Download or read book The Chances of Explanation written by Paul Humphreys and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a post-positivist theory of deterministic and probabilistic causality that supports both quantitative and qualitative explanations. Features of particular interest include the ability to provide true explanations in contexts where our knowledge is incomplete, a systematic interpretation of causal modeling techniques in the social sciences, and a direct realist view of causal relations that is compatible with a liberal empiricism. The book should be of wide interest to both philosophers and scientists. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics written by Uri D. Leibowitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How far should our realism extend? For many years philosophers of mathematics and philosophers of ethics have worked independently to address the question of how best to understand the entities apparently referred to by mathematical and ethical talk. But the similarities between their endeavours are not often emphasised. This book provides that emphasis. In particular, it focuses on two types of argumentative strategies that have been deployed in both areas. The first—debunking arguments—aims to put pressure on realism by emphasising the seeming redundancy of mathematical or moral entities when it comes to explaining our judgements. In the moral realm this challenge has been made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street; in the mathematical realm it is known as the 'Benacerraf-Field' problem. The second strategy—indispensability arguments—aims to provide support for realism by emphasising the seeming intellectual indispensability of mathematical or moral entities, for example when constructing good explanatory theories. This strategy is associated with Quine and Putnam in mathematics and with Nicholas Sturgeon and David Enoch in ethics. Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics addresses these issues through an explicitly comparative methodology which we call the 'companions in illumination' approach. By considering how argumentative strategies in the philosophy of mathematics might apply to the philosophy of ethics, and vice versa, the papers collected here break new ground in both areas. For good measure, two further companions for illumination are also broached: the philosophy of chance and the philosophy of religion. Collectively, these comparisons light up new questions, arguments, and problems of interest to scholars interested in realism in any area.
Download or read book Causal Explanation for Social Scientists written by Andrew Peter Vayda and published by Altamira Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social scientists everywhere have an interest in understanding and explaining what happens in the world. In this anthology, Vayda and Walters aid social scientists with strategy and methods to answer their causal questions. The selected readings are not only by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and human ecologists, but also by philosophers, biologists, historians, and specialists in various other fields. It will appeal to those doing applied research on practical problems, as well as to those seeking to satisfy their intellectual curiosity about why things happen.
Download or read book Causality and Explanation written by Wesley C. Salmon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-22 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two decades Wesley Salmon has helped to shape the course of debate in philosophy of science. He is a major contributor to the philosophical discussion of problems associated with causality and the author of two influential books on scientific explanation. This long-awaited volume collects twenty- six of Salmon's essays, including seven that have never before been published and others difficult to find. Part I comprises five introductory essays that presuppose no formal training in philosophy of science and form a background for subsequent essays. Parts II and III contain Salmon's seminal work on scientific explanation and causality. Part IV offers survey articles that feature advanced material but remain accessible to those outside philosophy of science. Essays in Part V address specific issues in particular scientific disciplines, namely, archaeology and anthropology, astrophysics and cosmology, and physics. Clear, compelling, and essential, this volume offers a superb introduction to philosophy of science for nonspecialists and belongs on the bookshelf of all who carry out work in this exciting field. Wesley Salmon is renowned for his seminal contributions to the philosophy of science. He has powerfully and permanently shaped discussion of such issues as lawlike and probabilistic explanation and the interrelation of explanatory notions to causal notions. This unique volume brings together twenty-six of his essays on subjects related to causality and explanation, written over the period 1971-1995. Six of the essays have never been published before and many others have only appeared in obscure venues. The volume includes a section of accessible introductory pieces, as well as more advanced and technical pieces, and will make essential work in the philosophy of science readily available to both scholars and students.
Download or read book Existence and Explanation written by W. Spohn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays is dedicated to 'Joe' Karel Lambert. The contributors are all personally affected to Joe in some way or other, but they are definitely not the only ones. Whatever excuses there are - there are some -, the editors apologize to whomever they have neglected. But even so the collection displays how influential Karel Lambert has been, personally and through his teaching and his writings. The display is in alphabetical order - with one exception: Bas van Fraassen, being about the earliest student of Karel Lambert, opens the collection with some reminiscences. Naturally, one of the focal points of this volume is Lambert's logical thinking and (or: freed of) ontological thinking. Free logic is intimately connected with description theory. Bas van Fraassen gives a survey of the development of the area, and Charles Daniels points to difficulties with definite descriptions in modal contexts and stories. Peter Woodruff addresses the relation between free logic and supervaluation semantics, presenting a novel condition which recovers desirable metatheoretic properties for free logic under that semantics. Terence Parsons shows how free logic can be utilized in interpreting sentences as purporting to denote events (true ones succeed and false ones fail) and how this helps to understand natural language.
Download or read book Science Explanation and Rationality written by James H. Fetzer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-12-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carl G. Hempel exerted greater influence upon philosophers of science than any other figure during the 20th century. In this far-reaching collection, distinguished philosophers contribute valuable studies that illuminate and clarify the central problems to which Hempel was devoted. The essays enhance our understanding of the development of logical empiricism as the major intellectual influence for scientifically-oriented philosophers and philosophically-minded scientists of the 20th century.
Download or read book Causation and Explanation written by Joseph Keim Campbell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scholars discuss the development and application of theories of causation and explanation, offering a state-of-the-art view of current work on these two topics.
Download or read book Explanation Prediction and Confirmation written by Dennis Dieks and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, the second in the Springer series Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, contains selected papers from the workshops organised by the ESF Research Networking Programme PSE (The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective) in 2009. Five general topics are addressed: 1. Formal Methods in the Philosophy of Science; 2. Philosophy of the Natural and Life Sciences; 3. Philosophy of the Cultural and Social Sciences; 4. Philosophy of the Physical Sciences; 5. History of the Philosophy of Science. This volume is accordingly divided in five sections, each section containing papers coming from the meetings focussing on one of these five themes. However, these sections are not completely independent and detached from each other. For example, an important connecting thread running through a substantial number of papers in this volume is the concept of probability: probability plays a central role in present-day discussions in formal epistemology, in the philosophy of the physical sciences, and in general methodological debates---it is central in discussions concerning explanation, prediction and confirmation. The volume thus also attempts to represent the intellectual exchange between the various fields in the philosophy of science that was central in the ESF workshops.
Download or read book Principles and methods Notes and explanations for the use of students Mathematical and physical tables written by Harold Whiting and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Scientific Explanation a Study of the Function of Theroy Probability and Law in Science written by Richard Bevan Braithwaite and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rethinking Explanation written by Johannes Persson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nature of scientific explanation has been an important topic in philosophy of science for many years. This book highlights some of the conceptual problems that still need to be solved and points out a number of fresh philosophical ideas to explore.
Download or read book Mind Meaning and Scientific Explanation written by John-Michael Kuczynski and published by John-Michael Kuczynski. This book was released on with total page 1003 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive treatise on analytic philosophy, with special attention paid to the theoretical basis of psychopathology.
Download or read book Explanation in Causal Inference written by Tyler J. VanderWeele and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 729 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book begins with a comprehensive introduction to mediation analysis, including chapters on concepts for mediation, regression-based methods, sensitivity analysis, time-to-event outcomes, methods for multiple mediators, methods for time-varying mediation and longitudinal data, and relations between mediation and other concepts involving intermediates such as surrogates, principal stratification, instrumental variables, and Mendelian randomization. The second part of the book concerns interaction or "moderation," including concepts for interaction, statistical interaction, confounding and interaction, mechanistic interaction, bias analysis for interaction, interaction in genetic studies, and power and sample-size calculation for interaction. The final part of the book provides comprehensive discussion about the relationships between mediation and interaction and unites these concepts within a single framework.
Download or read book Explanation Quantity and Law written by John Forge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in 1999, this work sets out to give an account of explanation which is adequate to the problems that arise when looking at physical science. It offers a theory of explanation with supporting analysis, and also an application to the task of giving an account of explanation in quantum mechanics.
Download or read book Evolutionary Explanation in the Social Sciences written by Philippe van Parijs and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1981 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In broad, nonmathematical terms, the author explains how evolutionary ideas can be applied in the social sciences. The book was one of the early attempts to publicise the rise of sociobiology.
Download or read book Scientific Explanation written by Philip Kitcher and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1962-05-25 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific Explanation was first published in 1962. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Is a new consensus emerging in the philosophy of science? The nine distinguished contributors to this volume apply that question to the realm of scientific explanation and, although their conclusions vary, they agree in one respect: there definitely was an old consensus. Co-editor Wesley Salmon's opening essay, "Four Decades of Scientific Explanation," grounds the entire discussion. His point of departure is the founding document of the old consensus: a 1948 paper by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation," that set forth, with remarkable clarity, a mode of argument that came to be known as the deductive-nomological model. This approach, holding that explanation dies not move beyond the sphere of empirical knowledge, remained dominant during the hegemony of logical empiricism from 1950 to 1975. Salmon traces in detail the rise and breakup of the old consensus, and examines the degree to which there is, if not a new consensus, at least a kind of reconciliation on this issue among contemporary philosophers of science and clear agreement that science can indeed tell us why. The other contributors, in the order of their presentations, are: Peter Railton, Matti Sintonen, Paul W. Humphreys, David Papineau, Nancy Cartwright, James Woodward, Merrilee H. Salmon, and Philip Kitcher.
Download or read book On the Quanta Explanation of Vision written by Maarten Anne Bouman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-09 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
