The Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Monist, Materialist and Mechanist

This essay will present Hobbes as the most consistent philosopher of the 17th century, and show that in all areas his endeavors have cogency that is unrivalled, in many ways even to this day. The second section will outline Hobbes’ conception of philosophy and his causal materialism. Section 3 will deal briefly with Hobbes’ discussion of sensation and then present his views on the nature and function of language and how reason depends upon language. Section 4 portrays his views about the material world; Section 5 deals with nature of man; and the 6th section with the artificial body of the commonwealth and the means of its creation

Mechanistic Information and Causal Continuity

Some biological processes (our examples are DNA expression and a reflex response in the leech) move from step to step in a way that cannot be completely understood solely in terms of causes and correlations. This paper develops a notion of mechanistic information that can be used to explain the continuities of such processes. We compare them to processes (including the Krebs cycle) that do not involve information. We compare our conception of mechanistic information to some familiar notions including Crick’s idea of genetic information, Shannon-Weaver information, and Millikan’s biosemantic information

Perceiving and Knowing as Activities

According to the tradition of most empiricists, perception is the basis for all our knowledge (at least of the world). The tradition also assumes that perception by humans is a passive activity resulting in some static states pertaining perception and belief, which are then, in some versions, modified by the mind before being passed onto memory and knowledge. Following the work of J. J. Gibson, we argue that perceiving involves many activities and actions. This is true of both visual as well as olfactory-taste perception. The main moral of this paper is that perceiving and knowing are best thought of not as involving static states, but rather as ongoing temporal activities involving change. This presumably means giving up a frozen ontology of states and moving towards something like a dynamic ontology as a basis

Session 5: Development, Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology

Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Workshop in History and Philosophy of Biology, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, March 23-24 2001 Session 5: Development, Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psycholog

Descartes, corpuscles and reductionism : mechanism and systems in Descartes' physiology

I argue that Descartes explains physiology in terms of whole systems, and not in terms of the size, shape and motion of tiny corpuscles (corpuscular mechanics). It is a standard, entrenched view that Descartes’s proper means of explanation in the natural world is through strict reduction to corpuscular mechanics. This view is bolstered by a handful of corpuscular-mechanical explanations in Descartes’s physics, which have been taken to be representative of his treatment of all natural phenomena. However, Descartes’s explanations of the ‘principal parts’ of physiology do not follow the corpuscular–mechanical pattern. Des Chene (2001) has identified systems in Descartes’s account of physiology, but takes them ultimately to reduce down to the corpuscle level. I argue that they do not. Rather, Descartes maintains entire systems, with components selected from multiple levels of organisation, in order to construct more complete explanations than corpuscular mechanics alone would allow

What can polysemy tell us about theories of explanation?

Philosophical accounts of scientific explanation are broadly divided into ontic and epistemic views. This paper explores the idea that the lexical ambiguity of the verb to explain and its nominalisation supports an ontic conception of explanation. I analyse one argument which challenges this strategy by criticising the claim that explanatory talk is lexically ambiguous, 375–394, 2012). I propose that the linguistic mechanism of transfer of meaning, 109–132, 1995) provides a better account of the lexical alternations that figure in the systematic polysemy of explanatory talk, and evaluate the implications of this proposal for the debate between ontic and epistemic conceptions of scientific explanation

Fight, flight, barter, or collaborate : kindergarten teachers\u27 perspectives of implementing the common core state standards

Using Shulman\u27s theory of teacher knowledge as the theoretical framework and a phenomenological research design, this qualitative study used Seidman\u27s three-interview protocol to understand how 11 kindergarten teachers perceived the CCSS affected their use of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) and their instructional discretion. This study also examined how these teachers perceived their public school setting (rural, suburban, urban or urban charter) affected their implementation of the CCSS. Colaizzi\u27s seven-step phenomenological methodology was employed to analyze the data into emergent themes. Five themes related to the research questions emerged from the analysis. First, the kindergarten teachers in this study perceived the CCSS to be challenging for their students. Second, the teachers identified DAP as important to their practice. Third, the teachers perceived there to be barriers to their use of DAP. Fourth, the teachers identified discretion as important to their practice. Fifth, the teachers perceived their school setting directly affected how they implemented the CCSS. Additional findings show the majority of participants perceived the CCSS negatively affected their use of DAP and that attention must be given to planning to ensure DAP\u27s use. Finally, findings show that to maintain their discretion and use of instructional practices like DAP, the teachers engaged in fight, flight, barter, or collaboration behaviors with their principals. Findings from this study illustrate the need for teachers to play a central role in the re-examination of the kindergarten CCSS for developmental appropriateness as well as the implementation of the CCSS at the school level. Findings also show the need for school leaders to become well versed in the use of DAP to address standards and to work toward creating collaborative learning communities within their schools. Last, these findings show that the CCSS as a reform effort for improving student outcomes for ELL students and students of poverty are falling short of their intended goal

OPTIMIZING THE PERIODICITY OF PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE INSPECTIONS BASED ON HISTORICAL RELIABILITY DATA

Condensers are critical to the operation of naval vessels that utilize the Rankine cycle for propulsion. Eddy current analysis is a nondestructive evaluation of the integrity of seawater tubes in condensers. Defects significant enough to be expected to allow seawater to leak into the steam side of the condenser prior to the next inspection are identified and plugged. In this paper, the interval between eddy current inspections is determined with a known probability of a tube leak occurring prior to the next inspection based on the results of past inspections. Ship maintainers will be able to optimize the inspection periodicity, thus reducing life-cycle maintenance costs within an acceptable risk. Condenser tube degradation is modeled along with eddy current inspection accuracy to determine the probability of a defect growing to a leak. A case study is presented that evaluates the impacts of inspection frequency and tube-plugging limit on the probability of a leak.Outstanding ThesisCivilian, Department of the NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Potentiality in Biology

We take the potentialities that are studied in the biological sciences (e.g., totipotency) to be an important subtype of biological dispositions. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we want to provide a detailed understanding of what biological dispositions are. We claim that two features are essential for dispositions in biology: the importance of the manifestation process and the diversity of conditions that need to be satisfied for the disposition to be manifest. Second, we demonstrate that the concept of a disposition (or potentiality) is a very useful tool for the analysis of the explanatory practice in the biological sciences. On the one hand it allows an in-depth analysis of the nature and diversity of the conditions under which biological systems display specific behaviors. On the other hand the concept of a disposition may serve a unificatory role in the philosophy of the natural sciences since it captures not only the explanatory practice of biology, but of all natural sciences. Towards the end we will briefly come back to the notion of a potentiality in biology

Along the Red Road: Tribally Controlled Colleges and Student Development

American Indian tnibally controlled colleges were created to provide higher education in a familiar cultural setting to a population that is severely underrepresented in American higher education. Since little is known regarding student development at tribal colleges, the purpose of this study was to assess retention, talent development, satisfaction, racial discrimination, and cultural knowledge/identity at tribal colleges using American Indians who attended non-Indian institutions as a comparison sample. In early 1999, survey data were collected from students who entered fourteen tribal colleges and two Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) colleges and from American Indian students who entered non-Indian. institutions in 1993 (n = 496). Results indicate that the American. Indian populations enrolling at tribal/BIA colleges and non-Indian colleges are very different in a number of important respects. Although tribal college student bodies differ from each other on tribally linked variables (blood quantum, being raised on a reservation, speaking a Native language, and tribal membership), they are remarkably similar on variables considered to be traditional predictors of retention (income, parental education, and degree aspirations). The fact that tribal and BIA college students, compared to American Indians who attend non-Indian institutions. score much higher on tribally linked variables and much lower on traditional predictors of retention suggests that these colleges can indeed be regarded as a unique “system” of institutions. The multivariate analyses investigated the influence of institutional type (tribal, BIA, low selectivity non-Indian, and high selectivity non-Indian) on the following outcomes: retention (AA/Vocational, bachelor’s degree), talent development, satisfaction with the college experience, experiencing racial discrimination (from students and faculty), and cultural knowledge/identity. Attending a BIA college slightly reduces the student\u27s chances of completing a bachelor’s degree, while attending a tribal college slightly reduces a student\u27s self reported growth in cognitive development. Otherwise, most of the outcome differences between tribal/BIA and non-Indian institutions can be attributed to the differential input characteristics of their students