bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Habermas’ Consensus Theory of Truth
Authors: Hesse Mary
Published: January 2016

The question of truth is central to current discussions in both of the major contemporary styles of philosophizing. In the Anglo-American linguistic and empiricist tradition there is a lively response (some might say backlash) to apparent difficulties caused by recent recognition of theory change and meaning variance in science. And within the Continental hermeneutio tradition there is raised the central question of the truth status of interpretations in the cultural sciences where these appear not to be subject to the criteria of empirical science. Let me say straight away that I believe that the almost universal dependence on versions of the correspondence theory of truth among analytical philosophers will prove seriously inadequate to both forms of the epistemological problem, and that we have to face here a deep challenge to many entrenched assumptions of empiricism — assumptions that are too infrequently brought to the light of day in these discussions.2
The ‘Reduction by Synthesis’ of Biology to Physical Chemistry
Authors: Levy Monique H.
Published: January 2016

The problem of the reduction of biology to physical chemistry has raised numerous controversies for several years. The reader is referred to Ayala & Dobzhansky (1974), Hull (1972, 1973, 1974, 1976), Polanyi (1967, 1968), Roll-Hansen (1969, 1974), Ruse (1971, 1976), and Schaffner (1967, 1969, 1974, 1976). Supporters and opponents of reduction are continually exchanging arguments and it is almost impossible, even for an objective reader, to discern who is correct.

The partisans of reduction insist that physical chemistry, contributes a very useful explanatory schema for the understanding of a certain number of biological processes. For instance, in genetics, great progress has been realized because of the contribution made by chemistry in the determination of the genetic code and in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms governing the laws of heredity.
Levels of Reflexivity: Unnoted Differences within the “Strong Programme” in the Sociology of Knowledge
Authors: Manier Edward
Published: January 2016

Although Barry Barnes (1974, 1977) and David Bloor (1976, 1978, 1981) are co-workers in the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh, there are hitherto unnoted but fundamental differences in their programs in the sociology of science.

Bloor defines his “strong programme” in the sociology of science by three basic tenets (“causality,” “symmetry,” and “reflexivity”) and also claims to establish laws and to test a general theory of the causal links connecting cognitive and social factors in the history of science. (Bloor 1976, pp. 4-5). In other words, the “strong programme” aims to be: (1) Causal, i.e., concerned with the conditions which bring about beliefs or states of knowledge. (2) Symmetrical, i.e., appealing to the same sorts of causes and to the same patterns of causal explanation for all beliefs and cognitive claims, whether regarded as true or false, rational or irrational, successful or unsuccessful. (3) Reflexive, i.e., using the explanatory resources of the sociology of science in the critical evaluation and explanation of the sociology of science itself.
A Model Theoretic Semantics for Quantum Logic
Authors: Stachow E.-W.
Published: January 2016

The purpose of this contribution is to consider a model theoretic semantics of quantum logic. The quantum logic to which we refer here comprises the system of sequential quantum logic (Stachow 1980b). This system establishes the implication relation with respect to logically connected propositions and also with respect to the more general class of sequentially connected propositions of the language of quantum physics.

A dialogic semantics for logically connected sentences is developed in Stachow (1976, p. 203), where it is shown that a logical system, usually called the system of quantum logic, is complete and sound with respect to the dialogic semantics. The dialogic semantics is extended to sequentially connected sentences in Stachow (1980b) and to modal sentences in Mittelstaedt (1979, p. 479).

In comparison with other approaches to a language for science, the dialogic approach is developed from a pragmatic and methodological point of view (Stachow 1980a).
Recent Changes in the Concept of Matter: How Does ‘Elementary Particle’ Mean?
Authors: Shrader-Frechette K. S.
Published: January 2016

“How does a poem mean?” asked John Ciardi, noted poet and critic (1959, p. 663). Because he was convinced that “there will never be a complete system for understanding poetry,” Ciardi urged his Harvard and Rutgers students to discover “the total experience” of a poem and never to look merely for what it means (1959, p. 666).

Like a good poem, the total meaning of the concept of matter always eludes us. As Heisenberg put it: what we know is not nature itself, but “nature exposed to our method of questioning.” (Cited in Capra 1975, p. 126). For this reason, and because high-energy physics is in a state of rapid development, it would be presumptuous to attempt to say what matter or elementary particles are (See Woodruff 1963, p. 578). Moreover this “what” question is more properly a scientific one, about the correct referents of a specific theory of matter. “How does ‘matter’ mean?” or “how does ‘elementary particle’ mean?” is more properly a philosophical question.
What Should We Expect of a Theory of Explanation?
Authors: Klein Barbara V. E.
Published: January 2016

Few topics in the philosophy of science have received as much discussion as the topic of explanation. Yet as Hanna's (1979, pp. 291-316) survey of recent research on scientific explanation makes abundantly clear, the field is riddled with competing “paradigms”, “models”, and “formulas” with little sign of any consensus.

It is useful in this sort of situation to engage in metatheoretic ascent. What do we or ought we to expect of a theory of explanation? Unless some measure of agreement can be reached about that question, how can we expect agreement (or even rationally adjudicable disagreement) on the adequacy of particular candidate theories? The purpose of this paper is to sketch a meta-theoretic characterization of what: a theory of explanation ought to be like. The view I will put forth is surely not the only one, but it is a view which I believe to be implicit in the work of a number of influential writers on the subject, including Hempel (1965).
Causality: Production and Propagation
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: January 2016

A standard picture of causality has been around at least since the time of Hume. The general idea is that we have two (or more) distinct events which bear some sort of cause-effect relation to one another. There has, of course, been considerable controversy regarding the nature of both the relation and the relata. It has sometimes been maintained, for instance, that facts or propositions (rather than events) are the sorts of entities which can constitute the relata. It has long been disputed whether individual events or only classes of events can sustain cause-effect relations. The relation itself has sometimes been taken to be that of sufficient condition, sometimes necessary condition, or perhaps a combination of the two. Some authors have even proposed that certain sorts of statistical relations constitute causal relations.
Units of Selection and the Structure of the Multi-Level Genome
Authors: Wimsatt William C.
Published: January 2016

The dominant view among evolutionary biologists today is that the gene is the only unit of selection. According to this view, larger units are too unstable in evolutionary time to act as units of selection. Chromosomes are broken up by sexual recombination. At the level of the individual organism, phenotypes pass on genes, but (it is claimed!) last themselves only one generation. Genotypes of individuals, collections of chromosomes, are rearranged by Mendelian independent assortment in sexual reproduction and so also persist for only one generation. Groups of individuals are still more ephemeral, or so we are told.

All of these points are argued at length by George C. Williams in his bookAdaptation and Natural Selectionwhich, since its publication in 1966, has been the watershed for the rise to dominance of this reductionistic vision of evolutionary theory.
Confusions of Symbolization in Mental Representation
Authors: Kolers Paul A.
Published: January 2016

Although we all speak of “representation”, philosophers and psychologists often have quite different referents for the term. Among philosophers, “representation”, or “a representation”, usually refers to a picture of some sort; and concerns with resemblance, realism, abstraction, and the like are prominent (Goodman 1968). Psychologists and some philosophers accept the term more broadly, and by representation mean something like symbol— that is, some mark that stands for, denotes, or represents something else (Howard 1980). I shall use the word in this latter way.

Goodman's treatment of symbols and so, willy-nilly, of representation, is the most sophisticated we háve. He has been concerned largely with reference—with what symbols may mean—and expresses the concern with a theory of the structure and function of symbols.
Imagery—There's More to It than Meets the Eye
Authors: Schwartz Robert
Published: January 2016

The public image of private imagery is showing signs of a comeback. Not only does it again seem legitimate to talk about “having” images, there has been a tremendous revival of interest in the role of imagery in all aspects of cognition. But while the experimental work on imagery has been progressing nicely, there is little agreement over how best to interpret the empirical results. The newly gathered data not only has not convinced everyone of the importance of imagery, it has spawned a whole new generation of critics who are sure that imagist explanations of cognition are without merit. These critics generally do not deny that people experience images; rather they deny the significance of these phenomena for psychological theory. Some go so far as to maintain that the very notion of an imagist explanation is in principle misguided.
Methodology, Ideology and Feminist Critiques of Science
Authors: Koertge Noretta
Published: January 2016

This paper deals briefly with two questions which I have discussed elsewhere (Koertge 1981 and forthcoming):

a)

If all scientists were perfect Popperians (i.e., absolutely scrupulous with respect to methodology), how much influence could their backgrounds have? I include under background: the individual's “background knowledge” (in Popper's sense), psycho-sexual upbringing, class origins or identification, metaphysics, and ideology. This is a rather mixed bag and I hope the context will make clear whether it is primarily the person's values which are influential or his/her prescientific beliefs.

b)

Having argued that it is possible for background to play a role, I then ask whether the ideals of feminism suggest the need for a new methodology and epistemology for science. I will comment in particular on Harding's paper in this volume.
Is General Relativity Generally Relativistic?
Authors: Jones Roger
Published: January 2016

Within the lore of nearly every scientific theory, among the facts, laws, theorems, and such that constitute the “truths” it expresses, are one or more principles. Physics textbooks, I know, usually mention them at the beginning, or during some interlude given over to general remarks or speculation. As examples, the uncertainty principle and correspondance principle of quantum mechanics come to mind (see, e.g., Messiah 1960). And associated with the general theory of relativity, which is particularly rich in principles, are a principle of general covariance, a principle of equivalence (or two), Mach's principle, and a general principle of relativity (see, e.g., Misner, Thome, and Wheeler 1973).

Where do principles come from? Generally, as I said, they are supposed to be “truths” about the working of the world: observations and experiments are appealed to as their sources. But this doesn't distinguish them from facts and laws.
What's Wrong with the Received View of Evolutionary Theory?
Authors: Beatty John
Published: January 2016

This idea meant that heredity evolved—an evolution of the hereditary mechanism—an evolution of mitosis and meiosis. I had opened up an immense field of inquiry. I had to find out how the genes could control the chromosomes, how the chromosomes could control themselves at the same time that they were controlling the organism. I first discussed this problem in 1932. Formally anybody can repeat the idea and learn and write it down, but few have grasped its implications, as I think, for biology. (C. D. Darlington 1980, p. 74).

In the world of academic specialties and subspecialties, philosophy of biology certainly counts as a self-respecting, if not otherwise respected, field of study. It has its own exemplary works, its own lines of communication, etc. In this regard, philosophy of biology might be compared with philosophy of physics.
Theory Construction and Experiment: An Empiricist View
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van
Published: January 2016

The empiricism/realism debates have been going on now for so long, in so many philosophical arenas, that any simple statement of the issue is bound to be wrong or biased. Yet we need a simple formulation to begin, if only to know who is meant to pick up which gauntlet. I shall begin with a short sketch of how I see the enterprise of philosophy of science, and then I shall describe what I take to be good empiricist views on two subjects: theory construction and experimentation. At the end I shall sum up with a simple recasting of the main points at issue.

Within philosophy, the philosophy of science is comparable to philosophy of law, philosophy of art, of religion, of mathematics. These disciplines are comparable in that each has as subject matter a large-scale cultural phenomenon, with its associated activities, institutions, products, language, and internal standards of evaluation.
Explaining Scientific Discovery
Authors: Koertge Noretta
Published: January 2016

The history of science provides two prima facie reasons for believing that there is a “logic” to scientific discovery. The first is the phenomenon of multiple or simultaneous discoveries. The second is the fact that internalist historians of science (who eschew non-cognitive explanations) routinely explain how a discovery was made and why scientist X took an important step which scientist Y did not!

However, some philosophers have argued that purported historical explanations of discovery are all sleight-of-hand tricks—what we really have is a confused mixture of rational reconstructions of the justification steps in the process combined with a description, not an explanation, of the creative leaps. Others would claim that historians do indeed help us to understand scientific discoveries, but the mode of understanding involved is not that provided by the Hempelian covering law model. Rather we empathize with the creative leaps of past geniuses.
Probabilistic Explanation: Introduction
Authors: Salmon Wesley C.
Published: January 2016

The year 1982 marks the twentieth anniversary of Carl G. Hempel's “Deductive-Nomological vs. Statistical Explanation,” published in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, volume III. This work constitutes, to the best of my knowledge, the first extended and systematic philosophical treatment of statistical or probabilistic explanation, and the first serious attempt to articulate explicitly a precise model for such explanations. Because of this fact, it seems to me, we may take 1962 as the year in which the philosophical theory of scientific explanation first entered the twentieth century. By that time, virtually every branch of empirical science made indispensable use of statistical methods and most of them counted statistical generalizations among their important results.
Filling Some Epistemological Gaps: New Patterns of Inference in Evolutionary Theory
Authors: Kauffman Stuart A.
Published: January 2016

Deeply held scientific beliefs, like metaphysical presumptions, color the world in their own hues, leaving in shadow questions which might be both posable and answerable under a different light. Contemporary evolutionary theory, derived from the intellectual marriage of Darwin and Mendel, is such a world view. Whatever conceptual order this intellectual union has brought, it remains true that heritable mutations and Natural Selection are processes exploring and pruning a complex tree of possibilities. The central epistemological failure of contemporary evolutionary theory, I shall argue, is that it has supplied little insight into the expected character of the possibilities which are explored. Prune though it may, selection itself cannot generate biological order, and variation can only explore. Hidden in the shadows of current theory lies the concept that the ultimate sources of order in the living world must derive from basic properties of structural or dynamical self-organization in complex molecular systems; further that an appropriate understanding of such self-organizing properties would help limit and explain the possibilities explored in evolution.
What is the Difference that Makes a Difference? Gadamer, Habermas, and Rorty
Authors: Bernstein Richard J.
Published: January 2016

There are many ways to characterize what we are talking about when we speak of modernity and post-modernity. But one description—as it pertains to philosophy—might go something like this. The “core problem” for philosophy in the modern world has been to resolve what Michael Dummett has called the “scandal” of philosophy:—“the scandal caused by philosophy's lack of a systematic methodology.”
Beyond Inference in Perception
Authors: Stich Stephen P.
Published: January 2016

The controversy over inference in perception turns on the nature of the processes that intervene between the stimulus.and the perceptual experience or percept. For those who find it useful to conceptualize such matters in boxological shorthand, the dispute can be viewed as focusing on the contents of the box in Figure 1. (Figures will be found at the end of the paper.)

Gibsonians have stressed the informational richness of the stimulus and have argued that in virtue of that informational richness no complex inferential processes must be postulated in the box. Rather, the perceptual mechanism can be thought of as “picking up” or “resonating to” the information in the stimulus. But, of course, the suggestion that the perceptual system can pick up information “directly” from the stimulus does not really speak to the issue of what is in the box.
Implications of Incommensurability
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: January 2016

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn offered an account of the difficulties which attend the reception of revolutionary scientific ideas: “Communication across the revolutionary divide,” he wrote, “is inevitably partial.” (Kuhn 1962, p. 149). Eight years later, in the postscript to the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he sounded the same theme, characterizing the participants in revolutionary debates as people who attach their terms to nature differently, so that their communication is “inevitably only partial” (Kuhn 1970, p. 198). In his most recent discussion of these issues (Kuhn 1983), Kuhn has explained more clearly than before the nature of the differences in language which he takes to be present in revolutionary debates.
The Bounds of Law: Universality in Science
Authors: Gruender David
Published: January 2016

The idea that events in nature are, somehow, governed by natural laws, and that to understand those laws would be a key to understanding the events—is a very old one. Whether abstracted from a religious context, or arrived at through independent reflection about nature, this idea first became prominent in the early days of what we now call science. Since the time geometry was worked out in axiomatic form, some 2,300 years ago, the combination of its deductive power, together with the understanding it yielded of the fundamental physical realm of space, I think it is fair to say geometry has stood as the very model of what we ought to expect laws of nature to look like, as well as how they ought to function.

This phenomenon can be seen in the work of Euclid himself, especially that in mechanics (Clagett 1955).
Marjorie Grene and the Phenomenon of Life
Authors: Compton John J
Published: January 2016

In the house of philosophy of science are many mansions, and Marjorie Grene has lived — or at least taken rooms — in most of them. She has done everything from studies of concepts and presuppositions within particular sciences, chiefly the biological sciences, to analyses of notions such as explanation and reduction, which cut across many sciences, to extended reflections on scientific knowledge and practice Uberhaupt. In an important sense, however, Marjorie Grene is not a “philosopher of science” at all, if one means by that a practitioner of some technical specialty, but simply a philosopher — or, as she likes to put it, a “teacher of the history of philosophy” — who takes scientific inquiry seriously. Indeed, one of her major contributions has precisely been to insist that renewal in philosophy of science is inseparable from a fundamental re-thinking of the tradition of modern philosophy generally. It is this rethinking that has occupied her over more than three decades.
Gödel, Wittgenstein and the Nature of Mathematical Knowledge
Authors: Tymoczko Thoma
Published: January 2016

“And so, if I understand you correctly, you act and you know why act, but you don't know why you know that you know what you do?”

The problem that I want to discuss can be stated simply. For the sake of argument, I assume that knowledge is a relation between people and propositions, and that mathematical knowledge is a subspecies of this. Ordinarily, we are inclined to assume that we can account for one mathematician's knowledge without reference to any other mathematician. So in epistemology we assume that there is but a single ideal mathematician or that, at least as far as knowledge goes, an individual mathematician can be considered in isolation from all others. In so far as a community of mathematicians enters epistemology at all, it is after the already established fact of individual knowledge. The community typically serves as a device for the efficient distribution of knowledge.
The Justification of Mathematical Induction
Authors: Boolos Georg
Published: January 2016

There ie an old (c. 1967) argument due to Dana Scott tnat is not as well known to philosophers and logicians as it ought to be. I shall cone back to it later.

The principle of matheaatlcal induction asserts that every number belongs to any class tnat contains zero and also contains tne successor of any member.

Can the principle of mathematical induction be proved? That is to say, is there a way to show tnat every numoer oelongs to any class, that, etc?

Like any other statement, the principle of mathematical induction can be derived from itself, in zero lines. This quick and easy derivation is not a proof of mathematical induction: it does not show that induction is true.
Large-Scale Biological Entities and the Evolutionary Process
Authors: Eldredge Nile
Published: January 2016

I wish to pose an instance in which philosophy has made an explicit and I feel, very useful contribution to the resolution of a set of scientific problems. Some of this work has been done by philosophers with a biological bent, and some by biologists with a philosophical bent. Whether the upshot is philosophy of biology, I cannot say. But recent conceptual advances in the ontology of what we might call “large biological things” holds a number of practical consequences for macroevolutionary theory.

Let us begin by asking what is “macroevolution” and, consequently, macroevolutionary theory? The “Modern Synthesis“, of course, maintains thatvthe neo-Darwinian paradigm (i.e., natural selection united with a’ coherent theory of the principles of heredity) is both necessary and sufficient to account for most evolutionary phenomena, including macroevolution.
The Significance of Verisimilitude
Authors: Niiniluoto Ilkk
Published: January 2016

This paper defends the thesis that the concept of verisimilitude is an indispensable tool for the fallibllist and realist epistemology. Part of my argument consists in suggesting that this concept has important applications within the history and philosophy of science (Section 6). But this is not enough to convince a critical reader who suspects that talk about “closeness to the truth” is perhaps meaningless - or “mumbojumbo”, to use Laudan's (1981) expression. Surely a necessary condition for the significance of verisimilitude is its existence. Therefore, I also have to outline in some detail a programme which, at least in my view, leads to a satisfactory definition of the degrees of truthlikeness for various kinds of scientific statements (Sections 3 - 5). But first I try to give a,diagnosis of the main reasons why Popper's theory of truthlikeness failed (Sections 1 - 2).
Reichenbach, Causation, and Explanation
Authors: Otte Richard
Published: January 2016

Theories of scientific explanation have taken different forms, but many philosophers are adopting models of explanation in which causation plays a central role. The intuition behind this idea is that we explain the occurrence of an event by displaying its causal history, or by listing its causes. As natural as this may seem, problems arise when we attempt to use this model of explanation with a system that is indeterministic. If we want to give a causal explanation of an event that is not causally determined, then we need a theory of causation which allows for causation in indeterministic systems.
The Universality of Laws in Space and Time
Authors: Rynaslewicz Robert
Published: January 2016

Part of our folklore is that genuine laws of nature must be universal in space and time. The purpose of this note is to explicate and compare various senses of this requirement. I am not concerned to argue here that the requirement, in any one of its explicated forms, should or should not be adopted.

If it is hard to state straight out exactly what is demanded by universality in space and time, Michael Tooley has provided an example of a hypothetical law which fails the requirement in a significant sense:

All fruit in Smith’s garden at any time are apples. When one attempts to take an orange into the garden, it turns into an elephant. Bananas so treated become apples as they cross the boundary, while pears are resisted by a force that cannot be overcome.
Truth, Epistemio Ideals and the Psychology of Categorization
Authors: McCauley Robert N.
Published: January 2016

Many philosophers, and particularly those of a Kantian stripe, have suspected that claims about the ways the world and its Joints are (in contrast to claims about the joints in our models of the world and the way they are) make little sense. Recently, similar views have gained prominence in the philosophy of science and in cognitive psychology. The demise of the strong distinction between theoretical and observational terms over the past two decades is just one, among many, developments in the philosophy of science which is of a piece with such suspicions. Meanwhile, a great deal of recent theoretical work on the psychology of categorization also affirms the fundamentality of our cognitive constructs in structuring human experience.
The Revolutionary General
Authors: Bosworth John R.
Published: January 2016

A recent article in Philosophy of Science by Andrew Lugg (1985), revives interest once again in Johannes Kepler’s so-called “discovery” of the laws of planetary motion. Typically, as if by some recurring philosophical instinct, it focuses on Kepler’s finally settling on the ellipse for planetary orbits--the first of his three laws. There is a fascination with the limiting shape of what is still taken to be the scope of the Sun’s sovereign domain, rather than with the second, or, even more rarely, the third law. Ever since the famous debate between John Stuart Mill and William Whewell, philosophers and historians have been drawn to this notable advance in early modern science--in what Kepler himself calls his “war on Mars” (the planet itself named after the “god” of war).
Metatickles and Ratificationism
Authors: Sobel Jordan Howard
Published: January 2016

Responses to Newcomb-like challenges to evidential decision theories such as Jeffrey’s “logic of decision” range from allegations of incoherence and irrelevance; through stonewalling - “Just one box for me, thank you.“; to arguments that maintain that when properly applied by an ideal agent such theories get the right answers and, for example, prescribe the taking of both boxes, not just one; on to conservative revisions of evidential decision theories that are held to get these supposedly right answers while remaining true to its evidential, Humean spirit; and finally to responses of radical revisionists who claim that only causal decision theories can get all Newcomb-like problem cases right. I discuss responses of the first sort in another paper - “Newcomb-like Problems for Jeffrey’s Logic of Decision.”
Towards a Theory of Theoretical Objects
Authors: Brittan Gordon G.
Published: January 2016

Science is made possible by the introduction of theoretical objects. Why this should be so has never been made clear. Indeed, it has never been made clear how theoretical objects are rightly to be understood, or in what ways they differ from more ordinary sorts of physical objects. What follows is a sketch of a new theory. In my view, this theory becomes explicit on the so-called “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics. But it has implicitly characterized scientific development since the revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries.

How are theoretical objects rightly to be understood? I say that they are objects whose existence is postulated by a theory is alright as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. We also need to know what theories are.
The Cognitive and Social Sides of Epistemology
Authors: Goldman Alvin I.
Published: January 2016

Any plausible treatment of human knowledge must acknowledge two shapers of opinion: the psychological and the social. The formation of almost any belief, even the mere perception of familiar objects or recollection of recent events, involves the execution of a complex array of mental operations or computations. So the psychological component in belief-formation is ubiquitous. The social component, while not quite ubiquitous, is almost as crucial. A large proportion of the mature cognizer's beliefs are acquired from others; and typically the vehicles of acquisition — public language, and internal techniques for assessing the claims of others — are themselves socially or culturally acquired. Scientists, of course, are no different in these fundamental respects. They too are cognizers with human brains, and they work in professional communities. Their beliefs result from use of their psychological equipment, and from the scientific lore and methodology that is largely indebted to interpersonal training and communication.
The Confirmation of Common Component Causes
Authors: Forster Malcolm R.
Published: January 2016

There is an interesting problem concerning component causes posed by Cartwright (1983) in her book How the Laws of Physics Lie, which is easily explained in terms of a simple example. Consider a cup sitting on the table. Why doesn’t it move? The explanation given by Newtonian mechanics is that the cup is experiencing two forces-the downward force of gravity and the upward ‘elastic’ force of the table-and these two forces exactly cancel to produce a zero resultant force. This zero resultant force then produces a zero acceleration, which ‘explains’ why the cup doesn’t move. This rather simple, yet typical, example of theoretical explanation raises a surprisingly deep puzzle: What justification is there for believing in the existence of the component forces if they are redundant to the explanation? For it does not really matter what size the component forces are so long as their resultant is zero.
Confirming Inexact Generalizations
Authors: Adams Ernest W.
Published: January 2016

An inexact generalization like ‘ravens are black’ will be symbolized as a prepositional function with free variables thus: ‘Rx ⇒ Bx.’ The antecedent ‘Rx’ and consequent ‘Bx’ will themselves be called absolute formulas, while the result of writing the non-boolean connective ‘⇒’ between them is conditional. Absolute formulas are arbitrary first-order formulas and include the exact generalization ‘(x)(Rx → Bx)’ and sentences with individual constants like ‘Rc & Bc.’ On the other hand the non-boolean conditional ‘⇒’ can only occur as the main connective in a formula. We shall also need to consider formulas with more than one free variable such as ‘xHy ⇒ xTy,’ which might express ‘if x is the husband of y then x is taller than y.’ Though it is inessential, it will simplify things to work in ‘n-languages’ with a finite number of individual constants c1,…, cn, which are interpreted as denoting the elements of the domains of the ‘n-models’ to be described below.
Simplicity and Observability: When are Particles Elementary?
Authors: Gavroglu Kostas
Published: January 2016

Writing the history of elementary particle physics has all the problems common to writing the history of any other subject “in the making”. There is, however, an additional characteristic, unique to this branch of physics. The development of particle physics, unlike the situation in other branches of physics, reveals a continuously changing picture of what its object of investigation is, of what, in other words, the things we call particles are and how elementary they should be considered. The history of elementary particle physics is, in a way, the history of the continuous reinterpretation of both the ontological and methodological status of the notion of elementarity. Hence, examining the history of elementary particle physics is also an attempt to explicate this changing collective consciousness of the scientific community about the elementarity of particles. In studying, therefore, (practically any aspect of) the history of elementary particle physics, one has to be sensitive about a number of philosophical, and primarily methodological issues which have acquired an added significance due to the relatively recent and mainly theoretical developments.
The Explanatory Coherence of Continental Drift
Authors: Thagard Paul , Nowak Gregory
Published: January 2016

In the nineteen-sixties, plate tectonics became the accepted theoretical framework in the earth sciences. This framework revived the idea of continental drift that had been first proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener (1966). This paper offers an analysis of the arguments of Wegener and his opponents. We shall show that from Wegener’s perspective his hypotheses possessed a high degree of explanatory coherence, while from the opponents’ perspective his theory was incoherent with much that was generally known.

Our analysis uses a new theory of explanatory coherence that has already been applied to several important cases in the history of science: Lavoisier’s argument for his oxygen theory against the phlogiston theory, Darwin’s argument for the theory of evolution by natural selection, and current disputes about why dinosaurs became extinct (Thagard 1988b). This theory is implemented in a connectionist computer program called ECHO that takes statements of explanatory relations as input and creates a network of units, crudely analogous to neurons, with excitatory and inhibitory links among them.
Understanding Regression
Authors: Woodward James
Published: January 2016

Although statistical techniques like regression analysis and path analysis are widely used in the biomedical, behavioral and social sciences to make causal inferences there has been surprisingly little philosophical discussion of the details of such techniques and of the conceptions of causation and explanation implicit in them. There also has been relatively little attempt to compare such techniques with various probabilistic models of causation and explanation in the philosophical literature.

In this paper I explore, for reasons of space in a very sketchy and schematic way, some issues in philosophy of science raised by regression analysis. One general conclusion I reach is that it is considerably less obvious than one might suppose that the philosophical theories alluded to above are plausibly viewed as reconstructions of regression techniques.
Jarrett’s Locality Condition and Causal Paradox
Authors: Stairs Allen
Published: January 2016

In this paper, I want to present a family of results that may seem to add up to a new proof of the impossibility of hidden variables. In fact, I very much doubt that that’s really what really emerges, but I think the results are nonetheless interesting because they help to sharpen the discussion of Jon Jarrett’s very useful decompostion theorem, in particular, of the condition he calls locality. Jarrett (1984) and Ballentine and Jarrett (1987) have suggested that the so-called condition of locality is the one that provides the conceptual link between hidden variable theories and relativity: if locality is violated, so is relativity. On the other hand, a theory may violate the condition Jarrett calls completeness without running afoul of relativity. Now I agree with Jarrett and Ballentine about completeness, but I strongly suspect that we have quite a way to go before we really understand what would be involved in a violation of locality.
Herbert Feigl
Authors: Aune Bruce
Published: January 2016

Herbert Feigl was one of the most admirable people I have known. I was fortunate to have him a a friend and as a teacher (he directed my PhD dissertation). He was a very special friend and a very special teacher. To round out what is being said here, I want to share my impressions of him as a teacher and as a person.

I don't think I ever took a course from Herbert; he taught me informally as a thesis director and as a helpful older friend. When he guided me through the writing of my thesis, I was almost unaware fo the teaching he was doing. It is only in recent years that I have come to appreciate how important it was for me.

In comparison with other teachers, Herbert was extremely permissive—the opposite of coercive. For him, nothing was off-limits.
Ultimate Explanations: Comments on Tipler
Authors: Sklar Lawrence
Published: January 2016

Prof. Tipler and his colleague John Barrow, applying the results and methods of contemporary physics, have made a number of suggestions for pushing beyond the limits of science as ordinarily understood, sometimes suggesting that ideas once thought archaic and worthy to be discarded can be revivified in the light of our new theoretical understanding of the world. The role of the observer in quantum mechanics, they suggest, makes at least plausible “idealist” claims of the dependence of matter on mind. Cosmology, they suggest, provides a framework in which the idea of God as evolutionary endpoint of man-in-nature, familiar from Teilhard de Chardin, can be made concrete and plausible at least as a possibility. All of this, admittedly speculative, structure is presented in something like the form of an inverted pyramid, resting at its base on the much less ambitious, if much more secure, methodological posits of the sort grouped together under the (somewhat misleading) rubric of the “Weak Anthropic Principle.”
On the Possibility that the Present Quantum State of the Universe is the Vacuum
Authors: Albert David Z.
Published: January 2016

This note will consist of a single rather elementary remark about the overall Quantum state of the world.

Let me say something at the outset about what this remark is supposed to be good for. It will not support and it will also not raise any doubts about any particular cosmological model. The problems which this remark will turn out to have a bearing on are problems which those models aren't intended to address, problems (about which, however, there has lately been a good deal of speculation) connected with the ‘ultimate beginnings’ of the world; and the remark will merely suggest that those problems need not be worried about; that perhaps, after, there simply aren't genuine problems like that.

The remark is that if any linear Quantum-Mechanical equations of motion happen to be the true and universal equations of motion of the world, then it is consistent with everything we observe, and it is consistent with everything we are even likely to observe, to suppose that the present (and past and future) state of the physical world is the vacuum state.
Accommodation, Prediction and Bayesian Confirmation Theory
Authors: Howson Colin
Published: January 2016

‘A hypothesis can only be received upon the ground of its having been verified by successful prediction’, C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol. II, p.466.

Hempel, in his classic [1966], raised a problem which already had a long pedigree. Balmer, having examined measurements of the wavelengths of lines in the emission spectrum of hydrogen, constructed a now well-known formula for generating these, and also other lines at that time unknown to him. Hempel asked whether Balmer's formula would have been as strongly confirmed by the new lines had they too formed part of Balmer's database. Hempel's question poses the famous and ancient accommodation-versus-prediction problem: is a hypothesis h, designed among other things to account for data e, confirmed by e as much as h would have been, had it been found to explain e without, however, having been constructed to do so? An unconditionally negative answer has been given by a numerous and influential body of scientists and philosophers; this unconditional view of the matter I shall call predictionism.
Some Public Policy Problems with the Science of Carcinogen Risk Assessment
Authors: Cranor Carl F.
Published: January 2016

Government agencies and private risk assessors use (quasi) scientific “risk assessment” procedures to try to estimate or predict risks to human health or the environment that might result from exposure to toxic substances in order to take steps to prevent such risks from arising or to eliminate the risks if they already exist We might think of this as an aspect of “regulatory science”.

Using carcinogen risk assessment as a model I consider several aspects of risk assessment—use of epidemiology, animal bioassays, and extrapolation models in predicting risks—to show how scientific procedures and uncertainties may determine (in a way often unbeknownst to the practitioners) the public policy debates concerning the estimation of risks from carcinogens.

For one thing, actual and possible scientific uncertainties are large enough that two different researchers using exactly the same data could come to quite different conclusions; such uncertainties permit risk assessors in large measure to determine regulatory decisions even though this exceeds their authority.
Laudan’s Model of Axiological Change and the Bohr-Einstein Debate
Authors: Folse Henry J.
Published: January 2016

Since the publication of Science and Values in which Laudan unveiled his “reticulated model of scientific change” (Laudan (1984)), he has published a series of articles emphasizing the naturalistic axiology inherent in this model. (Laudan (1986), (1987a), (1987b), (1989), and (forthcoming)). His epistemic naturalism makes the business of fixing rational beliefs about facts, theories, methodologies, and aims all together “cut from the same piece of empirical cloth.” Laudan’s position has numerous attractive qualities: It allows one to accept a great deal of the wisdom in historicism without caving in to relativism. It allows one to accept the seemingly inevitable annexation of the theory of knowledge by the sciences and yet still maintain a normative epistemology. Finally, it awakens philosophers of science’s dogmatic slumbers regarding the axiology of scientific inquiry, and stimulates historical research into the relation between practiced means and professed ends in the sciences.
Observation: An Empirical Discussion
Authors: Gilman Daniel
Published: January 2016

Of the many controversial claims in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions perhaps none are more troublesome than those made in his account of the role of a paradigm in perception. For if we take it that “a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself (Kuhn 1970, p. 113) and that “two groups of scientists see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction” (Kuhn 1970, p. 150) then we seem to be burdened with all the familiar problems about whether, and how, experimental evidence could possibly serve to promote the acceptance of a paradigm. And, indeed, these problems have been amply discussed in the last several decades. Dudley Shapere, for instance, has questioned Kuhn’s account of how science comes to move between incommensurable paradigms. (Shapere 1964) Still, Kuhn’s discussion of perception has an empirical foundation in psychological research which gives it a certain resilience in the face of surface problems with the consequences of his account.
Beyond Numerical and Causal Accuracy: Expanding the Set of Justificational Criteria
Authors: Ramsey Jeffry L.
Published: January 2016

Until recently, realists and anti-realists alike have assumed that any approximations which appear in explanations and confirmations in the mathematically oriented physical and biological sciences are “mere distractions” (Laymon 1989, p. 353). When approximation techniques must be used, they are typically justified by appeals to their numerical accuracy. However, recent interest in computational complexity in the sciences has revealed that numerical accuracy is not always the only criterion which should be invoked to justify the use of approximations. Cartwright (1983), Franklin (1988) and others have suggested that causal accuracy should be added as a criterion.

Numerical and causal accuracy are important. However, they form a sufficient set of justificational criteria only when certain—often unstated—conditions obtain. These conditions are actually assumptions which are often not satisfied, especially in the computationally complex situations which characterize discovery and exploratory contexts. In these contexts, we need to concentrate on “delineating a justificatory set which is relevant to [the] given epistemic situation” (Duran 1988, p. 273).
Reasoning from Phenomena: Lessons from Newton
Authors: Dorling Jon
Published: January 2016

On the model of Newton’s Principia, the great majority of successful new theories in physics have been introduced by deduction from the phenomena arguments. In such arguments an explanatory theory is deduced from one or more of the empirical facts, or lower level empirical generalizations, which it is designed to explain, by the device of adjoining suitable higher-level theoretical constraints on the form of the required theory. Those theoretical constraints leave certain parameters, the precise form of certain functions, and so on, in the new theory, undetermined, except with the help of the lower level empirical premises.
The Unimportance of Semantics
Authors: Creath Richard
Published: January 2016

Our deepest commitments about history are reflected in how we break it down into periods. (Cf. Galison 1988) By drawing a break at a certain point we emphasize the novelty and importance of a new development. It is also how we contain and dismiss certain work as no longer relevant. Thus, in the history of physics we break the story with Newton, both to emphasize his roles in bringing previous developments to a close and in initiating new lines of work, and also to suggest that the ongoing practice of physics thereafter can appropriately in large measure ignore what preceeds Newton. Periodizing history is essential to understanding it, including when we periodize the work of a given writer. In philosophy, anyone who did not see a gulf between Kant’s early work and his critical philosophy or between Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and his Philosophical Investigations would be missing something enormously important.