The notion of a severe test has played an important methodological role in the history of science. But it has not until recently been analyzed in any detail. We develop a generally Bayesian analysis of the notion, compare it with Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical approach by way of sample diagnostic tests in the medical sciences, and consider various objections to both. At the core of our analysis is a distinction between evidence and confirmation or belief. These notions must be kept separate (...) if mistakes are to be avoided; combined in the right way, they provide an adequate understanding of severity. Those who think that the weight of the evidence always enables you to choose between hypotheses “ignore one of the factors (the prior probability) altogether, and treat the other (the likelihood) as though it ...meant something other than it actually does. This is the same mistake as is made by someone who has scruples about measuring the arms of a balance (having only a tape measure at his disposal ...), but is willing to assert that the heavier load will always tilt the balance (thereby implicitly assuming, although without admitting it, that the arms are of equal length!). (Bruno de Finetti, Theory of Probability)2. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a criticism of Carnap's inductive logic which also applies to other formal methods of inductive inference. Criticisms of Carnap's views have typically centered upon the justification of his particular choice of inductive method. I argue that the real problem is not that there is an agreed upon method for which no justification can be found, but that different methods are justified in different circumstances.

The paper reviews criteria which have been used to distinguish science from nonscience and from pseudo–science, and it examines the extent to which they can usefully be applied to “creation science.” These criteria do not force a clear decision, especially as creation science resembles important eighteenth–century forms of orthodox science. Nevertheless, the proponents of creation science may be accused of pious fraud in failing to concede in their political battles that their “science” is tentative and tendentious and will continue to (...) be so while it remains archaic and poorly integrated into the rest of science. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Newton's first optical paper. My aim is to examine the type of argument which Newton uses in order to convince his readers of the truth of his theory of colors. My claim is that this argument is an induction by elimination, and that the Newtonian method of justification is a kind of “generative justification”, a term due to T. Nickles. To achieve my aim I analyze in some detail the arguments in Newton's first optical paper, (...) relating the paper with Newton's other writings in optics, and especially his early correspondence in defence of his theory of colors. (shrink)

Of articles which are submitted for publication in Philosophy, a surprisingly large proportion are about the views of Richard Rorty. Some, indeed, we have published. They, along with pretty well all the articles we receive on Professor Rorty, are highly critical. On the perverse assumption that there must be something to be said for anyone who attracts widespread hostility, it is only right to see what can be said in favour of Rorty's latest collection of papers, entitled, Truth and Progress,.

There is a rather striking video currently used in police training. A firearms officer is caught on video shooting an armed suspect. The officer then gives his account of what happened, and there is no suggestion that he is tying to fabricate evidence. He says that he shot the suspect once; his partner says that he fired two shots. On the video we see four shots being deliberately fired. Memory, it seems, is an unreliable witness in situations of stress.

I begin by distinguishing two notions of model, the notion of a truth-making structure and the notion of a mathematical model (in one specific sense). I then argue that although the models of the semantic view have often been taken to be both truth-making structures and mathematical models, this is in part due to a failure to distinguish between two ways of truth-making; in fact, the talk of truth-making is best excised from the view altogether. The result is a version (...) of the semantic view which is better supported by the direct evidence offered for it, better equipped to achieve its avowed aims, and, I think, closer to the intentions of the original proponents of the view in many ways, despite some of their own declarations to the contrary. (shrink)