Unification and the Myth of Purely Reductive Understanding

In this paper significant challenges are raised with respect to the view that explanation essentially involves unification. These objections are raised specifically with respect to the well-known versions of unificationism developed and defended by Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher. The objections involve the explanatory regress argument and the concepts of reduction and scientific understanding. Essentially, the contention made here is that these versions of unificationism wrongly assume that reduction secures understanding

A Comprehensive Framework for Controlled Query Evaluation, Consistent Query Answering and KB Updates in Description Logics

In this extended abstract we discuss the relationship between confidentiality-preserving frameworks and inconsistency-tolerant repair and update semantics in Description Logics (DL). In particular, we consider the well-known problems of Consistent Query Answering, Controlled Query Evaluation, and Knowledge Base Update in DL and introduce a unifying framework that can be naturally instantiated to capture significant settings for the above problems, previously investigated in the literature

Folk Semantic Intuitions, Arguments from Reference and Eliminative Materialism

In a series of papers, Machery, Mallon, Nichols and Stich critique so-called arguments from reference, arguments that assume a theory of reference in order to establish substantive conclusions. The critique is that, due to cross-cultural variation in semantic intuitions giving rise to methodological problems in the theory of reference, all arguments from reference have an unjustified assumption. I examine an important example of an argument from reference, an argument of Churchland’s in support of eliminative materialism. I suggest that extant responses to the critique are unsatisfactory, and provide an alternative response: one might justify the assumption of a theory of reference in an argument from reference by appealing to an appropriate explication of the relevant commonsense concept

The Need for Empirically-Led Synthetic Philosophy

The problem of unifying knowledge represents the frontier between science and philosophy. Science approaches the problem analytically bottom-up whereas, prior to the end of the nineteenth century, philosophy approached the problem synthetically top-down. In the late nineteenth century, the approach of speculative metaphysics was rejected outright by science. Unfortunately, in the rush for science to break with speculative metaphysics, synthetic or top-down philosophy as a whole was rejected. This meant not only the rejection of speculative metaphysics, but also the implicit rejection of empirically-led synthetic philosophy and the philosophy of nature. Since a change in the paradigm of science requires a change in the philosophy of nature underpinning science, the rejection of the philosophy of nature closes science to the possibility of a paradigm change. Given the foundational problems faced by science, there is a need for empirically-led synthetic philosophy in order to discover a new empirically-based philosophy of nature. Such a philosophy of nature may open science to the possibility of a paradigm change