共查询到20条相似文献,搜索用时 15 毫秒
1.
J. Wesley Robbins 《Zygon》1997,32(4):585-592
Willem Drees's stated purpose in Religion, Science and Naturalism is to maintain the continuing importance of religion in human life while being honest to the sciences. His preferred way of doing that is an example of what John Dewey once called "broken-backed naturalism." In contrast, Deweyan humanism accomplishes Drees's purpose in a more thoroughly naturalistic way. It does not bifurcate the world into the domain of the sciences—the natural world—and the domain of religion—the provider of answers to limit questions about the world as a whole, which fall outside the scope of the sciences. 相似文献
2.
Richard Scheines 《Metaphilosophy》2002,33(1&2):158-180
The computer's effect on our understanding of causation has been enormous. By the mid-1980s, philosophical and social-scientific work on the topic had left us with (1) no reasonable reductive account of causation and (2) a class of statistical causal models tied to linear regression. At this time, computer scientists were attacking the problem of equipping robots with models of the external that included probabilistic portrayals of uncertainty. To solve the problem of efficiently storing such knowledge, they introduced Bayes Networks and directed graphs. By attaching a causal interpretation to Bayes Networks, the philosophy of causation changed dramatically. We are now able to be extremely general about how causal structure connects to data, and systematic about when causal structures are empirically indistinguishable. In this essay I try to motivate and describe this synthesis. 相似文献
3.
Pat Lewtas 《Australasian journal of philosophy》2017,95(3):475-487
This paper argues that emergent conscious properties can't bestow emergent causal powers. It supports this conclusion by way of a dilemma. Necessarily, an (allegedly efficacious) emergent conscious property brings about its effects actively or other than actively (in senses explained in the paper). If actively, then, the paper argues, the emergent conscious property can't have causal powers at all. And if other than actively, then, the paper argues, the emergentist finds himself committed to incompatible accounts of causation. 相似文献
4.
Matthew Rellihan; 《Thought: A Journal of Philosophy》2024,10(4):249-256
I argue that Kroedel's 'Simple Argument' for downward causation fails and that this failure has consequences for any attempt to establish the reality of downward causation by appealing to counterfactual theories thereof. A central premise in Kroedel's argument equivocates. On one reading, it is true but renders the argument invalid; on another, it renders the argument valid but is likely false. I dedicate most of my efforts to establishing the second of these two claims. I show that the purported physical effects of mental properties do not counterfactually depend upon the total realizers of these properties. If counterfactual dependence is necessary for causation, it follows that mental properties are not causes. If counterfactual dependence is merely sufficient for causation, it follows that no appeal to counterfactuals will by itself succeed in showing that mental properties are causes. 相似文献
5.
Sven Ove Hansson 《Studia Logica》2006,82(3):329-336
The ideal world semantics of standard deontic logic identifies our obligations with how we would act in an ideal world. However,
to act as if one lived in an ideal world is bad moral advice, associated with wishful thinking rather than well-considered
moral deliberation. Ideal world semantics gives rise to implausible logical principles, and the metaphysical arguments that
have been put forward in its favour turn out to be based on a too limited view of truth-functional representation. It is argued
that ideal world semantics should be given up in favour of other, more plausible uses of possible worlds for modelling normative
subject-matter. 相似文献
6.
One finds in the systems of natural languages some explicit means of elaborating not only upon the directness of the causal relationship believed to exist between two events X and Y (i.e. some means of specifying just how inevitably event X gives or gave rise to event Y), but also some manner of indicating just who or what is understood to be the primary instigator of the caused event. The goal of the present paper is to explore these notions in detail and arrive at a formal, logic-based means of capturing them. 相似文献
7.
Deborah C. Smith 《Canadian journal of philosophy》2015,45(4):471-489
Jonathan Schaffer argues against a necessary connection between properties and laws. He takes this to be a question of what possible worlds we ought to countenance in our best theories of modality, counterfactuals, etc. In doing so, he unfairly rigs the game in favor of contingentism. I argue that the necessitarian can resist Schaffer’s conclusion while accepting his key premise that our best theories of modality, counterfactuals, etc. require a very wide range of things called ‘possible worlds’. However, the necessitarian can and should insist that, in many cases, these worlds are not metaphysically possible. I will further argue that, having taken such a stance, the necessitarian has additional resources to respond to Schaffer’s other arguments against the view. 相似文献
8.
Summary The purpose of this paper is to lay bare the major problems underlying the concept of downward causation as discussed within the perspective of the present interest for phenomena that are characterized by self-organization.In our discussion of the literature, we have focussed on two questions: (1) What sorts of things are said to be, respectively, causing and caused within the context of downward causation? And (2) What is the meaning of ‘causing’ in downward causation? We have concluded that the concept of ‘downward causation’ is muddled with regard to the meaning of causation and fuzzy with regard to the nature of the causes and the effects. Moreover, we have concluded that ‘causation’ in respect of ‘downward causation’ is usually understood in terms of explanation and determination rather than in terms of causation in the sense of ‘bringing about’. Thus, the term ‘downward causation’ is badly chosen. 相似文献
9.
According to difference-based (e.g. counterfactual/covariational) models of causal judgement, the epistemic state of the agent should not affect judgements of cause. Four experiments examined opportunity chains in which a physical event (distal cause) enabled a subsequent proximal cause to produce an outcome. All four experiments showed that when the proximal cause was a human action, it was judged as more causal if the agent was aware of his opportunity than if he was not or if the proximal cause was a physical event. The first two experiments showed that these preferences could not be explained in terms of differences in perceived conditional probability (whether from the observer's or the agent's point of view), social controllability or perceptions of the causal sequence as forming a single unit. The third experiment showed that awareness affected the perceived deliberateness with which the action brought the outcome about but not its perceived voluntariness. The fourth experiment showed that when the outcome was intended, the perceived deliberateness of the agent's action was a plausible mediator of the effect of awareness of opportunity on causal preference. We conclude that awareness of the opportunity allows inferences about the deliberate production of the outcome when the action is voluntary, which in turn influence causal judgements. 相似文献
10.
Brian Garrett 《Thought: A Journal of Philosophy》2014,3(3):230-233
In this discussion paper I argue that Max Black's well‐known bilking argument does not succeed in showing the impossibility of backwards causation. 相似文献
11.
Samuel Murray 《Philosophical explorations》2016,19(3):268-275
Timothy O’Connor has recently defended a version of libertarianism that has significant advantages over similar accounts. One of these is an argument that secures indeterminism on the basis of an argument that shows how causal determinism threatens agency in virtue of the nature of the causal relation involved in free acts. In this paper, I argue that while it does turn out that free acts are not causally determined on O’Connor’s view, this fact is merely stipulative and the argument that he presents for this conclusion begs the question. 相似文献
12.
Dirk Kindermann 《Inquiry (Oslo, Norway)》2013,56(8):912-955
The received picture of linguistic communication understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. This picture is in conflict with the attractive Lewisian view of belief as self-location, which is motivated by de se attitudes – first-personal attitudes about oneself – as well as attitudes about subjective matters such as personal taste. In this paper, I provide a solution to the conflict that reconciles these views. I argue for an account of mental attitudes and communication on which mental content and speech act content is understood as sets of multicentered worlds – roughly, possible worlds ‘centered’ on a sequence of individuals at a time. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on multicentered worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. The resulting picture is one on which the point of conversation is the coordination of individual perspectives. 相似文献
13.
Christian List 《Journal of Philosophical Logic》2008,37(1):57-65
Suppose the members of a group (e.g., committee, jury, expert panel) each form a judgment on which worlds in a given set are
possible, subject to the constraint that at least one world is possible but not all are. The group seeks to aggregate these
individual judgments into a collective judgment, subject to the same constraint. I show that no judgment aggregation rule
can solve this problem in accordance with three conditions: “unanimity,” “independence” and “non-dictatorship,” Although the
result is a variant of an existing theorem on “group identification” (Kasher and Rubinstein, Logique et Analyse 160:385–395,
1997), the aggregation of judgments on which worlds are possible (or permissible, desirable, etc.) appears not to have been
studied yet. The result challenges us to take a stance on which of its conditions to relax. 相似文献
14.
Mark Jago 《Synthese》2009,167(2):327-341
Gaining information can be modelled as a narrowing of epistemic space. Intuitively, becoming informed that such-and-such is the case rules out certain scenarios or would-be possibilities. Chalmers’s
account of epistemic space treats it as a space of a priori possibility and so has trouble in dealing with the information
which we intuitively feel can be gained from logical inference. I propose a more inclusive notion of epistemic space, based
on Priest’s notion of open worlds yet which contains only those epistemic scenarios which are not obviously impossible. Whether something is obvious is not
always a determinate matter and so the resulting picture is of an epistemic space with fuzzy boundaries. 相似文献
15.
Thomas Kroedel 《Philosophical Studies》2008,139(1):125-143
The paper argues that mental causation can be explained from the sufficiency of counterfactual dependence for causation together with relatively weak assumptions about the metaphysics of mind. If a physical event counterfactually depends on an earlier physical event, it also counterfactually depends on, and hence is caused by, a mental event that correlates with (or supervenes on) this earlier physical event, provided that this correlation (or supervenience) is sufficiently modally robust. This account of mental causation is consistent with the overdetermination of physical events by mental events and other physical events, but does not entail it.
相似文献
Thomas KroedelEmail: |
16.
Zeiler MD 《Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior》1992,57(3):417-427
Behavior is a property of living organisms, not of inanimate matter. The problems of physical science are to understand how a phenomenon works; biological science adds the questions of what a phenomenon does and how something that does such things came to be. Exclusive dedication to cause–effect explanations ignores how behavior helps creatures cope with their internal and external environments. Laws of causation describe the precursors to behavior; laws of function describe the effects of behavior. The numerous instances of learning reflect the many ways that selective pressure for altering behavior on the basis of experience has been manifested. Little basis exists for assuming that the various forms of learning reflect either common functions or common processes. Instead, it seems that evolutionary processes have resulted in domain-specific learning. The rules of learning must be understood in terms of the function that the particular manifestation of learning serves for the organism. Evolutionary theory provides the framework for understanding function as well as relations between function and causal mechanisms. 相似文献
17.
ROBERT NORTHCOTT 《Theoria》2009,75(4):336-343
Jonathan Schaffer (2004 ) proposes an ingenious amendment to David Lewis's semantics for counterfactuals. This amendment explicitly invokes the notion of causal independence, thus giving up Lewis's ambitions for a reductive counterfactual account of causation. But in return, it rescues Lewis's semantics from extant counterexamples. I present a new counterexample that defeats even Schaffer's amendment. Further, I argue that a better approach would be to follow the causal modelling literature and evaluate counterfactuals via an explicit postulated causal structure. This alternative approach easily resolves the new counterexample, as well as all the previous ones. Up to now, its perceived drawback relative to Lewis's scheme has been its non‐reductiveness. But since the same drawback applies equally to Schaffer's amended scheme, this becomes no longer a point of comparative disadvantage. 相似文献
18.
In the work of both Ludwik Fleck and Thomas Kuhn the scientific literature plays important roles for stability and change
of scientific phenomenal worlds. In this article we shall introduce the analyses of scientific literature provided by Fleck
and Kuhn, respectively. From this background we shall discuss the problem of how divergent thinking can emerge in a dogmatic
atmosphere. We shall argue that in their accounts of the factors inducing changes of scientific phenomenal worlds Fleck and
Kuhn offer substantially different approaches, and we shall discuss in which respects their approaches may be compatible.
This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. 相似文献
19.
Kit Fine 《Journal of Philosophical Logic》2000,29(6):543-584
This paper provides a possible worlds semantics for the system of the author's previous paper The Logic of Essence. The basic idea behind the semantics is that a statement should be taken to be true in virtue of the nature of certain objects just in case it is true in any possible world compatible with the nature of those objects. It is shown that a slight variant of the original system is sound and complete under the proposed semantics. 相似文献
20.
Maxwell J. Cresswell 《Studia Logica》2006,82(3):307-327
The possible-worlds semantics for modality says that a sentence is possibly true if it is true in some possible world. Given
classical prepositional logic, one can easily prove that every consistent set of propositions can be embedded in a ‘maximal
consistent set’, which in a sense represents a possible world. However the construction depends on the fact that standard
modal logics are finitary, and it seems false that an infinite collection of sets of sentences each finite subset of which
is intuitively ‘possible’ in natural language has the property that the whole set is possible. The argument of the paper is
that the principles needed to shew that natural language possibility sentences involve quantification over worlds are analogous
to those used in infinitary modal logic. 相似文献