The special sciences are generally taken to include all the sciences above physics, including biochemistry, genetics and the various biological sciences, the brain sciences, cognitive science, psychology, and economics, amongst many others. Because of their growing success over the last century, the special sciences, and their results, play an increasingly central role in philosophy. This is true of issues in the philosophy of mind and psychology, such as the mind-body problem or the nature of emotion, but also in central debates in ethics concerning a person's moral psychology and its implications, in metaphysics, for instance in discussions of personal identity and the possibility of freewill, and in epistemology, through the manifold issues affected by the nature of human cognitive capabilities. Consequently, debates over the nature, and status, of special sciences are understandably vigorous, though unfortunately they are also especially challenging because of the wide range of...