Uruguay—Getting Rid of Critics

Getting rid of interventions.

According to James Woodward's influential interventionist account of causation, X is a cause of Y iff, roughly, there is a possible intervention on X that changes Y. Woodward requires that interventions be merely logically possible. I will argue for two claims against this modal character of interventions: First, merely logically possible interventions are dispensable for the semantic project o...

Getting Rid of Species ?

This paper explores the implications of generalizing the species problem as a special case of the taxon problem. Once a decision is made about what taxa in general are to represent, then species in particular are simply the least inclusive taxon of that type. As I favor a Hennigian phylogenetic basis for taxonomy, I explore the application of phylogenetics to species taxa. Furthermore, I advoca...

Rorty and His Critics

Reply to Our Critics

Ratte for reading and criticizing our book. Interestingly, their three sets of comments (to which we shall respond in order) reflect three very different standpoints on both vision and the science of vision. 1. Reply to Tim Schroeder Tim Schroeder is a very sympathetic reader indeed. He raises two queries, both of which are well taken and go deep to the heart of our framework. His first questio...

Replies to My Critics

I thank my critics for time, thought, and effort put into their commentaries. Since obviously I can’t respond to everything, I will try to address what strike me as the most important questions they ask and objections they raise. I think I have decent answers to some questions and decent responses to some objections, in other cases it seems enough to clarify the relevant view, and in still othe...