This paper contests Lynne Rudder Baker's claim to have shown that eliminative materialism is bound to fail on purely conceptual grounds. It is argued that Baker's position depends on knowing that certain developments in science cannot occur, and that we cannot know that this is so. Consequently, the sort of argument Baker provides is question-begging. For similar reasons, the confidence that the proponents of eliminative materialism have in it is misplaced.

The individual soul is an ageless idea, attested in prehistoric times by the oral traditions of all cultures. But as far as we know, it enters history in ancient Egypt. I will begin with the individual soul in ancient Egypt, then recount the birth of the world soul in the Pythagorean community of ancient Greece, and trace it through the Western Esoteric Tradition until its demise in Kepler's writings, along with the rise of modern science, around 1600 CE. Then I (...) tell of the rebirth of the world soul recently, in new branches of mathematics. (shrink)

Interpretations of Aristotle's account of the relation between body and soul have been widely divergent. At one extreme, Thomas Slakey has said that in theDe Anima‘Aristotle tries to explain perception simply as an event in the sense-organs’. Wallace Matson has generalized the point. Of the Greeks in general he says, ‘Mind–body identity was taken for granted.… Indeed, in the whole classical corpus there exists no denial of the view that sensing is a bodily process throughout’. At the opposite extreme, Friedrich (...) Solmsen has said of Aristotle's theory, ‘it is doubtful whether the movement or the actualization occurring when the eye sees or the ear hears has any physical or physiological aspect.’ Similarly, Jonathan Barnes has described Aristotle as leaning hesitantly towards the view that desire and thought are wholly non-physical. But on the emotions and sense-perception, Barnes takes an intermediate position. Aristotle treats these, he says, as including physical and non-physical components. Other writers too have sought a position somewhere in the middle. Thus G. R. T. Ross concedes that we find in Aristotle ‘what looks like the crudest materialism’. It appears that objects produce changes in an organism, ‘and the reception of these changes in the sense organisperception’. But, he maintains, this gives us only half the picture. The complete theory ‘may in a way be designated as a doctrine of psychophysical parallelism’. W. D. Ross also seeks a middle position. He thinks that Aristotle sometimes brings out ‘the distinctively mental, non-corporeal nature of the act [of sensation].… But Aristotle cannot be said to hold successfully to the notion of sensation as a purely mental activity having nothing in common with anything physical. He is still under the influence of earlier materialism’. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus claims to solve the problem of the individual/society duality. However, the concept of habitus appears to be inadequate to explain the idiosyncratic features of individual field actors’ practices. In this article, I argue that to explain the particularity of individual habitus, we must appreciate the operationalization of relational logic in field theory. I further argue that individuals learn to prediscursively identify certain types of practices as meaningful for a given field position because of their embodied experiences (...) of movements within the historically specific relational structure of the field. Thus, the same individual can exhibit multiple and even contradictory practices depending on the person’s relational position in the field. I illustrate this insight by discussing the political habitus of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. (shrink)

Abordamos aqui a influência do método de Condillac sobre a história da química. Partindo da confessada dívida de Lavoisier com o abade, propomo-nos a avaliar o aporte que o método condillaquiano terá para a filosofia natural da segunda metade do XVIII, colocando-a primeiramente na perspectiva da onda newtoniana que contaminou progressivamente as ciências a partir do fim do XVII. Mostramos então como o método de Newton, via alquimia, é capaz de inserir aspectos alheios ao mecanicismo estrito nas discussões, o que (...) garantirá à química legitimidade para se valer de conceitos como atrações e afinidades. Mais tarde, ao constituir e sistematizar um método geral de conhecimento marcado pelo modelo newtoniano, Condillac legará aos naturalistas meios para ordenar proficuamente novas regiões de conhecimento. Quando adequadamente adaptado por Lavoisier aos problemas químicos, este método promoverá a “revolução” da química, ou seu estabelecimento definitivo como ciência positiva. (shrink)

In this article, I present a case study of underdetermination in nineteenth-century electrodynamics between a pure field theory and a formulation in terms of action at a distance. A particular focus is on the question if and how this underdetermination is eventually resolved. It turns out that after a period of overt underdetermination, during which the approaches are developed separately, the two programmes are merged. On the basis of this development, I argue that the original underdetermination survives in hidden form (...) in ontological and methodological redundancies of the subsequent particle–field electrodynamics. Implications regarding criteria for theory choice and the realism debate are briefly addressed. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that Newtonian forces are real, symmetrical and non-causal relations. First, I argue that Newtonian forces are real; second, that they are relations; third, that they are symmetrical relations; fourth, that they are not species of causation. The overall picture is anti-Humean to the extent that it defends the existence of forces as external relations irreducible to spatio-temporal ones, but is still compatible with Humean approaches to causation (and others) since it denies that forces are a (...) species of causation. (shrink)

Bourdieu carved out a distinctive analytical niche for his reflexive sociology. His epistemological tool of field analysis, sometimes coupled with statistical correspondence analysis, is particular...

The paper explores a particular line of objection against wave-function realism. This view, advocated by Bell and presently defended by Albert, North and Ney, claims tha...

In the broadest sense of the phrase, there is action at a distance whenever there is a spatial or temporal gap between a cause and its effect. In this sense, it is not at all controversial that there is action at a distance. To cite a few instances: the page a few inches in front of you is impinging on your senses; the Sun is now warming the Earth; we are still living with the consequences of the Second World War. (...) What is controversial is the idea of unmediated action at a distance, where there is both a gap between cause and effect and no intermediate causes and effects to fill it. The three examples just mentioned are cases of action at a distance, certainly, but not, surely, unmediated action at a distance. What we expect to find, in each case, is a spatially and temporally continuous causal series stretching across time and space. (shrink)

When evaluating the success of causal theories of explanation the focus has typically been on the legitimacy of causal relations and on putative examples of explanations that we cannot capture in causal terms. Here I motivate the existence of a third kind of problem: the difficulty of accounting for explanatory disputes. Moreover, I argue that this problem remains even if the first two are settled and that it threatens to undercut one of the central motivations for causal accounts of explanation, (...) namely, the causal account of the directionality of scientific explanation. (shrink)

In recent years a number of scholars have argued that Faraday's theories of matter and force were founded on concepts which were derived from Boscovich'sTheoria Philosophiae Naturalis(1758). The notion that Faraday's ideas display Boscovichean tendencies is not a new one: it was proposed by several of Faraday's immediate successors and has been noted by more recent commentators. Statements of this kind are not implausible as assertions of a general correspondence between Faraday's views on matter, as expressed in the “Speculation touching (...) Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter” of 1844, and Boscovich's theory of point atomism, but Professor L. Pearce Williams has made much stronger claims for the dependence of Faraday's ideas on Boscovich's theory of matter. Williams' interpretation has been questioned by recent scholarship, and in this paper I wish to advance an alternative interpretation of Faraday's ideas on electricity and the nature of matter. (shrink)

Alternatives in the History of Science. The paper deals with the function of the scientist's subjective activity in the research process. This will be discussed at the background of the discourse between distant action and narrow action theories of electromagnetism in 19th century physics. The analysis shows in which high degree the protagonists of these theories regarded this situation consciously as a bifurcation in the development of their science. This article describes then how the history of science values the case. (...) The result of this valuation is dependent on the different philosophical points of view. Finally we point out some desiderata for the further discussion on methodology of science that would be the consequence of the acknowledgement of real bifurcations in scientific thought. (shrink)

ArgumentAccording to a long-standing interpretation which traces back to Max Jammer'sConcepts of Force(1957), Ruggiero G. Boscovich would have developed a concept of force in the tradition of Leibniz's dynamics. In his variation on the theme, basic properties of matter such as solidity or impenetrability would be derived from an interplay of some “active” force of attraction and repulsion that any primary element of nature (“point of matter” in Boscovich's theory) would possess. In the present paper I discuss many flaws of (...) this interpretation and argue for an alternative point of view, according to which the crucial aspect in the development of Boscovich's natural philosophy is his early definition of forces as “mathematical determinations” to have a certain state of motion. This is consistent with a Newtonian background and has as its epistemological consequence a certain agnosticism about the nature of forces and a “mathematical neutralism” (mathematics as a neutral tool, allowing for a plurality of interpretations). (shrink)

Work on analogy has been done from a number of disciplinary perspectives throughout the history of Western thought. This work is a multidisciplinary guide to theorizing about analogy. It contains 1,406 references, primarily to journal articles and monographs, and primarily to English language material. classical through to contemporary sources are included. The work is classified into eight different sections (with a number of subsections). A brief introduction to each section is provided. Keywords and key expressions of importance to research on (...) analogy are discussed in the introductory material. Electronic resources for conducting research on analogy are listed as well. (shrink)

Throughout his career David Hull has sought to bring the philosophy of science into closer contact with science and especially with biological science (Hull 1969, 1997b). This effort has taken many forms. Sometimes it has meant ‘either explaining basic biology to philosophers or explaining basic philosophy to biologists’ (Hull 1996, p. 77). The first of these tasks, simple as it sounds, has been responsible for revolutionary changes. It is well known that traditional philosophy of science, modeled as it was on (...) theoretical physics, proved inadequate when philosophers turned their attention to biological science. Biological examples have driven major revisions of accounts of reduction (Hull 1974; Schaffner 1993, Ch. 9), laws of nature (Beatty et al. 1997), theories (Lloyd 1988) and natural kinds (Wilson 1999, Part III). Nor is explaining basic philosophy to biologists a task to be looked down upon. It is useful, not because philosophy has all the answers, but because scientists must think about how to do science, that is doing philosophy of science and scientists frequently reinvent philosophical views with known flaws. Early in his career Hull found biological systematists in the grip of a crude operationalism about scientific concepts and said so in the pages of Systematic Zoology (Hull 1968). For the next thirty years, as biologists debated the nature of species and the correct principles of classification, Hull added a philosophical note at the same congresses and in the same journals (Hull 1970, 1976, 1980, 1997a, 1999). (shrink)

In June 1849 William Thomson wrote to Michael Faraday suggesting that the concept of a uniform magnetic field could be used to predict the motions of small magnetic and diamagnetic bodies. In his letter Thomson showed how Faraday's lines of magnetic force could represent the effect of the ‘conducting power’ for magnetic force of matter in the region of magnets. This was Thomson's extension to magnetism of an analogy between the mathematical descriptions of the distribution of static electricity and of (...) the diffusion of heat through uniform bodies. In 1850 Faraday published his first comprehensive theory of the magnetic properties of matter. He explained the behaviour of matter in the field by four assumptions: that matter has a specific disturbing effect on the normal distribution of lines of magnetic force; that this effect depends on its ability to conduct or transmit the magnetic action; and that material bodies tend to move so as to cause the least possible disturbance of the lines from their normal distribution. Faraday also assumed that diamagnetics transmit magnetic action less well than empty space, while paramagnetics transmit it more readily than space. This implied that space must have a specific conductivity between that of paramagnetic and diamagnetic materials. In order to preserve a distinction between matter and space Faraday defined ‘matter’ as either the source of action or as a conductor which is able to influence the lines of action; space was the absence of such powers. While space could conduct, it differed from matter in that it could neither originale lines of force nor influence their course and distribution. (shrink)

I argue that philosophical issues concerning reductive explanations help constrain the construction of quantum theories with appropriate state spaces. I illustrate this general proposal with two examples of restricting attention to physical states in quantum theories: regular states and symmetry-invariant states. 1Introduction2Background2.1 Physical states2.2 Reductive explanations3The Proposed ‘Correspondence Principle’4Example: Regularity5Example: Symmetry-Invariance6Conclusion: Heuristics and Discovery.

I argue that, in at least one important sense, the hypothesis that you are a brain in a vat provides better explanations than the explanations provided by standard ways of interpreting our best scientific theories. This puts pressure on anyone who—like me!—wishes to resist taking this radical hypothesis seriously when doing science and scientifically-informed metaphysics. Insofar as our resistance is justified, it can’t be justified simply by claiming that the brain in a vast hypothesis is explanatorily impoverished.

Drawing on Earman’s definition of determinism and Lewis’ best systems account of laws, in What Makes Time Special? Craig Callender develops an account of time as ‘the strongest thing’. The characterisation of this account apparently assumes no action at a temporal distance, an assumption that also underlies Earman’s account of determinism. In this paper I show that there is a way to define determinism that allows worlds with action at a temporal distance to count as deterministic, that action at a (...) temporal distance is possible on a best systems account of laws, and hence that Callender need not make this assumption. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that Newtonian forces are real symmetrical and non-causal relations. In the first part, I argue that Newtonian forces are real; in the second part, that they are relations; in the third part, that they are symmetrical relations; in the fourth part, that they are not causal relations, (but causal relata) by which I mean that they are not species of causation. The overall picture is anti-humean to the extent that it defends the existence of forces, (...) irreducible to spatio-temporal relations, but is still compatible with humean approaches to causation (and others) since it denies that forces are species of causation. (shrink)