Abductive inference and historiography: a conversation for historians and philosophers

the article takes the form of a conversation between students in a philosophy seminar of history. The topic of the day is abduction, a form of inference first identified by Charles S. Peirce, that compared and contrasted the deduction and induction. After the teacher introduce the topic and a student summarize the own Peirce’ vision about the abductive inference, students take turns proposing abductive inference models and offering observations on the possible suitability of these models as descriptions or guides for an investigation or historical explanation. A student proposes that the difference of abduction, contrasting with the deduction and induction is just that abduction infers that the conclusion is possible rather than required (deduction) or probable (induction). Some students offer objections to this characterization and discussion then moves towards a number of other proposals to understand the very abduction, as well as the distinction between particularity and historical whole, the character of the historical explanation and evidence of the role in the evaluation of historical theses.o artigo toma a forma de uma conversa entre estudantes em um seminário de filosofia da história. O tópico do dia é abdução, uma forma de inferência identificada pela primeira vez por Charles S. Peirce, que a comparou e contrastou à dedução e indução. Após o professor introduzir o tópico e um aluno resumir a visão do próprio Peirce acerca da inferência abdutiva, os alunos se revezam propondo modelos de inferência abdutiva e oferecendo observações sobre a possível adequação destes modelos como descrições de ou guias para uma investigação ou explicação histórica. Um aluno propõe que a diferença da abdução, contrastando com a dedução e indução é apenas que a abdução infere que a conclusão é possível ao invés de necessária (dedução) ou provável (indução). Alguns alunos oferecem objeções a esta caracterização e a discussão então se move na direção de uma série de outras propostas para compreender a própria abdução, assim como a distinção entre particularidade e generalidade histórica, o caráter da explicação histórica e a função da evidência na avaliação das teses históricas

What Constitutes an Explanation in Biology?

One of biology's fundamental aims is to generate understanding of the living world around—and within—us. In this chapter, I aim to provide a relatively nonpartisan discussion of the nature of explanation in biology, grounded in widely shared philosophical views about scientific explanation. But this discussion also reflects what I think is important for philosophers and biologists alike to appreciate about successful scientific explanations, so some points will be controversial, at least among philosophers. I make three main points: (1) causal relationships and broad patterns have often been granted importance to scientific explanations, and they are in fact both important; (2) some explanations in biology cite the components of or processes in systems that account for the systems’ features, whereas other explanations feature large-scale or structural causes that influence a system; and (3) there can be multiple different explanations of a given biological phenomenon, explanations that respond to different research aims and can thus be compatible with one another even when they may seem to disagree

Natural artificiality, niche construction, and the content-open mediation of human behavior

There are at least two senses in which human beings can be called “naturally artificial”: (1) being adapted for creation of and participation in niche constructed environments, and (2) being adapted for creation of and participation in such environments despite an exceptional indeterminacy in the details of the niche constructed environments themselves. The former puts human beings in a common category with many niche-constructing organisms while the latter is arguably distinctive of our species. I explain how this can be so by developing an account of supporting concepts of complexity, contingency, and content-openness, and show how to defend the position against a common style of objection by a single comparative case study: hermit crabs and their shells versus humans and their movable dwellings. Finally, I consider evidence that such a feature is indeed species-typical and evolved in human populations

Engaging Local Ideas about Healthy Eating to Combat Protein-Energy Malnutrition in West Africa

This is a summary of my summer research project for the Charles Center. Now it is finally in PDF format!Funding: Charles Center Summer Research Scholarship Advisor: Professor J. D. La Fleu

Constraints on the timing of infant cognitive change: Domain-specific or domain-general?

Most studies of infant cognition focus on group data from single domains. Yet, without the multidomain testing of the same infants longitudinally, such data cannot be used to evaluate whether the timing of cognitive change occurs in a domain-general or a domain-specific way. We present the results of a longitudinal study pooling data from three European laboratories set up identically. Over 100 healthy, monolingual infants each underwent multi-domain testing at 6 and again at 10 months in six experimental tasks (speech processing, face processing, and action/event processing), as well as a videotaped 3-minute recording of mother/infant dyads in a play session with an identical set of toys. Previous research examined the effects of maternal sensitivity only on general intelligence measures, but our approach is novel in that it assessed dyadic effects on specific cognitive domains, attempting to pinpoint in finer detail the effects of mother-infant dyadic interaction on the timing of cognitive change. Our findings highlight the importance of a multi-domain approach, in that unlike the assumptions drawn from cross-sectional data, our longitudinal study yielded different developmental timing across domains within the same infants. Our results also highlight a crucial difference: at the group level 6- and 10-month-olds display the expected effects found in previous research, but when re-analysed according to mother-child interaction ratings, the quality of dyadic interaction style turned out to subtly foster or delay development in domainspecific and age-specific ways, contributing to the range of individual differences in timing that we observe in cognitive development over the first year of life