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8Darwinism and the Moral Status of AnimalsIn Dag Prawitz & Dag Westerståhl (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 499--509. 1994.
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182Polanyi on the meno paradoxPhilosophy of Science 41 (2): 203. 1974.In [1] Michael Polanyi argues that in order to understand how scientists come to recognize problems as problems, we must invoke a concept of “tacit knowing.” Tacit knowledge is a kind of knowledge of which we are aware but which cannot be made explicit. Polanyi argues that a paradox discussed in the Meno cannot be solved without appeal to this notion of tacit knowledge. Here I want to argue, quite simply, that Polanyi's formulation of the “paradox” can be easily subverted without an appeal to ta…Read more
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51A clash of competing metaphorsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5): 887-887. 1999.Metaphors have three important functions in scientific discourse: heuristic, rhetorical, and epistemic. I argue that, contrary to prevailing opinion, metaphors are indispensable components of scientific methodology as well as scientific communication. Insofar as the choice of metaphors reflects ideological commitments, all science is ideological. The philosophically vexed question is how to characterize the sense in which science is not merely ideological.
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52Michael H. Robins, 1941-2002Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 76 (5). 2003.This is an obituary for Michael H. Robins.
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49What does evolutionary biology tell us about philosophy and religion?Zygon 29 (1): 45-54. 1994.Considerations from evolutionary biology lead Michael Ruse, among others, to a naturalistic turn in philosophy. I assess some of the pragmatic and skeptical conclusions concerning ethics, religion, and epistemology that Ruse draws from his evolutionary naturalism. Finally, I argue that there is an essential tension between science and religion which forecloses the possibility of an ultimate reconciliation between the two as they are now understood.
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46Lndividualism and Holism in the Social SciencesAnalyse & Kritik 24 (1): 87-99. 2002.Harold Kincaid’s Individualism and the Unity of Science is a subtle and nuanced analysis of the interlocking themes and issues surrounding the struggle between ‘holists’ and ‘individualists’ in the social sciences. Two major claims, one substantial and one methodological, emerge from this analysis. The substantial claim is a defense of a ‘non-reductive unity’ of the sciences. The methodological claim is that the disputes between reductionists and pluralists or between individualists and holists …Read more
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Review of Gary Cziko's Without miracles: universal selection theory and the second Darwinian revolution (review)Philosophical Psychology 10 399-401. 1997.
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25Coming of age in the philosophy of biologyInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 30 (4). 1987.No abstract
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81Ontic realism and scientific explanationPhilosophy of Science 63 (3): 321. 1996.Wesley Salmon defends an ontic realism that distinguishes explanatory from descriptive knowledge. Explanatory knowledge makes appeals to (unobservable) theoretical acausal mechanisms. Salmon presents an argument designed both to legitimize attributing truth values to theoretical claims and to justify treating theoretical claims as descriptions. The argument succeeds but only at the price of calling the distinction between explanation and description into question. Even if Salmon's attempts to di…Read more
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66What's Wrong with Methodological Naturalism?Human Affairs 19 (2). 2009.The compatibility of Darwinism with religious beliefs has been the subject of vigorous debate from 1859 to the present day. Darwin himself did not think that there was any incompatibility between his theory of natural selection and the existence of God. However, he did not think that appeals to the direct or indirect activity of a Creator substantially increased our understanding of any natural phenomenon. In effect, Darwin endorsed what we would today label as ’methodological naturalism,’ rough…Read more
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18Letters: the Grand Competition ContinuesRussell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 12. 1992.
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16Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy by Michael Ruse (review)Isis 79 286-287. 1988.
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Reviews: Philosophical Aspects of Science-Complexity and Evolution (review)Annals of Science 55 (4): 428. 1998.
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15Naturalism and evolutionary epistemologiesIn M. Sintonen, J. Wolenski & I. Niiniluoto (eds.), Handbook of Epistemology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 735--745. 2004.
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30Individualism and the unity of science, Harold Kincaid. Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, VII + 165 pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 16 (1): 147-174. 2000.
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11Discussions of the moral status of animals typically address the key questions from an anthropocentric point of view. An alternative approach adopts a non-anthropocentric perspective. In this paper, I explore the theoretical and experimental results which make this approach plausible and address two key questions: [1] to what extent is it proper to speak of the moral lives of non-human animals? [2] How might we empirically establish that animals lead moral lives?
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35Scaling the metaphorical brick wallBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (6): 947-948. 1999.Palmer argues that functionalist accounts of the mind are radically incomplete in virtue of a “metaphorical brick wall” that precludes a complete treatment of qualia. I argue that functionalists should remain unmoved by this line of argument to the effect that their accounts fail to do justice to some “intrinsic” features of experience.
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49Ethics and evolution: The biological basis of moralityInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 36 ( 1-2). 1993.