This paper develops an account of scientific objectivity for a relativist theory of evidence. It briefly reviews the character and shortcomings of empiricist and wholist treatments of theory acceptance and objectivity and argues that the relativist account of evidence developed by the author in an earlier essay offers a more satisfactory framework within which to approach questions of justification and intertheoretic comparison. The difficulty with relativism is that it seems to eliminate objectivity from scientific method. Reconceiving objectivity as a function (...) of the social character of science, rather than of individually practiced methods, allows us to claim that science is objective even if relativism is true, and provides a more realistic account of scientific objectivity than is possible on either the empiricist or the wholist accounts. (shrink)

A familiar adage in the philosophy of science is that general hypotheses are better supported by varied evidence than by uniform evidence. Several studies suggest that young children do not respect this principle, and thus suffer from a defect in their inductive methodology. We argue that the diversity principle does not have the normative status that psychologists attribute to it, and should be replaced by a simple rule of probability. We then report experiments designed to detect conformity to the latter (...) rule in children's inductive judgment. The results suggest that young children in both the United States and Taiwan are sensitive to the constraints imposed by the rule on judgments of probability and evidential strength. We conclude with a suggested reinterpretation of the thesis that children's inductive methodology qualifies them as “little scientists.”. (shrink)

The ‘indispensability argument’ for the existence of mathematical objects appeals to the role mathematics plays in science. In a series of publications, Joseph Melia has offered a distinctive reply to the indispensability argument. The purpose of this paper is to clarify Melia’s response to the indispensability argument and to advise Melia and his critics on how best to carry forward the debate. We will begin by presenting Melia’s response and diagnosing some recent misunderstandings of it. Then we will discuss four (...) avenues for replying to Melia. We will argue that the three replies pursued in the literature so far are unpromising. We will then propose one new reply that is much more powerful, and—in the light of this—advise participants in the debate where to focus their energies. (shrink)

Though there is a wide and varied literature on ethical supererogation, there has been almost nothing written about its epistemic counterpart, despite an intuitive analogy between the two fields. This paper seeks to change this state of affairs. I will begin by showing that there are examples which intuitively feature epistemically supererogatory doxastic states. Next, I will present a positive theory of epistemic supererogation that can vindicate our intuitions in these examples, in an explanation that parallels a popular theory of (...) ethical supererogation. Roughly, I will argue that a specific type of epistemic virtue—the ability to creatively think up plausible hypotheses given a body of evidence—is not required of epistemic agents. Thus, certain exercises of this virtue can result in supererogatory doxastic states. In presenting this theory, I will also show how thinking about epistemic supererogation can provide us a new way forward in the debate about the uniqueness thesis for epistemic rationality. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World) is generally conceived of as being the failed manifesto of logical positivism. In this paper we will consider the following question: How much of the Aufbau can actually be saved? We will argue that there is an adaptation of the old system which satisfies many of the demands of the original programme. In order to defend this thesis, we have to show how a new 'Aufbau-like' programme may (...) solve or circumvent the problems that affected the original Aufbau project. In particular, we are going to focus on how a new system may address the well-known difficulties in Carnap's Aufbau concerning abstraction, dimensionality, and theoretical terms. (shrink)

This paper suggests a bridge principle for all-or-nothing belief and degrees of belief to the effect that belief corresponds to stably high degree of belief. Different ways of making this Humean thesis on belief precise are discussed, and one of them is shown to stand out by unifying the others. The resulting version of the thesis proves to be fruitful in entailing the logical closure of belief, the Lockean thesis on belief, and coherence between decision-making based on all-or-nothing beliefs and (...) on degrees of belief. (shrink)

Derivational robustness may increase the degree to which various pieces of evidence indirectly confirm a robust result. There are two ways in which this increase may come about. First, if one can show that a result is robust, and that the various individual models used to derive it also have other confirmed results, these other results may indirectly confirm the robust result. Confirmation derives from the fact that data not known to bear on a result are shown to be relevant (...) when it is shown to be robust. Second, robustness may increase the degree to which the robust result is indirectly confirmed if it increases the weight with which existing evidence indirectly confirms it. This may happen when it strengthens the connection between the core and the robust result by showing that auxiliaries are not responsible for the result. (shrink)

Maxwell claimed that the electrostatic inverse square law could be deduced from Cavendish's spherical condenser experiment. This is true only if the accuracy claims made by Cavendish and Maxwell are ignored, for both used the inverse square law as a premise in their analyses of experimental accuracy. By so doing, they assumed the very law the accuracy of which the Cavendish experiment was supposed to test. This paper attempts to make rational sense of this apparently circular procedure and to relate (...) it to some variants of traditional problems concerning old and new evidence. (shrink)

The problem for the scientist created by using idealizations is to determine whether failures to achieve experimental fit are attributable to experimental error, falsity of theory, or of idealization. Even in the rare case when experimental fit within experimental error is achieved, the scientist must determine whether this is so because of a true theory and fortuitously canceling idealizations, or due to a fortuitous combination of false theory and false idealizations. For the engineer, the problem seems rather different. Experiment for (...) the engineer reveals the closeness of predictive fit that can be achieved by theory and idealization for a particular case. If the closeness of fit is good enough for some practical purpose, the job is done. If not, or there are reasons to consider variation, then the engineer needs to know how well the experimentally determined closeness of fit will extrapolate to new cases. This paper focuses on engineering measures of closeness of fit and the projectibility of those measures to new cases. (shrink)

Varied evidence confirms more strongly than less varied evidence, ceteris paribus. This epistemological Variety of Evidence Thesis enjoys widespread intuitive support. We put forward a novel explication of one notion of varied evidence and the Variety of Evidence Thesis within Bayesian models of scientific inference by appealing to measures of entropy. Our explication of the Variety of Evidence Thesis holds in many of our models which also pronounce on disconfirmatory and discordant evidence. We argue that our models pronounce rightly. Against (...) a backdrop of failures of the Variety of Evidence Thesis, the intuitive case for the Variety of Evidence Thesis emerges strengthened. Our models do however not support the general case for the thesis since our explication of it fails to hold in certain cases. The parameter space of this failure is explored and an explanation for the failure is offered. (shrink)

Many conditionals seem to convey the existence of a link between their antecedent and consequent. We draw on a recently proposed typology of conditionals to argue for an old philosophical idea according to which the link is inferential in nature. We show that the proposal has explanatory force by presenting empirical results on the evidential meaning of certain English and Dutch modal expressions.

The question of the role of theory in the determination of reference of theoretical terms continues to be a controversial one. In the present paper I assess a number of responses to this question (including variations on David Lewis’s appeal to Ramsification), before describing an alternative, epistemically oriented account of the reference-determination of such terms. The paper concludes by discussing some implications of the account for our understanding of both realism and such competitors of realism as constructive empiricism.

We canvas a number of past uses of Ramsey sentences which have yielded disappointing results, and then consider three very interesting recent attempts to deploy them for a Ramseyan Dialetheist theory of truth, a modal account of laws and theories, and a criterion for the existence of factual properties. We think that once attention is given to the specific kinds of theories that Ramsey had in mind, it becomes evident that their Ramsey sentences are not the best ways of presenting (...) those theories. (shrink)

Questions of objectivity involve many general philosophy of science issues; when directed toward the social sciences, even more complex issues surface about the status of the social sciences, e.g. can they be sciences as are the natural sciences? This paper does not take on this mass of issues directly, but instead argues for more restricted theses, in particular that questions about objectivity in the social sciences are often usefully seen as local empirical issues. I look at arguments around underdetermination, value (...) ladenness, the indeterminancy or nonquantitative nature of social science categories or attributes, and traditional ontological debates over materialism and idealism. I show that in all these cases some of the key issues about objectivity are specific empirical issues in the social sciences. (shrink)

According to van Fraassen, inference to the best explanation (IBE) is incompatible with Bayesianism. To argue to the contrary, many philosophers have suggested hybrid models of scientific reasoning with both explanationist and probabilistic elements. This paper offers another such model with two novel features. First, its Bayesian component is imprecise. Second, the domain of credence functions can be extended.

This paper provides examples drawn from the author’s experience that support the conclusion that errors and deceptions in archival science are often not easily or quickly corrected. The difficulty in correcting errors and deceptions needs wider recognition if it is to be overcome. In addition, the paper discusses how subtle abuses introduce errors into the archival literature.

: Any precise version of H-D needs to handle various problems, most notably, the problem of selective confirmation: Precise formulations of H-D should not have the consequence that where S confirms T, for any T', S confirms T&T'. It is the perceived failure of H-D to solve such problems that has lead John Earman to recently conclude that H-D is "very nearly a dead horse". This suggests the following state of play: H-D is an intuitively plausible idea that breaks down (...) in the attempt to give it a precise formulation. Indeed I think that fairly captures the view among specialists in the field of confirmation theory. Here I argue that the truth about H-D is largely the reverse: H-D can be given a precise formulation that avoids the longstanding technical problems, however, it relies on a fundamentally unsound philosophical intuition. The bulk of this paper involves reviewing the problems affecting previous attempts at giving precise formulations of H-D and displaying some recent versions that can handle these problems. It then briefly explains why the basic intuition behind H-D is itself unsound, namely, because H-D involves a tacit assumption of inductive scepticism. Finally, the historical relation between H-D and the positivists' quest for a criterion of empirical significance will be reconsidered with the surprising result that having glossed H-D as fundamentally unsound it is concluded that a sound version of the criterion of empirical significance is now available. The demarcation criterion, the positivists' philosopher's stone that serves to separate claims with empirical significance from claims lacking empirical significance having finally been found, it is argued that we should regard empirical significance as just one among a variety of virtues and not follow the positivists in taking it to be a sin qua non for all meaningful statements. (shrink)

I propose that empirical procedures, like computational procedures, are justified in terms of truth-finding efficiency. I contrast the idea with more standard philosophies of science and illustrate it by deriving Ockham's razor from the aim of minimizing dramatic changes of opinion en route to the truth.

Explaining the connection, if any, between simplicity and truth is among the deepest problems facing the philosophy of science, statistics, and machine learning. Say that an efficient truth finding method minimizes worst case costs en route to converging to the true answer to a theory choice problem. Let the costs considered include the number of times a false answer is selected, the number of times opinion is reversed, and the times at which the reversals occur. It is demonstrated that (1) (...) always choosing the simplest theory compatible with experience, and (2) hanging onto it while it remains simplest, is both necessary and sufficient for efficiency. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University, Baker Hall 135, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

We describe the three place relation of contrastive knowledge, which holds between a person, a target proposition, and a contrasting proposition. The person knows that p rather than that q. We argue for three claims about this relation. (a) Many common sense and philosophical ascriptions of knowledge can be understood in terms of it. (b) Its application is subject to fewer complications than non-contrastive knowledge is. (c) It applies over a wide range of human and nonhuman cases.

Assuming an essential difference between scientific data and phenomena, this paper argues for the view that we have to understand how empirical findings get transformed into scientific phenomena. The work of scientists is seen as largely consisting in constructing these phenomena which are then utilized in more abstract theories. It is claimed that these matters are of importance for discussions of theory choice and progress in science. A case study is presented as a starting point: paleomagnetism and the use of (...) paleomagnetic data in early discussions of continental drift. Some general features of this study are presented in formalized language. It is suggested that the presentation given is particularly suited for a semantic conception of theories. Even though the construction of scientific phenomena is the main topic of this paper, the view presented here is more adapted to realism than social constructivism. (shrink)

The waning popularity of logical empiricism and the supposed discovery of insurmountable technical difficulties led most philosophers to abandon the project to formulate a formal criterion of empirical significance. Such a criterion would delineate claims that observation can confirm or disconfirm from those it cannot. Although early criteria were clearly inadequate, criticisms made of later, more sophisticated criteria were often indefensible or easily answered. Most importantly, Carnap’s last criterion was seriously misinterpreted and an amended version of it remains tenable.

Statistical tests of the primality of some numbers look similar to statistical tests of many nonmathematical, clearly empirical propositions. Yet interpretations of probability prima facie appear to preclude the possibility of statistical tests of mathematical propositions. For example, it is hard to understand how the statement that n is prime could have a frequentist probability other than 0 or 1. On the other hand, subjectivist approaches appear to be saddled with ‘coherence’ constraints on rational probabilities that require rational agents to (...) assign extremal probabilities to logical and mathematical propositions. In the light of these problems, many philosophers have come to think that there must be some way to generalize a Bayesian statistical account. In this article I propose that a classical frequentist approach should be reconsidered. I conclude that we can give a conditional justification of statistical testing of at least some mathematical hypotheses: if statistical tests provide us with reasons to believe or bet on empirical hypotheses in the standard situations, then they also provide us with reasons to believe or bet on mathematical hypotheses in the structurally similar mathematical cases. (shrink)

This paper motivates using explicit methods in linguistics by attempting to estimate the size of a linguistic data set. Such estimations are difficult because redundant data can easily pad the data set. To address this, I offer some explicit operationalizations of the data and their features. But for linguistic data, negative associations don’t indicate true redundancy, and yet for many measures they can be mathematically impossible to ignore. It is proven that this troublesome phenomenon has positive Lebesgue measure, is monotonically (...) increasing, and that these two features hold robustly in four different ways. (shrink)

– We offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities. We argue that there are propositions to which precise probability cannot be assigned, but to which imprecise probability can be assigned. In such cases the alternative to imprecise probability is not precise probability, but no probability at all. And an imprecise probability is substantially better than no probability at all. Our argument is based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurable sets. Non-measurable propositions cannot receive precise probabilities, but there is a natural (...) way for them to receive imprecise probabilities. The mathematics of non-measurable sets is arcane, but its epistemological import is far-reaching; even apparently mundane propositions are liable to be affected by non-measurability. The phenomenon of non-measurability dramatically reshapes the dialectic between critics and proponents of imprecise credence. Non-measurability offers natural rejoinders to prominent critics of imprecise credence. Non-measurability even reverses some of the critics’ arguments—by the very lights that have been used to argue against imprecise credences, imprecise credences are better than precise credences. (shrink)

This paper offers an answer to Glymour's ‘old evidence’ problem for Bayesian confirmation theory, and assesses some of the objections, in particular those recently aired by Chihara, that have been brought against that answer. The paper argues that these objections are easily dissolved, and goes on to show how the answer it proposes yields an intuitively satisfactory analysis of a problem recently discussed by Maher. Garber's, Niiniluoto's and others’ quite different answer to Glymour's problem is considered and rejected, and the (...) paper concludes with some brief reflections on the prediction/accommodation issue. (shrink)

I maintain, in defending “thirdism,” that Sleeping Beauty should do Bayesian updating after assigning the “preliminary probability” 1/4 to the statement S: “Today is Tuesday and the coin flip is heads.” (This preliminary probability obtains relative to a specific proper subset I of her available information.) Pust objects that her preliminary probability for S is really zero, because she could not be in an epistemic situation in which S is true. I reply that the impossibility of being in such an (...) epistemic situation is irrelevant, because relative to I, statement S nonetheless has degree of evidential support 1/4. (shrink)

We present a new argument for the claim that in the Sleeping Beauty problem, the probability that the coin comes up heads is 1/3. Our argument depends on a principle for the updating of probabilities that we call ‘generalized conditionalization’, and on a species of generalized conditionalization we call ‘synchronic conditionalization on old information’. We set forth a rationale for the legitimacy of generalized conditionalization, and we explain why our new argument for thirdism is immune to two attacks that Pust (...) (Synthese 160:97–101, 2008) has leveled at other arguments for thirdism. (shrink)

The point of this paper is to provide a principled framework for a naturalistic, interactivist-constructivist model of rational capacity and a sketch of the model itself, indicating its merits. Being naturalistic, it takes its orientation from scientific understanding. In particular, it adopts the developing interactivist-constructivist understanding of the functional capacities of biological organisms as a useful naturalistic platform for constructing such higher order capacities as reason and cognition. Further, both the framework and model are marked by the finitude and fallibility (...) that science attributes to organisms, with their radical consequences, and also by the individual and collective capacities to improve their performances that learning organisms display. Part A prepares the ground for the exposition through a critique of the dominant Western analytic tradition in rationalising science, followed by a brief exposition of the naturalist framework that will be employed to frame the construction. This results in two sets of guidelines for constructing an alternative. Part B provides the new conception of reason as a rich complex of processes of improvement against epistemic values, and argues its merits. It closes with an account of normativity and our similarly developing rational knowledge of it, including (reflexively) of reason itself. (shrink)

It is widely believed that many of the competing accounts of scientific explanation have ramifications which are relevant to the scientific realism debate. I claim that the two issues are orthogonal. For definiteness, I consider Cartwright's argument that causal explanations secure belief in theoretical entities. In Section I, van Fraassen's anti-realism is reviewed; I argue that this anti-realism is, prima facie, consistent with a causal account of explanation. Section II reviews Cartwright's arguments. In Section III, it is argued that causal (...) explanations do not license the sort of inferences to theoretical entities that would embarass the anti-realist. Section IV examines the epistemic commitments involved in accepting a causal explanation. Section V presents my conclusions: contra Cartwright, the anti-realist may incorporate a causal account of explanation into his vision of science in an entirely natural way. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have discovered a large number of asymmetries in our intuitions about philosophically significant notions. Often those intuitions turned out to be sensitive to normative factors. Whereas optimists have insisted on a unified explanation of these findings, pessimists have argued that it is impossible to formulate a single factor explanation. I defend the intermediate position according to which unification is possible to some extent, but should be pursued within limits. The key issue that I address is how it is (...) possible to set such limits in a way that is true to the phenomena. (shrink)