Starting with causation, the intended notion is perhaps best introduced by examples. Causation is present when one billiard ball strikes another (which Hume called ‘a perfect instance’ of causation), when a person lifts a suitcase, and when a spring uncoils. To a first approximation, one might test for causation by testing for counterfactual dependence: if the cause had not occurred, then the e...

In recent years, a “change in attitude” in particle physics has led to our understanding current quantum field theories as effective field theories (EFTs). The present paper is concerned with the significance of this EFT approach, especially from the viewpoint of the debate on reductionism in science. In particular, it is a purpose of this paper to clarify how EFTs may provide an interesting ca...

Certain Game of Life configurations create patterns. The most famous is the glider, a pattern of on and off cells that moves diagonally across the grid. It is possible to implement an arbitrary Turing machine by arranging Game of Life patterns. Computability theory applies to such Turing machines. Thus while not eluding the Game of Life rules, new laws (computability theory) that are independen...

In recent cancer research, strong and apparently conflicting epistemological stances have been advocated by different research teams in a mist of an ever-growing body of knowledge ignited by ever-more perplexing and non-conclusive experimental facts: in the past few years, an ‘organicist’ approach investigating cancer development at the tissue level has challenged the established and so-called ...

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It may be that qualia are neither a uniquely hard problem that physicalism can only resolve by treating them as fundamental properties as Chalmers has suggested in some of his writings (1995, 1996, 2003), nor so ephemeral that they will disappear entirely once Science has solved all of the easy problems associated with the brain as Dennett has proposed in some of his (1988, 1991). It could be t...

Effective field theories have been a very popular tool in quantum physics for almost two decades. And there are good reasons for this. I will argue that effective field theories share many of the advantages of both fundamental theories and phenomenological models, while avoiding their respective shortcomings. They are, for example, flexible enough to cover a wide range of phenomena, and concret...

§0 Introduction By far the most central and important question about laws of nature is this: Are they mere patterns in the phenomena (patterns that are in some way salient, to be sure—but still, nothing more than patterns)? Or are they something more, something that somehow governs or constrains those phenomena? Disagreement over this issue constitutes the Schism in contemporary philosophical w...