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48Stability of democracies: a complex systems perspectiveEuropean Journal of Physics 40 (1). 2019.The idea that democracy is under threat, after being largely dormant for at least 40 years, is looming increasingly large in public discourse. Complex systems theory offers a range of powerful new tools to analyse the stability of social institutions in general, and democracy in particular. What makes a democracy stable? And which processes potentially lead to instability of a democratic system? This paper offers a complex systems perspective on this question, informed by areas of the mathematic…Read more
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165Reply in Book Symposium on James Ladyman, Don Ross: 'Everything must go: metaphysics naturalized', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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16Scientific metaphysics and social scienceSynthese 202 (5): 1-34. 2023.Recently, philosophers have developed an extensive literature on social ontology that applies methods and concepts from analytic metaphysics. Much of this is entirely abstracted from, and unconcerned with, social science. However, Epstein (2015) argues explicitly that analytic social metaphysics, provided its account of ontological ‘grounding’ is repaired in specific ways, can rescue social science from explanatory impasses into which he thinks it has fallen. This version of analytic social onto…Read more
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Strategic theory of norms for empirical applications in political science and political economyIn Harold Kincaid & Jeroen van Bouwel (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Political Science, Oxford University Press. 2023.The study of social norms sprawls across all of the social sciences but the the concept lacks a unified conception and formal theory. We synthesize an account that can be applied generally, at the social scale of analysis, and can be applied to empirical evidence generated in field and lab experiments. More specifically, we provide new analysis on representing norms for application in empirical political science, and in parts of economics that do not follow the recent trend among some behavioral…Read more
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7L’étude de tout, par tous les moyens ; étude critique de Philosophie de l’esprit, état des lieux , par Denis Fisette et Pierre Poirier (review)Philosophiques 30 (1): 245-262. 2003.
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45Why People are Atypical AgentsPhilosophical Papers 31 (1): 87-116. 2002.Abstract In this paper, I argue that the traditional philosophical approach of taking cognitively and emotionally competent adult people to be the prototypical instances of agency should be revised in light of current work in the behavioral sciences. Logical consistency in application is better served by taking simple goal-directed and feedback-governed systems such as insects as the prototypes of the concept of agency, with people being agents ?by extension? in the same sense as countries or co…Read more
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12L’étude de tout, par tous les moyens ; étude critique de Philosophie de l’esprit, état des lieux (Paris, Vrin, 2000, 337 p.), par Denis Fisette et Pierre Poirier (review)Philosophiques 30 (1): 245. 2003.
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41Group Doxastic Rationality Need Not Supervene on Individual RationalitySouthern Journal of Philosophy 44 (S1): 106-117. 2006.There is a strong formal analogy between proposition-wise supervenience of collective doxastic rationality on individual doxasticrationality and supervenience of social choice functions on individual choice functions. In light of this analogy, the basis for List and Pettit’s impossibility theorems can fruitfully be compared with the basis for Arrow’s. This helps to explain why List and Pettit can derive no impossibility theorem for set-wise supervenience. However, there are empirical reasons for…Read more
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293What to say to a skeptical metaphysician: A defense manual for cognitive and behavioral scientistsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (5): 603-627. 2004.A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that…Read more
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47What can economics contribute to the study of human evolution?Biology and Philosophy 27 (2): 287-297. 2012.The revised edition of Paul Seabright’s The Company of Strangers is critically reviewed. Seabright aims to help non-economists participating in the cross-disciplinary study of the evolution of human sociality appreciate the potential value that can be added by economists. Though the book includes nicely constructed and vivid essays on a range of economic topics, in its main ambition it largely falls short. The most serious problem is endorsement of the so-called strong reciprocity hypothesis tha…Read more
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102Two styles of neuroeconomicsEconomics and Philosophy 24 (3): 473-483. 2008.I distinguish between two styles of research that are both called . Neurocellular economics (NE) uses the modelling techniques and mathematics of economics to model relatively encapsulated functional parts of brains. This approach rests upon the fact that brains are, like markets, massively distributed information-processing networks over which executive systems can exert only limited and imperfect governance. Harrison's (2008) deepest criticisms of neuroeconomics do not apply to NE. However, th…Read more
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5Francesco Guala The Methodology of Experimental Economics (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (2): 247-252. 2008.
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18Timing models of reward learning and core addictive processes in the brainBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (4): 457-458. 2008.People become addicted in different ways, and they respond differently to different interventions. There may nevertheless be a core neural pathology responsible for all distinctively addictive suboptimal behavioral habits. In particular, timing models of reward learning suggest a hypothesis according to which all addiction involves neuroadaptation that attenuates serotonergic inhibition of a mesolimbic dopamine system that has learned that cues for consumption of the addictive target are signals…Read more
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32The game-theoretic innocence of experimental behavioral psychologyBehavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (3): 426-427. 2001.Hertwig and Ortmann imply that failure of many behavioral psychologists to observe several central methodological principles of experimental economics derives mainly from differences in disciplinary culture. I suggest that there are deeper philosophical causes, based (ironically) on a legacy of methodological individualism in psychology from which economists have substantially cured themselves through use of game theory. Psychologists often misidentify their objects of study by trying to wrench …Read more
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19The evolution of individualistic normsIn Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott & Ben Fraser (eds.), Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, Mit Press. pp. 17. 2012.It is generally recognized that descriptive and normative individualism are logically independent theses. This paper defends the stronger view that recognition of the falsehood of descriptive individualism is crucial to understanding the evolutionary and developmental basis of normative individualism. The argument given for this is not analytic; rather, it is based on empirical generalizations about the evolution of markets with specialized labor, about the nature of information processing in la…Read more
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7PHILIP MIROWSKI The Effortless Economy of Science? (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (3): 659-665. 2009.
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108The cognitive and behavioral sciences: Real patterns, real unity, real causes, but no supervenienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (5): 637-647. 2004.Our response amplifies our case for scientific realism and the unity of science and clarifies our commitments to scientific unity, nonreductionism, behaviorism, and our rejection of talk of “emergence.” We acknowledge support from commentators for our view of physics and, responding to pressure and suggestions from commentators, deny the generality supervenience and explain what this involves. We close by reflecting on the relationship between philosophy and science
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42Towards a New Philosophy of Positive EconomicsDialogue 34 (3): 467-. 1995.Imagine asking a typical, well informed, contemporary philosopher whether or not she considered biology to be a science. Our informant, being a philosopher, would not necessarily respond with the straightforward “of course” that would be expected from anyone else. She might first reason through a complicated and heavily qualified definition of science, or she might distinguish certain parts of biology that she held to be more clearly scientific than others. If she were partial to a certain sort …Read more
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23Special, radical, failure of reduction in psychiatryBehavioral and Brain Sciences 42. 2019.Use of network models to identify causal structure typically blocks reduction across the sciences. Entanglement of mental processes with environmental and intentional relationships, as Borsboom et al. argue, makes reduction of psychology to neuroscience particularly implausible. However, in psychiatry, a mental disorder can involve no brain disorder at all, even when the former crucially depends on aspects of brain structure. Gambling addiction constitutes an example.
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18Some mental disorders are based on networks, others on latent variablesBehavioral and Brain Sciences 33 (2-3): 166-167. 2010.Cramer et al. persuasively conceptualize major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) as network disorders, rejecting latent variable accounts. But how does their radical picture generalize across the suite of mental and personality disorders? Addictions are Axis I disorders that may be better characterized by latent variables. Their comorbidity relationships could be captured by inserting them as nodes in a super-network of Axis I conditions
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30Special human vulnerability to low-cost collective punishmentBehavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (1): 37-38. 2012.Guala notes that low-cost punishment is the main mechanism that deters free-riding in small human communities. This mechanism is complemented by unusual human vulnerability to gossip. Defenders of an evolutionary discontinuity supporting human sociality might seize on this as an alternative to enjoyment of moralistic aggression as a special adaptation. However, the more basic adaptation of language likely suffices
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26Reply to Lagueux: on a Revolution in Methodology of EconomicsErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 1 (1): 56-60. 2008.
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28Real Patterns and the Ontological Foundations of MicroeconomicsEconomics and Philosophy 10 (2): 113-136. 1994.Most philosophical accounts of the foundations of economics have assumed that economics is intended to be an empirical science concerned with human behaviour, though they have, of course, differed over the extent to which it has been or can be successful as such an enterprise. A prominent source of dissent against this consensus is Alexander Rosenberg. In his recent book, Rosenberg summarizes and completes his statement of a position that he has been developing for some time. He argues that alth…Read more
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113Quining qualia Quine's wayDialogue 32 (3): 439-59. 1993.Thanks largely to Daniel Dennett, I am a recent convert to what many will regard as the shocking hypothesis that qualia do not exist. This admission is not quite a confident sighting of that rarest of philosophical birds, an unequivocally sound and valid argument. For one thing, I have, like many, been frustrated by and suspicious of philosophers' use of qualia for some time, and have often wished them dead ; so I was an easy mark. More to the point, I was persuaded by Dennett without being pers…Read more