共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 15 毫秒
1.
William C. Wimsatt 《Synthese》2006,151(3):445-475
Methodological reductionists practice ‘wannabe reductionism’. They claim that one should pursue reductionism, but never propose how. I integrate two strains in prior work to do so. Three kinds of activities are pursued as “reductionist”. “Successional reduction” and inter-level mechanistic explanation are legitimate and powerful strategies. Eliminativism is generally ill-conceived. Specific problem-solving heuristics for constructing inter-level mechanistic explanations show why and when they can provide powerful and fruitful tools and insights, but sometimes lead to erroneous results. I show how traditional metaphysical approaches fail to engage how science is done. The methods used do so, and support a pragmatic and non-eliminativist realism. 相似文献
2.
Patrick McGivern 《Synthese》2008,165(1):53-75
I discuss arguments about the relationship between different “levels” of explanation in the light of examples involving multi-scale
analysis. I focus on arguments about causal competition between properties at different levels, such as Jaegwon Kim’s “supervenience
argument.” A central feature of Kim’s argument is that higher-level properties can in general be identified with “micro-based”
properties. I argue that explanations from multi-scale analysis give examples of explanations that are problematic for accounts
such as Kim’s. I argue that these difficulties suggest that some standard assumptions about causal competition need to be
revised. 相似文献
3.
Kenneth F. Schaffner 《Synthese》2006,151(3):377-402
In this paper, I propose two theses, and then examine what the consequences of those theses are for discussions of reduction and emergence. The first thesis is that what have traditionally been seen as robust, reductions of one theory or one branch of science by another more fundamental one are a largely a myth. Although there are such reductions in the physical sciences, they are quite rare, and depend on special requirements. In the biological sciences, these prima facie sweeping reductions fade away, like the body of the famous Cheshire cat, leaving only a smile. ... The second thesis is that the “smiles” are fragmentary patchy explanations, and though patchy and fragmentary, they are very important, potentially Nobel-prize winning advances. To get the best grasp of these “smiles,” I want to argue that, we need to return to the roots of discussions and analyses of scientific explanation more generally, and not focus mainly on reduction models, though three conditions based on earlier reduction models are retained in the present analysis. I briefly review the scientific explanation literature as it relates to reduction, and then offer my account of explanation. The account of scientific explanation I present is one I have discussed before, but in this paper I try to simplify it, and characterize it as involving field elements (FE) and a preferred causal model system (PCMS) abbreviated as FE and PCMS. In an important sense, this FE and PCMS analysis locates an “explanation” in a typical scientific research article. This FE and PCMS account is illustrated using a recent set of neurogenetic papers on two kinds of worm foraging behaviors: solitary and social feeding. One of the preferred model systems from a 2002 Nature article in this set is used to exemplify the FE and PCMS analysis, which is shown to have both reductive and nonreductive aspects. The paper closes with a brief discussion of how this FE and PCMS approach differs from and is congruent with Bickle’s “ruthless reductionism” and the recently revived mechanistic philosophy of science of Machamer, Darden, and Craver. 相似文献
4.
Philippe Huneman 《Erkenntnis》2012,76(2):171-194
This paper investigates the conception of causation required in order to make sense of natural selection as a causal explanation
of changes in traits or allele frequencies. It claims that under a counterfactual account of causation, natural selection
is constituted by the causal relevance of traits and alleles to the variation in traits and alleles frequencies. The “statisticalist”
view of selection (Walsh, Matthen, Ariew, Lewens) has shown that natural selection is not a cause superadded to the causal
interactions between individual organisms. It also claimed that the only causation at work is those aggregated individual
interactions, natural selection being only predictive and explanatory, but it is implicitly committed to a process-view of
causation. I formulate a counterfactual construal of the causal statements underlying selectionist explanations, and show
that they hold because of the reference they make to ecological reliable factors. Considering case studies, I argue that this
counterfactual view of causal relevance proper to natural selection captures more salient features of evolutionary explanations
than the statisticalist view, and especially makes sense of the difference between selection and drift. I eventually establish
equivalence between causal relevance of traits and natural selection itself as a cause. 相似文献
5.
Nigel Pleasants 《Philosophia》2009,37(4):669-679
In On Certainty, Wittgenstein’s reflections bring into view the phenomenon of basic certainty. He explores this phenomenon
mostly in relation to our certainty with regard to empirical states of affairs. Drawing on these seminal observations and
reflections, I extend the inquiry into what I call “basic moral certainty”, arguing that the latter plays the same kind of
foundational role in our moral practices and judgements as basic empirical certainty does in our epistemic practices and judgements.
I illustrate the nature and significance of basic moral certainty via critical examination of contemporary philosophical “explanations”
of the wrongness of killing. These pseudo explanations, as I show them to be, will be seen to founder in a similar manner
to Moore’s “Proof” of an external world, that is, in a manner that discloses the phenomenon of basic (moral) certainty. 相似文献
6.
Dmitry Kurakin 《Integrative psychological & behavioral science》2010,44(3):227-234
Meaningful life is emotionally marked off. That’s the general point that Johansen (IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral
Science 44, 2010) makes which is of great importance. Fictional abstractions use to make the point even more salient. As an example I’ve examined
Borges’ famous fiction story. Along with the examples of Johansen it provides an informative case of exploring symbolic mechanisms
which bind meaning with emotions. This particular mode of analysis draws forth poetry and literature in general to be treated
as a “meaningful life laboratory”. Ways of explanation of emotional effect the art exercises on people, which had been disclosed
within this laboratory, however, constitute a significant distinction in terms that I have designated as “referential” and
“substantive”. The former appeals to something that has already been charged with emotional power, whereas the latter comes
to effect by means of special symbolic mechanisms creating the emotional experience within the situation. Johansen, who tends
to explain emotions exerted by the art without leaving the semiotic perspective, is drawn towards the “referential” type of
explanation. Based upon discussions in theory of metaphor and Robert Witkin’s sociological theory of arts it is demonstrated
an insufficient of “referential” explanation. To overcome a monopoly of “referential” explanation of emotional engagement,
in particular, in literature, means to break away from the way of reasoning, stating endless references to “something else”,
presupposing the existence of something already significant and therefore sharing its effects. 相似文献
7.
Clark Glymour 《Journal of Philosophical Logic》2012,41(2):461-469
Various proposals have suggested that an adequate explanatory theory should reduce the number or the cardinality of the set
of logically independent claims that need be accepted in order to entail a body of data. A (and perhaps the only) well-formed
proposal of this kind is William Kneale’s: an explanatory theory should be finitely axiomatizable but it’s set of logical
consequences in the data language should not be finitely axiomatizable. Craig and Vaught showed that Kneale theories (almost)
always exist for any recursively enumerable but not finitely axiomatizable set of data sentences in a first order language
with identity. Kneale’s criterion underdetermines explanation even given all possible data in the data language; gratuitous
axioms may be “tacked on.” Define a Kneale theory, T, to be logically minimal if it is deducible from every Kneale theory
(in the vocabulary of T) that entails the same statements in the data language as does T. If they exist, minimal Kneale theories
are candidates for best explanations: they are “bold” in a sense close to Popper’s; some minimal Kneale theory is true if
any Kneale theory is true; the minimal Kneale theory that is data equivalent to any given Kneale theory is unique; and no
Kneale theory is more probable than some minimal Kneale theory. I show that under the Craig-Vaught conditions, no minimal
Kneale theories exist. 相似文献
8.
Nuel Belnap 《Studia Logica》2009,91(3):305-334
The first section (§1) of this essay defends reliance on truth values against those who, on nominalistic grounds, would uniformly
substitute a truth predicate. I rehearse some practical, Carnapian advantages of working with truth values in logic. In the
second section (§2), after introducing the key idea of auxiliary parameters (§2.1), I look at several cases in which logics
involve, as part of their semantics, an extra auxiliary parameter to which truth is relativized, a parameter that caters to
special kinds of sentences. In many cases, this facility is said to produce truth values for sentences that on the face of
it seem neither true nor false. Often enough, in this situation appeal is made to the method of supervaluations, which operate
by “quantifying out” auxiliary parameters, and thereby produce something like a truth value. Logics of this kind exhibit striking
differences. I first consider the role that Tarski gives to supervaluation in first order logic (§2.2), and then, after an
interlude that asks whether neither-true-nor-false is itself a truth value (§2.3), I consider sentences with non-denoting
terms (§2.4), vague sentences (§2.5), ambiguous sentences (§2.6), paradoxical sentences (§2.7), and future-tensed sentences
in indeterministic tense logic (§2.8). I conclude my survey with a look at alethic modal logic considered as a cousin (§2.9),
and finish with a few sentences of “advice to supervaluationists” (2.10), advice that is largely negative. The case for supervaluations
as a road to truth is strong only when the auxiliary parameter that is “quantified out” is in fact irrelevant to the sentences of interest—as
in Tarski’s definition of truth for classical logic. In all other cases, the best policy when reporting the results of supervaluation is to use only explicit
phrases such as “settled true” or “determinately true,” never dropping the qualification. 相似文献
9.
Matthew C. Haug 《Philosophical Studies》2010,150(3):313-330
Several philosophers (e.g., Ehring (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 30:461–480, 1996); Funkhouser (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 40:548–569, 2006); Walter (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37:217–244, 2007) have argued that there are metaphysical differences between the determinable-determinate relation and the realization relation
between mental and physical properties. Others have challenged this claim (e.g., Wilson (Philosophical Studies, 2009). In this paper, I argue that there are indeed such differences and propose a “mechanistic” account of realization that elucidates
why these differences hold. This account of realization incorporates two distinct roles that mechanisms play in the realization
of mental (and other special science) properties which are implicit, but undeveloped, in the literature—what I call “constitutive”
and “integrative” mechanisms. I then use these two notions of mechanism to clarify some debates about the relations between
realization, multiple realizability, and irreducibility. 相似文献
10.
Adrian Mitchell Currie 《Synthese》2014,191(6):1163-1183
Geologists, Paleontologists and other historical scientists are frequently concerned with narrative explanations targeting single cases. I show that two distinct explanatory strategies are employed in narratives, simple and complex. A simple narrative has minimal causal detail and is embedded in a regularity, whereas a complex narrative is more detailed and not embedded. The distinction is illustrated through two case studies: the ‘snowball earth’ explanation of Neoproterozoic glaciation and recent attempts to explain gigantism in Sauropods. This distinction is revelatory of historical science. I argue that at least sometimes which strategy is appropriate is not a pragmatic issue, but turns on the nature of the target. Moreover, the distinction reveals a counterintuitive pattern of progress in some historical explanation: shifting from simple to complex. Sometimes, historical scientists rightly abandon simple, unified explanations in favour of disunified, complex narratives. Finally I compare narrative and mechanistic explanation, arguing that mechanistic approaches are inappropriate for complex narrative explanations. 相似文献
11.
Jure Zovko 《Synthese》2008,162(3):425-438
In this article, I discuss the manner in which Dieter Henrich’s theory of subjectivity has emerged from the fundamental questions
of German Idealism, and in what manner and to what extent this theory effects a reinstatement of metaphysics. In so doing,
I shall argue that Henrich’s position represents a viable refutation of the attempt of the physicalist explanation of the
world to prove the concept of the subject to be superfluous. Henrich’s metaphysics of subjectivity is primarily focused on
the ‘ultimate questions’ which also compose “the deep levels of our subjectivity” and concern the factors that should promote
stability in our emotional, moral and intellectual life. I argue with Henrich that the indisputable facticity of our conscious
life is worthy of our special consideration and interpretation, explanation and clarification, just as the deeper meaning
(the individual and collective subconscious structure) hidden beneath the layers of apparent comprehensibility calls for urgent
investigation. Such interpretation and elucidation of life’s meaning has a tripartite character: first, it consists of clarification
of the totality of human experience together with the realities playing a part in it; second, it builds on the process by
which the contents of experience are cognized, and the knowledge thereof which results; thirdly, it embraces the transcendental
precondition enabling each and every one of us to consciously lead our lives—for life, in a human sense, does not merely happen to one. Henrich’s metaphysical foundation of subjectivity is
compared with Kolak‘s position, according to which individual consciousness is not insular, but integrated into the totality
of overall unity that some have called “the Universal Self”, “the Noumenal Self”. 相似文献
12.
Thomas W. Polger 《Synthese》2010,177(2):193-212
13.
Kari L. Theurer 《Journal for General Philosophy of Science》2018,49(3):371-392
Mechanistic explanation is at present the received view of scientific explanation. One of its central features is the idea that mechanistic explanations are both “downward looking” and “upward looking”: they explain by offering information about the internal constitution of the mechanism as well as the larger environment in which the mechanism is situated. That is, they offer both constitutive and contextual explanatory information. Adequate mechanistic explanations, on this view, accommodate the full range of explanatory factors both “above” and “below” the target phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that mechanistic explanation cannot furnish both constitutive and contextual information simultaneously, because these are different types of explanation with distinctly different aims. Claims that they can, I argue, depend on several intertwined confusions concerning the nature of explanation. Particularly, such claims tend to conflate mechanistic and functional explanation, which I argue ought to be understood as distinct. Conflating them threatens to oversell the explanatory power of mechanisms and obscures the means by which they explain. I offer two broad reasons in favor of distinguishing mechanistic and functional explanation: the first concerns the direction of explanation of each, and the second concerns the type of questions to which these explanations offer answers. I suggest an alternative picture on which mechanistic explanation is understood as fundamentally constitutive, and according to which an adequate understanding of a phenomenon typically requires supplementing the mechanistic explanation with a functional explanation. 相似文献
14.
Jack Vromen 《Erkenntnis》2010,73(3):365-383
Abell, Felin and Foss argue that “macro-explanations” in strategic management, explanations in which organizational routines
figure prominently and in which both the explanandum and explanans are at the macro-level, are necessarily incomplete. They take a diagram (which has the form of a trapezoid) from Coleman,
Foundations of Social Theory, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.)/London, (1990) to task to show that causal chains connecting two macro-phenomena always involve “macro-to-micro” and “micro-to-macro” links,
links that macro-explanations allegedly fail to recognize. Their plea for micro-foundations in strategic management is meant
to shed light on these “missing links”. The paper argues that while there are good reasons for providing micro-foundations,
Abell, Felin and Foss’s causal incompleteness argument is not one of them. Their argument does not sufficiently distinguish
between causal and constitutive relations. Once these relations are carefully distinguished, it follows that Coleman’s diagram
has to be squared. This in turn allows us to see that macro-explanations need not be incomplete. 相似文献
15.
Peter Forrest 《Journal of Philosophical Logic》2010,39(3):229-254
Mereotopology is that branch of the theory of regions concerned with topological properties such as connectedness. It is usually
developed by considering the parthood relation that characterizes the, perhaps non-classical, mereology of Space (or Spacetime,
or a substance filling Space or Spacetime) and then considering an extra primitive relation. My preferred choice of mereotopological
primitive is interior parthood. This choice will have the advantage that filters may be defined with respect to it, constructing “points”, as Peter Roeper
has done (“Region-based topology”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 26 (1997), 25–309). This paper generalizes Roeper’s result, relying only on mereotopological axioms, not requiring an underlying
classical mereology, and not assuming the Axiom of Choice. I call the resulting mathematical system an approximate lattice, because although meets and joins are not assumed they are approximated. Theorems are proven establishing the existence and
uniqueness of representations of approximate lattices, in which their members, the regions, are represented by sets of “points”
in a topological “space”. 相似文献
16.
Jaegwon Kim 《Philosophical Studies》2010,148(1):101-112
This paper discusses in broad terms the metaphysical projects of Sydney Shoemaker’s Physical Realization. Specifically, I examine the effectiveness of Shoemaker’s novel “subset” account of realization for defusing the problem
of mental causation, and compare the “subset” account with the standard “second-order” account. Finally, I discuss the physicalist
status of the metaphysical worldview presented in Shoemaker’s important new contribution to philosophy of mind and metaphysics. 相似文献
17.
Allyson Mount 《Philosophical Studies》2008,138(2):193-209
Within the class of indexicals, a distinction is often made between “pure” or “automatic” indexicals on one hand, and demonstratives
or “discretionary” indexicals on the other. The idea is supposed to be that certain indexicals refer automatically and invariably
to a particular feature of the utterance context: ‘I’ refers to the speaker, ‘now’ to the time of utterance, ‘here’ to the
place of utterance, etc. Against this view, I present cases where reference shifts from the speaker, time, or place of utterance
to some other object, time, or place. I consider and reject the claim that these counterexamples to the automatic indexical
theory all involve non-literal uses of indexicals and argue that they cannot be explained away on the grounds that they involve
conversational implicature or pretense. 相似文献
18.
Samuli Pöyhönen 《Philosophical explorations》2013,16(1):93-109
In this article, I develop an account of the use of intentional predicates in cognitive neuroscience explanations. As pointed out by Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker, intentional language abounds in neuroscience theories. According to Bennett and Hacker, the subpersonal use of intentional predicates results in conceptual confusion. I argue against this overly strong conclusion by evaluating the contested language use in light of its explanatory function. By employing conceptual resources from the contemporary philosophy of science, I show that although the use of intentional predicates in mechanistic explanations sometimes leads to explanatorily inert claims, intentional predicates can also successfully feature in mechanistic explanations as tools for the functional analysis of the explanandum phenomenon. Despite the similarities between my account and Daniel Dennett's intentional-stance approach, I argue that intentional stance should not be understood as a theory of subpersonal causal explanation, and therefore cannot be used to assess the explanatory role of intentional predicates in neuroscience. Finally, I outline a general strategy for answering the question of what kind of language can be employed in mechanistic explanations. 相似文献
19.
Gary L. St. C. Oates 《Social Psychology of Education》2009,12(4):415-441
The viability of five prominent explanations for the black–white performance gap (“academic engagement,” “cultural capital,”
“social capital,” “school quality” and “biased treatment”) is examined using NELS data and a LISREL model that adjusts for
clustering of students within schools. Empirical models have typically assessed these factors individually—a practice that probably fosters overestimation of their explanatory power. School quality and biased treatment emerge as
the primary explanations for black–white high school test performance differentials. Access to better-quality schools and
receipt of more stimulating interpersonal “signals” from gatekeepers ensue from racial (and socioeconomic) privilege. Enhanced
test performance in turn ensues from these resources. In essence, the explanations for the racial gap that place more emphasis
on what black and white students “bring to” high school (i.e., specific levels of engagement, cultural and social capital),
seem less consequential to performance differentials than “what happens to” them when they get there (i.e., quality of education
provided, and race-contingent treatment received). 相似文献
20.
Gary Williams 《Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences》2011,10(2):217-239
I respond to Ned Block’s claim that it is “ridiculous” to suppose that consciousness is a cultural construction based on language
and learned in childhood. Block is wrong to dismiss social constructivist theories of consciousness on account of it being
“ludicrous” that conscious experience is anything but a biological feature of our animal heritage, characterized by sensory
experience, evolved over millions of years. By defending social constructivism in terms of both Julian Jaynes’ behaviorism
and J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, I draw a distinction between the experience or “what-it-is-like” of nonhuman animals
engaging with the environment and the “secret theater of speechless monologue” that is familiar to a linguistically competent
human adult. This distinction grounds the argument that consciousness proper should be seen as learned rather than innate
and shared with nonhuman animals. Upon establishing this claim, I defend the Jaynesian definition of consciousness as a social–linguistic
construct learned in childhood, structured in terms of lexical metaphors and narrative practice. Finally, I employ the Jaynesian
distinction between cognition and consciousness to bridge the explanatory gap and deflate the supposed “hard” problem of consciousness. 相似文献