How has multiplicity superseded impossibility in philosophical challenges to artificial consciousness? I assess a trajectory in recent debates on artificial consciousness, in which metaphysical and explanatory challenges to the possibility of building conscious machines lead to epistemological concerns about the multiplicity underlying ‘what it is like’ to be a conscious creature or be in a conscious state. First, I analyse earlier challenges which claim that phenomenal consciousness cannot arise, or cannot be built, in machines. These are based on Block’s Chinese (...) Nation and Chalmers’ Hard Problem. To defuse such challenges, theorists of artificial consciousness can appeal to empirical methods and models of explanation. Second, I explain why this naturalistic approach produces an epistemological puzzle on the role of biological properties in phenomenal consciousness. Neither behavioural tests nor theoretical inferences seem to settle whether our machines are conscious. Third, I evaluate whether the new challenge can be managed through a more fine-grained taxonomy of conscious states. This strategy is supported by the development of similar taxonomies for biological species and animal consciousness. Although it makes sense of some current models of artificial consciousness, it raises questions about their subjective and moral significance. (shrink)

Natural kind concepts have the function of tracking categories that exist independently of our beliefs and purposes. But not all ways of tracking categories in the natural world involve conceiving of them as natural kinds. Anthropic concepts represent groups of natural, mind‐independent entities that are apt for serving various human interests, goals, and projects. They represent the natural world under a practical mode of presentation, as a set of material resources that can be transformed to further a host of functions (...) and ends. I argue that cross‐cultural studies of traditional ecological knowledge provide evidence that many chemical, mineral, and biological concepts that are frequently taken to be natural kind concepts turn out on closer inspection to be anthropic concepts. Anthropic concepts are distinguished from artifact concepts, and a form of realism about the anthropic kinds that they refer to is defended. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how human science categories yield projectable inferences by critically examining Ron Mallon’s ‘social role’ account of human kinds. Mallon contends that human categories are projectable when a social role produces a homeostatic property cluster (HPC) kind. On this account, human categories are projectable when various social mechanisms stabilize and entrench those categories. Mallon’s analysis obscures a distinction between transitory and robust projectable inferences. I argue that the social kinds discussed by Mallon yield the former, (...) while classifications of biological kinds yield the latter. Classifications from psychiatry (‘schizophrenia,’ ‘hysteria’) are discussed as examples. (shrink)

Although contentious, the concept of resilience is common in sustainability research. Critique of the concept have often focused on the content of the concept. In this paper we focus on another feature of concepts, namely how they are defined. We distinguish between concepts that are ostensively defined, that aim to point to some phenomena, and stipulatively defined concepts, where the content of the concept is given in the definition itself. We argue that although definitions themselves are similar across many different (...) disciplines where resilience is used?most notably psychology and ecology?they differ in how. This has interesting consequences for how different disciplines can be connected and integrated. Notably, integration on basis of ostensively defined concepts turn on sharing the extension of the concept, but not necessarily the intension, whereas integration on basis of stipulatively defined concepts work in the opposite way. (shrink)

Recent work on Natural Kind Essentialism has taken a deflationary turn. The assumptions about the grounds of essentialist truths concerning natural kinds familiar from the Kripke-Putnam framework are now considered questionable. The source of the problem, however, has not been sufficiently explicated. The paper focuses on the Twin Earth scenario, and it will be demonstrated that the essentialist principle at its core (which I call IDENT)—that necessarily, a sample of a chemical substance, A, is of the same kind as another (...) sample, B, if and only if A and B have the same microstructure—must be re-evaluated. The Twin Earth scenario also assumes the falsity of another essentialist principle (which I call INST): necessarily, there is a 1:1 correlation between (all of ) the chemical properties of a chemical substance and the microstructure of that substance. This assumption will be questioned, and it will be argued that, in fact, the best strategy for defending IDENT is to establish INST. The prospects for Natural Kind Essentialism and microstructural essentialism regarding chemical substances will be assessed with reference to recent work in the philosophy of chemistry. Finally, a weakened form of INST will be presented. (shrink)

Identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for individuating and classifying diseases is a matter of great importance in the fields of law, ethics, epidemiology, and of course, medicine. In this paper, I first propose a means of achieving this goal, ensuring that no two distinct disease-types could correctly be ascribed to the same disease-token. I then posit a metaphysical ontology of diseases—that is, I give an account of what a disease is. This is essential to providing the most effective means (...) of interfering with disease processes. Following existing work in the philosophy of medicine and epidemiology (primarily Christopher Boorse; Caroline Whitbeck; Alexander Broadbent), philosophy of biology (Joseph LaPorte; D.L. Hull), conditional analyses of causation (J.L. Mackie; David Lewis), and recent literature on dispositional essentialism (Stephen Mumford and Rani Anjum; Alexander Bird), I endorse a dispositional conception of disease. Following discussion of various conceptions of disease-identity, their relations to the clinical and pathological effects of the diseases in question, and how diseases are treated, I conclude (i) that diseases should be individuated by their causes, and (ii) that diseases are causal processes best seen as simultaneously acting sequences of mutually manifesting dispositions. (shrink)

Some astronomers believe that we have discovered that Pluto is not a planet. I contest this assessment. Recent discoveries of trans-Neptunian Pluto-sized objects do not require that we exclude Pluto from the planets. But the obvious alternative, that classificatory revision is a matter of arbitrary choice, is also unpalatable. I argue that this classificatory controversy — which I compare to the controversy about the classification of the platypus — illustrates how our classificatory practices are laden with normative commitments of a (...) distinctive kind. I argue that the “norm-ladenness” of classification has philosophically significant ramifications for how we think about scientific disputes and debates in the metaphysics of classification such as the monism/pluralism debate. (shrink)

In this paper I defend Kuhn’s view of scientific discovery, which involves two central tenets, namely that a scientific discovery always requires a discovery-that and a discovery-what, and that there are two kinds of scientific discovery, resulting from the temporal order of the discovery-that and the discovery-what. I identify two problems with Kuhn’s account and offer solutions to them from a realist stance. Alternatives to Kuhn’s account are also discussed.

Similarly to other accounts of disease, Christopher Boorse’s Biostatistical Theory (BST) is generally presented and considered as conceptual analysis, that is, as making claims about the meaning of currently used concepts. But conceptual analysis has been convincingly critiqued as relying on problematic assumptions about the existence, meaning, and use of concepts. Because of these problems, accounts of disease and health should be evaluated not as claims about current meaning, I argue, but instead as proposals about how to define and use (...) these terms in the future, a methodology suggested by Quine and Carnap. I begin this article by describing problems with conceptual analysis and advantages of “philosophical explication,” my favored approach. I then describe two attacks on the BST that also question the entire project of defining “disease.” Finally, I defend the BST as a philosophical explication by showing how it could define useful terms for medical science and ethics. (shrink)

Mineral species are, at first glance, an excellent candidate for an ideal set of natural kinds somewhere beyond the periodic table. Mineralogists have a detailed set of rules and formal procedure for ratifying new species, and minerals are a less messy subject matter than biological species, psychological disorders, or even chemicals more broadly—all areas of taxonomy where the status of species as natural kinds has been disputed. After explaining how philosophers have tended to get mineralogy wrong in discussions of natural (...) kinds, I show how minerals species don’t behave like natural kinds. They are defined on the basis of human intentionality, not merely natural distinctions. They aren’t ideal grounds for inductive inference. And they don’t form a system that divides nature along a set of equivalent joints. While this is a regrettable outcome to those of us who like the idea of science relying on natural kinds, I contend that mineralogy is doing just fine without a natural kind-based taxonomy, and may in fact be better off without one. (shrink)

Stars are conspicuously absent from reflections on natural kinds and scientific classifications, with gold, tiger, jade, and water getting all the philosophical attention. This is too bad for, as this paper will demonstrate, interesting philosophical lessons can be drawn from stellar taxonomy as regards two central, on-going debates about natural kinds, to wit, the monism/pluralism debate and the realism/antirealism debate. I’ll show in particular that stellar kinds will not please the essentialist monist, nor for that matter will it please the (...) pluralist embracing promiscuous realism à la Dupré. (shrink)

Natural Categories and Human Kinds is a recent and timely contribution to current debate on natural kinds. Because of the growing sophistication of this debate, it is necessary to make careful distinctions in order to appreciate the originality of Khalidi’s position. Khalidi’s view on natural kinds is naturalistic: if we want to know what Nature’s joints really are, we should look at the actual carving job carried out by our best scientific practices. Like LaPorte, Khalidi is a fallibilist: our best (...) scientific theories may be revised or abandoned and so can our current classifications of natural kinds. Unlike LaPorte, however, Khalidi is an anti-essentialist: he argues against the idea that membership in a natural kind is a matter of possessing an essential set of necessary and sufficient properties. Like Dupré, Khalidi is a pluralist and anti-reductionist: he does not believe that there is only one true classification system and that there are natural kinds only at the so-called "fundamental level" of microphysics. Khalidi develops his pluralistic and anti-reductionistic position on the basis of a deep appreciation for the special sciences but, unlike Dupré, he thinks that only the scientific inquiry, which is driven by epistemic purposes, discover natural kinds and that, therefore, there are important differences between scientific and folk classifications. Khalidi’s conception of natural kinds has both an epistemic and a metaphysical component. (shrink)

Kripke argues for origin essentialism, the view that the same individual cannot have multiple origins. Sober hypothesises that Kripke's origin essentialism applies to biological species. This paper shows that Sober's hypothesis fails. Because Kripke's original argument is invalid, it cannot vindicate Sober's proposal. Salmon offers an influential reformulation of Kripke's argument but his argument fails to extend to species: the notion of an individual's origin is too narrow to apply to species, and Salmon's argument rests on a thought experiment that (...) conflicts with how species evolve. Thus, Sober and others are wrong to think that Kripke's origin essentialism can save species essentialism. (shrink)

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

In this paper I raise a difficulty for Joseph LaPorte's account of chemical kind terms. LaPorte has argued against Putnam that H₂O content is neither necessary nor sufficient to fix the reference of the kind term 'water' and that we did not discover that water is H₂O. To this purpose, he revisits Putnam's Twin Earth story with the fictional scenario of Deuterium Earth, whose ocean consists of 'dwater', to conclude that we did not discover that deuterium oxide is (a kind (...) of) water (usually called 'heavy water'). Instead, according to LaPorte, by including deuterium oxide in the extension of the term 'water', we simply refined our vague use of the term 'water'. But we could have decided to exclude deuterium oxide from the extension of the term 'water'. Let us call this the thesis of semantic stipulation. I raise two problems for LaPorte's Deuterium Earth story. First, I show that 'dwater' (i.e. deuterium oxide not as a kind of water) does not have the same scientific credibility of 'heavy water' (i.e. deuterium oxide as a kind of water). Second, I argue that for the thesis of semantic stipulation to go through one would need to show that 'dwater' is semantically on a par with 'heavy water'. Namely, one would need to show that 'dwater' is a projectible kind term, capable of supporting inductive inferences. But, in fact, it is not, because the term is vulnerable to an unwelcome Goodmanian scenario, unless one surreptitiously reintroduces some Putnamian assumptions about D₂O content being necessary and sufficient to fix the reference of the term. (shrink)

Large-scale book-length treatises on natural kinds are rather few compared to the amount of discussion on the subject and not since Brian Ellis’ Scientific Essentialism perhaps has anyone attempted to build a philosophical “world view” around a theory of natural kinds. Most discussion about natural kinds of the last decade has restricted itself to specific issues, such as the species debate or chemical kinds, or, as in the case of LaPorte (2009), the semantic practices surrounding kind concepts and conceptual change. (...) In this respect, Magnus’ Scientific Enquiry and Natural Kinds: From Planets to Mallards has a worthy ambition, not least for displaying how rich and informative natural kind discussion can be despite its recent characterization as a philosophical dead end (see Hacking 2007). This holds even more so because Magnus attempts this within the context of a highly naturalistic account of natural kinds, rather than a metaphysically driven approach already predisposed to metaphysic .. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue that ontological choices in scientific practice undermine common formulations of the value-free ideal in science. First, I argue that the truth values of scientific statements depend on ontological choices. For example, statements about entities such as species, race, memory, intelligence, depression, or obesity are true or false relative to the choice of a biological, psychological, or medical ontology. Second, I show that ontological choices often depend on non-epistemic values. On the basis of (...) these premises, I argue that it is often neither possible nor desirable to evaluate scientific statements independently of non-epistemic values. Finally, I suggest that considerations of ontological choices do not only challenge the value-free ideal but also help to specify positive roles of non-epistemic values in an often neglected area of scientific practice. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds on the basis of contemporary ethnobiological research. I argue that ethnobiological accounts of taxonomic convergence-divergence patters challenge common philosophical models of the relation between folk concepts and natural kinds. Furthermore, I outline a positive model of taxonomic convergence-divergence patterns that is based on Slater's [2014] notion of “stable property clusters” and Franklin-Hall's [2014] discussion of natural kinds as “categorical bottlenecks.” Finally, I argue that this model (...) is not only helpful for understanding the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds but also makes substantial contributions to contemporary debates about natural kinds.to contemporary debates about natural kinds. (shrink)

This paper presents an extension of Putnam's account of how substance terms such as ‘water’ and ‘gold’ function and of how a posteriori necessary truths concerning the underlying microstructures of such kinds may be derived. The paper has three aims. I aim to refute a familiar criticism of Putnam's account: that it presupposes what Salmon calls an ‘irredeemably metaphysical, and philosophically controversial, theory of essentialism’. I show how all of the details of Putnam's account—including those that Salmon believes smuggle in (...) such essentialist commitments—can be squared with a rejection of any such essentialist metaphysics. I aim to reveal why Steward is wrong to suppose that, by helping himself to the claim that ‘H2O’ is a rigid designator of a substance, Kripke, too, presupposes something controversially ‘metaphysical’. I aim to show how my proposed account also sidesteps a variety of objections raised by Needham and others who argue that Kripke's and Putnam's accounts of how ‘water’ and.. (shrink)

It is often said that there is just one “objective” tree of life: a single accurate branching hierarchy of species reflecting order of descent. For any two species there is a single correct answer as to whether one is a “daughter” of the other, whether the two are “sister species” by virtue of their descent from a common parental species, whether they belong to a family line that excludes any given third species, and so on. This position is not right. (...) We may whittle a tree of life, paring troublesome branches, in order to portray an ordering that admits of no legitimate dissent. But the history of life can sustain many legitimate arrangements of the same branches of species. The same can be said about other taxonomically relevant groups besides species, such as “Least Inclusive Taxonomic Units” (LITUs), so the basic claim survives even if we abandon traditional species. Similarly, the claim survives even if we distinguish between synchronic and diachronic groups, even if we consider polytomies, even if we distinguish between models and the world modeled, and even if we recognize an objective world. Nor is the claim merely an epistemic one. (shrink)

Unlike conceptual analysis, conceptual engineering does not aim to identify the content that our current concepts do have, but the content which these concepts should have. For this method to show the results that its practitioners typically aim for, being able to change meanings seems to be a crucial presupposition. However, certain branches of semantic externalism raise doubts about whether this presupposition can be met. To the extent that meanings are determined by external factors such as causal histories or microphysical (...) structures, it seems that they cannot be changed intentionally. This paper gives an extended discussion of this ‘externalist challenge’. Pace Herman Cappelen’s recent take on this issue, it argues that the viability of conceptual engineering crucially depends on our ability to bring about meaning change. Furthermore, it argues that, contrary to first appearance, causal theories of reference do allow for a sufficient degree of meaning control. To this purpose, it argues that there is a sense of what is called ‘collective long-range control’, and that popular versions of the causal theory of reference imply that people have this kind of control over meanings. (shrink)

Several recent interpretations see Hegel's theory of the Concept as a form of conceptual realism, according to which finite reality is articulated by objectively existing concepts. More precisely, this theory has been interpreted as a version of natural kind essentialism, and it has been proposed that its function is to account for the possibility of genuine explanations. This suggests a promising way to reconstruct the argument that Hegel's theory of objective concepts is based on—an argument that shows that the possibility (...) of explanation rests on metaphysical preconditions and that natural kind essentialism gives the only adequate account of those preconditions. But in order for such a reconstruction to be successful, one needs to spell out the metaphysical features in virtue of which Hegelian natural kinds can account for the possibility of explanation. The article takes up this challenge. It offers the first detailed analysis of the modal fine-structure of Hegel's natural kind essentialism and shows how Hegel's position, thus understood, provides the details needed to complete the explanation-based argument. (shrink)

Functional reductionism concerning mental properties has recently been advocated by Jaegwon Kim in order to solve the problem of the 'causal exclusion' of the mental. Adopting a reductionist strategy first proposed by David Lewis, he regards psychological properties as being 'higher-order' properties functionally defined over 'lower-order' properties, which are causally efficacious. Though functional reductionism is compatible with the multiple realizability of psychological properties, it is blocked if psychological properties are subdivided or crosscut by neurophysiological properties. I argue that there is (...) recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience that shows that this is the case for the psychological property of fear. Though this may suggest that some psychological properties should be revised in order to conform to those of neurophysiology, the history of science demonstrates that this is not always the outcome, particularly with properties that play an important role in our folk theories and are central to human concerns. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of measurement has emphasized the existence of both diachronic and synchronic “loops,” or feedback processes, in the epistemic achievements of measurement. A widespread response has been to conclude that measurement outcomes do not convey interest-independent facts about the world, and that only a coherentist epistemology of measurement is viable. In contrast, I argue that a form of measurement realism is consistent with these results. The insight is that antecedent structure in measuring spaces constrains our empirical procedures such that (...) successful measurement conveys a limited, but veridical knowledge of “fixed points,” or stable, interest- independent features of the world. (shrink)

There has been much work on ontological dependence in recent literature. However, relatively little of it has been dedicated to the ways in which individual physical objects may depend on other distinct, non-overlapping objects. This paper gives several examples of such object-dependence and distinguishes between different types of it. The paper also introduces and refines the notion of an n-tet. N-tets (typically) occur when there are object-dependence relations between n objects. I claim that the identity (or, rather, what I call (...) the n-dentity) conditions for n-tets are not grounded in the individual identity conditions of each of the n objects, but instead are metaphysically basic. The paper then briefly discusses some ramifications of accepting object-dependence (and n-tets) on the philosophy of biology, ethics, and logic. (shrink)

Following Kripke and Putnam, the received view of chemical kinds has been a microstructuralist one. To be a microstructuralist about chemical kinds is to think that membership in said kinds is conferred by microstructural properties. Recently, the received microstructuralist view has been elaborated and defended, but it has also been attacked on the basis of complexities, both chemical and ontological. Here, I look at which complexities really challenge the microstructuralist view; at how the view itself might be made more complicated (...) in order to accommodate such challenges; and finally, at what this increasingly complicated picture implies for our standard assessment of chemical kindhood—primarily, for the widespread assumption that chemical kinds in general are more neat and tidy than those messy biological ones. _1_ The Received View _2_ A Taxonomy of Chemical Kinds _3_ Atomic Number _4_ H2O, H3O+, OH−, and More _5_ Complicating the Microstructuralist Picture _6_ Concrete and Other Mixtures _7_ Macromolecules, Especially Proteins _8_ Abandoning Sameness of Elemental Composition _9_ Not So Different after All. (shrink)

In the debate over the reality of race, a three-way dispute has become entrenched: race is biologically real, socially real, or simply not real. These three theses have each enjoyed increasingly sophisticated defenses over roughly the past thirty years, but we argue here that this debate contains a lacuna: there is a fourth, mostly neglected, position that we call ‘basic racial realism.’ Basic racial realism says that though race is neither biologically real nor socially real, it is real all the (...) same. Our goal is to establish this theory's credentials and provide it with initial support. It appears to be in a strong dialectical position and to nicely capture what many want from a theory of race. (shrink)

Scientific anti-realists who appeal to the pessimistic induction (PI) claim that the theoretical terms of past scientific theories often fail to refer to anything. But on standard views in philosophy of language, such reference failures prima facie lead to certain sentences being neither true nor false. Thus, if these standard views are correct, then the conclusion of the PI should be that significant chunks of current theories are truth-valueless. But that is semantic anti-realism about scientific discourse—a position most philosophers of (...) science, anti-realists included, consider anathema today. Therefore, proponents of the PI confront a dilemma: either accept semantic anti-realism or reject common semantic views. I examine strategies (with particular emphasis on supervaluations) for the PI proponent to either lessen the sting of this argument, or learn to live with it. 1 Introduction2 Designation Failure 2.1 Designation failure leads to truth-valueless sentences2.1.1 Direct reference theory2.1.2 Fregeanism2.1.3 Accounts of reference-fixing: why ‘phlogiston’ fails to designate 2.2 Objection: sentences exhibiting designation failure are false not truth-valueless 2.3 Avoiding truth-valuelessness via controversial semantic positions3 What to do? Closing the Gaps4 Conclusion. (shrink)

After having reconstructed a minimal biological characterisation of species, we endorse an “empirical approach” based on the idea that it is the peculiar evolutionary history of the species at issue—its peculiar origination process, its peculiar metapopulation structure and the peculiar mixture and strength of homeostatic processes vis à vis heterostatic ones—that determines species’ identity at a time and through time. We then explore the consequences of the acceptance of the empirical approach in settling the individuals versus kinds dispute. In particular, (...) while conceptual arguments have been proposed to show that species can be equally treated as individuals and kinds because mereology’s and set-theory’s languages are inter-translatable, we advance instead a causal argument to sustain the claim that each species is both a kind and an individual. (shrink)

Taking Carnap’s classic exposition as a starting point, this paper develops a pragmatic account of the method of explication, defends it against a range of challenges and proposes a detailed recipe for the practice of explicating. It is then argued that confusions are involved in characterizing explications as definitions, and in advocating precising definitions as an alternative to explications. Explication is better characterized as conceptual re-engineering for theoretical purposes, in contrast to conceptual re-engineering for other purposes and improving exactness for (...) purely practical reasons. Finally, three limitations which call for further development of the method of explication are discussed. (shrink)

The concepts of placebos and placebo effects refer to extremely diverse phenomena. I recommend dissolving the concepts of placebos and placebo effects into loosely related groups of specific mechanisms, including (potentially among others) expectation-fulfillment, classical conditioning, and attentional-somatic feedback loops. If this approach is on the right track, it has three main implications for the ethics of informed consent. First, because of the expectation-fulfillment mechanism, the process of informing cannot be considered independently from the potential effects of treatment. Obtaining informed (...) consent influences the effects of treatment. This provides support for the authorized concealment and authorized deception paradigms, and perhaps even for outright deceptive placebo use. Second, doctors may easily fail to consider the potential benefits of conditioning, leading them to misjudge the trade-off between beneficence and autonomy. Third, how attentional-somatic feedback loops play out depends not only on the content of the informing process but also on its framing. This suggests a role for libertarian paternalism in clinical practice. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis dissertation is to propose a novel position in the debate on scientific realism, modal empiricism, and to show its fruitfulness when it comes to interpreting the cognitive content of scientific theories. Modal empiricism is an empiricist position, according to which the aim of science is to produce empirically adequate theories rather than true theories. However, it suggests adopting a broader comprehension of experience than traditional versions of empiricism, through a commitment to natural modalities. Following modal (...) empiricism, there are possibilities in nature, and constraints on what is possible, and a theory is empirically adequate if it correctly delimits the range of possible experiences. The position rests on a situated and pragmatic conception of natural modalities and of empirical confrontation. We claim that it can do justice to the empirical success of science, while not falling prey to the problem of theory change that undermines scientific realism. We explain how constraints of necessity on phenomena can be known by induction, and how this modal epistemology fits with scientific practice. Finally, we claim that a commitment to natural modalities allows for a rich interpretation of the cognitive content of theories. Modal empiricism could renew some metaphysical debates within a pragmatist framework, by tying them to experience and not being constrained by realist prejudices. -/- L'objet de cette thèse est de proposer une position originale dans le débat sur le réalisme scientifique, l'empirisme modal, et d'en démontrer la fructuosité quand il s'agit de tirer des enseignements du contenu cognitif des théories scientifiques. L'empirisme modal est une position empiriste, suivant laquelle le but de la science n'est pas de produire des théories vraies, mais des théories empiriquement adéquate. Cependant, il propose d'adopter un cadre plus large que les versions traditionnelles d'empirisme pour penser l'expérience, en incorporant un engagement envers les modalités naturelles, ou l'idée qu'il y a du possible dans la nature, et des contraintes sur les possibles. Nos théories sont empiriquement adéquates si elles délimitent correctement l'étendue des expériences possibles. Cette position s'appuie sur une conception située et pragmatique des modalités naturelles et de la confrontation empirique. Nous prétendons qu'elle est à même de rendre justice au succès empirique des sciences, sans pour autant faire face au problème du changement théorique qui mine le réalisme scientifique. Nous expliquons comment les contraintes de nécessité sur les phénomènes peuvent être connues à l'issue d'une induction, et en quoi cette façon de voir s'accorde avec la pratique scientifique. Enfin, nous affirmons qu'un engagement envers les modalités naturelles offre une richesse interprétative à même de renouveler, dans un cadre pragmatiste, plus ouvert que le réalisme, certaines questions métaphysiques tout en les ramenant à l'expérience . (shrink)

This paper examines causal theories of reference with respect to how plausible an account they give of non-physical natural kind terms such as ‘gene’ as well as of the truth of the associated theoretical claims. I first show that reference fixism for ‘gene’ fails. By this, I mean the claim that the reference of ‘gene’ was stable over longer historical periods, for example, since the classical period of transmission genetics. Second, I show that the theory of partial reference does not (...) do justice to some widely held realist intuitions about classical genetics. This result is at loggerheads with the explicit goals usually associated with partial theories of reference, which is to defend a realist semantics for scientific terms. Thirdly, I show that, contrary to received wisdom and perhaps contrary to physics and chemistry, neither reference fixism nor partial reference are necessary in order to hold on to scientific realism about biology. I pinpoint the reasons for this in the nature of biological kinds, which do not even remotely resemble natural kinds (i.e., Lockean real essences) as traditionally conceived. (shrink)

Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...) DE, and second, the idea of ESV cannot serve as a “foundation” or “root” of distributive egalitarianism. (shrink)

In (1959), Carnap famously attacked Heidegger for having constructed an insane metaphysics based on a misconception of both the logical form and the semantics of ordinary language. In what follows, it will be argued that, once one appropriately (i.e., in a Russellian fashion) reads Heidegger’s famous sentence that should paradigmatically exemplify such a misconception, i.e., “the nothing nothings”, there is nothing either logically or semantically wrong with it. The real controversy as to how that sentence has to be evaluated—not as (...) to its meaning but as to its truth—lies at the metaphysico- ontological level. For in order for the sentence to be true one has to endorse an ontology of impossibilia and Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles. (shrink)