Results for 'Explanatory power'

950 found
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  1. The Explanatory Power of Deflationary Truth.Darren Bradley - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (8):3439-3456.
    It is widely believed that deflationary truth has no explanatory power. I will argue that it does. Specifically, I will consider some objections to deflationary truth having explanatory power, and argue that they fail. The position which will emerge is that the deflationary concept of truth is analogous to the concept of an average. Scientists take averages to be explanatory, and I will argue that the concept of deflationary truth is explanatory in the same (...)
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  2. Purely Probabilistic Measures of Explanatory Power: A Critique.William Roche & Elliott Sober - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (1):129-149.
    All extant purely probabilistic measures of explanatory power satisfy the following technical condition: if Pr(E | H1) > Pr(E | H2) and Pr(E | ∼H1) < Pr(E | ∼H2), then H1’s explanatory power with respect to E is greater than H2’s explanatory power with respect to E. We argue that any measure satisfying this condition faces three serious problems—the Problem of Temporal Shallowness, the Problem of Negative Causal Interactions, and the Problem of Nonexplanations. We (...)
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  3. The Explanatory Power of the Substance View of Persons.Francis J. Beckwith - 2004 - Christian Bioethics 10 (1):33-54.
    The purpose of this essay is to offer support for the substance view of persons, the philosophical anthropology defended by Patrick Lee in his essay. In order to accomplish this the author presents a brief definition of the substance view; argues that the substance view has more explanatory power in accounting for why we believe that human persons are intrinsically valuable even when they are not functioning as such, why human persons remain identical to themselves over time, and (...)
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  4. Primitiveness, Metaontology, and Explanatory Power.Jiri Benovsky - 2013 - Dialogue 52 (2):341-358.
    Metaphysical theories heavily rely on the use of primitives to which they typically appeal. I will start by examining and evaluating some traditional well-known theories and I will discuss the role of primitives in metaphysical theories in general. I will then turn to a discussion of claims of between theories that, I think, depend on equivalences of primitives, and I will explore the nature of primitives. I will then claim that almost all explanatory power of metaphysical theories comes (...)
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  5. Phenomenal Externalism's Explanatory Power.Peter W. Ross - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (3):613-630.
    I argue that phenomenal externalism is preferable to phenomenal internalism on the basis of externalism's explanatory power with respect to qualitative character. I argue that external qualities, namely, external physical properties that are qualitative independent of consciousness, are necessary to explain qualitative character, and that phenomenal externalism is best understood as accepting external qualities while phenomenal internalism is best understood as rejecting them. I build support for the claim that external qualities are necessary to explain qualitative character on (...)
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  6. The Explanatory Power of Local Miracle Compatibilism.Garrett Pendergraft - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 156 (2):249-266.
    Local miracle compatibilists claim that we are sometimes able to do otherwise than we actually do, even if causal determinism obtains. When we can do otherwise, it will often be true that if we were to do otherwise, then an actual law of nature would not have been a law of nature. Nevertheless, it is a compatibilist principle that we cannot do anything that would be or cause an event that violates the laws of nature. Carl Ginet challenges this nomological (...)
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  7. The Implausibility and Low Explanatory Power of the Resurrection Hypothesis—With a Rejoinder to Stephen T. Davis.Robert Greg Cavin & Carlos A. Colombetti - 2020 - Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry 2 (1):37-94.
    We respond to Stephen T. Davis’ criticism of our earlier essay, “Assessing the Resurrection Hypothesis.” We argue that the Standard Model of physics is relevant and decisive in establishing the implausibility and low explanatory power of the Resurrection hypothesis. We also argue that the laws of physics have entailments regarding God and the supernatural and, against Alvin Plantinga, that these same laws lack the proviso “no agent supernaturally interferes.” Finally, we offer Bayesian arguments for the Legend hypothesis and (...)
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  8. On the explanatory power of hallucination.Dominic Alford-Duguid & Michael Arsenault - 2017 - Synthese 194 (5).
    Pautz has argued that the most prominent naive realist account of hallucination—negative epistemic disjunctivism—cannot explain how hallucinations enable us to form beliefs about perceptually presented properties. He takes this as grounds to reject both negative epistemic disjunctivism and naive realism. Our aims are two: First, to show that this objection is dialectically ineffective against naive realism, and second, to draw morals from the failure of this objection for the dispute over the nature of perceptual experience at large.
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  9. On the explanatory power of truth in logic.Gila Sher - 2018 - Philosophical Issues 28 (1):348-373.
    Philosophers are divided on whether the proof- or truth-theoretic approach to logic is more fruitful. The paper demonstrates the considerable explanatory power of a truth-based approach to logic by showing that and how it can provide (i) an explanatory characterization —both semantic and proof-theoretical—of logical inference, (ii) an explanatory criterion for logical constants and operators, (iii) an explanatory account of logic’s role (function) in knowledge, as well as explanations of (iv) the characteristic features of logic (...)
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  10. The Limits of the Explanatory Power of Developmentalism.David Sobel - 2010 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 7 (4):517-527.
    Richard Kraut's neo-Aristotelian account of well-being, Developmentalism, aspires to explain not only which things are good for us but why those things are good for us. The key move in attempting to make good on this second aspiration involves his claim that our ordinary intuitions about what is good for a person can be successfully explained and systematized by the idea that what benefi ts a living thing develops properly that living thing's potentialities, capacities, and faculties. I argue that Kraut's (...)
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  11. Analyzing the Explanatory Power of Bionic Systems With the Minimal Cognitive Grid.Antonio Lieto - 2022 - Frontiers in Robotics and AI 9.
    In this article, I argue that the artificial components of hybrid bionic systems do not play a direct explanatory role, i.e., in simulative terms, in the overall context of the systems in which they are embedded in. More precisely, I claim that the internal procedures determining the output of such artificial devices, replacing biological tissues and connected to other biological tissues, cannot be used to directly explain the corresponding mechanisms of the biological component(s) they substitute (and therefore cannot be (...)
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  12. On the role of explanatory and systematic power in scientific reasoning.Peter Brössel - 2015 - Synthese 192 (12):3877-3913.
    The paper investigates measures of explanatory power and how to define the inference schema “Inference to the Best Explanation”. It argues that these measures can also be used to quantify the systematic power of a hypothesis and the inference schema “Inference to the Best Systematization” is defined. It demonstrates that systematic power is a fruitful criterion for theory choice and IBS is truth-conducive. It also shows that even radical Bayesians must admit that systemic power is (...)
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  13. Collective Obligations: Their Existence, Their Explanatory Power, and Their Supervenience on the Obligations of Individuals.Bill Wringe - 2016 - European Journal of Philosophy 24 (2):472-497.
    In this paper I discuss a number of different relationships between two kinds of obligation: those which have individuals as their subject, and those which have groups of individuals as their subject. I use the name collective obligations to refer to obligations of the second sort. I argue that there are collective obligations, in this sense; that such obligations can give rise to and explain obligations which fall on individuals; that because of these facts collective obligations are not simply reducible (...)
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  14. Explanatory Abstractions.Lina Jansson & Juha Saatsi - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (3):817–844.
    A number of philosophers have recently suggested that some abstract, plausibly non-causal and/or mathematical, explanations explain in a way that is radically dif- ferent from the way causal explanation explain. Namely, while causal explanations explain by providing information about causal dependence, allegedly some abstract explanations explain in a way tied to the independence of the explanandum from the microdetails, or causal laws, for example. We oppose this recent trend to regard abstractions as explanatory in some sui generis way, and (...)
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  15. Against the Explanatory Argument for Enactivism.Leonard Dung - 2022 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 29 (7-8):57-68.
    Sensorimotor enactivism is the view that the content and the sensory modality of perceptual experience are determined by implicit knowledge of lawful regularities between bodily movements and patterns of sensory stimulation. A proponent of the explanatory argument for sensorimotor enactivism holds that this view is able to provide an intelligible explanation for why certain material realizers give rise to certain perceptual experiences, while rival accounts cannot close this “explanatory gap”. However, I argue that the notion of the “material (...)
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  16. Importance and Explanatory Relevance: The Case of Mathematical Explanations.Gabriel Târziu - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (3):393-412.
    A way to argue that something plays an explanatory role in science is by linking explanatory relevance with importance in the context of an explanation. The idea is deceptively simple: a part of an explanation is an explanatorily relevant part of that explanation if removing it affects the explanation either by destroying it or by diminishing its explanatory power, i.e. an important part is an explanatorily relevant part. This can be very useful in many ontological debates. (...)
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  17.  98
    Twenty-one Theories of Rationality Assessed for Which Is the Most Explanatory.Lantz Fleming Miller - manuscript
    This article serves as either an addendum or as an expansion of ideas and work developed in my 2024 book, The Rationality Project: Across the Millennia, issued by Palgrave Macmillan. The book explores 21 potential theories for explaining rationality in terms of why and how one among these can serve in the position of explanatory power. The book does not fully explain all of these candidate theories, assigning that complete role to this addendum or work-in-progress. The main reason (...)
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  18. The Power to Govern.Erica Shumener - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):270-291.
    I provide a new account of what it is for the laws of nature to govern the evolution of events. I locate the source of governance in the content of law propositions. As such, I do not appeal to primitive notions of ground, essence, or production to characterize governance. After introducing the account, I use it to outline previously unrecognized varieties of governance. I also specify that laws must govern to have two theoretical virtues: explanatory power as well (...)
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  19. Slurs, roles and power.Mihaela Popa-Wyatt & Jeremy L. Wyatt - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 175 (11):2879-2906.
    Slurring is a kind of hate speech that has various effects. Notable among these is variable offence. Slurs vary in offence across words, uses, and the reactions of audience members. Patterns of offence aren’t adequately explained by current theories. We propose an explanation based on the unjust power imbalance that a slur seeks to achieve. Our starting observation is that in discourse participants take on discourse roles. These are typically inherited from social roles, but only exist during a discourse. (...)
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  20. Metaphysically explanatory unification.David Mark Kovacs - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (6):1659-1683.
    This paper develops and motivates a unification theory of metaphysical explanation, or as I will call it, Metaphysical Unificationism. The theory’s main inspiration is the unification account of scientific explanation, according to which explanatoriness is a holistic feature of theories that derive a large number of explananda from a meager set of explanantia, using a small number of argument patterns. In developing Metaphysical Unificationism, I will point out that it has a number of interesting consequences. The view offers a novel (...)
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  21. The Reductive Explanation of Boiling Water in Levine's Explanatory Gap Argument.Max Seeger - manuscript
    This paper examines a paradigm case of allegedly successful reductive explanation, viz. the explanation of the fact that water boils at 100°C based on facts about H2O. The case figures prominently in Joseph Levine’s explanatory gap argument against physicalism. The paper studies the way the argument evolved in the writings of Levine, focusing especially on the question how the reductive explanation of boiling water figures in the argument. It will turn out that there are two versions of the (...) gap argument to be found in Levine’s writings. The earlier version relies heavily on conceptual analysis and construes reductive explanation as a process of deduction. The later version makes do without conceptual analysis and understands reductive explanations as based on theoretic reductions that are justified by explanatory power. Along the way will be shown that the bridge principles — which are being neglected in the explanatory gap literature — play a crucial role in the explanatory gap argument. (shrink)
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  22. The Artificial Intelligence Explanatory Trade-Off on the Logic of Discovery in Chemistry.José Ferraz-Caetano - 2023 - Philosophies 8 (2):17.
    Explanation is a foundational goal in the exact sciences. Besides the contemporary considerations on ‘description’, ‘classification’, and ‘prediction’, we often see these terms in thriving applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in chemistry hypothesis generation. Going beyond describing ‘things in the world’, these applications can make accurate numerical property calculations from theoretical or topological descriptors. This association makes an interesting case for a logic of discovery in chemistry: are these induction-led ventures showing a shift in how chemists can problematize research questions? (...)
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  23. Dynamical Systems Theory and Explanatory Indispensability.Juha Saatsi - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (5):892-904.
    I examine explanations’ realist commitments in relation to dynamical systems theory. First I rebut an ‘explanatory indispensability argument’ for mathematical realism from the explanatory power of phase spaces (Lyon and Colyvan 2007). Then I critically consider a possible way of strengthening the indispensability argument by reference to attractors in dynamical systems theory. The take-home message is that understanding of the modal character of explanations (in dynamical systems theory) can undermine platonist arguments from explanatory indispensability.
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  24. Grounding Functionalism and Explanatory Unificationism.Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier - 2023 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (4):799-819.
    In this essay, I propose a functionalist theory of grounding (functionalist-grounding). Specifically, I argue that grounding is a second-order phenomenon that is realized by relations that play the noncausal explanatoriness role. I also show that functionalist-grounding can deal with a powerful challenge. Appeals to explanatory unificationism have been made to argue that the success of noncausal explanations does not depend on the existence of grounding relations. Against this, I argue that a systematization involving functionalist-grounding is superior to its anti-relational (...)
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  25. An explanatory challenge for epistemological disjunctivism.Cameron Boult - 2017 - Episteme 15 (2):141-153.
    Epistemological Disjunctivism is a view about paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge. Duncan Pritchard claims that it is particularly well suited to accounting for internalist and externalist intuitions. A number of authors have disputed this claim, arguing that there are problems for Pritchard’s way with internalist intuitions. I share the worry. However, I don’t think it has been expressed as effectively as it can be. My aim in this paper is to present a new way of formulating the worry, in terms (...)
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  26. Critical Realism in the Personal Domain: Spinoza and Explanatory Critique of the Emotions.Martin Evenden - 2012 - Journal of Critical Realism 11 (2):163-187.
    Within critical realist circles, the development of knowledge in the natural and social domains has thus far been much stronger by comparison with its respective development within the personal domain. What I want to explore here is how knowledge can be positively used to have emancipatory effects at the level of the individual. The way in which we are able to achieve this is by coming to have what Spinoza calls more adequate ideas of ourselves, other beings, and our place (...)
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  27. The Role of Power in Social Explanation.Torsten Menge - 2018 - European Journal of Social Theory 21 (1):22 - 38.
    Power is often taken to be a central concept in social and political thought that can contribute to the explanation of many different social phenomena. This article argues that in order to play this role, a general theory of power is required to identify a stable causal capacity, one that does not depend on idiosyncratic social conditions and can thus exert its characteristic influence in a wide range of cases. It considers three promising strategies for such a theory, (...)
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  28. Why one model is never enough: a defense of explanatory holism.Hochstein Eric - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (6):1105-1125.
    Traditionally, a scientific model is thought to provide a good scientific explanation to the extent that it satisfies certain scientific goals that are thought to be constitutive of explanation. Problems arise when we realize that individual scientific models cannot simultaneously satisfy all the scientific goals typically associated with explanation. A given model’s ability to satisfy some goals must always come at the expense of satisfying others. This has resulted in philosophical disputes regarding which of these goals are in fact necessary (...)
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  29. Power as a catalyst for conflict: Can violence ever be eradicated from human society?Kai Sun Yiu - manuscript
    In the face of conflict, power can be defined as ‘the ability to get one’s needs met [1].’ Power requires not just an ability to do or act by strength and force, but also requires an inherent want and need for a commodity. Yet it is self-explanatory that a desire for power isn’t temporary, but perpetual, with those whose needs are satisfied always yearning for more. This can lead to longer term conflict, suggesting the gradient of (...)
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  30. Power Emergentism and the Collapse Problem.Elanor Taylor - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (2):302-318.
    Strong emergentism is the position that certain higher-level properties display a kind of metaphysical autonomy from the lower-level properties in which they are grounded. The prospect of collapse is a problem for strong emergentism. According to those who press the collapse problem any purportedly strongly emergent feature inheres in the emergence base and so is not genuinely autonomous from that base. Umut Baysan and Jessica Wilson argue that power emergentism avoids the collapse problem. In this paper, I challenge the (...)
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  31. The Animal Sexes as Historical Explanatory Kinds.Laura Franklin-Hall - 2017 - In Shamik Dasgupta, Brad Weslake & Ravit Dotan (eds.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Science. London: Routledge. pp. 177-197.
    Though biologists identify individuals as ‘male’ or ‘female’ across a broad range of animal species, the particular traits exhibited by males and females can vary tremendously. This diversity has led some to conclude that cross-animal sexes (males, or females, of whatever animal species) have “little or no explanatory power” (Dupré 1986: 447) and, thus, are not natural kinds in any traditional sense. This essay will explore considerations for and against this conclusion, ultimately arguing that the animal sexes, properly (...)
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  32. Progressus as an Explanatory Model: An Anthropological Principle Illustrated by the Russia-Ukraine War.Paul Ertl - 2023 - Conatus 8 (2):175-194.
    At the beginning of the Russian Federation’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union put up massive resistance, but due to its sudden overload, it was unable to deal with the situation adequately. It was in a state of paralysis for some time. Therefore, five explanatory models for the Russian actions are presented: an offensive, a defensive, a situational, a socio-cultural, and an ideological-historical one. It is then shown that the German term Gewalt, which combines the English (...)
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  33. (1 other version)Nietzsche's Will to Power as Naturalist Critical Ontology.Donovan Miyasaki - 2013 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 30 (3):251-69.
    In this paper, I argue that Nietzsche’s published works contain a substantial, although implicit, argument for the will to power as ontology—a critical and descriptive, rather than positive and explanatory, theory of reality. Further, I suggest this ontology is entirely consistent with a naturalist methodology. The will to power ontology follows directly from Nietzsche’s naturalist rejection of three metaphysical presuppositions: substance, efficient causality, and final causality. I show that a number of interpretations, including those of Clark, Schacht, (...)
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  34. Review of Ted Poston's Reason and explanation: A defense of explanatory coherentism (2014, Palgrave Macmillan). [REVIEW]Roche William - 2015 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:1-7.
    Ted Poston's book Reason and Explanation: A Defense of Explanatory Coherentism is a book worthy of careful study. Poston develops and defends an explanationist theory of (epistemic) justification on which justification is a matter of explanatory coherence which in turn is a matter of conservativeness, explanatory power, and simplicity. He argues that his theory is consistent with Bayesianism. He argues, moreover, that his theory is needed as a supplement to Bayesianism. There are seven chapters. I provide (...)
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  35. Developing the explanatory dimensions of part–whole realization.Ronald Endicott - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (12):3347-3368.
    I use Carl Gillett’s much heralded dimensioned theory of realization as a platform to develop a plausible part–whole theory. I begin with some basic desiderata for a theory of realization that its key terms should be defined and that it should be explanatory. I then argue that Gillett’s original theory violates these conditions because its explanatory force rests upon an unspecified “in virtue of” relation. I then examine Gillett’s later version that appeals instead to theoretical terms tied to (...)
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  36. Grounding and the argument from explanatoriness.David Mark Kovacs - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (12):2927-2952.
    In recent years, metaphysics has undergone what some describe as a revolution: it has become standard to understand a vast array of questions as questions about grounding, a metaphysical notion of determination. Why should we believe in grounding, though? Supporters of the revolution often gesture at what I call the Argument from Explanatoriness: the notion of grounding is somehow indispensable to a metaphysical type of explanation. I challenge this argument and along the way develop a “reactionary” view, according to which (...)
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  37. The Dependence Response and Explanatory Loops.Andrew Law - 2020 - Faith and Philosophy 37 (3):294-307.
    There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...)
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  38. II—Evolved Powers, Artefact Powers, and Dispositional Explanations.Barbara Vetter - 2018 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 92 (1):277-297.
    Alexander Bird puts forward a modest version of anti-Humeanism about the non-fundamental, by providing an argument for the existence of a certain select class of non-fundamental but sparse dispositions: those that have an evolutionary function. I argue that his argument over-generates, so much so that the sparse–abundant distinction, and with it the tenet of his anti-Humean view, becomes obsolete. I suggest an alternative way of understanding anti-Humeanism in the non-fundamental realm, one which is not concerned with the existence of sparse (...)
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  39. Whewell’s hylomorphism as a metaphorical explanation for how mind and world merge.Ragnar van der Merwe - 2023 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 54 (1):19-38.
    William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however that Levine does (...)
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  40. The Transformative Power of Social Movements.Heydari Fard Sahar - 2023 - Philosophy Compass (1):e12951.
    Social movements possess transformative and progressive power. In this paper, I argue that how this is so, or even if this is so, depends on one's explanatory framework. I consider three such explanatory frameworks for social movements: methodological individualism, collectivism, and complexity theory. In evaluating the various appeals and weaknesses of these frameworks, I show that complexity theory is uniquely poised to capture the complex and dynamic reality of the social world.
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  41. Mental Faculties and Powers and the Foundations of Hume’s Philosophy.Karl Schafer - 2024 - In Sebastian Bender & Dominik Perler (eds.), Powers and Abilities in Early Modern Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge.
    With respect to the topic of “powers and abilities,” most readers will associate David Hume with his multi-pronged critique of traditional attempts to make robust explanatory use of those notions in a philosophical or scientific context. But Hume’s own philosophy is also structured around the attribution to human beings of a variety of basic faculties or mental powers – such as the reason and the imagination, or the various powers involved in Hume’s account of im- pressions of reflection and (...)
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  42. (1 other version)Platonic Computer— the Universal Machine That Bridges the “Inverse Explanatory Gap” in the Philosophy of Mind.Simon X. Duan - 2022 - Filozofia i Nauka 10:285-302.
    The scope of Platonism is extended by introducing the concept of a “Platonic computer” which is incorporated in metacomputics. The theoretical framework of metacomputics postulates that a Platonic computer exists in the realm of Forms and is made by, of, with, and from metaconsciousness. Metaconsciousness is defined as the “power to conceive, to perceive, and to be self-aware” and is the formless, con-tentless infinite potentiality. Metacomputics models how metaconsciousness generates the perceived actualities including abstract entities and physical and nonphysical (...)
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  43.  82
    Pain without power.Timothy Joseph Lane - 2008 - National Chengchi University Philosophical Journal 20:123-182.
    Some theories of consciousness emphasize its relationship to language, its emergent quality, and its causal role. Prominent among these theories is the one that Dennett has been developing for nearly four decades. According to Dennett’s most recent version, consciousness is a kind of cerebral clout. But consideration of examples of pain—arguably the best candidate on offer for a paradigm of consciousness—reveals that clout is neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness. Moreover, pain doesn’t necessarily have the aftermath that is predicted by (...)
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  44. Ācārya Kundakunda’s Niyamasāra – The Essence of Soul-adoration (With Authentic Explanatory Notes).Vijay K. Jain (ed.) - 2019 - Dehradun, India: Vikalp Printers.
    ‘Niyamasāra’ by Ācārya Kundakunda (circa 1st century BC) is among the finest spiritual texts that we are able to lay our hands on in the present era. The treatise expounds, with authority, the nature of the soul (ātmā) from the real, transcendental point-of-view (niścayanaya). It expounds the essence of the objects of knowledge, and, by the word ‘niyama’, the path to liberation. ‘Niyamasāra’ is the Word of the Omniscient Lord. It has the power to bestow ineffable happiness of liberation (...)
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  45. Theoretical Identities as Explanantia and Explananda.Kevin Morris - 2011 - American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (4):373-385.
    The mind-brain identity theory, the thesis that sensations are identical with properties or processes of the brain, was introduced into contemporary discussion by U.T. Place, Herbert Feigl, and J.J.C Smart in the 1950s. Despite its widespread rejection in the following decades, the identity theory has received several carefully articulated defenses in recent years. Aside from developing novel responses to well-known arguments against the identity theory, contemporary identity theorists have argued that the epistemological resources available to support the adoption of identities (...)
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  46. Don’t get it wrong! On understanding and its negative phenomena.Haomiao Yu & Stefan Petkov - 2024 - Synthese 203 (48):1-33.
    This paper studies the epistemic failures to reach understanding in relation to scientific explanations. We make a distinction between genuine understanding and its negative phenomena—lack of understanding and misunderstanding. We define explanatory understanding as inclusive as possible, as the epistemic success that depends on abilities, skills, and correct explanations. This success, we add, is often supplemented by specific positive phenomenology which plays a part in forming epistemic inclinations—tendencies to receive an insight from familiar types of explanations. We define lack (...)
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  47. Finding hope.Michael Milona - 2019 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (5):710-729.
    This paper defends a theory of hope according to which hopes are composed of a desire and a belief that the object of the desire is possible. Although belief plus desire theories of hope are now widely rejected, this is due to important oversights. One is a failure to recognize the relation that hope-constituting desires and beliefs must stand in to constitute a hope. A second is an oversimplification of the explanatory power of hope-constituting desires. The final portion (...)
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  48. Wittgensteinian-Foucauldian Analysis of Labelling Theory.Coraline Empson - manuscript
    In this essay, I analyse Howard S. Becker's labelling theory, using Wittgenstein and Foucault to argue that it has significant explanatory power in describing what I term "the hegemonic power of the label". Much of this essay hints at my general thought with regards hegemony at the level of interaction and language. Final grade was first class honours, 2,000 word limit. -/- The ideas expressed herein have matured significantly since. I am working on a quantitative study with (...)
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  49. Phenomenal Holism and Cognitive Phenomenology.Martina Fürst - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (8): 3259–3289..
    The cognitive phenomenology debate centers on two questions. (1) What is an apt characterization of the phenomenology of conscious thought? And (2), what role does this phenomenology play? I argue that the answers to the former question bear significantly on the answers to the latter question. In particular, I show that conservatism about cognitive phenomenology is not compatible with the view that phenomenology explains the constitution of conscious thought. I proceed as follows: To begin with, I analyze the phenomenology of (...)
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  50. Epistemological status of rationality principles in the social sciences: a structural invariance criterion.Jeremy Attard - manuscript
    In the social sciences, within the explanatory paradigm of structural individualism, a theory of action – like rational choice theory – models how individuals behave and interact at the micro level in order to explain macro observations as the aggregation of these individuals actions. A central epistemological issue is that such theoretical models are stuck in a dilemma between falsity of their basic assumptions and triviality of their explanation. On the one hand, models which have a great empirical success (...)
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