This paper proposes to carve out a new position in the scientific realism/antirealism debate and argue that it captures some of the most important realist and some of the most important antirealist considerations. The view, briefly stated, is that there is always a fact of the matter about whether the singular statements science gives us are literally true, but there is no fact of the matter about whether the non-singular statements science gives us are literally true. I call this view (...) singularist semirealism. Singularist semirealism sides with scientific realism with regards to singular statements but it is an antirealist view with regards to non-singular statements. In this sense, singularist semirealism could be considered to be ‘the best of both worlds’. 1 Introduction2 Truth and Correctness3 Property-Tokens and Property-Types4 Singularist Semirealism5 Encouragement from Actual Scientific Practice6 Some Potentially Worrying Consequences of Singularist Semirealism7 Some Promising Consequences of Singularist Semirealism8 Conclusion: Theory Change. (shrink)

In October 2009 I decided to stop doing philosophy. This meant, in particular, stopping work on the book that I was writing on the nature of probability. At that time, I had no intention of making my unfinished draft available to others. However, I recently noticed how many people are reading the lecture notes and articles on my web site. Since this draft book contains some important improvements on those materials, I decided to make it available to anyone who wants (...) to read it. That is what you have in front of you. The account of Laplace’s theory of probability in Chapter 4 is very different to what I said in my seminar lectures, and also very different to any other account I have seen; it is based on a reading of important texts by Laplace that appear not to have been read by other commentators. The discussion of von Mises’ theory in Chapter 7 is also new, though perhaps less revolutionary. And the final chapter is a new attempt to come to grips with the popular, but amorphous, subjective theory of probability. The material in the other chapters has mostly appeared in previous articles of mine but things are sometimes expressed differently here. I would like to say again that this is an incomplete draft of a book, not the book I would have written if I had decided to finish it. It no doubt contains poor expressions, it may contain some errors or inconsistencies, and it doesn’t cover all the theories that I originally intended to discuss. Apart from this preface, I have done no work on the book since October 2009. (shrink)

Детермінізм постає як ключове поняття для науки від моменту її виникнення: наука покликана чітко і однозначно визначати причини явищ, які спостерігаються, та на цій основі впевнено прогнозувати розвиток цих явищ. Втім, вже понад століття, після виникнення квантової фізики та з формулюванням теорії відносності і принципу невизначеності класичне розуміння детермінізму зазнало суттєвого перегляду у фізиці, яка вважалася зразком науки. Ще більше викликів поняття детермінізму отримало у соціальних та гуманітарних науках, які звертаються до об’єктів, які не можуть повністю бути охоплені людським досвідом (...) і бути перевіреними за допомогою експериментів. Водночас, саме до соціальних і гуманітарних наук все більшою мірою звертаються за відповідями на питання, яким буде ближче суспільне майбутнє і як підготуватися до його викликів. Все це зумовило необхідність уточнення, до якої міри саме поняття детермінізму зберегло для науки свою значущість, а також прояснити сучасне розуміння пов’язаних з ним понять, таких як причиновість, індетермінізм, невизначеність тощо. Важливі, і до сьогодні належним чином не осмислені ідеї і проблеми були сформульовані у класичних працях видатних представників природничих та гуманітарних наук, зокрема, таких як фізик Вернер Гейзенберг та історик і соціолог Реймонд Арон. З розвитком науки концепція каузальності лише ускладнюється і розвивається як теоретичне обґрунтування відносин причинності, детермінізму і взаємозалежності, і водночас як наближена модель причинності як об’єктивного і закономірного взаємозв’язку речей, процесів і явищ. Окремим завданням науки постає здійснювати публічне роз’яснення сутнісних змін у концепції наукового детермінізму як припущення щодо можливих стійких повторюваних зв’язків, без якого, щоправда, неможлива наукова чи навіть квазінаукова систематизація знання. (shrink)

Over time, various thematic classifications have been put forward to organize science into a coherent system of specialized areas of research. From an analysis of the historical evolution of the criteria used to distinguish the sciences from one another, I propose in this paper a quadripartite typology for the different thematic classification systems propounded by scholars throughout the centuries. Basically, I argue that the criteria used to differentiate the sciences have been alternately drawn from their respective subject matters, kinds of (...) knowledge, methods and aims. Then, I show that several reclassifications occurred in the thematic structure of science. Finally, I argue that such changes in the structure of learning displaced the modalities of contact between the objects, knowledge, methods and aims of the various branches of science, with the result of outlining reshaped intellectual territories conducive to the emergence of new areas of research. (shrink)

It is a common opinion that chance events cannot be understood in causal terms. Conversely, according to a causal view of chance, intersections between independent causal chains originate accidental events, called “coincidences.” The present paper takes into proper consideration this causal conception of chance and tries to shed new light on it. More precisely, starting from Hart and Honoré’s view of coincidental events, this paper furnishes a more detailed account on the nature of coincidences, according to which coincidental events are (...) hybrids constituted by ontic components, that is the intersections between independent causal chains, plus epistemic aspects; where by “epistemic” we mean what is related, in some sense, to knowledge: for example, access to information, but also expectations, relevance, significance, that is psychological aspects. In particular, this paper investigates the role of the epistemic aspects in our understanding of what coincidences are. In fact, although the independence between the causal lines involved plays a crucial role in understanding coincidental events, that condition results to be insufficient to give a satisfactory definition of coincidences. The main target of the present work is to show that the epistemic aspects of coincidences are, together with the independence between the intersecting causal chains, a constitutive part of coincidental phenomena. Many examples are offered throughout this paper to enforce this idea. This conception, despite—for example—Antoine Augustine Cournot and Jacques Monod’s view, entails that a pure objectivist view about coincidences is not tenable. (shrink)

Well into the 1940s, many French biologists rejected both Mendelian genetics and Darwinism in favour of neo-transformism, the claim that evolution proceeds by the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In 1931 the zoologist Maurice Caullery published Le Problème d’évolution, arguing that, while Lamarckian mechanisms could not be demonstrated in the present, they had nevertheless operated in the past. It was in this context that Raymond Aron expressed anxiety about the relationship between biology, history, and human autonomy in his 1938 Introduction à (...) la philosophie de l’histoire: essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique, in which he rejected both neo-Kantian and biological accounts of human history. Aron aspired to a philosophy of history that could explain the dual nature of human existence as fundamentally rooted in the biological, and at the same time, as a radical transcendence of natural law. I argue that Aron’s encounter with evolutionary theory at this moment of epistemic crisis in evolutionary theory was crucial to the formation of his philosophy of history, and moreover that this case study demonstrates the importance of moving beyond the methodological divisions between intellectual history and history of science. (shrink)

Pierre Duhem can be looked upon as one of the heirs of a tradition of historical and philosophical researches that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. This tradition opposed the naïve historiography and epistemology of the positivist school. Beside the positivists of different leanings such as Littré, Laffitte, Wyrouboff, and Berthelot, we find Cournot, Naville, and Tannery, who developed sophisticated histories and philosophies of science focusing on the real scientific practice and its history. They unfolded elements of (...) continuity and discontinuity in the history of science, and enlightened the complex relationship among experimental, mathematical, logical and philosophical components in scientific practice. In Pierre Duhem we find a systematic and vivid interpretation of these meta-theoretical issues, and a meaningful development of a cultural tradition that re-emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

According to Antoine Augustine Cournot, chance events are the result of the intersection between independent causal chains. This coincidental notion of chance is not a new one, but—as Cournot remarks—it comes from Saint Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, and more probably from Jean de La Placette. Such a conception of chance phenomena seems to be very important, not only because it is closely related to the Principle of Causality, but also since it grounds Cournot’s theory of objective probability. Starting from Martin’s work, (...) the main attempt of this survey is to endorse the idea that Cournot’s coincidental notion of hasard is objective, that is it is ontic and it does not depend—in some sense—on our degree of knowledge. In order to do that, a central role in the discussion will be given to the meaning of the independence between the intersecting causal chains and to Cournot’s conception of causation. (shrink)

By “physical probability” I mean the empirical concept of probability in ordinary language. It can be represented as a function of an experiment type and an outcome type, which explains how non-extreme physical probabilities are compatible with determinism. Two principles, called specification and independence, put restrictions on the existence of physical probabilities, while a principle of direct inference connects physical probability with inductive probability. This account avoids a variety of weaknesses in the theories of Levi and Lewis.