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  1. Realization in biology?Sergio Balari & Guillermo Lorenzo - 2019 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (1):5.
    It is widely assumed that functional and dispositional properties are not identical to their physical base, but that there is some kind of asymmetrical ontological dependence between them. In this regard, a popular idea is that the former are realized by the latter, which, under the non-identity assumption, is generally understood to be a non-causal, constitutive relation. In this paper we examine two of the most widely accepted approaches to realization, the so-called ‘flat view’ and the ‘dimensioned view’, and we (...)
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  • (1 other version)The ant colony as a test for scientific theories of consciousness.Daniel A. Friedman & Eirik Søvik - 2019 - Synthese (2):1-24.
    The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...)
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  • Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs: How Peircean Semiotics Combines Phenomenal Qualia and Practical Effects.Marc Champagne - 2018 - Cham: Springer.
    It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – (...)
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  • Interventionism for the Intentional Stance: True Believers and Their Brains.Markus I. Eronen - 2020 - Topoi 39 (1):45-55.
    The relationship between psychological states and the brain remains an unresolved issue in philosophy of psychology. One appealing solution that has been influential both in science and in philosophy is Dennett’s concept of the intentional stance, according to which beliefs and desires are real and objective phenomena, but not necessarily states of the brain. A fundamental shortcoming of this approach is that it does not seem to leave any causal role for beliefs and desires in influencing behavior. In this paper, (...)
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  • Actor Network, Ontic Structural Realism and the Ontological Status of Actants.Corrado Matta - 2014 - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Networked Learning 2014.
    In this paper I discuss the ontological status of actants. Actants are argued as being the basic constituting entities of networks in the framework of Actor Network Theory (Latour, 2007). I introduce two problems concerning actants that have been pointed out by Collin (2010). The first problem concerns the explanatory role of actants. According to Collin, actants cannot play the role of explanans of networks and products of the same newtork at the same time, at pain of circularity. The second (...)
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  • (4 other versions)Mental Causation.David Robb & John Heil - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Worries about mental causation are prominent in contemporary discussions of the mind and human agency. Originally, the problem of mental causation was that of understanding how a mental substance (thought to be immaterial) could interact with a material substance, a body. Most philosophers nowadays repudiate immaterial minds, but the problem of mental causation has not gone away. Instead, focus has shifted to mental properties. How could mental properties be causally relevant to bodily behavior? How could something mental qua mental cause (...)
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  • The quantum measurement problem: State of play.David Wallace - 2008 - In Dean Rickles (ed.), The Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics. Ashgate.
    This is a preliminary version of an article to appear in the forthcoming Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics.In it, I aim to review, in a way accessible to foundationally interested physicists as well as physics-informed philosophers, just where we have got to in the quest for a solution to the measurement problem. I don't advocate any particular approach to the measurement problem (not here, at any rate!) but I do focus on the importance of decoherence theory to (...)
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  • Notions of Cause: Russell’s Thesis Revisited.Don Ross & David Spurrett - 2007 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (1):45-76.
    We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In showing how to recover an approximation to Russell's conclusion (...)
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  • Emergence and reduction: Reply to Kim.Ausonio Marras - 2006 - Synthese 151 (3):561-569.
    In this paper I examine Jaegwon Kim’s view that emergent properties are irreducible to the base properties on which they supervene. Kim’s view assumes a model of ‘functional reduction’ which he claims to be substantially different from the traditional Nagelian model. I dispute this claim and argue that the two models are only superficially different, and that on either model, properly understood, it is possible to draw a distinction between a property’s being reductively identifiable with its base property and a (...)
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  • Embedded cognition and mental causation: Setting empirical Bounds on metaphysics. [REVIEW]Fred Keijzer & Maurice Schouten - 2007 - Synthese 158 (1):109 - 125.
    We argue that embedded cognition provides an argument against Jaegwon Kim’s neural reduction of mental causation. Because some mental, or at least psychological processes have to be cast in an externalist way, Kim’s argument can be said to lead to the conclusion that mental causation is as safe as any other form of higher-level of causation.
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  • Really Real Patterns.Tyler Millhouse - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (4):664-678.
    Dennett [1991] proposes a novel ontological account of the propositional attitudes—real patterns. Despite its name, the degree to which this account is committed to realism remains unclear. In this paper, I propose an alternative criterion of pattern instantiation, one that assesses the difficultly of faithfully interpreting a physical system as instantiating a particular pattern. Drawing on formal measures of simplicity and similarity, I argue that, for well-instantiated patterns, our interpretation will be computable by using a short program. This approach preserves (...)
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  • A (Meta)Metafísica da Ciência: O Caso da Mec'nica Qu'ntica Não Relativista.Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo & Jonas R. Becker Arenhart - 2022 - Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 63 (152):275-296.
    ABSTRACT Traditionally, being a realist about something means believing in the independent existence of that something. In this line of thought, a scientific realist is someone who believes in the objective existence of the entities postulated by our best scientific theories. In metaphysical terms, what does that mean? In ontological terms, i.e., in terms of what exists, scientific realism can be understood as involving the adoption of a scientifically informed ontology. But according to some philosophers, a realistic attitude must go (...)
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  • (1 other version)The ant colony as a test for scientific theories of consciousness.Daniel A. Friedman & Eirik Søvik - 2021 - Synthese 198 (2):1457-1480.
    The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...)
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  • The (meta)metaphysics of science: the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanics.Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo & Jonas R. B. Arenhart - 2022 - Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy 63 (152):275-296.
    Traditionally, being a realist about something means believing in the independent existence of that something. In this line of thought, a scientific realist is someone who believes in the objective existence of the entities postulated by our best scientific theories. In metaphysical terms, what does that mean? In ontological terms, i.e., in terms of what exists, scientific realism can be understood as involving the adoption of a scientifically informed ontology. But according to some philosophers, a realistic attitude must go beyond (...)
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  • The spectrum of metametaphysics: mapping the state of art in scientific metaphysics.Jonas R. Becker Arenhart & Raoni Wohnrath Arroyo - 2021 - Veritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 66 (1):e41217.
    Scientific realism is typically associated with metaphysics. One current incarnation of such an association concerns the requirement of a metaphysical characterization of the entities one is being a realist about. This is sometimes called “Chakravartty’s Challenge”, and codifies the claim that without a metaphysical characterization, one does not have a clear picture of the realistic commitments one is engaged with. The required connection between metaphysics and science naturally raises the question of whether such a demand is appropriately fulfilled, and how (...)
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  • Can predictive processing explain self-deception?Marko Jurjako - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-20.
    The prediction error minimization framework denotes a family of views that aim at providing a unified theory of perception, cognition, and action. In this paper, I discuss some of the theoretical limitations of PEM. It appears that PEM cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of motivated reasoning, as instantiated in phenomena such as self-deception, because its cognitive ontology does not have a separate category for motivational states such as desires. However, it might be thought that this objection confuses levels of explanation. (...)
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  • Compressibility and the Reality of Patterns.Tyler Millhouse - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (1):22-43.
    Daniel Dennett distinguishes real patterns from bogus patterns by appeal to compressibility. As information theorists have shown, data are compressible if and only if those data exhibit a pattern....
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  • Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience.Bernard Feltz, Marcus Missal & Andrew Sims (eds.) - 2019 - Leiden: Brill.
    This book aims to show that recent developments in neuroscience permit a defense of free will. Through language, human beings can escape strict biological determinism.
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  • Theoretical status of computational cognitive modeling.Ron Sun - unknown
    This article explores the view that computational models of cognition may constitute valid theories of cognition, often in the full sense of the term ‘‘theory”. In this discussion, this article examines various (existent or possible) positions on this issue and argues in favor of the view above. It also connects this issue with a number of other relevant issues, such as the general relationship between theory and data, the validation of models, and the practical benefits of computational modeling. All the (...)
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  • Solving the measurement problem: De broglie-Bohm loses out to Everett. [REVIEW]Harvey R. Brown & David Wallace - 2004 - Foundations of Physics 35 (4):517-540.
    The quantum theory of de Broglie and Bohm solves the measurement problem, but the hypothetical corpuscles play no role in the argument. The solution finds a more natural home in the Everett interpretation.
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  • Collective Belief Defended.Michael G. Bruno & J. M. Fritzman - 2020 - Social Epistemology 35 (1):48-66.
    We evaluate several significant objections to the possibility of group belief. These incredulity objections urge that the very concept of group belief is suspect or incoherent. Although many other...
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  • Choosing between the long and short informational routes to psychological explanation.Marc Champagne - 2013 - Philosophical Psychology 26 (1):129-138.
    Following recent work by Don Ross (Ross, 2000; Ross & Spurrett, 2004), I contrast the influential theories of Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland in information-theoretic terms. Dennett makes much of the fact that the morphological shorthand which emerges before a witness as she looks upon cohesive aggregates of matter commands some measure of predictive power. This, for him, speaks against eliminating recourse to an intentional vocabulary. By contrast, the eliminative materialism defended by Churchland does not gloss such informational compressibility as (...)
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  • What’s on Your Mind? A Brain Scan Won’t Tell.Yakir Levin & Itzhak Aharon - 2011 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2 (4):699-722.
    Reverse Inference ( RI ) is an imaging-based type of inference from brain states to mental states, which has become highly widespread in neuroscience, most especially in neuroeconomics. Recent critical studies of RI may be taken to show that, if cautiously used, RI can help achieve research goals that may be difficult to achieve by way of behavior-based procedures alone. But can RI exceed the limits of these procedures and achieve research goals that are impossible for them to achieve alone? (...)
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  • Biological and Physicochemical Explanations in Experimental Biology.William A. Rottschaefer - 2008 - Biological Theory 3 (4):380-390.
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  • Building low level causation out of high level causation.Samuel Lee - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):9927-9955.
    I argue that high level causal relationships are often more fundamental than low level causal relationships. My argument is based on some general principles governing when one causal relationship will metaphysically ground another—a phenomenon I term derivative causation. These principles are in turn based partly on our intuitive judgments concerning derivative causation in a series of representative examples, and partly on some powerful theoretical considerations in their favour. I show how these principles entail that low level causation can derive from (...)
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  • New functionalism and the social and behavioral sciences.Lukas Beck & James D. Grayot - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-28.
    Functionalism about kinds is still the dominant style of thought in the special sciences, like economics, psychology, and biology. Generally construed, functionalism is the view that states or processes can be individuated based on what role they play rather than what they are constituted of or realized by. Recently, Weiskopf has posited a reformulation of functionalism on the model-based approach to explanation. We refer to this reformulation as ‘new functionalism’. In this paper, we seek to defend new functionalism and to (...)
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  • Saunders and Wallace reply.Simon Saunders & David Wallace - 2008 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3):315-317.
    A reply to a comment by Paul Tappenden (BJPS 59 (2008) pp. 307-314) on S. Saunders and D. Wallace, "Branching and Uncertainty" (BJPS 59 (2008) pp. 298-306).
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