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945Notions of Cause: Russell’s Thesis RevisitedBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (1): 45-76. 2007.We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In…Read more
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535Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalizedOxford University Press. 2007.Every Thing Must Go aruges that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it ...
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299What 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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252Chalmers's Naturalistic Dualism: The Irrelevance of the Mind-Body Problem to the Scientific Study of ConsciousnessIn Christina E. Erneling & David Martel Johnson (eds.), The Mind as a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture, Oxford University Press. pp. 165-175. 2005.
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228Scientific metaphysics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalized--conducted as part of natural science.
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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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156Ontic structural realism and economicsPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 732-743. 2008.Ontic structural realism (OSR) is crucially motivated by empirical discoveries of fundamental physics. To this extent its potential to furnish a general metaphysics for science may appear limited. However, OSR also provides a good account of the progress that has been achieved over the decades in a formalized special science, economics. Furthermore, this has a basis in the ontology presupposed by economic theory, and is not just an artifact of formalization. †To contact the author, please write …Read more
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153The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2009.The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics is a reference work on philosophical issues in the practice of economics. It is motivated by the view that there is more to economics than general equilibrium theory, and that the philosophy of economics should reflect the diversity of activities and topics that currently occupy economists. Contributions in the book are thus closely tied to on-going theoretical and empirical concerns in economics. Contributors include both philosophers of science an…Read more
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150The alleged coupling-constitution fallacy and the mature sciencesIn Richard Menary (ed.), The Extended Mind, Mit Press. 2010.This chapter discusses the plausibility of the criticism against the thesis that external factors causally influence cognition and that they are, consequently, partly constitutive of cognition. The discussion should not be taken as implicitly proposing that the opposite theory is true, although the works of Adams and Aizawa suggest that they are defending internalism. This can be attributed to the fact that systems are, by definition, bounded; one must make assumptions about systems in developin…Read more
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138Daniel Dennett (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2002.Contemporary Philosophy in Focus will offer a series of introductory volumes to many of the dominant philosophical thinkers of the current age. Each volume will consist of newly commissioned essays that will cover all the major contributions of a preeminent philosopher in a systematic and accessible manner. Author of such groundbreaking and influential books as Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel C. Dennett has reached a huge general and professional audience that extends…Read more
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134Classical Game Theory, Socialization and the Rationalization of ConventionsTopoi 27 (1-2): 57-72. 2008.The paper begins by providing a game-theoretic reconstruction of Gilbert’s (1989) philosophical critique of Lewis (1969) on the role of salience in selecting conventions. Gilbert’s insight is reformulated thus: Nash equilibrium is insufficiently powerful as a solution concept to rationalize conventions for unboundedly rational agents if conventions are solutions to the kinds of games Lewis supposes. Both refinements to NE and appeals to bounded rationality can plug this gap, but lack generality.…Read more
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132Evolutionary game theory and the normative theory of institutional design: Binmore and behavioral economicsPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 5 (1): 51-79. 2006.In this article, I critically respond to Herbert Gintis's criticisms of the behavioral-economic foundations of Ken Binmore 's game-theoretic theory of justice. Gintis, I argue, fails to take full account of the normative requirements Binmore sets for his account, and also ignores what I call the ‘scale-relativity’ considerations built into Binmore 's approach to modeling human evolution. Paul Seabright's criticism of Binmore, I note, repeats these oversights. In the course of answering Gintis's …Read more
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125Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context (edited book)MIT Press. 2007.Philosophers and behavioral scientists discuss what, if anything, of the traditionalconcept of individual conscious will can survive recent scientific discoveries that humandecision-making is distributed across different brain processes and ...
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120Real Patterns and the Ontological Foundations of MicroeconomicsEconomics and Philosophy 11 (1): 113. 1995.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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114Quining 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
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110Two 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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109The World in the DataIn Don Ross, James Ladyman & Harold Kincaid (eds.), Scientific metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 108-150. 2013.
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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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105What Is Addiction? (edited book)The MIT Press. 2010.Leading addiction researchers survey the latest findings in addiction science, countering the simplistic cultural stereotypes of the addict.
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95Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics NaturalizedIn James Ladyman & Don Ross (eds.), Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalized, Oxford University Press. 2007.This book argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, this book demonstrates how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundament…Read more
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84Our point of departure is Russell’s (1913) argument for the ‘complete extrusion’ of the word ‘cause’ from the philosophical vocabulary. We argue that at least three different types of philosophical project concerning ‘cause’ should be carefully distinguished, and that failures to distinguish them lie at the root of some apparently recalcitrant problems. We call them the ‘cognitive’, the ‘scientific’ and the ‘metaphysical’.
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74Daniel DennettInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 18 (2): 295-299. 2010.Contemporary Philosophy in Focus will offer a series of introductory volumes to many of the dominant philosophical thinkers of the current age. Each volume will consist of newly commissioned essays that will cover all the major contributions of a preeminent philosopher in a systematic and accessible manner. Author of such groundbreaking and influential books as Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel C. Dennett has reached a huge general and professional audience that extends…Read more
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71Francesco Guala the methodology of experimental economicsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (2): 247-252. 2008.
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66Neural networks, real patterns, and the mathematics of constrained optimization: an interview with Don RossErasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 9 (1): 142. 2016.
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66The Microeconomic Interpretation of GamesPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.This paper is part of a larger project defending of the foundations of microeconomics against recent criticisms by philosophers. Here, we undermine one source of these criticisms, arising from philosophers' disappointment with the performance of microeconomic tools, in particular game theory, when these are applied to normative decision theory. Hollis and Sugden have recently articulated such disappointment in a sophisticated way, and have argued on the basis of it that the economic conception o…Read more
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60Economic Theory and Cognitive Science: MicroexplanationBradford. 2007.In this study, Don Ross explores the relationship of economics to other branches of behavioral science, asking, in the course of his analysis, under what interpretation economics is a sound empirical science. The book explores the relationships between economic theory and the theoretical foundations of related disciplines that are relevant to the day-to-day work of economics -- the cognitive and behavioral sciences. It asks whether the increasingly sophisticated techniques of microeconomic analy…Read more
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60PHILIP MIROWSKI The Effortless Economy of Science? (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (3): 659-665. 2009.