The purported failures of ergodic theory are shown to arise from misconception of the functions served by scientific explanation. In fact, the predictive failures of ergodic theory are precisely its points of greatest physical utility, where genuinely new knowledge about actual physical systems can be obtained, once the links between explanation and reconstructive estimation are recognized.

This paper evaluates the potentials of Mullā Şadrā’s philosophy to explain the possibility of the Islamization of philosophy. This contributes to a more general, yet controversial, project in post-revolutionary Iran, namely the Islamization of knowledge, especially in the humanities. If there would be a mechanism through which Islamization of philosophy – as a historical example and as a field of knowledge that provides theoretical grounds of other humanities – can be plausibly explained, then one might think of Islamizing the humanities, (...) as well. One famous explanation in Iran is based on the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification. It explains how a philosopher is permitted to use the Islamic content in the context of discovery – not justification – and how this helps to Islamize philosophy. In this article, we claim a new explanation which is based on Mullā Şadrā’s transcendent philosophy. Such a philosophical explanation not only acknowledges using the Qur’an and authentic narrations in the context of discovery but also necessitates involving revelation as a philosophical criterion in the context of justification and a highly valid epistemic source in producing the new philosophical content. This provides a strong account of the Islamization of philosophy. (shrink)

The purported failures of ergodic theory (seen in its often proved ineptitude to ground a mechanical explanation of thermodynamics) are shown to arise from misconception of the functions served by scientific explanation. In fact, the predictive failures of ergodic theory are precisely its points of greatest physical utility, where genuinely new knowledge about actual physical systems can be obtained, once the links between explanation and reconstructive estimation are recognized.

Nozick analyzes fundamental issues, such as the identity of the self, knowledge and skepticism, free will, the foundations of ethics, and the meaning of life.

Heyman's model explains the irrationality of addictive behavior, but it does not satisfactorily answer the question of whether this behavior is voluntary because it does not address the issue of the choice of preference functions. Furthermore, although Heyman disconfirms the disease model of addiction, this does not resolve the issue of whether addiction should be classified as a mental illness.

The main focus of this dissertation is the late medieval doctrine of Concurrentism. Concurrentists hold that God is immediately, causally involved in every event in nature, and yet so are creatures: For any natural effect to obtain, both God and creature must make a genuine causal contribution to the effect. Yet the presence of God's immanent activity in nature is claimed to not overdetermine or render otiose the real and necessary causal input of creatures. I develop and defend this view (...) as follows. First, I explain that---for the theist---any proper account of secondary causation can be given only against the backdrop of God's primary causation, which is best described as God's causal providence. Next, I offer a traditional interpretation of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, one that sharply distinguishes it in kind from ordinary, natural efficient causality or production. Given this interpretation, I argue that simply in virtue of being committed to creation ex nihilo, the theist is thereby committed to a theory of primary causation that I call The Strong View of Divine Providence . SP entails that God must not only sustain or conserve that which He creates, but also act directly in the operations of His creatures, and in the production of their effects. I then employ SP to evaluate the various theories of secondary causation available. Of the three possible contenders---Mere Conservationism, Occasionalism, and Concurrentism---I argue that only the latter two are compatible with SP. I then provide objections to occasionalism, showing how the doctrine either undermines its commitments to both divine providence and human freedom---so is philosophically and theologically unacceptable---or is better categorized as a version of one of the other two theories. Since mere conservationism is ruled out, simply given the conditions of SP, it follows that the most plausible view for the traditional theist to hold is some version of concurrentism. I then offer a positive analysis of concurrentism by explaining why God must concur with creatures, what God's concurrence amounts to, and then describe a simple model to explain how God concurs with creatures. (shrink)

There is a salient contrast in how theoretical representations are regarded. Some are regarded as revealing the nature of what they represent, as in familiar cases of theoretical identification in physical chemistry where water is represented as hydrogen hydroxide and gold is represented as the element with atomic number 79. Other theoretical representations are regarded as serving other explanatory aims without being taken individually to reveal the nature of what they represent, as in the representation of gold as a standard (...) for pre-20th century monetary systems in economics or the representation of the meaning of an English sentence as a function from possible worlds to truth values in truth-conditional semantics. Call the first attitude towards a theoretical representation *realist* and the second attitude *instrumentalist*. Philosophical explanation purports to reveal the nature of whatever falls within its purview, so it would appear that a realist attitude towards its representations is a natural default. I offer reasons for skepticism about such default realism that emerge from attending to several case studies of philosophical explanation and drawing a general metaphilosophical moral from the foregoing discussion. (shrink)

Michael P. Levine, Tamas Pataki. the case of racism. If one understands racism to be rooted in some underlying psychological structure, then while what is ordinarily called racist behavior may well be indicative of such an underlying structure, ...

Explanations are very important to us in many contexts: in science, mathematics, philosophy, and also in everyday and juridical contexts. But what is an explanation? In the philosophical study of explanation, there is long-standing, influential tradition that links explanation intimately to causation: we often explain by providing accurate information about the causes of the phenomenon to be explained. Such causal accounts have been the received view of the nature of explanation, particularly in philosophy of science, since the 1980s. (...) However, philosophers have recently begun to break with this causal tradition by shifting their focus to kinds of explanation that do not turn on causal information. The increasing recognition of the importance of such non-causal explanations in the sciences and elsewhere raises pressing questions for philosophers of explanation. What is the nature of non-causal explanations – and which theory best captures it? How do non-causal explanations relate to causal ones? How are non-causal explanations in the sciences related to those in mathematics and metaphysics? This volume of new essays explores answers to these and other questions at the heart of contemporary philosophy of explanation. The essays address these questions from a variety of perspectives, including general accounts of non-causal and causal explanations, as well as a wide range of detailed case studies of non-causal explanations from the sciences, mathematics and metaphysics. (shrink)

본 연구는 20세기말 사이버 공간의 등장과 함께 등장했던 레비의 ‘집단 지성’이란 개념의 검토를 목적으로 한다.이 개념은 최근 등장한 사회적 문제들에 대한 주요한 해결책으로 주목받고 있다. 지성은 전통적으로 지식과 관련하는 인간의 능력으로 간주되어 왔는데, 베르그송은 이를 도구를 제작하고, 제작을 무한하게 변형시키는 능력이라고 규정한 바 있다. 인공적인 도구를 제작하는 인간의 지성은 지식이 모든 이에게 개방되고 공유되는 공간인 사이버 공간에까지 나아갔다. 사이버 공간을 통해 지식은 이제 특정 집단에 의해 점유되지 않는다. 또한 이 공간은 현대 문명에서 나타나는 여러 현상들에도 지식의 지위를 부여하기에 이른다. 이런 (...) 점을 고려할 때, 레비의 집단 지성은 사이버 공간이라는 새로운 환경 속에서 인간성이 어떻게 변화했는지를 보여주는 통찰이라 하겠다. 레비는 모든 의견들과 지식들이 공유되고 실시간으로 전달되는 사이버 공간은 인간에게 새로운 삶의 전망들을 제시한다고 본다. 새로운 방식의 정치 체제는 삶의 전망 중에 가장 두드러지는 것이라 할 수 있다. 집단 지성은 자유로운 의견 교류를 전제로 하기 때문에 대의 정치제와 달리 사회 구성원 모두가 생산적 담론의 형성에 참여할 수 있다. 그런데 이러한 낙관적 전망에도 불구하고 지금의 현실은 여전히 이러한 기대에 근접하지 못하고 있다. 담론들을 제도적으로 검열하고, 익명적 의도로 인해 정보와 여론이 조작되는 것은 이에 대한 예시라 할 수 있다. 이러한 레비의 전망과 현실 사이의 간극에도 불구하고 사이버 공간이 인간에게 새로운 가능성을 개방했다는 것은 분명하다. ‘집단 지성’의 가능성을 구체적인 영역들에서 모색하는 최근의 동향은 이 가능성을 통해 현대인의 삶을 긍정적으로 변화시키고자 하는 노력으로 볼 수 있다. 지식이 공존되는 사이버 공간 속에서 인간이 획득한 지적 자유는 분명 획기적인 사건이며, 이런 점에서 집단 지성에 대한 논의는 그 이론적 실효성을 갖는다 하겠다. (shrink)

Merleau-ponty's thesis of the ambiguity of time is used to criticize husserl's and hume's views of the self. the thesis states that 1) the experience of present and past time depend on one another for intelligibility, and 2) the "objective" is past experience frozen in time; the "subjective" is present experience. adequate accounts of the self (and, generally, adequate philosophical explanation) will respect the ambiguity of time and discuss the interaction between subjective and objective facets of experience.

This book develops a philosophical structure for historical explanation that resolves disputes about the scientific status of history that have persisted since the nineteenth century. It does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative and by making their logic explicit. The books formulates a unique positive account of the logic of narrative explanations. This logic reveals how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. The book also develops a nonrealist (irrealist) (...) metaphysics and epistemology of history--that is, it argues that there exists no one fixed past but many pasts. It includes a novel reading of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, displaying how Kuhn offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. The book situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework. Naturalism regards all canons of rational inquiry as evolving and contingent. The book also argues for the general philosophical significance of historical explanation. The first four chapters defuse methodological and the metaphysical objections to narrative explanations. The final three chapters explore how narrative explanations relate to other sciences. It will be of interest to researchers in historiography, theory of history, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

I show why all current theories of personal identity, including the relativist/dissolutionist alternatives proposed recently by Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit, are subject to criticisms that collectively point in the direction of the thesis that there exists only one person in the universe. By my analysis, we are each a different human being. But the barriers between human beings--such as our each having a different physical body, different memories, a different stream of consciousness, different spatiotemporal positions, and so on--are not (...) necessarily borders between persons. Personhood, I claim, is not reducible to anything but the I: the pure ego or pure consciousness, similar to what Zeno Vendler and J. L. Mackie have recently, folllowing Kant, called the "Transcendental I." It is by avoiding a "transcendental" analysis, however, that leads to the possibility that we are each, personally, the subject of the universe. (shrink)

Provides a clear and cogent defense of the intentionalist approach to the interpretation of texts.

The two purposes of this essay. The general philosophical problem with most versions of social libertarianism and how this essay will proceed. The specific problem with liberty explained by a thought-experiment. The positive and abstract theory of interpersonal liberty-in-itself as ‘the absence of interpersonal initiated constraints on want-satisfaction’, for short ‘no initiated impositions’. The individualistic liberty-maximisation theory solves the problems of clashes, defences, and rectifications without entailing interpersonal utility comparisons or libertarian consequentialism. The practical implications of instantiating liberty: three (...) rules of liberty-in-practice, 1) initial ultimate control of one’s body, 2) initial ultimate control of one’s used resources, 3) consensual interpersonal interactions and resource transfers. These rules are economically efficient and maximise general want-satisfaction. Private property and legal remedies are additional practical institutional aspects, but to which ‘initiated impositions’ then apply prima facie. Libertarian law is often mistaken for complete libertarianism. Moral explanations are a separate issue. The three main moral theories imply libertarianism, but it can be morally posited independently of them. Critical rationalism and its application. No empirical or argumentative support for theories. An important ambiguity with ‘justification’. How the epistemology applies to the theory of liberty and its application but remains separable in principle. Conclusion: there are further published explanations but this should be enough to generate useful criticism. Appendix replying to some typical comments. (shrink)

A. N. Whitehead's approach to physical theorizing contrasts with that of mainstream or official physics in being centrally concerned with articulating a background explanation of physical facts and phenomena in general that would take the place of the “ether” of classical physics, a project otherwise unpursued by the science in its modern period. Unlike Einstein's, Whitehead's approach to relativity primarily seeks explanation rather than utility ; also, it avoids the philosophical problems with Einstein's theory alleged by Whitehead and a (...) range of other philosophers. This stops short of a finding as to the comparative worth of Whitehead's alternative basis for quantitative formulations. (shrink)

This multidisciplinary collection explores three key concepts underpinning psychiatry -- explanation, phenomenology, and nosology -- and their continuing relevance in an age of neuroimaging and genetic analysis. An introduction by Kenneth S. Kendler lays out the philosophical grounding of psychiatric practice. The first section addresses the concept of explanation, from the difficulties in describing complex behavior to the categorization of psychological and biological causality. In the second section, contributors discuss experience, including the complex and vexing issue of how self-agency (...) and free will affect mental health. The third and final section examines the organizational difficulties in psychiatric nosology and the instability of the existing diagnostic system. Each chapter has both an introduction by the editors and a concluding comment by another of the book's contributors. Contributors: John Campbell, Ph.D.; Thomas Fuchs, M.D., Ph.D.; Shaun Gallagher, Ph.D.; Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D.; Sandra D. Mitchell, Ph.D.; Dominic P. Murphy, Ph.D.; Josef Parnas, M.D., Dr.Med.Sci.; Louis A. Sass, Ph.D.; Kenneth F. Schaffner, M.D., Ph.D.; James F. Woodward, Ph.D.; Peter Zachar, Ph.D. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001788486; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 168-178.; Language(s): English; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.