Results for 'Nicholas Breslin'

649 found
Order:
  1. Coherence and correspondence in the network dynamics of belief suites.Patrick Grim, Andrew Modell, Nicholas Breslin, Jasmine Mcnenny, Irina Mondescu, Kyle Finnegan, Robert Olsen, Chanyu An & Alexander Fedder - 2017 - Episteme 14 (2):233-253.
    Coherence and correspondence are classical contenders as theories of truth. In this paper we examine them instead as interacting factors in the dynamics of belief across epistemic networks. We construct an agent-based model of network contact in which agents are characterized not in terms of single beliefs but in terms of internal belief suites. Individuals update elements of their belief suites on input from other agents in order both to maximize internal belief coherence and to incorporate ‘trickled in’ elements of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. Preparing the Particular: Kant on the Imagination’s Role in Judgment.Nicholas Dunn - forthcoming - Southern Journal of Philosophy.
    That Kant sees the faculties of imagination and judgment as closely related is not controversial. Yet precisely how they relate to each other, especially across his Critical philosophy, is less clear. In this paper, I consider the relationship between what Kant calls the ‘power of imagination’ [Einbildungskraft] and the ‘power of judgment’ [Urteilskraft]. I argue for the following claim: insofar as the power of judgment is the faculty of thinking particulars under universals, the power of imagination is the faculty of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  3. Embodiment, Interaction, and Experience: Toward a Comprehensive Model in Addiction Science.Nicholas Zautra - 2015 - Philosophy of Science 82 (5):1023-1034.
    Current theories of addiction try to explain what addiction is, who experiences it, why it occurs, and how it develops and persists. In this article, I explain why none of these theories can be accepted as a comprehensive model. I argue that current models fail to account for differences in embodiment, interaction processes, and the experience of addiction. To redress these limiting factors, I design a proposal for an enactive account of addiction that follows the enactive model of autism proposed (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Brief Account of How Nicholas Maxwell Came to Argue for the Urgent Need for a Revolution in Universities.Nicholas Maxwell - manuscript
    We need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities around the world, wherever possible, so that they take their fundamental task to be, not to acquire and apply knowledge, but rather to help humanity learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that we may make progress towards a good, genuinely civilized, wise world. The pursuit of knowledge would be a vital but subsidiary task. I have argued for the urgent need for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. The feasibility issue.Nicholas Southwood - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (8):e12509.
    It is commonly taken for granted that questions of feasibility are highly relevant to our normative thinking – and perhaps especially our normative thinking about politics. But what exactly does this preoccupation with feasibility amount to, and in what forms if any is it warranted? This article aims to provide a critical introduction to, and clearer characterization of, the feasibility issue. I begin by discussing the question of how feasibility is to be understood. I then turn to the question of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   22 citations  
  6. A New Conception of Science.Nicholas Maxwell - 2000 - Physics World 13 (8):17-18.
    When scientists choose one theory over another, they reject out of hand all those that are not simple, unified or explanatory. Yet the orthodox view of science is that evidence alone should determine what can be accepted. Nicholas Maxwell thinks he has a way out of the dilemma.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  7. Deception and evidence.Nicholas Silins - 2005 - Philosophical Perspectives 19 (1):375–404.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   68 citations  
  8. Deadly Language Games: Theological Reflections on Emerging Reproductive Technologies.Nicholas Colgrove - 2024 - Christian Bioethics 30 (2):67-84.
    This issue of Christian Bioethics explores theological, metaphysical, and ethical questions surrounding emerging reproductive technologies. Narratives concerning such technologies are often manipulated via “language games.” Language games involve toying with language to ensure that one’s vision of the good gains or retains political prominence. Such games are common in academic discussions of “artificial womb” technologies. Abortion proponents, for example, are already using language to dehumanize subjects within “artificial wombs.” This is unsurprising. Were relevant subjects considered persons, then abortion access (and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Representation in Cognitive Science.Nicholas Shea - 2018 - Oxford University Press.
    How can we think about things in the outside world? There is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. In light of pioneering research, Nicholas Shea develops a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation with a firm focus on the subpersonal representations that pervade the cognitive sciences.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   129 citations  
  10. Science and the environment: A new enlightenment.Nicholas Maxwell - 1997 - Science and Public Affairs (Spring 1997):50-56.
    Nicholas Maxwell believes that while we have developed an excellent way of learning about the nature of the universe, we have so far failed in our attempts to apply this method to create a civilized world.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  11. Replies and Reflections.Nicholas Maxwell - 2009 - In Leemon McHenry (ed.), Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell. Frankfurt, Germany: Ontos Verlag. pp. 249-314.
    I reply to critical discussion of my work by Copthorne Macdonald, Steve Fuller, John Stewart, Joseph Agassi, Margaret Boden, Donald Gillies, Mathew Iredale, David Hodgson, Karl Rogers, and Leemon McHenry.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  12. The Vegetative State and the Science of Consciousness.Nicholas Shea & Tim Bayne - 2010 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (3):459-484.
    Consciousness in experimental subjects is typically inferred from reports and other forms of voluntary behaviour. A wealth of everyday experience confirms that healthy subjects do not ordinarily behave in these ways unless they are conscious. Investigation of consciousness in vegetative state patients has been based on the search for neural evidence that such broad functional capacities are preserved in some vegetative state patients. We call this the standard approach. To date, the results of the standard approach have suggested that some (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  13. Speak, Memory: Dignāga, Consciousness, and Awareness.Nicholas Silins - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of it? The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga offers a brilliant route to answering this question by leveraging the role awareness might play as a constraint on memory. I begin by clarifying his strategy and what conclusions it might be used to establish, and then turn to explain why it fails. The first main problem is that, contrary to his contemporary defenders, there is no good way to use it to reach (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. A mug's game? Solving the problem of induction with metaphysical presuppositions.Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - In Karl Popper, Science and Enlightenment. London: UCL Press.
    This paper argues that a view of science, expounded and defended elsewhere, solves the problem of induction. The view holds that we need to see science as accepting a hierarchy of metaphysical theses concerning the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, these theses asserting less and less as we go up the hierarchy. It may seem that this view must suffer from vicious circularity, in so far as accepting physical theories is justified by an appeal to metaphysical theses in turn (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  15. Knowledge or wisdom?Nicholas Maxwell - 2013 - The Philosophers' Magazine 62 (62):17-18.
    A bad philosophy of inquiry, built into the intellectual/institutional structure of universities round the world, betrays both reason and humanity.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  16. Contractualism for Us As We Are.Nicholas Southwood - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (3):529-547.
    A difficult problem for contractualists is how to provide an interpretation of the contractual situation that is both subject to appropriately stringent constraints and yet also appropriately sensitive to certain features of us as we actually are. My suggestion is that we should embrace a model of contractualism that is structurally analogous to the “advice model” of the ideal observer theory famously proposed by Michael Smith (1994; 1995). An advice model of contractualism is appealing since it promises to deliver a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  17. The Problem of Intermediates, an Introduction.Nicholas Baima - 2018 - Plato Journal: The Journal of the International Plato Society 18:41-44.
    Provides a brief introduction to the Problem of Intermediates in Plato and the stances taken toward this issue in this volume of the Plato Journal.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Public Attitudes Toward Cognitive Enhancement.Nicholas Fitz, Roland Nadler, Praveena Manogaran, Eugene Chong & Peter Reiner - 2013 - Neuroethics 7 (2):173-188.
    Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement even as they (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  19. Kant on Judgment and Feeling.Nicholas Dunn - 2024 - Kant Studien 115 (1):46-70.
    It is well known that Kant connects judgment and feeling in the third Critique. However, the precise relationship between these two faculties remains virtually unexplored, in large part due to the unpopularity of Kant’s faculty psychology. This paper considers why, for Kant, judgment and feeling go together, arguing that he had good philosophical reasons for forging this connection. The discussion begins by situating these faculties within Kant’s mature faculty psychology. While the ‘power of judgment’ [Urteilskraft] is fundamentally reflective, feeling [Gefühl] (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  20.  70
    Students’ perspectives on drugs and alcohol abuse at a public university in Zambia.Nicholas Mwanza & Ganizani Mwale - 2023 - HTS Theological Studies 79 (3):8.
    Access to students’ perspectives on substance abuse is essential for effective youth intervention projects development. This study aimed to explore students’ perspectives on abuse of drugs and alcohol with probable development of student-led intervention strategies. The study was conducted at public universities in Zambia. Student’s perspectives on drugs and alcohol abuse were documented using a mixed method design that employed purposive and snowball sampling to select 200 respondents to questionnaires and 10 to in-depth interviews. A humanistic theory approach was applied (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. Reconciling Regulation with Scientific Autonomy in Dual-Use Research.Nicholas G. Evans, Michael J. Selgelid & Robert Mark Simpson - 2022 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 47 (1):72-94.
    In debates over the regulation of communication related to dual-use research, the risks that such communication creates must be weighed against against the value of scientific autonomy. The censorship of such communication seems justifiable in certain cases, given the potentially catastrophic applications of some dual-use research. This conclusion however, gives rise to another kind of danger: that regulators will use overly simplistic cost-benefit analysis to rationalize excessive regulation of scientific research. In response to this, we show how institutional design principles (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  22. Articulating the Aims of Science.Nicholas Maxwell - 1977 - Nature 265 (January 6):2.
    Most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted the standard empiricist view that the basic intellectual aim of science is truth per se. But this seriously misrepresents the aims of scieince. Actually, science seeks explanatory truth and, more generally, important truth. Problematic metaphysical and value assumptions are inherent in the real aims of science. Precisely because these aims are profoundly problematic, they need to be articulated, imaginatively explored and critically assesseed, in order to improve them, as an integral part (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  23. Must Science Make Cosmological Assumptions if it is to be Rational?Nicholas Maxwell - 1997 - In T. Kelly (ed.), The Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the Irish Philosophical Society Spring Conference. Irish Philosophical Society.
    Cosmological speculation about the ultimate nature of the universe, being necessary for science to be possible at all, must be regarded as a part of scientific knowledge itself, however epistemologically unsound it may be in other respects. The best such speculation available is that the universe is comprehensible in some way or other and, more specifically, in the light of the immense apparent success of modern natural science, that it is physically comprehensible. But both these speculations may be false; in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  24. Non-violent Resistance and Last Resort.Nicholas Parkin - 2016 - Journal of Military Ethics 15 (4):259-274.
    It is commonly accepted that recourse to war is justifiable only as a last resort. If a situation can be resolved by less harmful means, then war is unjust. It is also commonly accepted that violent actions in war should be necessary and proportionate. Violent actions in war are unjust if the end towards which those actions are means can be achieved by less harmful means. In this article, I argue that satisfaction of the last resort criterion depends in part (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  25. (1 other version)Could Inelastic Interactions Induce Quantum Probabilistic Transitions?Nicholas Maxwell - 2018 - In Shan Gao (ed.), Collapse of the Wave Function: Models, Ontology, Origin, and Implications. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
    What are quantum entities? Is the quantum domain deterministic or probabilistic? Orthodox quantum theory (OQT) fails to answer these two fundamental questions. As a result of failing to answer the first question, OQT is very seriously defective: it is imprecise, ambiguous, ad hoc, non-explanatory, inapplicable to the early universe, inapplicable to the cosmos as a whole, and such that it is inherently incapable of being unified with general relativity. It is argued that probabilism provides a very natural solution to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. Propositions and Cognitive Relations.Nicholas K. Jones - 2019 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119 (2):157-178.
    There are two broad approaches to theorizing about ontological categories. Quineans use first-order quantifiers to generalize over entities of each category, whereas type theorists use quantification on variables of different semantic types to generalize over different categories. Does anything of import turn on the difference between these approaches? If so, are there good reasons to go type-theoretic? I argue for positive answers to both questions concerning the category of propositions. I also discuss two prominent arguments for a Quinean conception of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  27. Explaining Perceptual Entitlement.Nicholas Silins - 2012 - Erkenntnis 76 (2):243-261.
    This paper evaluates the prospects of harnessing “anti-individualism” about the contents of perceptual states to give an account of the epistemology of perception, making special reference to Tyler Burge’s ( 2003 ) paper, “Perceptual Entitlement”. I start by clarifying what kind of warrant is provided by perceptual experience, and I go on to survey different ways one might explain the warrant provided by perceptual experience in terms of anti-individualist views about the individuation of perceptual states. I close by motivating accounts (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  28. “Do We Need a Scientific Revolution.Nicholas Maxwell - 2008 - Journal for Biological Physics and Chemistry 8 (3):95-105.
    Many see modern science as having serious defects, intellectual, social, moral. Few see this as having anything to do with the philosophy of science. I argue that many diverse ills of modern science are a consequence of the fact that the scientific community has long accepted, and sought to implement, a bad philosophy of science, which I call standard empiricism. This holds that the basic intellectual aim is truth, the basic method being impartial assessment of claims to knowledge with respect (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  29. A Defence of Manipulationist Noncausal Explanation: The Case for Intervention Liberalism.Nicholas Emmerson - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (8):3179-3201.
    Recent years have seen growing interest in modifying interventionist accounts of causal explanation in order to characterise noncausal explanation. However, one surprising element of such accounts is that they have typically jettisoned the core feature of interventionism: interventions. Indeed, the prevailing opinion within the philosophy of science literature suggests that interventions exclusively demarcate causal relationships. This position is so prevalent that, until now, no one has even thought to name it. We call it “intervention puritanism” (I-puritanism, for short). In this (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  30. Pacifism and Educational Violence.Nicholas Parkin - 2023 - Journal of Peace Education 20 (1):75-94.
    Education systems are full of harmful violence of types often unrecognised or misunderstood by educators, education leaders, and bureaucrats. Educational violence harms a great number of innocent persons (those who, morally speaking, may not be justifiably harmed). Accordingly, this paper rejects educational violence used to achieve educational ends. It holds that educational violence is unjustified if the condition that innocent persons are harmed is satisfied, that this condition is satisfied in current educational practice (compulsory schooling), and that, therefore, the current (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  31. Prolife Hypocrisy: Why Inconsistency Arguments Do Not Matter.Nicholas Colgrove, Bruce Philip Blackshaw & Daniel Rodger - 2020 - Journal of Medical Ethics (Online First):1-6.
    Opponents of abortion are often described as ‘inconsistent’ (hypocrites) in terms of their beliefs, actions and/or priorities. They are alleged to do too little to combat spontaneous abortion, they should be adopting cryopreserved embryos with greater frequency and so on. These types of arguments—which we call ‘inconsistency arguments’—conform to a common pattern. Each specifies what consistent opponents of abortion would do (or believe), asserts that they fail to act (or believe) accordingly and concludes that they are inconsistent. Here, we show (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  32. Patients, doctors and risk attitudes.Nicholas Makins - 2023 - Journal of Medical Ethics 49 (11):737-741.
    A lively topic of debate in decision theory over recent years concerns our understanding of the different risk attitudes exhibited by decision makers. There is ample evidence that risk-averse and risk-seeking behaviours are widespread, and a growing consensus that such behaviour is rationally permissible. In the context of clinical medicine, this matter is complicated by the fact that healthcare professionals must often make choices for the benefit of their patients, but the norms of rational choice are conventionally grounded in a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  33. Miscarriage Is Not a Cause of Death: A Response to Berg’s “Abortion and Miscarriage”.Nicholas Colgrove - 2021 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 46 (4):394-413.
    Some opponents of abortion claim that fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. Following Berg (2017), let us call these individuals “Personhood-At-Conception” (or PAC), opponents of abortion. Berg argues that if fetuses are persons from the moment of conception, then miscarriage kills far more people than abortion. As such, PAC opponents of abortion face the following dilemma: They must “immediately” and “substantially” shift their attention, resources, etc., toward preventing miscarriage or they must admit that they do not actually believe (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  34. Kant on Moral Feeling and Practical Judgment.Nicholas Dunn - 2024 - In Edgar Valdez (ed.), Rethinking Kant Volume 7. Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 72-96.
    Commentators have shown a steady interest in the role of feeling in Kant’s moral and practical philosophy over the last few decades. Much attention has been given to the notion of ‘moral feeling’ in general, as well as to what Kant calls the ‘feeling of respect’ for the moral law. My focus in this essay is on the role of feeling in practical judgment. My claim in what follows is that the act of judging in the practical domain—i.e., determining what (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  35. Introspection and inference.Nicholas Silins - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 163 (2):291-315.
    In this paper I develop the idea that, by answering the question whether p, you can answer the question whether you believe that p. In particular, I argue that judging that p is a fallible yet basic guide to whether one believes that p. I go on to defend my view from an important skeptical challenge, according to which my view would make it too easy to reject skeptical hypotheses about our access to our minds. I close by responding to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  36. Subsuming ‘determining’ under ‘reflecting’: Kant’s power of judgment, reconsidered.Nicholas Dunn - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Kant’s distinction between the determining and reflecting power of judgment in the third Critique is not well understood in the literature. A mainstream view unifies these by making determination the telos of all acts of judgment (Longuenesse 1998). On this view, all reflection is primarily in the business of producing empirical concepts for cognition, and thus has what I call a determinative ideal. I argue that this view fails to take seriously the independence and autonomy of the ‘power of judgment’ (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  37. The Comprehensibility of the Universe: A New Conception of Science.Nicholas Maxwell - 1998 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    The Comprehensibility of the Universe puts forward a radically new conception of science. According to the orthodox conception, scientific theories are accepted and rejected impartially with respect to evidence, no permanent assumption being made about the world independently of the evidence. Nicholas Maxwell argues that this orthodox view is untenable. He urges that in its place a new orthodoxy is needed, which sees science as making a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, these (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  38. What’s Wrong With Aim-Oriented Empiricism?Nicholas Maxwell - 2015 - Acta Baltica Historiae Et Philosophiae Scientiarum 3 (2):5-31.
    For four decades it has been argued that we need to adopt a new conception of science called aim-oriented empiricism. This has far-reaching implications and repercussions for science, the philosophy of science, academic inquiry in general, conception of rationality, and how we go about attempting to make progress towards as good a world as possible. Despite these far-reaching repercussions, aim-oriented empiricism has so far received scant attention from philosophers of science. Here, sixteen objections to the validity of the argument for (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  39. A priori conjectural knowledge in physics: The comprehensibility of the universe.Nicholas Maxwell - 2011 - In Michael J. Shaffer & Michael L. Veber (eds.), What Place for the A Priori? Open Court. pp. 211-240.
    In this paper I argue for a priori conjectural scientific knowledge about the world. Physics persistently only accepts unified theories, even though endlessly many empirically more successful disunified rivals are always available. This persistent preference for unified theories, against empirical considerations, means that physics makes a substantial, persistent metaphysical assumption, to the effect that the universe has a (more or less) unified dynamic structure. In order to clarify what this assumption amounts to, I solve the problem of what it means (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  40. Universities: from knowledge to wisdom.Nicholas Maxwell - 2010 - Scientists for Global Responsibility Newsletter (38):18-20.
    Nicholas Maxwell argues that the growth in academic work devoted to policy issues could mark the beginning of a shift from ‘knowledge-inquiry’ to ‘wisdom-inquiry’, leading to importance benefits for society.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41. Reflections of Reason: Kant on Practical Judgment.Nicholas Dunn - 2023 - Kantian Review (4):1-22.
    My aim in this paper is to provide an account of practical judgement, for Kant, that situates it within his theory of judgement as a whole—particularly, with regards to the distinction between the determining and reflecting use of judgement. I argue that practical judgement is a kind of determining judgement, but also one in which reflecting judgement plays a significant role. More specifically, I claim that practical judgement arises from the cooperation of the reflecting power of judgement with the faculty (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  42. Misunderstanding Understanding Scientific Progress.Nicholas Maxwell - manuscript
    In my book Understanding Scientific Progress, I argue that fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, above all the problem of induction, cannot be solved granted standard empiricism (SE), a doctrine which most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted. A key tenet of SE is that no permanent thesis about the world can be accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence. For a number of reasons, we need to adopt a rather different conception of science which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43. Understanding Scientific Progress: Aim-Oriented Empiricism.Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - St. Paul, USA: Paragon House.
    "Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and numerous others. He lauds Popper for advancing beyond (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  44. The Place for Religious Content in Clinical Ethics Consultations: A Reply to Janet Malek.Nicholas Colgrove & Kelly Kate Evans - 2019 - HEC Forum 31 (4):305-323.
    Janet Malek (91–102, 2019) argues that a “clinical ethics consultant’s religious worldview has no place in developing ethical recommendations or communicating about them with patients, surrogates, and clinicians.” She offers five types of arguments in support of this thesis: arguments from consensus, clarity, availability, consistency, and autonomy. This essay shows that there are serious problems for each of Malek’s arguments. None of them is sufficient to motivate her thesis. Thus, if it is true that the religious worldview of clinical ethics (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  45. Muller’s Critique of the Argument for Aim-Oriented Empiricism.Nicholas Maxwell - 2009 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 40 (1):103-114.
    For over 30 years I have argued that we need to construe science as accepting a metaphysical proposition concerning the comprehensibility of the universe. In a recent paper, Fred Muller criticizes this argument, and its implication that Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism is untenable. In the present paper I argue that Muller’s criticisms are not valid. The issue is of some importance, for my argument that science accepts a metaphysical proposition is the first step in a broader argument intended to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  46. Defending the Doctrine of the Mean Against Counterexamples: A General Strategy.Nicholas Colgrove - 2024 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (Online First):1-24.
    Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean states that each moral virtue stands opposed to two types of vice: one of excess and one of deficiency, respectively. Critics claim that some virtues—like honesty, fair-mindedness, and patience—are counterexamples to Aristotle’s doctrine. Here, I develop a generalizable strategy to defend the doctrine of the mean against such counterexamples. I argue that not only is the doctrine of the mean defensible, but taking it seriously also allows us to gain substantial insight into particular virtues. Failure (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  47. Simplicity.Nicholas Maxwell - 2000 - Philsci Archive.
    There are two problems of simplicity. What does it mean to characterize a scientific theory as simple, unified or explanatory in view of the fact that a simple theory can always be made complex (and vice versa) by a change of terminology? How is preference in science for simple theories to be justified? In this paper I put forward a proposal as to how the first problem is to be solved. The more nearly the totality of fundamental physical theory exemplifies (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48. The Menace of Science without Wisdom.Nicholas Maxwell - 2012 - Ethical Record 117 (9):10-15.
    We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of science – and of academic inquiry more generally. Instead of giving priority to the search for knowledge, universities need to devote themselves to seeking and promoting wisdom by rational means, wisdom being the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom thus including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides. A basic task ought to be to help humanity (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49. Do abnormal responses show utilitarian bias?Nicholas Shackel & Guy Kahane - 2008 - Nature 452:E5.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  50. Too Many Cats: The Problem of the Many and the Metaphysics of Vagueness.Nicholas K. Jones - 2010 - Dissertation, Birkbeck, University of London
    Unger’s Problem of the Many seems to show that the familiar macroscopic world is much stranger than it appears. From plausible theses about the boundaries of or- dinary objects, Unger drew the conclusion that wherever there seems to be just one cat, cloud, table, human, or thinker, really there are many millions; and likewise for any other familiar kind of individual. In Lewis’s hands, this puzzle was subtly altered by an appeal to vagueness or indeterminacy about the the boundaries of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 649