The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science articles

Recent articles from The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

Competence and the classical cascade: a reply to Franks.(response to Bradley Franks, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, v. 46, p. 475)
December 1, 1998... 1 Introduction Marr's distinction between three levels of explanation of a computational system has become a familiar part of the methodology of cognitive science. Marr distinguishes between the top level of computational theory, the middle level of representation and algorithm, and...

Mathematical explanation and the theory of why-questions.
December 1, 1998... 1 Introduction Philosophers of science have long described explanations as answers to why-questions.(1) The view that this is the most profitable way to study explanations has gained recent prominence. For instance, Alan Garfinkel writes, 'Attending to the questions rather than the...

Evolutionary psychology and the Massive Modularity Hypothesis.
December 1, 1998... 1 Introduction A few decades ago the following claims held a dominant position in psychology and the behavioural sciences: (i) Anti-nativism: The human mind contains little if any innate, psychological structure. (ii) Non-modularity: What innate structure we possess is largely...

Individualism and the nature of syntactic states.
December 1, 1998... 1 Introduction Individualism about the mind is a declaration of independence, proclaiming the mind to be, not causally, but logically or metaphysically independent of its environment. According to the individualist, the psychological nature or type-identity of a mental state is fixed...

Understanding electromagnetism.
December 1, 1998... 1 Introduction When one first learns classical electromagnetism, one is taught to think of Maxwell's equations as governing the evolution in time of the electric and magnetic fields (or, more subtly, of the electromagnetic field). Under this interpretation the theory is both...