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110The logic of soku in the kyoto schoolPhilosophy East and West 54 (3): 302-321. 2004.Can contradictions be meaningful? How can one assert 'P soku not-P' or 'P and yet not-P' without sacrificing intelligibility? Expanding on previous attempts, mainly by Dilworth and Heisig, to demystify the soku connective, a formal system is presented here for the logic of soku. Through a formal distinction between internal and external negation, grammatical features of the soku connective are shown to be logically irrelevant, and the principle of non-contradiction is preserved. Disparities with…Read more
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135General relativity and the standard model: Why evidence for one does not disconfirm the otherStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (2): 124-132. 2008.General Relativity and the Standard Model often are touted as the most rigorously and extensively confirmed scientific hypotheses of all time. Nonetheless, these theories appear to have consequences that are inconsistent with evidence about phenomena for which, respectively, quantum effects and gravity matter. This paper suggests an explanation for why the theories are not disconfirmed by such evidence. The key to this explanation is an approach to scientific hypotheses that allows their actual …Read more
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95Network analyses in systems biology: new strategies for dealing with biological complexitySynthese 195 (4): 1751-1777. 2018.The increasing application of network models to interpret biological systems raises a number of important methodological and epistemological questions. What novel insights can network analysis provide in biology? Are network approaches an extension of or in conflict with mechanistic research strategies? When and how can network and mechanistic approaches interact in productive ways? In this paper we address these questions by focusing on how biological networks are represented and analyzed in a …Read more
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102Mereological heuristics for huayan buddhismPhilosophy East and West 60 (3): 355-368. 2010.This is an attempt to explain, in a way familiar to contemporary ways of thinking about mereology, why someone might accept some prima facie puzzling remarks by Fazang, such as his claims that the eye of a lion is its ear and that a rafter of a building is identical to the building itself. These claims are corollaries of the Huayan Buddhist thesis that everything is part of everything else, and it is intended here to show that there is a rational basis for this thesis that involves a nonstandard…Read more
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461Don’t Blame the IdealizationsJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1): 85-100. 2013.Idealizing conditions are scapegoats for scientific hypotheses, too often blamed for falsehood better attributed to less obvious sources. But while the tendency to blame idealizations is common among both philosophers of science and scientists themselves, the blame is misplaced. Attention to the nature of idealizing conditions, the content of idealized hypotheses, and scientists’ attitudes toward those hypotheses shows that idealizing conditions are blameless when hypotheses misrepresent. These …Read more
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250A Principles-based Model of Ethical Considerations in Military Decision MakingJournal of Defense Modeling and Simulation 13 (2): 195-211. 2016.When comparing alternative courses of action, modern military decision makers often must consider both the military effectiveness and the ethical consequences of the available alternatives. The basis, design, calibration, and performance of a principles-based computational model of ethical considerations in military decision making are reported in this article. The relative ethical violation (REV) model comparatively evaluates alternative military actions based upon the degree to which they viol…Read more
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813Toward Modeling and Automating Ethical Decision Making: Design, Implementation, Limitations, and ResponsibilitiesTopoi 32 (2): 237-250. 2013.One recent priority of the U.S. government is developing autonomous robotic systems. The U.S. Army has funded research to design a metric of evil to support military commanders with ethical decision-making and, in the future, allow robotic military systems to make autonomous ethical judgments. We use this particular project as a case study for efforts that seek to frame morality in quantitative terms. We report preliminary results from this research, describing the assumptions and limitations of…Read more
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231Is All Abstracting Idealizing?The Reasoner 2 (4): 4-5. 2008.I defend a distinction between abstraction and idealization. Idealizations distort; abstractions do not.
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631Bowtie Structures, Pathway Diagrams, and Topological ExplanationErkenntnis 79 (5): 1135-1155. 2014.While mechanistic explanation and, to a lesser extent, nomological explanation are well-explored topics in the philosophy of biology, topological explanation is not. Nor is the role of diagrams in topological explanations. These explanations do not appeal to the operation of mechanisms or laws, and extant accounts of the role of diagrams in biological science explain neither why scientists might prefer diagrammatic representations of topological information to sentential equivalents nor how such…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Asian Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
The Huayan School of Chinese Buddhism |