Results for 'Chris Mcconville'

304 found
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  1. Fittingness: A User’s Guide.Chris Howard & Rach Cosker-Rowland - 2023 - In Chris Howard & Rach Cosker-Rowland (eds.), Fittingness. OUP.
    The chapter introduces and characterizes the notion of fittingness. It charts the history of the relation and its relevance to contemporary debates in normative and metanormative philosophy and proceeds to survey issues to do with fittingness covered in the volume’s chapters, including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relations between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of issues to (...)
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  2. When Transmission Fails.Chris Tucker - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (4):497-529.
    The Neo-Moorean Deduction (I have a hand, so I am not a brain-in-a-vat) and the Zebra Deduction (the creature is a zebra, so isn’t a cleverly disguised mule) are notorious. Crispin Wright, Martin Davies, Fred Dretske, and Brian McLaughlin, among others, argue that these deductions are instances of transmission failure. That is, they argue that these deductions cannot transmit justification to their conclusions. I contend, however, that the notoriety of these deductions is undeserved. My strategy is to clarify, attack, defend, (...)
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  3. Time travel and time machines.Chris Smeenk & Christian Wuthrich - 2011 - In Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press. pp. 577-630.
    This paper is an enquiry into the logical, metaphysical, and physical possibility of time travel understood in the sense of the existence of closed worldlines that can be traced out by physical objects. We argue that none of the purported paradoxes rule out time travel either on grounds of logic or metaphysics. More relevantly, modern spacetime theories such as general relativity seem to permit models that feature closed worldlines. We discuss, in the context of Gödel's infamous argument for the ideality (...)
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  4. (2 other versions)Seemings and Justification: An Introduction.Chris Tucker - 2013 - In Seemings and Justification: New Essays on Dogmatism and Phenomenal Conservatism. New York: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 1-29.
    It is natural to think that many of our beliefs are rational because they are based on seemings, or on the way things seem. This is especially clear in the case of perception. Many of our mathematical, moral, and memory beliefs also appear to be based on seemings. In each of these cases, it is natural to think that our beliefs are not only based on a seeming, but also that they are rationally based on these seemings—at least assuming there (...)
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  5. Parity, moral options, and the weights of reasons.Chris Tucker - 2022 - Noûs 57 (2):454-480.
    The (moral) permissibility of an act is determined by the relative weights of reasons, or so I assume. But how many weights does a reason have? Weight Monism is the idea that reasons have a single weight value. There is just the weight of reasons. The simplest versions hold that the weight of each reason is either weightier than, less weighty than, or equal to every other reason. We’ll see that this simple view leads to paradox in at least two (...)
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  6. Philosophy of Cosmology.Chris Smeenk - 2013 - In Robert Batterman (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Physics. Oxford University Press USA. pp. 607-652.
    This chapter addresses philosophical questions raised in contemporary work on cosmology. It provides an overview of the Standard Model for cosmology and argues that its deficiency in addressing theories regarding the very early universe can be resolved by introducing a dynamical phase of evolution that eliminates the need for a special initial state. The chapter also discusses recent hypotheses about dark matter and energy, issues that it relates to philosophical debates about underdetermination.
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  7. How ontology might be possible: Explanation and inference in metaphysics.Chris Swoyer - 1999 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23 (1):100–131.
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  8. Withhold by Default: A Difference Between Epistemic and Practical Rationality.Chris Tucker - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-24.
    It may seem that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons differently, because ties in practical rationality tend to generate permissions and ties in epistemic rationality tend to generate a requirement to withhold judgment. I argue that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons in the same way, but they have different "default biases". Practical rationality is biased toward every option being permissible whereas epistemic rationality is biased toward withholding judgment's being required.
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  9. Dogmatic Withholding: Confessions of a Serial Offender.Chris Tucker - forthcoming - In Alexandra Zinke & Verena Wagner (eds.), Suspension in Epistemology and Beyond. Routledge.
    This chapter provides an account of what dogmatism is, why the term matters, and how it applies to withholding judgment. Roughly, a person is dogmatic about P when a certain problematic personal investment—a superiority complex, broadly construed—biases their judgment concerning whether P. The term dogmatism and its cognates matter because of their social function. To accuse you of dogmatism is to signal how you are to be treated: your judgment or behavior needs to be “brought down to earth,” so that (...)
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  10. The dual scale model of weighing reasons.Chris Tucker - 2021 - Noûs 56 (2):366-392.
    The metaphor of weighing reasons brings to mind a single (double-pan balance) scale. The reasons for φ go in one pan and the reasons for ~φ go in the other. The relative weights, as indicated by the relative heights of the two pans of the scale, determine the deontic status of φ. This model is simple and intuitive, but it cannot capture what it is to weigh reasons correctly. A reason pushes the φ pan down toward permissibility (has justifying weight) (...)
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  11. A Holist Balance Scale.Chris Tucker - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (3):533-553.
    Scale-based models of weighing reasons face challenges concerning the context sensitivity of weight, the aggregation of weight, and the methodology for determining what the weights of reasons are. I resolve these challenges.
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  12. (1 other version)Phenomenal conservatism and evidentialism in religious epistemology.Chris Tucker - 2011 - In Raymond VanArragon & Kelly James Clark (eds.), Evidence and Religious Belief. Oxford, US: Oxford University Press. pp. 52--73.
    Phenomenal conservatism holds, roughly, that if it seems to S that P, then S has evidence for P. I argue for two main conclusions. The first is that phenomenal conservatism is better suited than is proper functionalism to explain how a particular type of religious belief formation can lead to non-inferentially justified religious beliefs. The second is that phenomenal conservatism makes evidence so easy to obtain that the truth of evidentialism would not be a significant obstacle to justified religious belief. (...)
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  13. If Dogmatists Have a Problem with Cognitive Penetration, You Do Too.Chris Tucker - 2014 - Dialectica 68 (1):35-62.
    Perceptual dogmatism holds that if it perceptually seems to S that P, then S thereby has prima facie perceptual justification for P. But suppose Wishful Willy's desire for gold cognitively penetrates his perceptual experience and makes it seem to him that the yellow object is a gold nugget. Intuitively, his desire-penetrated seeming can't provide him with prima facie justification for thinking that the object is gold. If this intuitive response is correct, dogmatists have a problem. But if dogmatists have a (...)
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  14. Kant’s Postulate of the Immortality of the Soul.Chris W. Surprenant - 2008 - International Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1):85-98.
    In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant grounds his postulate for the immortality of the soul on the presupposed practical necessity of the will’s endless progress toward complete conformity with the moral law. Given the important role that this postulate plays in Kant’s ethical and political philosophy, it is hard to understand why it has received relatively little attention. It is even more surprising considering the attention given to his other postulates of practical reason: the existence of God and freedom. (...)
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  15. Dignity-enhancing nursing care.Chris Gastmans - 2013 - Nursing Ethics 20 (2):142-149.
    Starting from two observations regarding nursing ethics research in the past two decades, namely, the dominant influence of both the empirical methods and the principles approach, we present the cornerstones of a foundational argument-based nursing ethics framework. First, we briefly outline the general philosophical–ethical background from which we develop our framework. This is based on three aspects: lived experience, interpretative dialogue, and normative standard. Against this background, we identify and explore three key concepts—vulnerability, care, and dignity—that must be observed in (...)
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  16. Acquaintance and Fallible Non-Inferential Justification.Chris Tucker - 2016 - In Brett Coppenger & Michael Bergmann (eds.), Intellectual Assurance: Essays on Traditional Epistemic Internalism. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 43-60.
    Classical acquaintance theory is any version of classical foundationalism that appeals to acquaintance in order to account for non-inferential justification. Such theories are well suited to account for a kind of infallible non-inferential justification. Why am I justified in believing that I’m in pain? An initially attractive (partial) answer is that I’m acquainted with my pain. But since I can’t be acquainted with what isn’t there, acquaintance with my pain guarantees that I’m in pain. What’s less clear is whether, given (...)
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  17. Propositions and Parthood: The Universe and Anti-Symmetry.Chris Tillman & Gregory Fowler - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3):525 - 539.
    It is plausible that the universe exists: a thing such that absolutely everything is a part of it. It is also plausible that singular, structured propositions exist: propositions that literally have individuals as parts. Furthermore, it is plausible that for each thing, there is a singular, structured proposition that has it as a part. Finally, it is plausible that parthood is a partial ordering: reflexive, transitive, and anti-symmetric. These plausible claims cannot all be correct. We canvass some costs of denying (...)
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  18. The Elusive Higgs Mechanism.Chris Smeenk - 2006 - Philosophy of Science 73 (5):487-499.
    The Higgs mechanism is an essential but elusive component of the Standard Model of particle physics. Without it Yang‐Mills gauge theories would have been little more than a warm‐up exercise in the attempt to quantize gravity rather than serving as the basis for the Standard Model. This article focuses on two problems related to the Higgs mechanism clearly posed in Earman’s recent papers (Earman 2003, 2004a, 2004b): what is the gauge‐invariant content of the Higgs mechanism, and what does it mean (...)
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  19.  70
    Inflation and the Origins of Structure.Chris Smeenk - 2018 - In David E. Rowe, Tilman Sauer & Scott A. Walter (eds.), Beyond Einstein: Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation, and Cosmology in the Twentieth Century. New York, USA: Springer New York. pp. 205-241.
    Guth provided a persuasive rationale for inflationary cosmology based on its ability to solve fine-tuning problems of big bang cosmology. Yet one of the most important consequences of inflation was only widely recognized a few years later: inflation provides a mechanism for generating small departures from uniformity, needed to seed formation of subsequent structures, by “freezing out” vacuum fluctuations to form classical density perturbations. This paper recounts the historical development of this aspect of inflation and puts it in context of (...)
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  20. Satisficing and Motivated Submaximization (in the Philosophy of Religion).Chris Tucker - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (1):127-143.
    In replying to certain objections to the existence of God, Robert Adams, Bruce Langtry, and Peter van Inwagen assume that God can appropriately choose a suboptimal world, a world less good than some other world God could have chosen. A number of philosophers, such as Michael Slote and Klaas Kraay, claim that these theistic replies are therefore committed to the claim that satisficing can be appropriate. Kraay argues that this commitment is a significant liability. I argue, however, that the relevant (...)
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  21. Predictability crisis in early universe cosmology.Chris Smeenk - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 46 (PA):122-133.
    Inflationary cosmology has been widely accepted due to its successful predictions: for a “generic” initial state, inflation produces a homogeneous, flat, bubble with an appropriate spectrum of density perturbations. However, the discovery that inflation is “generically eternal,” leading to a vast multiverse of inflationary bubbles with different low-energy physics, threatens to undermine this account. There is a “predictability crisis” in eternal inflation, because extracting predictions apparently requires a well-defined measure over the multiverse. This has led to discussions of anthropic predictions (...)
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  22. Defusing the Common Sense Problem of Evil.Chris Tweedt - 2015 - Faith and Philosophy 32 (4):391-403.
    The inductive argument from evil to the non-existence of God contains the premise that, probably, there is gratuitous evil. Some skeptical theists object: one's justification for the premise that, probably, there is gratuitous evil involves an inference from the proposition that we don't see a good reason for some evil to the proposition that it appears that there is no good reason for that evil, and they use a principle, "CORNEA," to block that inference. The common sense problem of evil (...)
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  23. Too far beyond the call of duty: moral rationalism and weighing reasons.Chris Tucker - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (6):2029-2052.
    The standard account of supererogation holds that Liv is not morally required to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing her life, to save the lives of five soldiers. Many proponents defend the standard account by appealing to moral rationalism about requirement. These same proponents hold that Bernie is morally permitted to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing his life, to spare someone a mild burn. I argue that this position is unstable, at least as moral rationalism is ordinarily defended. The (...)
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  24. Weighing Reasons Against.Chris Tucker - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaethics.
    Ethicists increasingly reject the scale as a useful metaphor for weighing reasons. Yet they generally retain the metaphor of a reason’s weight. This combination is incoherent. The metaphor of weight entails a very specific scale-based model of weighing reasons, Dual Scale. Justin Snedegar worries that scale-based models of weighing reasons can’t properly weigh reasons against an option. I show that there are, in fact, two different reasons for/against distinctions, and I provide an account of the relationship between the various kinds (...)
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  25. International Right and Kant's World Federation.Chris Melenovsky - manuscript
    Recent interpretations of Kant’s international political philosophy have argued that the formation of a coercive world-state (Völkerstaat) is morally required. While these interpretations highlight the importance of a strong world government, they ignore Kant’s alternative to a Völkerstaat, a world-federation (Völkerbund). For both theoretical and practical reasons, the Völkerbund plays a crucial role in cosmopolitan right, and Kant can only justifiably reject the formation of the Völkerstaat because of the structure of the Völkerbund. This article explains the constitution and functions (...)
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  26.  97
    Trouble with Hubble: Status of the Big Bang Models.Chris Smeenk - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):1265-1274.
    Cosmologists take the $\Lambda$CDM model to be a permanent contribution to our knowledge of the universe, based on the success of precision cosmology. Consistent, independent determinations of the parameters in this model encourage physicists to take it seriously. This stance incurs an obligation to resolve any discrepancies by reanalyzing measurements or adding further complexity. Recent observations in cosmology indicate a tension between “local” and “global” determinations of the Hubble constant. Here I argue that this tension illustrates one of the benefits (...)
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  27. Divine Satisficing and the Ethics of the Problem of Evil.Chris Tucker - 2020 - Faith and Philosophy 37 (1):32-56.
    This paper accomplishes three goals. First, it reveals that God’s ethics has a radical satisficing structure: God can choose a good enough suboptimal option even if there is a best option and no countervailing considerations. Second, it resolves the long-standing worry that there is no account of the good enough that is both principled and demanding enough to be good enough. Third, it vindicates the key ethical assumption in the problem of evil without relying on the contested assumption that God’s (...)
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  28. There is no measurement problem for Humeans.Chris Dorst - 2021 - Noûs 57 (2):263-289.
    The measurement problem concerns an apparent conflict between the two fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, namely the Schrödinger equation and the measurement postulate. These principles describe inconsistent behavior for quantum systems in so-called "measurement contexts." Many theorists have thought that the measurement problem can only be resolved by proposing a mechanistic explanation of (genuine or apparent) wavefunction collapse that avoids explicit reference to "measurement." However, I argue here that the measurement problem dissolves if we accept Humeanism about laws of nature. (...)
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  29. Fairness, Free-Riding and Rainforest Protection.Chris Armstrong - 2016 - Political Theory 44 (1):106-130.
    If dangerous climate change is to be avoided, it is vital that carbon sinks such as tropical rainforests are protected. But protecting them has costs. These include opportunity costs: the potential economic benefits which those who currently control rainforests have to give up when they are protected. But who should bear those costs? Should countries which happen to have rainforests within their territories sacrifice their own economic development, because of our broader global interests in protecting key carbon sinks? This essay (...)
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  30. Philosophy of Psychedelics.Chris Letheby - 2021 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by "mystical" experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about (...)
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  31. Supererogatory Duties and Caregiver Heroic Testimony.Chris Weigel - 2023 - Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 9 (1).
    The sacrifices of nurses in hard-hit cities during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and of family caregivers for people with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease present two puzzles. First, traditional accounts of supererogation cannot allow for the possibility of making enormous sacrifices that make one’s actions supererogatory simply to do what morality requires. These caregivers, however, are doing their moral duty, yet their actions also seem to be paradigmatic cases of supererogation. I argue that Dale Dorsey’s new account of supererogation (...)
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  32. (1 other version)Time in Cosmology.Chris Smeenk - 2013 - In Adrian Bardon & Heather Dyke (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Time. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 201-219.
    This essay aims to provide a self-contained introduction to time in relativistic cosmology that clarifies both how questions about the nature of time should be posed in this setting and the extent to which they have been or can be answered empirically. The first section below recounts the loss of Newtonian absolute time with the advent of special and general relativity, and the partial recovery of absolute time in the form of cosmic time in some cosmological models. Section II considers (...)
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  33. Self unbound: ego dissolution in psychedelic experience.Chris Letheby & Philip Gerrans - 2017 - Neuroscience of Consciousness 3:1-11.
    Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ‘I’ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ‘ego dissolution’ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which representations are bound. (...)
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  34. Luck, Propositional Perception, and the Entailment Thesis.Chris Ranalli - 2014 - Synthese 191 (6):1223-1247.
    Looking out the window, I see that it's raining outside. Do I know that it’s raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell 2002, Turri 2010, Pritchard 2011, 2012) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can see p and not (...)
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  35. Natural Resources: The Demands of Equality.Chris Armstrong - 2013 - Journal of Social Philosophy 44 (4):331-347.
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  36. False Vacuum: Early Universe Cosmology and the Development of Inflation.Chris Smeenk - 2005 - In Eisenstaedt Jean & Knox A. J. (eds.), The Universe of General Relativity. Birkhauser. pp. 223-257.
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  37. Newton's Principia.Chris Smeenk & Eric Schliesser - 2013 - In Jed Z. Buchwald & Robert Fox (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of physics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 109-165.
    The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader. While the core thread remains the theories and experimental practices of physics, the Handbook contains (...)
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  38. Experience as evidence.Chris Tucker - 2024 - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence. New York, NY: Routledge.
    This chapter explores whether and when experience can be evidence. It argues that experiences can be evidence, and that this claim is compatible with just about any epistemological theory. It evaluates the most promising argument for the conclusion that certain experiences (e.g., seeming to see) are always evidence for believing what the experiences represent. While the argument is very promising, one premise needs further defense. The argument also depends on a certain connection between reasonable belief and the first person perspective.
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  39. Promoting coherent minimum reporting guidelines for biological and biomedical investigations: the MIBBI project.Chris F. Taylor, Dawn Field, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Jan Aerts, Rolf Apweiler, Michael Ashburner, Catherine A. Ball, Pierre-Alain Binz, Molly Bogue, Tim Booth, Alvis Brazma, Ryan R. Brinkman, Adam Michael Clark, Eric W. Deutsch, Oliver Fiehn, Jennifer Fostel, Peter Ghazal, Frank Gibson, Tanya Gray, Graeme Grimes, John M. Hancock, Nigel W. Hardy, Henning Hermjakob, Randall K. Julian, Matthew Kane, Carsten Kettner, Christopher Kinsinger, Eugene Kolker, Martin Kuiper, Nicolas Le Novere, Jim Leebens-Mack, Suzanna E. Lewis, Phillip Lord, Ann-Marie Mallon, Nishanth Marthandan, Hiroshi Masuya, Ruth McNally, Alexander Mehrle, Norman Morrison, Sandra Orchard, John Quackenbush, James M. Reecy, Donald G. Robertson, Philippe Rocca-Serra, Henry Rodriguez, Heiko Rosenfelder, Javier Santoyo-Lopez, Richard H. Scheuermann, Daniel Schober, Barry Smith & Jason Snape - 2008 - Nature Biotechnology 26 (8):889-896.
    Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...)
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  40.  77
    Validating the Universe in a Box.Chris Smeenk & Sarah C. Gallagher - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (5):1221-1233.
    Computer simulations of the formation and evolution of large-scale structure in the universe are integral to the enterprise of modern cosmology. Establishing the reliability of these simulations has been extremely challenging, primarily because of epistemic opacity. In this setting, robustness analysis defined by requiring converging outputs from a diverse ensemble of simulations is insufficient to determine simulation validity. We propose an alternative path of structured code validation that applies eliminative reasoning to isolate and reduce possible sources of error, a potential (...)
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  41. Absolute Identity and the Trinity.Chris Tweedt - 2023 - Religious Studies 59 (1):34-54.
    Trinitarians are charged with at least two contradictions. First, the Father is God and the Son is God, so it seems to follow that the Father is the Son. Trinitarians affirm the premises but deny the conclusion, which seems contradictory. Second, the Father is a God, the Son is a God, and the Holy Spirit is a God, but the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit. This (...)
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  42. Parity, Pluralism, and Permissible Partiality.Chris Tucker - forthcoming - In Eric Siverman (ed.), Virtuous and Vicious Expressions of Partiality. Routledge.
    We can often permissibly choose a worse self-interested option over a better altruistic alternative. For example, it is permissible to eat out rather than donate the money to feed five hungry children for a single meal. If we eat out, we do something permissibly partial toward ourselves. If we donate, we go beyond the call of moral duty and do something supererogatory. Such phenomena aren’t easy to explain, and they rule out otherwise promising moral theories. Incommensurability and Ruth Chang’s notion (...)
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  43. Humean laws, explanatory circularity, and the aim of scientific explanation.Chris Dorst - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (10):2657-2679.
    One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises if we fail to (...)
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  44. The problem is not runaway climate change. The problem is us.Chris Abel - 2023 - Architectural Research Quarterly 27 (1):79-84.
    Given the irrationality and failures of human behaviour in the face of ecocide, the majority of humankind appears either unable or unwilling to change self-destructive ways of life. Rejecting common accounts, the author suggests that the reasons for our stubborn resistance to change go well beyond cognitive dissonance or any standard political and economic explanations. Nor is the answer to be found in human history alone. The driving forces underlying that resistance, the author argues, originate far back in evolutionary time (...)
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  45. Solving the Problem of Nearly Convergent Knowledge.Chris Tweedt - 2018 - Social Epistemology 32 (4):219-227.
    The Problem of Nearly Convergent Knowledge is an updated and stronger version of the Problem of Convergent Knowledge, which presents a problem for the traditional, binary view of knowledge in which knowledge is a two-place relation between a subject and the known proposition. The problem supports Knowledge Contrastivism, the view that knowledge is a three-place relation between a subject, the known proposition, and a proposition that disjoins the alternatives relevant to what the subject knows. For example, if knowledge is contrastive, (...)
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  46. The All or Nothing Ranking Reversal and the Unity of Morality.Chris Tucker - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics.
    Supererogatory acts are, in some sense, morally better their non-supererogatory alternatives. In this sense, what is it for one option A to be better than an alternative B? I argue for three main conclusions. First, relative rankings are a type of all-in action guidance. If A is better than B, then morality recommends that you A rather than B. Such all-in guidance is useful when acts have the same deontic status. Second, I argue that Right > Wrong: permissible acts are (...)
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  47. Exploratory hypothesis tests can be more compelling than confirmatory hypothesis tests.Mark Rubin & Chris Donkin - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology.
    Preregistration has been proposed as a useful method for making a publicly verifiable distinction between confirmatory hypothesis tests, which involve planned tests of ante hoc hypotheses, and exploratory hypothesis tests, which involve unplanned tests of post hoc hypotheses. This distinction is thought to be important because it has been proposed that confirmatory hypothesis tests provide more compelling results (less uncertain, less tentative, less open to bias) than exploratory hypothesis tests. In this article, we challenge this proposition and argue that there (...)
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  48. How to Explain Miscomputation.Chris Tucker - 2018 - Philosophers' Imprint 18:1-17.
    Just as theory of representation is deficient if it can’t explain how misrepresentation is possible, a theory of computation is deficient if it can’t explain how miscomputation is possible. Nonetheless, philosophers have generally ignored miscomputation. My primary goal in this paper is to clarify both what miscomputation is and how to adequately explain it. Miscomputation is a special kind of malfunction: a system miscomputes when it computes in a way that it shouldn’t. To explain miscomputation, you must provide accounts of (...)
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  49. Against ‘permanent sovereignty’ over natural resources.Chris Armstrong - 2015 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 14 (2):129-151.
    The doctrine of permanent sovereignty over natural resources is a hugely consequential one in the contemporary world, appearing to grant nation-states both jurisdiction-type rights and rights of ownership over the resources to be found in their territories. But the normative justification for that doctrine is far from clear. This article elucidates the best arguments that might be made for permanent sovereignty, including claims from national improvement of or attachment to resources, as well as functionalist claims linking resource rights to key (...)
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  50.  22
    The climate emergency: Reality bites!Chris Abel - 2024 - Architectural Research Quarterly 27 (4):357-361.
    This updated essay expands on the author's analysis of the complex social and psychological reasons for the inadequate response to the climate emergency. Recent reports by climate scientists quoted in the article suggest that the pace of climate change has already reached the point of irreversibility, triggering multiple tipping points with catastrophic implications for the future of life on this planet. Yet climate change denial, which as the author explains, takes many forms itself, both aggressive and passive, remains common at (...)
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