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15Molecular Genetics, Reductionism, and Disease Concepts in PsychiatryJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 17 (2): 127-153. 1992.The study of mental illness by the methods of molecular genetics is still in its infancy, but the use of genetic markers in psychiatry may potentially lead to a Virchowian revolution in the conception of mental illness. Genetic markers may define novel clusters of patients having diverse clinical presentations but sharing a common genetic and mechanistic basis. Such clusters may differ radically from the conventional classification schemes of psychiatric illness. However, the reduction of even r…Read more
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14In Quest for Scientific Psychiatry: Toward Bridging the Explanatory GapPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (3): 261-273. 2013.The contemporary epistemic status of mental health disciplines does not allow the cross validation of mental disorders among various genetic markers, biochemical pathway or mechanisms, and clinical assessments in neuroscience explanations. We attempt to provide a meta-empirical analysis of the contemporary status of the cross-disciplinary issues existing between neuro-biology and psychopathology. Our case studies take as an established medical mode an example cross validation between biological …Read more
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28Genes, behavior, and developmental emergentism: One process, indivisible?Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 209-252. 1998.The question of the influence of genes on behavior raises difficult philosophical and social issues. In this paper I delineate what I call the Developmentalist Challenge (DC) to assertions of genetic influence on behavior, and then examine the DC through an indepth analysis of the behavioral genetics of the nematode, C. elegans, with some briefer references to work on Drosophila. I argue that eight "rules" relating genes and behavior through environmentally-influenced and tangled neural nets cap…Read more
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14Theories, models, and equations in biology: The heuristic search for emergent simplifications in neurobiologyPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 1008-1021. 2008.This article considers claims that biology should seek general theories similar to those found in physics but argues for an alternative framework for biological theories as collections of prototypical interlevel models that can be extrapolated by analogy to different organisms. This position is exemplified in the development of the Hodgkin‐Huxley giant squid model for action potentials, which uses equations in specialized ways. This model is viewed as an “emergent unifier.” Such unifiers, which …Read more
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15Ethical Considerations in Human Investigation Involving Paradigm Shifts: Organ Transplantation in the 1990sIRB: Ethics & Human Research 19 (6): 5. 1997.
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12Reduction: the Cheshire cat problem and a return to rootsSynthese 151 (3): 377-402. 2006.In this paper, I propose two theses, and then examine what the consequences of those theses are for discussions of reduction and emergence. The first thesis is that what have traditionally been seen as robust, reductions of one theory or one branch of science by another more fundamental one are a largely a myth. Although there are such reductions in the physical sciences, they are quite rare, and depend on special requirements. In the biological sciences, these prima facie sweeping reductions fa…Read more
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4Coherentist approaches to scientific progress in psychiatry: comments on KendlerIn Kenneth S. Kendler & Josef Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry Ii: Nosology, Oxford University Press. pp. 323. 2012.
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4Caenorhabditis elegans is a tiny worm that has become the focus of a large number of worldwide research projects examining its genetics, development, neuroscience, and behavior. Recently several groups of investigators have begun to tie together the behavior of the organism and the underlying genes, neural circuits, and molecular processes implemented in those circuits. Behavior is quintessentially organismal—it is the organism as a whole that moves and mates—but the explanations are devised at …Read more
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10Model organisms and behavioral genetics: A rejoinderPhilosophy of Science 65 (2): 276-288. 1998.In this rejoinder to the three preceding comments, I provide some additional philosophical warrant for the biomedical sciences' focus on model organisms. I then relate the inquiries on model systems to the concept of 'deep homology', and indicate that the issues that appear to divide my commentators and myself are in part empirical ones. I cite recent work on model organisms, and especially C. elegans that supports my views. Finally, I briefly readdress some of the issues raised by Developmental…Read more
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7Interactions among Theory, Experiment, and Technology in Molecular BiologyPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.This article examines how a molecular "solution" to an important biological problem-how is antibody diversity generated? was obtained in the 1970s. After the primarily biological clonal selection theory (CST) was accepted by 1967, immunologists developed several different contrasting theories to complete the SCST. To choose among these theories, immunology had to turn to the new molecular biology, first to nucleic acid hybridization and then to recombinant DNA technology. The research programs o…Read more
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22Theory structure, reduction, and disciplinary integration in biologyBiology and Philosophy 8 (3): 319-347. 1993.This paper examines the nature of theory structure in biology and considers the implications of those theoretical structures for theory reduction. An account of biological theories as interlevel prototypes embodying causal sequences, and related to each other by strong analogies, is presented, and examples from the neurosciences are provided to illustrate these middle-range theories. I then go on to discuss several modifications of Nagel''s classical model of theory reduction, and indicate at wh…Read more
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31Theory change in immunology part II: The clonal selection theoryTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 13 (2). 1992.This two-part article examines the competition between the clonal selection theory and the instructive theory of the immune response from 1957–1967. In Part I the concept of a temporally extended theory is introduced, which requires attention to the hitherto largely ignored issue of theory individuation. Factors which influence the acceptability of such an extended theory at different temporal points are also embedded in a Bayesian framework, which is shown to provide a rational account of belie…Read more
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1Clinical trials: the validation of theory and therapyIn Robert S. Cohen & Larry Laudan (eds.), Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum, D. Reidel. pp. 191--208. 1983.
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4Paradigm changes in organ transplantation: A journey toward selflessness?Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 19 (5): 425-440. 1998.
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13Behavior at the organismal and molecular levels: The case of C. elegansPhilosophy of Science 67 (3): 288. 2000.Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a tiny worm that has become the focus of a large number of worldwide research projects examining its genetics, development, neuroscience, and behavior. Recently several groups of investigators have begun to tie together the behavior of the organism and the underlying genes, neural circuits, and molecular processes implemented in those circuits. Behavior is quintessentially organismal--it is the organism as a whole that moves and mates--but the explanations …Read more
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3Commentary on Stotz and Griffiths, Burian, and Waters: Genes, Concepts, DST Implications, and the Possibility of PrototypesHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 26 (1). 2004.
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6Logic of Discovery and Diagnosis in Medicine (edited book)Univ of California Press. 1985.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.
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11The challenge of psychiatric nosology and diagnosisJournal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 18 (3): 704-709. 2012.
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1Theories, models, and equations in systems biologyIn Fred C. Boogerd, Frank J. Bruggeman, Jan-Hendrik S. Hofmeyr & Hans V. Westerhoff (eds.), Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations, Elsevier. pp. 145--162. 2007.
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9Extrapolation from Animal ModelsIn Peter McLaughlin, Peter Machamer & Rick Grush (eds.), Theory and Method in the Neurosciences, Pittsburgh University Press. pp. 200. 2001.
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1Coming home to Hume: A sociobiological foundation for a concept of 'health' and moralityJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 24 (4). 1999.Assessing the normative status of concepts of health and disease involves one in questions regarding the relationship between fact and value. Some have argued that Christopher Boorse's conception of health and disease lacks such a valuational element because it cannot account for types of harms which, while disvalued, do not have evolutionarily dysfunctional consequences. I take Boorse's account and incorporate some Humean-like sociobiological assumptions in order to respond to this challenge. T…Read more
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5A philosophical overview of the problems of validity for psychiatric disordersIn Kenneth S. Kendler & Josef Parnas (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry Ii: Nosology, Oxford University Press. pp. 169. 2012.
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1Medicine, philosophy ofIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. pp. 264-269. 1996.
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1Interpretive practices in medicineIn Peter Machamer & Gereon Wolters (eds.), Interpretation: Ways of Thinking About the Sciences and the Arts, University of Pittsburgh Press. 2010.
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47The Watson-Crick model and reductionismBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 20 (4): 325-348. 1969.
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12Exemplar reasoning about biological models and diseases: A relation between the philosophy of medicine and philosophy of scienceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 11 (1): 63-80. 1986.the structure of medical science with a special focus on the role of generalizations and universals in medicine, and (2) philosophy of medicine's relation with the philosophy of science. I argue that a usually overlooked aspect of Kuhnian paradigms, namely, their characteristic of being "exemplars", is of considerable significance in the biomedical sciences. This significance rests on certain important differences from the physical sciences in the nature of theories in the basic and the clinical…Read more
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