ABSTRACT Questions in the philosophy of the city are often approached first by modeling the city. I explain what models are and work through some examples to offer a rational reconstruction of how they are used by urban theorists and philosophers. Of special note is the influence modeling choices have on our conclusions about the city, rendering disputes about models especially tricky. I conclude with a critical discussion of some philosophical lessons about the city gleaned from the survey of models.

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ABSTRACT This paper offers a novel interpretation of the classical Confucian philosopher Xunzi's environmental ethics, arguing for a comprehensive anthropocentric reading that nevertheless recognizes ecological awareness as a necessary condition for human flourishing. It begins by clarifying the concept of anthropocentrism and situating Xunzi's thought within recent interpretations of Confucian environmental ethics. It then examines Xunzi's conception of morality and his account of the relationship between Heaven and the Way, both of which support an anthropocentric framework. Finally, this paper explores two dimensions of Xunzi's thought especially relevant to environmental ethics: the virtue of “understanding Heaven” ( zhi tian 知天), which requires sensitivity to natural regularities, and the role of ritual ( li 禮) as a means of moderating human interaction with nature and cultivating morality. The resulting framework remains faithful to the Xunzi while providing valuable resources for contemporary environmental ethics.

ABSTRACTThis article surveys recent work on primitive ontology (PO) approaches to quantum mechanics, focusing on proposals that seek to integrate this approach with the metaphysics of causal powers. PO approaches aim to provide a clear metaphysical picture in which the world consists of local entities such as particles, matter density fields or flashes, and these entities compose macroscopic objects, such as scientists and their measuring devices. To account for the behaviour of these local entities, some PO theories invoke the metaphysics of powers. After motivating PO approaches and contrasting them with wave function realism, I consider the development of power‐based POs, contrasting them with both Humean POs and POs which invoke primitive laws. I explain how different power‐based frameworks address key quantum phenomena, and I survey some difficulties, including the Problem of Holism, of small worlds and of top‐down causation. Such challenges are best confronted, I suggest, by drawing on Aristotelian hylomorphism: If powers are grounded in forms that unify physical systems, then power‐based POs can accommodate holistic and context‐sensitive behaviour.

ABSTRACT Do animals have episodic memory—the kind of memory which gives us rich details about particular past events—or is this uniquely human? This might look like an empirical question, but is attracting increasing philosophical attention. We review relevant behavioural evidence, as well as drawing attention to neuroscientific and computational evidence which has been less discussed in philosophy. Next, we distinguish and evaluate reasons for scepticism about episodic memory in animals. In the process, we articulate three pressing philosophical issues underlying these sceptical arguments, which should be the focus of future work. The Problem of Interspecific Variation asks which differences between humans and animal memory mean that an animal has a variant of episodic memory, and which mean that it has a different kind of memory altogether. The Problem of Functional Variation asks how we should conceptualise the functions of episodic memory and other capacities across species and across evolutionary time. Finally, the Problem of Alternatives asks what, besides episodic memory, might explain the evidence—and how we should evaluate competing explanations.

ABSTRACTHow do psychiatrists arrive at their diagnostic conclusions? Though several philosophers of psychiatry have proposed how to understand psychiatric diagnostic reasoning over the last decade, this essential question of the epistemology of psychiatric practice has received little attention. This article introduces the reader to this topic, its importance, and the major theoretical positions presented in the debate, while also pointing to future relevant research in this area of philosophy of psychiatry.

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a rise in the engagement with empirical methods in philosophy. However, explicit discussion of the method and methodology behind such approaches is scarce, in particular for engagement with qualitative ethnographic styles of empirical research. This entry gathers debates from various philosophical subfields where ethnography has found a philosophical use. First, I introduce ethnography and highlight different versions through examples from phenomenology, political philosophy, ethics and philosophy of science. Then, I address three common challenges raised against the relevance and legitimacy of ethnographic philosophy, some specific to ethnography, others shared with experimental philosophy and integrated history and philosophy of science. The entry ends by suggesting some benefits of ethnographic philosophy, including a potential for genuine surprise, the opportunity to fine‐tune and enrichen concepts and a better grasp at philosophical significance in human lives. In addition, I note that ethnography encourages more thoroughgoing philosophical self‐reflection about contextual and situational features of philosophical theories and about the particularities of the philosophers developing them, introducing the idea of ‘naturalising the philosopher’.

ABSTRACT Theoretical underdetermination is a central issue in the Philosophy of Science, having been discussed and debated since the early 20th century. The so‐called “Duhem‐Quine problem” has been used as an umbrella term to refer to a number of problematic features that arise from the lack of a biunivocal correspondence between theory and evidence. However, the now familiar idea that the detection of an empirical phenomenon is inferred from a complex collection of data entails the recognition that not only theories, but also the description of empirical phenomena are underdetermined by evidence. Empirical underdetermination, understood as the underdetermination of evidence (or assumed empirical phenomena) by data, emerges as a major challenge that has yet to be fully recognized and carefully addressed in the philosophy of science. The paper summarizes the distinction between empirical and theoretical underdetermination as it implicitly appears in the literature to date. It presents them as instances of a more general type, both of which arise from the same basic problems, albeit at different levels and with different implications. Important but often overlooked aspects of the empirical/theoretical distinction, the notion of background assumption, and the different roles of evidence will be clarified.