Why Variation Matters to Philosophy

Clinical variation: why it matters.

j 2 1 N o ve m b e r 2 0 16 Vmedications, interventions and procedures may be very different and lead to variation in outcomes. The following articles discusswhy exploring unwarranted variation is a priority for health care systems; how atlases of health care variation act as catalysts of change andwhat health care systems can do to increase appropriate care. In this context, the Australian hea...

Philosophy matters in brain matters

PURPOSE Although most neuroscientists and physicians would argue against Cartesian dualism, Descartes's version of the psyche/soma divide, which has been controversial since he proposed it in the seventeenth century, continues to haunt contemporary neurological diagnoses through terms such as functional, organic, and psychogenic. Drawing on my own experiences as a person with medically unexplai...

Why Learning How to Chase Butterflies Matters: A Response to Recent Commentaries

Why intraspecific trait variation matters in community ecology.

Natural populations consist of phenotypically diverse individuals that exhibit variation in their demographic parameters and intra- and inter-specific interactions. Recent experimental work indicates that such variation can have significant ecological effects. However, ecological models typically disregard this variation and focus instead on trait means and total population density. Under what ...

Why neuroscience matters to cognitive neuropsychology

The broad issue in this paper is the relationship between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. That issue arises particularly sharply for cognitive neurospsychology, some of whose practitioners claim a methodological autonomy for their discipline. They hold that behavioural data from neuropsychological impairments are sufficient to justify assumptions about the underlying modular structure of...