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(b. 1939) are professors at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California. Woodward teaches philosophy; Goodstein teaches physics. Woodward has served Caltech as executive officer (review)Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence. forthcoming.
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40Causes, Conditions, and the Pragmatics of Causal ExplanationIn Gregory J. Morgan (ed.), Philosophy of Science Matters: The Philosophy of Peter Achinstein, Oxford University Press. pp. 247. 2011.
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18Book ReviewsRonald Giere, Science Without Laws. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press , x+ 285pp. $25.00 (review)Philosophy of Science 69 (2): 379-384. 2002.
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93Supervenience and Singular Causal StatementsRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 27 211-246. 1990.In his recent book, Causation: A Realistic Approach , Michael Tooley discusses the following thesis, which he calls the ‘thesis of the Humean Supervenience of Causal Relations’: The truth values of all singular causal statements are logically determined by the truth values of statements of causal laws, together with the truth values of non-causal statements about particulars . represents one version of the ‘Humean’ idea that there is no more factual content to the claim that two particular event…Read more
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39Book Reviews: Time: A Traveler's Guide. By Clifford A. Pickover. Oxford University Press, New York, 1998, xviii +285 pp., 815.95 (softcover, 1999). ISBN 0-19-513096-0. Surfing Through Hyperspace: Understanding Higher Universes in Six Easy Lessons. By Clifford A. Pickover. Oxford University Press, New York, 1999, xxiv +239 pp., 825.00 (hardcover). ISBN 0-19-513006-5 (review)Foundations of Physics 30 (1): 165-170. 2000.
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57Gravity, Inertia, and Quantum Vacuum Zero Point FieldsFoundations of Physics 31 (5): 819-835. 2001.Over the past several years Haisch, Rueda, and others have made the claim that the origin of inertial reaction forces can be explained as the interaction of electrically charged elementary particles with the vacuum electromagnetic zero-point field expected on the basis of quantum field theory. After pointing out that this claim, in light of the fact that the inertial masses of the hadrons reside in the electrically chargeless, photon-like gluons that bind their constituent quarks, is untenable, …Read more
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97Flux Capacitors and the Origin of InertiaFoundations of Physics 34 (10): 1475-1514. 2004.The explanation of inertia based on “Mach's principle” is briefly revisited and an experiment whereby the gravitational origin of inertia can be tested is described. The test consists of detecting a small stationary force with a sensitive force sensor. The force is presumably induced when a periodic transient Mach effect mass fluctuation is driven in high voltage, high energy density capacitors that are subjected to 50 kHz, 1.3 kV amplitude voltage signal, and threaded by an alternating magnetic…Read more
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111What is the Cause of Inertia?Foundations of Physics 29 (6): 899-930. 1999.The question of the cause of inertial reaction forces and the validity of “Mach's principle” are investigated. A recent claim that the cause of inertial reaction forces can be attributed to an interaction of the electrical charge of elementary particles with the hypothetical quantum mechanical “zero-point” fluctuation electromagnetic field is shown to be untenable. It fails to correspond to reality because the coupling of electric charge to the electromagnetic field cannot be made to mimic plaus…Read more
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92Book Review: The Future of Spacetime. By Stephen W. Hawking, Kip S. Thorne, Igor Novikov, Timothy Ferris, Alan Lightman, and Richard Price. W. W. Norton, New York and London, 2002, 220 pp., $25.95 (hardcover). ISBN 0-393-02022-3 (review)Foundations of Physics 32 (9): 1485-1491. 2002.
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105Causation: Interactions between Philosophical Theories and Psychological ResearchPhilosophy of Science 79 (5): 961-972. 2012.This article explores some ways in which philosophical theories of causation and empirical investigations into causal learning and judgment can mutually inform one another.
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127Psychological studies of causal and counterfactual reasoningIn Christoph Hoerl, Teresa McCormack & Sarah R. Beck (eds.), Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology, Oxford University Press. pp. 16. 2011.Counterfactual theories of causation of the sort presented in Mackie, 1974, and Lewis, 1973 are a familiar part of the philosophical landscape. Such theories are typically advanced primarily as accounts of the metaphysics of causation. But they also raise empirical psychological issues concerning the processes and representations that underlie human causal reasoning. For example, do human subjects internally represent causal claims in terms of counterfactual judgments and when they engage in cau…Read more
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120Social preferences in experimental economicsPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 646-657. 2008.This article explores some issues having to do with the use of experimental results from one‐shot games to reach conclusions about the existence of social preferences that are taken to figure in the explanation of cooperation in repeated interactions in real life. †To contact the author, please write to: Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125; e‐mail: [email protected].
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506Mental causation and neural mechanismsIn Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation, Oxford University Press. pp. 218-262. 2008.This paper discusses some issues concerning the relationship between the mental and the physical, including the so-called causal exclusion argument, within the framework of a broadly interventionist approach to causation.
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143Evading the IRSIn Martin R. Jones & Nancy Cartwright (eds.), Idealization XII: Correcting the Model. Idealization and Abstraction in the Sciences, Rodopi. 2005.'IRS' is our term for the logical empiricist idea that the best way to understand the epistemic bearing of observational evidence on scientific theories is to model it in terms of Inferential Relations among Sentences representing the evidence, and sentences representing hypotheses the evidence is used to evaluate. Developing ideas from our earlier work, including 'Saving the Phenomena'(Phil Review 97, 1988, p.303-52 )we argue that the bearing of observational evidence on theory depends upon cau…Read more
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110The incompatibility of Mach's principle and the principle of equivalence in current gravitation theoryBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 23 (2): 111-116. 1972.
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108Mach's principle: Micro- or macrophysical?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 26 (2): 137-141. 1975.
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236What are moral intuitions and why should we care about them? A neurobiological perspectivePhilosophical Issues 18 (1): 164-185. 2008.No Abstract
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389What is a mechanism? A counterfactual accountProceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2002 (3). 2002.This paper presents a counterfactual account of what a mechanism is. Mechanisms consist of parts, the behavior of which conforms to generalizations that are invariant under interventions, and which are modular in the sense that it is possible in principle to change the behavior of one part independently of the others. Each of these features can be captured by the truth of certain counterfactuals
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57Why do people cooperate as much as they do?In Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (ed.), Philosophy of the social sciences: philosophical theory and scientific practice, Cambridge University Press. 2009.This paper makes use of recent empirical results, mainly from experimental economics, to expore the conditions under which people will cooperate and to assess competing explantions of this cooperation. It is argued that the evidence supports the claim that people differ in type, with some being conditional cooperators and others being motivated by more or less sophisticated forms of self-interest. Stable cooperation requires, among other things, rules and institutions that protect conditional co…Read more
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134Interventionist theories of causation in psychological perspectiveIn Alison Gopnik & Laura Schulz (eds.), Causal learning: psychology, philosophy, and computation, Oxford University Press. pp. 19--36. 2007.Interventionist Theories of Causation in Psychological Perspective
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320Law and explanation in biology: Invariance is the kind of stability that mattersPhilosophy of Science 68 (1): 1-20. 2001.This paper develops an account of explanation in biology which does not involve appeal to laws of nature, at least as traditionally conceived. Explanatory generalizations in biology must satisfy a requirement that I call invariance, but need not satisfy most of the other standard criteria for lawfulness. Once this point is recognized, there is little motivation for regarding such generalizations as laws of nature. Some of the differences between invariance and the related notions of stability an…Read more
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178Data, phenomena, and reliabilityPhilosophy of Science 67 (3): 179. 2000.This paper explores how data serve as evidence for phenomena. In contrast to standard philosophical models which invite us to think of evidential relationships as logical relationships, I argue that evidential relationships in the context of data-to-phenomena reasoning are empirical relationships that depend on holding the right sort of pattern of counterfactual dependence between the data and the conclusions investigators reach on the phenomena themselves
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58Laws, Causes, and InvarianceIn Stephen Mumford & Matthew Tugby (eds.), Metaphysics and Science, Oxford University Press. 2013.This chapter explores some issues having to do with the structure of the evidential reasoning we use to infer causal and lawful claims. It is argued that such reasoning always makes use of prior, causally, or nomologically committed information, thus undercutting various views that attempt to reduce causal and lawful claims to claims about regularities. A non-reductive account of laws and causes built around the notion of invariance is advanced as an alternative.
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57Explanatory asymmetriesPhilosophy of Science 51 (3): 421-442. 1984.This paper examines a recent attempt by Evan Jobe to account for the asymmetric character of many scientific explanations. It is argued that a purported counterexample to Jobe's account, from Clark Glymour, is inconclusive, but that the account faces independent objections. It is also suggested, contrary to Jobe, that the explanatory relation is not always asymmetric. Sometimes a singular sentence C can figure in a DN derivation of another singular sentence E and E can also figure in a DN deriva…Read more
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900Causation in biology: Stability, specificity, and the choice of levels of explanationBiology and Philosophy 25 (3): 287-318. 2010.This paper attempts to elucidate three characteristics of causal relationships that are important in biological contexts. Stability has to do with whether a causal relationship continues to hold under changes in background conditions. Proportionality has to do with whether changes in the state of the cause “line up” in the right way with changes in the state of the effect and with whether the cause and effect are characterized in a way that contains irrelevant detail. Specificity is connected bo…Read more
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63Book Review: Concepts of Mass in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, by Max Jammer (review)Foundations of Physics 30 (6): 959-964. 2000.
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266The problem of variable choiceSynthese 193 (4): 1047-1072. 2016.This paper explores some issues about the choice of variables for causal representation and explanation. Depending on which variables a researcher employs, many causal inference procedures and many treatments of causation will reach different conclusions about which causal relationships are present in some system of interest. The assumption of this paper is that some choices of variables are superior to other choices for the purpose of causal analysis. A number of possible criteria for variable …Read more
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93On an information-theoretic model of explanationPhilosophy of Science 54 (1): 21-44. 1987.This paper is an assessment of an attempt, by James Greeno, to measure the explanatory power of statistical theories by means of the notion of transmitted information (It). It is argued that It has certain features that are inappropriate in a measure of explanatory power. In particular, given a statistical theory T with explanans variables St and explanandum variables Mj, it is argued that no plausible measure of explanatory power should depend on the probability P(Si) of occurrence of initial c…Read more
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105Koch’s postulates: An interventionist perspectiveStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 59 35-46. 2016.We argue that Koch’s postulates are best understood within an interventionist account of causation, in the sense described in Woodward. We show how this treatment helps to resolve interpretive puzzles associated with Koch’s work and how it clarifies the different roles the postulates play in providing useful, yet not universal criteria for disease causation. Our paper is an effort at rational reconstruction; we attempt to show how Koch’s postulates and reasoning make sense and are normatively ju…Read more
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |