Stuart Glennan
Biographic Data
| ID | 5911639 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stuart Glennan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stuart |
| FAMILY NAME | Glennan |
| SIGNATURE | GLENNAN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Butler University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0292-6811 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Conversation About Writing and Citing with Justice and Charity
Citational injustice often refers to the underrepresentation or misrepresentation of the work of members of marginalized populations within academic publications. The literature emphasises how these unjust practices reproduce and perpetuate known hierarchies and colonial power structures. While these are global trends that impact all academic disciplines, a full understanding of them requires considering how these practices play out within specif…
The Object-Activity Theory of Events
Six Theses on Mechanisms and Mechanistic Science
In this paper we identify six theses that constitute core results of philosophical investigation into the nature of mechanisms, and of the role that the search for and identification of mechanisms play in the sciences. These theses represent the fruits of the body of research that is now often called New Mechanism. We concisely present the main arguments for these theses. In the literature, these arguments are scattered and often implicit. Our an…
Corporeal composition
Constitutive relevance & mutual manipulability revisited
The New Mechanical Philosophy
This book argues for a new image of nature and of science—one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that suggests that much of the work of natural and social scientists involves discovering, describing, and explaining how these mechanisms work. The book explores the interplay between ontological questions about mechanisms as things in the world and methodological questions about how these mechanis…
Mechanisms, Causes, and the Layered Model of the World
Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide a…
Modeling mechanisms
Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation
Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of…
Contextual Unanimity and the Units of Selection Problem
Sober and Lewontin's critique of genic selectionism is based upon the principle that a unit of selection should make a context-independent contribution to fitness. Critics have effectively shown that this principle is flawed. In this paper I show that the context independence principle is an instance of a more general principle for characterizing causes,called the contextual unanimity principle. I argue that this latter principle, while widely ac…
Capacities, Universality, and Singularity
In this paper I criticize Cartwright's analysis of capacities and offer an alternative analysis. I argue that Cartwright's attempt to connect capacities to her condition CC fails because individuals can exercise capacities only in certain contexts. My own analysis emphasizes three features of capacities: 1) Capacities belong to individuals; 2) Capacities are typically not metaphysically fundamental properties of individuals, but can be explained …
Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation
Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of…
Modeling mechanisms
Mechanisms, Causes, and the Layered Model of the World
Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide a…
Constitutive relevance & mutual manipulability revisited
Contextual Unanimity and the Units of Selection Problem
Sober and Lewontin's critique of genic selectionism is based upon the principle that a unit of selection should make a context-independent contribution to fitness. Critics have effectively shown that this principle is flawed. In this paper I show that the context independence principle is an instance of a more general principle for characterizing causes,called the contextual unanimity principle. I argue that this latter principle, while widely ac…
Capacities, Universality, and Singularity
In this paper I criticize Cartwright's analysis of capacities and offer an alternative analysis. I argue that Cartwright's attempt to connect capacities to her condition CC fails because individuals can exercise capacities only in certain contexts. My own analysis emphasizes three features of capacities: 1) Capacities belong to individuals; 2) Capacities are typically not metaphysically fundamental properties of individuals, but can be explained …
Corporeal composition
Capacities, Universality, and Singularity
In this paper I criticize Cartwright's analysis of capacities and offer an alternative analysis. I argue that Cartwright's attempt to connect capacities to her condition CC fails because individuals can exercise capacities only in certain contexts. My own analysis emphasizes three features of capacities: 1) Capacities belong to individuals; 2) Capacities are typically not metaphysically fundamental properties of individuals, but can be explained …
Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation
Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of…
Contextual Unanimity and the Units of Selection Problem
Sober and Lewontin's critique of genic selectionism is based upon the principle that a unit of selection should make a context-independent contribution to fitness. Critics have effectively shown that this principle is flawed. In this paper I show that the context independence principle is an instance of a more general principle for characterizing causes,called the contextual unanimity principle. I argue that this latter principle, while widely ac…
Modeling mechanisms
Mechanisms, Causes, and the Layered Model of the World
Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide a…
The New Mechanical Philosophy
This book argues for a new image of nature and of science—one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that suggests that much of the work of natural and social scientists involves discovering, describing, and explaining how these mechanisms work. The book explores the interplay between ontological questions about mechanisms as things in the world and methodological questions about how these mechanis…
Corporeal composition
Constitutive relevance & mutual manipulability revisited
Six Theses on Mechanisms and Mechanistic Science
In this paper we identify six theses that constitute core results of philosophical investigation into the nature of mechanisms, and of the role that the search for and identification of mechanisms play in the sciences. These theses represent the fruits of the body of research that is now often called New Mechanism. We concisely present the main arguments for these theses. In the literature, these arguments are scattered and often implicit. Our an…
The Object-Activity Theory of Events
Conversation About Writing and Citing with Justice and Charity
Citational injustice often refers to the underrepresentation or misrepresentation of the work of members of marginalized populations within academic publications. The literature emphasises how these unjust practices reproduce and perpetuate known hierarchies and colonial power structures. While these are global trends that impact all academic disciplines, a full understanding of them requires considering how these practices play out within specif…
Epistemology (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (10 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Mathematics (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Metaphysics (4 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (4 works) · Philosophy of science (4 works) · Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies (3 works)