This set contains Murray's renowned _English Grammar_, and his textbooks. The unique study of Murray's life and work, by Colin Eaton West is here updated with new notes by David A. Reibel.

Reasoning in Biological Discoveries brings together a series of essays, which focus on one of the most heavily debated topics of scientific discovery. Collected together and richly illustrated, Darden's essays represent a groundbreaking foray into one of the major problems facing scientists and philosophers of science. Divided into three sections, the essays focus on broad themes, notably historical and philosophical issues at play in discussions of biological mechanism; and the problem of developing and refining reasoning strategies, including interfield relations and (...) anomaly resolution. Darden summarizes the philosophy of discovery and elaborates on the role that mechanisms play in biological discovery. Throughout the book, she uses historical case studies to extract advisory reasoning strategies for discovery. Examples in genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology reveal the process of discovery in action. (shrink)

Philosophers of science typically associate the causal‐mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon’s account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of mechanism, I show how the complex‐systems approach avoids certain (...) objections to Salmon’s account of causal‐mechanical explanation. I conclude by discussing how mechanistic explanations can provide understanding by unification. (shrink)

The author presents a history of the attempts to find the final "theory of everything," gives a forceful argument that one can never be found, and a warning that the compromises necessary to produce a final theory may well undermine the rules of doing good science. At the heart of the story is the rise of the particle physicists and their attempts to reach far out into the cosmos for a unifying theory. Unable to subject their findings and theories to (...) experimental scrutiny, they have moved into a world governed entirely by mathematical and highly speculative theories, none of which can be empirically verified. "Does physics then become a branch of aesthetics?" Lindley asks. For an opposing viewpoint, see Stephen Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This paper examines the hypothesis that analogies may play a role in the generation of new ideas that are built into new explanatory theories. Methods of theory construction by analogy, by failed analogy, and by modular components from several analogies are discussed. Two different analyses of analogy are contrasted: direct mapping (Mary Hesse) and shared abstraction (Michael Genesereth). The structure of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection shows various analogical relations. Finally, an "abstraction for selection theories" is shown to be (...) the structure of a number of theories. (shrink)

In 1958, Francis Crick distinguished the flow of information from the flow of matter and the flow of energy in the mechanism of protein synthesis. Crick’s claims about information flow and coding in molecular biology are viewed from the perspective of a new characterization of mechanisms and from the perspective of information as holding a key to distinguishing work in molecular biology from that of biochemistry in the 1950s–1970s . Flow of matter from beginning to end does not occur in (...) the protein synthesis mechanism; flow of information does. The flow of information and coding in molecular biological mechanisms are distinguished, on the one hand, from formal information theory, and, on the other, from information as used in cognitive neuroscience, where information and representation are often coupled. (shrink)

This note discusses lecture plates at the Hugo de Vries Laboratorium that may be relevant to Hugo de Vries's claim to have independently discovered Mendel's law of segregation. Dating when the plates were made is problematic.

Democracy establishes relationships of political equality, ones in which citizens equally share authority over what they do together and respect one another as equals. But in today's divided public square, democracy is challenged by political thinkers who disagree about how democratic institutions should be organized, and by antidemocratic politicians who exploit uncertainties about what democracy requires and why it matters. Democratic Equality mounts a bold and persuasive defense of democracy as a way of making collective decisions, showing how equality of (...) authority is essential to relating equally as citizens. James Lindley Wilson explains why the US Senate and Electoral College are urgently in need of reform, why proportional representation is not a universal requirement of democracy, how to identify racial vote dilution and gerrymandering in electoral districting, how to respond to threats to democracy posed by wealth inequality, and how judicial review could be more compatible with the democratic ideal. What emerges is an emphatic call to action to reinvigorate our ailing democracies, and a road map for widespread institutional reform. Democratic Equality highlights the importance of diverse forms of authority in democratic deliberation and electoral and representative processes—and demonstrates how that authority rests equally with each citizen in a democracy. (shrink)

David Hume's claim that necessary connection is essential to causality was at the expense of a useful causal distinction we sometimes note with the words ‘necessity’ and ‘contingency’. And since, as J. L. Mackie has stated, Hume made ‘the most significant and influential single contribution to the theory of causation’, subsequent writers on causality, regardless of their support for, or opposition to, Hume, have joined him in trampling this distinction. The object of this paper is not so much to undermine (...) one of Hume's conclusions as it is to describe a use of ‘necessary’ that, while surviving in popular usage, is ignored or obfuscated in the literature on causality. (shrink)

This essay considers Newman’s basic epistemology in terms of two of his most important, and often overlooked, sources: Aristotle and the Church Fathers. Inparticular, Newman’s reliance upon Aristotle’s ethical and rhetorical thought on the one hand, and upon the patristic concept of oikonomia on the other, guided him in crafting the well-known account of faith and reason in his thirteenth University Sermon.

The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, published in two volumes in 1963, were well received by critics and scholars alike. The publication of these four volumes of later letters completes this edition of Mill's personal correspondence. These volumes contain over 1,800 letters, most never before published, and some sixty earlier letters that have come to light since the publication of the first two volumes of correspondence. The letters have been assembled from widely dispersed collections in the libraries of fifty-eight (...) institutions and of some thirty private collections in Britain and in other countries of the Commonwealth, Europe, and North America. In addition, many personal letters of which no originals sirvived have been located in contemporary periodicals or biographies of Mill's correspondence. (shrink)

This paper discusses how a subject's judgments about his actions, uncertainties and values may be improved by seeking out and reconciling inconsistences between related judgments. Decision theory tells us that there are relationships between coherent judgments, such as between a prior, likelihood and posterior, but does not tell us how a subject is to reconcile his own, possibly incoherent, views. The role of coherence in improving judgments is not clear. This paper discusses whether there is a unique, best reconciliation of (...) incoherent judgments and how such reconciliation could improve decision-making. The basic principles of the coherent view are explained and a language developed in which the problem of reconciliation can be discussed. The practical importance of the problem is emphasized, illustrated by several examples and possible solutions are explored. (shrink)

In this essay, I make the interpretive claim that we cannot properly understand the Federalist without appreciating the extent to which the papers mount a sustained rejection of extra-constitutional democracy—practices in which people aim to assert authority over the terms of common life in ways that are not sanctioned by existing laws. I survey such practices, which were common in America before and after the Revolution. I argue that there is continuity between Publius’s justification for rejecting extra-constitutional democracy and his (...) justification for his preferred system against constitutional alternatives. Adequate analysis and evaluation of the Federalist’s arguments about faction, representation, and institutional design require attention to the double duty the arguments play against constitutional and extra-constitutional opposition. This interpretive argument supports several analytic and evaluative conclusions. First, we must distinguish a new form of “non-hierarchical dualist” constitutionalism, according to which irregular democratic activity need not be limited to extraordinary “constitutional moments” or revolutions. Second, the politically egalitarian character of procedures depends not on the procedures alone, but how the maintenance of such procedures limits other forms of democratic practice. Third, the argument suggests a novel defense of “uncivil” disobedient politics: one grounded not in contributions to democratic deliberation, but in the entitlements of citizens to direct assertions of authority over common life. (shrink)

An extensive literature overlapping economics, statistical decision theory and finance, contrasts expected utility [EU] with the more recent framework of mean–variance (MV). A basic proposition is that MV follows from EU under the assumption of quadratic utility. A less recognized proposition, first raised by Markowitz, is that MV is fully justified under EU, if and only if utility is quadratic. The existing proof of this proposition relies on an assumption from EU, described here as “Buridan’s axiom” after the French philosopher’s (...) fable of the ass that starved out of indifference between two bales of hay. To satisfy this axiom, MV must represent not only “pure” strategies, but also their probability mixtures, as points in the (σ, μ) plane. Markowitz and others have argued that probability mixtures are represented sufficiently by (σ, μ) only under quadratic utility, and hence that MV, interpreted as a mathematical re-expression of EU, implies quadratic utility. We prove a stronger form of this theorem, not involving or contradicting Buridan’s axiom, nor any more fundamental axiom of utility theory. (shrink)

This comment encourages normative democratic theorists to attend to the agenda for democratic theory that Steffen Ganghof sets in Beyond Parliamentarism and Presidentialism. I discuss Ganghof’s distinction between ‘procedural’ and ‘process’ equality. I conclude with a meta-theoretical question about how theorists should think about advocacy for large-scale constitutional systems.

What does the abundance of data and proliferation of data-making methods mean for the ordinary person, the person on the street? And, what could they come to mean? In this paper, we present an overview of a year-long project to examine just such questions and complicate, in some ways, what it is to ask them. The project is a collective exercise in which we – a mixture of social scientists, designers and makers – and those living and working on one (...) street in Cambridge, Tenison Road, are working to think through how data might be materialised and come to matter. The project aims to better understand the specificities and contingencies that arise when data is produced and used in place. Mid-way through the project, we use this commentary to give some background to the work and detail one or two of the troubles we have encountered in putting locally relevant data to work. We also touch on a methodological standpoint we are working our way into and through, one that we hope complicates the separations between subject and object in data-making and opens up possibilities for a generative refiguring of the manifold relations. (shrink)

In this paper we recount several research projects conducted at ImaginationLancaster a Design-led research laboratory, all of which consider Object-Oriented Ontology. The role OOO plays in these projects is varied: as a generative mechanism contributing to ideation; as a framework for analysis; and as a constituent in developing new design theory. Each project’s focus is quite unique—an app, a board game, a set of Tarot cards, a kettle and a living room—however they are all concerned with developing new understandings relating (...) to the ubiquitous, networked, ‘smart’ technologies which are often referred to as the Internet of Things. Through our reflexive account of these research projects the aim of this paper is to provide insights into, and promote new discussion about, the relevance and scope for OOO in socio-technical Design Research, and beyond. (shrink)

Recent estimates indicate that over 40,000 children die annually in the United States and a majority have life-limiting conditions. Children at end of life require extensive healthcare resources, including multiple hospital readmissions and emergency room visits. Yet, many children still suffer from symptoms at end of life—including fatigue, pain, dyspnea, and anxiety—with less than 10% of these children utilizing hospice care services. A critical barrier to pediatric hospice use was the original federal regulations associated with the hospice care that required (...) a diagnosis of 6 months to live and the discontinuation of all curative treatments. The Concurrent Care Provision of the United States’ Affordable Care Act eliminated the need to forgo curative therapies in order to enroll in hospice for children in Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program. Concurrent care for children can help mitigate the tension families experience in choosing between essential forms of care, as well as contribute to improved end-of-life outcomes for the child and possibly bereavement outcomes for the family. Understanding concurrent care for children from a social justice perspective has important advocacy and research implications for hospice and palliative care clinicians providing care for children and their families. We apply Powers and Faden’s theory of social justice “as the moral foundation of public health and health policy” to the provision of concurrent care to children near end of life and families in the United States. The goals of applying this theory are to explore additional insights and perspectives into concurrent care policy may provide and to assess the usefulness of this theory when applied to end-of-life health policy. We argue that concurrent care policy is socially just since it has potential to promote well-being in vulnerable children and families and can limit the inequity children at end-of-life experience in access to high-quality hospice care. (shrink)

Some propositional attitude verbs require that the complement contain some “subjective predicate”. In terms of the theory proposed by Lasersohn, these verbs would seem to identify the “judge” of the embedded proposition with the matrix subject, and there have been suggestions in this direction. I show that it is possible to analyze these verbs as setting the judge and doing nothing more; then according to whether a judge index or a judge argument is assumed, unless the complement contains a subjective (...) predicate, the whole matrix is redundant or there is a type conflict. I further show that certain clear facts argue for assuming a judge argument which can be filled by a contextually salient entity–or by the subject of a subjective attitude verb. (shrink)

Two main methods for analysing de re readings of definite descriptions in intensional contexts coexist: that of evaluating the description in the actual world, whether by means of scope, actuality operators, or non-local world binding, and that of substituting another description, usually one expressing a salient or ‘vivid’ acquaintance relation to an attitude holder, prior to evaluation. Recent work on so-called descriptive indexicals suggests that contrary to common assumptions, both methods are needed, for different ends. This paper aims to show (...) that there is indeed a division of labour between the two methods of analysis and to identify criteria for choosing among alternative ways to model the second, substitutional method. (shrink)

How questions are understudied in philosophy and linguistics. They can be answered in very different ways, some of which are poorly understood. Jaworski identifies several types: ‘manner’, ‘method, means or mechanism’, ‘cognitive resolution’, and develops a logic designed to enable us to distinguish among them. Some key questions remain open, however, in particular, whether these distinctions derive from an ambiguity in how, from differences in the logical structure of the question or from contextual underspecification. Arguing from two classes of responses, (...) adverbs and by gerunds, I give the answer that the logical structure of the question is indeed relevant: loosely, manners are adjuncts but methods are arguments. (shrink)

abstract In 2002 Diane Pretty went to the European Court of Human Rights to gain a ruling about assisted suicide. In the course of this she argued that the right to life implied a right to die. This paper will consider, from an ethical rather than a legal point of view, how the right to life might imply (or not) a right to die, and whether this includes either a right that others shall help us die, or a right against (...) non‐interference if others are willing to help us. It does this by comparing the right to life to conceptions of property rights. This is not because I think human life is property, but because some of our ways of talking and thinking about our control over our own lives seem to be similar to our thoughts about our control over our own property. The right to life has traditionally been taken as a negative right, that is a right that others not deprive us of life. Pretty's argument, however, seems to be moving towards a positive right, not just to remain alive, but to be enabled in doing what we want to with our lives, and thus disposing of them if we so choose. The comparison with property rights suggests that the right to die only applies if our lives are ours absolutely, and may itself be modified by the suggestion that suicide harms all of us by devaluing human life in general. (shrink)

The capacity-building strategy used by a US-based research organisation, the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation , to strengthen the system for the protection of human research subjects and the infrastructure of its international collaborating partner, the University of Liberia, are discussed. To conduct the much-needed biomedical and social science-based research-related activities in the future, this partnership is expected by PIRE to gradually evolve over time to strengthen the capacity of the local investigators and administrators of the University of Liberia. (...) Accordingly, a unique opportunity to share technology and resources with a post-conflict, resource-constrained country is created by this partnership. This capacity-building model to strengthen the protection of human subjects in research can also be replicated in similar resource-constrained international settings and, accordingly, our experiences and limitations are shared in this paper. (shrink)