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40The Online Alternative: Sustainability, Justice, And Conferencing in PhilosophyEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 16 (2): 145-171. 2020.The recent global pandemic has led to a shift to online conferences in philosophy. In this paper we argue that online conferences, more than a temporary replacement, should be considered a sustainable alternative to in-person conferences well into the future. We present three arguments for more online conferences, including their reduced impact on the environment, their enhanced accessibility for groups that are minorities in philosophy, and their lower financial burdens, especially important gi…Read more
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5Laws of Ecology and Their Promise of ExplanationsPhilosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14 (5). 2022.A number of ecologists have put forward various proposals that ecology has laws, yet they have not explicated what role laws play in ecological explanations. Marcel Weber (1999), Lev Ginzburg and Mark Colyvan (2004) correct this deficiency and also make their case for laws of ecology: the principle of competitive exclusion and Malthus's law of exponential growth respectively. According to Weber, the principle of competitive exclusion explains phenomena (1) by direct application, or (2) by descri…Read more
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16Introduction to values and pluralism in the environmental sciences: From inferences to institutionsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90 (C): 140-144. 2021.
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311Mechanisms in ecologyIn Stuart Glennan & Phyllis McKay Illari (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 348-361. 2017.New mechanistic philosophy has not examined explanations in ecology although they are based extensively on describing mechanisms responsible for phenomena under scrutiny. This chapter uses the example of research on the shrub Lonicera maackii (Amur honeysuckle) to scrutinize individual-level mechanisms that are generally accepted and used in ecology and confronts them with the minimal account of mechanisms. Individual-level mechanisms are for a phenomenon, are hierarchical, and absent entities p…Read more
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772The mechanistic approach of The Theory of Island Biogeography and its current relevanceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (1): 22-33. 2014.Philosophers of science have examined The Theory of Island Biogeography by Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson (1967) mainly due to its important contribution to modeling in ecology, but they have not examined it as a representative case of ecological explanation. In this paper, I scrutinize the type of explanation used in this paradigmatic work of ecology. I describe the philosophy of science of MacArthur and Wilson and show that it is mechanistic. Based on this account and in light of contributi…Read more
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172Causal and Mechanistic Explanations, and a Lesson from EcologyIn Alexandru Manafu (ed.), The Prospects for Fusion Emergence, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Vol. 313. 2015.
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110Ecological explanation between manipulation and mechanism descriptionPhilosophy of Science 76 (5): 821-837. 2009.James Woodward offers a conception of explanation and mechanism in terms of interventionist counterfactuals. Based on a case from ecology, I show that ecologists’ approach to that case satisfies Woodward’s conditions for explanation and mechanism, but his conception does not fully capture what ecologists view as explanatory. The new mechanistic philosophy likewise aims to describe central aspects of mechanisms, but I show that it is not sufficient to account for ecological mechanisms. I argue th…Read more
Dayton, Ohio, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |