About us
P&G is more than just a group of people. It is a community. A community of philosophers, thinkers, book readers, paper readers, and folks that ask the foundational questions. What is the meaning of life? How do we know what we know? What makes us human? These are some of the questions that P&G members explore together through lively discussions and debates. But P&G is not only about intellectual pursuits. It is also a community of thoughtful people coming together to hike, and hangout. Whether it's enjoying the beauty of nature, sharing a meal, or playing games, P&G members bond over their common interests and values. P&G is a community where you can find friends who challenge you to grow and support you along the way.
Upcoming events
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Bechtel & Abrahamsen: A Mechanist Model of Scientific Explanation, Part 2
·OnlineOnlineA live, text-driven seminar on major works in philosophy (mostly analytic). We read the paper together, slowly—stopping to clarify terms, reconstruct arguments, and stress-test claims. You can find the next week's reading here
WARNING
Browse the current and upcoming papers along with past Readings and meetings. Expect highly technical material, dense terminology, and high abstraction. It is full of philosophical jargon and complex technical terms. Your expectation should be to treat it as a graduate seminar in philosophy. We don't assume you have a degree in philosophy, but we do assume philosophical maturity and/or a crazy level of passion for deductive reasoning. If you are into that sort of thing, be my guest. We will start reviewing the paper, and start reading from page 6 of the PDF. For my little introduction and motivation of Mechanistic Scientific Explanation, see here: LINK
DETAILS
The paper Bechtel and Abrahamsen (2005), “Explanation: A Mechanist Alternative” (Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2): 421–441) addresses a longstanding mismatch between the dominant philosophical model of scientific explanation and the explanatory practices actually employed in the life sciences.
The primary motivation stems from the persistent inadequacy of the deductive-nomological (D-N) model—the received view inherited from logical empiricism—for capturing biological explanation. The D-N framework requires explanations to subsume phenomena under universal laws via logical deduction from those laws plus initial conditions. Yet, as the authors observe, biologists rarely invoke laws in this formal sense when explaining phenomena. Instead, biological literature is saturated with appeals to mechanisms: structured systems of parts performing operations that produce the target phenomenon. A telling indicator is the near-absence of "law" in explanatory contexts contrasted with the ubiquity of "mechanism" (e.g., hundreds of papers on mechanisms of protein synthesis versus virtually none framed in terms of laws). Even when law-like regularities appear (such as stoichiometric ratios in cellular respiration), they typically characterize phenomena or group exemplars without revealing why or how the phenomenon occurs.This discrepancy is philosophically significant: twentieth-century philosophy of science, heavily oriented toward physics, largely neglected mechanistic explanation despite its centrality in biology and other special sciences. Challenges to the centrality of laws in biology (e.g., from Cartwright, Giere, Beatty, and Rosenberg) further highlight that genuine explanatory work often lies in the mechanisms responsible for any observed regularities, not in the laws themselves. The result is a gap: the D-N model offers little guidance for discovery, testing, or generalization in contexts where strict universal laws are scarce or unilluminating, leaving philosophers without a framework adequate to the epistemic practices biologists actually use.
The paper offers a mechanist alternative that reframes explanation as the identification and modeling of mechanisms—structures performing functions through organized component parts and operations, where the orchestrated activity of the mechanism is responsible for the phenomenon. This approach promises to better align philosophical accounts with scientific practice by introducing three key departures from the nomological paradigm:
- Epistemic resources: Mechanistic explanations draw on richer, non-linguistic tools—diagrams for spatial and temporal organization and simulations (mental, computational, or physical) for reasoning about dynamics—rather than relying solely on propositions and logical inference.
- Direction in discovery and testing: The organized, decomposable nature of mechanisms provides concrete heuristics: decompose into parts and operations, localize functions, and intervene diagnostically to probe and confirm components.
- Generalization via exemplars: Explanations begin with specific model cases and extend through analysis of similarities and variations across instances, rather than universal quantification.
In short, the paper motivates a shift toward mechanistic explanation by exposing the explanatory poverty of law-centric models in biology and proposing a framework that restores intelligibility to "how things work" accounts—offering philosophers a more faithful reconstruction of explanatory success in the life sciences while opening new avenues for debates on representation, discovery, and generalization.
20 attendees
FTI: Workshop: Trump & non trump supporters on Transgender issues
·OnlineOnlineWe invite Pro Trump and Anti-Trump people alike to join us in researching the topic of the night. We will look for the facts related to the topic, and how the policies of democrats and republicans have influenced it historically. In this unique event, Trump supporters will have the chance to challenge facts put forth by non trump supporters, and vice versa - Once we’ve put forth the facts by each side - including any concerns put forth by the other side, we will show the conclusions each side comes to based on their understanding of the facts. Doing this will help us get a clear view of how Trump supporters and non trump supporters see the topic.
Lastly, Garrett will put together a presentation and we will get volunteers to present the trump and non trump perspective on the facts and conclusions the following week.
A little about our host:
Garrett is a programmer turned award-winning software inventor turned entrepreneur (http://platerate.com/) is his company. His hobby is writing and discussing practical philosophy, and he does life coaching on request to help people live happy, moral lives. He is also the executive director of The Free Thinker Institute (http://freethinkerinstitute.org/), which aims to create a community that helps members increase happiness and decrease harm for themselves and those they can influence.Format:
Lecture and discussionNote:
Social time for our community 15 minutes before the presentation.To get familiar with our past events, feel free to check out our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmixGB9GdrptyEWovEj80zgAfter registering via zoom, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
We publish our event recordings on our Youtube channel to offer our help to anyone who would like to but can’t attend the meeting, so we need to give this clause. If you don’t want to be recorded, just remain on mute and keep your video off.
Here’s our legal notice:
For valuable consideration received, by joining this event I hereby grant Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns, the irrevocable and unrestricted right to use and publish any and all Zoom recordings for trade, advertising and any other commercial purpose, and to alter the same without any restriction. I hereby release Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns from all claims and liability related to said video recordings.1 attendee
PLEASE READ INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FOR PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE WEEKLY EVENT - VARIOUS
·OnlineOnline# You cannot RSVP here. Please go to the PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE link below for meeting description and instructions
# PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE WEEKLY EVENT - VARIOUS
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