Results for 'Christopher J. O'Toole'

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  1. Benedict, Thomas, or Augustine?: The Character of MacIntyre’s Narrative.Christopher J. Thompson - 1995 - The Thomist 59 (3):379-407.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BENEDICT, THOMAS, OR AUGUSTINE? THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE CHRISTOPHER J. THOMPSON University of St. Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota Introduction I N HIS Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry1 Alasdair Macintyre continues (with certain modifications) in a similar trajectory established in two earlier works, After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Against postEnlightenment portraits of moral reasoning, he consistently defends a conception of practical rationality which entails the (...)
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  2. Ontologies as Integrative Tools for Plant Science.Ramona Walls, Balaji Athreya, Laurel Cooper, Justin Elser, Maria A. Gandolfo, Pankaj Jaiswal, Christopher J. Mungall, Justin Preece, Stefan Rensing, Barry Smith & Dennis W. Stevenson - 2012 - American Journal of Botany 99 (8):1263–1275.
    Bio-ontologies are essential tools for accessing and analyzing the rapidly growing pool of plant genomic and phenomic data. Ontologies provide structured vocabularies to support consistent aggregation of data and a semantic framework for automated analyses and reasoning. They are a key component of the Semantic Web. This paper provides background on what bio-ontologies are, why they are relevant to botany, and the principles of ontology development. It includes an overview of ontologies and related resources that are relevant to plant science, (...)
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  3. Development of reaching to the body in early infancy: From experiments to robotic models.Matej Hoffmann, Lisa K. Chinn, Eszter Somogyi, Tobias Heed, Jacqueline Fagard, Jeffrey J. Lockman & Kevin J. O'Regan - 2017 - In Matej Hoffmann, Lisa K. Chinn, Eszter Somogyi, Tobias Heed, Jacqueline Fagard, Jeffrey J. Lockman & Kevin J. O'Regan (eds.), 2017 Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL-EpiRob). IEEE. pp. 112-119.
    We have been observing how infants between 3 and 21 months react when a vibrotactile stimulation (a buzzer) is applied to different parts of their bodies. Responses included in particular movement of the stimulated body part and successful reaching for and removal of the buzzer. Overall, there is a pronounced developmental progression from general to specific movement patterns, especially in the first year. In this article we review the series of studies we conducted and then focus on possible mechanisms that (...)
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  4. What You Believe Travels Differently: Information and Infection Dynamics Across Sub-Networks.Patrick Grim, Christopher Reade, Daniel J. Singer, Stephen Fisher & Stephen Majewicz - 2010 - Connections 30:50-63.
    In order to understand the transmission of a disease across a population we will have to understand not only the dynamics of contact infection but the transfer of health-care beliefs and resulting health-care behaviors across that population. This paper is a first step in that direction, focusing on the contrasting role of linkage or isolation between sub-networks in (a) contact infection and (b) belief transfer. Using both analytical tools and agent-based simulations we show that it is the structure of a (...)
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  5. Strategic Flexibility and Its Relationship to the Level of Quality of Services Provided in Non-Governmental Hospitals.Zahi O. Abu-Nahel, Wafiq H. Alagha, Mazen J. Al Shobaki, Samy S. Abu-Naser & Suliman A. El Talla - 2020 - International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research (IJAMR) 4 (10):57-84.
    Abstract: The study aimed to determine the strategic flexibility and its relationship to the level of quality of services provided, from the viewpoint of the internal beneficiary in non-governmental hospitals in Gaza Strip. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, and the questionnaire was designed as a tool to collect data and consisted of (39) items, and the researchers used the comprehensive survey method, and the number of the study population was (536) individuals, where (434) questionnaires were retrieved, (...)
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  6. Responsive Flexibility and Its Role in Improving Service Quality in Non-Governmental Hospitals.Zahi O. Abu-Nahel, Mazen J. Al Shobaki, Samy S. Abu-Naser & Suliman A. El Talla - 2020 - International Journal of Academic Accounting, Finance and Management Research (IJAAFMR) 4 (9):38-61.
    The study aimed at identifying responsive flexibility and its role in improving service quality, from the point of view of the internal beneficiary in non-governmental hospitals in Gaza Strip. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, and the questionnaire was designed as a tool to collect data, and the researchers used the comprehensive survey method, and the number of the study population was (536) single, where (434) questionnaires were retrieved, and the recovery rate was (80.97%). The study showed (...)
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  7. The Reality of Decision Making in NGOs in Gaza Strip.Rasha O. Owda, Maram Owda, Mohammed N. Abed, Samia A. M. Abdalmenem, Samy S. Abu-Naser & Mazen J. Al Shobaki - 2019 - International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research (IJAMR) 3 (8):1-10.
    The study aimed to identify the reality of decision-making in the local NGOs in Gaza Strip. In order to achieve the objectives of the study and to test its hypotheses, the analytical descriptive method was used, relying on the questionnaire as a main tool for data collection. The study society was one of the decision makers in the local NGOs in Gaza Strip. The study population reached 78 local NGOs in Gaza Strip. A Census Method of the possible study community (...)
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  8. Design Thinking and Its Use in NGOs in Gaza Strip.Rasha O. Owda, Maram Owda, Mohammed N. Abed, Samia A. M. Abdalmenem, Samy S. Abu-Naser & Mazen J. Al Shobaki - 2019 - International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research (IJAMR) 3 (7):41-52.
    The study aimed to identify Design Thinking and its use in NGOs in Gaza Strip. In order to achieve the objectives of the study and to test its hypotheses, the analytical descriptive method was used, relying on the questionnaire as a main tool for data collection. The study society was one of the decision makers in the local NGOs in the Gaza Strip. The study population reached 78 local NGOs in Gaza Strip. The overall inventory of the possible study community (...)
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  9. Quality of Services and Its Role in Enhancing Strategic Flexibility in Non-Governmental Hospitals.Zahi O. Abu-Nahel, Wafiq H. Alagha, Mazen J. Al Shobaki, Samy S. Abu-Naser & Suliman A. El Talla - 2020 - International Journal of Academic Accounting, Finance and Management Research(IJAAFMR) 4 (10):38-56.
    Abstract: The study aimed to determine the quality of services and its role in enhancing strategic flexibility, from the point of view of the internal beneficiary in non-governmental hospitals in Gaza Strip. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, and the questionnaire was designed as a tool to collect data and consisted of (39) items, and the researchers used the comprehensive survey method, and the number of the study population was (536) individuals, where (434) questionnaires were retrieved, and (...)
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  10. Performance Efficiency of University Education from Students Perspective.Samia A. M. Abdalmenem, Rasha O. Owda, Amal A. Al Hila, Samy S. Abu-Naser & Mazen J. Al Shobaki - 2018 - International Journal of Engineering and Information Systems (IJEAIS) 2 (11):10-24.
    The study aims to identify the efficiency of the university education performance from the perspective of postgraduate and undergraduate students in international and Palestinian universities. The analytical descriptive approach was used for this purpose and the questionnaire was used as a main tool for data collection. The study community consists of: post graduate students, (23850) graduate students and (146355) undergraduate students. The sample of the study was 378 graduate students and 383 undergraduate students. The random stratified sample was used. The (...)
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  11. Comparing the Understanding of Subjects receiving a Candidate Malaria Vaccine in the United States and Mali.R. D. Ellis, I. Sagara, A. Durbin, A. Dicko, D. Shaffer, L. Miller, M. H. Assadou, M. Kone, B. Kamate, O. Guindo, M. P. Fay, D. A. Diallo, O. K. Doumbo, E. J. Emanuel & J. Millum - 2010 - American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 83 (4):868-72.
    Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...)
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  12. A Case Study on Computational Hermeneutics: E. J. Lowe’s Modal Ontological Argument.David Fuenmayor & Christoph Benzmueller - manuscript
    Computers may help us to better understand (not just verify) arguments. In this article we defend this claim by showcasing the application of a new, computer-assisted interpretive method to an exemplary natural-language ar- gument with strong ties to metaphysics and religion: E. J. Lowe’s modern variant of St. Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God. Our new method, which we call computational hermeneutics, has been particularly conceived for use in interactive-automated proof assistants. It aims at shedding light on the (...)
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  13. The Technologisation of the Social: A Political Anthropology of the Digital Machine.Paul O'Connor & Marius Ion Benta (eds.) - 2021 - London, UK: Routledge.
    In an era of digital revolution, artificial intelligence, big data and augmented reality, technology has shifted from being a tool of communication to a primary medium of experience and sociality. Some of the most basic human capacities are increasingly being outsourced to machines and we increasingly experience and interpret the world through digital interfaces, with machines becoming ever more ‘social’ beings. Social interaction and human perception are being reshaped in unprecedented ways. This book explores this technologisation of the social and (...)
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  14. Kim jest człowiek : Wyzwania ery cyfrowej.Piotr J. Janik - 2016 - In M. Szymczyk & R. Grzywacz (eds.), W trosce o człowieka. Paradygmaty stare i nowe. pp. 285-295.
    The issue “Human being in the digital era” is not superfluous. Every technology, i.e. literacy, print etc., gives tools, but at the same time impacts deeply human being. The article attempts to answer the following questions: what kind of change is taking place nowadays? what are the associated challenges? Is it true what Einstein once said: “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them”?
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  15. Impermissive Bayesianism.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2013 - Erkenntnis 79 (Suppl 6):1185-1217.
    This paper examines the debate between permissive and impermissive forms of Bayesianism. It briefly discusses some considerations that might be offered by both sides of the debate, and then replies to some new arguments in favor of impermissivism offered by Roger White. First, it argues that White’s (Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–186, 2010) defense of Indifference Principles is unsuccessful. Second, it contends that White’s (Philos Perspect 19:445–459, 2005) arguments against permissive views do not (...)
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  16. Philosophy of Scientific Theories. The First Essay: Names and Realities.Vladimir Kuznetsov & O. Gabovіch - 2023 - Kyiv: Naukova Dumka. Edited by Tetyana Gardashuk.
    The English Synopsis is after the text of the book. The book presents an original and generalizing substantive vision of the philosophy of science through the prism of a detailed analysis of the polysystem structure of scientific theories. Theories are considered, firstly, as complex specialized forms of developed scientific thinking about the realities studied by natural science, secondly, as constantly improving tools for producing new knowledge in interaction with experimental research, and thirdly, as carriers of ordered and verified knowledge. Emphasis (...)
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  17. The Nomic Likelihood Account of Laws.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9 (9):230-284.
    An adequate account of laws should satisfy at least five desiderata: it should provide a unified account of laws and chances, it should yield plausible relations between laws and chances, it should vindicate numerical chance assignments, it should accommodate dynamical and non-dynamical chances, and it should accommodate a plausible range of nomic possibilities. No extant account of laws satisfies these desiderata. This paper presents a non-Humean account of laws, the Nomic Likelihood Account, that does.
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  18. Contemporary Hylomorphisms: On the Matter of Form.Christopher J. Austin - 2020 - Ancient Philosophy Today 2 (2):113-144.
    As there is currently a neo-Aristotelian revival currently taking place within contemporary metaphysics and dispositions, or causal powers are now being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, more attention is beginning to be paid to a central Aristotelian concern: the metaphysics of substantial unity, and the doctrine of hylomorphism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of hylomorphism present in the contemporary literature and argue that not only does each engender unique conceptual difficulties, but neither adequately captures the (...)
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  19. Ur-Priors, Conditionalization, and Ur-Prior Conditionalization.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2016 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3.
    Conditionalization is a widely endorsed rule for updating one’s beliefs. But a sea of complaints have been raised about it, including worries regarding how the rule handles error correction, changing desiderata of theory choice, evidence loss, self-locating beliefs, learning about new theories, and confirmation. In light of such worries, a number of authors have suggested replacing Conditionalization with a different rule — one that appeals to what I’ll call “ur-priors”. But different authors have understood the rule in different ways, and (...)
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  20. Understanding Conditionalization.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (5):767-797.
    At the heart of the Bayesianism is a rule, Conditionalization, which tells us how to update our beliefs. Typical formulations of this rule are underspecified. This paper considers how, exactly, this rule should be formulated. It focuses on three issues: when a subject’s evidence is received, whether the rule prescribes sequential or interval updates, and whether the rule is narrow or wide scope. After examining these issues, it argues that there are two distinct and equally viable versions of Conditionalization to (...)
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  21. Organisms, activity, and being: on the substance of process ontology.Christopher J. Austin - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (2):1-21.
    According to contemporary ‘process ontology’, organisms are best conceptualised as spatio-temporally extended entities whose mereological composition is fundamentally contingent and whose essence consists in changeability. In contrast to the Aristotelian precepts of classical ‘substance ontology’, from the four-dimensional perspective of this framework, the identity of an organism is grounded not in certain collections of privileged properties, or features which it could not fail to possess, but in the succession of diachronic relations by which it persists, or ‘perdures’ as one entity (...)
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  22. Dispositional Properties in Evo-Devo.Christopher J. Austin & Laura Nuño de la Rosa - 2018 - In Laura Nuño de la Rosa & G. Müller (eds.), Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Springer.
    In identifying intrinsic molecular chance and extrinsic adaptive pressures as the only causally relevant factors in the process of evolution, the theoretical perspective of the Modern Synthesis had a major impact on the perceived tenability of an ontology of dispositional properties. However, since the late 1970s, an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have challenged the descriptive and explanatory adequacy of this “chance alone, extrinsic only” understanding of evolutionary change. Because morphological studies of homology, convergence, and teratology have revealed a space (...)
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  23. Arbitrariness and Uniqueness.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 102 (4):665-685.
    Evidential Uniqueness is the thesis that, for any batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that a subject with that evidence should have. One of the most common kinds of objections to views that violate Evidential Uniqueness are arbitrariness objections – objections to the effect that views that don’t satisfy Evidential Uniqueness lead to unacceptable arbitrariness. The goal of this paper is to examine a variety of arbitrariness objections that have appeared in the literature, and to assess the extent (...)
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  24. The ontology of organisms: Mechanistic modules or patterned processes?Christopher J. Austin - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (5):639-662.
    Though the realm of biology has long been under the philosophical rule of the mechanistic magisterium, recent years have seen a surprisingly steady rise in the usurping prowess of process ontology. According to its proponents, theoretical advances in the contemporary science of evo-devo have afforded that ontology a particularly powerful claim to the throne: in that increasingly empirically confirmed discipline, emergently autonomous, higher-order entities are the reigning explanantia. If we are to accept the election of evo-devo as our best conceptualisation (...)
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  25. Aristotelian Essentialism: Essence in the Age of Evolution.Christopher J. Austin - 2017 - Synthese 194 (7):2539-2556.
    The advent of contemporary evolutionary theory ushered in the eventual decline of Aristotelian Essentialism (Æ) – for it is widely assumed that essence does not, and cannot have any proper place in the age of evolution. This paper argues that this assumption is a mistake: if Æ can be suitably evolved, it need not face extinction. In it, I claim that if that theory’s fundamental ontology consists of dispositional properties, and if its characteristic metaphysical machinery is interpreted within the framework (...)
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  26. Deference and Uniqueness.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (3):709-732.
    Deference principles are principles that describe when, and to what extent, it’s rational to defer to others. Recently, some authors have used such principles to argue for Evidential Uniqueness, the claim that for every batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that it’s permissible for subjects with that total evidence to have. This paper has two aims. The first aim is to assess these deference-based arguments for Evidential Uniqueness. I’ll show that these arguments only work given a particular kind (...)
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  27. Too much of a good thing: decision-making in cases with infinitely many utility contributions.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7309-7349.
    Theories that use expected utility maximization to evaluate acts have difficulty handling cases with infinitely many utility contributions. In this paper I present and motivate a way of modifying such theories to deal with these cases, employing what I call “Direct Difference Taking”. This proposal has a number of desirable features: it’s natural and well-motivated, it satisfies natural dominance intuitions, and it yields plausible prescriptions in a wide range of cases. I then compare my account to the most plausible alternative, (...)
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  28. Can All-Accuracy Accounts Justify Evidential Norms?Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2018 - In Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij & Jeff Dunn (eds.), Epistemic Consequentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Some of the most interesting recent work in formal epistemology has focused on developing accuracy-based approaches to justifying Bayesian norms. These approaches are interesting not only because they offer new ways to justify these norms, but because they potentially offer a way to justify all of these norms by appeal to a single, attractive epistemic goal: having accurate beliefs. Recently, Easwaran & Fitelson (2012) have raised worries regarding whether such “all-accuracy” or “purely alethic” approaches can accommodate and justify evidential Bayesian (...)
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  29. Evo-devo: a science of dispositions.Christopher J. Austin - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 7 (2):373-389.
    Evolutionary developmental biology represents a paradigm shift in the understanding of the ontogenesis and evolutionary progression of the denizens of the natural world. Given the empirical successes of the evo-devo framework, and its now widespread acceptance, a timely and important task for the philosophy of biology is to critically discern the ontological commitments of that framework and assess whether and to what extent our current metaphysical models are able to accommodate them. In this paper, I argue that one particular model (...)
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  30. Two mistakes regarding the principal principle.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2010 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (2):407-431.
    This paper examines two mistakes regarding David Lewis’ Principal Principle that have appeared in the recent literature. These particular mistakes are worth looking at for several reasons: The thoughts that lead to these mistakes are natural ones, the principles that result from these mistakes are untenable, and these mistakes have led to significant misconceptions regarding the role of admissibility and time. After correcting these mistakes, the paper discusses the correct roles of time and admissibility. With these results in hand, the (...)
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  31. Person-affecting views and saturating counterpart relations.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 158 (2):257-287.
    In Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984) posed a challenge: provide a satisfying normative account that solves the Non-Identity Problem, avoids the Repugnant and Absurd Conclusions, and solves the Mere-Addition Paradox. In response, some have suggested that we look toward person-affecting views of morality for a solution. But the person-affecting views that have been offered so far have been unable to satisfy Parfit's four requirements, and these views have been subject to a number of independent complaints. This paper describes a person-affecting (...)
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  32. Constraint Accounts of Laws.Meacham Christopher J. G. - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.
    In recent work, Adlam (2022b), Chen & Goldstein (2022), and Meacham (2023) have defended accounts of laws that take laws to be primitive global constraints. A major advantage of these accounts is that they’re able to accommodate the many different kinds of laws that appear in physical theories. In this paper I’ll present these three accounts, highlight their distinguishing features, and note some key differences that might lead one to favor one of these accounts over the others. I’ll conclude by (...)
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  33. Difference Minimizing Theory.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6.
    Standard decision theory has trouble handling cases involving acts without finite expected values. This paper has two aims. First, building on earlier work by Colyvan (2008), Easwaran (2014), and Lauwers and Vallentyne (2016), it develops a proposal for dealing with such cases, Difference Minimizing Theory. Difference Minimizing Theory provides satisfactory verdicts in a broader range of cases than its predecessors. And it vindicates two highly plausible principles of standard decision theory, Stochastic Equivalence and Stochastic Dominance. The second aim is to (...)
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  34. Binding and its consequences.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 149 (1):49-71.
    In “Bayesianism, Infinite Decisions, and Binding”, Arntzenius et al. (Mind 113:251–283, 2004 ) present cases in which agents who cannot bind themselves are driven by standard decision theory to choose sequences of actions with disastrous consequences. They defend standard decision theory by arguing that if a decision rule leads agents to disaster only when they cannot bind themselves, this should not be taken to be a mark against the decision rule. I show that this claim has surprising implications for a (...)
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  35. Sleeping beauty and the dynamics of de se beliefs.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 138 (2):245-269.
    This paper examines three accounts of the sleeping beauty case: an account proposed by Adam Elga, an account proposed by David Lewis, and a third account defended in this paper. It provides two reasons for preferring the third account. First, this account does a good job of capturing the temporal continuity of our beliefs, while the accounts favored by Elga and Lewis do not. Second, Elga’s and Lewis’ treatments of the sleeping beauty case lead to highly counterintuitive consequences. The proposed (...)
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  36. Is Dispositional Causation Just Mutual Manifestation?Christopher J. Austin - 2015 - Ratio 29 (3):235-248.
    Dispositional properties are often referred to as ‘causal powers’, but what does dispositional causation amount to? Any viable theory must account for two fundamental aspects of the metaphysics of causation – the causal complexity and context sensitivity of causal interactions. The theory of mutual manifestations attempts to do so by locating the complexity and context sensitivity within the nature of dispositions themselves. But is this theory an acceptable first step towards a viable theory of dispositional causation? This paper argues that (...)
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  37. Structural Powers and the Homeodynamic Unity of Organisms.Christopher J. Austin & Anna Marmodoro - 2017 - In William M. R. Simpson, Robert Charles Koons & Nicholas Teh (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 169-184.
    Although they are continually compositionally reconstituted and reconfigured, organisms nonetheless persist as ontologically unified beings over time – but in virtue of what? A common answer is: in virtue of their continued possession of the capacity for morphological invariance which persists through, and in spite of, their mereological alteration. While we acknowledge that organisms‟ capacity for the “stability of form” – homeostasis - is an important aspect of their diachronic unity, we argue that this capacity is derived from, and grounded (...)
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  38. Unravelling the Tangled Web: Continuity, Internalism, Non-Uniqueness and Self-Locating Beliefs.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2007 - In Tamar Szabó Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology: Volume 3. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 86.
    A number of cases involving self-locating beliefs have been discussed in the Bayesian literature. I suggest that many of these cases, such as the sleeping beauty case, are entangled with issues that are independent of self-locating beliefs per se. In light of this, I propose a division of labor: we should address each of these issues separately before we try to provide a comprehensive account of belief updating. By way of example, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order (...)
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  39. A Biologically Informed Hylomorphism.Christopher J. Austin - 2017 - In William M. R. Simpson, Robert Charles Koons & Nicholas Teh (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 185-210.
    Although contemporary metaphysics has recently undergone a neo-Aristotelian revival wherein dispositions, or capacities are now commonplace in empirically grounded ontologies, being routinely utilised in theories of causality and modality, a central Aristotelian concept has yet to be given serious attention – the doctrine of hylomorphism. The reason for this is clear: while the Aristotelian ontological distinction between actuality and potentiality has proven to be a fruitful conceptual framework with which to model the operation of the natural world, the distinction between (...)
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  40. Contemporary Approaches to Statistical Mechanical Probabilities: A Critical Commentary - Part I: The Indifference Approach.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (12):1116-1126.
    This pair of articles provides a critical commentary on contemporary approaches to statistical mechanical probabilities. These articles focus on the two ways of understanding these probabilities that have received the most attention in the recent literature: the epistemic indifference approach, and the Lewis-style regularity approach. These articles describe these approaches, highlight the main points of contention, and make some attempts to advance the discussion. The first of these articles provides a brief sketch of statistical mechanics, and discusses the indifference approach (...)
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  41. (2 other versions)Climate Justice and Geoengineering: Ethics and Policy in the Atmospheric Anthropocene.Christopher J. Preston (ed.) - 2016 - Rowman & Littlefield International.
    A collection of original and innovative essays that compare the justice issues raised by climate engineering to the justice issues raised by competing approaches to solving the climate problem.
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  42. Three proposals regarding a theory of chance.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2005 - Philosophical Perspectives 19 (1):281–307.
    I argue that the theory of chance proposed by David Lewis has three problems: (i) it is time asymmetric in a manner incompatible with some of the chance theories of physics, (ii) it is incompatible with statistical mechanical chances, and (iii) the content of Lewis's Principal Principle depends on how admissibility is cashed out, but there is no agreement as to what admissible evidence should be. I proposes two modifications of Lewis's theory which resolve these difficulties. I conclude by tentatively (...)
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  43. (1 other version)Autonomous Chances and the Conflicts Problem.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2014 - In Alastair Wilson (ed.), Chance and Temporal Asymmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 45-67.
    In recent work, Callender and Cohen (2009) and Hoefer (2007) have proposed variants of the account of chance proposed by Lewis (1994). One of the ways in which these accounts diverge from Lewis’s is that they allow special sciences and the macroscopic realm to have chances that are autonomous from those of physics and the microscopic realm. A worry for these proposals is that autonomous chances may place incompatible constraints on rational belief. I examine this worry, and attempt to determine (...)
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  44. The Dispositional Genome: Primus Inter Pares.Christopher J. Austin - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (2):227-246.
    According to the proponents of Developmental Systems Theory and the Causal Parity Thesis, the privileging of the genome as “first among equals” with respect to the development of phenotypic traits is more a reflection of our own heuristic prejudice than of ontology - the underlying causal structures responsible for that specified development no more single out the genome as primary than they do other broadly “environmental” factors. Parting with the methodology of the popular responses to the Thesis, this paper offers (...)
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  45.  74
    Logicism and Theory of Coherence in Bertrand Russell's Thought.Adimike J. O. E. - 2023 - Bodija Journal: A Philosophico-Theological Journal 13:1-14.
    Logicism is the thesis that all or, at least parts, of mathematics is reducible to deductive logic in at least two senses: (A) that mathematical lexis can be defined by sole recourse to logical constants [a definition thesis]; and, (B) that mathematical theorems are derivable from solely logical axioms [a derivation thesis]. The principal proponents of this thesis are: Frege, Dedekind, and Russell. The central question that I raise in this paper is the following: ‘How did Russell construe the philosophical (...)
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  46. Contemporary Approaches to Statistical Mechanical Probabilities: A Critical Commentary - Part II: The Regularity Approach.Christopher J. G. Meacham - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (12):1127-1136.
    This pair of articles provides a critical commentary on contemporary approaches to statistical mechanical probabilities. These articles focus on the two ways of understanding these probabilities that have received the most attention in the recent literature: the epistemic indifference approach, and the Lewis-style regularity approach. These articles describe these approaches, highlight the main points of contention, and make some attempts to advance the discussion. The second of these articles discusses the regularity approach to statistical mechanical probabilities, and describes some areas (...)
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  47. Evolution in the Double Stream of Time - An inner Morphology of Organic Thought (2nd edition).Christoph J. Hueck - 2012 - Stuttgart: Akanthos Academy.
    This book shows that in the naturalistic and Darwinian explanation of life and its evolution, a decisive factor is overlooked, namely the human, knowing mind. The questions about life and its evolution can be answered if consciousness is taken into account not as a spectator, but as an integral part of reality. In the first-person-perception of cognition, the forces and laws of organic development can be observed and explored. It becomes apparent that evolution was not a random event, but the (...)
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  48. Evolution im Doppelstrom der Zeit - Morphologie des organischen Erkennens (2nd edition).Christoph J. Hueck - 2023 - Stuttgart: Akanthos Academy.
    Warum verlief die Evolution bis zum Menschen und ist nicht auf einer früheren Stufe stehen geblie­ben? Verdanken wir unser Dasein einer über Millionen von Jahren abgelaufenen Kette von Zufällen? Kann man das Leben aus toter Materie erklären? Und was ist Leben überhaupt? Die Antworten, die die Naturwissenschaft auf diese grundlegenden Fragen gibt, können ein tieferes Nachdenken nicht befriedigen. In diesem Buch wird gezeigt, dass in der naturalistischen und darwi­nistischen Erklärung des Lebens und seiner Evolution ein entscheidender Faktor übersehen wird, nämlich (...)
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    Empirical Vitalism – Observing an Organism’s Formative Power within an Active and Co-Constitutive Relation between Subject and Object.Christoph J. Hueck - forthcoming - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences.
    This article proposes an empirical approach to understanding the life of an organism that overcomes reductionist and dualist approaches. The approach is based on Immanuel Kant’s analysis of the cognitive conditions required for the recognition of an organism: the concept of teleology and the assumption of a formative power of self-generation. It is analyzed how these two criteria are applied in the cognition of a developing organism. Using the example of a developmental series of a plant leaf, an active and (...)
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  50. The Truthmaking Argument Against Dispositionalism.Christopher J. Austin - 2014 - Ratio 28 (3):271-285.
    According to dispositionalism, de re modality is grounded in the intrinsic natures of dispositional properties. Those properties are able to serve as the ground of de re modal truths, it is said, because they bear a special relation to counterfactual conditionals, one of truthmaking. However, because dispositionalism purports to ground de re modality only on the intrinsic natures of dispositional properties, it had better be the case that they do not play that truthmaking role merely in virtue of their being (...)
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