In the last 20 years or so, since the publication of a seminal paper by Watts and Strogatz :440–442, 1998), an interest in topological explanations has spread like a wild fire over many areas of science, e.g. ecology, evolutionary biology, medicine, and cognitive neuroscience. The topological approach is still very young by all standards, and even within special sciences it still doesn’t have a single methodological programme that is applicable across all areas of science. That is why this special issue (...) is important as a first systematic philosophical study of topological explanations and their relation to a well understood and widespread explanatory strategy, such as mechanistic one. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a quality space model as an account of the intelligibility of explanation. I argue that descriptions of causal or functional roles (Chalmers Levine, 2001) are not the only basis for intelligible explanations. If we accept that phenomenal concepts refer directly, not via descriptions of causal or functional roles, then it is difficult to find role fillers for the described causal roles. This constitutes a vagueness constraint on the intelligibility of explanation. Thus, I propose to use (...) quality space models to develop a systematic way of studying different modalities of perception and feelings, e.g., visual and auditory perception, pain, and emotion, that can reveal some structural relations among these modalities. It might turn out that topological explanation can be more intelligible than causal explanation in this case. I discuss two accounts of a quality space for color vision (Clark, 2000; Rosenthal, 2010) and propose how to construct a quality space for pain. Daniel Kostic is Associated Researcher at Berlin School of Mind and Brain. (shrink)

In non-causal explanations, some non-causal facts (such as mathematical, modal or metaphysical) are used to explain some physical facts. However, precisely because these explanations abstract away from causal facts, they face two challenges: 1) it is not clear why would one rather than the other non-causal explanantia be relevant for the explanandum; and 2) why would standing in a particular explanatory relation (e.g., “counterfactual dependence”, “constraint”, “entailment”, “constitution”, “grounding”, and so on), and not in some other, be explanatory. I develop (...) an explanatory relevance account which is based on erotetic constraints and show how it addresses these two challenges. (shrink)

Levenstein et al. aptly highlight some of the foundational issues in theoretical neuroscience, such as the role of abstraction and idealization in providing scientific explanations and understanding, and distinguishing under which conditions neuroscientific models provide genuine explanations, or mere descriptions, predictions, or control. -/- The authors rightly emphasize that philosophers of science can also gain valuable insights from the vast body of neuroscience literature, by employing methods of digital humanities, such as text mining, in line with the cognitive metascience approach (...) (Miłkowski, 2023). -/- Conversely, neuroscientists can benefit from the latest research in philosophy of science, particularly on the epistemic norms of diverse kinds of explanations in neuroscience, e.g., topological (Kostić, 2020), computational (Miłkowski, 2013; Chirimuuta, 2018), dynamical (Favela, 2020), and functional (Egan, 2017). Understanding the diverse goals of theories is conducive to fruitful exploratory and explanatory scientific practice. Some forms of scientific understanding are not always grounded in explanations, but also in diverse theoretical representations, e.g., diagrams, taxonomies, and diagnostic manuals (Miłkowski, 2023). Philosophical theories of understanding can also integrate different kinds of explanations in a single framework (Khalifa et al., 2022). -/- The need for these interdisciplinary connections is particularly vivid in the case of network models that are increasingly being used in neuroscience (Kostić et al., 2020), and especially when it comes to evaluating their explanatory power (Kostić, 2020; Kostić and Khalifa, 2023). -/- In conclusion, we strongly support Levenstein et al.'s call for greater collaboration between philosophers of science and neuroscientists on the foundational issues in neuroscience. Embracing this interdisciplinary approach is essential for advancing our knowledge of the brain and its function. (shrink)

Global properties of canonical derivability predicates in Peano Arithmetic) are studied here by means of a suitable propositional modal logic GL. A whole book [1] has appeared on GL and we refer to it for more information and a bibliography on GL. Here we propose a sequent calculus for GL and, by exhibiting a good proof procedure, prove that such calculus admits the elimination of cuts. Most of standard results on GL are then easy consequences: completeness, decidability, finite model property, (...) interpolation and the fixed point theorem. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to determine the relative frequency of course offerings on social issues and business ethics in American business schools. Specifically, a random sample of the curricula of 119 American business schools were analyzed in order to gauge the importance given to coursework on ethics and social issues. The findings indicated that the incidence of such courses was generally low in American business curricula, particularly at the graduate level. These findings are discussed in light of the (...) current concern for more responsible corporate behavior. (shrink)

One of the areas of concern raised by cross-border reproductive travel regards the treatment of women who are solicited to provide their ova or surrogacy services to foreign consumers. This is particularly troublesome in the context of developing countries where endemic poverty and low standards for both medical care and informed consent may place these women at risk of exploitation and harm. We explore two contrasting proposals for policy development regarding the industry, both of which seek to promote ethical outcomes (...) and social justice: While one proposal advocates efforts to minimize cross-border demand for female reproductive resources through the pursuit of national self-sufficiency, the other defends cross-border trade as a means for meeting the needs of vulnerable groups. Despite the conflicting objectives of the proposed strategies, the paper identifies common values and points of agreement between the two, including the importance of regulations to safeguard those providing ova or surrogacy services. (shrink)

This article focuses mainly on (1) the policy of Delft University of Technology since 1992 as regards the university-wide introduction of a compulsory course on ethics and engineering, and (2) the ideal structure of such a course, including the educational goals of the course.

F. J. J.Buytendijk died on October 21st 1974 at the age of 87. His important contribution to the study of animal behaviour is analyzed here in relation to the historical development of animal psychology and ethology. The detailed study of his scientific production suggests, according to the authors, that some important findings, although largely not paid attention to in present-day literature, are akin to the conceptual and methodological evolution of comparative ethology.

The current Ebola epidemic has presented challenges both medical and ethical. Although we have known epidemics of untreatable diseases in the past, this particular one may be unique in the intensity and rapidity of its spread, as well as ethical challenges that it has created, exacerbated by its geographic location. We will look at the infectious agent and the epidemic it is causing, in order to understand the ethical problems that have arisen.

Relatively congruence regular quasivarieties and quasivarieties of logic have noticeable similarities. The paper provides a unifying framework for them which extends the Blok-Pigozzi theory of elementarily algebraizable (and protoalgebraic) deductive systems. In this extension there are two parameters: a set of terms and a variable. When the former is empty or consists of theorems, the Blok-Pigozzi theory is recovered, and the variable is redundant. On the other hand, a class of membership logics is obtained when the variable is the only (...) element of the set of terms. For these systems the appropriate variant of equivalent algebraic semantics encompasses the relatively congruence regular quasivarieties. (shrink)

Classical temples in ancient Greece show two deterministic illusionistic principles of architecture, which govern their functional design: geometric proportionalism and a set of illusion-strengthening rules in the proportionalism's stochastic margin. Animal morphology, in its mechanistic-deductive revival, applies just one architectural principle, which is not always satisfactory. Whether a Greek Classical situation occurs in the architecture of living structure is to be investigated by extreme testing with deductive methods.Three deductive methods for explanation of living structure in animal morphology are proposed: the (...) parts, the compromise, and the transformation deduction. The methods are based upon the systems concept for an organism, the flow chart for a functionalistic picture, and the network chart for a structuralistic picture, whereas the optimal design serves as the architectural principle for living structure. These methods show clearly the high explanatory power of deductive methods in morphology, but they also make one open end most explicit: neutral issues do exist. (shrink)

This book attempts, through a series of interpretive discussions, to confront a number of well-known perplexities in their structural form of disjunctive moments, of interpretive contexts of 'this is' and 'this is not.'.

We give an alternative proof of the stability of separably closed fields of fixed Éršov invariant to the one given in [W]. We show that in case the Éršov invariant is finite, the theory is in fact equational. We also characterize the independence relation in those theories.

During the last decade neurotransplantation has developed into a technique with the possible potential to repair damaged or degenerating human brain. Effective neurotransplantation has so far been based on the use of fetal brain tissue derived from aborted embryos or fetuses. The ethical issues related to this new therapeutic approach therefore not only concern the possible adverse side effects for a neural graft-receiving patient, but also the relationship between the requirements for fetal tissue and the decision-making process for induced abortion. (...) Although for decades human embryos and fetuses have been the subject of biomedical studies, and, in principle, their use has therefore not been seen as ethically objectionable, the above points made it necessary to reconsider the moral issues. The present paper points out several of these issues, both from the donor and acceptor (patient) point of view. The conclusion is that under a series of restrictions intended to prevent the use of grafts from encouraging induced abortions and to maintain high standards of respect for life and human dignity, neurotransplantation using embryonic or fetal brain tissue parts cannot be rejected on moral grounds. (shrink)

The fact that it is possible to define three different material conditionals in orthomodular lattices suggests that there exist three different orthomodular logics whose conditionals are material conditionals and whose models are orthomodular lattices. The purpose of this paper is to provide equationally definable implication algebras for each of these material conditionals.

John Rawls’ use of a contractarian strategy for justifying basic principles of justice has raised the hope that a similar strategy might work for a theory of right and moral principles generally. I want to show that this hope cannot be fulfilled.In what follows I interpret contractarianism in a Rawlsian way on the grounds that his is the most plausible version of the doctrine we are likely to get. I am not however concerned with the details of Rawls’ argument for (...) justice but instead with an idea that appears to underlie the contractarian strategy. In order to avoid the complications of Rawlsian exegesis, I choose to discuss the doctrine as it might be used to justify a moral principle of mutual assistance and not as Rawls in fact uses it to justify principles of justice. (shrink)