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117Recipes 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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192The 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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78Reduction 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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812Eliminativist 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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1197History 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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486Mechanist 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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565Ontic 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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305Pluralism 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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557First 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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312Review 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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270The 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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882HIT 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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697Embodied Cognition: Grounded Until Further Notice?British Journal of Psychology 99 157-164. 2008.Embodied Cognition is the kind of view that is all trees, no forest. Mounting experimental evidence gives it momentum in fleshing out the theoretical problems inherent in Cognitivists’ separation of mind and body. But the more its proponents compile such evidence, the more the fundamental concepts of Embodied Cognition remain in the dark. This conundrum is nicely exemplified by Pecher and Zwaan’s book, Grounding Cognition, which is a programmatic attempt to rally together an array of empirical r…Read more
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153Pluralism about Truth as Alethic DisjunctivismIn Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen & Cory Wright (eds.), Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, Oxford University Press. 2012.The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of various forms of alethic pluralism. Along the way we will draw a number of distinctions that, hopefully, will be useful in mapping the pluralist landscape. Finally, we will argue that a commitment to alethic disjunctivism, a certain brand of pluralism, might be difficult to avoid for adherents of the other pluralist views to be discussed. We will proceed as follows: Section 1 introduces alethic monism and alethic pluralism. Section 2 presents a …Read more
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313New Waves in Truth (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2010.What is truth? Philosophers are interested in a range of issues involving the concept of truth beginning with what sorts of things can be true. This is a collection of eighteen new and original research papers on truth and other alethic phenomena by twenty of the most promising young scholars working on truth today.
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693There is widespread recognition at universities that a proper understanding of science is needed for all undergraduates. Good jobs are increasingly found in fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine, and science now enters almost all aspects of our daily lives. For these reasons, scientific literacy and an understanding of scientific methodology are a foundational part of any undergraduate education. Recipes for Science provides an accessible introduction to the main conce…Read more
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91Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2012.The relative merits and demerits of historically prominent views such as the correspondence theory, coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism, and instrumentalism have been subject to much attention in the truth literature and have fueled the long-lived debate over which of these views is the most plausible one. While diverging in their specific philosophical commitments, adherents of these historically prominent views agree in at least one fundamental respect. They are all alethic monists. They …Read more
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989Explanatory Pluralism: An Unrewarding Prediction Error for Free Energy TheoristsBrain and Cognition 112. 2017.Courtesy of its free energy formulation, the hierarchical predictive processing theory of the brain (PTB) is often claimed to be a grand unifying theory. To test this claim, we examine a central case: activity of mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic (DA) systems. After reviewing the three most prominent hypotheses of DA activity—the anhedonia, incentive salience, and reward prediction error hypotheses—we conclude that the evidence currently vindicates explanatory pluralism. This vindication implies th…Read more
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195The ontic conception of scientific explanationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 54 20-30. 2015.Wesley Salmon’s version of the ontic conception of explanation is a main historical root of contemporary work on mechanistic explanation. This paper examines and critiques the philosophical merits of Salmon’s version, and argues that his conception’s most fundamental construct is either fundamentally obscure, or else reduces to a non-ontic conception of explanation. Either way, the ontic conception is a misconception.
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1351Mechanistic explanation without the ontic conceptionEuropean Journal of Philosophy of Science 2 (3): 375-394. 2012.The ontic conception of scientific explanation has been constructed and motivated on the basis of a putative lexical ambiguity in the term explanation. I raise a puzzle for this ambiguity claim, and then give a deflationary solution under which all ontically-rendered talk of explanation is merely elliptical; what it is elliptical for is a view of scientific explanation that altogether avoids the ontic conception. This result has revisionary consequences for New Mechanists and other philosophers …Read more
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57Review of Michael P. Lynch, True to Life: Why Truth Matters (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2): 271-273. 2005.
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2115Mechanisms and psychological explanationIn Paul Thagard (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Elsevier. 2007.As much as assumptions about mechanisms and mechanistic explanation have deeply affected psychology, they have received disproportionately little analysis in philosophy. After a historical survey of the influences of mechanistic approaches to explanation of psychological phenomena, we specify the nature of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation. Contrary to some treatments of mechanistic explanation, we maintain that explanation is an epistemic activity that involves representing and reasoning a…Read more
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