bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Realism
Authors: Maddy Penelope 
Published: October 2003

AbstractThe early sections describe the pre‐theoretic realism of the mathematician, survey the basic forms of realism in philosophy, and attempt to disentangle the issues of realism from debates over the nature of truth. The final section begins by laying out traditional Platonism, intuitionism, and formalism. Quine's famous critique of Carnap's conventionalism then leads to Quine's realism, and Putnam's developments thereof, while a different sort of mathematical realism is found in Gödel's writings. Set theoretic realism emerges as an effort to build on the strengths of Quine's and Gödel's realisms, while avoiding their weaknesses and filling in their lacunae.
Perception and Intuition
Authors: Maddy Penelope 
Published: October 2003

AbstractBegins with a presentation and elaboration of Benacerraf's epistemic challenge to realism: how can we gain knowledge of an acausal world of non‐spatio‐temporal abstracts? I then outline a theory of perception based in part on neurological theories of Hebb and developmental evidence from Piaget, and I argue in these terms that we can, in fact, perceive sets of medium‐sized physical objects. This account of perception is elaborated into an account of physical and mathematical intuition, faculties that produce various rudimentary beliefs that underlie the simplest physical and set theoretic assumptions (e.g. that physical objects generally look different from different points of view, or that any two objects can be collected into a set). I conclude by comparing and contrasting this epistemology with some controversial passages from Gödel's writings.
Numbers
Authors: Maddy Penelope 
Published: October 2003

AbstractBegins with a review of Benacerraf's metaphysical challenge to mathematical realism based on sets: how, for example, can number theory be the study of particular sets when other sets with the same structural relations would seem to do just as well? The set theoretic realist gives the straightforward response that numbers are not particular sets, but properties of sets. I close with a digression on the prospects for ‘Frege numbers’—i.e. numbers construed as proper classes.
Monism and Beyond
Authors: Maddy Penelope 
Published: October 2003

AbstractOutlines a physicalistic version of set theoretic realism (a sort of monism), and compares and contrasts it with Field's nominalism, with structuralism, and with modalism. I conclude that, despite metaphysical differences, versions of all these views share the new challenge raised in Ch. 4: how are new axiom candidates to be rationally evaluated?
Aspects of Reason
Authors: Grice Paul 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This book, based on Grice's 1979 Locke Lectures at Oxford and published posthumously, elaborates the notions of reasons, reasoning, and rationality, with particular emphasis on the unity of practical and non‐practical (‘alethic’) reasoning. It begins with a look at the nature of ordinary reasoning and distinguishes between ‘flat rationality’, the formal capacity to apply inferential rules, and ‘variable rationality’, the excellence or competence of good reasoning (Ch. 1). Grice then proposes an ‘Equivocality Thesis’, arguing that a structural representation can be given for justificatory (normative) reasons that allows for modals (ought, must, etc.) to be used univocally across the alethic/practical divide in terms of general acceptability statements (Chs. 2–3). In addition, he shows that valid inferences can be drawn from alethic to practical acceptability statements (Ch. 4). Finally, Grice provides a characterization of happiness as it features in practical thinking, and suggests it to be an ‘inclusive end’, consisting of the realization of other ends that are desirable for their own sake as well as for the sake of happiness (Ch. 5). An extensive introduction by Richard Warner provides a helpful summary and explanation of key aspects of the book.
Reason and Reasoning
Authors: Grice Paul 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Grice deals with the nature of practical and non‐practical (‘alethic’) reasoning, particularly what may be called imperfect reasoning. It consists of ‘misreasoning’ (the misapplication of good principles of reasoning), ‘incomplete reasoning’ (formally invalid but nonetheless correct inferences due to a missing premise that is either suppressed or expected to exist), and ‘too good to be reasoning’ (valid reasoning that is ‘uninteresting’ because it is merely mechanical, aimless, or overly detailed). The last two kinds of reasoning, Grice argues, suggest a distinction between ‘flat rationality’ (the formal capacity to apply inferential rules common to all human beings) and ‘variable rationality’ (the excellence or competence of good reasoning, which we have to different degrees).
Practical and Alethic Reasons: Part I
Authors: Grice Paul 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Grice continues his project of proving the univocality of common modals (the ‘Equivocality Thesis’) by showing how a univocal structural representation can be applied to a certain (non‐moral) class of alethic and practical acceptability statements that are at least sometimes (informally) valid, subject to license of the involved transitional inferences from a ‘Principle of Total Evidence’. Grice also shows that these acceptability statements can be modified to account for defeasible (ceteris paribus , degrees of probability/desirability) and non‐defeasible (‘unqualified’) generalizations, which in turn can be utilized to account for a univocal set of modals such as ‘ought’ and ‘must’. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ‘Principle of Total Evidence’.
Practical and Alethic Reasons: Part II
Authors: Grice Paul 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter first shows how—given certain circumstances—valid inferences can be drawn from alethic to practical acceptability statements. For this, Grice tries to establish an acceptability statement of the form ‘it is acceptable that if (on the alethic side) A only if B, then (on the practical side) one should A only if one should B’. He then turns to a discussion of the characteristics of practical thinking other than the application of means–ends reasoning. Such practical thinking, Grice suggests, includes the determination of antecedently indeterminate desires and intentions, contains systems of priorities, and often is revisionist and comparative.
Some Reflections About Ends and Happiness
Authors: Grice Paul 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Grice discusses happiness as an end, and its relation to other ends, as it would feature in practical reasoning. He begins by analysing Aristotle's claims towards the self‐sufficiency and finality of happiness as an end, and defends the thesis that happiness is an ‘inclusive end’, consisting of the realization of various other ends that are desirable for their own sakes as well as for the sake of happiness. Grice then briefly discusses the possibility that the components of happiness may not be certain universals (power, honour, etc.) or states of affairs but the desires for such universals or states of affairs. He ends with the suggestion that happiness can be characterized as a system of ends that is suitable for the guidance of life, and hence must be marked by features that are conducive to its stability and flexibility.
Introduction
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The opposition between empiricism and realism with respect to science is old: it appeared clearly in the seventeenth century sense of superiority of the ‘mechanical philosophy’ to Scholastic metaphysics, and continued for the next three centuries’ debates over the philosophical foundations of physics. Empiricist views developed by the logical positivists of Vienna and
Berlin were defeated by the emergence of scientific realism in the mid‐twentieth century. This defeat was largely due to the inadequacy of the positivist theories of meaning and language. To present a viable empiricist account of science, we need conceptions of theory structure, truth, and empirical adequacy that are essentially independent of a theory's linguistic formulation. Correlative to this discussion of the relationship between theory and world is the question what it is to accept a scientific theory––how much belief is involved? And what is involved other than belief? The position to be developed here (given the momentary name ‘constructive empiricism’) will view scientific activity as one of construction rather than discovery: construction of models that must be adequate to the observable phenomena, and not discovery of the truth about postulated unobservable parts of nature. Acceptance of a scientific theory so viewed will have an irreducible pragmatic dimension in addition to involving only a modest amount of belief.
Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This chapter examines and criticizes the main arguments offered for scientific realism, here identified as the following view: Science aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. In contrast, constructive empiricism, which also opts for a literal understanding of scientific language, is the following view: Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate (but also has a pragmatic dimension, to be elucidated). Topics examined include the ’theory/observation dichotomy’, observable versus unobservable entities, epistemology and the epistemic community, inference to the best explanation, principle of the common cause, and fictionalism. The views of Smart, Sellars, Reichenbach, Putnam, and Dummett are considered. It is argued that the arguments offered for scientific realism, though telling against logical positivism, do not support it over and against constructive empiricism.
To Save the Phenomena1
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
What is the empirical content of a theory? If a theory is identified with one of its linguistic formulations, the only available answers allow for no non‐trivial distinction between empirical and non‐empirical content. The restriction of such a formulated theory to a narrow ‘observational’ vocabulary is not a description of the observable part of the world but a hobbled and hamstrung description of its entire domain, still with non‐empirical implications. Viewing a theory as identified through the family of its models––the structures it makes available for modelling the phenomena––yields a new approach. The distinctions so made are illustrated with Newton's physics, absolute versus relative motion, nineteenth‐ century ether theory of electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics. A hermeneutic circle in the interpretation is noted, and the theory‐independence of the observable/unobservable distinction maintained.
Empiricism and Scientific Methodology
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Scientific theories do much more than answer empirical questions. This can be understood along empiricist lines only if those other aspects are instrumental for the pursuit of empirical strength and adequacy, or serving other aims subordinate to these. This chapter accordingly addresses four main questions: (1) Does the rejection of realism lead to a self‐defeating scepticism? (2) Are scientific methodology and experimental design intelligible on any but a realist interpretation of science? (3) Is the ideal of the unity of science, or even the practice of using distinct theories in conjunction, intelligent on an empiricist view? (4) What sense can an empiricist position accord to those theoretical virtues––such as simplicity, coherence, explanatory power––that are not reducible to empirical strength or adequacy? The answers to these questions rely strongly on the pragmatics of scientific inquiry, and advocate a ‘Clausewitz doctrine’ of experimentation as a continuation of theorizing by other means.
The Pragmatics of Explanation1
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Explanatory power is a complex theoretical virtue, not reducible to empirical strength or adequacy, which includes other virtues as its own preconditions. Since this virtue provides one of the main criteria by which theories are evaluated, it presents thus a challenge to any empiricist account of science. After a critical account of attempted explications of the concept of scientific explanation, this chapter offers a pragmatic account that identifies explanations with answers to why‐questions. Since such questions are set by the questioner, and have their family of relevant direct answers determined by the presuppositions, values, and interests involved in the questioning, that makes explanation relative to contextual factors. On this understanding, evaluations of scientific explanation cannot play the role required for their use in support of scientific realism––and, incidentally, the large array of standard puzzles in the literature on this subject are solved.
Probability: The New Modality of Science
Authors: Fraassen Bas C. van 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The Aristotelian tradition in science, dominant before the advent of modern science, saw real modalities in nature: necessity, possibility, contingency, potentiality, and essence. Throughout the modern period and the early twentieth century, empiricists struggled to maintain that there was nothing to be found between matters of actual fact on the one hand and relations between ideas or words on the other. Probability has the logical form of a modality, but until the twentieth century, it could be construed as a measure of ignorance, or of actual proportions and frequencies, not a basic parameter in nature itself. That changed with the advent of quantum mechanics and the admission of indeterminism as a theoretical possibility. The legitimacy of irreducible probabilities was admitted in the modelling of natural processes. The challenge to the empiricist now is to interpret probability as it appears there, and this includes the larger challenge of displaying an empiricistically acceptable role for modalities in general in the scientific image. This chapter provides a systematic critique of frequentist and propensity interpretations of physical probability, but also characterizes the models of probability theory as constructible from families of sequences constrained by limiting frequencies. This formal agreement with a certain kind of ’ideal frequency’ account is embedded in a philosophical view of modalities in general that turns on an account of the language of science on the level of pragmatics.
The False Prison Volume Two
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
This is the second of David Pears's acclaimed two‐volume work on the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy, covering the Philosophical Investigations and other writings from 1929 onwards. Though more selective in its coverage than the first volume (it deals mainly with Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology and the ego, the possibility of a private language and rule‐following), the book reveals with great clarity the style, method, and content of Wittgenstein's later thought. While this volume is independently comprehensible, Pears remains largely within the structural framework of the first volume and uncovers thereby the general overall configuration and internal organization of Wittgenstein's thought.
The Exemplary Treatment of the Ego
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Takes as a starting point Wittgenstein's treatment of solipsism and the ego, a discussion that picks up on the concluding chapters of Volume 1. Pears identifies two main lines of thought in the Philosophical Investigations, regarding Wittgenstein's treatment of sensations and ‘meaning and doing’, and argues that these run structurally parallel to the discussion of solipsism and the ego. He thereby determines the framework on the basis of which the internal structure of Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole is to be revealed.
The First Attempt to Extend the Treatment of the Ego to Sensations and Their Types: Reactions to Phenomenalism
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Pears examines Wittgenstein's views on sensations and their types in the light of classical phenomenalism. He argues that Wittgenstein never subscribed to phenomenalism with an empirically fixed baseline and outlines the relation between Wittgenstein's critique of ego‐based solipsism and such a phenomenalism.
The First Attempt to Extend the Treatment of the Ego to Sensations and Their Types: Other Minds
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Argues that the problem Wittgenstein was concerned with in the transition period around 1929 did not regard the external world but other minds. Pears delineates this problem as it struck Wittgenstein and reveals how it caused the change in philosophical outlook and influenced his later philosophy of psychology.
The Private Language Argument of Philosophical Investigations
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Shifts the discussion from Wittgenstein's treatment of sensations to his views on the method of re‐identifying them by means of a private language. Pears outlines Wittgenstein's private language argument and argues that it is a reductio ad absurdum that applies to a language for sensations whose connections with the physical world have been severed.
The Disabling Defect of a Private Language
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Pears examines the question of what exactly the cause for the disabling effect, the consequence that we cannot distinguish between seeming right and being right, of a private language is. He introduces and evaluates two influential answers to this question and critically examines the importance of the possibility of a solitary language user to the notion of a logically private language.
Rule‐Following: Meaning and Doing
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Departs from Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology and picks up the notions of meaning and doing, in the light of his early theory of meaning. Pears introduces Wittgenstein's rule‐following considerations and puts forward a differentiated non‐critical interpretation of Wittgenstein's thoughts on how to follow a rule.
Rule‐Following: The Rejection of the Platonic Theory in Philosophical Investigations
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Chapter 17 deepens the rule‐following discussion and critically examines Saul Kripke's influential sceptical interpretation of Wittgenstein. Pears discusses Wittgenstein's rejection of Platonism and connects the rule‐following considerations to a number of strands of Wittgenstein's thought introduced in the previous chapters.
The Next Problem
Authors: Pears David 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Connects the two main strands of Wittgenstein's later philosophy discussed in Volume 2 in a number of ways and culminates in an abstract and general overview of the later works. Pears extracts the similarities and differences between Wittgenstein's later thought and the philosophies of his predecessors and contemporaries, and thereby determines his place in the past and his value for present philosophical endeavours.
How the Laws of Physics Lie
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Nancy Cartwright argues for a novel conception of the role of fundamental scientific laws in modern natural science. If we attend closely to the manner in which theoretical laws figure in the practice of science, we see that despite their great explanatory power these laws do not describe reality. Instead, fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models. Thus, the correct account of explanation in science is not the traditional covering law view, but the ‘simulacrum’ account. On this view, explanation is a matter of constructing a model that may employ, but need not be consistent with, a theoretical framework, in which phenomenological laws that are true of the empirical case in question can be derived. Anti‐realism about theoretical laws does not, however, commit one to anti‐realism about theoretical entities. Belief in theoretical entities can be grounded in well‐tested localized causal claims about concrete physical processes, sometimes now called ‘entity realism’. Such causal claims provide the basis for partial realism and they are ineliminable from the practice of explanation and intervention in nature.
Causal Laws and Effective Strategies
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Argues for the irreducibility of causal laws to laws of association, probabilistic or deterministic. Statistical or probabilistic analyses of causality, which typically require that the cause increase or alter the probability of the effect, cannot succeed because causes increase the probability of their effects only in situations that exhibit causal homogeneity with respect to that effect (Simpson's paradox). This condition must enter the definition of an effective strategy, which is why causal laws are ineliminable for scientifically grounded interventions in nature.
The Truth Doesn't Explain Much
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
The standard view of explanation in science—the covering law model—assumes that knowledge of laws lies at the basis of our ability to explain phenomena. But in fact most of the high‐level claims in science are ceteris paribus generalizations, which are false unless certain precise conditions obtain. Given the explanatory force of ceteris paribus generalizations but the paucity of true laws, the covering law model of explanation must be false. There is, it is argued, a trade‐off between truth and explanatory power.
The Reality of Causes in a World of Instrumental Laws
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Argues in favour of a distinction between causal and theoretical explanation and claims that scientific realism can be defended for the former, but the latter can only defensibly be interpreted via instrumentalism. The truth of fundamental laws is typically defended by appeal to the argument from coincidence, or inference to the best explanation. However, if we analyse the way theoretical and causal explanations function in physics, we discover that the two have a very different status. As an illustration, Perrin's experiments, which sought to confirm Avogadro's number are properly viewed as inference to the most probable cause, not as inference to the best explanation.
When Explanation Leads to Inference
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
When is it justified to infer from the fact that a theory provides a good explanation of phenomena to the truth of the theory used in explanation (i.e. inference to the best explanation)? Bas van Fraassen and Pierre Duhem's instrumentalism, which demands only that good theories should ‘save the phenomena’, precludes such inferences altogether. However, in cases of inference to the most probable cause, the instrumentalist position excludes too much. In fact, although explanation via well‐tested causal claims does not justify belief in theoretical laws, it does justify belief in the theoretical entities that figure in those claims (i.e. in ‘entity realism’).
For Phenomenological Laws
Authors: Cartwright Nancy 
Published: October 2003

Abstract
Conventional accounts like the deductive‐nomological model suppose that high‐level theories couched in abstract language encompass or imply more low‐level laws expressed in more concrete language (here called phenomenological laws). The truth of phenomenological laws is then supposed to provide evidence for the truth of the theory. This chapter argues that, to the contrary, approximations are required to arrive at phenomenological laws and generally these approximations improve on theory and are not dictated by the facts. Examples include an amplifier model, exponential decay and the Lamb shift (Based on work with Jon Nordby).