Category: Explanation

Where Are All the Successful Analyses?

analytical philosophy / Cognition / Concepts / Explanation / Michael Strevens: Thinking Off Your Feet

I promised a surprise for today’s post. It’s a nasty one. Philosophical analysis is a search for the essential natures of such things as knowledge, justice, and causality. I’ve been defending analysis on two fronts. First, I’ve argued that it its inputs—the case judgments delivered by our “starter theories” of …

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Michael Silberstein Webinar on Explanatory Strategies in the Biological Sciences

Explanation / NM Webinar / Philosophy of Science

The Brains blog is excited for the next Neural Mechanisms webinar this Friday. It is free. Find information about how and when to join the webinar here: https://www.neuralmechanisms.org/blog/25-january-michael-siblerstein-webinar-constraints-on-localization-and-decomposition-20 (and below). Constraints on Localization and Decomposition as Explanatory Strategies in the Biological Sciences 2.0 Michael Silberstein (Elizabethtown College) 25 January 2019h 15-17 …

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Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds: Conceptual Analysis and Conceptual Engineering

analytical philosophy / Concepts / Edouard Machery: Philosophy Within its Proper Bounds / Experimental Philosophy / Explanation

In the previous post, I defended a restricted form of modal skepticism and I concluded that many traditional philosophical issues could not be resolved and should be set aside. One may wonder what is left for philosophers to do: Am I suggesting to close philosophy departments? Fear not, dear reader, …

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Explanation and Integration in Mind and Brain Science

Cognition / Explanation / functionalism / Neuroscience; Philosophy of Science / Psychology / reduction

This forthcoming volume, edited by David Kaplan, should be of interest to The Brains Blog community, and it includes papers by fellow contributors Gualtiero Piccinini and Corey Maley:

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/explanation-and-integration-in-mind-and-brain-science-9780199685509?cc=us&lang=en&#

 

A Note on Constitutive Relevance in Mechanisms

Explanation / Mindcraft / Philosophy of Mind / Philosophy of Science

Carl Craver (Explaining the Brain, 2007) argues that what it is for an object doing X (micro variable) to be a working component of a mechanism doing Y (macro variable) is (i) for the former to be a part of the latter and (ii) for the two of them to …

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Our New, Ongoing and Empirically Resolvable Debates over Reduction and Emergence

Carl Gillett: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy / Concepts / Explanation / functionalism / naturalism / reduction

Some philosophers of science have suggested that scientific discussions of “reductionism” and “emergentism” are merely rhetorical funding grabs. But drawing together my work in earlier parts of the book, in the final section, Part IV, I outline how we are in substantive, ongoing and empirically resolvable scientific debates about the …

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The Scientific Emergentist and her Striking Metaphysical Mutualism

Carl Gillett: Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy / Concepts / Explanation / functionalism / naturalism / reduction

Part III of the book focuses on reconstructing the scientific emergentism of writers like Anderson, Freeman, Laughlin, Prigogine, and others, and providing a theoretical framework for its claims. I argue that scientific emergentism is a philosophically overlooked, and profoundly important position, that I dub ‘Mutualism’ with a range of novel …

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