Causal Exclusion

Mind uploading involves two technological approaches: brain simulation and brain replacement. To achieve immortality, these approaches must metaphysically satisfy the requirements of phenomenal consciousness and personal identity. This paper finds that to meet these requirements, brain simulation presupposes the truth of role functionalism for mental states and ultra-role-functionalism for identity, while brain replacement presupposes the truth of realizer functionalism for both mental states and identity. To adjudicate these functionalist theories based not only on a priori considerations but also on empirical evidence, this paper introduces a confirmation process that moves from empirical observation (i.e., sensory substitution) to science (i.e., sensorimotor enactivism) and then to metaphysics. It finds that realizer functionalism aligns better with empirical observation than role functionalism. If realizer functionalism is a more reasonable theory, it would imply that brain simulation is impossible, while brain replacement remains a possibility. However, realizer functionalism is an empirically constrained metaphysics. While it commits to the metaphysical possibility of brain replacement, our analysis, based on relevant neuroscientific research, argues that it is unlikely to possess such a nomological possibility. Therefore, whether through brain simulation or brain replacement, it is unlikely that humans could achieve immortality through mind uploading.

Few phenomena are as intriguing and enigmatic as the ones that constitute mentality, and investigating them as behaviors of biological organisms (humans, in this case) poses an enormous challenge for the sciences of the mind. These sciences, collectively known as cognitive science, form an umbrella that embraces the study of mental phenomena. It is in this field that the idea for the new-mechanistic model of explanation tests its limits, as it must not only tame the explanatory complexity of biology but also delve deep into the mysteries of the mind. It is into these deep intellectual waters that the present dissertation descends.
This inquiry targets various interconnected issues: Can the new-mechanistic explanatory framework be extended to explain mental phenomena? How can we reconcile the diverse concepts of levels encountered in cognitive science with mechanistic levels? What role does decomposition play in explaining biological and mental phenomena, primarily as an analytical tool and also as an integral part of the mechanistic explanatory schema? Can mechanistic explanatory models incorporate the informational and representational aspects of cognitive processes? Ultimately, can the gap between psychological and neurobiological approaches to cognition be bridged with the aid of the mechanistic explanatory framework?
The research unfolds across various stages, progressing from the general to the specific. This gradual specialization is reflected in the two parts of the study, the sequence of chapters, and their internal structure. The research methodologies employed to address these questions approach the subject matter from multiple angles. The study begins with conceptual mapping and analysis of the two fundamental components that constitute the research axis of the dissertation. These are the concepts of levels and decomposition, which are examined in the first two chapters. The subsequent two chapters present a comparative analysis of two explanatory models: Carl Gillett's (2016) compositional explanations and Carl Craver's (2007) new-mechanistic explanatory framework, which focuses on neuroscience, with an emphasis on constitutive explanations. These models are closely related, as they both emphasize the role of recursive decomposition leading to a hierarchy of multiple explanatory levels. These two chapters are framed by two extensive case studies. The first, presented in the third chapter, concerns compositional explanations of the bending mechanism of the knee and the physiology of muscle contraction. The second, detailed in the fourth chapter, explores the constitutive mechanistic explanation of neurobiological mechanisms of spatial memory development in mice.
While the first part lays the groundwork for mechanistic explanation by initially examining levels, decomposition, and biological complexity, the second part delves into the deep waters of applying mechanistic explanations to mental phenomena. It begins by analyzing their distinctive character, which stems from information processing and intentionality -the capacity for internal representation of the world and the attribution of meaning to it. A comparative study is conducted to investigate the compatibility of levels used in cognitive science explanations with mechanistic explanatory levels, using visual recognition of an apple as a case study. The fifth chapter concludes with a negative assessment regarding levels, constituting the first major challenge to the applicability of mechanistic explanation to mental phenomena.
The final chapter presents a comparative and critical discussion on the possibility of unifying psychological and mechanistic models into a common explanatory framework, highlighting the problems that arise in such an endeavor. The concept of decomposition is then revisited as an analytical tool for constructing psychological explanatory models, examined in the case of the internal visual representation of a horse. Finally, it highlights the issues that emerge when applying this to physical (neurobiological) and mental (concerning informational and representational content) entities. The chapter and the dissertation conclude with a proposal for reconciliation between psychological and neurobiological explanatory models. In this proposal, psychological models play a central role, with mechanistic explanations subsumed within them as a hierarchy of explanatory mechanisms extending across many lower levels. Each hierarchy of mechanisms implements a specific explanatory level of the psychological model, without a one-to-one correspondence between neurological and psychological elements that recursively extends to all lower levels.
Concluding the study, while mechanistic explanations offer valuable insights for understanding mental phenomena, they require significant modifications to fully capture their unique characteristics. The proposed framework suggests a way to integrate psychological and neurobiological approaches to cognition without reductionism, adopting a form of interpretive pluralism that respects the autonomy of different levels and aspects of explanation while illuminating their interconnections.


SUBJECT AREA: Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Biology
KEYWORDS: new-mechanism, near-decomposability, integrated explanations, biological complexity, psychological models, information processing

The article presents the author's response to an article related to reductionism and psychological measurement in cognitive neuroscience by Rogier A. Kievit and Denny Borsboom, published in a previous issue of the periodical. The author says that the commentaries by the writers in the article suggests that the implementation of conceptually guided psychometric models is viable. He also focuses on the relation between people and reductionism mentioned by the writers in the article.

Non-reductive physicalism is committed to two theses: first, that mental properties are ontologically autonomous, and second, that physicalism is true. Jaegwon Kim has argued that this view is unstable – to honor one thesis, one must abandon the other. In this paper, I present an account of property realization that addresses Kim’s criticism and that explains how the two theses are indeed comfortably compatible.

In this paper we offer some ideas on the relationship between metaphysics of causation and common explanatory practices of behaviour. We first suggest a sort of "negotiating model" for theorizing about mental causation, and then examine the so-called causal closure argument focusing on some morals one can draw from it that further illustrate the model we recommend.

This document is a synopsis of discussions at the workshop prepared by Nicholaos Jones and Kevin Coffey, with remarks added by by Chuang Liu, John D. Norton, John Earman, Gordon Belot, Mark Wilson, Bob Batterman and Margie Morrison. The program is included in an appendix.

Uzro~nici mastitisa ovaca su uglavnom infektivni, re|e mehani~ki ili hemijski (toksi~ni) agensi. Kod ovaca mastitis uglavnom izazvaju Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus agalactiae, koagulaza negativne stafilokoke (CNS), Arcanobacter pyogenes, mikoplazme, pasterele, retko plesni i gljivice. Staphylococcus aureus se prenosi preko sekreta ovaca obolelih od mastitisa, ruku muza~a i Uvod / Introduction * Rad primljen za {tampu 24. 03. 2010. godine ** Dr sci. med. vet.

Advocates of the disunity of science do not commonly hold this position for metaphysical reasons. One reason for this is that for those skeptical about traditional conceptions of unified science, the grand systems of traditional metaphysics are likely to seem even more dubious. More simply, recent doubts about the unity of science have developed from rather different directions. Such doubts have especially emerged from the recent tendency in science studies to seek a sharper focus on the details of science than has been customary ...

The central argument for nonreductive physicalism is the argument from multiple realizability. J. Kim subjected this argument to a forceful critique and defended a form of type-physicalism. I revisit these fundamental arguments here, reconstructing both the argument and the counterargument. I argue that not only does nonreductive physicalism escape Kim’s counterargument, but also its truth is central to our understanding of the physical world. Mental types are in general not reducible to physical types, and furthermore many important types of physical individuals can only be classified and explained by their role in realizing mental types.

En el núcleo de nuestra imagen de sentido común se encuentra la idea de que los seres humanos somos agentes, es decir, orientamos nuestras acciones a partir de pensamientos, intenciones y deseos. En este texto, Norman Malcolm examina si disponer de una teoría neurofisiológica completa podría llevarnos a abandonar esta suposición. Malcolm argumenta que nuestras explicaciones cotidianas del comportamiento humano dependen de principios a priori que conectan a lo mental con la acción. Puesto que las explicaciones proporcionadas por una teoría neurofisiológica completa dependerían de leyes contingentes, no de verdades conceptuales, tales explicaciones estarían en competencia con las explicaciones psicológicas. Para respaldar esta afirmación, Malcolm introduce un supuesto que se ha vuelto extremadamente influyente en el debate sobre la causación mental: el ‘principio de exclusión causal’. Si las leyes neurofisiológicas fuesen suficientes para explicar la acción, entonces podría prescindirse por completo de las explicaciones psicológicas. La incompatibilidad entre explicaciones psicológicas y explicaciones neurofisiológicas sumada a que las primeras involucran verdades conceptuales parecería conducir a una refutación a priori de la posibilidad de una teoría neurofisiológica completa. Pero la conclusión de Malcolm es más moderada. Él afirma que tal teoría es inconcebible; aun así, sigue siendo una posibilidad lógica.

It is often argued that constitution and causation are
different kinds of dependence relations. Some have argued for a
distinction between constitutive explanation of causal capacities
that explain what a system would do in specific situations from
causal or etiological explanations that explain why an event such as
a change in the property of a system happened. In what follows we
argue against the claim that causation and constitution are always
distinct metaphysical relations. This paper develops a temporal
account of constitution. We call this species of constitution,
diachronic constitution. We show how diachronic constitution is a
consequence of a common type of causation in the empirical
sciences: continuous reciprocal causation, a variety of causal
production instantiated in complex dynamical systems. Hence, this
paper seeks to establish that constitution does not only resemble
causation in certain respects. We argue for the stronger claim that
constitution can be analysed in terms of causation understood as
production of change. Temporalizing the constitution relation is
neither as remarkable nor as problematic as it might initially seem.
The idea of diachronic constitution will appear almost inevitable in
the context of complex dynamical systems, given local interactions
between microscale and macroscale states in such systems.

Mental causation is notoriously threatened by the causal exclusion argument. A prominent strategy to save mental causation from causal exclusion consists in subscribing to an interventionist account of causation. This move has, however, recently been challenged by several authors. In this paper, we do two things: We (i) develop what we consider to be the strongest version of the interventionist causal exclusion argument currently on the market and (ii) propose a new way how it can in principle be overcome. In particular, we propose to replace strict supervenience in the assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical by probabilistic supervenience and show how this move has the potential to license the inference to mental causation. Finally, we argue that probabilistic supervenience captures some of the most important intuitions that strict supervenience captures and discuss possible objections to weakening strict supervenience in the way we suggest.

In this article, I shall examine Jessica Wilson's schema for weak emergence in connection with two questions: why are only certain proper subsets of the powers borne by lower-level features associated with higher-level, weakly emergent features? Why is a certain proper subset of the powers borne by a given lower-level feature associated with a certain higher-level, weakly emergent feature, and vice versa? I shall consider and criticize four possible answers to these questions, including Wilson's own view. Finally, I shall suggest my own solution, which is based on something akin to grounding categoricalism. I shall also explore some consequences of accepting my view.

It will be argued that strong/radical emergence while possible is problematic on a number of fronts, in particular it is neither explanatory nor unifying. Fortunately, there is a better, more unifying and explanatory alternative that be will called contextual emergence. The notion of contextual emergence will be explicated and defended against competitors.

Stephen Yablo suggested that the relation of mental properties to physical properties is the same as that between red and scarlet: one of determinable property to determinate property. So just as being scarlet is a specific way of being red, on Yablo's proposal being a certain neurological property (c-fibres firing, say) is a specific way of being a certain mental property (pain, in this case). I explain the virtues of this theory, in particular as defended and developed by Jessica Wilson, but raise some problems for it. I then describe a novel theory of the mental/physical relationship, which inverts the Yablo-Wilson proposal. On this theory mental properties, notably phenomenal properties-or, as I will say, qualia-are determinates of determinable physical properties. I explain the virtues of this view, and argue that they at least match, and plausibly exceed, those of the Yablo-Wilson theory. In particular, this new theory is able to account for certain prominent perplexities of the mind/body problem that tend to go unexplained. I distinguish the view from nearby theories, in particular the increasingly popular 'Russellian monism'. I end by likening it to a recent interpretation of Aristotle's philosophy of mind due to David Charles.

The traditional thesis of the autonomy of psychology from neuroscience is grounded in a metaphysical thesis; the irreducibility thesis. Anti-reductionism is still dominant nowadays, and, as a consequence, autonomists arguably stand on firmer grounds. Still, an anti-autonomist might have the intuition that even if psychology is not reducible to neuroscience, there is a sense, not metaphysically grounded but epistemologically grounded, in which psychology clearly is not autonomous from neuroscience. The challenge is then to offer a concept of autonomy which allows for the articulation of a new and significant autonomy thesis and to show that the thesis is false. The thesis that psychologists need not consider neuroscientific explanations when putting forward psychological explanations is such a thesis. I take it that both this characterization of autonomy and an anti-autonomist argument in this sense can already be found in a paper co-authored by Gualtiero Piccinini and Carl Craver. Piccinini and Craver’s attack on this thesis is grounded on the claim that psychologists should support their functional analyses by means of mechanistic explanations for the former to be justified at all. I also take it that, as Lawrence Shapiro has shown, their argument ultimately fails. But this was a very valuable attempt, and, in this paper, I intend to build on it with the aim of offering a new and hopefully effective anti-autonomist argument. I contend that psychologists do need to consider neuroscientific explanations when putting forward psychological explanations, and this stems from the fact that they provide the same type of explanations of the same kind of phenomena as neuroscientist, or so I argue.

Mental causation is with us all the time. Being a table is different from being a human-although we are composed of physical particles, we have understanding, reason, or perception, which are able to make a difference in the physical world. In this dissertation, I have detail discussions of contemporary substance dualism, the mind-brain identity theory, and Jaegwon Kim's functionalism, and thus conclude that none of them can provide an appropriate account to the problem of mental causation. By distinguishing the mind from the body, substance dualists face the pairing problem: How does this particular mind unite with this particular body and thus interact? With the pairing problem, more and more philosophers accept physicalism. However, it is surprising that the problem of mental causation arises again from the heart of physicalism.

Physicalists and dualists have failed to provide a convincing answer to the mind-body problem. This is because they, respectively, sacrifice mental causation and neglect the close relationship between the mind and the body. To tackle this, some contemporary philosophers, such as Timothy O'Connor and Jonathan Jacobs, have turned to the concept of strong emergentism. This perspective views the mind as an emergent physical substance with autonomous causal powers. If this standpoint is tenable, it holds promise for resolving the mind-body problem. Nevertheless, the idea of strong emergentism faces substantial challenges. This article aims to achieve two objectives. First, it addresses these challenges and asserts that, even in the face of the most serious concern, "the collapse problem", a specific interpretation of strong emergentism remains unthreatened. Second, we contend that while O'Connor and Jacobs present a thought-provoking proposal, its clarity is hindered, and a thorough understanding is only possible when we perceive the emergent substance as more than merely physical.

I begin with a basic account of teleo-pragmatic functionalism and its main features. I then discuss what that view implies about the nature of cognition, theories and understanding and thus about the limits on our ability to explain the mental and its relation to the non-mental. I show that teleo-pragmatic functionalism leads naturally to a version of non-reductive physicalism that combines theoretical pluralism with a strongly contextualist and pragmatic view of theories and models. Though non-reductionist at the theoretical and conceptual level, the view is nonetheless thoroughly and robustly physicalist in its ontology. Zusammenfassung Ich beginne mit einem basalen Ansatz des teleo-pragmatischen Funktionalismus und charakterisiere seine Hauptzüge. Im nächsten Schritt diskutiere ich die Implikationen dieses Ansatzes in Bezug auf die Natur der Kognition, auf Theorien und Verstehen, sowie die Implikationen dieses Ansatzes in Bezug auf die Grenzen unserer Fähigkeit das Mentale und seine Relation zum Nicht-Mentalen zu verstehen. Ich zeige, dass die Annahme eines teleo-pragmatischer Funktionalismus zur Annahme eines nicht-reduktiven Physikalismus führt, der Theorien-Pluralismus mit einer streng kontextualistischen und pragmatischen Interpretation von Theorien und Modellen vereinigt. Während dieser Ansatz auf der Ebene von Theorien und Begriffen zwar nicht-reduktionistisch ist, so ist er in ontologischer Hinsicht dennoch eindeutig physikalistisch.

Given that "most contemporary analytic philosophers [endorse] a physicalist picture of the world," 1 one should expect substantial arguments for physicalism. In fact, however, the only serious considerations in favor of physicalism circle around the notion of causation. 2 On the premise that physical effects of conscious causes are not overdetermined by ontologically distinct sufficient causes, and on the premise that physical effects have sufficient purely physical causal histories, the argument from causal closure concludes that the mind can act in the world only if it is a physical thing itself. If this is sound, then philosophers who assume that the mind acts in the world are committed to physicalism. 3

Uvođenjem novog leka oklacitinib maleata u veterinarsku kliničku praksu napravljenje značajan pomak u lečenju alergijskog i kliničkih slučajeva atopijskog dermatitisa(posebno pratećeg svraba) kod pasa.U lečenju ovih bolesti do sada su se najčešće koristili glukokortikoidi, ciklosporin iantihistaminici. Pokazalo se da ciklosporin ima sličnu aktivnost kao i glukokortikoidi,dok je aktivnost antihistaminika slabija. Novi lek oklacitinib maleat ima antiinflamatornii antipruritični efekt sličan onom koji izazivaju glukokortikoidi i ciklosporin, alimu (za razliku od njih) efekt brže nastupa, što mu daje veliku prednost.Oklacitinib je imunomodulator i ima specifičan mehanizam delovanja. Deluje takošto inhibira aktivnost enzima janus kinaza (pre svega JAK1 i JAK3), od kojih zavisifunkcija proinflamatornih i pruritogenih citokina.Oklacitinib je prilično bezbedan lek, ukoliko se koristi u kraćem vremenskom periodui u preporučenim dozama.

The aim of this paper is to develop further a model of reduction derived from Nagel’s model and from the deductive-nomological model of explanation. We propose this development by examining its consistency with the history of physics, in particular, with Nagel´s further account of the history of physics. In the first part, we introduce the issue of intertheoretical reduction. In the second, we examine the partial consistency of the derived D-N model of reduction with Nagel’s further considerations on reduction. As a conclusion, we argue that, in agreement with Nagel´s theory, the full consistency with history of science is a criterion needed for any purported theory of reduction and that the autonomy of the reducing science is to be preserved.

The objective of this work is to investigate the influence of combined application of prostaglandin and oxytocin on the duration of farrowing in sows, number of newborn piglets and interval between two expulsions of piglets. The experiment was carried out on 133 pregnant sows of Danish Landrace-Yorkshire Large white breed, which were divided into three groups depending on the day of the induction of partus (112th, 113th and 114th day of pregnancy). Within each group, the sows were divided into three subgroups, and they were given synthetic prostaglandin PGF2-alfa (dinoprost-DINOLYTIC) analogue in dosage of 10 mg (eq. 2ml of preparation)/animal (I subgroup) single or combined with one (after having fifth piglet) (II subgroup), or two (after having fifth and tenth piglet) (III subgroup) application of oxytocin (OXYTOKEL) in dosage of 20 i.j. + 15 i.j. (eq. 2 ml + 1,5 ml preparation/animal), (two applications). Obtained results show that in the sows treated only with prostaglandin, the...

Science increases understanding and offers more and more approximate natural explanations. The process of rationality uncovering patterns and causes constitutes scientific inquiry. This book is a multidisciplinary study of the mind body problem.
Hypothesis of this book challenges reductionist-scientists identification of mind and body, and the so-called common-sense religious dualism of soul-in-the-machine of the body. Though human mind cannot be disserved from its neuronal correlates as a separate entity, it is irreducible to the brain. If mind and brain are two dichotomised substance nor one and the same substance, then what is it? As the brain is made up of components, even the thoughts or self are, in some sense, are properties of those components. But how? Answer to these questions consist in the ubiquitous phenomenon of emergence. The inquiry has to incorporate essential themes such as complexity, system dynamics, emergence, cosmological-biological evolution, thermodynamics and evolution. Human mind as the emergent functionality of the human brain is a biological system embedded in the universe that has thermodynamic-evolutionary history. The universe which is a matter-energy-information system, actualised in time and space, becomes conscious of itself at least through one of its invention viz. human mind-brain.

Kim on Overdetermination, Exclusion and Nonreductive Physicalism Jaegwon Kim argues that nonreductive physicalism entails the causal irrelevance of mental features both to mental and physical effects. 1 My focus will be on Kim's reasons for denying the causal relevance of mental properties to physical phenomena, particularly the behaviour of human bodies. Also, my focus will be on intentional states (e.g. beliefs and desires) rather than qualia. Suppose that we are trying to explain some bodily movement, for example, why Ed's right arm went up. We answer by referring to his desire to wave to a friend. According to Kim, while this appeal to one of Ed's mental properties seems to account for Ed's behaviour, we should be able to explain the same behaviour solely by appeal to physical features, if any brand of physicalism is true. This is because every good

Saznanja o rezistenciji na antimikrobne lekove bakterija mle~ne kiseline su jo{ uvek ograni~ena, verovatno zbog velikog broja rodova i vrsta koje postoje kod ove grupe, kao i zbog razlika u njihovom spektru rezistencije. Evropska agencija za bezbednost hrane EFSA smatra rezistentnost na antimikrobne lekove, posebno prenosive rezistencije, va`nim kriterijumom kod dono{enja odluke o kvalifikovanoj proceni bezbednosti-QPS statusu odredjenog soja. Ne postoje prihva}eni standardi za fenotipsku ili genotipsku evaluaciju rezistencije na antimikrobne lekove kod izolata hrane. Tako|e, izbor medija je problemati~an, kao i specifikacija minimalne inhibitorne koncentracije MIC vrednosti kao posledica velikih varijacija u vrsti i mogu}e rezultiraju}e varijacije u MIC vrednostima izme|u vrsta i roda. Teku}a istra`ivanja u ovoj oblasti pokazala su da bi se na kraju mogao dobiti niz razli~itih MIC vrednosti specifi~nih za vrstu ili rod koje bi mogle jo{ vi{e da prodube sada{nju kompleksnost. Jo{ jedan problem koji postoji u vezi sa odre|ivanjima bezbednosti starter sojeva jeste da, kada se jednom identifikuju fenotip rezistencije i asocirana determinanta rezistencije, postaje te{ko da se poka`e da ta determinanta nije prenosiva, posebno ukoliko se gen rezistencije ne nalazi na plazmidu i ukoliko nema standardnih protokola za prikazivanje genetskog transfera. Usled postojanja takvih problema, sistem o kvalifikovanoj proceni bezbednosti QPS treba da ostavi prostora za interpretaciju rezultata, posebno kada se oni odnose na metodologiju odre|ivanja fenotipa rezistencije, odredjivanje MIC vrednosti ze odre|eni rod, vrstu, ili soj, na nemogu}nost ustanovljavanja genetske baze fenotipa rezistencije, kao i prenosivost gena rezistencije.

The authors of the following two discussion notes have been working on causation for about 40 years. Woodward's work culminated in his book Making Things Happen (OUP 2003), Spohn's work culminated in chapters 14 and 15 of his book The Laws of Belief (OUP 2012), which have almost book-length. Prima facie, their accounts look quite similar; the interventionist theory of causal Bayes nets seems to be their common ground. Therefore, it is important to also see their differences. These are explained in the notes, which mutually discuss their theories of causation. The exchange originates from an Author Meets Critic session at the APA meeting in Baltimore in January 2017.

Peter Menzies has developed a novel version of the exclusion principle that he claims to be compatible with the possibility of mental causation. Menzies proposes to frame the exclusion principle in terms of a difference-making account of causation, understood in counterfactual terms. His new exclusion principle appears in two formulations: upwards exclusion — which is the familiar case in which a realizing event causally excludes the event that it realizes — and, more interestingly, downward exclusion, in which an event causally excludes its realizer. This paper shows that one consequence of Menzies’s proposed solution to the problem of mental causation is a ubiquitous violation of the principle of closure — a fact that forces him into a trilemma to which we see no satisfactory response.

Interventionism analyses causal influence in terms of correlations of changes under a distribution of interventions. But the correspondence between correlated changes and causal influence is not obvious. I probe its plausibility with a problem-case involving variables related as time derivative (velocity) to integral (position), such that the latter variable must change given an intervention on the former unless dependencies are introduced among the testing and controlling interventions. Under the orthodox criteria such interventions will fail to be appropriate for causal analysis. I consider various alternatives, including permitting control interventions to be chancy, restricting the available models and mitigating variation of off-path variables. None of these work. I then present a fourth suggestion which modifies the interventionist criteria in order to permit interventions which can influence other variables than just their own targets. The correspondence between correlated changes and causal influence can thereby saved when dependencies are introduced among such interventions. This modification and the required dependencies, I argue, are perfectly in line with practice and may also assist in a wider class of cases. I'll then consider three unsuccessful responses on behalf of the

It is commonly believed that there is a fundamental incompatibility between multiple realization and type identity in the philosophy of mind. This claim can be challenged, however, since a single neural type may be realized by different microphysical types. In this case, the identity statement would connect the psychological and the neural type, while the neural type, in turn, could be multiply realized by different microphysical types. Such a multiple realization of higher level types occurs quite frequently even within physics and it should be acceptable for physicalism in general.

Cadmium (Cd) is an extremely toxic metal that is widespread in nature. Due to its favorable properties, it was widely used in the industry for the production of alkaline batteries, accumulators, pigments, and colored alloys. However, it has been shown that exposure to low concentrations of cadmium leads to damage to many organs and organ systems, and the use of this metal in industry is reduced, and it is replaced by other, less harmful materials. Today, fossil fuel combustion and cigarette consumption are important sources of cadmium exposure. Numerous studies have examined the toxic effects of cadmium and they highlight the kidneys, liver, gonads as the organs that suffer the most damage. The kidneys, as the main place of cadmium storage in the body, are mostly exposed to its toxic effects. In the proximal tubular cells of the kidney, exposure to cadmium disrupts transport processes. Although ionized cadmium (Cd 2+) is thought to be largely responsible for the damage that occurs, the role of the cadmium and metallothionein complex (Cd-MT) cannot be ignored. Peritubular exposure to ionized cadmium indirectly leads to a decrease in the activity of the Na + /L-alanine cotransporter and a decrease in the rate of slow repolarization of the luminal membrane, while the Cd-MT complex leads to both direct and indirect inhibition of this transporter. Also, the Cd-MT complex inhibits Na + /Glucosa cotransporter activity. Exposure to cadmium also leads to a decrease in the endocytic uptake of low molecular weight proteins, which is accompanied by microalbuminuria.

Reductionism concerns a set of ontological and epistemological claims, and methodological strictures based on them, about the relationship between two different scientific domains. The critical assumption is that one of these domains is privileged over the other in the sense that the concepts, rules, laws, and other elements of the privileged domain can be used to specify, constitute, or account for those of the other “reduced” domain. This specification often consists of explanation, such that the “reducing” domain is epistemically privileged over the reduced one. Explanations of this type are “reductionist” (or, are “reductions”) and reductionism is then the thesis that such explanations will always be forthcoming or at least are possible in principle. Reductionism is most plausible if the entities of the reduced domain can be interpreted as arising from (e.g., as aggregates of) entities of the reduced domain. This ontological claim is controversial but motivates many reductionist...

The structuralist program has developed a useful metascientific resource: ontological reductive links (ORLs) between the constituents of the potential models of reduced and reducing theories. This resource was developed initially to overcome an objection to structuralist "global" accounts of the intertheoretic reduction relation. But it also illuminates the way that concepts at a higher level of scientific investigation (e.g., cognitive psychology) become "structured through reduction" to lower-level investigations (e.g., cellular/molecular neuroscience). After (briefly) explaining this structuralist background, I demonstrate how this resource illuminates an actual, emerging scientific example: the link between the psychological concept of a "consolidation switch" from short-term to long-term memory and the cellular/molecular mechanisms of the transition from earlyto late-phases of long-term potentiation (LTP) (an important type of synaptic plasticity in mammalian hippocampus and cortex). 1. STRUCTURALIST BACKGROUND Historically, structuralists have viewed intertheoretic reduction as a "global" relation. They eschew the "standard" Anglo-American account of theory structure as a set of sentences, propositions, or other linguistic items. But they retain the "standard" idea that reduction is a relation over entire classes of entities that constitute theories (i.e., models). Although structuralists place far stronger restrictions on the reduction relation than Suppes's (1956, chapters 8 and 9) "isomorphism" condition-see, e.g., Balzer et al. (1987, chapter 6), Mormann (1988), and Mayr (1976)-this "global" feature still leaves the accounts open to Schaffner's (1967) devastating "too weak to be adequate" challenge (Bickle 1998, chapter 3). There exists, or can be contrived, obvious cases of nonreduction that meet all the formal (set-theoretic) conditions structuralists lay down on the relation. Although he didn't mention Schaffner by name, C. U. Moulines (1984) first developed a structuralist resource that can be tailored to address Schaffner's challenge (Bickle 1998, chapter 3). More interesting for my purposes in this essay, this same resource also illuminates another puzzling metascientific notion. Sometimes in the process of being related to sci

Structuralism provides useful resources for advancing our understanding of the intertheoretic reduction relation and its place in the history of science. This paper begins by surveying these resources and assessing their metascientific significance. Nevertheless, important challenges remain. I close by arguing that the reductionism implicit in current scientific practice in a paradigmatic reductionistic scientific field-"molecular and cellular cognition"-is better understood on an "intervene and track" model rather than as any kind of intertheoretic relation. I illustrate my alternative model by describing briefly a recent reductionistic result from the field. It appears doubtful that any structuralist resources will illuminate this newly-recognized type of reduction-in-actual-scientific-practice.

PHILOSOPHICAL ACCOUNTS OF SCIENTIFIC REDUCTION Consider what is, among philosophers, an apparently unconventional argument (at least in the sense that few seem to act upon it). Suppose we wish to understand scientific reductionism-its nature, aims, scope, and potential limits. Here's a strategy: Let us find a clear example of a ''reductionistic'' field of scientific inquiry, dubbed so not only by its practitioners but also by scientists working in other, related fields. Then, as unencumbered by epistemological and metaphysical assumptions as we can rend ourselves, let us investigate some paradigmatic examples of recent research from that field, with our choice of examples dictated by the field's most prominent researchers. (These choices will result from discussions with those researchers, from publication in the field's most respected journals, from decisions by prominent funding agencies, and the like.) And then let us analyze the shared practices across these examples that differentiate this field from other scientific fields investigating related phenomena, only admittedly less reductionistically. (A good analogy here might be what a historian of a science does qua historian, only we'll be working with recent and current case studies.) The resulting account should be an analysis of real reductionism in real scientific practice, as contrasted with artificial accounts of scientific reductionism that rest instead on philosophical assumptions about ''what reduction has to be''. So characterized, that project strikes me as inherently reasonable. So why is it virtually non-existent in contemporary philosophy? It is virtually non-existent therein. Two accounts of ''reduction'' dominate the philosophical literature. One, intertheoretic reduction, has its roots in late-20th-century philosophy of

RESUMEN Este artículo se centra en el marco para las relaciones composicionales entre propiedades, o relaciones de "realización", propuesto por Ken Aizawa y Carl Gillett (A&G) y, en particular, en el análisis de la "realización múltiple" que estos autores defienden en ese marco. Sostengo que el análisis de la realización múltiple de A&G demanda una elucidación de la noción de nivel y que el marco propuesto por estos autores no resulta exitoso bajo ninguna de las interpretaciones disponibles de los niveles en ciencia. Por lo tanto, existe una preocupación fundamentada acerca de la viabilidad de la propuesta de A&G.

Jaegwon Kim has proposed that the proper way to reduce mental to physical events and properties is to apply the causal inheritance-as-identity principle: "M is the property of having a property with such-and-such causal potentials, and it turns out that property P is exactly the property that fits the causal specification. And this grounds the identification of M with P". It is argued that this principle should require further that the connection between properties M and P be dynamically intelligible (that is, compatible with the evolutionary and developmental features of mind-brains), and nomologically grounded. It is claimed that an adequate 'causal inheritance-as-identity principle' requires an intermediate level of reduction between mind and brain, in terms of adaptive control structures. It is further argued that this level provides dynamical intelligibility of the P-M connections, and provides nomological explanations for how physical and mental properties must develop jointly. nent the mental type it is, is its role in relating inputs to outputs and its relations to other functional components. MT, however, is compatible with physicalism (even though it does not entail it as reductionism does). The kind of physicalism that is compatible with MT is "token physicalism", according to which having a mental state supervenes on some physical state or other-a human brain state, or possibly some non-human brain state, or even some circuit state in a computer. More generally, properties that are causally involved in the special sciences, such as psychology, economics, etc., supervene on physical properties, but cannot be reduced to them. The laws of physics are not contradicted by the laws of the special sciences, but the latter have their own vocabulary, and their own regularities, which cannot be couched in physical terms. What makes this physicalism "non reductive" is that two properties in the special sciences may be identical while having a different physical realization. In other words, mental states may be functionally identical, but fail to be realized by the same type of brain state. However, as Kim observed, supervenience baptizes a difficulty rather than solving it. There is a variety of ways in which supervenience itself can be explained. The way in which MT explains supervenience consists in invoking the relation between the mental state and its physical basis as one in which a second-order property M, (such as the property of having such and such a functional role) is related to a first-order property P that "realizes" M. In Kim's terms: "Having M is having a property with causal specification D, and in systems like S, P is the property meeting specification D." (Kim, 1998, p.24). Many authors have taken this "realization" relation to relate two different types of properties, physical or neural, on the one hand, and mental or psychological, on the other. On such a view, mental properties, although they are necessarily physically realized, are not reducible to their realizers. This non-reductive interpretation of the "realization" relation, however, has been questioned. It raises the old worry of causal overdetermination; if there are two different properties, then why should we attribute any causal role to the mental property, once it is admitted that it has a physical realization? To prevent causal pre-emption of the physical over the mental, Kim offers three arguments in favor of a different view of "realization", in which the two properties are actually identical. First, he observes that, pace Putnam, multirealizability is not an obstacle to

One important aspect of biological explanation is detailed causal modeling of particular phenomena in limited experimental background conditions. Recognising this allows a new avenue for intertheoretic reduction to be seen. Reductions in biology are possible, when one fully recognises that a sufficient condition for a reduction in biology is a molecular model of 1) only the demonstrated causal parameters of a biological model and 2) only within a replicable experimental background. These intertheoretic identifications-which are ubiquitous in biology and form the basis of ruthless reductions (Bickle 2003)-are criticised as merely "local" (Sullivan 2009) or "fragmentary" (Schaffner 2006). However, in an instructive case, a biological model is preserved in molecular terms, and a complex biological phenomenon has been successfully reduced. In doing this the molecular model remains valid in a broader range of background conditions and meaningfully unites disparate biological phenomena. Philosophical Background Contemporary intertheoretic reduction of biology-as the epistemological project of formally uniting scientific domains with identities, rather than an ontological analysis of mereologically differentiated levels-begins with E. Nagel (1949, 1961), develops with K. Schaffner's application of reduction to genetics (1967, 1993) and arrives at J. Bickle's ruthless reductionism in neuroscience (2003; 2006). It is by this route that the debate has encountered a conceptual narrows, where the successful reduction of anything of broad explanatory value from biology through into molecular language seems methodologically impossible (Schaffner 2006; Sullivan 2009). Admittedly (Schaffner 2006), initially promising attempts to connect the formal structure of biology, specifically, the laws of classical genetics with those of molecular genetics, failed to find the required common axiomatisation, even with significant restrictions and restructuring. But on an account of explanation that includes experimental models (e.g. : Cartwright 1983; Hacking 1983; Woodward 2003)-where individual models, not entire theories, do the explaining-reduction requires mapping between particular biological and molecular phenomena. Such one-to-one maps connecting some classically defined gene with a chemically individuated segment of DNA were to provide the necessary and sufficient molecular mechanisms for the biologically individuated phenomenon. Problematically, such maps appear to reveal many-to-many relations between molecular and biological models (Hull 1974). Molecular models exhibit context sensitivity: the

This paper argues in defense of the anti-reductionist consensus in the philosophy of biology. More specifically, it takes issues with Alex Rosenberg's recent challenge of this position. We argue that the results of modern developmental genetics rather than eliminating the need for functional kinds in explanations of development actually reinforce their importance.

Numerous studies have shown that a mare can develop a uterine infection that causes signifi cant economic losses in horse breeding. Assessment of the reproductive system in breeding animals in our country has been rarely carried out, however this is a common or compulsory practice in countries that have developed horse breeding. Th is paper describes the importance and diff erent techniques for the use of double protected swabs in the diagnostics of bacterial infection of the mare uterus in order to improve their fertility.

It seems that higher-level, nonbasic properties can only manifest their causal powers by exerting causal influence on lower-level, physically basic phenomena in the first place. A very influential line of reasoning conceives of this form of downward causation as either reducible to causation by physical properties or as ultimately untenable, because incompatible with the causal closure of physical reality. The paper argues that this is not so. It examines, first, why it is that a recent attempt by Noordhof to substantiate the notion of supervenient causation in a nonreductive framework fails. The upshot of this examination is the claim that any attempted specification of the most basic causal factors which supposedly underlie a causal transaction cannot account for the counterfactually necessary connections with the effect in question. By contrast, the specification of these factors at a higher level would allow establishing such connections. The paper closes with a discussion of how this view of autonomous causation at the higher-level can coexist with the notion of a complete specification of the causes of any physical effect exclusively in physical terms.