bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Niels Bohr on the Unity of Science
Authors: MacKinnon Edward
Published: January 2016

When the Unity of Science movement organized, Niels Bohr was listed as the first member of the Advisory Committee. He contributed a one page paper to Volume One of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Bohr 1938). This paper stressed, but did not explain, the idea that to bring out the proper unity of science it is necessary to analyze the presuppositions underlying the unambiguous application of even our most elementary concepts. Since this rather trivial paper was the only contribution to the movement Bohr made, he might seem to have little interest in the unity of science.

The opposite was the case. Bohr thought that his explanation of the unity proper to physics was one of his most basic, and certainly his most misunderstood, contributions to science. Yet, he thought that he never succeeded in making his position intelligible to professional philosophers.
The Norms of Social Inquiry and Masculine Experience
Authors: Harding Sandra
Published: January 2016

For more than a century social scientists and philosophers of social science have argued about whether or not the ontology and methodology for inquiry in the physical sciences is appropriate to capture adequately the regularities of social life and their underlying causal determinants. The issue arises because of the prima facie fact that human actions are structured not only by the laws governing the behavior of physical matter, but also by intentional systems—that is, by culture-wide systems of concepts, rules, conventions and beliefs, and by individual systems of perceptions, motives, and goals arrived at within these cultural systems. Consequently, it is not possible either to identify or to classify human actions apart from this intentional dimension within which human action occurs. Whether, and how, this difference in the nature of the subject matter of social inquiry requires “deviating” from the “logic” of the natural sciences then becomes the substance of the dispute.
Similarities and Differences between Evolutionary Theory and the Theories of Physics
Authors: Williams Mary B.
Published: January 2016

In the 1950's and 60's there arose a plethora of claims that the structure of evolutionary theory was intrinsically different from the structures of the theories of physics—and thus from the structure that philosophers of science claimed to be the structure of scientific theories. There were claims:

1)

that evolutionary theory had no laws (Smart 1963);

2)

that evolutionary concepts were so peculiar that their definitions violated the ordinary standards for definitions (Beckner 1959);

3)

that evolutionary theory was not axiomatizable (Beckner 1959);

4)

that evolutionary theory made no falsifiable predictions (Scriven 1959, Manser 1965, Smart 1963);

5)

that evolutionary biology relied on teleological explanations which violated the deductive-nomological explanation form (Hempel 1965); and

6)

that evolutionary biology made significant use of narrative explanations which also violated the deductive-nomological explanation form (Goudge 1961)
Technology and Value Theory
Authors: Smith Carol Ann
Published: January 2016

I begin this paper by surveying the kinds of questions that arise in the emerging field of Technology and Society Studies. This survey leads me to ask if the area of value theory is sufficiently well-developed to sustain intelligent and critical discussion of the value issues in this field. I note that philosophers have had little to say about the kinds of value questions that arise and, in the remainder of the paper, I argue that what little there is has often got off on the wrong foot — either because of assumptions that are wrong-headed or because the approach is question-begging for some of the central value issues.

While the field of Technology and Society Studies is as yet rather ill-defined, a perusal of the literature and the course descriptions suggests the categorization that follows.
Introspection, Observation, and Experiment: An Example Where Experiment Pays Off
Authors: Carden Guy , Dieterich Thomas G.
Published: January 2016

How do we collect data to test theories about syntax and semantics? For most of us, the process is very simple: We have a hypothesis, we construct sample sentences to test it, introspect about their grammaticality or meaning, and move on to modify our hypothesis as necessary. It would be fair to say that the standard method of data collection in syntax and semantics is personal introspection. This personal introspection is not totally uncontrolled, of course: Doubtful cases are checked informally with friends or colleagues; and there is an implicit, check when the referees accept a paper or an audience listens without objecting. What we have, in effect, is the introspection of the professionals, the people who know what the issues are.

This standard method has been enormously successful: Linguists have produced precise and interesting theories about syntax and semantics; and the bulk of the data on which these theories depend is undisputed and, we believe, undisputable.
Some Thoughts on Data and Theory in Linguistics
Authors: Grandy Richard E.
Published: January 2016

Questions about the nature of the appropriate data for linguistics may seem a mundane matter, but they reflect deep issues about'the nature of language and of the science of linguistics, if science it be. Consequently the methodological modifications suggested by Carden and Dieterich (1981) and Zwicky (1981) could have ramifications far beyond a slight broadening of the range of data relevant to syntactic theory. In section 1, I review the arguments for the currently standard theory against the suggestion to broaden the range of data, and in section 2. I try to give a brief historical account of the origins of the presuppositions of the orthodox theory.

The current official conception of the goal of syntactic theory is that it is to distinguish syntactically well-formed strings of a given language from those that are not syntactically well-formed, and to provide structural descriptions of the sentences.
Scientific Realism and Naturalistic Epistemology
Authors: Boyd Richard
Published: January 2016

By “scientific realism” philosophers ordinarily mean the doctrine that non-observational terms in scientific theories should typically be interpreted as putative referring expressions, and that when the semantics of theories is understood that way (“realistically“), scientific theories embody the sorts of propositions whose (approximate) truth can be confirmed by the ordinary experimental methods which scientists employ. There are as many possible versions of scientific realism as there are possible accounts of how “theoretical terms” refer and of how the actual methods of science function to produce knowledge.

What I will do in this paper is to explore the consequences of one such version of scientific realism, a version which embodies the implicatures as well as the implications of the realist slogan that reality is prior to thought.
Hermeneutical Realism and Scientific Observation
Authors: Heelan Patrick A.
Published: January 2016

This paper will summarize positions explained and defended more fully in my book, Space-Perception and The Philosophy of Science (Heelan 1982). The philosophical genre of this paper is that of a hermeneutical phenomenology, it addresses questions from the point of view of such writers as, E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, M. Merleau-Ponty, P. Ricoeur, and H-G. Gadamer (see references). Those who are not familiar with this kind of writing may well find the exposition too brief to be persuasive; those who are, may wonder at the audacity of applying such methods of analysis to the natural sciences. It is unlikely that either group will be entirely pleased with the content of what I have to say.

My principal theses are the following: (1) reality is the content of World, and this comprises whatever is or can be given directly in a public way within perception;
Aleatory Explanations Expanded
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: January 2016

In my paper “Aleatory Explanations” (Humphreys 1981a) I presented the rudiments of a theory of explanation which had the following features:

1)

Explanations of indeterministic phenomena are given by means of a specification of the contributing and counteracting causes involved;

2)

Probability values are not themselves explanatory and explanations need not specify probability values;

3)

Maximal specificity criteria are not part of the logical criteria of adequacy for explanations;

4)

Partial explanations which are nevertheless true can thus be given;

5)

Explanations of this kind show that the traditional ‘X because Y’ pattern of explanation is inadequate for indeterministic causal explanations and must be replaced by ‘X because Y, despite Z’.

In that paper, I restricted myself to explanations of events and their complements, involving only direct causes in two-state Markov chains.
Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability
Authors: Kuhn Thomas S.
Published: January 2016

Twenty years have passed since Paul Feyerabend and I first used in print a term we had borrowed from mathematics to describe the relaationship between successive scientific theories. ‘Incommensurability’ was the term; each of us was led to it by problems we had encountered in interpreting scientific texts (Feyerabend 1962; Kuhn 1962). My use of the term was broader than his; his claims for the phenomenon were more sweeping than mine; but our overlap at that time was substantial. Each of us was centrally concerned to show that the meanings of scientific terms and concepts — ‘force’ and ‘mass’, for example, or ‘element’ and ‘compound’ — often changed with the theory in which they were deployed. And each of us claimed that when such changes occurred, it was impossible to define all the terms of one theory in the vocabulary of the other.
On the Empirical Adequacy of Composite Statistical Hypotheses
Authors: Hanna Joseph F.
Published: January 2016

What are the eplstemolog leal virtues that we value In scientific theories? In The Scientific Image. Bas van Fraassen (1980) argues that the preeminent virtue Is empirical adequacy: the capacity of a theory to “save the phenomena”. In an Intuitive sense a theory Is empirically adequate if “What It says about the observable things and events in this world is true.” This point of view, according to which the eplstemologlcal aim of science is to save the phenomena, van Fraassen calls constructive empiricism. In an earlier “constructive critique” of constructive empiricism (1983), I argued that there were serious problems In van Fraassen's proposal for extending the notion of empirical adequacy to statistical theories. In that paper I suggested an alternative definition for the empirical adequacy of a simple statistical hypothesis: roughly speaking, the idea Is that a simple statistical hypothesis Is empirically adequate provided that there does not exist another simple hypothesis which has a higher likelihood relative to the set of all phenomena (past, present, and future) In the actual world.
The Convergence and Content of Scientific Opinion
Authors: Cushing James T.
Published: January 2016

Two of the most interesting and important questions today in the philosophy of science are (1) how (I.e., by what mechanisms) scientific opinion is made to converge to certain laws and theories and (2) what these laws and theories tell us. Larry Laudan's (1984a) Science and Values addresses the first problem and Nancy Cartwright's (T9BT) How the Laws of Physics Lie the second. Although the Issues are different, they are related and do have an important similarity. Both exhibit a tension between simplicity and complexity. In the case of scientific.consensus, the situation at first seems neat and simplesince there is usually an overall agreement among scientists about the major features of laws and theories. However, a closer look reveals a much more Involved Interplay among several factors to produce that convergence. On the other hand, the actual phenomena of the real world appear quite Involved whereas the fundamental laws science arrives at have a simplicity about them (at least to the trained or Indoctrinated eye).
Quantitative Probabilistic Causality and Structural Scientific Realism
Authors: Humphreys Paul W
Published: January 2016

Rather than distinguishing between the natural and social sciences on the basis of their subject matter, it is often philosophically fruitful to start with the fact that most social phenomena are not amenable to investigation by laboratory experimentation. One can, in some cases, use randomized experimental designs to investigate causal relationships between social phenomena, but ethical and practical difficulties often preclude the use of such techniques. In the absence of these two empirical approaches, two principal alternatives are often used: causal models and quasi-experimentation. I shall focus on the former here, because the techniques involved offer an interesting example of how the context of investigation can affect the structural form of mathematical models used to describe phenomena. I have an ulterior motive, however. Little attempt has been made to link the substantive work on causal modeling with philosophical theories of probabilistic causality.
Kant's Philosophy of Science: The Transition From Metaphysics to Science
Authors: Butts Robert E
Published: January 2016

For many of us nurtured in idealist ways inclining us to unwavering acceptance of Kantian principles, 1951 was a bad year. We read in Reichenbach's The Rise of Saientifio Philosophy of the “disintegration of the synthetic a priori”. Kant had taught us that there are very general principles—each one connected to a primal category of thought—that are necessary in the formation of mathematics and physics and are expressible in nonanalytic propositions. However, since Kant's death in 1804 both mathematics and physics have developed revolutionary traits: non-euclidian geometries, new developments in symbolic logic, relativity physics, and finally, quantum mechanics, sealed the negative fate of Kant's high principles. Henceforth we must accept that there are no non-empty claims about reality that can be counted as necessary or indispensable to mathematics and science.
Causal Processes and Causal Interactions
Authors: Ehring Douglas
Published: January 2016

Wesley Salmon in Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World offers a causal account of scientific explanation (Salmon 1984). In this context he develops an analysis of the concept of causality, an analysis which marks a break with various contemporary theories of causation including the Neo-Humean view, counterfactual theory, and manipulability theory. His analysis also goes well beyond the confines of probabilistic accounts such as that developed by Suppes. Salmon attempts to explicate the concept of causation by way of two concepts, that of a causal process and that of a causal interaction, which, he defines with some precision and care. In this paper I will present a series of problem cases which run contrary to Salmon’s line of analysis.

In developing his analysis of causation Salmon makes use of the notion of a “process”.
Leibniz on Continuity
Authors: Arthur Richard T.W.
Published: January 2016

Leibniz never tired of stressing the fundamental importance of the concept of continuity for philosophy, nor was he shy of attributing major importance to his own struggle through “the labyrinth of the continuum” for the subsequent development of his whole system of thought. Unfortunately, however, his own thought on the subject is something of a labyrinth itself, and from a modern point of view many of his pronouncements are apt to seem blatantly contradictory.

Certain quotations seem to commit him unambiguously to atomism. Thus to de Voider he writes: “Matter is not continuous, but discrete…. The same holds for changes, which are not truly continuous.” (To de Voider, 11th October 1705: G.II.279).2
The Character of Galilean Evidence
Authors: Pitt Joseph C.
Published: January 2016

Concerning evidence there are two important questions: (1) what is going to count as evidence? and (2) what are the appropriate means for employing evidence? These two problems pervade the analysis of the scientific process. They are with us as much today as in Galileo’s time. For example, with respect to contemporary arguments between Evolutionists and Scientific Creationists, if the issue is taken in its cognitive rather than its political dimension, the entire discussion turns on the criteria for acceptable, evidence, i.e, the heart of the problem is disagreement over the status of the data one wants to invoke as evidence.

Many of the disputes between Galileo and his philosophical, interlocutors in his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems turn on some of the same issues that bedevil the debate between evolutionists and creationists, i.e., what is going to count as evidence?
Synthesis, Sensibility, and Kant’s Philosophy of Mathematics
Authors: Van Kirk Carol A.
Published: January 2016

Kant’s philosophy of mathematics presents two fundamental problems of interpretation: (1) Kant claims that mathematical truths or “judgments” are synthetic a priori; and (2) Kant maintains that intuition is required for generating and/or understanding mathematical statements. Both of these problems arise for us because of developments in mathematics since Kant. In particular, the axiomatization of geometry--Kant’s paradigm of mathematical thinking--has made it seem to some commentators as, for example, Russell, that both (1) and (2) are false (Russell 1919, p. 145).2 If virtually all of mathematics, including geometry, is axiomatizable, it would seem that mathematics results in analytic judgments that are totally independent of sensibility, the source, according to Kant, of intuition. In this paper I will address both of these difficulties. I shall argue that Kant’s understanding of both “synthetic” and “intuition” make his position immune to these criticisms.
Instrumental Evaluation in Scientific Knowledge
Authors: Clendinnen F. John
Published: January 2016

Unlike some recent authors, Hilary Putnam recognizes that we can not avoid inquiring about the normative force of the principles that guide scientific reasoning. His answer is in terms of values. In presenting his case for “Internal Realism”, he argues that values are presupposed in statements of fact (1981, pp. 128-134). The central thesis in his argument is that truth is not a correspondence with an “unconceptualized reality” and that “the claim that science seeks to discover the truth can mean no more than that science seeks to construct a world picture which, in the ideal limit, satisfies certain criteria of rational acceptability” (p. 130). We adopt these criteria because having a theory which conforms to them is valuable to us; it is part of human flourishing (pp. 133-134).
Observation and Growth in Scientific Knowledge
Authors: Nola Robert
Published: January 2016

The first published paper on pulsars was entitled, by its five co-authors, “Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source”. (Hewish, et al. 1968). The publication of this paper preceded by some months the coining of the word ‘pulsar’ to refer to such pulsating radio sources. Does it seem odd to talk of observing pulsars? It might seem so since much effort has subsequently gone into identifying pulsars with optically visible stars using conventional light, not radio, telescopes. We can say that the moons of Jupiter are observable since either we can see them through a telescope or, at some future date, astronauts will be able to travel close enough to Jupiter to see its moons without visual aids.
The Paradox of Instrumentalism
Authors: Papineau David
Published: January 2016

J.J.C. Smart says that instrumentalism makes it “surprising that the world should be such as to contain these odd and ontologically disconnected phenomena…. Is It not odd that the phenomena of the world should be such as to make a purely instrumental theory true? On the other hand, if we interpret the theory in a realist way, then we have no need for such a cosmic coincidence…. A lot of surprising facts no longer seem surprising….” (Smart 1963, p. 39).

Intuitively Smart seems right. The instrumentalist, who believes the observational consequences of some theory, but eschews any commitment to the theory itself, ends up believing something far less plausible than the realist, who can account for those consequences in terms of the theory.
Bootstrapping in Un-Natural Sciences: Archaeological Theory Testing
Authors: Wylie Alison
Published: January 2016

Glymour’s boostrapping account of confirmation is meant to show how it is that evidence can bear on a theory in a discriminating, noncircular way even when that theory is used to establish the inferential link between evidence and a test hypothesis. Evidence confirms a theory on his account if, “using the theory, we can deduce from the evidence an instance of the hypothesis i.e., an hypothesis comprising or instantiating the test theory, and the deduction is such that it does not guarantee that we would have gotten an instance of the hypothesis regardless of what the evidence might have been.” (1980, p. 127). Glymour goes on to argue that this strategy of inference should appear most explicitly in the developing and “un-natural” (social) sciences where novel theories are being formulated or applied to new domains (1980, p. 172).
Sociobiology and the Semantic View of Theories
Authors: Horan Barbara L.
Published: January 2016

The semantic view of scientific theories has been defended as more adequate than the “received” view, especially with respect to biological theories (Beatty 1980, 1981; Thompson 1983). However, the semantic view has not been evaluated on its own terms. In this paper I first show how the theory of sociobiology propounded by E.O. Wilson (1975) can be understood on the semantic approach. I then discuss the criticism that Wilson’s theory is beset by the problem of unreliable generalizations. I suggest that this problem results from the use of the model-building strategy in theory. I conclude that the problem is pressing enough to impugn the semantic view as an adequate account of sociobiological theory.

According to proponents of the semantic view of theories, scientific theories function to specify a class of “models,” interpretations, or representations of their postulates.
The Constitution of Domains In Science: A Linguistic Approach
Authors: Mattick Paul
Published: January 2016

The last twenty-five years have seen a major shift in the philosophy of science, from a focus on the logical syntax of the language of science to attempts, based often on detailed historical research, to understand the development of scientific accounts of the world. The once “Received View” of logical empiricism assumed the adequacy of an analysis of scientific knowledge in terms of interpreted logical systems. The limitations of logic as a framework for analysis of the language of science became apparent for what one might call internal and external reasons. Internally, the attempt to formalize the logical syntax of science led to the emergence to view of fundamental problems with the logical construal of laws and with the concept of confirmation.
Probabilistic Reasoning in Expert Systems Reconstructed in Probability Semantics
Authors: Cooke Roger M.
Published: January 2016

Probabilistic reasoning is traditionally represented by inferences of the following form (also called probabilistic explanations):

where A and B are one-place predicates in a first order language, P(A | B) is the conditional probability of observing A among individuals having property B, and q is close to one.

This argument is not logically valid, as the premises may be true while the conclusion is false. Moreover, as it stands, the premises do not even make the conclusion plausible. It may be the case that 90% of the population dies before the age of 85, and that individual j is a member of the population, but this in itself does not make it plausible that individual j will die before the age of 85.
Objective Homogeneity Relativized
Authors: Hanna Joseph F.
Published: January 2016

In his recent book Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World Wesley Salmon provides a detailed explication of objective homogeneity, a concept which is central to his Statistical-Relevance (S-R) model of explanation. One of the purposes of Salmon’s explication is to refute Hempel’s thesis of the epistemic relativity of statistical explanation. According to this thesis “the concept of statistical explanation for particular events is essentially relative to a given knowledge situation” (Hempel 1965, pp. 402-403, quoted in Salmon 1984, p. 48). Salmon introduces (1984, p. 55) the concept that forms the basis for his S-R model as follows: “A reference class A is homogeneous with respect to an attribute B provided there is no set of properties Ci (1 ≤i ≤ k; k ≥ 2) in terms of which A can be relevantly partitioned.
Evaluation of Evidence in Group Selection Debates
Authors: Lloyd Elisabeth A.
Published: January 2016

The conflation of two fundamentally distinct issues has generated serious confusion in the philosophical and biological literature concerning the units of selection. The questions of how a unit of selection is defined, theoretically, is rarely distinguished from the question of how to determine the empirical accuracy of claims--either specific or general--concerning which unit(s) are undergoing selection processes. In this paper, I begin by refining a definition of the unit of selection, first presented by William Wimsatt, that is grounded in the structure of natural selection models. I then explore the implications of this definition for empirical evaluation of group selection models. I examine an objection to Wimsatt’s definition raised by Elliott Sober, and I conclude by indicating how the proposed refined definition can clarify which sorts of empirical evidence could be brought to bear on group selection controversies.
The Transformation of Human Sociobiology
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: January 2016

Critics of human sociobiology need a new image. Intense as the joys of strangling infant sciences may be, they do eventually fade, leaving a desire to nurture some more healthy enterprise. In this essay, I shall attempt to complement the critique given in my (1985) by offering a blueprint for the transformation of human sociobiology.

I start with a point that seems to me essential for understanding the complex of issues surrounding sociobiology: sociobiology is highly diverse. Restricting our attention to what I have called “narrow sociobiology” (Kitcher 1985, p. 115), the application of ideas from evolutionary biology to the study of animal social behavior, we find a range of studies and programs that differ in scope, rigor, and intention. Almost everyone who is concerned with the evolution and function of social behavior pays homage to Darwin (for exceptions, see Ho and Saunders 1984), but this common commitment that covers thinkers as diverse as Richard Lewontin and E. O. Wilson provides no grand conclusion about the nature of sociality in humans or in animals generally.
Reflections on Empirical, External and Ideological Studies of Science
Authors: Koertge Noretta
Published: January 2016

Baltas calls for an empirical theory of the structure and development of Physics—one which gives a unified ac count of both the internal and external aspects of the science. In this paper he proposes a tripartite structure for physical theory and describes the role of socially determined ideological “assumptions” upon that structure.

Since there is very little social consensus amongst philosophers today on many elements of his project, before discussing his proposal in detail it might be helpful to sort out some of the widely disparate enterprises which are associated with terms such as external or ideological when applied to the study of science. Baltas does not always use these terms in quite the ways I would expect.
Cognition and Epistemic Reliability: Comments on Goldman
Authors: Hatfield Gary
Published: January 2016

Goldman has offered a novel conception of epistemology, or, to use his terminology, epistemics. Although the project is complex and terminologically intricate, the central point that sets it apart from traditional epistemology is his conception of the objects of epistemic evaluation. Goldman claims that the objects of epistemic evaluation include not merely the beliefs a person holds and the relation of these beliefs to the evidence, but the processes and methods that are used in arriving at the beliefs. Processes and methods are epistemically commendable, on Goldman's view, to the extent that they reliably produce true beliefs, where “truth” is defined independently of epistemic norms. It is the role of the cognitive and social sciences to identify the processes and methods that are to be evaluated; the cognitive and social sciences thus have an essential role to play in epistemology, though they can by no means replace it.
Which Universal?
Authors: Peterson Philip L.
Published: January 2016

D.A. Armstrong’s account (1983, intimately influenced by Tooley 1977 and Swoyer 1982) of natural laws is that they arerelations between universals.Armstrong doesn’t simply hold that laws are some relationships or other between universals. He also holds that they are first-order universals themselves (1983, pp. 89-90). Each ordinary law-say,causallaw-is numerically identical to some first-order universal. This is a striking, seemingly incredible hypothesis. What is Armstrong thinking of when he says (1983, p. 90):

I propose that the state of affairs, the law, N(F,G), is a dyadic universal, that is, a relation, holding between states of affairs. Suppose that a particular object, a, is F, and so, because of the law N(F,G), it, a, is also G. This state of affairs, an instantiation of the law, has the form Rab, where R = N(F,G), a = a’s being F, and b, = b’s being G:

(N(F,G))(a's being F, b's being G).
Reconstruction of the Optical Revolution: Lakatos vs. Laudan
Authors: Chen Xiang
Published: January 2016

The optical revolution, that is, the replacement of corpuscular optics by wave optics at the beginning of the nineteenth century, has attracted the attention of philosophers of science for a long time. For a long period the cause of the optical revolution was attributed to “crucial experiments” such as Foucault’s experiment on the velocity of light (Sabra 1954, pp.149-51). Later Frankel argued that social and political factors were necessary for the victory of the wave theory (Frankel 1976, p.142). These accounts, however, were severely criticized by recent theorists of scientific change, especially Lakatos and Laudan. Lakatos calls the opinion that accounted for the optical revolution solely by “crucial experiments” naive “instant rationality” (Lakatos 1978, p.68 & 72n). Laudan also regards the attempt to explain scientific revolution mainly by social and political elements as “jumping to a premature conclusion” (Laudan 1977, p.4).
A Defense of a Non-Computational, Interactive Model of Visual Observation
Authors: Paller Bonnie Tamarkin
Published: January 2016

In a recent paper1 I argued that observation can be thought of as the result of a properly composed and functioning observation system. In brief, such a system must be composed of a source object and one or more devices which interact with a receptor. If we think of observation as the result of interaction among components are differing functions, we can approach the problem of describing human sense perception as that of describing one type of observation, differentiated from other types by the organic and species specific nature of the receptor devices. Receptor devices are typed by their specific range of sensitivity, which is best thought of as a limit on the type of devices with which the receiver can interact. One consequence of this view is that observation can be achieved in all sorts of ways by all sorts of organic and non-organic systems as long as they satisfy functional conditions.
Neo-Skinnerian Psychology: A Non-Radical Behaviorism
Authors: Smith Terry L.
Published: January 2016

Radical Behaviorism makes the implausible claim that “the appeal to mind explains nothing at all” (Skinner 1971, p. 186). Clearly, such a claim (if accepted) would lend strong support to the Skinnerian research program, if only because it would eliminate the major competition. But what support remains when such a claim is not accepted? This paper shall argue that the Skinnerian research program need not depend upon the supposition that there is something scientifically illicit or vacuous about the explanations offered by mentalistic psychology. Distinguishing Radical Behaviorism from a position that grows out of Skinner’s writings from 1938 through 1950, it asserts that the latter position provides a conception of the behavior analytic program that is compatible with the basic claims of cognitive and folk psychology.

We may give a rough definition of this position by following Cummins (1983) in distinguishing between two types of scientific theory.
Testing for Convergent Realism
Authors: Aronson Jerrold L.
Published: January 2016

In “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” Larry Laudan presents the realist with these fascinating challenges:

What,then,of realism itself as a ‘scientific’ hypothesis?…If realism has made some novel predictions or been subjected to carefully controlled tests, one does not learn about it from the literature of contemporary realism. (1981, p. 46.)

He then goes on to say:

No proponent of realism has sought to show that realism satisfies those stringent empirical demands which the realist himself minimally insists on when appraising scientific theories. (1981, p. 46)

Not only do I fully endorse what Laudan says in these passages, I think it is time to take him up on these challenges.

Laudan’s position has been that scientific progress can be explained without having to appeal to verisimilitude. Instead, we explain the success of a scientific theory in terms of its subjugation to the cannons of experimental controls: those theories that have been put through proper testing during the course of their formulation are the ones that are most likely to be reliable. (1984, pp. 96-101)
Natural Selection, Hypercycles and the Origin of Life
Authors: Sarkar Sahotra
Published: January 2016

Over the last eighteen years Manfred Eigen and his co-workers have postulated a new theory about the origin of life on earth that has presented a detailed account of how many of the features of extant living organisms (such as a universal genetic code and protein-nucleic acid interdependence) might have arisen from purely physical interactions.2 This theory is critically based on the special dynamical properties of certain chemical cycles called “hypercycles” which cause some of them to exhibit hyperbolic growth over time while undergoing selection. The purpose of this paper is to separate two aspects of this theory and then to study the first one in greater detail. The first aspect consists of a physical account of evolution by natural selection at the molecular level that depends only on the kinetics of certain chemical systems and can be applied to a variety of such systems. The second consists of the special dynamical properties that are exhibited when this account is applied, specifically, to hypercycles.
General Causation
Authors: Carroll John W.
Published: January 2016

Philosophers of science, e.g. Cartwright (1979) and Skyrms (1980), have given accounts of general causation in probabilistic terms; not surprising since we often accept general causal sentences as true despite being aware of apparent counterinstances. Consider:

(E1) Smoking is a cause of heart attacks.

We accept (E1) as true though aware of smokers who never have a heart attack. Here I quickly review familiar problems in two existing probabilistic accounts, offer a new objection, and suggest the beginnings of an alternative account.

The traditional model of general causation maintains that causes, and only causes, raise the probability of the effect That is:

(TM) F is a cause of G if and only if .

Despite some intuitive appeal, the traditional model faces at least three basic objections. First, consider cases of epiphenomena in which there are properties F, G, and H such that F is a cause of G, F is a cause of H, but G is not a cause of H and H is not a cause of G.
Impartiality and Causal Decision Theory
Authors: Armendt Brad
Published: January 2016

Causal decision theory (CDT) is the best theory of rational choice now available.2 I intend to provide some support for that claim in part I of this paper by responding to two criticisms of CDT. The first criticism says that CDT is superfluous, since it does no better in the problems that matter than does evidential decision theory (EDT) at recommending correct choices. A second criticism says that CDT by itself is flawed: according to this view, there are problems in which CDT makes bad recommendations, unless it is supplemented with an additional deliberation mechanism, either involving metatickles or screening for ratifiable choices.3 I will argue in response to the first criticism that CDT is genuinely better than any EDT of the most sophisticated sort: there are problems where CDT gives better recommendations, and they are problems that do matter.
Interpreting Science
Authors: Fine Arthur
Published: January 2016

In the quantum theory the state of an evolving system is represented by a function that depends on time and perhaps on some other parameters. It is generally called the “psi-function”, and it evolves according to an equation called the Schrödinger equation. Indeed Schrödinger introduced the psi-function into physics. In the beginning (i.e., in 1926) Schrödinger thought that the psi-function referred to a fuzzy bit of reality. That is, he pictured an electron, whose state was given by a certain psi-function, as a pulsating bit of electricity, something like an electrical cloud or a patch of electrical fog. In short order, however, Schrödinger saw difficulties with this interpretation, and after trying out more sophisticated refinements he abandoned the whole project. What he abandoned was the program of trying to interpret the psi-function as directly representing some spatiotemporal features of the object whose state it characterized.
A Philosopher Looks at String Theory
Authors: Weingard Robert
Published: January 2016

Before we, as philosophers, take a look at string theory I want to mention that more than one person has suggested to me that it is still too early for philosophical and foundational studies of string theory. Indeed, the suggestion emphasizes, since string theory is still in the process of development, and its physical and mathematical principles are not completely formulated, there is, in a sense, no theory for the philosopher to analyze. And I must admit that I think there is something to this suggestion. In a sense I hope I will make clear, there does not yet exist a precise mathematical formulation for string theory as there is Hilbert space for (elementary) quantum theory, and Riemann spacetime for general relativity. Because these latter formulations exist, we can ask precise questions, and prove precise theorems about their interpretation.
String Theory, Quantum Gravity and Locality
Authors: Taylor Cyrus C.
Published: January 2016

In this talk, I'd like to explain a little bit about what string theory is, why theoretical physicists are so excited about it, and why I think that it will have a rather profound impact on some of our ideas about the structure of the physical world.

Let me begin by reviewing the way we think about quantum mechanical particles in a relativistic setting. The classical dynamics of the theory is specified by assuming that the action for a given particle trajectory is proportional to the relativistic interval traversed by the particle. If one sets up a canonical formalism with the variable parametrizing the particle trajectory playing the role of time, then one finds that the four-momentum of the particle is constrained, with the constraint just being the relativistic relation between the mass, energy, and three-momentum of a particle. The particle thus lives on a subspace of the full phase space, and one finds that on this subspace, the Hamiltonian for the system vanishes.
From Micro to Macro: A Solution to the Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics
Authors: Bub Jeffrey
Published: January 2016

Philosophical debate on the measurement problem of quantum mechanics has, for the most part, been confined to the non-relativistic version of the theory. Quantizing quantum field theory, or making quantum mechanics relativistic, yields a conceptual framework capable of dealing with the creation and annihilation of an indefinite number of particles in interaction with fields, i.e. quantum systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. I want to show that a solution to the standard measurement problem is available if we exploit the properties of the infinite quantum models available in this broader conceptual framework.

There is a qualitative difference between quantum systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom and quantum systems with a finite number of degrees of freedom. In the infinite case, there exist many unitarily inequivalent irreducible Hilbert space representations of the algebra of observables of the system. In the finite case, there is only one such representation.
Modern Physics and the Philosophy of Science
Authors: Shapere Dudley
Published: January 2016

The focus of this paper will be on certain aspects of three concepts, those of existence, explanation, and force, together with some related ideas. Specifically, I want to look at some of the roots of those concepts both in written history and, somewhat speculatively, in more primitive circumstances of the history of the human species; and I want to compare certain aspects of the three concepts with their rational descendants in the theories and expectations of contemporary physics. Although these topics are interesting and important in themselves, and there is much more to say about them, my primary aim in the present essay will be to extract some methodological implications from them regarding the problems and methods of the philosophy of science. Indeed, some of the ways in which the topics are important for philosophers of science will be brought out by the discussion of those methodological implications.
Confirmation, Complexity and Social Laws
Authors: Kincaid Harold
Published: January 2016

Two attitudes largely dominate current philosophic thinking about the social sciences. One argues that the social science are not and cannot be real sciences—because the social sciences have not and probably cannot produce anything like the laws of the natural sciences. The other attitude—coming from the hermeneutic tradition—defends the social sciences, but only by arguing that laws are irrelevant to social explanation. Disparate as they are, both traditions share the assumption that laws in the social sciences are beyond reach. In this paper I argue the opposite thesis—viz. that social laws are both a possibility and actuality.

Philosophers have typically approached laws in the social sciences by an old-fashioned route—by means of relatively a priori conceptual analysis. One or several necessary conditions for laws are identified, usually by appeal to intuitions. Then it is argued that no alleged law in the social sciences could have the necessary features.
Ceteris Paribus Conditions as Prior Knowledge: A View from Economics
Authors: de Marchi Neil , Kim Jinbang
Published: January 2016

We take it that what is intended by “laws” in the title of this session—“Confirming Ceteris Paribus Laws in the Social Sciences”—is reliable rather than fortuitous relations, that is, Millian “tendencies,” with “forcing” properties. These refer to causes which do their work whether or not interfered with, or even counteracted by, other causes. Early econometricians had this in mind when they referred to “autonomous” relations (or behavioral relations). We entirely beg the question of how we know when we are dealing with genuine causes and with the related question how we come by autonomous relations. Instead, we concentrate upon some implications of our supposing that we can identify the experimental conditions necessary to confirm the operation of whatever tendency is in question.

Another expression for these experimental conditions is the steps necessary in order to transform a theoretical model into an estimable one.
Paradigms, Populations and Problem-Fields: Approaches to Disagreement
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: January 2016

How do we characterize theoretical disagreement and how does this translate into strategies for practicing scientists? I integrate Kuhn’s (1962) notions of paradigms and problem-fields with Hull’s (1982,1988) concept of populational variation and Shapere’s (1974) characterization of domains in interpreting the Ox-Phos Controversy in bioenergetics (1961-1977). The analysis highlights the differences between intraparadigm disagreement (based on proposed solutions to shared problems) and interparadigm disagreement (based on the problems themselves and views of relevant domain).

Kuhn (1959,1962) introduced the notion that a single, uniform paradigm guides ‘normal science’. He further suggested that scientific communities undergo gestalt-like changes in research focus, implying that all disagreement is based on ‘incommensurable’ paradigms. Philosophers and historians of science concerned largely with how consensus is established (see Laudan 1984; Laudan and Laudan 1989) have found this problematic as a universal model (e.g., Lakatos and Musgrave 1970; Laudan 1977).
Herbert Simon’s Computational Models of Scientific Discovery
Authors: Downes Stephen
Published: January 2016

Herbert Simon’s work on scientific discovery deserves serious attention by philosophers of science for several reasons. First, Simon was an early advocate of rational scientific discovery, contra Popper and logical empiricist philosophers of science (Simon 1966). This proposal spurred on investigation of scientific discovery in philosophy of science, as philosophers used and developed Simon’s notions of “problem solving” and “heuristics” in attempts to provide rational accounts of scientific discovery (See Nickles 1980a, Wimsatt 1980). Second, Simon promoted and developed many of the crucial techniques and methods used in cognitive science. One is the use of computers to model internal psychological processes, a technique central to his account of scientific discovery. Another is protocol analysis, the use of the verbal reports of experimental subjects in psychology to construct accounts of their psychological processes. Protocol analysis is given a detailed formulation by Simon (Simon and Ericsson 1984), and is modified for use in the study of scientific cognition in the paper on Krebs (Kulkarni and Simon 1988).
Does Representational Content Arise from Biological Function?
Authors: Hall Richard J.
Published: January 2016

Let us assume that some organisms, humans at least and the other higher animals, have internal states and behavioral states that represent things external to themselves. One of the questions that everyone would like answered about these states is: In virtue of what does such a representational state get the specific content that it has? An answer to this question that’s popular just now is: In virtue of its biological function. I believe there is a deep reason why such an answer can’t work. I shall present that reason in this paper.

First, we need to be clear about the notion of biological function that’s being appealed to here. In particular, we need to distinguish two fairly different ways of thinking about function. We could think of something’s function as what it contributes to the present functioning or output of some complex system of which it is a part. Roughly, this is Cummins’ view in (Cummins 1984).