease. However, a group of French researchers defend the idea of a genetic theory of infectious diseases. By identifying four common genetic mechanisms (Mendelian predisposition to multiple infections, Mendelian predisposition to one infection, and major gene and polygenic predispositions), (...)
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  • (1 other version)Indispensability arguments in favour of reductive explanations.Jeroen Van Bouwel, Erik Weber & Leen De Vreese - 2011 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 42 (1):33-46.
    Instances of explanatory reduction are often advocated on metaphysical grounds; given that the only real things in the world are subatomic particles and their interaction, we have to try to explain everything in terms of the laws of physics. In this paper, we show that explanatory reduction cannot be defended on metaphysical grounds. Nevertheless, indispensability arguments for reductive explanations can be developed, taking into account actual scientific practice and the role of epistemic interests. Reductive explanations might be indispensable to address (...)
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  • (1 other version)Genetic determinism and the innate-acquired distinction.Maria Kronfeldner - 2009 - Medicine Studies 1 (2):167-181.
    This article illustrates in which sense genetic determinism is still part of the contemporary interactionist consensus in medicine. Three dimensions of this consensus are discussed: kinds of causes, a continuum of traits ranging from monogenetic diseases to car accidents, and different kinds of determination due to different norms of reaction. On this basis, this article explicates in which sense the interactionist consensus presupposes the innate?acquired distinction. After a descriptive Part 1, Part 2 reviews why the innate?acquired distinction is under attack (...)
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  • Toxic ethics: Environmental genomics and the health of populations.Jason Scott Robert & Andrea Smith - 2004 - Bioethics 18 (6):493–514.
    ABSTRACT Dealing primarily with implications rather than foundations, and focusing downstream at the expense of upstream prevention, mainstream bioethics is at a toxic watershed. Through an extended analysis of the Environmental Genome Project (EGP), we offer new tools from the philosophy of science and from critical epidemiology to help bioethics to move ahead. Our aim in this paper is not to resolve the moral and conceptual problems we reveal, but rather to outline ways to prevent such problems from arising in (...)
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  • Models of and models for: Theory and practice in contemporary biology.Evelyn Fox Keller - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (3):86.
    Two decades of critique have sensitized historians and philosophers of science to the inadequacies of conventional dichotomies between theory and practice, thereby prompting the search for new ways of writing about science that are less beholden than the old ways to the epistemological mores of theoretical physics, and more faithful to the actual practices not only of physics but of all the natural sciences. The need for alternative descriptions seems particularly urgent if one is to understand the place of theory (...)
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  • Critical notice: Cycles of contingency – developmental systems and evolution. [REVIEW]James Griesemer, Matthew H. Haber, Grant Yamashita & Lisa Gannett - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3):517-544.
    The themes, problems and challenges of developmental systems theory as described in Cycles of Contingency are discussed. We argue in favor of a robust approach to philosophical and scientific problems of extended heredity and the integration of behavior, development, inheritance, and evolution. Problems with Sterelny's proposal to evaluate inheritance systems using his `Hoyle criteria' are discussed and critically evaluated. Additional support for a developmental systems perspective is sought in evolutionary studies of performance and behavior modulation of fitness.
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  • Psychopathy: Morally Incapacitated Persons.Heidi Maibom - 2017 - In Thomas Schramme & Steven Edwards (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Medicine. Springer. pp. 1109-1129.
    After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...)
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  • Explanatory pluralism in the medical sciences: Theory and practice.Leen De Vreese, Erik Weber & Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2010 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 31 (5):371-390.
    Explanatory pluralism is the view that the best form and level of explanation depends on the kind of question one seeks to answer by the explanation, and that in order to answer all questions in the best way possible, we need more than one form and level of explanation. In the first part of this article, we argue that explanatory pluralism holds for the medical sciences, at least in theory. However, in the second part of the article we show that (...)
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  • Synthetic biology and genetic causation.Gry Oftedal & Veli-Pekka Parkkinen - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2):208-216.
    Synthetic biology research is often described in terms of programming cells through the introduction of synthetic genes. Genetic material is seemingly attributed with a high level of causal responsibility. We discuss genetic causation in synthetic biology and distinguish three gene concepts differing in their assumptions of genetic control. We argue that synthetic biology generally employs a difference-making approach to establishing genetic causes, and that this approach does not commit to a specific notion of genetic program or genetic control. Still, we (...)
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  • How norms make causes.Maria Kronfeldner - 2014 - International Journal of Epidemiology 43:1707–1713.
    This paper is on the problem of causal selection and comments on Collingwood's classic paper "The so-called idea of causation". It discusses the relevance of Collingwood’s control principle in contemporary life sciences and defends that it is not the ability to control, but the willingness to control that often biases us towards some rather than other causes of a phenomenon. Willingness to control is certainly only one principle that influences causal selection, but it is an important one. It shows how (...)
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  • Explanation in Biology: An Enquiry into the Diversity of Explanatory Patterns in the Life Sciences.P.-A. Braillard and C. Malaterre (ed.) - 2015 - Springer.
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  • (1 other version)How biologists conceptualize genes: an empirical study.Karola Stotz, Paul E. Griffiths & Rob Knight - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (4):647-673.
    Philosophers and historians of biology have argued that genes are conceptualized differently in different fields of biology and that these differences influence both the conduct of research and the interpretation of research by audiences outside the field in which the research was conducted. In this paper we report the results of a questionnaire study of how genes are conceptualized by biological scientists at the University of Sydney, Australia. The results provide tentative support for some hypotheses about conceptual differences between different (...)
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  • (1 other version)Racism and Human Genome Diversity Research: The Ethical Limits of "Population Thinking".Lisa Gannett - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (S3):S479-S492.
    This paper questions the prevailing historical understanding that scientific racism “retreated” in the 1950s when anthropology adopted the concepts and methods of population genetics and race was recognized to be a social construct and replaced by the concept of population. More accurately, a “populational” concept of race was substituted for a “typological one”—this is demonstrated by looking at the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky circa 1950. The potential for contemporary research in human population genetics to contribute to racism needs to be (...)
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  • Exploring Biopower in the Regulation of Farm Animal Bodies: Genetic Policy Interventions in UK Livestock.Carol Morris & Lewis Holloway - 2007 - Genomics, Society and Policy 3 (2):1-17.
    This paper explores the analytical relevance of Foucault's notion of biopower in the context of regulating and managing non-human lives and populations, specifically those animals that are the focus of livestock breeding based on genetic techniques. The concept of biopower is seen as offering theoretical possibilities precisely because it is concerned with the regulation of life and of populations. The paper approaches the task of testing the 'analytic mettle' of biopower through an analysis of four policy documents concerned with farm (...)
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  • Latent variables and the network perspective.Catherine Belzung, Etienne Billette De Villemeur, Mael Lemoine & Vincent Camus - 2010 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3):150-1.
    We discuss the latent variables construct, particularly in regard to the following: that latent variables are considered as the sole explanatory factor of a disorder; that pragmatic concerns are ignored; and that the relationship of these variables to biological markers is not addressed. Further, we comment on the relationship between bridge symptoms and causality, and discuss the proposal in relationship to other constructs (endophenotypes, connectionist-inspired networks).
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  • A relational-constructionist account of protein macrostructure and function.Gil Santos, Gabriel Vallejos & Davide Vecchi - 2020 - Foundations of Chemistry 22 (3):363-382.
    One of the foundational problems of biochemistry concerns the conceptualisation of the relationship between the composition, structure and function of macromolecules like proteins. Part of the recent philosophical literature displays a reductionist bias, that is, the endorsement of a form of microstructuralism mirroring an out-dated biochemical conceptualisation. We shall argue that such microstructuralist approaches are ultimately committed to a potentialist form of micro-predeterminism whereby the macrostructure and function of proteins is accounted for solely in terms of the intrinsic properties and (...)
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  • Shallow versus deep genetic causes.Adam C. Smith & Stephen M. Downes - 2023 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46:e201.
    We argue that Madole & Harden's distinction between shallow versus deep genetic causes can bring some clarity to causal claims arising from genome-wide association studies (GWASs). However, the authors argue that GWAS only finds shallow genetic causes, making GWAS commensurate with the environmental studies they hope to supplant. We also assess whether their distinction applies best to explanations or causes.
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  • Mothers: The Invisible Instruments of Health Promotion.Kathryn L. MacKay - 2021 - Hypatia 36 (1):60-79.
    In this article, I focus on two problematic aspects of British health-promotion campaigns regarding feeding children, particularly regarding breastfeeding and obesity. The first of these is that health-promotion campaigns around “lifestyle” issues dehumanize mothers with their imagery or text, stemming from the ongoing undervaluing and objectification of mothers and women. Public health-promotion instrumentalizes mothers as necessary components in achieving its aims, while at the same time undermining their agency as persons and interlocutors by tying “mother” to particular images. This has (...)
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  • A Job for Philosophers: Causality, Responsibility, and Explaining Social Inequality.Robin Zheng - 2018 - Dialogue 57 (2):323-351.
    People disagree about the causes of social inequality and how to most effectively intervene in them. These may seem like empirical questions for social scientists, not philosophers. However, causal explanation itself depends on broadly normative commitments. From this it follows that (moral) philosophers have an important role to play in determining those causal explanations. I examine the case of causal explanations of poverty to demonstrate these claims. In short, philosophers who work to reshape our moral expectations also work, on the (...)
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  • Gene.Hans-Jörg Rheinberger - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • History, philosophy, and science education: reflections on genetics 20 years after the human genome project.Robert Meunier - 2023 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 45 (2):1-8.
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  • From humanized mice to human disease: guiding extrapolation from model to target.Monika Piotrowska - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (3):439-455.
    Extrapolation from a well-understood base population to a less-understood target population can fail if the base and target populations are not sufficiently similar. Differences between laboratory mice and humans, for example, can hinder extrapolation in medical research. Mice that carry a partial or complete human physiological system, known as humanized mice, are supposed to make extrapolation more reliable by simulating a variety of human diseases. But what justifies our belief that these mice are similar enough to their human counterparts to (...)
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  • (1 other version)Is heritability explanatorily useful?Christopher H. Pearson - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (1):270-288.
    The paper addresses the question of whether heritability can be useful in establishing genetics as an explanation for an individual’s display of some trait or behavior. After reviewing the fundamental philosophical challenge to heritability—that heritability is a population level measure—an argument is presented for rethinking the role heritability occupies in both causal and explanatory claims. It is argued that heritability can be useful for genetically based explanations of individual traits, if the conditions for proper genetic explanation are modestly reconceived, and (...)
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  • Transposon dynamics and the epigenetic switch hypothesis.Stefan Linquist & Brady Fullerton - 2021 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 42 (3):137-154.
    The recent explosion of interest in epigenetics is often portrayed as the dawning of a scientific revolution that promises to transform biomedical science along with developmental and evolutionary biology. Much of this enthusiasm surrounds what we call the epigenetic switch hypothesis, which regards certain examples of epigenetic inheritance as an adaptive organismal response to environmental change. This interpretation overlooks an alternative explanation in terms of coevolutionary dynamics between parasitic transposons and the host genome. This raises a question about whether epigenetics (...)
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  • Constant factors and hedgeless Hedges: On heuristics and biases developmental biology.Jason Scott Robert - unknown
    How does a complex organism develop from a relatively simple, homogeneous mass? The usual answer is: through the execution of species-specific genetic instructions specifying the development of that organism. Commentators are sometimes sceptical of this usual answer, but of course not all commentators. Some biologists refer to master control genes responsible for the activation of all the genes responsible for every aspect of organismal development; and some philosophers, most notoriously Rosenberg, buy this claim hook, line, and sinker. Here I explore (...)
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  • Schizophrenia epigenesis?Jason Scott Robert - 2000 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 21 (2):191-215.
    I begin by examining how genetics drivesschizophrenia research, and raise both familiar andrelatively novel criticisms of the evidence putativelysupporting the genetic basis of schizophrenia. Inparticular, I call attention to a set of concernsabout the effects of placentation on concordance ratesof schizophrenia in monozygotic twins, which furtherweakens the case for schizophrenia''s so-called stronggenetic component. I then underscore two criticalpoints. First, I emphasize the importance of takingseriously considerations about the complexity of bothontogenesis and the development of hereditarydiseases. The recognition of developmentalconstraints and (...)
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  • (1 other version)Indispensability Arguments in Favour of Reductive Explanations.Jeroen Van Bouwel, Erik Weber & Leen De Vreese - 2011 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 42 (1):33-46.
    Instances of explanatory reduction are often advocated on metaphysical grounds; given that the only real things in the world are subatomic particles and their interaction, we have to try to explain everything in terms of the laws of physics. In this paper, we show that explanatory reduction cannot be defended on metaphysical grounds. Nevertheless, indispensability arguments for reductive explanations can be developed, taking into account actual scientific practice and the role of epistemic interests. Reductive explanations might be indispensable to address (...)
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