bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Likeness of Lawlikeness
Authors: Fetzer James H. 
Published: January 2016

AbstractThe thesis of this paper is that extensional language alone provides an essentially inadequate foundation for the logical formalization of any lawlike statement. The arguments presented are intended to demonstrate that lawlike sentences are logically general dispositional statements requiring an essentially intensional reduction sentence formulation. By introducing a non-extensional logical operator, the ‘fork', the difference between universal and statistical laws emerges in a distinction between dispositional predicates of universal strength as opposed to those of merely statistical strength. While -the logical form of universal and statistical laws appears to be fundamentally dissimilar on the standard account, from this point of view their syntactical structure is basically the same.
The Bicentenary of Technology Assessment
Authors: Settle Tom 
Published: January 2016

My thesis in this paper is that because technology assessment has an irreducible moral component it challenges some rather common assumptions among scientists, moral philosophers, democratic theorists and philosophers of science. Quite apart from my sympathy both with technology assessment in general and with its moral component in particular, I think the challenge to established modes of thought is very wholesome. Philosophers of science would be failing in their ordinary jobs, let alone in their moral responsibilities, if, having noticed the social phenomenon of a resurgence of interest in technology assessment, they refrained from inspecting its repercussions upon the ontological, epistemological and axiological presuppositions of science, especially of political science and of economics.It has sometimes been suggested that technology assessment is a child of the 1960’s, born in North America, weaned in 1972 with the enactment of the Technology Assessment Act by the congress of the U.S.A.
The Illusions of Experience
Authors: Anderson Robert M. 
Published: January 2016

AbstractOn reading the grain argument as advanced by Meehl and Sellars, I find that there is not one but two grain arguments. According to one argument, mental events cannot be the same as neural events because mental events have a continuity that neural events do not have. The other argues for the same conclusion from the simplicity of experienced quality. I answer these arguments by claiming that these properties of experience are illusory. I detail a dual threshold theory of visual experience and show that given this model the mind-brain identity theory predicts the existence of these illusions.
The Development of Kant's Conception of Scientific Explanation
Authors: MacKinnon Edward 
Published: January 2016

Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is undoubtedly the most neglected and misunderstood of all his major works. It should, I believe, be interpreted as an attempted rational reconstruction of the mechanics of Newton and Euler. What Kant attempted to reconstruct, however, were the conceptual foundations of science rather than the logical structure. The reasons for this as well as the particular way in which it was done can best be understood in the light of Kant's own philosophical development. In summarizing this I will focus on two interrelated issues: Kant's concept of matter, which changed somewhat in the course of his long development; and his interpretation of scientific explanation, which changed considerably.Kant's earliest concerns with scientific explanation involved three aspects of interest here: Christian Wolff's (1679-1754) systematization of philosophy, which served as his point of departure; the ideas on scientific methodology, which he derived from Isaac Newton; and Kant's own work in science.
Moderate Historicism and the Empirical Sense of ‘Good Science’
Authors: Merrill G. H. 
Published: January 2016

Much recent discussion has been devoted to questions concerning what role considerations of the history of science should play in developing and evaluating philosophical analyses of science. It is generally, if not universally, conceded that the philosopher of science must appeal in some way to actual scientific practice and to the historical development of actual science if his analysis is to have any content, and it has been argued (Achinstein 1977) that even the most “ahistorical” of the positivists made, or presupposed, such an appeal.It is now fairly common to distinguish two polar positions regarding the relation of history to philosophy of science: radical logicism is the doctrine that an appeal to actual scientific practice or to the history of science can never serve to refute any philosophical analysis of scientific concepts, while radical historicism is the view that really there is nothing more to the philosophy of science than historical description and analysis (i.e., that conformation to the history of science is always the determining factor in evaluating the adequacy of a philosophical analysis of science).
The Herd as a Means
Authors: Hull David L. 
Published: January 2016

In 1886 Friedrich Nietzsche noted the following basic error in the philosophies of his day, ”…to place the goal in the herd and not in single individuals! The herd is a means, no more! But now one is attempting to understand the herd as an individual and to ascribe to it a higher rank than to the individual—profound misunderstanding!!! Also to characterize that which makes herdlike, sympathy, as the more valuable side to our nature!” (Nietzsche 1901, p. 403).The recent flap over sociobiology has stemmed largely from the fear that biology is being used to justify a Nietzschean view of human societies, as if the chief good in human relations must be basically selfish, as if apparently altruistic behavior is fundamentally hypocritical. From Darwin to the present, biologists have blithely attributed the presence and persistence of all sorts of traits, including behavioral traits, to the “good of the species”.
A Bayesian Argument in Favor of Randomization
Authors: Swijtink Zeno G. 
Published: January 2016

The theory of personal probability must be explored with circumspection and imagination. For example, applying the theory naively one quickly comes to the conclusion that randomization is without value to statistics. This conclusion does not sound right; and it is not right.L. J. Savage (1961, p. 585).Randomization is a generally accepted principle of sound experimental design and common practice among working scientists. But many philosophers and some theoretical statisticians have rejected it. Bayesians have most often stated their opposition to randomization in terms of a decision theoretic argument. Not all Bayesians, however, could go along with that argument, as the above quotation by Leonard Savage testifies.In this paper I will examine the Bayesian decision theoretic argument against randomization and show why it fails. By means of an example I will then give a partial justification of randomization in Bayesian terms.
How to Commit the Gambler's Fallacy and Get Away with It
Authors: Baird Davis , Otte Richard E. 
Published: January 2016

The gambler's fallacy runs like this: We know1) the bias for heads of a certain coin and flipping device is 1/2, and2) flips of the coin with the flipping device are independent.Given these facts we can easily compute the probability of 4 heads or fewer turning up in 20 flips, P(h≤4), to beSuppose we flip the coin 15 times and get—improbably enough—all tails. If the coin lands tails up once more in the next 5 flips the improbable event of 4 or fewer heads in 20 flips, h≤4, will have occurred. Since P(h≤4) is so small we might be tempted to infer that all of the next five flips will be heads.
Truthlikeness for Quantitative Statements
Authors: Niiniluoto Ilkka 
Published: January 2016

In A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability (1865), I. Todhunter tells that among the “learned conversations” of the Florentine gentlemen the following question was once proposed: “A horse is really worth a hundred crowns, one person estimated it at ten crowns and another at a thousand; which of the two made the more extravagant estimate?” When consulted on this matter, Galileo pronounced the two estimates to be equally extravagant, “because the ratio of a thousand to a hundred is the same as the ratio of a hundred to ten”. A priest named Nozzolini thought that the higher estimate is more mistaken, since “the excess of a thousand above a hundred is greater than that of a hundred above ten.” (p. 5).Todhunter's comment on this issue is interesting: it does not appear to him that “the discussion is of any scientific interest or value”.
The Differences That make a Difference: A Comment on Richard Bernstein
Authors: McCarthy Thomas 
Published: January 2016

With his usual deftness and sensitivity to the spirit of our times, Richard Bernstein has brought us to the center of current philosophical debates concerning modernity and postmodernity. He has sought to identify the common ground shared by three of the principals in these debates, in contradistinction to the usual stress placed on the differences separating them. He finds this common ground in the vision of a “non-foundational” or “anti-foundational pragmatic humanism” which is said to inspire all three, and next to which the usually perceived differences — which he does not’ deny — fade to differences of emphasis.One job of a commentator is to set a discussion in motion, and the easiest way to do that here is obviously to recall the familiar differences, to argue that they are basic, and to suggest that next to them the alleged common ground shades to philosophical insignificance.
Direct Inference and Randomization
Authors: Levi Isaac 
Published: January 2016

R.A. Fisher began defending the use of randomized assignments of treatments to plots in agricultural field experiments in 1926 (Fisher 1926). His claims on behalf of randomization were challenged by many other statisticians including his friend and colleague W.S. Gosset, the celebrated “Student” (Gosset 1937). After Gosset's death, Fisher's insistence upon the critical importance of randomization to good experimental design became a cornerstone of methodological orthodoxy, a status it has continued to enjoy until recent years. Even so, an undercurrent of resistance to some of the more excessive claims on behalf of randomization has continued to influence thoughtful statisticians and methodologists.Fisher's rationale for. randomization was grounded on the need to control or eliminate systematic error or bias. For example, the average yield of wheat on plots treated with one kind of fertilizer may be compared with the average yield of wheat of the same variety on plots treated with another kind of fertilizer.
The Sure Thing Principle
Authors: Jeffrey Richard 
Published: January 2016

Here is the example that L. J. Savage (1954, p. 21) uses to adumbrate the principle:A businessman contemplates buying a certain piece of property. He considers the outcome of the next presidential election relevant to the attractiveness of the purchase. So, to clarify the matter for himself, he asks whether he would buy it if he knew that the, Republican candidate were going to win, and decides that he would do so. Similarly, he considers whether he would buy if he knew that the Democratic candidate were going to win, and again finds that he would do so. Seeing that t he would buy in either, event, he decides that he should buy, even though he does not know which event obtains, or will obtain, as we would ordinarily say.
Inductive Analogy in Carnapian Spirit
Authors: Kuipers Theo A.F. 
Published: January 2016

A number of evaluations of the general prospects of Carnap's program of inductive logic have been presented on different occasions (e.g., Adler 1980, Jeffrey 1973, Kuipers 1984a, Lakatos 1968, Niiniluoto 1982). Niiniluoto's and my own account are the most positive about the internal strength of the program, provided one includes open systems of inductive probability, i.e., systems with non-zero probabilities for contingent universal generalizations. As is well-known, this was done for the first time by Hintikka.This paper will not add a new evaluation to the list. Instead, I will show that the internal heuristic of Carnap's restricted program is already strong enough to solve one of its major problems, i.e., the problem of integrating analogy influences in systems of inductive probability.Carnap has given considerable attention to the problem of analogy; to be precise, to what he called analogy by similarity, or analogy influences based on a distance function between the predicates.
Observability
Authors: Rynasiewicz Robert 
Published: January 2016

Among objects and events in the world some have been or eventually will be observed. Others never have been and never will be. Current wisdom has it that among these latter are those that are nonetheless observable. Furthermore, the class of observable, not just observed, phenomena determines the empirical import of science. As van Fraassen tells us, a theory is empirically adequate if “what the theory says about what is observable (by us) it true.” (1980, p. 18). If there are quibbles with this picture, they are with the feasibility of a nonarbitrary or a theory-neutral distinction between the observable and the unobservable, but not with the idea that there are observable yet forever unobserved objects and events.This, however, is precisely my quibble. Concrete items of the world—events and objects—are either observed or unobserved but, I urge, are not in addition observable or unobservable. This is not because I deny that a nonarbitrary or theory-neutral distinction can be drawn.
Doing Science
Authors: Addelson Kathryn Pyn 
Published: January 2016

It is not easy to ask serious questions about sex and gender in the construction of science. Science is so constructed that the questions keep being transformed into something else. Sometimes into “external” questions about social context. Or into historical questions about bad science in the past (now corrected). Or into questions about suspect sciences like anthropology or primatology, but not real sciences like physics. Or into political questions about equal opportunity. Or perhaps into the ravings of Marxists and Feminists. It is particularly difficult to ask serious questions about sex and gender in philosophy of science, because of the ways in which its scholars have reconstructed science.In “Primatology Is Politics by Other Means”, Donna Haraway talks about sex and gender so as to reformulate the way we talk about science. As I read her paper, there are two main investigatory concepts she uses. One is “social organization”.
The Kantian Foundations of Modern Science
Authors: Brittan Gordon G 
Published: January 2016

One way of putting our Interpretive problem, as Professor Butts, does in his very interesting paper, is to characterize the relation(s) between Kant's transcendental and metaphysical principles, on the one hand, and between these principles and the presumptive laws of empirical science, on the other. Another way of putting the problem is to distinguish between Kant's merely illustrative use of the science of his day, his appropriation, generalization, and redeployment of contemporary, often chemical, concepts, his commitment to certain features of classical physics, in particular, as constitutive of any adequate conception of experience, and his identification of the deep presuppositions of any science worthy of the name.In fact, I do not think that there is any general and precise way in which transcendental and metaphysical principles and the laws of empirical science are related. At best there are analogies.
The Problem of Irreversibility
Authors: Earman John 
Published: January 2016

The nature and basis of irreversibility has been intensively investigated over the last 100 years by physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers. But if progress is measured by convergence of opinion among the “experts” then it is hard to detect; in fact the field is a virtual Tower of Babel. J.L. Lebowitz, one of the leading mathematical physicists in the field put it this way:I do not know if anyone is making bets on the eventual resolution of the apparent paradoxes relating to the coexistence, in the description of the same phenomena, of both determinism and randomness, reversibility and time asymmetry, and so on. If there are people betting, however, I would be very happy to be the banker and keep the money until everyone has agreed on the answer. (Lebowitz 1983, p. 4)
Schlick’s Critique of Positivism
Authors: Lewis Joia 
Published: January 2016

It is not well known that Moritz Schlick, whose name is inseparable from the development of logical positivism, was extremely critical of positivism prior to the 1920’s. The positivism Schlick found fault with was associated with the physicist Ernst Mach. Schlick went to considerable lengths to criticize Machian positivism on both epistemological and ontological grounds. He also objected to the positivist claim to be able to account for relativity theory within its framework.Schlick’s views before his move to Vienna in 1922 have been labeled a “critical empiricist realism” (see Feigl 1938, p. xx) or a “structural realism” (Friedman 1983, p. 501). His exposure to the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally held up as the crucial factor in turning him away from his early realist views towards positivism. There is general acknowledgment of a major change in Schlick’s philosophical thinking in the early 20’s; disagreement exists, however, over both the extent of the change and whether it was a positive or negative one.
Explanation in the Semantic Conception of Theory Structure
Authors: Thompson Paul 
Published: January 2016

The semantic conception of theories has a relatively short history the beginnings of which Frederick Suppe has traced to von Neumann (Suppe 1988). Two other early initiators and advocates were Evert Beth in 1948-49 (Beth 1948, 1949; see also 1961) and Patrick Suppes in 1957 in his Introduction to Logic (Suppes, 1957). Beth advanced what has become known as a state space approach while Suppes advanced a set-theoretical predicate approach.Suppes suggested that scientific theories are more appropriately formalized as set-theoretical predicates. Shortly thereafter in 1961 Robert Stoll in his Set Theory and Logic (Stoll, 1961) made a similar claim about the formalization of informal theories of which scientific theories are instances. Suppes wrote a number of papers during the 1960's in which he indicated the features of theories that were better represented on a set-theoretical predicate conception of theories (see, for example Suppes, 1962).
Sets and Point-Sets: Five Grades of Set-Theoretic Involvement in Geometry
Authors: Burgess John P. 
Published: January 2016

Cantor was the founder of not one but two theories: an earlier theory of point-sets and a later theory of sets. How are they related? How much more about points and sets of points can be proved with the assumption of sets of sets of points, sets of sets of sets of points, and so on, than without? The present paper is a semi-popular (nontechnical except for presupposing some familiarity with first-order logic) survey of partial answers obtained by logicians during the last decades.Tarski (1959) has shown how classical geometry (of any number of dimensions, say for definiteness three) can be formalized in a first-order language, here to be called L0, as a first-order theory, here to be called G0. L0 has variables x,y,z, and so on for points, and predicates for a couple of geometric relations among points. G0 has a dozen axioms and one scheme.
Paradigms and Barriers
Authors: Margolis Howard 
Published: January 2016

Having for thirty years believed and taught the doctrine of phlogiston… I for a long time felt inimical to the new system, which represented as absurd that which I hitherto regarded as sound doctrine; but this enmity… springs only from force of habit… [Black to Lavoisier, 1791]This paper is abstracted from a forthcoming book which defends a particular answer to the question of just what it is that shifts when a paradigm shifts. The claim is that what shifts are habits of mind. And in particular the claim is that the most striking cases of paradigm shift will characteristically turn on a shift in some single, uniquely critical, habit of mind: the barrier. An account of a radical discovery — discovery that prompts the Kuhnian symptoms of incommensurability, so that intuitions that seem irresistible to some seem perverse to their rivals — then characteristically turns on how some individual got past the barrier (escaped the critical habit of mind), while at least for a while others could not do so.
Another Day for an Old Dogma
Authors: Levy Robert J. 
Published: January 2016

In Theory and Evidence, Clark Glymour asserts that many philosophers are convinced that “evidence can only bear on the entire body of our beliefs, and cannot be parceled out here and there“(1980,p.5). Attributing this view to Quine, Glymour says:No working scientist acts as though the entire sweep of scientific theory faces the tribunal of experience as a single, undifferentiated whole; nor, I think, does any working person act so with regard to his beliefs. On the contrary, much of the scientist’s business is to construct arguments that aim to show that a particular piece of experiment or observation bears on a particular piece of theory, and such arguments are among the most celebrated accomplishments in the history of our sciences (1980,p.3).Some philosophers might counter that Glymour’s criticisms apply properly to a view Quine had significantly modified two decades before the publication of Theory and Evidence.
Additivity and the Units of Selection
Authors: Godfrey-Smith Peter 
Published: January 2016

Variation is the fuel of evolution, but as is well known, not all variation will drive Darwin’s engine along. Within population genetics, “additivity” is one concept used to characterize the salient type of variation. The characterization of variation (variance) in terms of additivity originates with R.A. Fisher (1918), and Fisher’s “fundamental theorem of natural selection” (1930) states that the rate of evolutionary change is proportional to the additive variance in fitness in the population at that time. Evolution proceeds until the additive variance is exhausted.It would not be surprising if a concept so important in the mathematical structure of evolutionary theory had philosophical significance. In two important works, William Wimsatt (1981) and Elisabeth Lloyd (1988) have claimed that additivity can be used to give a criterion for deciding the “unit of selection” in an evolutionary process.
Reversibility and the Interpretation of Mixtures in Quantum Mechanics
Authors: Pessoa Osvaldo 
Published: January 2016

The term “experimental philosophy” has been used to refer to the solution of what were considered philosophical problems by means of laboratory experiments. A recent example of this was the experimental violation of the Bell inequality, which ruled out certain philosophically appealing “realist local” theories as alternatives to quantum mechanics (QM).Following the spirit of such experimental philosophy, this paper proposes a feasible test between two different interpretations concerning the nature of “mixtures” in QM. The use of delayed coincidence techniques seems to show that the process of mixing beams of light in different polarizations is reversible, favoring a weak version of the so-called “ignorance interpretation” over the “instrumentalist” view.