Philosophy

I trace the principle of subsidiarity (social and legal matters ought to be handled at the most local and appropriate level) to show how it has been used as a middle ground to privilege decision making and autonomy at local levels. The use of subsidiarity recognizes that not all decisions are best handled at the local level, in which case other levels (such as national governments and international organizations) should intervene, but that they should do so only if their intervention contributes to the common good, the local good, and the autonomy and dignity of individuals. I show how this principle has been applied in papal teachings, Catholic Social Tradition, by environmentalists, and in criminal justice work.

MUCH OF THE LITERATURE ON RECONCILIATION emphasizes the need for guilty parties to remember and acknowledge their guilt and to make amends for the wrong that was committed.' To begin the process of reconciliation, the guilty party must acknowledge guilt through an apology. Ifthe guilty party does not acknowledge their guilt and then make efforts to make restitution or to change their behavior, then the victims who forgive risk making themselves more

This essay argues that the flaws of just war theory should lead us to develop a new approach to living with others. Danielle Poe begins her argument with a description of just war theory and its failures. In the next section, Poe discusses the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On and Luce Irigaray in order to construct ethical commitments between people. These ethical commitments come from concrete acts of empathy, such as relationships of compassion, kindness, and hospitality. Finally, Poe considers how these concrete acts can create conditions to prevent war.

This essay argues that the flaws of just war theory should lead us to develop a new approach to living with others. DanieIIe Poe begins her argument with a description of just war theory and its failures. In the next section, Poe discusses the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On and Luce Irigaray in order to c o n s m t ethical commitments between people. These ethical commitments come from concrete acts of empathy, such CIS relationships of compassion, kindness, and hospitality. Finally, Poe considers how these comete acts can create conditions to prevent war.

This essay argues that the flaws of just war theory should lead us to develop a new approach to living with others. DanieIIe Poe begins her argument with a description of just war theory and its failures. In the next section, Poe discusses the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On and Luce Irigaray in order to c o n s m t ethical commitments between people. These ethical commitments come from concrete acts of empathy, such CIS relationships of compassion, kindness, and hospitality. Finally, Poe considers how these comete acts can create conditions to prevent war.

Philosophers of science have examined The Theory of Island Biogeography by Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson (1967) mainly due to its important contribution to modeling in ecology, but they have not examined it as a representative case of ecological explanation. In this paper, I scrutinize the type of explanation used in this paradigmatic work of ecology. I describe the philosophy of science of MacArthur and Wilson and show that it is mechanistic. Based on this account and in light of contributions to the mechanistic conception of explanation due to Craver (2007), and Bechtel and Richardson (1993), I argue that MacArthur and Wilson use a mechanistic approach to explain the species-area relationship. In light of this examination, I formulate a normative account of mechanistic explanation in ecology. Furthermore, I argue that it offers a basis for methodological unification of ecology and solves a dispute on the nature of ecology. Lastly, I show that proposals for a new paradigm of biogeography appear to maintain the norms of mechanistic explanation implicit in The Theory of Island Biogeography.

Conceptions of mechanisms due to Glennan (1996; 2002), Machamer, Darden, and Craver (2000), Bechtel and Abrahamsen (2005) have developed in opposition to the nomological approach to explanation. It is less emphasized, however, that these conceptions have also developed as alternatives to the causal perspective on explanation. In this paper, I argue that despite their distancing from the topic of causation, the mechanistic conceptions need to incorporate in their definitions of mechanisms the notion of insensitivity of causal relations that was examined by Woodward (2006).

Jani Raerinne (2011) and Lindley Darden (2013) argue that causal claims are not sufficiently explanatory, and causal talk should be replaced with mechanistic talk. I examine several examples from ecological research, two of which rely on causal models and structural equation modeling, to show that the assertions of Raerinne and of Darden have to be reconsidered.

New mechanistic philosophy has not examined explanations in ecology although they are based extensively on describing mechanisms responsible for phenomena under scrutiny. This chapter uses the example of research on the shrub Lonicera maackii (Amur honeysuckle) to scrutinize individual-level mechanisms that are generally accepted and used in ecology and confronts them with the minimal account of mechanisms. Individual-level mechanisms are for a phenomenon, are hierarchical, and absent entities play a role in their functioning. They are distinguished by the role played by properties in determining activities and organization. The chapter also considers the experimental methods for discovery of individual-level mechanisms, the possibility of group-level mechanisms in ecology, and suggests further research problems.

Behaviorism is a scientific and philosophical movement that began in the early 1900s in response to introspectionism, the predominant theoretical approach within psychology at the time. According to introspectionists, the aim of psychology was to articulate a full description of conscious experiences as they appeared to the subject through introspection. Behaviorists, on the other hand, were skeptical of the reliability of introspection and took the proper aim of psychology to be the study of publicly observable behavior.

The notion of an intervening variable was first designated by behavioral theorists to refer to a variable that mediated the relationship between an environmental stimulus and a behavioral response. The consistency with which intervening variables were deployed in psychological explanations became a central debate within psychology beginning in the 1930s. During this time, psychology was expanding as an academic discipline, and neo-behaviorism was emerging as the predominant theoretical approach leading this expansion. Unlike classical behaviorism, which eschewed references to the internal mental structures of an organism and took the aim of psychology to be the description and prediction of observable behaviors in response to measurable environmental stimuli, neo-behaviorists maintained that positing variables to mediate the relationship between stimulus and response was instrumentally useful for explaining and predicting behavior.

View related articles View Crossmark data fear-inducing memory disorders would be a great boon for most sufferers of such conditions. This does not mean, though, that every such sufferer is a morally appropriate candidate for such treatment. At present, however, it is not clear how such differentiations would be made.