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1
Parkinson, Gavin. Surrealism, art, and modern science: Relativity, quantum mechanics, epistemology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
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2
Elkins, James. Six stories from the end of representation: Images in painting, photography, astronomy, microscopy, particle physics, and quantum mechanics, 1980-2000. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2008.
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3
Keutner, Thomas. Ignoranz, Täuschung, Selbsttäuschung: Kausalität in den Handlungswissenschaften. Freiburg: Verlag K.Alber, 2004.
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Keutner, Thomas. Ignoranz, Täuschung, Selbsttäuschung: Kausalität in den Handlungswissenschaften. Freiburg: Verlag K.Alber, 2004.
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Keutner, Thomas. Ignoranz, Täuschung, Selbsttäuschung: Kausalität in den Handlungswissenschaften. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2004.
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6
Braun, Marta. Picturing time: The work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
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7
Alternatives in Jewish bioethics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
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8
Roger, Herdman, and Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Division of Health Care Services., eds. Non-heart-beating organ transplantation: Medical and ethical issues in procurement. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press, 1997.
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9
Glennan, Stuart. Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy. Edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199368815.013.39.
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The past twenty years have seen a resurgence of philosophical interest in mechanisms, an interest that has been driven both by concerns with the logical empiricist tradition and by the sense that a philosophy of science that attends to mechanisms will be more successful than traditional alternatives in illuminating the actual content and practice of science. In this chapter, the author surveys some of the topics discussed by the so-called new mechanists. These include the nature of mechanisms themselves, how mechanisms are discovered and represented via models, the debate over the norms of mechanistic explanation, and the relationship between mechanisms and causation.
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Glennan, Stuart. The New Mechanical Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198779711.001.0001.
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This book argues for a new image of nature and of science—one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that suggests that much of the work of natural and social scientists involves discovering, describing, and explaining how these mechanisms work. The book explores the interplay between ontological questions about mechanisms as things in the world and methodological questions about how these mechanisms can be characterized. Ontologically, mechanisms are understood to be collections of entities whose organized activities and interactions give rise to phenomena. This minimal conception of mechanism is abstract enough to encompass most of the wide variety of things that scientists have called mechanisms. While mechanisms are particular things, localized in space and time, the models that scientists use to describe them must be abstract and idealized. The mechanistic approach provides new ways of thinking about traditional metaphysical questions—for instance, about the nature of objects, part-whole and cause-effect relations, properties and universals, natural kinds, and laws of nature. It also suggests novel approaches for thinking about methodological questions concerning scientific representation, causal inference, reduction, and scientific explanation. The New Mechanical Philosophy offers the promise of a better understanding of the sources of both the unity and diversity of science.
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Surrealism, Art, and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology. Yale University Press, 2008.
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12
Egan, Frances. Function-Theoretic Explanation and the Search for Neural Mechanisms. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199685509.003.0007.
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A common kind of explanation in cognitive science might be called function-theoretic: with some target cognitive capacity in view, the theorist hypothesizes that the system computes a well-defined function (in the mathematical sense) and explains how computing this function contributes to the exercise of the cognitive capacity. Recently, proponents of the so-called “new mechanist” approach in philosophy of science have argued that a model of a cognitive capacity is explanatory only to the extent that it reveals the causal structure of the mechanism underlying the capacity. If they are right, then a cognitive model that resists a transparent mapping to known neural mechanisms—as many function-theoretic models do—fails to be explanatory. I argue that a function-theoretic characterization of a cognitive capacity can be genuinely explanatory even absent an account of how the capacity is realized in neural hardware.
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Thagard, Paul. Natural Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190678739.001.0001.
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Philosophy is the attempt to answer general questions about the nature of knowledge, reality, and values. Natural philosophy draws heavily on the sciences and finds no room for supernatural entities such as souls, gods, and possible worlds. Paul Thagard develops interconnected theories of knowledge, reality, morality, justice, meaning, and the arts. He uses new theories of brain mechanisms and social interactions to forge original accounts of the traditional branches of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. Rather than reducing the humanities to the sciences, this book displays fertile interconnections that show that philosophical questions and artistic practices can be much better understood by considering how human brains operate and interact in social contexts. The sciences and the humanities are interdependent, because both the natural and social sciences cannot avoid questions about methods and values that are primarily the province of philosophy. Rather than diminish philosophy, the goal of this book is to show its importance for diverse human enterprises, including science, politics, the arts, and everyday life. Natural philosophy draws on the sciences to dramatically increase understanding of fundamental issues concerning mind, meaning, and morality. This book belongs to a trio that includes Brain–Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity and Mind–Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.
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Six Stories from the End of Representation: Images in Painting, Photography, Astronomy, Microscopy, Particle Physics, and Quantum Mechanics, 1980-2000 (Writing Science). Stanford University Press, 2008.
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15
Elkins, James. Six Stories from the End of Representation: Images in Painting, Photography, Astronomy, Microscopy, Particle Physics, and Quantum Mechanics, 1980-2000 (Writing Science). Stanford University Press, 2008.
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16
Rand, Sebastian. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature. Edited by Dean Moyar. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199355228.013.18.
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Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is best understood through its contribution to Hegel’s larger philosophical project of both articulating and actually achieving human freedom. It contributes to this project by showing that nature and natural things are themselves free, in a specific sense of freedom that Hegel critically appropriates from Kant. Hegel demonstrates this freedom of nature through the conceptual transformation of natural-scientific “representations” (laws, kinds, and other universals) into systematically ordered “concrete universals” in which the empirical content of the sciences is preserved and systematized in a way that emphasizes nature’s self-determination, rather than its alleged sheer givenness and “externality.” After a general account of, first, Hegel’s understanding of the natural sciences and their results, and, second, his transformative method, the chapter presents a detailed reconstruction of his treatment of collision, fall, and orbital motion in the Mechanics.
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Giardini, Francesca, and Rafael Wittek, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190494087.001.0001.
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Reputations can make or break citizens, communities, or companies. Reputations matter for individual careers, for one’s chances of finding a partner, for a profession’s credibility, or for the value of a firm’s stock options – to name but a few. The key mechanism for the creation, maintenance, and destruction of reputations in everyday life is gossip – evaluative talk about absent third parties. Reputation and gossip are inseparably intertwined, but up until now have been mostly studied in isolation. The present Handbook closes this gap, drawing on cutting edge insights from a multitude of disciplines, ranging from psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology and economics to philosophy, neurobiology and computer science. Being the first integrated and comprehensive collection of studies on both phenomena, each of the 25 chapters explores the current state of the art on the antecedents, processes and outcomes of the gossip-reputation link in contexts as diverse as online markets, non-industrial societies, modern firms, social networks, or schools. The volume is organized into seven parts, each of them devoted to the exploration of a different facet of gossip and reputation. Highly international in scope, the volume brings together some of the most eminent experts on gossip and reputation. Their contributions do not only help us to better understand the complex interplay between two of society’s most delicate social mechanisms. By pointing to new problems and a newly emerging cross-disciplinary solutions, the book also sketches the contours of a long term research agenda.
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Silberstein, Michael, W. M. Stuckey, and Timothy McDevitt. Relational Blockworld and Quantum Mechanics. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198807087.003.0005.
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The main thread of chapter 4 introduces some of the major mysteries and interpretational issues of quantum mechanics (QM). These mysteries and issues include: quantum superposition, quantum nonlocality, Bell’s inequality, entanglement, delayed choice, the measurement problem, and the lack of counterfactual definiteness. All these mysteries and interpretational issues of QM result from dynamical explanation in the mechanical universe and are dispatched using the authors’ adynamical explanation in the block universe, called Relational Blockworld (RBW). A possible link between RBW and quantum information theory is provided. The metaphysical underpinnings of RBW, such as contextual emergence, spatiotemporal ontological contextuality, and adynamical global constraints, are provided in Philosophy of Physics for Chapter 4. That is also where RBW is situated with respect to retrocausal accounts and it is shown that RBW is a realist, psi-epistemic account of QM. All the relevant formalism for this chapter is provided in Foundational Physics for Chapter 4.
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Banchetti-Robino, Marina Paola. The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197502501.001.0001.
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This book examines the way in which Robert Boyle seeks to accommodate his complex chemical philosophy within the framework of a mechanistic theory of matter. More specifically, the book proposes that Boyle regards chemical qualities as properties that emerge from the mechanistic structure of chymical atoms. Within Boyle’s chemical ontology, chymical atoms are structured concretions of particles that Boyle regards as chemically elementary entities, that is, as chemical wholes that resist experimental analysis. Although this interpretation of Boyle’s chemical philosophy has already been suggested by other Boyle scholars, the present book provides a sustained philosophical argument to demonstrate that, for Boyle, chemical properties are dispositional, relational, emergent, and supervenient properties. This argument is strengthened by a detailed mereological analysis of Boylean chymical atoms that establishes the kind of theory of wholes and parts that is most consistent with his emergentist conception of chemical properties. The emergentist position that is being attributed to Boyle supports his view that chemical reactions resist direct explanation in terms of the mechanistic properties of fundamental particles, as well as his position regarding the scientific autonomy of chemistry from mechanics and physics.
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(Editor), Graham Macdonald, and David Papineau (Editor), eds. Teleosemantics. Oxford University Press, USA, 2006.
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Lambert, Enoch, and John Schwenkler, eds. Becoming Someone New. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198823735.001.0001.
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This book presents fifteen new essays on the topic of transformative experience, choice, and change. Questions that are covered include: What is the nature of personal transformation? How can choices for or against transformative change be rational? To what extent can imagination help us to anticipate the nature of transformative experience? What are some mechanisms of personal transformation? How is the concept of transformative experience relevant to moral and political philosophy?
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Frere, Jean-Claude, Jean-Marie Clarke, and Leonardo. Leonardo: Painter, Inventor, Visionary, Mathematician, Philosopher, Engineer. Vilo International, 1995.
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23
Kowalewski, Hubert. Snakes, Leaves, and Poisoned Arrows. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190636647.003.0009.
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A paradox about emotions is that although we experience them directly through our minds and bodies, they appear to be vague and elusive when we try to talk about them. Consequently, most of the language used to speak about emotions is metaphorical. This observation is consonant with cognitive linguistics, which views metaphors as conceptual rather than purely verbal mechanisms. Emotions are one of the central matters of Buddhist philosophy, and language used to talk about them abounds in conceptual metaphors. This article inspects metaphorical expressions used in the canonical collection of early Buddhist texts. It reveals fundamental differences in the way emotions are thought of in Buddhist and Western culture. While in the West emotions are typically conceptualized in terms of FORCE, Buddhism conceives them in terms of FORCE, OBJECT or both. These variations are not incidental and results from fundamental differences between Christian and Buddhist worldviews and philosophy.
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Ben-Menahem, Yemima. Causation in Science. Princeton University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691174938.001.0001.
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This book explores the role of causal constraints in science, shifting our attention from causal relations between individual events—the focus of most philosophical treatments of causation—to a broad family of concepts and principles generating constraints on possible change. The book looks at determinism, locality, stability, symmetry principles, conservation laws, and the principle of least action—causal constraints that serve to distinguish events and processes that our best scientific theories mandate or allow from those they rule out. The book's approach reveals that causation is just as relevant to explaining why certain events fail to occur as it is to explaining events that do occur. It investigates the conceptual differences between, and interrelations of, members of the causal family, thereby clarifying problems at the heart of the philosophy of science. The book argues that the distinction between determinism and stability is pertinent to the philosophy of history and the foundations of statistical mechanics, and that the interplay of determinism and locality is crucial for understanding quantum mechanics. Providing a historical perspective, the book traces the causal constraints of contemporary science to traditional intuitions about causation, and demonstrates how the teleological appearance of some constraints is explained away in current scientific theories such as quantum mechanics. The book represents a bold challenge to both causal eliminativism and causal reductionism—the notions that causation has no place in science and that higher-level causal claims are reducible to the causal claims of fundamental physics.
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Langland-Hassan, Peter, and Agustin Vicente, eds. Inner Speech. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198796640.001.0001.
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Inner speech lies at the chaotic intersection of numerous difficult questions in contemporary philosophy and psychology. On the one hand, inner speech utterances are private mental events of a kind. On the other, they resemble speech acts of the sort used in interpersonal communication. Thought and its linguistic expression appear to overlap. Further, inner speech is at once imagistic in nature, having a characteristic auditory-verbal phenomenology; yet it also appears suitable to carrying complex linguistic contents. In another apparent clash, inner speech episodes seem to constitute or express sophisticated trains of conceptual thought; yet, at the same time, they are deeply motoric in nature, drawing on mechanisms for speech production and perception more generally. Also, in using inner speech, we seem able both to regulate our bodily actions and, arguably, to gain a unique kind of access to our own beliefs and desires. Finally, disorders as “thought insertion” and auditory verbal hallucinations are plausibly explicable in terms of the malfunctioning of mechanisms governing speech production and perception. But there is still little on what those mechanisms are, nor in how they might be involved. This interdisciplinary volume—comprising twelve chapters by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists—capitalizes on growing interest in the many questions surrounding inner speech and presents a range of new theories concerning both its nature and location within these important debates.
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Brower, Andrew V. Z., and Randall T. Schuh. Biological Systematics. 3rd ed. Cornell University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501752773.001.0001.
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Understanding the history and philosophy of biological systematics (phylogenetics, taxonomy and classification of living things) is key to successful practice of the discipline. In this thoroughly revised third edition, the authors provide an updated account of cladistic principles and techniques, emphasizing their empirical and epistemological clarity. The book covers the history and philosophy of systematics; the mechanics and methods of character analysis, phylogenetic inference, and evaluation of results; the practical application of systematic results to biological classification, adaptation and coevolution, biodiversity, and conservation; along with new chapters on species and molecular clocks. The book is both a textbook for students studying systematic biology and a desk reference for practicing systematists. Part explication of concepts and methods, part exploration of the underlying epistemology of systematics, the edition addresses why some methods are more empirically sound than others.
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Beebee, Helen, Christopher Hitchcock, and Huw Price, eds. Making a Difference. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746911.001.0001.
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Making a Difference presents fifteen original essays on causation and counterfactuals by philosophers and political theorists. Collectively, they represent the state of the art on these topics. The essays in this volume are inspired by the work of the late Australian philosopher Peter Menzies (1953–2015), who himself made a very great difference to our contemporary understanding of these matters. Topics covered include: the semantics of counterfactuals, agency theories of causation, the context-sensitivity of causal claims, structural equation models, mechanisms, mental causation, the causal exclusion argument, and free will. Contributors: Helen Beebee, Thomas Blanchard, David Braddon-Mitchell, Rachael Briggs, Nancy Cartwright, Christopher Hitchcock, Christian List, Cei Maslen, Peter Menzies, Daniel Nolan, Philip Pettit, Huw Price, Jonathan Schaffer, Brad Weslake, James Woodward.
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Mann, Peter. Newton’s Three Laws. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198822370.003.0001.
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This chapter introduces Newton’s laws, the Newtonian formulation of mechanics and key concepts such as configuration space and phase space for later development. In 1687, the natural philosopher Sir Isaac Newton published the Principia Mathematica and, with it, sparked the revolutionary ideas key to all branches of classical physics. In this chapter, the system is the object of interest and is considered to be either a single or a collection of generic particles that are not governed by quantum mechanics, for quantum systems do not follow these laws explicitly. Results for systems of particles and conservation laws are presented as the invariance of a given quantity under time evolution. The N-body problem, first integrals, initial value problems and Galilean transformations are all introduced and the Picard iteration and the Verlet algorithm are discussed.
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Ott, Walter, and Lydia Patton, eds. Laws of Nature. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746775.001.0001.
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The concept of a law of nature, while familiar, is deeply puzzling. Theorists such as Descartes think a divine being governs the universe according to the laws which follow from that being’s own nature. Newton detaches the concept from theology and is agnostic about the ontology underlying the laws of nature. Some later philosophers treat laws as summaries of events or tools for understanding and explanation, or identify the laws with principles and equations fundamental to scientific theories. In the first part of this volume, essays from leading historians of philosophy identify central questions: are laws independent of the things they govern, or do they emanate from the powers of bodies? Are the laws responsible for the patterns we see in nature, or should they be collapsed into those patterns? In the second part, contributors at the forefront of current debate evaluate the role of laws in contemporary Best System, perspectival, Kantian, and powers- or mechanisms-based approaches. These essays take up pressing questions about whether the laws of nature can be consistent with contingency, whether laws are based on the invariants of scientific theories, and how to deal with exceptions to laws. These twelve essays, published here for the first time, will be required reading for anyone interested in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and the histories of these disciplines.
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Braun, Marta. Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (1830-1904). University Of Chicago Press, 1995.
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Trout, J. D. Understanding and Fluency. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190469863.003.0012.
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Philosophy and psychology appeal to a sense of understanding, typically a feeling invoked to explain people’s choices. ‘Understanding’ seems loosely associated with properties like transparency (things we understand we can also introspect), or voluntary (cognitive) control (things we understand we can turn over in our mind). Research on attention and memory shows that many candidate cases of understanding lack properties like transparency and voluntary control. In fact, ‘understanding’ may denote an unprincipled stew of states, processes, capacities, and goals that are only occasionally present when philosophers, and ordinary folks, apply the term or concept. A unified account of understanding might be valuable, but understanding isn’t a natural kind or defined by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. Any unity we find in understanding comes not from the involvement of common mechanisms across diverse cases, but rather of messy cognitive activities in the common goal of pursuing the truth.
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Thagard, Paul. Brain-Mind. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190678715.001.0001.
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Minds enable people to perceive, imagine, solve problems, understand, learn, speak, reason, create, and be emotional and conscious. Competing explanations of how the mind works have identified it as soul, computer, brain, dynamical system, or social construction. This book explains minds in terms of interacting mechanisms operating at multiple levels, including the social, mental, neural, and molecular. Brain–Mind presents a unified, brain-based theory of cognition and emotion with applications to the most complex kinds of thinking, right up to consciousness and creativity. Unification comes from systematic application of Chris Eliasmith’s powerful new Semantic Pointer Architecture, a highly original synthesis of neural network and symbolic ideas about how the mind works. The book shows the relevance of semantic pointers to a full range of important kinds of mental representations, from sensations and imagery to concepts, rules, analogies, and emotions. Neural mechanisms are used to explain many phenomena concerning consciousness, action, intention, language, creativity, and the self. This book belongs to a trio that includes Mind–Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions and Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.
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Troisi, Alfonso. The Painted Mind. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199393404.001.0001.
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The scientific focus of this book is on the human mind and behavior viewed from an evolutionary perspective. The author is a clinical psychiatrist but his research background ranges from primate ethology to neuroscience, behavioral biology to molecular genetics, and Darwinian psychiatry to evolutionary psychology. Discussion of emotions, cognitive capacities, and behaviors integrates a variety of research and clinical findings that, ultimately, can be reduced to the evolutionary distinction between proximate mechanisms and adaptive functions. An original feature of the book is that it combines science and art. Each chapter is inspired by a painting masterpiece, and a substantial portion of the text is devoted to introducing the reader to the artistic significance of the works and to biographical notes concerning the painters who made them. In addition, each painting is accurately reproduced in a full-page color plate. Description of the evolutionary theories that explain how the human mind works are intermixed with the critical discussion of the perspectives of humanistic disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, religion, or literature. In order to give the reader lively examples of psychological and behavioral patterns, the chapters are filled with stories of people—stories of literary characters, stories of historical characters, and clinical cases.
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Hüttemann, Andreas, and Alan Love. Reduction. Edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199368815.013.26.
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Reduction and reductionism have been central philosophical topics in analytic philosophy of science for more than six decades. Together they encompass a diversity of issues from metaphysics and epistemology. This article provides an introduction to the topic that illuminates how contemporary epistemological discussions took their shape historically and limns the contours of concrete cases of reduction in specific natural sciences. The unity of science and the impulse to accomplish compositional reduction in accord with a layer-cake vision of the sciences, the seminal contributions of Ernest Nagel on theory reduction and how they strongly conditioned subsequent philosophical discussions, and the detailed issues pertaining to different accounts of reduction that arise in both physical and biological science (e.g., limit-case and part-whole reduction in physics, the difference-making principle in genetics, and mechanisms in molecular biology) are explored. The conclusion argues that the epistemological heterogeneity and patchwork organization of the natural sciences encourages a pluralist stance about reduction.
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Hazony, Yoram, and Eric Schliesser. Newton and Hume. Edited by Paul Russell. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199742844.013.28.
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Central aspects of Hume’s proposed “system of the sciences” as described in the Treatise are modeled on Newton’s Principia. But, as recent scholarship has suggested, Hume’s Treatise also bears a deeply subversive message with respect to Newtonian science. This chapter offers a revised overview of what Hume takes from Newton and what he rejects: The first part of the chapter argues that in the Treatise Hume adopts a version of Newton’s “analytic and synthetic method” for philosophy, thereby placing a distinctively Newtonian form of explanatory reduction at the center of his own philosophical method. The second part of the chapter, on the other hand, shows that many of the most important aspects of Hume’s argument in Book 1 of the Treatise can be understood as critical of core conceptual and ontological commitments of Newton’s mechanics as developed in the Principia.
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Bargu, Banu, ed. Turkey's Necropolitical Laboratory. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474450263.001.0001.
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Turkey’s democratic regime and its vicissitudes are dependent on a necropolitical undercurrent. This book presents a bold collection of essays that evaluate Turkey’s recent history from the perspective of the necropolitical underpinnings of its precarious democracy. Combining cutting edge research and a diverse range of approaches from multiple disciplines, including political theory, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, international relations, and gender and sexuality studies, the book examines the multiple ways in which lives are brought into the fold of power and analyses how they are subjected to mechanisms of death and destruction, as well as modalities of infrastructural violence, strategic neglect and exposure. Focusing on themes such as martyrdom, counterinsurgency warfare, enforced disappearances and conscientious objection; sites such as emergency zones, cemeteries, monuments and borderlands; and institutions such as prisons, courts and the army, the collection offers a sobering and original analysis of contemporary Turkey and, thus indirectly, of the changing political dynamics of the Middle East. It points to the emergence of new forms of impoverishment, inequality and disposability. It provides a new and rich lexicon that makes a sophisticated contribution to the growing research program on violence in the critical humanities.
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French, Steven, and Juha Saatsi, eds. Scientific Realism and the Quantum. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198814979.001.0001.
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Scientific realism has traditionally maintained that our best scientific theories can be regarded as more or less true and as representing the world as it is (more or less). However, one of our very best current theories—quantum mechanics—has famously resisted such a realist construal, threatening to undermine the realist stance altogether. The chapters in this volume carefully examine this tension and the reasons behind it, including the underdetermination generated by the multiplicity of formulations and interpretations of quantum physics, each presenting a different way the world could be. Authors in this volume offer a range of alternative ways forward: some suggest new articulations of realism, limiting our commitments in one way or another; others attempt to articulate a ‘third way’ between traditional forms of realism and antirealism, or are critical of such attempts. Still others argue that quantum theory itself should be reconceptualised, or at least alternative formulations should be considered in the hope of evading the problems faced by realism. And some examine the nature of these issues when moving beyond quantum mechanics to quantum field theory. Taken together they offer an exciting new set of perspectives on one of the most fundamental questions in the philosophy of modern physics: how can one be a realist about quantum theory, and what does this realism amount to?
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de Vignemont, Frédérique, Andrea Serino, Hong Yu Wong, and Alessandro Farnè, eds. The World at Our Fingertips. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198851738.001.0001.
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Where do you end and the external world begin? This might seem to be a straightforward, binary question: your skin is the boundary, with the self on one side and the rest of the world on the other. Peripersonal space shows that the division is not that simple. The boundary is blurrier than you might have thought. Our ability to monitor the space near the body appears to be deeply ingrained. Our evolutionary history has equipped our brains with a special mechanism to track multisensory stimuli that can potentially interact with our physical body in its immediate surroundings and prime appropriate actions. The processing of the immediate space around one’s body thus displays highly specific multisensory and motor features, distinct from those that characterize the processing of regions of space that are further away. The computational specificities here lead one to wonder whether classic theories of perception apply to the special case of peripersonal space. We think that there is a need to reassess the relationship between perception, action, emotion, and self-awareness in the highly special context of the immediate surroundings of our body. For the first time, leading experts on peripersonal space in cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and ethology gathered in this volume describe the vast number of fascinating discoveries about this special way of representing space. For the first time too, these empirical results and the questions they open are brought into dialogue with philosophy.
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Levin, Frank S. Surfing the Quantum World. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198808275.001.0001.
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Surfing the Quantum World bridges the gap between in-depth textbooks and typical popular science books on quantum ideas and phenomena. Among its significant features is the description of a host of mind-bending phenomena, such as a quantum object being in two places at once or a certain minus sign being the most consequential in the universe. Much of its first part is historical, starting with the ancient Greeks and their concepts of light, and ending with the creation of quantum mechanics. The second part begins by applying quantum mechanics and its probability nature to a pedagogical system, the one-dimensional box, an analog of which is a musical-instrument string. This is followed by a gentle introduction to the fundamental principles of quantum theory, whose core concepts and symbolic representations are the foundation for most of the subsequent chapters. For instance, it is shown how quantum theory explains the properties of the hydrogen atom and, via quantum spin and Pauli’s Exclusion Principle, how it accounts for the structure of the periodic table. White dwarf and neutron stars are seen to be gigantic quantum objects, while the maximum height of mountains is shown to have a quantum basis. Among the many other topics considered are a variety of interference phenomena, those that display the wave properties of particles like electrons and photons, and even of large molecules. The book concludes with a wide-ranging discussion of interpretational and philosophic issues, introduced in Chapters 14 by entanglement and 15 by Schrödinger’s cat.
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Chudnoff, Elijah. Forming Impressions. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198863021.001.0001.
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Perception and intuition are our basic sources of knowledge about the concrete world around us, and more abstract matters such as mathematics, metaphysics, and morality. Perception and intuition, however, are also capacities we deliberately improve in ways that draw on our knowledge about these domains. How can the sensory and intellectual impressions that lie at the foundation of our knowledge themselves be informed by our knowledge? In Forming Impressions: Expertise in Perception and Intuition, Chudnoff addresses this and other questions that derive from trying to understand the improvability of our basic sources of knowledge. At the extreme of improvement lies expertise, and there is a wealth of research on the structures and mechanisms underlying expert perception and expert intuition that promises to illuminate the nature and significance of improvements to these sources of knowledge in general. Taking this cue, the first part of the book lays the groundwork for the rest by elaborating an interpretation of the psychology of expertise. The second part develops a setting for thinking about the epistemology of expert perception and expert intuition. The third part of the book explores the significance of the resulting view of intuition and its improvability for recent debates about philosophical methodology. Chudnoff defends a rationalist view of the role of intuition in philosophy that can be traced back to classic works on methodology such as Descartes’ Rules and Spinoza’s Emendation of the Intellect.
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Scerri, Eric. The Periodic Table. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190914363.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
The periodic table of elements is among the most recognizable image in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of science. In this new edition, Eric Scerri offers readers a complete and updated history and philosophy of the periodic table. Written in a lively style to appeal to experts and interested lay-persons alike, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance begins with an overview of the importance of the periodic table and the manner in which the term "element" has been interpreted by chemists and philosophers across time. The book traces the evolution and development of the periodic table from its early beginnings with the work of the precursors like De Chancourtois, Newlands and Meyer to Mendeleev's 1869 first published table and beyond. Several chapters are devoted to developments in 20th century physics, especially quantum mechanics and and the extent to which they explain the periodic table in a more fundamental way. Other chapters examine the formation of the elements, nuclear structure, the discovery of the last seven infra-uranium elements, and the synthesis of trans-uranium elements. Finally, the book considers the many different ways of representing the periodic system and the quest for an optimal arrangement.
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Webb, Andrew, Derek Angus, Simon Finfer, Luciano Gattinoni, and Mervyn Singer, eds. Oxford Textbook of Critical Care. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199600830.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
Since the first edition of the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care was published there have been many advances in in our understanding and management of critical illness. The first edition was prefaced with a note on the exacting nature of critical care—the holistic complexity of the patient with multisystem dysfunction, the out-of-hours commitment, the often stressful and highly charged situations requiring considerable agility of brain and hand, and the continuing evolution (and occasional revolution) in perceived ‘best practice’. These challenging demands are precisely what attract the critical care practitioner to the specialty. The importance of strong support mechanisms—from colleagues, national and international societies, and robust educational and research outputs—is paramount to sustain and enhance the quality of care patients receive. The format used in the first edition with system-orientated sections continues. Each section has been subdivided into short topics grouped according to clinical problems, facilitating manageable and relevant searches in electronic media. It is a single-volume major reference book aiming to cover the breadth of clinical and organizational aspects of adult critical care medicine in readable chunks. The editors acknowledge that every single topic cannot possibly be covered in detail, but hope the book’s comprehensive nature will be found useful by all health care providers who look after critically-ill patients. There are often local, national, and international differences in philosophy and management strategy. Some of these differences are seemingly contradictory and it is often difficult for physicians in one country to assimilate information produced for another. This is an international text attempting to give a balanced view where international differences exist. The book informs, rather than dictates.
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Wilson, Alastair. The Nature of Contingency. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198846215.001.0001.
Full textAbstract:
Contingency is everywhere, but what is it? This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and on cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. The framework is a modal realist one, in the tradition of David Lewis: all genuine possibilities are on a par, and the actual world is simply the one that we ourselves inhabit. It departs from Lewisian modal realism in that quantum possible worlds are not philosophical posits but scientific discoveries. Contingency and other modal notions have often been seen as beyond the limits of science. Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation: metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book’s quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency.