Abstract The cognitive phenomenology debate centers on two questions. (1) What is an apt characterization of the conscious thought? And (2), what role does this play? I argue that answers to former question bear significantly latter question. In particular, show conservatism about not compatible with view explains constitution thought. proceed as follows: To begin with, analyze our sensory expe...

Recent work in the domain of the validation of complex computational models reveals that modelers of complex systems, particularly modelers of the earth’s climate, face a deeply entrenched form of confirmation holism. Confirmation holism, as it is traditionally understood, is the thesis that a single hypothesis cannot be tested in isolation, but that such tests always depend on other theories o...

In its relationship with society, contemporary medicine is beset by a deep tension. It is an old tension and familiar to all those who work in and study medicine. It has long been observed, for example, that the instrumental stance of scientific medicine can entail a loss of consideration for the person of the patient.1 The idealtype of the biomedical physician is a kind of applied scientist, g...

At the recent World Conference of Family Doctors (WONCA) meeting in Orlando, I attended a session of presented papers related to medical education. One examined the degree to which Swedish GPs felt that a holistic approach was important to their work. Curiously, this paper was labeled in the programme as not eligible for CME credit. During the questions period, one attendee suggested that CME w...

This paper uses a systems-theoretic model to structure an account of human history. According to the model, a process, after its beginning and early development, often reaches a critical stage where it encounters some limitation. If the limitation is overcome, development does not face a comparable challenge until a second critical juncture is reached, where obstacles to further advance are mor...

Abstract In this paper, I distinguish between two possible versions of Amie Thomasson’s easy ontology project that differ in virtue positing atomic or holistic application conditions, and evaluate the strengths a version over non-holistic version. particular, argue neither recently identified regress circularity problems are troublesome for supporter if they adopt account conditions. This is no...

We investigate whether holism presents a problem for inductive inference by examining the relationship between the size of a Bayesian network that represents human conceptual knowledge and the computational complexity of probabilistic inference in that network. We find that, despite prior claims, holism may not be a problem for inductive inference, as computational cost does not increase expone...