Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Emerging from the causal drain.Richard Corry - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 165 (1):29-47.
    For over 20 years, Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument has stood as the major hurdle for non-reductive physicalism. If successful, Kim’s argument would show that the high-level properties posited by non-reductive physicalists must either be identical with lower-level physical properties, or else must be causally inert. The most prominent objection to the Causal Exclusion Argument—the so-called Overdetermination Objection—points out that there are some notions of causation that are left untouched by the argument. If causation is simply counterfactual dependence, for example, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Pluralism or unity in biology: could microbes hold the secret to life?Carol E. Cleland - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (2):189-204.
    Pluralism is popular among philosophers of biology. This essay argues that negative judgments about universal biology, while understandable, are very premature. Familiar life on Earth represents a single example of life and, most importantly, there are empirical as well as theoretical reasons for suspecting that it may be unrepresentative. Scientifically compelling generalizations about the unity of life must await the discovery of forms of life descended from an alternative origin, the most promising candidate being the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Nonetheless, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Reducing the dauer larva: molecular models of biological phenomena in Caenorhabditis elegans research.Michal Arciszewski - 2013 - Synthese 190 (18):4155-4179.
    One important aspect of biological explanation is detailed causal modeling of particular phenomena in limited experimental background conditions. Recognising this allows one to appreciate that a sufficient condition for a reduction in biology is a molecular model of (1) only the demonstrated causal parameters of a biological model and (2) only within a replicable experimental background. These identities—which are ubiquitous in biology and form the basis of ruthless reductions (Bickle, Philosophy and neuroscience: a ruthlessly reductive account, 2003)—are criticised as merely (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Science without reduction.Helmut F. Spinner - 1973 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 16 (1-4):16 – 94.
    The aim of this essay is a criticism of reductionism ? both in its ?static? interpretation (usually referred to as the layer model or level?picture of science) and in its ?dynamic? interpretation (as a theory of the growth of scientific knowledge), with emphasis on the latter ? from the point of view of Popperian fallibilism and Feyerabendian pluralism, but without being committed to the idiosyncrasies of these standpoints. In both aspects of criticism, the rejection is based on the proposal of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Theory structure, reduction, and disciplinary integration in biology.Kenneth F. Schaffner - 1993 - Biology and Philosophy 8 (3):319-347.
    This paper examines the nature of theory structure in biology and considers the implications of those theoretical structures for theory reduction. An account of biological theories as interlevel prototypes embodying causal sequences, and related to each other by strong analogies, is presented, and examples from the neurosciences are provided to illustrate these middle-range theories. I then go on to discuss several modifications of Nagel''s classical model of theory reduction, and indicate at what stages in the development of reductions these models (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Models of reduction and categories of reductionism.Sahotra Sarkar - 1992 - Synthese 91 (3):167-94.
    A classification of models of reduction into three categories — theory reductionism, explanatory reductionism, and constitutive reductionism — is presented. It is shown that this classification helps clarify the relations between various explications of reduction that have been offered in the past, especially if a distinction is maintained between the various epistemological and ontological issues that arise. A relatively new model of explanatory reduction, one that emphasizes that reduction is the explanation of a whole in terms of its parts is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   66 citations