Scientific Realism (SR) has three crucial aspects: 1) the centrality of the concept of truth, 2) the idea that success is a reliable indicator of truth, and 3) the idea that the Inference to the Best Explanation is a reliable inference rule. It will be outlined how some realists try to overcome the difficulties which arise in justifying such crucial aspects relying on an adaptationist view of evolutionism, and why such attempts are inadequate. Finally, we will briefly sketch some of (...) the main difficulties the realist has to face in defending those crucial aspects, and how such difficulties are deeply related: they derive from the inability of SR to satisfyingly avoid the sceptical challenge of the criterion of truth. Indeed, SR seems not to be able to fill the so-called ‘epistemic gap’ (Sankey 2008). In fact, the epistemic gap cannot be filled in no way other than obtaining a criterion of truth, but such a criterion cannot be obtained if the epistemic gap obtains. (shrink)

This article presents a challenge that those philosophers who deny the causal interpretation of explanations provided by population genetics might have to address. Indeed, some philosophers, known as statisticalists, claim that the concept of natural selection is statistical in character and cannot be construed in causal terms. On the contrary, other philosophers, known as causalists, argue against the statistical view and support the causal interpretation of natural selection. The problem I am concerned with here arises for the statisticalists because the (...) debate on the nature of natural selection intersects the debate on whether mathematical explanations of empirical facts are genuine scientific explanations. I argue that if the explanations provided by population genetics are regarded by the statisticalists as non-causal explanations of that kind, then statisticalism risks being incompatible with a naturalist stance. The statisticalist faces a dilemma: either she maintains statisticalism but has to renounce naturalism; or she maintains naturalism but has to content herself with an account of the explanations provided by population genetics that she deems unsatisfactory. This challenge is relevant to the statisticalists because many of them see themselves as naturalists. (shrink)

This paper develops a probabilistic reconstruction of the No Miracles Argument in the debate between scientific realists and anti-realists. The goal of the paper is to clarify and to sharpen the NMA by means of a probabilistic formalization. In particular, we demonstrate that the persuasive force of the NMA depends on the particular disciplinary context where it is applied, and the stability of theories in that discipline. Assessments and critiques of "the" NMA, without reference to a particular context, are misleading (...) and should be relinquished. This result has repercussions for recent anti-realist arguments, such as the claim that the NMA commits the base rate fallacy. It also helps to explain the persistent disagreement between realists and anti-realists. (shrink)

William of Ockham wrote, ‘It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer .’ But what if each option uses less than its predecessor but no option uses the least? A scale perfectly balanced between a pair of kilogram weights can be tipped by adding half a kilogram to one side, or a quarter of a kilogram, or an eighth of a kilogram, or … For any choice, there is an option that gets the (...) job done with less. Relative futility does not entail absolute futility. The job can get done – but only if we use superfluous means. Is this a refutation of Ockham’s Razor or just a close shave? (shrink)

Among the non-monotonic reasoning processes, abduction is one of the most important. Usually described as the process of looking for explanations, it has been recognized as one of the most commonly used in our daily activities. Still, the traditional definitions of an abductive problem and an abductive solution mention only theories and formulas, leaving agency out of the picture. Our work proposes a study of abductive reasoning from an epistemic and dynamic perspective. In the first part we explore syntactic definitions (...) of both an abductive problem in terms of an agent’s information and an abductive solution in terms of the actions that modify the agent’s information. We look at diverse kinds of agents, including not only omniscient ones but also those whose information is not closed under logical consequence and those whose reasoning abilities are not complete. In the second part, we look at an existing logical framework whose semantic model allows us to interpret the previously stated formulas, and we define two actions that represent forms of abductive reasoning. (shrink)

Richard Boyd and Nicholas Sturgeon develop distinctive naturalistic arguments for scientific realism and moral realism. Each defends a realist position by an inference to the best explanation. In this paper, I suggest that these arguments for realism should be reformulated, with the law of likelihood replacing inference to the best explanation. The resulting arguments for realism do not work.

Here I reply to Jean Gayon's, Tim Lewens's, and Samir Okasha's comments on Did Darwin write the Origin backwards? The topics addressed include: Darwin's thinking that common ancestry is "evidentially prior" to natural selection; how Darwin uses phylogenetic trees to test hypotheses concerning natural selection; how group and indivdiual selection should be defined, and how each is related to the concept of adaptation.

Carl Hempel argued that probabilistic hypotheses are limited in what they can explain. He contended that a hypothesis cannot explain why E is true if the hypothesis says that E has a probability less than 0.5. Wesley Salmon and Richard Jeffrey argued to the contrary, contending that P can explain why E is true even when P says that E’s probability is very low. This debate concerned noncontrastive explananda. Here, a view of contrastive causal explanation is described and defended. It (...) provides a new limit on what probabilistic hypotheses can explain; the limitation is that P cannot explain why E is true rather than A if P assign E a probability that is less than or equal to the probability that P assigns to A. The view entails that a true deterministic theory and a true probabilistic theory that apply to the same explanandum partition are such that the deterministic theory explains all the true contrastive propositions constructable from that partition, whereas the probabilistic theory often fails to do so. (shrink)

Structural realists claim that we should endorse only what our scientific theories say about the structure of the unobservable world. But according to Newman’s Objection, the structural realist’s claims about unobservables are trivially true. In recent years, several theorists have offered responses to Newman’s Objection. But a common complaint is that these responses “give up the spirit” of the structural realist position. In this paper, I will argue that the simplest way to respond to Newman’s Objection is to return to (...) one of the standard motivations for adopting structural realism in the first place: the No Miracles Argument. Far from betraying the spirit of structural realism, the solution I present is available to any theorist who endorses this argument. (shrink)

Many necessitarians about cause and law (Armstrong 1983; Mumford 2004; Bird 2007) have argued that Humeans are unable to justify their inductive inferences, as Humean laws are nothing but the sum of their instances. In this paper I argue against these necessitarian claims. I show that Armstrong is committed to the explanatory value of Humean laws (in the form of universally quantified statements), and that contra Armstrong, brute regularities often do have genuine explanatory value. I finish with a Humean attempt (...) at a probabilistic justification of induction, but this fails due to its assumption that the proportionality syllogism is justified. Although this attempt fails, I nonetheless show that the Humean is at least as justified in reasoning inductively as Armstrong. (shrink)

Philosophers have proposed many alleged examples of non-causal explana- tions of particular events. I discuss several well-known examples and argue that they fail to be non-causal.

Starting with the slogan that understanding is a ‘knowledge of causes’, Stephen Grimm and John Greco have argued that understanding comes from a knowledge of dependence relations. Grounding is the trendiest dependence relation on the market, and if Grimm and Greco are correct, then instances of grounding should also give rise to understanding. In this paper, I will show that this prediction is correct – grounding does indeed generate understanding in just the way that Grimm and Greco anticipate. However, grounding (...) examples of understanding also show that Grimm and Greco are not telling the full story when it comes to understanding. Understanding can only be generated by a particular subset of dependence relations – those dependence relations that are also explanatory. Grimm and Greco should thus appeal to a privileged class of dependence relations, relations like grounding that can also give rise to explanation. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy, while some epistemologists claim that reflection—understood as a critical self-examination of belief—is a necessary condition for the attribution of valuable epistemic states, others reject this claim and maintain that philosophers tend to overestimate the value of reflection in their reports of epistemological phenomena. In this essay, we present a brief overview of this debate and outline the elements that constitute disagreement between epistemologists. Our diagnosis is that, despite radical disagreement, these positions converge, because they deal with (...) reflection from an individualistic point of view, defining it as an agent’s private metacognitive performance of her own epistemic states. As well as being a reason for disagreement, this conception of reflection may be the reason that epistemologists misunderstand its place and value. (shrink)

Some philosophers, most notably Hempel and Salmon, have tried to reduce explanation to probability by proposing analyses of explanation in probabilistic terms. Hempel claims, roughly, that a hypothesis H explains a datum D if and only if the conditional probability P is close to 1. It is well known that such an account fails in cases where H is irrelevant for D. Even though it is highly likely that Tom will not become pregnant, given that he regularly takes his wife’s (...) birth control pills, the latter does not explain the former. Neither does an idea work which is in the proximity of Salmon’s, namely, that H explains D if and only if P > P. Suppose Susan swallows a pound of arsenic in order to commit suicide. Shortly after, however, she dies because she is run over by a bus. The probability of dying, given that one ingests a pound of arsenic, is usually higher than the prior probability of dying. Nonetheless, it is not the arsenic but the collision with the bus which explains Susan’s death. The aforementioned objections are directed against …. (shrink)

Bird argues that scientific progress consists in increasing knowledge. Dellsén objects that increasing knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific progress, and argues that scientific progress rather consists in increasing understanding. Dellsén also contends that unlike Bird’s view, his view can account for the scientific practices of using idealizations and of choosing simple theories over complex ones. I argue that Dellsén’s criticisms against Bird’s view fail, and that increasing understanding cannot account for scientific progress, if acceptance, as opposed to (...) belief, is required for scientific understanding. (shrink)

To operationalize the methodological assessment of evolutionary psychology, three requirements are proposed that, if satisfied, would show that a hypothesis is not a just-so story: (1) theoretical entrenchment (i.e., that the hypothesis under consideration is a consequence of a more fundamental theory that is empirically well-confirmed across a very wide range of phenomena), (2) predictive success (i.e., that the hypothesis generates concrete predictions that make it testable and eventually to a certain extent corroborated), and (3) failure of rival explanations (i.e., (...) that crucial and successful predictions attributed to the hypothesis in question cannot be derived from alternative hypotheses). The author argues that the hypothesis about evolutionary sex differences in human jealousy satisfies all three requirements. Key Words: evolutionary psychology • adaptationism • philosophy of science • testability. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a closer look at Hans Reichenbach’s relation to metaphysics and work out some interesting parallels between his account and that of the proponents of inductive metaphysics, a tradition that emerged in the mid- and late 19th century and the early 20th century in Germany. It is in particular Hans Reichenbach’s conception of the relation between the natural sciences and metaphysics, as displayed in his treatment of the question of the existence of the external world, that (...) shows some very interesting similarities with inductive metaphysics. By a comparison with the position of the inductive metaphysician Erich Becher and his handling of the problem of realism, I work out the parallels between Reichenbach’s program and inductive metaphysics. I come to the conclusion that while there are certainly some respects in which Reichenbach’s logical empiricism is closer to the positions of the representatives of the Vienna Circle, it turns out that with regard to his views on metaphysics there is a greater affinity with the program of inductive metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper presents arguments and evidence from psychology and neuroscience supporting Lipton’s 2004 claim that scientists create knowledge through an abductive process that he calls “Inference to the Best Explanation”. The paper develops two conclusions. Conclusion 1 is that without conscious effort on our part, our brains use a process very similar to abduction as a powerful way of interpreting sensory information. To support Conclusion 1, evidence from psychology and neuroscience is presented that suggests that what we humans perceive through (...) our senses is not reality, but rather, our ‘brain’s “best guess” of the causes of its sensory input. The implication of this best guessing is that our brains use a process very similar to abduction throughout our lives to inform us of what is happening in the world around us. In addition, an argument based on Darwinian evolution is presented claiming that our brains do an excellent job of interpreting sensory information from the outside world. (If they did not, we, as a species, could hardly have survived.) Combining these two claims leads to Conclusion 1. Building on Conclusion 1, Conclusion 2 is that Lipton and others are correct in claiming that scientists use abduction when creating scientific theories. Abduction must be strong, because Nature chose abduction for its own sensemaking purposes. This paper’s contribution to knowledge is in pointing out that recent psychological and neuroscientific research has major implications for the philosophical world’s confidence in the probable validity of abductive inference. The punchline is simple: Nature chose abduction! (shrink)

Theoretical virtues play an important role in the acceptance and belief of theories in science and philosophy. Philosophers have well-developed views on which virtues ought and ought not to influence one’s acceptance and belief. But what do scientists think? This paper presents the results of a quantitative study with scientists from the natural and social sciences and compares their views to those held by philosophers. Some of the more surprising results are: all three groups have a preference order regarding theoretical (...) virtues, making theory choice a much more determinate matter than what has sometimes been suggested; the preference orders are very similar for the three groups; simplicity is viewed as an epistemic virtue particularly by social scientists ; and syntactic parsimony is preferred to ontological parsimony by all three groups. (shrink)

This article introduces and defends a probabilistic measure of the explanatory power that a particular explanans has over its explanandum. To this end, we propose several intuitive, formal conditions of adequacy for an account of explanatory power. Then, we show that these conditions are uniquely satisfied by one particular probabilistic function. We proceed to strengthen the case for this measure of explanatory power by proving several theorems, all of which show that this measure neatly corresponds to our explanatory intuitions. Finally, (...) we briefly describe some promising future projects inspired by our account. (shrink)

This article describes abductions as special patterns of inference to the best explanation whose structure determines a particularly promising abductive conjecture and thus serves as an abductive search strategy. A classification of different patterns of abduction is provided which intends to be as complete as possible. An important distinction is that between selective abductions, which choose an optimal candidate from given multitude of possible explanations, and creative abductions, which introduce new theoretical models or concepts. While selective abduction has dominated the (...) literature, creative abductions are rarely discussed, although they are essential in science. The article introduces several kinds of creative abductions, such as theoretical model abduction, common cause abduction and statistical factor analysis, and illustrates them by various real case examples. It is suggested to demarcate scientifically fruitful abductions from purely speculative abductions by the criterion of causal unification. (shrink)

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 (...) theory. Only if evidence is use-novel can it fully support the theory entailing it. As I point out in this paper, the writings of the most influential proponent of use-novelty contain a weaker and a stronger version of use-novelty. However both versions, I argue, are problematic. With regard to the appraisal of Mendeleev’ periodic table, the most contentious historical case in the predictivism debate, I argue that temporal predictivism is indeed supported, although in ways not previously appreciated. On the basis of this case, I argue for a form of so-called symptomatic predictivism according to which temporally novel predictions carry more confirmational weight only insofar as they reveal the theory’s presumed coherence of facts as real. (shrink)

In his seminal Inference to the Best Explanation, Peter Lipton adopted a causal view of explanation and a broadly Millian view of how causal knowledge is obtained. This made his account vulnerable to critics who charged that Inference to the Best Explanation is merely a dressed-up version of Mill’s methods, which in the critics’ view do the real inductive work. Lipton advanced two arguments to protect Inference to the Best Explanation against this line of criticism: the problem of multiple differences (...) and the problem of inferred differences. Lipton claimed that these two problems show Mill’s method of difference to be largely unworkable unless it is embedded in an explanationist framework. Here I consider both arguments as well as the best Millian defense against them. Since the existing Millian defense is only partially successful, I will develop a new and improved account. As an integral part of the argument, I show that my solutions to the problems of multiple and inferred differences offer new insight into Lipton’s main case study: Ignaz Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause of childbed fever. I conclude that the method of difference can overcome Lipton’s challenges outside an explanationist framework. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that van Fraassen's "bad lot objection" against Inference to the Best Explanation [IBE] severely misses its mark. First, I show that the objection holds no special relevance to IBE; if the bad lot objection poses a serious problem for IBE, then it poses a serious problem for any inference form whatever. Second, I argue that, thankfully, it does not pose a serious threat to any inference form. Rather, the objection misguidedly blames a form of inference (...) for not achieving what it never set out to achieve in the first place. (shrink)

How is metaphysics related to the empirical sciences? Should metaphysics in general be guided by the sources, methods and results of the sciences? And what about the special case of the metaphysics of the social world: should it likewise be guided by the sources, methods and results of the social sciences? In her paper “Social Science as a Guide to Social Metaphysics?”, K. Hawley raises the question: If we are sympathetic to the project of naturalising metaphysics, how should we approach (...) the metaphysics of the social world? She proceeds by discussing three approaches to social metaphysics: inference to the best explanation from current social science, descriptive conceptual analysis, and normative, especially ‘ameliorative’ projects. At the end of her discussion, she reaches a rather pessimistic conclusion, especially as regards the IBE approach: “a number of phenomena indicate that the prospects for securely basing social metaphysics via inference to the best explanation from social science are currently faint. […] We need to look elsewhere if we are to develop a metaphysics of the social world.” In my comments on her paper, I try to re-animate the program of an inductive metaphysics by defending the idea that the method of inference to the best explanation should be the central method of justification for metaphysics in general and for social metaphysics in particular. (shrink)

Philosophers use historical case studies to support wide-ranging claims about science. This practice is often criticized as problematic. In this paper we suggest that the function of case studies can be understood and justified by analogy to a well-established practice in biology: the investigation of model organisms. We argue that inferences based on case studies are no more problematic than inferences from model organisms to larger classes of organisms in biology. We demonstrate our view in detail by reference to a (...) case study with a long history: Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause of childbed fever. (shrink)

We investigate the context of discovery of two significant achievements of twentieth century biochemistry: the chemiosmotic mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation and the dark reaction of photosynthesis. The pursuit of these problems involved discovery strategies such as the transfer, recombination and reversal of previous causal and mechanistic knowledge in biochemistry. We study the operation and scope of these strategies by careful historical analysis, reaching a number of systematic conclusions: even basic strategies can illuminate “hard cases” of scientific discovery that go far (...) beyond simple extrapolation or analogy; the causal–mechanistic approach to discovery permits a middle course between the extremes of a completely substrate-neutral and a completely domain-specific view of scientific discovery; the existing literature on mechanism discovery underemphasizes the role of combinatorial approaches in defining and exploring search spaces of possible problem solutions; there is a subtle interplay between a fine-grained mechanistic and a more coarse-grained causal level of analysis, and both are needed to make discovery processes intelligible. (shrink)

Recently, in attempting to account for explanatory reasoning in probabilistic terms, Bayesians have proposed several measures of the degree to which a hypothesis explains a given set of facts. These candidate measures of "explanatory power" are shown to have interesting normative interpretations and consequences. What has not yet been investigated, however, is whether any of these measures are also descriptive of people’s actual explanatory judgments. Here, I present my own experimental work investigating this question. I argue that one measure in (...) particular is an accurate descriptor of explanatory judgments. Then, I discuss some interesting implications of this result for both the epistemology and the psychology of explanatory reasoning. (shrink)

Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause of puerperal fever around the middle of the 19th century counts among the paradigm cases of scientific discovery. For several decades, philosophers of science have used the episode to illustrate, appraise and compare views of proper scientific methodology.Here I argue that the episode can be profitably reexamined in light of two cognate notions: causal reasoning and mechanisms. Semmelweis used several causal reasoning strategies both to support his own and to reject competing hypotheses. However, these strategies (...) have gone unappreciated in the existing literature. I show that a causal reasoning approach makes sense of the multitude of tables in Semmelweis’s main text, which in later editions were often abridged because they appeared redundant.Moreover, the existing literature tends to focus on Semmelweis’s clinical intervention and on the extent to which it alone confirms his theoretical conclusions. This neglects Semmelweis’s efforts to show by animal experiments that his clinical results are in agreement with a demonstrable mechanism of puerperal fever pathogenesis. I argue that the full evidential force of Semmelweis’s argument can only be appreciated if both his clinical and his laboratory investigations are taken into account. (shrink)

What does it mean for a hypothesis to be ad hoc? One prominent account has it that ad hoc hypotheses have no independent empirical support. Others have viewed ad hoc judgements as subjective. Here I critically review both of these views and defend my own Coherentist Conception of Ad hocness by working out its conceptual and descriptive attractions.

The epistemic conception of scientific progress equates progress with accumulation of scientific knowledge. I argue that the epistemic conception fails to fully capture scientific progress: theoretical progress, in particular, can transcend scientific knowledge in important ways. Sometimes theoretical progress can be a matter of new theories ‘latching better onto unobservable reality’ in a way that need not be a matter of new knowledge. Recognising this further dimension of theoretical progress is particularly significant for understanding scientific realism, since realism is naturally (...) construed as the claim that science makes theoretical progress. Some prominent realist positions are best understood in terms of commitment to theoretical progress that cannot be equated with accumulation of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

I begin by distinguishing four different versions of the argument from evil that start from four different moral premises that in various ways link the existence of God to the absence of suffering. The version of the argument from evil that I defend starts from the premise that if God exists, he would not allow excessive, unnecessary suffering. The argument continues by denying the consequent of this conditional to conclude that God does not exist. I defend the argument against Skeptical (...) Theists who say we are in no position to judge that there is excessive, unnecessary suffering by arguing that this defense has absurd consequences. It allows Young Earthers to construct a parallel argument that concludes that we are in no position to judge that God did not create the earth recently. In the last section I consider whether theists can turn the argument from evil on its head by arguing that God exists. I first criticize Alvin Plantinga’s theory of warrant that one might try to use to argue for God’s existence. I then criticize Richard Swinburne’s Bayesian argument to the same conclusion. I conclude that my version of the argument from evil is a strong argument against the existence of God and that several important responses to it do not defeat it. (shrink)

Can scientific evidence outstretch what scientists have mentally entertained, or could ever entertain? This article focuses on the plausibility and consequences of an affirmative answer in a special case. Specifically, it discusses how we may treat automated scientific data-gathering systems—especially AI systems used to make predictions or to generate novel theories—from the point of view of confirmation theory. It uses AlphaFold2 as a case study.

According to a popular strategy amongst economists and philosophers, in order to solve the problem of interpersonal utility comparisons, we have to look at how ordinary people make such comparisons in everyday life. The most recent attempt to develop this strategy has been put forward by Goldman in his “Simulation and Interpersonal Utility” (Ethics 4:709–726, 1995). Goldman claims, first, that ordinary people make interpersonal comparisons by simulation and, second, that simulation is reliable for making interpersonal comparisons. In this paper, I (...) focus on Goldman’s latter claim. After updating Goldman’s account of how ordinary people make interpersonal comparisons in the light of Goldman’s newest formulation of his simulation theory of mental ascription (Goldman, Simulating Minds. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006), I develop and assess Goldman’s arguments in favour of the reliability of simulation for interpersonal comparisons. I argue that, under certain conditions, there may be room for a scientifically acceptable solution to the problem of interpersonal utility comparisons. (shrink)

We conceive of many general terms we use as having satisfaction conditions that are objective in that the thought that something meets them neither entails nor is entailed by the thought that we are currently in a position in which we are ready, or warranted, to apply those terms to it. How do we manage to use a given term in such a way that it is thereby endowed, and conceived to be endowed, with satisfaction conditions that are objective in (...) this sense? In the first half of the paper, I present a number of interrelated problems for some extant metasemantical accounts of how use determines objective satisfaction conditions. In the second half, I then propose a novel account that avoids all of these problems. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that if one is already an advocate of scientific realism, then one would be also a realist about laws of nature. To show this, I argue that only scientific realists would accept that non-accidental regularities require explanation and that their genuine explanation is given by laws of nature. Then, from this conclusion, it seems that scientific realists have reason to believe that there are laws of nature in an objective sense. If this is correct, the (...) conclusion is that there are no reasons for advocates of scientific realism to be skeptics about laws of nature. (shrink)

Can one still have understanding in situations that involve the kind of epistemic luck that undermines knowledge? Kvanvig (The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, 2003; in: Haddock A, Miller A, Pritchard D (eds) Epistemic value, 2009a; in: Haddock A, Miller A, Pritchard D (eds) Epistemic value, 2009b) says yes, Prichard (Grazer Philos Stud 77:325–339, 2008; in: O’Hear A (ed) Epistemology, 2009; in: Pritchard D, Millar A, Haddock A (eds) The nature and value of knowledge: three investigations, 2010) (...) say sometimes, DePaul and Grimm (Philos Phenomenol Res 74:498–514, 2007) and Grimm (Br J Philos Sci 57:515–535, 2006; in: Bernecker S, Pritchard D (eds) The Routledge companion to epistemology, 2011), Kvanvig’s critics, say no. The cases put forth by Kvanvig’s critics share a common feature, which seems to drive the intuition that understanding can’t be lucky: the fact that the information that makes up the individual’s understanding comes exclusively from a bad source. I formulate a case that lacks this feature, drawing on the fact that understanding produced from scientific inquiry is often produced by collaboration. I argue that my case provides good evidence that understanding is not a species of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate a fictionalist solution to the closure problem that affects constructive empiricism. Relying on Stephen Yablo’s recent study of closure puzzles, I show how we can partition the content of a theory in terms of its truthmakers and claim that a constructive empiricist can believe that all the observable conditions that are necessary to make a part of her theory true obtain and remain agnostic about whether or not the other truthmakers for the other parts of (...) her theory obtain. This can be done even though she asserts her theory as if it was wholly true. (shrink)

This paper is a commentary on Joseph Corabi’s “The Misuse and Failure of the Evolutionary Argument”, this Journal, vol. VI, No. 39; pp. 199-227. It defends William James’s formulation of the evolutionary argument against charges such as mishandling of evidence. Although there are ways of attacking James’s argument, it remains formidable, and Corabi’s suggested revision is not an improvement on James’s statement of it.

ABSTRACT Abduction as a method for sociological explanation is increasingly gaining interest, but questions remain as to what exactly it is and how it differs from other methods of inquiry. This paper compares abduction as conceived in Peircean pragmatism with the critical realist concept of retroduction. I argue that abduction in the Peircean sense and retroduction in the critical realist sense refer to different, but complementary, modes of inference. Abductive conclusions provide the starting point for retroductive inferences; the latter inform (...) the tenability of the former. Together, abduction and retroduction contribute to theoretical explanation. (shrink)

The cognitive revolution in psychology was a significant advance in our thinking about the mind. Philosophers and social scientists have looked to the cognitive sciences with the hope that the social world will yield to similar explanatory strategies. Dan Sperber has argued for a programme that would conceptualize the entire domain of anthropological theory in cognitive terms. Sperber's 'epidemiology' specifically excludes interpretive, structuralist and functionalist theories. This essay evaluates Sperber's epidemiological approach to anthropological theory. It argues that as a programme (...) for anthropological theorizing, Sperber's epidemiology could not be empirically grounded. Cognitive explanations depend on prior interpretations. While interpretation is a kind of theorizing, it cannot be assimilated to cognitive explanation. The essay concludes by sketching an explanatory coherence framework in which ethnographic interpretation and cognitive explanation are seen as parts of a unified body of anthropological theorizing. (shrink)

To explain an intentional action one must exhibit the agent’s reasons. Donald Davidson famously argued that the only clear way to understand action explanation is to hold that reasons are causes. Davidson’s discussion conflated two issues: whether reasons are causes and whether reasons causally explain intentional action. Contemporary work on explanation and normativity help disentangle these issues and ground an argument that intentional action explanations cannot be a species of causal explanation. Interestingly, this conclusion is consistent with Davidson’s conclusion that (...) reasons are causes. In other words, reasons are causes, but rationalizing explanations are not causal explanations. Key Words: action theory • explanation • causal explanation • rationality • Donald Davidson. (shrink)

Methodological triangulation is the use of more than one method to investigate a phenomenon. Nurse researchers investigate health phenomena using methods drawn from the natural and social sciences. The methodological debate concerns the possibility of confirming a single theory with different kinds of methods. The nursing debate parallels the philosophical debate about how the natural and social sciences are related. This article critiques the presuppositions of the nursing debate and suggests alternatives. The consequence is a view of triangulation that permits (...) different methods to confirm a single theory. The article then explores the consequences for the philosophy of social sciences. (shrink)

Agent-causal theories of free will, which rely on a non-reductionist account of the agent, have traditionally been associated with libertarianism. However, some authors have recently argued in favor of compatibilist agent-causal accounts. In this essay, I will show that such accounts cannot avoid serious problems of implausibility or incoherence. A careful analysis of the implications of non-reductionist views of the agent (event-causal or agent-causal as they may be) reveals that such views necessarily imply either the denial of the principle of (...) supervenience or the assumption of bottom-level indeterminism. I will contend that the former alternative comes at a high cost, while the latter is quite plausible. Therefore, providing that they accept the condition of the truth of indeterminism, non-reductionist accounts of the agent do not have to contradict our scientific worldview. Interestingly, while they should be taken seriously by anyone who is concerned with the passivity of the agent’s role under a reductionist scenario, non-reductivist accounts end up contributing an extra incompatibilist argument to the free will debate. (shrink)

Fritz Allhoff: Philosophies of the Sciences: A Guide Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 319-325 DOI 10.1007/s10441-011-9129-x Authors Thomas A. C. Reydon, Institute of Philosophy & Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science (ZEWW), Leibniz Universität Hannover, Im Moore 21, 30161 Hannover, Germany Journal Acta Biotheoretica Online ISSN 1572-8358 Print ISSN 0001-5342 Journal Volume Volume 59 Journal Issue Volume 59, Numbers 3-4.

Building on Nozick's invariantism about objectivity, I propose to define scientific objectivity in terms of counterfactual independence. I will argue that such a counterfactual independence account is (a) able to overcome the decisive shortcomings of Nozick's original invariantism and (b) applicable to three paradigmatic kinds of scientific objectivity (that is, objectivity as replication, objectivity as robustness, and objectivity as Mertonian universalism).

Building on Nozick's invariantism about objectivity, I propose to define scientific objectivity in terms of counterfactual independence. I will argue that such a counterfactual independence account is (a) able to overcome the decisive shortcomings of Nozick's original invariantism and (b) applicable to three paradigmatic kinds of scientific objectivity (that is, objectivity as replication, objectivity as robustness, and objectivity as Mertonian universalism).

The goal of this paper is to develop a counterfactual theory of explanation. The CTE provides a monist framework for causal and non-causal explanations, according to which both causal and non-causal explanations are explanatory by virtue of revealing counterfactual dependencies between the explanandum and the explanans. I argue that the CTE is applicable to two paradigmatic examples of non-causal explanations: Euler’s explanation and renormalization group explanations of universality.