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An Introduction to MechanismsIn Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Christian Wallmann, Michael Wilde, Brendan Clarke, Phyllis Illari, Michael P. Kelly, Charles Norell, Federica Russo, Beth Shaw & Jon Williamson (eds.), Evaluating evidence of mechanisms in medicine, Springer. 2018.
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82Evaluating evidence of mechanisms in medicineSpringer. 2018.The use of evidence in medicine is something we should continuously seek to improve. This book seeks to develop our understanding of evidence of mechanism in evaluating evidence in medicine, public health, and social care; and also offers tools to help implement improved assessment of evidence of mechanism in practice. In this way, the book offers a bridge between more theoretical and conceptual insights and worries about evidence of mechanism and practical means to fit the results into evidence…Read more
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15The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Mechanisms (edited book)Routledge. 2017.From the operation of the universe to DNA, the brain and the economy, natural and social frequently describe their activity as being concerned with discovering mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. This is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by …Read more
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18Predicting “it will work for us”: (way) beyond statisticsIn Phyllis McKay Illari, Federica Russo & Jon Williamson (eds.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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59Six Theses on Mechanisms and Mechanistic ScienceJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 53 (2): 143-161. 2022.In this paper we identify six theses that constitute core results of philosophical investigation into the nature of mechanisms, and of the role that the search for and identification of mechanisms play in the sciences. These theses represent the fruits of the body of research that is now often called New Mechanism. We concisely present the main arguments for these theses. In the literature, these arguments are scattered and often implicit. Our analysis can guide future research in many ways: it …Read more
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30Causality in the Sciences (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2011.Why do ideas of how mechanisms relate to causality and probability differ so much across the sciences? Can progress in understanding the tools of causal inference in some sciences lead to progress in others? This book tackles these questions and others concerning the use of causality in the sciences.
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21Building General Knowledge of Mechanisms in Information SecurityPhilosophy and Technology 32 (4): 627-659. 2019.We show how more general knowledge can be built in information security, by the building of knowledge of mechanism clusters, some of which are multifield. By doing this, we address in a novel way the longstanding philosophical problem of how, if at all, we come to have knowledge that is in any way general, when we seem to be confined to particular experiences. We also address the issue of building knowledge of mechanisms by studying an area that is new to the mechanisms literature: the methods o…Read more
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27Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “A Radical Approach to Ebola: Saving Humans and Other Animals”American Journal of Bioethics 19 (1). 2019.
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IntroductionIn Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Christian Wallmann, Michael Wilde, Brendan Clarke, Phyllis Illari, Michael P. Kelly, Charles Norell, Federica Russo, Beth Shaw & Jon Williamson (eds.), Evaluating evidence of mechanisms in medicine, Springer. 2018.
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How to Consider Evidence of Mechanisms: An OverviewIn Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Christian Wallmann, Michael Wilde, Brendan Clarke, Phyllis Illari, Michael P. Kelly, Charles Norell, Federica Russo, Beth Shaw & Jon Williamson (eds.), Evaluating evidence of mechanisms in medicine, Springer. 2018.
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Assessing ExposuresIn Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Christian Wallmann, Michael Wilde, Brendan Clarke, Phyllis Illari, Michael P. Kelly, Charles Norell, Federica Russo, Beth Shaw & Jon Williamson (eds.), Evaluating evidence of mechanisms in medicine, Springer. 2018.
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Particularisation to an IndividualIn Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Christian Wallmann, Michael Wilde, Brendan Clarke, Phyllis Illari, Michael P. Kelly, Charles Norell, Federica Russo, Beth Shaw & Jon Williamson (eds.), Evaluating evidence of mechanisms in medicine, Springer. 2018.
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ToolsIn Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Christian Wallmann, Michael Wilde, Brendan Clarke, Phyllis Illari, Michael P. Kelly, Charles Norell, Federica Russo, Beth Shaw & Jon Williamson (eds.), Evaluating evidence of mechanisms in medicine, Springer. 2018.
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46A Radical Approach to Ebola: Saving Humans and Other AnimalsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 18 (10): 35-42. 2018.As the usual regulatory framework did not fit well during the last Ebola outbreak, innovative thinking still needed. In the absence of an outbreak, randomised controlled trials of clinical efficacy in humans cannot be done, while during an outbreak such trials will continue to face significant practical, philosophical, and ethical challenges. This article argues that researchers should also test the safety and effectiveness of novel vaccines in wild apes by employing a pluralistic approach to ev…Read more
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14Mechanisms in medicineIn Miriam Solomon, Jeremy R. Simon & Harold Kincaid (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Medicine, Routledge. 2016.
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44Mechanisms, Models and Laws in Understanding SupernovaeJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (1): 63-84. 2019.There has been a burst of work in the last couple of decades on mechanistic explanation, as an alternative to the traditional covering-law model of scientific explanation. That work makes some interesting claims about mechanistic explanations rendering phenomena ‘intelligible’, but does not develop this idea in great depth. There has also been a growth of interest in giving an account of scientific understanding, as a complement to an account of explanation, specifically addressing a three-place…Read more
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9The things that scientists and philosophers have called mechanisms are a diverse lot. In this Chapter we provide some taxonomic principles to help sort them out. We start with the permissive conception called minimal mechanism, which suggests that a mechanism consists of entities whose activities and interactions are organized so as to be responsible for some phenomenon. We then sort mechanistic varieties by considering the varieties of phenomena, varieties of entities and activities/interaction…Read more
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16The philosophy of information quality (edited book)Springer International Publishing. 2014.This work fulfills the need for a conceptual and technical framework to improve understanding of Information Quality (IQ) and Information Quality standards. The meaning and practical implementation of IQ are addressed, as it is relevant to any field where there is a need to handle data and issues such as accessibility, accuracy, completeness, currency, integrity, reliability, timeliness, usability, the role of metrics and so forth are all a part of Information Quality. In order to support the cr…Read more
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51Causality in Cancer Research: a Journey Through Models in Molecular Epidemiology and their Philosophical InterpretationEmerging Themes in Epidemiology 14 (7): 1-8. 2017.In the last decades, Systems Biology (including cancer research) has been driven by technology, statistical modelling and bioinformatics. In this paper we try to bring biological and philosophical thinking back. We thus aim at making diferent traditions of thought compatible: (a) causality in epidemiology and in philosophical theorizing—notably, the “sufcient-component-cause framework” and the “mark transmission” approach; (b) new acquisitions about disease pathogenesis, e.g. the “branched model…Read more
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299Mechanisms and the Evidence HierarchyTopoi 33 (2): 339-360. 2014.Evidence-based medicine (EBM) makes use of explicit procedures for grading evidence for causal claims. Normally, these procedures categorise evidence of correlation produced by statistical trials as better evidence for a causal claim than evidence of mechanisms produced by other methods. We argue, in contrast, that evidence of mechanisms needs to be viewed as complementary to, rather than inferior to, evidence of correlation. In this paper we first set out the case for treating evidence of mecha…Read more
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30The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy (edited book)Routledge. 2017.From the operation of the universe to DNA, the brain and the economy, natural and social frequently describe their activity as being concerned with discovering mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first c…Read more
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93Causality: Philosophical theory meets scientific practiceOxford University Press. 2014.Scientific and philosophical literature on causality has become highly specialised. It is hard to find suitable access points for students, young researchers, or professionals outside this domain. This book provides a guide to the complex literature, explains the scientific problems of causality and the philosophical tools needed to address them.
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216Information quality, data and philosophyIn Luciano Floridi & Phyllis Illari (eds.), The philosophy of information quality, Springer International Publishing. 2014.In this opening chapter, we review the literature on information quality. Our major aim is to introduce the issues, and trace some of the history of the debates, with a view to situating the chapters in this volume – whose authors come from different disciplines – to help make them accessible to readers with different backgrounds and expertise. We begin in this section by tracing some influential analyses of IQ in computer science. This is a useful basis for examining some examples of developing…Read more
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103In Defence of ActivitiesJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1): 69-83. 2013.In this paper, we examine what is to be said in defence of Machamer, Darden and Craver’s (MDC) controversial dualism about activities and entities (Machamer, Darden and Craver’s in Philos Sci 67:1–25, 2000). We explain why we believe the notion of an activity to be a novel, valuable one, and set about clearing away some initial objections that can lead to its being brushed aside unexamined. We argue that substantive debate about ontology can only be effective when desiderata for an ontology are …Read more
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105According to current hierarchies of evidence for EBM, evidence of correlation is always more important than evidence of mechanisms when evaluating and establishing causal claims. We argue that evidence of mechanisms needs to be treated alongside evidence of correlation. This is for three reasons. First, correlation is always a fallible indicator of causation, subject in particular to the problem of confounding; evidence of mechanisms can in some cases be more important than evidence of correlati…Read more
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448What is a mechanism? Thinking about mechanisms across the sciencesEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 2 (1): 119-135. 2012.After a decade of intense debate about mechanisms, there is still no consensus characterization. In this paper we argue for a characterization that applies widely to mechanisms across the sciences. We examine and defend our disagreements with the major current contenders for characterizations of mechanisms. Ultimately, we indicate that the major contenders can all sign up to our characterization
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Why look at Causality in the Sciences?In Phyllis McKay Illari Federica Russo (ed.), Causality in the Sciences, Oxford University Press. 2011.
Areas of Specialization
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Areas of Interest
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