bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sellars on Scientific Realism and Perceiving
Authors: Cornman James W.
Published: January 2016

In his paper prepared for the 1976 meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Professor Sellars has raised two quite different objections, one against Professor van Fraassen and one against me. Although it may be that I should limit my reply to the issue concerning my theory of perceiving that Sellars raised, I cannot resist injecting myself into the debate between Sellars and van Fraassen. One reason I want to engage in their battle is that I find reasons for disagreeing with both of them on certain important issues which they have debated. My hope is that by joining their discussion I will help clarify the issues involved. After that, however, I will reply to Sellars’ objection to my theory of perceptual experience and perceiving.

Sellars and van Fraassen are diametrically opposed on the issue of scientific realism versus scientific instrumentalism.
Savage's Omelet
Authors: Jeffrey Richard
Published: January 2016

Consider an example. Your wife has just broken five good eggs into a bowl when you come in and volunteer to finish making the omelet. A sixth egg, which for some reason must either be used for the omelet or wasted altogether, lies unbroken beside the bowl. You must decide what to do with this unbroken egg. Perhaps it is not too great an oversimplification to say that you must decide among three acts only, namely, to break it into the bowl containing the other five, to break it into a saucer for inspection, or to throw it away without inspection ([15], p. 13).

The foregoing is the only example that L. J. Savage uses in the book that made Bayesian decision theory respectable. In discussing this example, Savage made a very interesting claim, that I want to explore here. The exploration will be far from complete.
Decision Theory and the Rationality of Ends
Authors: Waldner Ilmar
Published: January 2016

One of the more important directions in which work in decision theory is moving is towards the consideration of possible norms not only upon the choices of actions but also upon preferences among the outcomes. There is beginning to be felt a need to explore rationality conditions upon desires, or goals, or preferences, in the same way that rationality conditions upon beliefs and upon choices of actions have been explored. I have suggested on another occasion that there are also reasons to explore the possibility of norms on the processes of planning, design of alternatives, and adaptation. I will not be dealing with these latter issues in this paper, however. Neither do I want now to discuss at length the reasons for incorporating norms on goals, etc., into a decision theory. Yet perhaps I need to motivate the project somewhat at the outset.
The Interplay between Theory and Observation in the Solar Model of Hipparchus and Ptolemy
Authors: Okruhlik Kathleen
Published: January 2016

Accounts of ancient mathematical astronomy tend to err in either of two directions as regards the relationship between theory and observation. On the one hand, there are overly positivistic accounts according to which it is assumed that all theoretical progress made by the ancients was rendered possible by the increasing bulk and accuracy of observational data. On the other hand, there are those authors who, whenever they are confronted with a discrepancy between the observational report of an ancient and a modern result, are only too quick to conclude that the alleged observations were fudged (or even manufactured out of thin air) in order to support certain pre-existing theoretical commitments. It would appear from the case studies cited below that the truth about the relationship between observational data and theoretical presuppositions is somewhat more complicated than either of these two extreme accounts would allow.
Have Species Become Déclassé?
Authors: Caplan Arthur L.
Published: January 2016

There is no more popular pastime in the literature of the philosophy of biology than analyzing the concept of species. This is partly due to the fact that the concept is such a prominent one in presentations of evolutionary theory. It is also a result of the fact that philosophers and biologists have struggled without a great deal of success to formulate a definition of species that would be acceptable for all the diverse purposes of the biological sciences.

For some time, philosophers of biology assumed that, whatever problems of definition and explication exist regarding the concept of a species, the ontological status of the concept was certain. Species have long been viewed as classes. Indeed, they have been viewed as paradigmatic examples of classes of a special variety. Since the traits of organisms vary from creature to creature as well as from generation to generation, a special set of properties must be used to group or aggregate organisms into species.
The End-Use Problem in Engineering Ethics
Authors: Rogers C. Thomas
Published: January 2016

Almost everyone agrees that new technologies frequently have profound effects upon how we live as individuals, as groups, and as societies. As one author puts it: “One of the most persistent themes in the social sciences, history, and the humanities is the impact of technology and technological change on all aspects of social life.” (Merrill 1968, p. 576). Technology has come to be a central concern in much public debate on such issues as nuclear power, industrial and automobile pollution, transportation systems, energy, and military hardware.

Always bearing in mind Francis Bacon's claim that knowledge is power, we develop and employ technology for a variety of economic and social reasons. Moreover, technology is “people-embodied”, engineers being the principal agents of technological innovation and, thus, social change.
Mackie's Singular Causality and Linked Overdetermination
Authors: Ennis Robert H.
Published: January 2016

In The Cement of the Universe J. L. Mackie offered—with supplementation—a necessary-condition analysis of singular causal claims: “It seems that if any X is both necessary in the circumstances for and causally prior to Y, we shall say that X caused Y; also, wherever we are prepared to say that X caused Y we are prepared to say that X was necessary in the circumstances for and causally prior to Y” (p. 51). As Mackie interprets ‘necessary’, this is a counter-factual analysis.

Although there are difficulties with treating necessity (supplemented with the indicated qualifications) as sufficient for our being justified in saying that X caused Y (argued by Berofsky 1977 and Earman 1976, among others), I want to challenge the second half of the analysis, because refuting it seems to shake more deeply my sympathies for necessary-condition analyses.
Economics, Risk-Cost-Benefit Analysis, and the Linearity Assumption
Authors: Shrader-Frechette K. S.
Published: January 2016

Risk assessment, or risk-cost-benefit analysis (RCBA), an offshoot of decision analysis, has been widely touted as a “developing science” (see, for example, Levine 1979, p. 634). Used to help administrators make decisions on how to spend money, this set of procedures is directed at calculating whether the expected benefits from a proposed activity outweigh its expected risks or costs. For example, experts might wish to determine, given the risk of nuclear core melt and the possible resultant release of radioactive materials, whether additional containment (for reactor vessels) would be cost-effective.

In the sixties, RCBA was integrated into the planning and budgeting efforts of many federal agencies in the defense, aerospace, and energy fields. In the seventies, a number of regulatory agencies controlling environmental and occupational hazards likewise began to use the technique.
Was Carnap a Complete Verificationist in the Aufbau?
Authors: Creath Richard
Published: January 2016

Was Carnap a complete verificationist in the Aufbau? The question is asked in the precise sense which has been standard since 1936 in the work of such classical writers as Carnap, Hempel and Scheffler. It is not an idle question because many, if not most, writers including Carnap himself have thought that he was such a verificationist in the Aufbau. Moreover, it is generally agreed that verificationism in this sense is a serious mistake. I propose to argue that the Aufbau does not in fact embrace such a verificationism and to base my argument on evidence directly from the Aufbau and surrounding documents.

Since 1936 ‘verificationism’ has been standardly used in the sense of a theory of empirical meaningfulness according to which a statement is meaningful if and only if it is possible that there be evidence that we might actually obtain which would conclusively establish the statement as true.
The Incredibility of Rejecting Belief-Desire-Action Explanations
Authors: MacKay Alfred F.
Published: January 2016

An argument of Donald Davidson's (1970, 1973) has convinced many people that there is something suspect about the commonsense, belief-desire-action explanations that most of us apply to human behavior. Alexander Rosenberg (1980, 1983) has been convinced by Davidson's argument, and uses its conclusion (together with some ideas about sociobiology) to explain what he regards as the persistent failures of the social sciences. In this paper I shall not comment directly upon Davidson's argument. Instead, I will discuss an unacceptable implication of Rosenberg's use of it. Whether this reflects on Davidson's argument I leave for others to decide.

This is how Rosenberg uses the conclusion of Davidson's argument to explain the (alleged) failures of economics.

Philosophers have shown that the terms in which ordinary thought and the behavioral sciences describe the cause and effects of human action do not describe “natural kinds,” : they do not divide nature at the joints.
Probabilistic Explanation and Probabilistic Causality
Authors: Hanna Joseph F.
Published: January 2016

The subject of this panel discussion is probabilistic explanation. However, I would like to broaden the scope of my remarks to include the subject of probabilistic causality as well. For, I will argue in this paper that recent attempts to develop a theory of objective probabilistic causality are vulnerable to the same criticisms that in a previous paper I have advanced against the theories of objective probabilistic explanation proposed by Salmon and Fetzer.

During the past decade or so, both Salmon and Fetzer have written widely on the subject of probabilistic explanation, - and the Statistical-Relevance and Causal-Relevance models for which they are, respectively, well known have been extensively discussed in the literature. During this same period, Patrick Suppes' (1970) monograph has been a common reference point for discussions of probabilistic causality (though as Salmon points out in a recent article , Suppea' account shares many features with earlier accounts of causality proposed by Good and Reichenbach).
The Modern Synthesis: Its Scope and Limits
Authors: Sober Elliott R.
Published: January 2016

The Modern Synthesis, according to Gould (1980, p. 119), “has broken down on both its fundamental claims: extrapolationism (gradual allelic substitution for all evolutionary change) and nearly exclusive reliance on selection leading to adaptation.” In another place (1982b, p. 380), he writes that “the essence of Darwinism lies in the claim that natural selection is a creative force, and in the reductionist assertion that selection upon individual organisms is the locus of evolutionary change.” There is a trivial question of terminology here, and perhaps a less trivial question of historiography. Does Darwinism have an essence, and was the Modern Synthesis as monolithic as all that? Sewall Wright used to be routinely cited as one of the main synthesizers. Does it now turn out that his models of interdemic selection retroactively cast him into the outer darkness (on which see Orzack 1981 and Gould 1981)?
On Writing the History of Special Relativity
Authors: Earman John , Glymour Clark , Rynasiewicz Robert
Published: January 2016

Einstein himself had a few words to say about the writing of the history of science. From the first of his famous conversations with Einstein, Robert Shankland relates: “Then he gave me his ideas on historical writing of science. ‘Nearly all historians of science are philologists and do not comprehend what physicists were aiming at, how they thought and wrestled with their problems… .’ The struggle with their:problems, their trying everything to find a solution which came at last often by very indirect means, is the correct picture.” (Shankland 1963, p. 50).

Why should we take these words seriously? After all, Einstein was not an historian, and, unless we are to pose him as an authority on every topic, these comments represent but a personal opinion. This, however, is precisely why they should be taken seriously, if we are interested in the history of Einstein's own accomplishments.
Is The Visual System As Smart As It Looks?
Authors: Churchland Patricia Smith
Published: January 2016

Here is one way to portray the history of research on the visual system. It consists of a rivalry between those who discern the benchmarks of intelligence in visual perception, and those who seek to show how the appearance of intelligence can be stripped away to reveal the reality of essential stupidity. In the main the rivalry has been exciting and productive, as the two egg each other on to ever more extreme exertions; that is to exhibit demonstrations of ever more cunning ways in which stupid elements can be wired and assembled to yield smart looking results, and by reply, to exhibit demonstrations of ever more subtle and striking performances of the visual system which betoken intelligence and defy reduction by existing reductive hypotheses. The demonstrations of intelligence have typically come from behavioral experiments concerning, for example, illusory contours, and constancy in such things as size.perception and orientation perception.
Where the Theory of Probability Fails
Authors: Pitowsky Itamar
Published: January 2016

The purpose of this paper is to present a local solution to the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky (E.P.R.) paradox by way of a mechanical analogue (roulette) and then to note some of its consequences for the foundations of mathematics and probability theory. The detailed mathematical development of the model involves some highly specialized fields in mathematics (set theory, measure theory and group theory). My intention is to avoid these technicalities as much as possible. A complete account that includes proofs and application to physics is in Pitowsky (1982a, 1982b, 1983). Some mathematics is, however, indispensable. I shall denote by x,y,z,w unit vectors in the three dimensional Euclidean Space. If x,y are unit vectors, is the (small) angle between x and y so that 0 ≤ ≤ Π.
Philosophy of Science and Public Policy
Authors: Suppes Patric
Published: January 2016

Many persons would defend a sharp comparison of public policy and public science with judgments uniformly unfavorable to policy. Science is pure, policy is not. Science is essentially theoretical, policy is not. Science is rational, policy is not. Science deals in the factual and uncontroversial, policy does not. Although it is not my claim that public science and public, policy are the same thing, it will be a central thesis of what I have to say that the resemblances between public science and public policy are much closer than they seem, and consequently the philosophy of science and the philosophy of public policy are not widely divergent.

There is one meaning of philosophy of public policy, however, that I want to stay clear of. It is also associated with a meaning that can be attached to the philosophy of science.
Biological Science and Feminist Values
Authors: Ruse Michae
Published: January 2016

My topic is the relationship between science and values. Specifically, I will look at biological science, especially evolutionary theorizing, and at those values held dear (not to mention those values abhorred) by supporters of the feminist movement. Since discussions of this nature rapidly take on all of the fervour of a revivalist camp meeting, it is appropriate to begin with a text. I draw mine from Valley of the Amazons, the recent novel by Noretta Koertge. The conversation is between two women, Helen who is mllitantly anti-male, and Tretona, the heroine, who keeps one foot in the real world (of a kind), namely a philosophy of science department.

“So is the claim that men evolved after women? That's pretty speculative, isn't it? Just sounds like an inversion of the old Adam-before-Eve story to me.”
Messianic vs Myopic Realism
Authors: Levi Isaa
Published: January 2016

Advocates and opponents of nuclear power agree that cold water reactors will not explode like atom boaba. Such a logical poaaibility is incompatible with our knowledge of the design of such plants and the physical principles regulating their operation.

No such knowledge rules out the possibility of a core meltdown. Estimates of the rate at which such meltdowns will occur range from one in a million years (so that the probability of a reactor running one year without a meltdown occurring is 0.999999) to one in a thousand years (so that the probability of no meltdown in one year of operation is 0.9990005). (These probabilities are computed on the assumption that the production of meltdowns is a poisson process.)

Some philosophers think the difference between the hypothesis about atomic explosions and the one about core meltdowns to be a matter of degree.
Marx and the Objectivity of Science
Authors: Railton Pete
Published: January 2016

Karl Marx has written that “modern Industry … makes science a productive force distinct from labor and presses it into the service of capital” (1867, p. 361) Moreover, according to Marx, “The ideas of the ruling class are In every epoch the ruling ideas”, which are “nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships” (1846, p. 64). Part of what Marx means by ‘ideal expression’ is revealed when he argues that ruling ideas have a legitimating function: a ruling class must “represent its Interest as the conmon interest”, “give its ideas the form of universality, ana represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.” (1846, pp. 65-66).

The idea that scientific inquiry is objective is unquestionably among the ruling ideas of our epoch, and it represents science as serving not the Interests of a particular class, but a purely general interest in the understanding of nature.
How to Construct a Falsifiable Theory in Which the Universe Came Into Being Several Thousand Years Ago
Authors: Tipler Frank J
Published: January 2016

As everyone knows, in almost all modern cosmological models the origin of the Universe is placed between 10 and 20 billion years ago (van den Bergh 1984). The only exception I am aware of is the steady state theory, which has recently been given new life by the inflationary universe model (see Gott 1982, and Schramm's conference presentation), and which requires the universe to be infinitely old. No modern cosmological theory holds the Universe's age to be a mere 6,000 years, the traditional value in the West for centuries (Ussher 1660; Whiston 1696, 1717; Haber 1959). It is universally thought that radioactive dating and astronomical observation have definitely ruled out such a short age for the Universe. It is universally thought that it is impossible to construct a falsifiable theory which is consistent with the thousands of observations indicating an age of billions of years, but which holds that the Universe is only a few thousand years old.
Quantum Disjunctive Facts
Authors: McGrath James H.
Published: January 2016

To the memory of John D. Trimmer

This paper assesses the impact of disjunctive facts on the quantum logic read off procedure. The purpose of the procedure is to transfer a significant quantum structure to a set of propositions; its first step is an attempt to discover that structure. Here I propose that disjunctive facts as traditionally conceived have blocked the procedure at its first step and have therefore subverted the best-known attempts to read off quantum logic. Recently however Allen Stairs has proposed a view of disjunctive facts which re-establishes the possibility of reading off quantum logic. Both the traditional conception and Stairs’ revision of disjunctive facts are interesting in their own right, independent of quantum propositional logic.

Too many things are called ‘quantum logic’. The term is disentangled and notation is fixed in this preliminary step which relies on basic lattice theory.
Duhem on Maxwell: A Case-Study in the Interrelations of History of Science and Philosophy of Science
Authors: Ariew Roger , Barker Peter
Published: January 2016

Since the revival of historicist philosophy of science in the 1960s many philosophers have acknowledged a debt to Duhem. But Duhem’s opinions are imperfectly understood and, as McMullin has shown in his (1970) and (1979), there are many strands in the current revival of historicism. We consider here Duhem’s views on the role of history in the appraisal of scientific theories. However, there is no single text offering Duhem’s views on the subject; rather, they are revealed during their application to various historical and contemporary cases. Duhem’s most sustained examination of a contemporary case is his critique of Maxwell’s science and scientific methodology.

Duhem’s critique of Maxwell is not a set of isolated or incidental dicta, but the expression of Duhem’s mature thought over the last quarter-century of his life, ranging from (at least) 1893 to his death in 1916.
The Logical Skeleton of Darwin's Historical Methodology
Authors: Williams Mary B.
Published: January 2016

An apparently peculiar form of explanation is found in evolutionary biology (and other historical fields); it is called a genetic explanation by Beckner (1959) (and, in a more general discussion, by Hempel (1965)), a narrative explanation by Goudge (1961), and a Darwinian history by Kitcher (1985). Kitcher, assuming that the Darwinian history has some kind of logically respectable structure, is primarily concerned with arguing that it is the cornerstone of Darwin’s historical methodology; Beckner and Goudge, on the other hand, assuming that the genetic (or narrative) explanation is an important part of evolutionary biology, are primarily concerned with the difficulty of fitting this form of explanation into a logically respectable structure. Adopting the narrative explanation terminology, and assuming that the narrative explanation is central to Darwin’s historical methodology and to the methodology of contemporary evolutionary biology, I will in this paper delineate its logically respectable structure.
Consensus and Evolution in Science
Authors: Munevar Gonzalo
Published: January 2016

The bulk of this paper will be divided into three sections. I will first sketch what I take to be the main problem in the epistemology of science and explain how the issue of consensus is related to this problem. I will then try to solve the problem by using a social conception of scientific rationality based on evolutionary ideas. And I will finally elaborate that social conception by responding to several objections.

For over two decades now, many philosophers have talked about the existence of a crisis in the epistemology of science. This crisis presumably came about as the result of the dispute between two schools of thought: the logical and the socio-historical. The logical school is associated with the analytic and empiricist tradition in the field and is supposed to defend the rationality of science. The socio-historical, whose most notorious exponents are Kuhn (1970) and Feyerabend (1975), has been accused of irrationalism.
Against Correspondence: A Constructivist View of Experiment and the Real
Authors: Pickering Andy
Published: January 2016

This paper is about realism. The ideas presented were developed as part of a response to a persistent criticism levelled against the relativist/constructivist programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), namely that this programme fails to allow the real any role in the articulation of scientific thought. This criticism I believe to be mistaken, and justified, if at all, only by the relative silence of the SSK tradition on the role of the real. To indicate that this silence is a contingent, rather than a necessary attribute of the tradition, my aim here is to explore what can be said about the relation between the real and the articulated on the basis of empirical studies of scientific practice.

To situate what follows, let me note that the standard philosophical debate on realism concerns the reality, or lack of it, of unobservable entities appearing in well confirmed theories (Leplin 1984).
The Hole Argument
Authors: Norton John
Published: January 2016

The “hole argument” shows that spacetime substantivalism leads to a radical form of indeterminism in a broad class of spacetime theories. My purpose in this note is twofold. First I shall present a short and informal version of the argument in the form developed in Earman and Norton (1987). Second I will show how the argument can be extended to the case of “manifold plus further structure” substantivalism whenever that further structure admits certain common symmetries.

The hole argument depends on the possibility of displaying two models of some spacetime theory which agree everywhere but within a small neighborhood of the spacetime manifold. To illustrate how two such models are arrived at, I will describe the construction for the easy to visualize special case of a spatially homogeneous and isotropic expanding universe in general relativity. It will be clear how the construction can be extended to other spacetime theories.
Geometry, Time and Force in the Diagrams of Descartes, Galileo, Torricelli and Newton
Authors: Grosholz Emily R.
Published: January 2016

Mathematics plays a central role in the description, explanation and manipulation of natural phenomena. To what extent, and how and why mathematics applies to nature is a problem that has long occupied philosophers. Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Mach and Poincaré, to mention some of the most distinguished names, offer global solutions to this problem that are based on deep-lying metaphysical assumptions. In this essay, I would like to suggest an alternative approach, which is piecemeal rather than global, and historical before it is metaphysical.

I want to propose, first, that the question of applied mathematics be recast as a question about how mathematics and physics, a physics “always already” mathematized, are partially unified at various points in history, in such a way that they can share certain items, problems and methods while nonetheless remaining quite distinct. And, second, I suggest that these unifications may be quite heterogeneous and variable over time.
The Semantic Approach and its application to Evolutionary Theory
Authors: Lloyd Elisabeth A.
Published: January 2016

The semantic view of theory structure, as developed by Suppes (1957,1967), Suppe (1974, 1976, 1977, 1988), and van Fraassen (1970, 1972, 1980), represents theories as classes of models or structures. These models are, on the version of the semantic approach used here, defined by specifying their laws, parameters, and variables. The semantic approach to theory structure is simply a method of formalizing the content of scientific theories.

In a series of articles and a book, I have analyzed the structure of modern evolutionary theory using the semantic view as a framework (Lloyd 1984, 1986a, 1986b, 1987a, 1987b, 1988, forthcoming; cf. Thompson 1983, 1985, 1988). I shall briefly recap the analyses I have done, in order to demonstrate the range of problems accessible to the semantic view.

First, I have used the semantic view to analyze the structure of population genetics models, including kin and group selection models.
When Fair Betting Odds are not Degrees of Belief
Authors: Seidenfeld T. , Schervish M.J. , Kadane J.B.
Published: January 2016

The “Dutch Book” argument, tracing back to Ramsey (1926) and deFinetti (1974), offers prudential grounds for action in conformity with personal probability. Under several structural assumptions about combinations of stakes (that is, assumptions about the combination of wagers), your betting policy is consistent (coherent) only if your fair-odds are probabilities. The central question posed here is the following one: Besides providing an operational test of coherent betting, does the “Book” argument also provide for adequate measurement (elicitation) of the agent’s degrees of beliefs? That is, are an agent’s fairodds also his/her personal probabilities for those events?

We argue the answer is “No!” The problem is created by state-dependent utilities. The methods of elicitation proposed by Ramsey, by deFinetti and by Savage (1954), are inadequate to the challenge of state-dependent values.1
Reproducibility as a Methodological Imperative in Experimental Research
Authors: Hones Michael J.
Published: January 2016

In experimental scientific research, such as that conducted in High-Energy Physics (HEP), there are a number of problems which are unique to the experimental endeavor in contrast to theoretical research. The preparation of a sample of data to be analyzed requires a number of complicated and interrelated procedures to insure the purity or quality of the data. Thus, for example, in an experimental study of meson-baryon scattering, the separation of events of one type of scattering from others of similar configuration (see the discussion of different configurations in section II) requires intricate and sophisticated procedures along with the application of a number of criteria and standards of analysis. In the case of theoretical research, there are a number of philosophical discussions which formulate certain criteria or norms that theorists usually invoke in their evaluation of theories as well as in the actual choice of one theory over another.
Phylogenetic Analogies in the Conceptual Development of Science
Authors: Mishler Brent D.
Published: January 2016

David Hull’s approach to science, which culminated in his important book Science as a Process(1988), represents an unprecedented conjunction of philosophy of science with the results and concepts of a particular science. Hull takes an evolutionary approach to the conceptual development of science, importing much of his explanatory framework from comparative biology, the discipline where his empirical observations of scientists have been made. On the surface, such a cozy relationship between data, theory, and metatheory leads to worries about circular reasoning (Mishler 1989). Nevertheless, I will argue here that Hull’s approach is basically sound, and that the strength of his arguments comes precisely from his recognition of key analogies between the evolution of organisms and the conceptual evolution of scientists; however, certain disanalogies must also be taken into account.

Comparative biology can be divided into two distinct (although interrelated) halves based on differing orientations and types of questions asked.
Form and Order in Evolutionary Biology: Stuart Kauffman's Transformation of Theoretical Biology
Authors: Burian Richard M. , Richardson Robert C.
Published: January 2016

Stuart Kauffman’s forthcoming book, The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1991), is a large and ambitious attempt to bring about a major reorientation in theoretical biology and to provide a fundamental reinterpretation of the place of selection in evolutionary theory. Kauffman offers a formal framework which allows one to pose precise and well-defined questions about the constraints that self-organization imposes on the evolution of complex systems, and the relation of self-organization and selection. He says at the outset that he wants to “delineate the spontaneous sources of order, the self organized properties of simple and complex systems” and to understand how they “permit, enable and limit the efficacy of natural selection” (Introduction, p. 2).2 As he says somewhat later, the central theme running through his book is that “the order in organisms may largely reflect spontaneous order in complex systems” (ch. 6, p. 224).
Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding
Authors: Barnes Eric
Published: January 2016

The theory of explanatory unification was first proposed by Michael Friedman (1974) and developed in more detail by Philip Kitcher (1981,1989). The primary motivation for this theory is the case that the theory adequately accounts for the genesis of scientific understanding. Standard models of explanation are, moreover, allegedly constructed on the basis of a misconception of the nature of understanding. My thesis is that the unificationist account of understanding proposed by Friedman and Kitcher is false, and hence, that the theory of explanatory unification is fundamentally misconceived.

How does an explanation of some explanandum render the explanandum as ‘understood’? Carl Hempel wrote of the D-N covering law model that it shows that “given the particular circumstances and the laws in question, the occurrence of the phenomenon was to be expected; and it is in this sense that the explanation allows us to understand why the phenomenon occurred.”
The Objectivity and Invariance of Quantum Predictions
Authors: Fleming Gordon N.
Published: January 2016

In a recent article Itamar Pitowsky (1991) has analyzed some measurement possibilities presented by an entangled state of three spin ½ particles. From that analysis he has concluded that the valid predictions of results of possible future measurements, made by observers who actually carry out mutually space-like separated measurements, can be incompatible with one another in the sense that their conjunction contradicts the quantum theory. From this result Pitowsky infers the inherently observer specific, or relative, character of quantum predictions as opposed to the results of actual observations or measurements, which, he claims, are covariant; i.e. (I take it) compatibly translatable from one observer to another.
Explaining Brute Facts
Authors: Barnes Eric
Published: January 2016

I hope to convince you that one way of testing the mettle of a theory of
scientific explanation is to inquire what that theory entails about the
status of brute facts. In what follows I briefly consider the nature of
brute facts, and then survey several contemporary accounts of explanation
vis a vis this subject. These include the Friedman-Kitcher theory of
explanatory unification (Friedman (1974), Kitcher (1981) and (1989)), Peter
Lipton's (1991) account of the nature of explanatory loveliness, and the
causal theory of event explanation developed by Paul Humphreys in his
(1989). It is my view that each of these accounts of explanation entails (or
at least lends itself to) a false view about the nature of brute facts:
according to each account, a brute fact is unexplainable and thus represents
a scientific ‘mystery’, where by this expression I mean some manner of a
lack of scientific understanding.
Why There Can't Be a Logic of Induction
Authors: Glennan Stuart S.
Published: January 2016

Carnap's attempt to develop an inductive logic has been criticized on a
variety of grounds, and while there may be some philosophers who believe
that difficulties with Camap's approach can be overcome by further
elaborations and modifications of his system, I think it is fair to say that
the consensus is that the approach as a whole cannot succeed. In writing a
paper on problems with inductive logic (and with Camap's approach in
particular), I might therefore be accused of beating a dead horse. However,
there are still some (e.g., Spirtes, Glymour and Scheines 1993) who seem to
believe that purely formal methods for scientific inference can be
developed. It may still then be useful to perfonn an autopsy on a dead horse
when establishing the cause of death can shed light on issues of current
concern.
A Representational Reconstruction of Carnap's Quasianalysis
Authors: Mormann Thomas
Published: January 2016

According to general wisdom, quasianalysis belongs to the large family of Carnap's ingenious, but finally failed contributions to epistemology and philosophy of science. In this paper I want to show that this is not the case. Rather, Carnapian quasianalysis is to be considered as a promising theory of a representational constitution of scientific objects. That is to say, I intend to embed Carnap's approach of quasianalytical constitution in the framework of a general theory of meaningful representation (cf. Mundy (1986)).

The outline of this paper is as follows: In section 2 I recall the basics of the quasianalytical approach, taking into consideration not only the well-known account in “Der Logische Aufbau der Welt”(Aufbau)but also a rather unknown first version of quasianalysis (“Quasizerlegung”) which Carnap developed in an unpublished manuscript written in 1923. This paper deserves attention not only for philosophicohistorical reasons, rather it contains quite a lot of interesting features of the quasianalytical approach which do not appear in theAufbauaccount.
Non-Turing Computers and Non-Turing Computability
Authors: Hogarth Mark
Published: January 2016

Building on an idea by Pitowsky (1990), David Malament (private
communications), Hogarth (1992) and Earman and Norton (1993) have shown how
it is possible to perform computational supertasks—that is, an infinite
number of computational steps in a finite span of time—in a kind of
relativistic spacetime that Earman and Norton (1993) have dubbed a
Malament-Hogarth spacetime.

Definition 1 A spacetime (M,g) is
Malament-Hogarth just when there is a future
endless curve with past endpoint and a
point q∊M such that .

(Hereafter, the symbols “q” and “λ” are assumed to have the properties
they have in Definition 1.1 shall also speak of a “λ-curve”.)

Various examples of Malament-Hogarth (hereafter,
M-H) spacetimes are given in Hogarth (1992),
but the following artificial example from Earman and Norton (1993) is
perhaps the simplest.
Ideal Reaction Types and the Reactions of Real Alloys
Authors: Ramsey Jeffry L.
Published: January 2016

Scientists must often solve analytically or computationally intractable
problems. Philosophers of science have problematized the nature and role of
laws, theories and evidence by examining how scientists use abstractions
(Cartwright 1990), idealizations (Laymon 1985, Brezinski et. al. 1990),
approximations (Cartwright 1983; Laymon 1989; Ramsey 1990, 1992), and visual
images (Wimsatt 1991, Ruse 1991) in such situations. Here, I problematize
the nature and role of concepts by examining ideal types as a response to
intractability. I focus on the work of Carl Wagner, a former director of the
Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Goettingen. Wagner used ideal
types in his research on the oxidation of metal alloys during the middle
third of this century.

I argue that: natural scientists do use ideal typical concepts; these
concepts are distinct from ‘standard’ concepts; and ideal typical concepts
provide one means of connecting a tractable theoretical model with the
experimental evidence.
On the Paradoxical Aspects of New Quantum Experiments
Authors: Vaidman Lev
Published: January 2016

I shall discuss two recently suggested quantum experiments. These
experiments lead to paradoxical situations. I will argue that in the
framework of a particular Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum theory the
paradoxes do not arise.

The first experiment is the “interaction-free measurement” (Elitzur and
Vaidman 1993). The experimental group at Innsbruck headed by Prof. Zeilinger
is working now on its realization. Before describing the experiment let me
discuss a general question: “How do we know that there is an object in a
region of space?”

The simplest case is when the object itself causes some physical changes
outside the region:

i) The object is charged, so there is a field outside. We
can measure this field.

ii) The object yields a potential outside. Aharonov and Bohm
have taught us that potential even without field leads to a
measurable effect.

iii) The objects radiates photons or other
particles.
Should we Believe in the Big Bang?: A Critique of the Integrity of Modern
Cosmology
Authors: Rhook Graeme , Zangari Mark
Published: January 2016

Although the relativistic, hot big bang (RHBB) model is generally
regarded as “spectacularly successful: In short, it provides a reliable
accounting of the history of the Universe from about 0.01 sec after the
[big] bang until today, some 15 billion years later” (Turner 1992, 1), it
has recently faced serious attacks from a number of physicists who cite long
lists of (they claim) critical anomalies (e.g. Arp,
et.al. 1990, Burbidge, 1992, Arp and van
Flandern, 1992, Lerner, 1993a, Narlikar 1993). In this paper, we shall not
attempt to adjudicate on such disputes, nor do we wish to take a position on
the normative criteria that should govern science. Rather, our primary
concern is to highlight the tensions between the normative criteria accepted
by proponents of the RHBB (or demanded of rival theories) and the actual
progress of the big bang program.
Wavefunction Tails in the Modal Interpretation
Authors: Dickson Michael
Published: January 2016

Consider the general form of the state of a quantum system,
(eq. 1), where the
are (non-degenerate)
eigenvectors of an operator, A, corresponding to
an observable, A. According to the standard interpretation of quantum
mechanics (the precise details of which do not concern me here), A does not
have a definite value on the system in the state . But now suppose we measure
A by coupling the system to a measuring apparatus. The composite system is
then (eq. 2) where the
are the indicator-states of
the apparatus. Again, the standard interpretation tells us that the
apparatus is not in a definite indicator-state. But how can this be?
Measurements do have definite results. The apparatus is always in a definite
state.

I have just reviewed one version of the measurement problem. The modal
interpretation of quantum mechanics proposes a solution.
Shifting Frames: From Divided to Distributed Psychologies of Scientific Agents
Authors: Taylor Peter J.
Published: January 2016

When reading the papers of Solomon, Thagard and Goldman, I observed their framing doing considerable explicit and implicit work. Framing, a visual metaphor, stimulated me to respond with images of one kind or another. These should allow readers to visualize more issues and propositions than an argumentive format could have pinned down in the limited space available.

Figure 1 conveys how the three papers seem to me to frame the issue of integrating the cognitive and social: Scientists’beliefsare the focal phenomena, within three nested boxesof factorssurrounding them: thinking (reasoning etc.); cognition (information input and processing); and social (interaction among agents). (The other objects and lines will be explained in due course.) These factors are referred to asinfluences,something outside that gets into beliefs (1). The authors then argue about which set of influences is strongest or how to think about the factors “intermingling,” “overlapping,” “interacting.”.
Who's Afraid of the Human Genome Project?
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: January 2016

The Human Genome Project (henceforth HGP) arouses strong feelings. Enthusiasts view it as the culmination of the extraordinary progress of molecular biology during the past half century and as the beginnings of a revolutionized biology and medicine (Gilbert 1992, Caskey 1992). Detractors charge that it is wasteful, misguided, and pregnant with possibilities for social harm (Lewontin 1992, Hubbard and Wald 1993). In a short paper it is plainly impossible to explore all the sources of disagreement. My aim will be to consider the debate about the purely scientific merit of the HGP, to sketch the nature of the short-term issues which the project raises, and, finally, to identify what I take to be the deepest and most difficult questions.

The official goals of the HGP are to map and sequence the human genome, and the genomes of other organisms (so-called “model organisms”).
Renaissance Scholarship in America
Authors: Bradner Leicester
Published: January 2016

Renaissance scholarship in America has flourished within- creasing tempo ever since the influx of materials for study began to accumulate in American libraries following the cessation of the first world war in 1918. Only in the nineteen-thirties, however, did Renaissance scholars begin to feel the need for a synthesis of departmentalized researches which the medievalists in this country felt in the early nineteen-twenties. In part this feeling was produced by the growing volume and significance of Renaissance studies in this country, but it certainly also owed its existence to the widespread efforts to redefine the nature and extent of the period itself. The popular myth that the Renaissance was the revival of light and joy after the bleak darkness of the Middle Ages was exploded by the better understanding of the great achievements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Canopy position has a profound effect on soybean seed composition
Authors: Huber Steven C , Li Kunzhi , Nelson Randall , Ulyanov Alexander , DeMuro Catherine M. , Baxter Ivan
Published: January 2016

Although soybean seeds appear homogeneous, their composition (protein, oil and mineral concentrations) can vary significantly with the canopy position where they were produced. In studies with 10 cultivars grown over a 3-yr period, we found that seeds produced at the top of the canopy have higher concentrations of protein but less oil and lower concentrations of minerals such as Mg, Fe, and Cu compared to seeds produced at the bottom of the canopy. Among cultivars, mean protein concentration (average of different positions) correlated positively with mean concentrations of S, Zn and Fe, but not other minerals. Therefore, on a whole plant basis, the uptake and allocation of S, Zn and Fe to seeds correlated with the production and allocation of reduced N to seed protein; however, the reduced N and correlated minerals (S, Zn and Fe) showed different patterns of allocation among node positions. For example, while mean concentrations of protein and Fe correlated positively, the two parameters correlated negatively in terms of variation with canopy position. Altering the microenvironment within the soybean canopy by removing neighboring plants at flowering increased protein concentration in particular at lower node positions and thus altered the node-position gradient in protein (and oil) without altering the distribution of Mg, Fe and Cu, suggesting different underlying control mechanisms. Metabolomic analysis of developing seeds at different positions in the canopy suggests that availability of free asparagine may be a positive determinant of storage protein accumulation in seeds and may explain the increased protein accumulation in seeds produced at the top of the canopy. Our results establish node-position variation in seed constituents and provide a new experimental system to identify genes controlling key aspects of seed composition. In addition, our results provide an unexpected and simple approach to link agronomic practices to improve human nutrition and health in developing countries because food products produced from seeds at the bottom of the canopy contained higher Fe concentrations than products from the top of the canopy. Therefore, using seeds produced in the lower canopy for production of iron-rich soy foods for human consumption could be important when plants are the major source of protein and human diets can be chronically deficient in Fe and other minerals.