This paper argues for a novel understanding of the relationship between law and coercion. It firstly refutes Kenneth Himma’s claim that the authorisation of coercive enforcement mechanisms is a conceptually necessary feature of law. It then claims that the best way to understand the law is as coercion-apt. The “coercion-aptness” of law is clarified, in part, by appealing to an essential distinction between law and morality: Whereas it can be reasonable for the law to appeal to coercive means in order (...) to motivate compliance, it seems decidedly unreasonable for morality to do so. (shrink)

In this discussion of Emad Atiq's article "There are No Easy Counterexamples to Legal Anti-Positivism" I pose three challenges to his construction of an Inclusive Anti-positivism. I firstly argue that, contra Atiq, the moral facts that both ground IAP and allow it to satisfy the extensional challenge are sometimes reducible to social facts. In Section II, I briefly discuss internal- and external-to-practice appraisals of legal norms. Finally, in Section III, I touch upon the divergent explanations of legal normativity IAP and (...) positivism offer. (shrink)

We propose a domain-level ontology of plays for the facilitation of play-based collaborative autonomy among unmanned and manned-unmanned aircraft teams in the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) mission domain. We define a play as a type of plan that prescribes some pattern of intentional acts that are intended to reliably result in some goal in some competitive context, and which specifies one or more roles that are realized by those prescribed intentional acts. The ontology is well suited to be extended (...) to other types of military and nonmilitary unmanned vehicle operations. (shrink)

In this short note, we discuss several aspectsof “dimensions” and the related constructof “factors”. We concentrate on those aspectsthat are relevant to articles in this specialissue, especially those dealing with the analysisof the wild animal cases discussed inBerman and Hafner's 1993 ICAIL article. We reviewthe basic ideas about dimensions,as used in HYPO, and point out differences withfactors, as used in subsequent systemslike CATO. Our goal is to correct certainmisconceptions that have arisen over the years.

Applied ontologies have been used more and more frequently to enhance systems engineering. In this paper, we argue that adopting principles of ontological realism can increase the benefits that ontologies have already been shown to provide to the systems engineering process. Moreover, adopting Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), an ISO standard for top-level ontologies from which more domain specific ontologies are constructed, can lead to benefits in four distinct areas of systems engineering: (1) interoperability, (2) standardization, (3) testing, and (4) data (...) exploitation. Reaping these benefits in a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) context requires utilizing an ontology’s vocabulary when modeling systems and entities within those systems. If the chosen ontology abides by the principles of ontological realism, a semantic standard capable of uniting distinct domains, using BFO as a hub, can be leveraged to promote greater interoperability among systems. As interoperability and standardization increase, so does the ability to collect data during the testing and implementation of systems. These data can then be reasoned over by computational reasoners using the logical axioms within the ontology. This, in turn, generates new data that would have been impossible or too inefficient to generate without the aid of computational reasoners. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

Plato's Euthyrphro, Apology, andCrito portray Socrates' words and deeds during his trial for disbelieving in the Gods of Athens and corrupting the Athenian youth, and constitute a defense of the man Socrates and of his way of life, the philosophic life. The twelve essays in the volume, written by leading classical philosophers, investigate various aspects of these works of Plato, including the significance of Plato's characters, Socrates's revolutionary religious ideas, and the relationship between historical events and Plato's texts.

As health systems around the world turn towards highly distributed, specialized and cooperative structures to increase quality and safety of care as well as efficiency and efficacy of delivery processes, there is a growing need for supporting communication and collaboration of all parties involved with advanced ICT solutions. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) provides the information platform which is maturing towards the eHealth core application. To meet the requirements for sustainable, semantically interoperable, and trustworthy EHR solutions, different standards and different (...) national strategies have been established. The workshop summarizes the requirements for such advanced EHR systems and their underlying architecture, presents different strategies and solutions advocated by corresponding protagonists, discusses pros and cons as well as harmonization and migration strategies for those approaches. It particularly highlights a turn towards ontology-driven architectures. (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

This paper examines David Hull’s and Peter Godfrey-Smith’s accounts of biological individuality using the case of biofilms. Biofilms fail standard criteria for individuality, such as having reproductive bottlenecks and forming parent-offspring lineages. Nevertheless, biofilms are good candidates for individuals. The nature of biofilms shows that Godfrey-Smith’s account of individuality, with its reliance on reproduction, is too restrictive. Hull’s interactor notion of individuality better captures biofilms, and we argue that it offers a better account of biological individuality. However, Hull’s (...) notion of interactor needs more precision. We suggest some ways to make Hull’s notion of interactor and his account of individuality more precise. Generally, we maintain that biofilms are a good test case for theories of individuality, and a careful examination of biofilms furthers our understanding of biological individuality. (shrink)

The thesis we develop in this essay is that all humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions. As an empirical research program, we follow the framework of modern linguistics.1 The spirit of the argument dates back at least to the economist Adam Smith (1759/1976) who argued for something akin to a moral grammar, and more recently, to the political philosopher John (...) Rawls (1971). The logic of the argument, however, comes from Noam Chomsky’s thinking on language specifically and the nature of knowledge more generally (Chomsky, 1986, 1988, 2000; Saporta, 1978). If the nature of moral knowledge is comparable in some way to the nature of linguistic knowledge, as defended recently by Harman (1977), Dwyer (1999, 2004), and Mikhail (2000; in press), then what should we expect to find when we look at the anatomy of our moral faculty? Is there a grammar, and if so, how can the moral grammarian uncover its structure? Are we aware of our moral grammar, its method of operation, and its moment-to-moment functioning in our judgments? Is there a universal moral grammar that allows each child to build a particular moral grammar? Once acquired, are different moral grammars mutually incomprehensible in the same way that a native Chinese speaker finds a native Italian speaker incomprehensible? How does the child acquire a particular moral grammar, especially if her experiences are impoverished relative to the moral judgments she makes? Are there certain forms of brain damage that disrupt moral competence but leave other forms of reasoning intact? And how did this machinery evolve, and for what particular adaptive function? We will have more to say about many of these questions later on, and Hauser (2006) develops others. However, in order to flesh out the key ideas and particular empirical research paths, let us turn to some of the central questions in the study of our language faculty.. (shrink)

Dans sa Théorie des sentiments moraux (1759), Adam Smith classe les passions en trois catégories : passions sociales, asociales, égoïstes. Cette classification résulte directement de leur capacité à susciter ou non la sympathie. Les passions sociales apparaissent ainsi comme les plus propres à susciter un écho sympathique. La question à laquelle tente de répondre l'article est de savoir pourquoi ces mêmes passions sociales sont qualifiées par A. Smith de « naturellement musicales ». L'utilisation du concept de sympathie dans (...) le domaine musical est fréquente aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles, mais l'hypothèse avancée ici est que le lien est plus profond chez A. Smith. La sympathie met en effet en évidence une qualité d'ordre à la fois esthétique et morale inhérente à certaines passions, leur « convenance » (propriety) par opposition aux passions « discordantes ». Ces passions, produisant une superposition d'échos sympathiques comparables aux harmoniques d'un ton fondamental, sont les plus susceptibles d'être imitées par la musique, si l'on tient compte de la théorie esthétique originale formulée par A. Smith, pour qui la beauté des arts imitatifs ne tient pas à l'illusion mais au contraire à l'écart entre l'imitation et son objet. (shrink)

Dans sa Théorie des sentiments moraux (1759), Adam Smith classe les passions en trois catégories : passions sociales, asociales, égoïstes. Cette classification résulte directement de leur capacité à susciter ou non la sympathie. Les passions sociales apparaissent ainsi comme les plus propres à susciter un écho sympathique. La question à laquelle tente de répondre l'article est de savoir pourquoi ces mêmes passions sociales sont qualifiées par A. Smith de « naturellement musicales ». L'utilisation du concept de sympathie dans (...) le domaine musical est fréquente aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles, mais l'hypothèse avancée ici est que le lien est plus profond chez A. Smith. La sympathie met en effet en évidence une qualité d'ordre à la fois esthétique et morale inhérente à certaines passions, leur « convenance » (propriety) par opposition aux passions « discordantes ». Ces passions, produisant une superposition d'échos sympathiques comparables aux harmoniques d'un ton fondamental, sont les plus susceptibles d'être imitées par la musique, si l'on tient compte de la théorie esthétique originale formulée par A. Smith, pour qui la beauté des arts imitatifs ne tient pas à l'illusion mais au contraire à l'écart entre l'imitation et son objet. (shrink)

Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed (...) as “for” or “against” one (Champagne 2011a; Smith 2000). Such an account lets us objectively adjudicate moral questions, as Harris desires. However, by anchoring itself in the mortal body as a whole and not just the brain, such an account dampens the claim that neuroscience would have all the answers. Moreover, it pivots on an affirmation of one’s life that can seem mysterious by regular scientific standards. This chapter thus explains why the trade-off is worthwhile. (shrink)

This paper presents a theoretical elaboration of the ethical framework of classical capitalism as formulated by Adam Smith in reaction to the dominant mercantilism of his day. It is seen that Smith's project was profoundly ethical and designed to emancipate the consumer from a producer and state dominated economy. Over time, however, the various dysfunctions of a capitalist economy — e.g., concentration of wealth, market power — became manifest and the utilitarian ethical basis of the system eroded. Contemporary (...) capitalism, dominated as it is by large corporations, entrenched political interests and persistent social pathologies, bears little resemblance to the system which Smith envisioned would serve the common man. Most critiques of capitalism are launched from a Marxian-based perspective. We find, however, that by illustrating the wide gap between the reality of contemporary capitalism and the model of amoral political economy developed by Smith, the father of capitalism proves to be the most trenchant critic of the current order. (shrink)

Peter Godfrey-Smith and Nicholas Shea have argued that standard versions of teleosemantics render explanations of successful behavior by appealing to true beliefs circular and, consequently, non-explanatory. As an alternative, Shea has recently suggested an original teleosemantic account (that he calls ?Infotel-semantics?), which is supposed to be immune to the problem of circularity. The paper argues that the standard version of teleosemantics has a satisfactory reply to the circularity objection and that, in any case, Infotel-semantics is not better off than (...) standard teleosemantics. (shrink)

Within the Husserlian phenomenological philosophical tradition, description and interpretation co-exist. However, teaching the practice of phenomenological psychological research requires careful articulation of the differences between a descriptive and an interpretive relationship to what is provided by qualitative data. If as researchers we neglect the epistemological foundations of our work or avoid working through difficult methodological issues, then our work invites dismissal as inadequate science, undermining the effort to strongly establish psychology along qualitative lines. The first article in this two-part discussion (...) provides a Husserlian investigation of the meaning of ‘method’ for psychology as a human science. This investigation is undertaken in the light of some researchers’ appropriations of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in the service of non-methodical praxes. The second article will address some implications of the attempt to structure qualitative psychological research along ‘Gadamerian’ lines, taking seriously the references to Gadamer’s work made by researchers such as Van Manen and Smith. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 11, Edition 1 May 2011, 69-85. (shrink)

Table of Contents Perspectives on Animal Cognition Chapter 1 The Myth of Anthropomorphism John Andrew Fisher Chapter 2 Gendered Knowledge? Examining Influences on Scientific and Ethological Inquiries Lori Gruen Chapter 3 Interpretive Cognitive Ethology Hugh Wilder Chapter 4 Concept Attribution in Nonhuman Animals: Theoretical and Methodological Problems in Ascribing Complex Mental Processes Colin Allen and Marc Hauser Cognitive and Evolutionary Explanations Chapter 5 On Aims and Methods of Cognitive Ethology Dale Jamieson and Marc Bekoff Chapter 6 Aspects of (...) the Cognitive Ethology of an Injury-Feigning Bird, The Piping Plover Carolyn Ristau Chapter 7 Tradition in Animals: Field Observations and Laboratory Analysis Bennett G. Galef Chapter 8 The Study of Adaptation Randy Thornhill Chapter 9 The Units of Behavior in Evolutionary Explanations Sandra D. Mitchell Chapter 10 Levels of Analysis and the Functional Significance of Helping Behavior Walter D. Koenig and Ron Mumme Recognition, Choice, Vigilance, and Play Chapter 11 The Ubiquitous Concept of Recognition with Special Reference to Kin Andrew R. Blaustein and Richard H. Porter Chapter 12 Do Animals Choose Habitats? Michael Rosenzweig Chapter 13 The Influence of Models on the Interpretation of Vigilance Steven L. Lima Chapter 14 Is There an Evolutionary Biology of Play? Alex Rosenberg Chapter 15 Intentionality, Social Play, and Definition Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff Communication and Language Chapter 16 Communication and Expectations: A Social Process and the Cognitive Operation It Depends upon and Influences W. John Smith Chapter 17 Animal Communication and Social Evolution Michael Philips and Steven Austad Chapter 18 Animal Language: Methodological and Interpretive Issues Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Karen E. Brakke Chapter 19 Knowledge Acquisition and Asymmetry between Language Comprehension and Production: Dolphins and Apes as General Models for Animals Louis M. Herman and Palmer Morrel-Samuels Animal Minds Chapter 20 Evolution and Psychological Unity Roger Crisp Chapter 21 The Mental Lives of Nonhuman Animals John Dupré Chapter 22 Inside the Mind of a Monkey Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney Chapter 23 Science and Our Inner Lives: Birds of Prey, Bats, and the Common Bi-ped Kathleen Akins Chapter 24 Afterword: Ethics and the Study of Animal Cognition. (shrink)

The recent proliferation of deepfakes and other digitally produced deceptive representations has revived the debate on the epistemic robustness of photography and other mechanically produced images. Authors such as Rini (2020) and Fallis (2021) claim that the proliferation of deepfakes pose a serious threat to the reliability and the epistemic value of photographs and videos. In particular, Fallis adopts a Skyrmsian account of how signals carry information (Skyrms, 2010) to argue that the existence of deepfakes significantly reduces the information that (...) images carry about the world, which undermines their reliability as a source of evidence. In this paper, we focus on Fallis’ version of the challenge, but our results can be generalized to address similar pessimistic views such as Rini’s. More generally, we offer an account of the epistemic robustness of photography and videos that allows us to understand these systems of representation as continuous with other means of information transmission we find in nature. This account will then give us the necessary tools to put Fallis’ claims into perspective: using a richer approach to animal signaling based on the signaling model of communication (Maynard-Smith and Harper, 2003), we will claim that, while it might be true that deepfake technology increases the probability of obtaining false positives, the dimension of the epistemic threat involved might still be negligible. (shrink)

in Ethics, Humanism, and Medicine, ed. Marc Basson (New York: Alan R. Liss, 1980), pp. 81-94.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Temporal Puzzle: Metamorphosis of the Body in Piaget’s Early Writings” by Marc J. Ratcliff.: Ratcliff’s target article is an insightful introduction to a major corpus, the journal comprising the notes of Jean and Valentine Piaget in their studies of their three children. These studies were part of a research program in what Jean Piaget called “genetic epistemology.” My commentary focuses on a series of epistemological issues central to this theory of knowledge.

English summary: Marc Andre Wiegand analyzes the neo-Kantian premises of Gustav Radbruch's legal philosophy.

Standardly, epistemic peers regarding a given matter are said to be people of equal competence who share all relevant evidence. Alternatively, one can define epistemic peers regarding a given matter as people who are equally likely to be right about that matter. I argue that a definition in terms of likelihood captures the essence of epistemic peerhood better than the standard definition or any variant of it. What is more, a likelihood definition implies the truth of the central thesis in (...) the debate on peer disagreement, the so-called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give the opinions of our peers the same weight we give our own. Adopting a likelihood definition, however, does not end the debate on peer disagreement, because the alleged theoretical alternatives to the Equal Weight View, reinterpreted in the light of a likelihood definition, can in fact be shown to be compatible with this view—though the reinterpreted versions may appear less plausible than the original ones. (shrink)

The evidence that we get from peer disagreement is especially problematic from a Bayesian point of view since the belief revision caused by a piece of such evidence cannot be modelled along the lines of Bayesian conditionalisation. This paper explains how exactly this problem arises, what features of peer disagreements are responsible for it, and what lessons should be drawn for both the analysis of peer disagreements and Bayesian conditionalisation as a model of evidence acquisition. In particular, it is pointed (...) out that the same characteristic of evidence from disagreement that explains the problems with Bayesian conditionalisation also suggests an interpretation of suspension of belief in terms of imprecise probabilities. (shrink)

A commonly neglected feature of the so-called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give our peers’ opinions the same weight we give our own, is its prima facie incompatibility with the common picture of philosophy as an armchair activity: an intellectual effort to seek a priori knowledge. This view seems to imply that our beliefs are more likely to be true if we leave our armchair in order to find out whether there actually are peers who, by disagreeing (...) with us, force us to revise our beliefs. This article argues that the Equal Weight View should be spelled out in such a way that not only actual peer disagreement requires us to revise our beliefs, but also merely possible peer disagreement. This result is not a reductio ad absurdum of the view. Quite the opposite: it shows that the view is, contrary to appearance, compatible with our common way of doing philosophy. (shrink)

La Théorie des sentiments moraux d’Adam Smith, publiée pour la première fois en anglais en 1759, a été traduite en français quatre fois dans la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle. Puis, après deux siècles de simples rééditions, durant le xixe siècle et jusqu’à la toute fin du xxe siècle, une nouvelle traduction française a paru en 1999. Le présent article commence par des considérations méthodologiques portant sur le statut de la traduction comme retraduction, montrant en quoi l’acte de retraduire (...) peut être l’occasion d’un sentiment paradoxal d’insoutenable légèreté. On en déduit la nécessité d’étudier toute traduction par rapport à ce que l’on peut nommer son contexte objectif et son projet subjectif. C’est seulement à partir de la compréhension de ce contexte et de ce projet de traduction – lesquels peuvent être de nature politique, intellectuelle, économique, etc. – que l’on peut rendre compte des différents choix techniques de traduction qu’ont opérés les traducteurs successifs. Ainsi, on explique en quoi la traduction réalisée par la marquise de Condorcet en 1798 s’inscrit dans le contexte de la Révolution française du point de vue politique, et dans celui du rationalisme moral du point de vue philosophique. Par contraste, la traduction de Michaël Biziou, Claude Gautier et Jean-François Pradeau en 1999 correspond d’un point de vue politique à des interrogations portant sur le libéralisme économique, et d’un point de vue philosophique à la volonté d’interpréter Smith comme représentant du sentimentalisme moral. (shrink)

Unknown peers create a problem for those epistemologists who argue that we should be conciliatory in cases of peer disagreement. The standard interpretation of ‘being conciliatory’ has it that we should revise our opinions concerning a specific subject matter whenever we encounter someone who is as competent and well informed as we are concerning this subject matter (and thus is our peer) and holds a different opinion. As a consequence, peers whom we have never encountered and who are hence unknown (...) to us are not taken into account. This, however, appears odd; not only because it is an accidental matter which peers we happen to encounter and which not, but also because it would allow people to deliberately isolate themselves from any kind of intellectual exchange on the topic under consideration. The paper argues that we should take the problem of unknown peers seriously, and that disregarding the problem is an instance of the more general mistake of assuming that evidential quality and justified believability can be dealt with separately. Moreover, a solution to the problem of unknown peers is suggested. (shrink)

Linguistic dependencies between non‐adjacent words have been shown to cause comprehension difficulty, compared with local dependencies. According to one class of sentence comprehension accounts, non‐local dependencies are difficult because they require the retrieval of the first dependent from memory when the second dependent is encountered. According to these memory‐based accounts, making the first dependent accessible at the time when the second dependent is encountered should help alleviate the difficulty associated with the processing of non‐local dependencies. In a dual‐task paradigm, participants (...) read sentences that did or did not contain a non‐local dependency (i.e., object‐ and subject‐extracted cleft constructions) while simultaneously remembering a word. The memory task was aimed at making the word held in memory accessible throughout the sentence. In an object‐extracted cleft (e.g., It was Ellen whom John consulted…), the object (Ellen) must be retrieved from memory when consulted is encountered. In the critical manipulation, the memory word was identical to the verb's object (ELLEN). In these conditions, the extraction effect was reduced in the comprehension accuracy data and eliminated in the reading time data. These results add to the body of evidence supporting memory‐based accounts of syntactic complexity. (shrink)

Dieser Text geht der Frage nach, ob und, wenn ja, inwieweit sich Gedankenexperimente in der praktischen Philosophie in ihrer Struktur und ihrer epistemischen Signifikanz von Gedankenexperimenten in der theoretischen Philosophie oder in den Naturwissenschaften unterscheiden. Anhand einer allgemeinen Strukturanalyse von Gedankenexperimenten wird dabei aufgezeigt, dass bei Gedankenexperimenten in der praktischen Philosophie zwar häufig die angemessene Bewertung eines zugrunde gelegten Szenarios im Zentrum steht und nicht, wie zum Beispiel in theoretischen Philosophie oft, dessen angemessene Beschreibung, dass dieser Unterschied aber kaum Auswirkungen (...) hat auf die prinzipielle Anwendbarkeit – abgesehen von einer bisher übersehenen Konsequenz: Man darf in einem Gedankenexperiment nicht annehmen, dass moralische, ästhetische oder entscheidungstheoretische Prinzipien in unterschiedlichen möglichen Welten verschieden sind. Andernfalls käme dem Gedankenexperiment keinerlei epistemische Signifikanz zu. (shrink)

Marc Hauser puts forth the theory that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct, unconsciously propelling us to deliver judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling implications of his provocative theory vis-à-vis contemporary bioethics, religion, the law, and our everyday lives.

Richard Boyd’s Homeostatic Property Cluster Theory is becoming the received view of natural kinds in the philosophy of science. However, a problem with HPC Theory is that it neglects many kinds highlighted by scientific classifications while at the same time endorsing kinds rejected by science. In other words, there is a mismatch between HPC kinds and the kinds of science. An adequate account of natural kinds should accurately track the classifications of successful science. We offer an alternative account of natural (...) kinds that better recognizes the diversity of epistemic aims scientists have for constructing classifications. That account introduces the idea of a classificatory program and provides criteria for judging whether a classificatory program identifies natural kinds. (shrink)

The question of whether biologists should continue to use the Linnaean hierarchy has been a hotly debated issue. Invented before the introduction of evolutionary theory, Linnaeus's system of classifying organisms is based on outdated theoretical assumptions, and is thought to be unable to provide accurate biological classifications. Marc Ereshefsky argues that biologists should abandon the Linnaean system and adopt an alternative that is more in line with evolutionary theory. He traces the evolution of the Linnaean hierarchy from its introduction (...) to the present. He illustrates how the continued use of this system hampers our ability to classify the organic world, and then goes on to make specific recommendations for a post-Linnaean method of classification. Accessible to a wide range of readers by providing introductory chapters to the philosophy of classification and the taxonomy of biology, the book will interest both scholars and students of biology and the philosophy of science. (shrink)