Here is an idea that Carl Gillett and I broach in some works in progress and which we presented (among other things) at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology (and provoked by Richard’s exobiology post). In all explicitness, claims about realization and multiple realization should be indexed to levels. …
Recently there have been a lot of stories in the news about scientist’s finding water in the atmosphere of an extra-solar planet, and finding an extra-solar planet that they classify as habitableWhat is striking (to me) about these stories, besides the overal ‘cool factor’ of space stuff, is that these scientists …
Here. (If you haven’t read Dennett’s piece “Higher Order Truths about Chmess,” I recommend it.)
I just read John Earman and John Roberts’ interesting papers defending Humean Supervenience about laws of nature, in PPR 2005. They argue that facts about which generalizations are nomic supervene on non-nomic observable facts. Their argument is that without such supervenience, it would be impossible to find empirical justification for …
I just culled together a bunch of putative examples of downward causation, some from advocates, some from detractors. Particularly interesting and promising is the article by Robert Bishop, Downward causation in fluid convection, and Bechtel/Craver’s article Top-down causation without top-down causes, for which brief quotes will not do justice. (Note …
Today’s NY Times has a nice article on recent evidence that contrary to popular belief (especially among philosophers), some animals have a form of episodic memory and the ability to plan for future events.
