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106Recipes for Science: An Introduction to Scientific Methods and Reasoning (2nd ed.)Routledge. 2024.Scientific literacy is an essential aspect of an undergraduate education. Recipes for Science responds to this need by providing an accessible introduction to the nature of science and scientific methods appropriate for any beginning college student. The book is adaptable to a wide variety of different courses, such as introductions to scientific reasoning, methods courses in scientific disciplines, science education, and philosophy of science. Recipes for Science was first published in 2018, …Read more
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167The nature and norms of scientific explanation: some preliminariesZagadnienia Filozoficzne W Nauce 74. 2023.The paper introduces a special issue of the journal Philosophical Problems in Science (ZFN) on the topic of the nature and norms of scientific explanation.
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77Reduction and Mechanism (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (3): 637-641. 2022.Reductionism is an old doctrine desperate for new direction. With nomologically constructed theories commanding less attention in the life sciences, concern for the twentieth-century tradition of a...
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806Eliminativist undercurrents in the new wave model of psychoneural reductionJournal of Mind and Behavior 21 (4). 2000."New wave" reductionism aims at advancing a kind of reduction that is stronger than unilateral dependency of the mental on the physical. It revolves around the idea that reduction between theoretical levels is a matter of degree, and can be laid out on a continuum between a "smooth" pole (theoretical identity) and a "bumpy" pole (extremely revisionary). It also entails that both higher and lower levels of the reductive relationship sustain some degree of explanatory autonomy. The new wave predic…Read more
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1172History of Behavioral Neurology (2nd ed.)In Sergio Della Sala (ed.), Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. 1, Elsevier. 2022.This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of behavioral neurology, dividing it roughly into six eras. In the ancient and classical eras, emphasis is placed on two transitions: firstly, from descriptions of head trauma and attempted neurosurgical treatments to the exploratory dissections during the Hellenistic period and the replacement of cardiocentrism; and secondly, to the more systematic investigations of Galenus and the rise of pneumatic ventricular theory. In the medieval throug…Read more
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479Mechanist idealisation in systems biologySynthese 199 (1-2): 1555-1575. 2020.This paper adds to the philosophical literature on mechanistic explanation by elaborating two related explanatory functions of idealisation in mechanistic models. The first function involves explaining the presence of structural/organizational features of mechanisms by reference to their role as difference-makers for performance requirements. The second involves tracking counterfactual dependency relations between features of mechanisms and features of mechanistic explanandum phenomena. To make …Read more
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560Ontic Explanation Is either Ontic or Explanatory, but Not BothErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5. 2018.What features will something have if it counts as an explanation? And will something count as an explanation if it has those features? In the second half of the 20th century, philosophers of science set for themselves the task of answering such questions, just as a priori conceptual analysis was generally falling out of favor. And as it did, most philosophers of science just moved on to more manageable questions about the varieties of explanation and discipline-specific scientific explanation. O…Read more
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285Pluralism and the LiarIn Bradley Armour-Garb (ed.), Reflections on the Liar, Oxford University Press. 2017.Pluralists maintain that there is more than one truth property in virtue of which bearers are true. Unfortunately, it is not yet clear how they diagnose the liar paradox or what resources they have available to treat it. This chapter considers one recent attempt by Cotnoir (2013b) to treat the Liar. It argues that pluralists should reject the version of pluralism that Cotnoir assumes, discourse pluralism, in favor of a more naturalized approach to truth predication in real languages, which shoul…Read more
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548First principles in the life sciences: the free-energy principle, organicism, and mechanismSynthese 198 (14). 2021.The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a postulate, an unfalsifiable principle, a natural law, and an imperative. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship betwe…Read more
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302Review of Chrysostomos Mantzavinos's Explanatory Pluralism (review)Analysis 78 (3). 2018.Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (2016), Explanatory Pluralism. Cambridge University Press, xiv + 223 pp. £64.99 cloth.
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21The effect of blockade of NMDA and metabotropic glutamate5 (mGluR5) receptors in nicotine-dependent ratsBehavioural Pharmacology 12 (1). 2003.
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Hypocretin regulates brain reward function and cocaine consumption in ratsSociety for Neuroscience Abstracts 29. 2003.Hypocretin regulates brain reward function and cocaine consumption in rats. The hypocretinergic (Hcrt) system is implicated in energy homeostasis, feeding and sleep regulation. Hypocretinergic cell bodies are located in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and project throughout the brain. The aim of the present studies was to investigate the role of the Hcrt system in regulating brain reward function and the reinforcing properties of cocaine in rats. Intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) thresholds pro…Read more
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Stimulation of mGluR2/3 receptors precipitates nicotine withdrawal in rats: role of mGluR5 and NMDA receptorsSociety for Neuroscience Abstracts 27. 2001.Elevations in brain stimulation reward (BSR) thresholds have been observed in rats undergoing nicotine withdrawal and have been proposed as a sensitive measure of the negative affective state associated with nicotine withdrawal. mGluR are presynaptic autoreceptors that decrease glutamate release when stimulated. The aim of this study was to examine the role of glutamate neurotransmission in nicotine dependence. The mGluR agonist LY314582 (2.5–7.5 mg/kg) precipitated nicotine withdrawal as measur…Read more
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31Review Essay: Hubert Cuyckens, René Dirven, & John Taylor’s (2003) 'Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics'Cognitive Linguistics 18 (4). 2007.Essay on Cuyckens, Dirven, & Taylor (eds.) Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics, with emphasis on work on polysemy, prototypicality, and contextual modulation.
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62Animal models of depression in neuropsychopharmacology qua Feyerabendian philosophy of scienceIn Adv Psych, . pp. 129-148. 2002.The neuropsychopharmacological methods and theories used to investigate the nature of depression have been viewed as suspect for a variety of philosophical and scientific reasons. Much of this criticism aims to demonstrate that biochemical- and neurological-based theories of this mental illness are defective, due in part because the methods used in their service are consistently invalidated, failing to induce depression in pre-clinical animal models. Neuropsychopharmacologists have been able to …Read more
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266The Incoherence of Heuristically Explaining CoherenceIn Ron Sun (ed.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, . pp. 2622. 2006.Advancement in cognitive science depends, in part, on doing some occasional ‘theoretical housekeeping’. We highlight some conceptual confusions lurking in an important attempt at explaining the human capacity for rational or coherent thought: Thagard & Verbeurgt’s computational-level model of humans’ capacity for making reasonable and truth-conducive abductive inferences (1998; Thagard, 2000). Thagard & Verbeurgt’s model assumes that humans make such inferences by computing a coherence function …Read more
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877HIT and brain reward function: a case of mistaken identity (theory)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 64. 2017.This paper employs a case study from the history of neuroscience—brain reward function—to scrutinize the inductive argument for the so-called ‘Heuristic Identity Theory’ (HIT). The case fails to support HIT, illustrating why other case studies previously thought to provide empirical support for HIT also fold under scrutiny. After distinguishing two different ways of understanding the types of identity claims presupposed by HIT and considering other conceptual problems, we conclude that HIT is …Read more
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482Minimalism about truth: special issue introductionSynthese 195 (3): 927-933. 2018.The theme of this special issue is minimalism about truth, a conception which has attracted extensive support since the landmark publication of Paul Horwich's Truth (1990). Many well-esteemed philosophers have challenged Horwich's alethic minimalism, an especially austere version of deflationary truth theory. In part, this is at least because his brand of minimalism about truth also intersects with several different literatures: paradox, implicit definition, bivalence, normativity, propositional…Read more
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831Truth, pluralism, monism, correspondenceIn Cory D. Wright & Nikolaj Pedersen (eds.), New Waves in Truth, Palgrave-macmillan. 2010.When talking about truth, we ordinarily take ourselves to be talking about one-and-the-same thing. Alethic monists suggest that theorizing about truth ought to begin with this default or pre-reflective stance, and, subsequently, parlay it into a set of theoretical principles that are aptly summarized by the thesis that truth is one. Foremost among them is the invariance principle.
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170Is pluralism about truth inherently unstable?Philosophical Studies 159 (1). 2012.Although it’s sometimes thought that pluralism about truth is unstable—or, worse, just a non-starter—it’s surprisingly difficult to locate collapsing arguments that conclusively demonstrate either its instability or its inability to get started. This paper exemplifies the point by examining three recent arguments to that effect. However, it ends with a cautionary tale; for pluralism may not be any better off than other traditional theories that face various technical objections, and may be worse…Read more
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785Intractability and the use of heuristics in psychological explanationsSynthese 187 (2): 471-487. 2012.Many cognitive scientists, having discovered that some computational-level characterization f of a cognitive capacity φ is intractable, invoke heuristics as algorithmic-level explanations of how cognizers compute f. We argue that such explanations are actually dysfunctional, and rebut five possible objections. We then propose computational-level theory revision as a principled and workable alternative.
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403Review of Bortolotti's Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (review)Philosophical Quarterly 65 (260). 2015.
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925On the functionalization of pluralist approaches to truthSynthese 145 (1). 2005.Traditional inflationary approaches that specify the nature of truth are attractive in certain ways; yet, while many of these theories successfully explain why propositions in certain domains of discourse are true, they fail to adequately specify the nature of truth because they run up against counterexamples when attempting to generalize across all domains. One popular consequence is skepticism about the efficaciousness of inflationary approaches altogether. Yet, by recognizing that the failure …Read more
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1071Rational analysis, intractability, and the prospects of ‘as if’-explanationsSynthese 195 (2): 491-510. 2018.Despite their success in describing and predicting cognitive behavior, the plausibility of so-called ‘rational explanations’ is often contested on the grounds of computational intractability. Several cognitive scientists have argued that such intractability is an orthogonal pseudoproblem, however, since rational explanations account for the ‘why’ of cognition but are agnostic about the ‘how’. Their central premise is that humans do not actually perform the rational calculations posited by their …Read more
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55Autonomy, allostasic mechanisms, and AI: a biomimetic perspective.Pragmatics and Cognition 15 (3). 2007.We argue that the concepts of mechanism and autonomy appear to be antagonistic when autonomy is conflated with agency. Once these concepts are disentangled, it becomes clearer how autonomy emerges from complex forms of control. Subsequently, current biomimetic strategies tend to focus on homeostatic regulatory systems; we propose that research in AI and robotics would do well to incorporate biomimetic strategies that instead invoke models of allostatic mechanisms as a way of understanding how to…Read more
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958Truth, Ramsification, and the Pluralist's RevengeAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (2). 2010.Functionalists about truth employ Ramsification to produce an implicit definition of the theoretical term _true_, but doing so requires determining that the theory introducing that term is itself true. A variety of putative dissolutions to this problem of epistemic circularity are shown to be unsatisfactory. One solution is offered on functionalists' behalf, though it has the upshot that they must tread on their anti-pluralist commitments.
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827Is psychological explanation going extinct?In Maurice Schouten & Huib Looren de Jong (eds.), The Matter of the Mind: Philosophical Essays on Psychology, Neuroscience and Reduction, Wiley-blackwell. 2007.Psychoneural reductionists sometimes claim that sufficient amounts of lower-level explanatory achievement preclude further contributions from higher-level psychological research. Ostensibly, with nothing left to do, the effect of such preclusion on psychological explanation is extinction. Reductionist arguments for preclusion have recently involved a reorientation within the philosophical foundations of neuroscience---namely, away from the philosophical foundations and toward the neuroscience. I…Read more
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757Truth as a normative modality of cognitive actsIn Dirk Greimann & Geo Siegwart (eds.), Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 280-306. 2007.Attention to the conversational role of alethic terms seems to dominate, and even sometimes exhaust, many contemporary analyses of the nature of truth. Yet, because truth plays a role in judgment and assertion regardless of whether alethic terms are expressly used, such analyses cannot be comprehensive or fully adequate. A more general analysis of the nature of truth is therefore required – one which continues to explain the significance of truth independently of the role alethic terms play in d…Read more
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