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  1. Tests of Animal Consciousness are Tests of Machine Consciousness.Leonard Dung - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.
    If a machine attains consciousness, how could we find out? In this paper, I make three related claims regarding positive tests of machine consciousness. All three claims center on the idea that an AI can be constructed “ad hoc”, that is, with the purpose of satisfying a particular test of consciousness while clearly not being conscious. First, a proposed test of machine consciousness can be legitimate, even if AI can be constructed ad hoc specifically to pass this test. This is (...)
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  • The Virtues of Pursuit-Worthy Speculation: The Promises of Cosmic Inflation.William J. Wolf & Patrick M. Duerr - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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  • Crick's Adaptor Hypothesis and the Discovery of Transfer RNA: Experiment Surpassing Theoretical Prediction.Michael Fry - 2022 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14 (11):1-31.
    Historically, hypotheses failed in most cases to correctly forecast the workings of complex biological systems. Francis Crick’s adaptor hypothesis, however, stands out as an exceptional case of a confirmed abstract prediction. This hypothesis presciently anticipated the existence of RNA adaptors that function as bridges between amino acids and the chemically different nucleic acid template for proteins. Crick conjectured that the adaptors are enzymatically charged with cognate amino acids, they bind to complementary protein-coding nucleic acid, and their liberated amino acids are (...)
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  • The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history and philosophy of science.Agnes Bolinska & Joseph D. Martin - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 89 (C):63-73.
    We have previously argued that historical cases must be rendered canonical before they can plausibly serve as evidence for philosophical claims, where canonicity is established through a process of negotiation among historians and philosophers of science (Bolinska and Martin, 2020). Here, we extend this proposal by exploring how that negotiation might take place in practice. The working stock of historical examples that philosophers tend to employ has long been established informally, and, as a result, somewhat haphazardly. The composition of the (...)
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  • An Epistemic Advantage of Accommodation over Prediction.Finnur Dellsén - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.
    Many philosophers have argued that a hypothesis is better confirmed by some data if the hypothesis was not specifically designed to fit the data. ‘Prediction’, they argue, is superior to ‘accommodation’. Others deny that there is any epistemic advantage to prediction, and conclude that prediction and accommodation are epistemically on a par. This paper argues that there is a respect in which accommodation is superior to prediction. Specifically, the information that the data was accommodated rather than predicted suggests that the (...)
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  • How Deployment Realism withstands Doppelt's Criticisms.Mario Alai - 2018 - Spontaneous Generations 9 (1):122-135.
    Gerald Doppelt claims that Deployment Realism cannot withstand the antirealist objections based on the “pessimistic meta-induction” and Laudan’s historical counterexamples. Moreover it is incomplete, as it purports to explain the predictive success of theories, but overlooks the necessity to explain also their explanatory success. Accordingly, he proposes a new version of realism, presented as the best explanation of both predictive and explanatory success, and committed only to the truth of best current theories, not of the discarded ones. Elsewhere I criticized (...)
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  • Accommodation, prediction and replication: model selection in scale construction.Clayton Peterson - 2019 - Synthese 196 (10):4329-4350.
    In psychology, measurement instruments are constructed from scales, which are obtained on the grounds of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Looking at the literature, one can find various recommendations regarding how these techniques should be used during the scale construction process. Some authors suggest to use exploratory factor analysis on the entire data set while others advice to perform an internal cross-validation by randomly splitting the data set in two and then either perform exploratory factor analysis on both parts or (...)
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  • State of the Field: Why novel prediction matters.Heather Douglas & P. D. Magnus - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4):580-589.
    There is considerable disagreement about the epistemic value of novel predictive success, i.e. when a scientist predicts an unexpected phenomenon, experiments are conducted, and the prediction proves to be accurate. We survey the field on this question, noting both fully articulated views such as weak and strong predictivism, and more nascent views, such as pluralist reasons for the instrumental value of prediction. By examining the various reasons offered for the value of prediction across a range of inferential contexts , we (...)
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  • Novel Predictions and the No Miracle Argument.Mario Alai - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (2):297-326.
    Predictivists use the no miracle argument to argue that “novel” predictions are decisive evidence for theories, while mere accommodation of “old” data cannot confirm to a significant degree. But deductivists claim that since confirmation is a logical theory-data relationship, predicted data cannot confirm more than merely deduced data, and cite historical cases in which known data confirmed theories quite strongly. On the other hand, the advantage of prediction over accommodation is needed by scientific realists to resist Laudan’s criticisms of the (...)
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  • Theory-laden experimentation.Samuel Schindler - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (1):89-101.
    The thesis of theory-ladenness of observations, in its various guises, is widely considered as either ill-conceived or harmless to the rationality of science. The latter view rests partly on the work of the proponents of New Experimentalism who have argued, among other things, that experimental practices are efficient in guarding against any epistemological threat posed by theory-ladenness. In this paper I show that one can generate a thesis of theory-ladenness for experimental practices from an influential New Experimentalist account. The notion (...)
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  • How Theories Became Knowledge: Morgan's Chromosome Theory of Heredity in America and Britain. [REVIEW]Stephen G. Brush - 2002 - Journal of the History of Biology 35 (3):471-535.
    T. H. Morgan, A. H. Sturtevant, H. J. Muller and C. B. Bridges published their comprehensive treatise "The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity" in 1915. By 1920 Morgan 's "Chromosome Theory of Heredity" was generally accepted by geneticists in the United States, and by British geneticists by 1925. By 1930 it had been incorporated into most general biology, botany, and zoology textbooks as established knowledge. In this paper, I examine the reasons why it was accepted as part of a series of (...)
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  • Prediction in selectionist evolutionary theory.Rasmus Gr⊘Nfeldt Winther - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):889-901.
    Selectionist evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making novel predictions that are surprising, risky, and correct. I argue that it in fact exhibits the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to two other virtues: explanatory unification and model fitting. Two case studies show the predictive capacity of selectionist evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in E. coli, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.
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  • The case for the philosophy of chemistry.Eric Scerri & Lee McIntyre - 1997 - Synthese 111 (3):213-232.
    The philosophy of chemistry has been sadly neglected by most contempory literature in the philosophy of science. This paper argues that this neglect has been unfortunate and that there is much to be learned from paying greater philosophical attention to the set of issues defined by the philosophy of chemistry. The potential contribution of this field to such current topics as reduction, laws, explanation, and supervenience is explored, as are possible applications of insights gained by such study to the philosophy (...)
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  • Accommodation and prediction: The case of the persistent head.David Harker - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (2):309-321.
    A not unpopular thesis, when it comes to the confirmation of scientific theories, is that data which were used in the construction of a theory afford poorer support for that theory than data that played no role. Some compelling thought experiments have been offered in favour of this view, not as proof but rather to add some intuitive plausibility. In this paper I consider such thought experiments and argue that they do not support the thesis; the perceived importance of prediction (...)
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  • Bayesianism and support by novel facts.Colin Howson - 1984 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35 (3):245-251.
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  • Use-novel predictions and Mendeleev’s periodic table: response to Scerri and Worrall.Samuel Schindler - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (2):265-269.
    In this paper I comment on a recent paper by [Scerri, E., & Worrall, J. . Prediction and the periodic table. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 32, 407–452.] about the role temporally novel and use-novel predictions played in the acceptance of Mendeleev’s periodic table after the proposal of the latter in 1869. Scerri and Worrall allege that whereas temporally novel predictions—despite Brush’s earlier claim to the contrary—did not carry any special epistemic weight, use-novel predictions did indeed contribute to (...)
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  • Could Lakatos, even with Zahar's criterion for novel fact, evaluate the copernican research programme?Neil Thomason - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (2):161-200.
    Why did Copernicus's research programme supersede Ptolemy's?’, Lakatos and Zahar argued that, on Zahar's criterion for ‘novel fact’, Copernican theory was objectively scientifically superior to Ptolemaic theory. They are mistaken, Lakatos and Zahar applied Zahar's criterion to ‘a historical thought-experiment’—fictional rather than real history. Further, in their fictional history, they compared Copernicus to Eudoxus rather than Ptolemy, ignored Tycho Brahe, and did not consider facts that would be novel for geostatic theories. When Zahar's criterion is applied to real history, the (...)
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  • Heuristic novelty and the asymmetry problem in bayesian confirmation theory.Richard Nunan - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1):17-36.
    Bayesian confirmation theory, as traditionally interpreted, treats the temporal relationship between the formulation of a hypothesis and the confirmation (or recognition) of evidence entailed by that hypothesis merely as a component of the psychology of discovery and acceptance of a hypothesis. The temporal order of these events is irrelevant to the logic of rational theory choice. A few years ago Richmond Campbell and Thomas Vinci offered a reinterpretation of Bayes' Theorem in defense of the view that the temporal relationship between (...)
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  • Novel evidence and severe tests.Deborah G. Mayo - 1991 - Philosophy of Science 58 (4):523-552.
    While many philosophers of science have accorded special evidential significance to tests whose results are "novel facts", there continues to be disagreement over both the definition of novelty and why it should matter. The view of novelty favored by Giere, Lakatos, Worrall and many others is that of use-novelty: An accordance between evidence e and hypothesis h provides a genuine test of h only if e is not used in h's construction. I argue that what lies behind the intuition that (...)
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  • Accomodation, prediction, and confirmation.Lee McIntyre - 2001 - Perspectives on Science 9 (3):308-323.
    : In this paper I argue that belief in the greater confirmatory value of prediction over accommodation can best be understood as a function of the practice rather than the logic of science. Attempts to account for this asymmetry within the logic of science have revealed no non-arbitrary way to address the problem of underdetermination as it applies to prediction and thus have failed to account for the preference for prediction over accommodation on logical grounds. Instead, I propose a model (...)
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  • Predictivism and avoidance of ad hoc-ness: An empirical study.Samuel Schindler - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 104 (C):68-77.
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  • Novelty, coherence, and Mendeleev’s periodic table.Samuel Schindler - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 45:62-69.
    Predictivism is the view that successful predictions of “novel” evidence carry more confirmational weight than accommodations of already known evidence. Novelty, in this context, has traditionally been conceived of as temporal novelty. However temporal predictivism has been criticized for lacking a rationale: why should the time order of theory and evidence matter? Instead, it has been proposed, novelty should be construed in terms of use-novelty, according to which evidence is novel if it was not used in the construction of a (...)
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  • Novel facts and bayesianism.Ilkka Niiniluoto - 1983 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 34 (4):375-379.
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  • (1 other version)Inference to the Best explanation.Peter Lipton - 2005 - In Martin Curd & Stathis Psillos (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science. New York: Routledge. pp. 193.
    Science depends on judgments of the bearing of evidence on theory. Scientists must judge whether an observation or the result of an experiment supports, disconfirms, or is simply irrelevant to a given hypothesis. Similarly, scientists may judge that, given all the available evidence, a hypothesis ought to be accepted as correct or nearly so, rejected as false, or neither. Occasionally, these evidential judgments can be made on deductive grounds. If an experimental result strictly contradicts a hypothesis, then the truth of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Prediction, Accommodation, and the Logic of Discovery.Patrick Maher - 1988 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1988 (1):272-285.
    It is widely believed that if a piece of evidence for a theory was known at the time the theory was proposed, then it does not confirm the theory as strongly as it would if the evidence had been discovered after the theory was proposed. I shall call this view the predictivist thesis. Those who have endorsed it include Leibniz (1678), Huygens (1690, preface), Whewell (1847 vol. 2, p. 64f.), Peirce (1883), Duhem (1914, ch. II, §5), Popper (1965, p. 241f.), (...)
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  • Predictivism and model selection.Alireza Fatollahi - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (1):1-28.
    There has been a lively debate in the philosophy of science over _predictivism_: the thesis that successfully predicting a given body of data provides stronger evidence for a theory than merely accommodating the same body of data. I argue for a very strong version of the thesis using statistical results on the so-called “model selection” problem. This is the problem of finding the optimal model (family of hypotheses) given a body of data. The key idea that I will borrow from (...)
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  • Predictive hypotheses are ineffectual in resolving complex biochemical systems.Michael Fry - 2018 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (2):25.
    Scientific hypotheses may either predict particular unknown facts or accommodate previously-known data. Although affirmed predictions are intuitively more rewarding than accommodations of established facts, opinions divide whether predictive hypotheses are also epistemically superior to accommodation hypotheses. This paper examines the contribution of predictive hypotheses to discoveries of several bio-molecular systems. Having all the necessary elements of the system known beforehand, an abstract predictive hypothesis of semiconservative mode of DNA replication was successfully affirmed. However, in defining the genetic code whose biochemical (...)
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  • Acceptability criteria for work in theology and science.Nancey C. Murphy - 1987 - Zygon 22 (3):279-298.
    The philosophy of science of Imre Lakatos suggests criteria for acceptability of work in the interdisciplinary area of theology and science: proposals must contribute to scientific (or theological) research programs that lead to prediction and discovery of novel facts. Lakatos's methodology also suggests four legitimate types of theology–and–science interaction: (1) heuristic use of theology in science; (2) incorporation of a theological assertion as an auxiliary hypothesis in a scientific research program, or (3) as the central theory of a research program; (...)
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  • On the predilections for predictions.David Harker - 2008 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (3):429-453.
    Scientific theories are developed in response to a certain set of phenomena and subsequently evaluated, at least partially, in terms of the quality of fit between those same theories and appropriately distinctive phenomena. To differentiate between these two stages it is popular to describe the former as involving the accommodation of data and the latter as involving the prediction of data. Predictivism is the view that, ceteris paribus, correctly predicting data confers greater confirmation than successfully accommodating data. In this paper, (...)
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  • Neither truth nor empirical adequacy explain novel success.E. C. Barnes - 2002 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (4):418 – 431.
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  • Building A General Theory of Meta‐Argumentation.Hasmik Hovhannisyan & Robert Djidjian - 2017 - Metaphilosophy 48 (3):345-354.
    This article presents a critical analysis of the main modern approaches to the problem of meta-argumentation and suggests a method for developing a general conception of meta-argumentation. A set of theoretical-methodological difficulties along this path is revealed. Overcoming these aporias would constitute the main steps toward developing the body of a theory of meta-argumentation.
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  • The Bearing of Discovery on Justification.Jarrett Leplin - 1987 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (4):805 - 814.
    The point of the traditional distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification is to insist on the normative character of epistemology. The point is not to dismiss from epistemology merely the genesis of ideas; into the context of discovery go also descriptions of evaluative practices and decisions. However ideas are created, scrutinized, and judged, it is only the approbation to which they are entitled, accorded or not, that allegedly matters to epistemology. The criticism, familiar since N.R. Hanson's Patterns of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Dynamics of Theory Change: The Role of Predictions.Stephen G. Brush - 1994 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994 (2):132-145.
    “What did the President know and when did he know it?”Senator Howard Baker, Watergate hearings, 1973Why do scientists accept or reject theories? More specifically: why do they change from one theory to another? What is the role of empirical tests in the evaluation of theories?This paper focuses on a narrowly-defined question: in judging theories, do scientists give greater weight (other things being equal) to successfulnovel predictionsthan to successful deductions of previously-known facts? The affirmative answer is called the “predictivist thesis” (Maher (...)
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  • Levin and Ghins on the “no miracle” argument and naturalism.Mario Alai - 2012 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 2 (1):85-110.
    On the basis of Levin’s claim that truth is not a scientific explanatory factor, Michel Ghins argues that the “no miracle” argument (NMA) is not scientific, therefore scientific realism is not a scientific hypothesis, and naturalism is wrong. I argue that there are genuine senses of ‘scientific’ and ‘explanation’ in which truth can yield scientific explanations. Hence, the NMA can be considered scientific in the sense that it hinges on a scientific explanation, it follows a typically scientific inferential pattern (IBE), (...)
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  • Prediction and Novel Facts in the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs.Wenceslao J. Gonzalez - 2015 - In Philosophico-Methodological Analysis of Prediction and its Role in Economics. Cham: Imprint: Springer. pp. 103-124.
    In the methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP) there are important features on the problem of prediction, especially regarding novel facts. In his approach, Imre Lakatos proposed three different levels on prediction: aim, process, and assessment. Chapter 5 pays attention to the characterization of prediction in the methodology of research programs. Thus, it takes into account several features: (1) its pragmatic characterization, (2) the logical perspective as a proposition, (3) the epistemological component, (4) its role in the appraisal of research (...)
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  • (1 other version)On novel facts.Martin Carrier - 1988 - Zeitschrift Für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 19 (2):205-231.
    Das Problem, unter welchen Bedingungen eine Hypothese oder Theorienmodifikation als methodologisch akzeptabel gilt, wird in der wissenschaftstheoretischen Tradition als die Frage des Ad-Hoc-Charakters von Hypothesen diskutiert. Das gleichartige Problem tritt aber auch in Lakatos' Methodologie wissenschaftlicher Forschungsprogramme auf, welche von methodologisch zulässigen Theorienänderungen die Vorhersage 'neuer Tatsachen' verlangt. Über diesen Begriff der neuen Tatsache und damit der Adäquatheitsbedingungen für wissenschaftliche Erklärungen hat sich eine weitgefächerte Debatte entsponnen. In diesem Papier wird der Versuch unternommen, die Forderung der unabhängigen Testbarkeit einer Hypothese, (...)
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  • An appraisal of Mendeleev’s contribution to the development of the periodic table.Mansoor Niaz, María A. Rodríguez & Angmary Brito - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 35 (2):271-282.
    Historians and philosophers of science generally conceptualize scientific progress to be dichotomous, viz., experimental observations lead to scientific laws, which later facilitate the elaboration of explanatory theories. There is considerable controversy in the literature with respect to Mendeleev’s contribution to the origin, nature, and development of the periodic table. The objectives of this study are to explore and reconstruct: a) periodicity in the periodic table as a function of atomic theory; b) role of predictions in scientific theories and its implications (...)
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  • On novel confirmation.James A. Kahn, Steven E. Landsburg & Alan C. Stockman - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (4):503-516.
    Evidence that confirms a scientific hypothesis is said to be ‘novel’ if it is not discovered until after the hypothesis isconstructed. The philosophical issues surrounding novel confirmation have been well summarized by Campbell and Vinci [1983]. They write that philosophers of science generally agree that when observational evidence supports a theory, the confirmation is much stronger when the evidence is ‘novel’... There are, nevertheless, reasons to be skeptical of this tradition... The notion of novel confirmation is beset with a theoretical (...)
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  • Empirical Evidence in the Structure of Physical Theories.Stojan Obradovć - 2013 - Foundations of Science 18 (2):307-318.
    The author considers the empirical component of physical theories. He studies the origin and development of the theory of physical experiment, the structure and gnoseological hypotheses of the measuring process, as well as the relativity principle concerning the measuring equipment. Examples of modern physical theories are used in order to demonstrate the influence of experimental facts on the formation and development, verification and accepting of these theories in the structure of scientific systems. The role of accidental experimental facts in this (...)
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  • Intelligent inference and the web of belief : in defense of a post-foundationalist epistemology.Ronald C. Pine - unknown
    Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1996.
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