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  1. Special Issue: Philosophical Considerations in the Teaching of Biology. Part I, Philosophy of Biology and Biological Explanation.Kostas Kampourakis (ed.) - 2013 - Springer (Science & Education).
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  • Recent Work in The Philosophy of Biology.Christopher J. Austin - 2017 - Analysis 77 (2):412-432.
    The biological sciences have always proven a fertile ground for philosophical analysis, one from which has grown a rich tradition stemming from Aristotle and flowering with Darwin. And although contemporary philosophy is increasingly becoming conceptually entwined with the study of the empirical sciences with the data of the latter now being regularly utilised in the establishment and defence of the frameworks of the former, a practice especially prominent in the philosophy of physics, the development of that tradition hasn’t received the (...)
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  • Pluralists about Pluralism? Versions of Explanatory Pluralism in Psychiatry.Jeroen Van Bouwel - 2014 - In M. C. Galavotti, D. Dieks, W. J. Gonzalez, S. Hartmann, Th Uebel & M. Weber (eds.), New Directions in Philosophy of Science (The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective Series). Springer. pp. 105-119.
    In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...)
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  • Mechanistic Levels, Reduction, and Emergence.Mark Povich & Carl F. Craver - 2017 - In Stuart Glennan & Phyllis McKay Illari (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 185-97.
    We sketch the mechanistic approach to levels, contrast it with other senses of “level,” and explore some of its metaphysical implications. This perspective allows us to articulate what it means for things to be at different levels, to distinguish mechanistic levels from realization relations, and to describe the structure of multilevel explanations, the evidence by which they are evaluated, and the scientific unity that results from them. This approach is not intended to solve all metaphysical problems surrounding physicalism. Yet it (...)
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  • Memory as a cognitive kind: Brains, remembering dyads, and exograms.Samuli Pöyhönen - 2016 - In Catherine Kendig (ed.), Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice. Routledge. pp. 145-156.
    Theories of natural kinds can be seen to face a twofold task: First, they should provide an ontological account of what kinds of (fundamental) things there are, what exists. The second task is an epistemological one, accounting for the inductive reliability of acceptable scientific concepts. In this chapter I examine whether concepts and categories used in the cognitive sciences should be understood as natural kinds. By using examples from human memory research to illustrate my argument, I critically examine some of (...)
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  • Grading the Quality of Evidence of Mechanisms.Stefan Dragulinescu - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Kent
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  • A verisimilitudinarian analysis of the Linda paradox.Gustavo Cevolani, Vincenzo Crupi & Roberto Festa - 2012 - VII Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosphy of Science.
    The Linda paradox is a key topic in current debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. We present a novel analysis of this paradox, based on the notion of verisimilitude as studied in the philosophy of science. The comparison with an alternative analysis based on probabilistic confirmation suggests how to overcome some problems of our account by introducing an adequately defined notion of verisimilitudinarian confirmation.
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  • Un análisis crítico de la concepción mecanicista de la explicación.Sergio Daniel Barberis - 2012 - Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 38 (2):233-265.
    En este trabajo me propongo desarrollar un estudio crítico de la concepción mecanicista de la explicación científica. En primer lugar, argumento que la caracterización mecanicista de los modelos fenoménicos (no explicativos) es inadecuada, pues no ofrece un análisis aceptable de los conceptos de modelo científico y similitud, que son fundamentales para la propuesta. En segundo lugar, sostengo que la caracterización de los modelos mecanicistas (explicativos) es igualmente inadecuada, pues los análisis disponibles de la relación explicativa de relevancia constitutiva implican una (...)
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  • From Reactive to Endogenously Active Dynamical Conceptions of the Brain.Adele Abrahamsen & William Bechtel - unknown
    We contrast reactive and endogenously active perspectives on brain activity. Both have been pursued continuously in neurophysiology laboratories since the early 20thcentury, but the endogenous perspective has received relatively little attention until recently. One of the many successes of the reactive perspective was the identification, in the second half of the 20th century, of the distinctive contributions of different brain regions involved in visual processing. The recent prominence of the endogenous perspective is due to new findings of ongoing oscillatory activity (...)
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  • Mechanisms in medicine.Phyllis Illari - 2016 - In Miriam Solomon, Jeremy R. Simon & Harold Kincaid (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine. Routledge.
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  • Expectations-based Processes – An Interventionist Account of Economic Practice: Putting the Direct Practice of Economics on the Agenda of Philosophy of Economics.Leonardo Ivarola, Gustavo Marques & Diego Weisman - 2013 - Economic Thought 2 (2):20.
    The paper starts by distinguishing between two kinds of economic practice: theoretical economic practice (TEP) (model and theory building) and direct economic practice (DEP) (the practical operation upon real economies). Most of the epistemological and philosophical considerations have been directed to the first type of practice, one of whose main goals is the discovery of particular sorts of economic laws, mechanisms and other regularities which throw light on relevant economic patterns. We do not deny that in some restricted domains these (...)
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  • The Symbiotic Phenomenon in the Evolutive Context.Francisco Carrapiço - 2012 - In Torres Juan, Pombo Olga, Symons John & Rahman Shahid (eds.), Special Sciences and the Unity of Science. Springer. pp. 113--119.
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  • The Epistemology of Geometry I: the Problem of Exactness.Anne Newstead & Franklin James - 2010 - Proceedings of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science 2009.
    We show how an epistemology informed by cognitive science promises to shed light on an ancient problem in the philosophy of mathematics: the problem of exactness. The problem of exactness arises because geometrical knowledge is thought to concern perfect geometrical forms, whereas the embodiment of such forms in the natural world may be imperfect. There thus arises an apparent mismatch between mathematical concepts and physical reality. We propose that the problem can be solved by emphasizing the ways in which the (...)
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  • Intelligibility and the CAPE: Combatting Anti-psychologism about Explanation.Jonathan Waskan - unknown
    Much of the philosophical discussion of explanations has centered around two broad conceptions of what sorts of ‘things’ explanations are – namely, the descriptive and ontic conceptions. Defenders of each argue that scientific psychology has at best little to contribute to the study of explanations. These anti-psychologistic arguments come in two main varieties, the metaphysical and the epistemic. Both varieties trace back to Hempel and recur in the more recent writings of prominent mechanists. The metaphysical arguments attempt to combat psychologism (...)
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  • Philosophical controversies in the evaluation of medical treatments : With a focus on the evidential roles of randomization and mechanisms in Evidence-Based Medicine.Alexander Mebius - 2015 - Dissertation, Kth Royal Institute of Technology
    This thesis examines philosophical controversies surrounding the evaluation of medical treatments, with a focus on the evidential roles of randomised trials and mechanisms in Evidence-Based Medicine. Current 'best practice' usually involves excluding non-randomised trial evidence from systematic reviews in cases where randomised trials are available for inclusion in the reviews. The first paper challenges this practice and evaluates whether adding of evidence from non-randomised trials might improve the quality and precision of some systematic reviews. The second paper compares the alleged (...)
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  • The problem of granularity for scientific explanation.David Kinney - 2019 - Dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science (Lse)
    This dissertation aims to determine the optimal level of granularity for the variables used in probabilistic causal models. These causal models are useful for generating explanations in a number of scientific contexts. In Chapter 1, I argue that there is rarely a unique level of granularity at which a given phenomenon can be causally explained, thereby rejecting various causal exclusion arguments. In Chapter 2, I consider several recent proposals for measuring the explanatory power of causal explanations, and show that these (...)
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  • Imprecise Bayesian Networks as Causal Models.David Kinney - 2018 - Information 9 (9):211.
    This article considers the extent to which Bayesian networks with imprecise probabilities, which are used in statistics and computer science for predictive purposes, can be used to represent causal structure. It is argued that the adequacy conditions for causal representation in the precise context—the Causal Markov Condition and Minimality—do not readily translate into the imprecise context. Crucial to this argument is the fact that the independence relation between random variables can be understood in several different ways when the joint probability (...)
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  • Biopsychologiczne podstawy poznania geometrycznego.Mateusz Hohol - 2018 - Philosophical Problems in Science 64:137-165.
    In this review-paper, I focus on biopsychological foundations of geometric cognition. Starting from the Kant’s views on mathematics, I attempt to show that contemporary cognitive scientists, alike the famous philosopher, recognize mutual relationships of visuospatial processing and geometric cognition. What I defend is a claim that Tinbergen’s explanatory questions are the most fruitful tool for explaining our “hardwired,” and thus shared with other animals, Euclidean intuitions, which manifest themselves in spatial navigation and shape recognition. I claim, however, that these “hardwired (...)
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  • The challenge of characterizing operations in the mechanisms underlying behavior.William P. Bechtel - 2005 - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 84:313-325.
    Neuroscience and cognitive science seek to explain behavioral regularities in terms of underlying mechanisms. An important element of a mechanistic explanation is a characterization of the operations of the parts of the mechanism. The challenge in characterizing such operations is illustrated by an example from the history of physiological chemistry in which some investigators tried to characterize the internal operations in the same terms as the overall physiological system while others appealed to elemental chemistry. In order for biochemistry to become (...)
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  • Eschewing Entities: Outlining a Biology Based Form of Structural Realism.Steven French - 2013 - In Vassilios Karakostas & Dennis Dieks (eds.), Epsa11 Perspectives and Foundational Problems in Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 371--381.
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  • Towards the Methodological Turn in the Philosophy of Science.Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen & Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen & Roberta L. Millstein (eds.), Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics. Springer.
    This chapter provides an introduction to the study of the philosophical notions of mechanisms and causality in biology and economics. This chapter sets the stage for this volume, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, in three ways. First, it gives a broad review of the recent changes and current state of the study of mechanisms and causality in the philosophy of science. Second, consistent with a recent trend in the philosophy of science to focus on scientific practices, it in (...)
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  • Emotions as functional kinds: A meta-theoretical approach to constructing scientific theories of emotions.Juan Raúl Loaiza Arias - 2020 - Dissertation, Humboldt-Universität Zu Berlin
    In this dissertation, I address the question of how to construct scientific theories of emotions that are both conceptually sound and empirically fruitful. To do this, I offer an analysis of the main challenges scientific theories of emotions face, and I propose a meta-theoretical framework to construct scientific concepts of emotions as explications of folk emotion concepts. Part I discusses the main challenges theories of emotions in psychology and neuroscience encounter. The first states that a proper scientific theory of emotions (...)
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  • Drug Labels and Reproductive Health: How Values and Gender Norms Shape Regulatory Science at the FDA.Christopher ChoGlueck - 2019 - Dissertation, Indiana University
    The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is fraught with controversies over the role of values and politics in regulatory science, especially with drugs in the realm of reproductive health. Philosophers and science studies scholars have investigated the ways in which social context shapes medical knowledge through value judgments, and feminist scholars and activists have criticized sexism and injustice in reproductive medicine. Nonetheless, there has been no systematic study of values and gender norms in FDA drug regulation. I focus on (...)
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  • The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation.Carl F. Craver - 2014 - In Marie I. Kaiser, Oliver R. Scholz, Daniel Plenge & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Explanation in the Special Sciences: The Case of Biology and History. Springer Verlag. pp. 27-52.
    According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...)
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  • Causality in the McDowellian World.Alan Charles McKay - 2014 - Dissertation, Queen's University Belfast
    The thesis explores and suggests a solution to a problem that I identify in John McDowell’s and Lynne Rudder Baker’s approaches to mental and intention-dependent (ID) causation in the physical world. I begin (chapter 1) with a brief discussion of McDowell’s non-reductive and anti-scientistic account of mind and world, which I believe offers, through its vision of the unbounded conceptual and the world as within the space of reasons, to liberate and renew philosophy. However, I find an inconsistency in McDowell’s (...)
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  • Identity, reduction, and conserved mechanisms: Perspectives from circadian rhythm research.William Bechtel - 2012 - In Hill Christopher & Gozzano Simone (eds.), New Perspectives on Type Identity: The Mental and the Physical. Cambridge University Press. pp. 43.
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  • Explanation: Mechanism, modularity, and situated cognition.William Bechtel - 2009 - In Murat Aydede & P. Robbins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 155--170.
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  • Reduction, integration, and the unity of science: Natural, behavioral, and social sciences and the humanities.William P. Bechtel & Andrew Hamilton - 2007 - In T. Kuipers (ed.), Philosophy of Science: Focal Issues (Volume 1 of the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science). Elsevier.
    1. A Historical Look at Unity 2. Field Guide to Modern Concepts of Reduction and Unity 3. Kitcher's Revisionist Account of Unification 4. Critics of Unity 5. Integration Instead of Unity 6. Reduction via Mechanisms 7. Case Studies in Reduction and Unification across the Disciplines.
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  • Causal inquiry in the social sciences: the promise of process tracing.Rosa Runhardt - 2015 - Dissertation, London School of Economics
    In this thesis I investigate causal inquiry in the social sciences, drawing on examples from various disciplines and in particular from conflict studies. In a backlash against the pervasiveness of statistical methods, in the last decade certain social scientists have focused on finding the causal mechanisms behind observed correlations. To provide evidence for such mechanisms, researchers increasingly rely on ‘process tracing’, a method which attempts to give evidence for causal relations by specifying the chain of events connecting a putative cause (...)
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  • Intervention as both Test and Exploration: Reexamining the PaJaMo Experiment based on Aims and Modes of Interventions.Hsiao-Fan Yeh & Ruey-Lin Chen - unknown
    This paper explores multiple experimental interventions in molecular biology. By “multiple,” we mean that molecular biologists often use different modes of experimental interventions in a series of experiments for one and the same subject. In performing such a series of experiment, scientists may use different modes of interventions to realize plural goals such as testing given hypotheses and exploring novel phenomena. In order to illustrate this claim, we develop a framework of multiple modes of experimental interventions to analyze a series (...)
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  • Constitution and Causal Roles.Lorenzo Casini & Michael Baumgartner - unknown
    Alexander Gebharter has recently proposed to use Bayesian network causal discovery methods to identify the constitutive dependencies that underwrite mechanistic explanations. The proposal depends on using the assumptions of the causal Bayesian network framework to implicitly define mechanistic constitution as a kind of deterministic direct causal dependence. The aim of this paper is twofold. In the first half, we argue that Gebharter’s proposal incurs severe conceptual problems. In the second half, we present an alternative way to bring Bayesian network tools (...)
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  • Mental mechanisms: What are the operations?William P. Bechtel - 2005
    trying to explain these reactions in terms of changes in ele- began trying to characterize physiological processes in.
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  • Automata, man-machines and embodiment: deflating or inflating Life?Charles T. Wolfe - forthcoming - In A. Radman & H. Sohn (eds.), Critical and Clinical Cartographies; Embodiment /Technology /Care /Design. 010.
    Early modern automata, understood as efforts to ‘model’ life, to grasp its singular properties and/or to unveil and demystify its seeming inaccessibility and mystery, are not just fascinating liminal, boundary, hybrid, crossover or go-between objects, while they are all of those of course. They also pose a direct challenge to some of our common conceptions about mechanism and embodiment. They challenge the simplicity of the distinction between a purported ‘mechanistic’ worldpicture, its ontology and its goals, and on the other hand (...)
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  • Functional Decomposition: On Rationality and Incommensurability in Engineering.D. Van Eck - unknown
    The concept of technical function is a key concept to describe technical artifacts and artifacts-to-be-designed. Engineers often give such descriptions in terms of functional decomposition models, which represent relationships between functions and sets of other functions. Despite the importance of the concept of function there is no consensus among engineers about its meaning. Models of functional decomposition are likewise conceptually divergent. Although this conceptual diversity hampers information exchange between engineers, they accept and maintain it. Engineers do not, by and large, (...)
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  • Pain is Mechanism.Simon van Rysewyk - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Tasmania
    What is the relationship between pain and the body? I claim that pain is best explained as a type of personal experience and the bodily response during pain is best explained in terms of a type of mechanical neurophysiologic operation. I apply the radical philosophy of identity theory from philosophy of mind to the relationship between the personal experience of pain and specific neurophysiologic mechanism and argue that the relationship between them is best explained as one of type identity. Specifically, (...)
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  • Causal Mechanisms and the Philosophy of Causation.Ruth Groff - manuscript
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  • Telling Stories without Words.Kristin Andrews - 2009 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 16 (6-8):6-8.
    In this review article of Dan Hutto's bok Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons, I argue that we can take a functional approach to FP that identifies it with the practice of explaining behaviour -- that is, we can understand folk psychology as having the purpose of explaining behaviour and promoting social cohesion by making others’ behaviour comprehensible, without thinking that this ability must be limited to those with linguistic abilities. One reason for thinking that language must (...)
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  • Conceptual Reconstruction and Epistemic Import: Allosteric Mechanistic Explanations as a Unified Theory-Net.Karina Alleva, José Díez & Lucía Federico - 2017 - Crítica. Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 49 (146):5-36.
    The goal of this article is to show that formal analysis and reconstructions may be useful to discuss and shed light on substantive meta-theoretical issues. We proceed here by exemplification, analysing and reconstructing as a case study a paradigmatic biochemical theory, the Monod-Wyman-Changeux theory of allosterism, and applying the reconstruction to the discussion of some issues raised by prominent representatives of the new mechanist philosophy. We conclude that our study shows that at least in this case mechanicism and more traditional (...)
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  • Decomposing complexity: the discovering of pathway dynamics.Adam White - unknown
    Biochemists often adopt what may be called the “Strategy of Decomposition” for the causal discovery of biochemical pathway dynamic behaviours. This involves decomposing a pathway into a set of isolated parts, which are then analysed separately. It is assumed that knowledge gained of the isolated parts can then be used to explain the dynamic behaviours of the whole pathway. My thesis addresses the extent to which use of the Strategy of Decomposition is warranted. I evaluate two challenges contained in Bechtel (...)
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  • Mechanistic and Neo-mechanistic Accounts of Causation: How Salmon Already Got (Much of) It Right.Raffaella Campaner - 2013 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 3:81--98.
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  • Epistemic causality and evidence-based medicine.Federica Russo & Jon Williamson - 2011 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 33 (4).
    Causal claims in biomedical contexts are ubiquitous albeit they are not always made explicit. This paper addresses the question of what causal claims mean in the context of disease. It is argued that in medical contexts causality ought to be interpreted according to the epistemic theory. The epistemic theory offers an alternative to traditional accounts that cash out causation either in terms of “difference-making” relations or in terms of mechanisms. According to the epistemic approach, causal claims tell us about which (...)
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  • Causal webs in epidemiology.Federica Russo - unknown
    The notion of ‘causal web’ emerged in the epidemiological literature in the early Sixties and had to wait until the Nineties for a thorough critical appraisal. Famously, Nancy Krieger argued that such a notion isn’t helpful unless we specify what kind of spiders create the webs. This means, according to Krieger, (i) that the role of the spiders is to provide an explanation of the yarns of the web and (ii) that the sought spiders have to be biological and social. (...)
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  • Factores causales invariantes en ciencias sociales y su importancia en la implementación de políticas. Una visión crítica.Leonardo Ivarola - 2016 - Signos Filosóficos 18 (35).
    Las corrientes manipulabilistas tradicionales consideran que una implementación de política efectiva debe estar fundamentada en un conocimiento invariante. Este modo de pensamiento está basado en el supuesto ontológico de que existen factores causales estables tanto en las ciencias naturales como en las sociales. También asumen que un sólo tipo de intervención ex-ante es pertinente para una implementación efectiva. En el presente artículo se realizará una crítica a estos enfoques. En particular, se mostrará que los procesos sociales responden a una lógica (...)
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  • Natural Selection and Causal Productivity.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Hsiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen & Roberta L. Millstein (eds.), Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics,. Springer.
    In the recent philosophical literature, two questions have arisen concerning the status of natural selection: (1) Is it a population-level phenomenon, or is it an organism-level phenomenon? (2) Is it a causal process, or is it a purely statistical summary of lower-level processes? In an earlier work (Millstein, Br J Philos Sci, 57(4):627–653, 2006), I argue that natural selection should be understood as a population-level causal process, rather than a purely statistical population-level summation of lower-level processes or as an organism-level (...)
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  • When is it Mental?Stuart Glennan - 2015 - Humana Mente 8 (29).
    Most philosophical debate over mental causation has been concerned with reconciling commonsense intuitions that there are causal interactions between the mental and the physical with philosophical theories of the nature of the mental that seem to suggest otherwise. My concern is with a different and more practical problem. We often confront some cognitive, affective, or bodily phenomenon, and wonder about its source – its etiology or its underlying causal basis. For instance, you might wonder whether your queasiness due to something (...)
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  • Environmental Ethics.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In K. Kampourakis (ed.), The Philosophy of Biology: A Companion for Educators. Springer.
    A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...)
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  • Causality in medicine with particular reference to the viral causation of cancers.Brendan Clarke - 2011 - Dissertation, University College London
    In this thesis, I give a metascientific account of causality in medicine. I begin with two historical cases of causal discovery. These are the discovery of the causation of Burkitt’s lymphoma by the Epstein-Barr virus, and of the various viral causes suggested for cervical cancer. These historical cases then support a philosophical discussion of causality in medicine. This begins with an introduction to the Russo- Williamson thesis (RWT), and discussion of a range of counter-arguments against it. Despite these, I argue (...)
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  • Unity of Science and Pluralism: Cognitive Neurosciences of Racial Prejudice as a Case Study.Luc Faucher - 2012 - In Torres Juan, Pombo Olga, Symons John & Rahman Shahid (eds.), Special Sciences and the Unity of Science. Springer. pp. 177--204.
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  • Biological mechanisms: a case study in conceptual plasticity.Alexander Powell - unknown
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  • Adaptive speciation: The role of natural selection in mechanisms of geographic and non-geographic speciation.Jason M. Byron - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):303-326.
    Recent discussion of mechanism has suggested new approaches to several issues in the philosophy of science, including theory structure, causal explanation, and reductionism. Here, I apply what I take to be the fruits of the 'new mechanical philosophy' to an analysis of a contemporary debate in evolutionary biology about the role of natural selection in speciation. Traditional accounts of that debate focus on the geographic context of genetic divergence--namely, whether divergence in the absence of geographic isolation is possible (or significant). (...)
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