This volume consists of the invited papers presented at the 23rd International Wittgenstein Conference held in Kirchberg, Austria in August 2000. Among the topics treated are: truth, psychologism, science, the nature of rational discourse, practical reason, contextualism, vagueness, types of rationality, the rationality of religious belief, and Wittgenstein. Questions addressed include: Is rationality tied to special sorts of contexts? ls rationality tied to language? Is scientific rationality the only kind of rationality? Is there something like a Western rationality? and: Could (...) we genetically engineer human beings to be less wicked? (shrink)

Holism and reductionism are usually seen as opposite and mutually exclusive approaches to nature. Recently, some have come to see them as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. In this book I have argued that, even stronger, they should be seen as mutually dependent and co-operating research programmes. I have discussed holism and reductionism in biology in general and in ecology in particular. After an introductory chapter I have provided an overview of holistic and reductionistic positions in biology, and of the (...) reduction problems to which they relate. I have argued that it is extremely important to distinguish between ontological, epistemological and methodological aspects of these problems. The overview has shown that there are actually several approaches to reduction problems in biology, which can be characterized as more or less radically or moderately holistic or reductionistic. It has shown also that there are three major ’contradistinctions’ between holism and reductionism in biology, to wit the doctrine of emergence versus the reduction thesis; functional explanations versus causal explanations; and phenomenology versus mechanicism. In later chapters I have shown that these ’contradistinctions’ are not really contradistinctions at all. In the next chapters I have discussed the terms ’reduce’ and ’reduction’ in science. In chapter 3 I have discussed the reduction of laws and theories. I have shown that there are many different types of reduction depending on the auxiliary hypotheses that are being used in addition to the reducing theory: approximation-, aggregation, correlation and/or identification-hypotheses. The distinctions between these types has later, in chapter 5, proved to be of great importance in defining the concept of ’emergence’. The major conclusion of chapter 3 was that reduction is an epistemological issue, pertaining to logical relations between statements or systems of statements. It should not be confused, therefore, with ’ontological reduction’, certainly not in one of its ordinary senses, such as diminishing, devaluating or the like. Scientific reductions are, with the exception of instrumentalistic reductions, kinds of explanation, and, moreover, non-eliminative kinds of explanation. This means that a reduced law or theory is not eliminated by the reducing theory but rather consolidated or even reinforced. The ontology of the reduced law or theory is thereby also being consolidated. In chapter 4 I have argued that the same holds for reductions of concepts. Concept reductions are supposed to be accomplished by means of so-called ontological identity relations, which are in turn supposed to connect terms in the law or theory to be reduced, which do not occur in the reducing theory, with theoretical terms of the reducing theory. Because they are called ontological identity relations, several philosophers have thought that concept reductions imply some form of ontological reduction. And because they often occur in the context of micro-reductions, some have even thought that concept reductions are themselves micro-reductions. As a result, the idea has arisen that ontological identity relations are connections between macro-concepts and micro-concepts. However, concept reductions by means of ontological identity relations cannot be micro-reductions, because micro-reduction is, by definition, reduction with an aggregation step. Moreover, ontological identity relations are relations between different representations of and the same type of thing or attribute. That is, they express different epistemological sides of the same ontological coin. Therefore, concept reductions cannot be considered ontological reductions either, certainly not in the ordinary sense of diminishing, devaluating or the like. Thus, concept reduction is, like law or theory reduction, an epistemological issue: it pertains to relations between, in this case, different concepts or representations of one and the same type of thing or attribute. ’Ontological reduction’, then, may, in the context of scientific reductions, actually be considered a contradiction of terms. In chapter 5 I have linked this conclusion to the emergence thesis and to the alleged contradistinction between this thesis and the reduction thesis. I have shown that the doctrine of emergence actually consists of two separate claims, namely an ontological thesis stating that a whole has emergent properties which the component parts do not possess, neither separately nor in other partial combinations; and an epistemological thesis stating that emergent properties of wholes are ’in principle’ irreducible. I have argued that the first claim may be regarded as a valid, universal thesis about relations between properties of wholes and properties of parts, but that the second claim is untenable. I have discussed many emergent properties of wholes, biological as well as physico-chemical, that have proved to be explainable in terms of micro-theories about the component parts and auxiliary hypotheses. Once again, however, it is important to realize that reduction is an epistemological issue, whereas emergence, in the sense of thesis, is an ontological one. It is not ’wholes’ or ’emergent properties of wholes’ that are being reduced but statements about them. Reduction is a kind of explanation, not of explaining-away. Thus, it leaves the ontology of whatever is reduced fully intact. I have developed a new definition of the term ’emergence’ which expresses emergence in terms of the auxiliary hypotheses that may be used in reductions, in particular aggregation-, correlation- and identification-hypotheses. This has even lead to two very remarkable conclusions. First, emergence may be considered the opposite of ontological identity. And second, if there were no emergence, there wouldn’t be any reductions either. to reduce.) In this respect, therefore, there is absolutely no contradistinction between holism and reductionism. On these grounds I have introduced my thesis that holism and reductionism should rather be seen as mutually dependent, and hence co-operating, research programmes than as conflicting views of nature or of relations between sciences. Holistic programmes play an important role in science as guide programmes for reductionistic programmes by discovering or developing macro-laws or -theories about phenomena at the level of wholes, which they themselves, however, cannot explain. For these explanations they depend on the fruits of reductionistic programmes. If the latter succeed in providing the explanations they act as supply programmes for the holistic guide programmes. Reductionistic programmes depend in turn on holistic programmes for providing the macro-laws or -theories that call for these explanations. In chapter 6 I have discussed an example of this mutual dependency in the form of the reduction of the Bohr-effect in animal physiology. I have shown that this law has been reduced to the theory of allostery, applied to hemoglobin molecules in red blood cells, and that this application of the theory of allostery has been reduced to the theory of chemical bonding. I have also shown that at least six research programmes were involved in these reductions, and that the relations between these programmes can be characterized very well in terms of the model of holistic guide programmes and reductionistic supply programmes. The only, but highly significant, qualification appearing from example was that the terms ’holistic’ and ’reductionistic’ are extremely relative and should always be related to a certain given level of organization. In chapter 7 I have resolved the remaining contradistinction between holism and reductionism in biology, viz. the need for functional explanations and the demand that explanations be causal. I have shown that functional explanations are perfectly legitimate explanations which in a sense can be reconstrued as causal explanations. I have argued that functional explanations are indispensable components of more comprehensive, causal-evolutionary explanations, because the latter appeal to the adaptive value, and hence the function, of the property to be explained. In that sense functions can be regarded as adaptations, and functional explanations can be regarded as a sort of ’short-hand’ for evolutionary explanations. Finally, I have shown that in the context of functional explanations, too, co-operation of holistic and reductionistic research programmes occurs. In part 2 I have applied my thesis to ecology. I have shown that in ecology too, holismreductionism disputes notwithstanding, co-operation of holistic and reductionistic research programmes occurs, or, in so far as this appears to be not the case, that it should be strived after. In chapter 8 I have given an overview of reduction problems in ecology and of the various approaches to these problems. I have noticed that in ecology, too, there are several, radical, moderate and anti-reductionistic research strategies, with respect to the levels of both ecosystems, communities and populations. I have also noticed, however, that concrete solutions to reduction problems in ecology are frustrated by what is called the intellectual immaturity or the anomalous status of ecology. This refers to the almost complete lack of general laws and theories in ecology, at least at the higher levels of communities and ecosystems. Of a number of possible causes I have lifted out two, which lend themselves to philosophical analysis and clarification. The first one is the ambiguity of a major part of the ecological vocabulary. This was the subject of chapters 9 and 10. The second is the inhibitory effect which holism-reductionism disputes have on the growth of knowledge. This was the subject of chapter 13. In chapter 9 I have discussed the concept of an community. It appeared that the term ’community’ is used for several different entities at various levels of organization. This ambiguity alone seems to be sufficient for the lack of ’general’ laws and theories about ’communities’. My purpose in chapter 9 was to try and contribute to a solution of this problem. In doing so I have argued, first, that it seems wise to use the term ’community’ only for groups of species belonging to a single taxonomic or phylogenetic group, and to use the term ’biocoenosis’ for the higher level of organization, defined as the biotic component of an ecosystem. Next I have argued that, although species within communities may of course interact with each other, interaction is itself not a necessary or sufficient condition for community membership. Finally, I have hit upon what is known as the most notorious problem in community ecology, to wit the boundary problem, as well as the problem of heterogeneity. I have found that the cause of these problems lies in the fact that communities are almost invariably being seen as groups of populations occurring together in space and time, whereas the empirical fact is rather that populations of different species mostly do not occur together in the same space, and, moreover, that the species composition of communities changes continuously. This has lead to the suggestion that a community had better be defined as the group of individuals of two or more species occurring in the area of intersection of populations of these species. It is only in such intersection areas that one can really talk of the co-occurrence of species. I have shown the empirical adequacy of this definition by discussing various salt marsh plant communities on the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog. In chapter 10 I have clarified two other important, yet highly controversial, concepts in ecology, to wit habitat and niche. It appeared that there are at least four different habitat concepts in ecology, and as many niche concepts, the additional complication being that two of these habitat concepts correspond to two of these niche concepts, whence the distinction between habitat and niche is blurred. In addition, different habitat concepts appeared to correspond to different environment concepts and also to different biotope concepts. My purpose in chapter 10 was to disentangle all these concepts from one another and to supply each of them with a suitable term. I have done so by keeping a close eye on commonly accepted notions about habitat differentiation and niche differentiation, two ’principles’ allowing one to explain the coexistence or non-coexistence of species in communities. The results can be found in boxes 5 and 7 in chapter 10. In chapter 11 I was finally able to substantiate my claim that in ecology, too, co-operation of holistic and reductionistic research programmes occurs. I have discussed the reduction of the classical competition model of Lotka and Volterra to modern niche theory. The Lotka/Volterra model is a phenomenological model: it describes the possible effects of competition between two species. Modern niche theory, on the other hand, is a mechanistic theory, in which both the objects of competition and a mechanism are being specified. I have shown that the reduction was established with the help of a relatively simple identification hypothesis and two relatively simple aggregation hypotheses, making it yet another example of heterogeneous microreduction in biology. In the reduction, the Lotka/Volterra model acted as a holistic guide programme and modern niche theory acted as a reductionistic supply programme. In chapter 12 I have discussed another example of co-operation in the form of the approximative reduction of MacArthur and Wilson’s equilibrium theory of island biogeography. I have argued that this can be seen as a holistic model, which has been of great unifying and especially heuristic value, but which in time has been found to be a bit too simple and in some respects had to be corrected. Therefore, it can also be seen as an idealization in the sense of the model of idealization and concretization, which subsequent research programmes have concretized. Because these concretizations have a reductive character, we can see in this structure of idealization and concretization yet another example of the co-operation of holistic and reductionistic research programmes in ecology. A philosophically interesting side-conclusion was that the model of idealization and concretization thus appears to apply also to relations between research programmes, and not only to programme-internal developments. In chapter 13 I have discussed an example of the inhibitory effect that holism-reductionism disputes may have on the growth of knowledge. The example concerns a controversy in island biogeography over the role of interspecific competition in structuring communities. This controversy has lasted for about ten years, appeares to have died out rather than to have been resolved, and has produced nothing new in the field of explanations of community structure. I have shown that the major factors underlying the controversy were differing, in casu holistic and reductionistic, views of communities. Though this presented a problem for my thesis, I have argued that, ultimately, the controversy can be resolved, and in a sense has been resolved, in a way that corroborates my thesis. In the epilogue, finally, I have mentioned some remaining problems concerning the adequacy of the present reduction model in dealing with reduction in ecology. These problems pertain to the question of specificty of ecological laws and theories, the likelihood that reductions in ecology generally occur on the basis of several reducing micro-theories, and the possible relationship between the former two points. (shrink)

Scientific realism is the position that the aim of science is to advance on truth and increase knowledge about observable and unobservable aspects of the mind-independent world which we inhabit. This book articulates and defends that position. In presenting a clear formulation and addressing the major arguments for scientific realism Sankey appeals to philosophers beyond the community of, typically Anglo-American, analytic philosophers of science to appreciate and understand the doctrine. The book emphasizes the epistemological aspects of scientific realism and contains (...) an original solution to the problem of induction that rests on an appeal to the principle of uniformity of nature. (shrink)

When the original Dutch version of this book was presented in 1971 to the University of Leiden as a thesis for the Doctorate in philosophy, I was prevented by the academic mores of that university from expressing my sincere thanks to three members of the Philosophical Faculty for their support of and interest in my pursuits. I take the liberty of doing so now, two and a half years later. First and foremost I want to thank Professor G. Nuchelmans warmly (...) for his expert guidance of my research. A number of my most im portant sources were brought to my attention by him. During the whole process of composing this book his criticism and encouragement were carried out in a truly academic spirit. He thereby provided working conditions that are a sine qua non for every author who is attempting to approach controversial matters in a scientific manner, conditions which, however, were not easily available at that time. In a later phase I also came into contact with Professors L. M. de Rijk and J. B. Ubbink, with both of whom I had highly stimulating discussions and exchanges of ideas. The present edition contains some entirely new sections, viz. 1-9, IV-29, V-9, V-20, VII-14 (iii), (iv), VII-17 (i), VIII-22, IX-17, IX-19, X-9 and XI-8. Section X-9 was inspired by a remark made by Professor A. (shrink)

Autonomist accounts of cognitive science suggest that cognitive model building and theory construction (can or should) proceed independently of findings in neuroscience. Common functionalist justifications of autonomy rely on there being relatively few constraints between neural structure and cognitive function (e.g., Weiskopf, 2011). In contrast, an integrative mechanistic perspective stresses the mutual constraining of structure and function (e.g., Piccinini & Craver, 2011; Povich, 2015). In this paper, I show how model-based cognitive neuroscience (MBCN) epitomizes the integrative mechanistic perspective and concentrates (...) the most revolutionary elements of the cognitive neuroscience revolution (Boone & Piccinini, 2016). I also show how the prominent subset account of functional realization supports the integrative mechanistic perspective I take on MBCN and use it to clarify the intralevel and interlevel components of integration. (shrink)

2020 update of the entry "Properties".

According to a familiar objection to Davidson's causal theory of action, reasons are not causes qua reasons unless explanations of actions fit reason and action into a nomic nexus. The focus of this criticism should really be redirected to the issue of whether or not Davidson's theory provides an account of the explanatory force of explanations of actions.

The analysis of the concept of orbital allows us to argue that—in opposition to a recent position in philosophy of science—it is impossible to defend the autonomy of the chemical reality in regard to physical reality, appealing to the idea that there is a conceptual rupture among a chemical interpretation and a quantuminterpretation of the concept. This is the case because there are not two different interpretations of the concept of orbital. On the contrary, the concept involved in structural chemistry (...) and in quantum chemistry comes from quantum mechanics.El análisis del concepto de orbital permite argumentar—en oposición a una propuesta reciente en filosofía de la química—que no es posible defender la autonomía ontológica de la realidad química respecto de la física, sobre la base de una ruptura conceptual entre una interpretación química del concepto y otra propia de la mecánica cuántica. Esto es así porque no existen tales interpretaciones distintas del concepto de orbital, sino que, por el contrario, este concepto en química cuántica y en química estructural proviene de la mecánica cuántica. (shrink)

The functionalist conception of mental properties, together with their multiple realizability, is often taken to entail their irreducibility. It might seem that the only way to revise that judgement is to weaken the requirements traditionally imposed on reduction. However, Jaegwon Kim has recently argued that we should, on the contrary, strengthen those requirements, and construe reduction as what I propose to call “logical reduction”, a model of reduction inspired by emergentism. Moreover, Kim claims that what he calls “functional reduction” allows (...) one to reduce (at least some) mental properties by these new standards. I argue against both theses. First, I present a counterexample to the emergentist model of reduction: The model judges irreducible certain properties which are clearly reducible. Second, I contestthat functional reduction as construed by Kim satisfies the emergentist constraints. Functional reduction implies, over and above a functional definition of the reduced property, the indication of its realizers. But the latter information corresponding to the discovery of a (local) bridge law, is empirical and not purely logical. (shrink)

Chemistry is the study of the structure and transformation of matter. When Aristotle founded the field in the 4th century BCE, his conceptual grasp of the nature of matter was tailored to accommodate a relatively simple range of observable phenomena. In the 21st century, chemistry has become the largest scientific discipline, producing over half a million publications a year ranging from direct empirical investigations to substantial theoretical work. However, the specialized interest in the conceptual issues arising in chemistry, hereafter Philosophy (...) of Chemistry, is a relatively recent addition to philosophy of science. Philosophy of chemistry has two major parts. In the first, conceptual issues arising within chemistry are carefully articulated and analyzed. Such questions which are internal to chemistry include the nature of substance, atomism, the chemical bond, and synthesis. In the second, traditional topics in philosophy of science such as realism, reduction, explanation, confirmation, and modeling are taken up within the context of chemistry. (shrink)

In this paper we compare two different notions of 'power', both of which attempt to provide a realist understanding of quantum mechanics grounded on the potential mode of existence. For this propose we will begin by introducing two different notions of potentiality present already within Aristotelian metaphysics, namely, irrational potentiality and rational potentiality. After discussing the role played by potentiality within classical and quantum mechanics, we will address the notion of causal power which is directly related to irrational potentiality and (...) has been adopted by many interpretations of QM. We will then present the notion of immanent power which relates to rational potentiality and argue that this new concept presents important advantages regarding the possibilities it provides for understanding in a novel manner the theory of quanta. We end our paper with a comparison between both notions of 'power', stressing some radical differences between them. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that the ethical supervenes on the natural, where this is roughly the claim that it is impossible for two circumstances to be identical in all natural respects, but different in their ethical respects. This chapter refines and defends the traditional thought that this fact poses a significant challenge to ethical non-naturalism, a view on which ethical properties are fundamentally different in kind from natural properties. The challenge can be encapsulated in three core claims which the chapter (...) defends: that a defensible non-naturalism is committed to the supervenience of the ethical, that this commits the non-naturalist to a brute necessary connection between properties of distinct kinds, and that commitment to such brute connections counts against the non-naturalist’s view. Each of these claims has recently been challenged. Against Nicholas Sturgeon’s recent doubts about the dialectical force of supervenience, this chapter defends a supervenience thesis as deserving to be common ground among ethical realists. It is then argued that attempts to explain supervenience on behalf of the non-naturalist either fail as explanations, generate near-identical explanatory burdens elsewhere, or appeal to commitments that are inconsistent with core motivations for non-naturalism. The chapter concludes that, suitably refined, the traditional argument against nonnaturalism from supervenience is alive and well. (shrink)

Russell’s claim that only structural knowledge of the world is possible was influentially criticized by Newman as rendering scientific discoveries trivial. I show that a version of this criticism also applies to the “structural realism” more recently advocated by Worrall, which requires continuity of formal structure between predecessor and successor scientific theories. The problem is that structure, in its common set-theoretical construal, is radically underdetermined by the entities and relations over which it is defined, rendering intertheoretic continuity intolerably cheap. I (...) show that this problem may be overcome by supplementing the purely formal relation of intertheoretic isomorphism with the semiformal “Ontological Reductive Links” developed by Moulines and others of the German “structuralist” approach to the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Chemists do not aim at testing preconceptions or theoretical hypotheses only; they first and foremost produce and determine the object of chemical investigation: they learn through making. They never cease to create and stabilize heterogeneous devices, methods, models, and theories in order to act upon the world. Chemical bodies cannot be studied in isolation; their properties constitutively depend on what surrounds and acts upon them. Starting from the specificity of chemical practices, this paper investigates the meaning of consistency, inconsistency, and (...) that of the ceteris paribus clause, in this domain of science. In so doing, it defends the idea that studying what we call ‘a lack of consistency’ should always include the scrutiny of: the way a particular scientific practice is stabilized, and the ontological or pragmatic assumptions about the entities and processes upon which this practice revolves. (shrink)

One of the most unsettling problems in the history of philosophy examines how mathematics can be used to adequately represent the world. An influential thesis, stated by Eugene Wigner in his paper entitled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," claims that "the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Contrary to this view, this thesis delineates and implements (...) a strategy to show that the applicability of mathematics is very reasonable indeed. I distinguish three forms of the problem of the applicability of mathematics, and focus on one I call the problem of uncanny accuracy: Given that the construction and manipulation of mathematical representations is pervaded by uncertainty, error, approximation, and idealization, how can their apparently uncanny accuracy be explained? I argue that this question has found no satisfactory answer because our rational reconstruction of scientific practice has not involved tools rich enough to capture the logic of mathematical modelling. Thus, I characterize a general schema of mathematical analysis of real systems, focusing on the selection of modelling assumptions, on the construction of model equations, and on the extraction of information, in order to address contextually determinate questions on some behaviour of interest. A concept of selective accuracy is developed to explain the way in which qualitative and quantitative solutions should be utilized to understand systems. The qualitative methods rely on asymptotic methods and on sensitivity analysis, whereas the quantitative methods are best understood using backward error analysis. The basic underpinning of this perspective is readily understandable across scientific fields, and it thereby provides a view of mathematical tractability readily interpretable in the broader context of mathematical modelling. In addition, this perspective is used to discuss the nature of theories, the role of scaling, and the epistemological and semantic aspects of experimentation. In conclusion, we argue for a method of local and global conceptual analysis that goes beyond the reach of the tools standardly used to capture the logic of science; on their basis, the applicability of mathematics finds itself demystified. (shrink)

Scientific explanation is an important goal of scientific practise. Philosophers have proposed a striking diversity of seemingly incompatible accounts of explanation, from deductive-nomological to statistical relevance, unification, pragmatic, causal-mechanical, mechanistic, causal intervention, asymptotic, and model-based accounts. In this dissertation I apply two novel methods to reexamine our evidence about scientific explanation in practise and thereby address the fragmentation of philosophical accounts. I start by collecting a data set of 781 articles from one year of the journal Science. Using automated text (...) mining techniques I measure the frequency and distribution of several groups of philosophically interesting words, such as "explain", "cause", "evidence", "theory", "law", "mechanism", and "model". I show that "explain" words are much more common in scientific writing than in other genres, occurring in roughly half of all articles, and that their use is very often qualified or negated. These results about the use of words complement traditional conceptual analysis. Next I use random samples from the data set to develop a large number of small case studies across a wide range of scientific disciplines. I use a sample of "explain" sentences to develop and defend a new general philosophical account of scientific explanation, and then test my account against a larger set of randomly sampled sentences and abstracts. Five coarse categories can classify the explanans and explananda of my cases: data, entities, kinds, models, and theories. The pair of the categories of the explanans and explanandum indicates the "form" of an explanation. The explain-relation supports counterfactual reasoning about the dependence of qualities of the explanandum on qualities of the explanans. But for each form there is a different "core relation" between explanans and explanandum that supports the explain-relation. Causation, modelling, and argument are the core relations for different forms of scientific explanation between different categories of explanans and explananda. This flexibility allows me to resolve some of the fragmentation in the philosophical literature. I provide empirical evidence to show that my general philosophical account successfully describes a wide range of scientific practise across a large number of scientific disciplines. (shrink)

The past decade or so has witnessed an increase in the number of philosophical discussions about emergence and reduction in science. However, many of these discussions (though not all) remain too abstract and theoretical, and are wanting with respect to concrete examples taken from the sciences. This dissertation studies the topics of reduction and emergence in the context of a case study. I focus on the case of chemistry and investigate how emergentism can help us secure the autonomy of this (...) discipline in relation to the underlying microphysics. I develop an account of emergence (called functional emergence) that is, I argue, capable of answering the question of why we have chemistry instead of just applied quantum mechanics. I argue that functionally emergent properties in chemistry -- properties that are defined by their behaviour, not by some shared microphysical constituent -- can help us defend the autonomy of chemistry; they allow for the existence of sui generis chemical regularities, which can be used in sui generis chemical explanations. Functional emergence generates difficulties for some accounts of inter-theoretic reduction, but unlike other theories of emergence it is compatible with weaker forms of reductionism. (shrink)

This thesis has two goals. Firstly, we consider the problem of model selection for the purposes of prediction. In modern science predictive mathematical models are ubiquitous and can be found in such diverse fields as weather forecasting, economics, ecology, mathematical psychology, sociology, etc. It is often the case that for a given domain of inquiry there are several plausible models, and the issue then is how to discriminate between them – this is the problem of model selection. We consider approaches (...) to model selection that are used in classical [also known as frequentist] statistics, and fashionable in recent years methods of Akaike Information Criterion [AIC] and Bayes Information Criterion [BIC], the latter being a part of a broader Bayesian approach. We show the connection between AIC and BIC, and provide comparison of performance of these methods. Secondly, we consider some philosophical arguments that arise within the setting of the model selection approaches investigated in the first part. These arguments aim to provide counterexamples to the epistemic thesis of scientific realism, viz., that predictively successful scientific theories are approximately true, and to the idea that truth and predictive accuracy go together. We argue for the following claims: 1) that none of the criticisms brought forward in the philosophical literature against the AIC methodology are devastating, and AIC remains a viable method of model selection; 2) that the BIC methodology likewise survives the numerous criticisms; 3) that the counterexamples to scientific realism that ostensibly arise within the framework of model selection are flawed; 4) that in general the model selection methods discussed in this thesis are neutral with regards to the issue of scientific realism; 5) that a plurality of methodologies should be applied to the problem of model selection with full awareness of the foundational issues that each of these methodologies has. (shrink)

Contemporary theoretical physics is divided into diversified theories of different phenomena. These are characteristically frameworks for giving mathematical descriptions of perceptions, in the absence of understandable explanations or a unified worldview. This is not an optimal state of affairs, for people by nature desire to understand; this sets a major obstacle for an optimal progress rate of physics, for understandable explanations are more prolific of new predictions and applications than non-understandable explanations. Disunification in physics can be remedied only by discovering (...) an understandable ontology and applying it as the basis of unifying explanations of phenomena that were earlier explained by different theories. Due to disunified physics and the nature of traditional analysis in philosophy, there is no consensus about central concepts such as time, possibility and truth. It is suggested that philosophical analysis would be more prolific of understandable and applicable concepts, were it complemented by a method of unification. (shrink)

Ich rekonstruiere und kritisiere Hans Drieschs Argumentation für die Behauptung, daß biologischen Prozessen nur eine substanzdualistische Ontologie der belebten Materie (Vitalismus) gerecht werden kann. Meine Diagnose lautet, daß Drieschs Argumentation zwar logisch schlüssig ist bzw. durch leichte Modifikationen in eine logisch gültige Form gebracht werden kann, aber von empirisch unbegründeten, metaphysischen Prämissen über die Möglichkeiten eines energieumwandelnden Mechanismus ausgeht.

This article is devoted to the significant at all times and sounding anew in every epoch problem of the role of an individual (also a Hero, Great Man) in history, including such an aspect as the role of an individual in the process of state formation and progress. It is argued that in the age of globalization, when the humankind has found itself at the new developmental turning point, in the epoch when the influence of various individuals could affect dramatically (...) the further development of the whole world, there is an urgent necessity to return to the analysis of this issue. In the first part of this article the history of views on this problem from the antiquity to contemporary counterfactual history is considered. In the second part the author aims at presenting the complex of factors affecting the role of individuals as a conceptual system. He suggests that depending on various conditions and circumstances and with the account of specific features of historical place and time and personal characteristics, the historical role of an individual may fluctuate from the absolutely invisible up to the greatest one. A conclusion is made that the weaker and less stable is a society, the more destroyed are the old structures, the greater may be the personality's impact. In other words, the role of an individual is inversely correlated with society's stability and strength. The paper presents the model which includes four society’s state phases: 1) stable society of the monarchic type; 2) social pre-revolutionary crisis; 3) revolution; 4) creation of a new order. It is shown that a personality's greatest influence is observed at the third and fourth stages while at the first stage the influence is usually considerably weaker. (shrink)

Der Begriff ‘Modell’ leitet sich vom Lateinischen ‘modulus’ (das Maß) ab, im Italienischen existiert seit dem 16. Jh. ‘modello’ und R. Descartes verwendet im 17. Jh. ‘modèlle’. Während der Begriff in Architektur und Kunst schon seit der Renaissance gängig ist, wird er in den Naturwissenschaften erst im 19. Jh. verwendet.1 Dort greifen wissenschaftliche Modelle die für eine gegebene Problemstellung als wesentlich erachteten Charakteristika (Eigenschaften, Beziehungen, etc.) eines Untersuchungsgegenstandes heraus und machen diesen so einem Verständnis bzw. einer weiterführenden Untersuchung zugänglich. Es (...) ist üblich, zwischen Skalenmodellen, Analogmodellen und theoretischen Modellen zu unterscheiden. (shrink)

It is shown that at least part of the terminology of the theory of speech acts can be methodically introduced within the constructive ortholanguage-programm. There is evidence that a methodical constraint leads the reconstruction of the basic speech-act-types from requests via statements to questions. Moreover there is evidence that requests and questions don't involve "propositional acts".

Abstract: The paper argues that mainstream economics and mainstream philosophy of natural science had much in common during the period 1945-1965. It examines seven common features of the two fields and suggests a number of historical developments that might help explain these similarities. The historical developments include: the Vienna Circle connection, the Samuelson-Harvard-Foundations connection, and the Cold War operations research connection.

En este trabajo me propongo desarrollar un estudio crítico de la concepción mecanicista de la explicación científica. En primer lugar, argumento que la caracterización mecanicista de los modelos fenoménicos (no explicativos) es inadecuada, pues no ofrece un análisis aceptable de los conceptos de modelo científico y similitud, que son fundamentales para la propuesta. En segundo lugar, sostengo que la caracterización de los modelos mecanicistas (explicativos) es igualmente inadecuada, pues los análisis disponibles de la relación explicativa de relevancia constitutiva implican una (...) tesis metafísica que es rechazada por los mismos mecanicistas. Concluyo que el mecanicismo no ofrece todavía una elucidación aceptable de la explicación científica. In this paper, I offer a critical assessment of the mechanicist approach to scientific explanation. Firstly, I argue that the mechanicist characterization of (non explanatory) phenomenological models is inadequate, since it does not develop an explication of the concepts of scientific model and similarity, which are indispensable to the approach. Secondly, I claim that the mechanicist conception of (explanatory) mechanicist models is inadequate as well, since all the available analices of the explanatory relation of constitutive relevance imply a metaphysical thesis that is rejected by the mechanicists themselves. I conclude that mechanicism needs to be emended if it aims to be considered as a genuinely illuminating approach to scientific explanation. (shrink)

Debates about evolution and creation inevitably raise philosophical issues about the nature of scientific knowledge. What is a theory? What is an explanation? How is science different from non- science? How should theories be evaluated? Does science achieve truth? The aim of this chapter is to give a concise and accessible introduction to the philosophy of science, focusing on questions relevant to understanding evolution by natural selection, creation, and intelligent design. For the questions just listed, I state what I think (...) is the best available answer and show how it applies to debates about evolution and creationism. I also indicate alternative answers that are preferred by other philosophers. I hope that the result will be useful for science educators and anyone else involved in controversies about evolution and creation. (shrink)

Modern medicine has produced many successful theories concerning the causes of diseases. For example, we know that tuberculosis is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and that scurvy is caused by a deficiency of vitamin C. This chapter discusses the nature of medical theories from the perspective of the philosophy, history, and psychology of science. I will review prominent philosophical accounts of what constitutes a scientific theory, and develop a new account of medical theories as representations of mechanisms that explain (...) disease. An account of the nature of medical theories should illuminate many aspects of the development and application of medical knowledge. Most importantly, it should contribute to understanding of medical explanation, both at the general level of causes of diseases and at the individual level of diagnosis of particular cases of a disease. Medical researchers seek to explain the causes of diseases such as tuberculosis, while physicians seek to identify diseases that explain symptoms such as fever. A medical theory such as the bacterial theory of tuberculosis provides good explanations at both the general and individual levels. The primary aim of this chapter is to show how these explanations work. A secondary aim is to show how an account of medical theories can shed light on other aspects of medical research and practice, including the nature of medical discovery, the process of evaluation of competing medical theories, and the ways in which effective treatments of disease depend on the development of good mechanistic theories about diseases. (shrink)

In this paper I study how the theoretical categories of consumption theory were used by Milton Friedman in order to classify empirical data and obtain predictions. Friedman advocated a case by case definition of these categories that traded theoretical coherence for empirical content. I contend that this methodological strategy puts a clear incentive to contest any prediction contrary to our interest: it can always be argued that these predictions rest on a wrong classification of data. My conjecture is that this (...) methodological strategy can contribute to explain why Friedman’s predictions never generated the consensus he expected among his peers. (shrink)

The importance of the exclusion argument for contemporary physicalism is emphasized. The recent attempts to vindicate reductive physicalism by invoking certain needed revisions to the Nagelian model of reduction are then discussed. It is argued that such revised views of reduction offer in fact much less help to reductive physicalism than is sometimes supposed, and that many of these views lead to trouble when combined with the exclusion argument.

The aim of this essay is to emphasize a number of important points that will provide a better understanding of the history of philosophical thought concerning scientific knowledge. The main points made are: (a) that the principal way of viewing abstraction which has dominated the history of thought and epistemology up to the present is influenced by the original Aristotelian position; (b) that with the birth of modern science a new way of conceiving abstraction came into being which is better (...) characterized by the term idealization, the name that was later, in fact, to be used by scientists to describe their scientific activity; (c) that, however, on account of the influence of empirical and inductive philosophy, scientists have often not had sufficient methodological awareness of this new way of viewing abstraction; (d) that this new concept of abstraction has frequently been expressed in the framework of philosophies that lie outside the mainstream of contemporary epistemology or even exhibit marked anti-scientific tendencies; (e) that the theme of idealization has been taken up again in the last few decades and a great contribution in this direction has been made by the so-called Pozna school of methodology. (shrink)

Simulation techniques, especially those implemented on a computer, are frequently employed in natural as well as in social sciences with considerable success. There is mounting evidence that the "model-building era" (J. Niehans) that dominated the theoretical activities of the sciences for a long time is about to be succeeded or at least lastingly supplemented by the "simulation era". But what exactly are models? What is a simulation and what is the difference and the relation between a model and a simulation? (...) These are some of the questions addressed in this article. I maintain that the most significant feature of a simulation is that it allows scientists to imitate one process by another process. "Process" here refers solely to a temporal sequence of states of a system. Given the observation that processes are dealt with by all sorts of scientists, it is apparent that simulations prove to be a powerful interdisciplinarily acknowledged tool. Accordingly, simulations are best suited to investigate the various research strategies in different sciences more carefully. To this end, I focus on the function of simulations in the research process. Finally, a somewhat detailed case-study from nuclear physics is presented which, in my view, illustrates elements of a typical simulation in physics. (shrink)

The received view about emergence and reduction is that they are incompatible categories. I argue in this paper that, contrary to the received view, emergence and reduction can hold together. To support this thesis, I focus attention on dynamical systems and, on the basis of a general representation theorem, I argue that, as far as these systems are concerned, the emulation relationship is sufficient for reduction (intuitively, a dynamical system DS1 emulates a second dynamical system DS2 when DS1 exactly reproduces (...) the whole dynamics of DS2). This representational view of reduction, contrary to the standard deductivist one, is compatible with the existence of structural properties of the reduced system that are not also properties of the reducing one. Therefore, under this view, by no means are reduction and emergence incompatible categories but, rather, complementary ones. (shrink)

There is a tension or even contradiction between mental causation - the belief that some mental events or properties are causally relevant for some physical events or properties - and the irreducibility of mental features to physical ones, the causal closure of the physical, and the assumption that there is no overdetermination of the physical. To reconcile these premises was a promise of nonreductive physicalism, but a closer inspection shows that it is, on the contrary, a source of the problem (...) - namely, the unintelligibility of mental causation. This has to do with the widely-held assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical. How can the mental be causally relevant, then? And what is the relationship of the mental and the physical? There are many options, including identity, realizationism, emergence, or some kind of reducibility. But they all have their own problems, e.g. they threaten mental reality, the causal closure of the physical, or scientific explanations. All these aspects are covered in Jaegwon Kim's book Mind in a Physical World. This paper is a detailed introduction to it, discussing and critically commenting it and those still intriguing, but also confusing and complicated issues of the mind-body problem, especially the ontology of mental causation. (shrink)

Convergent scientific realism entails that science will sooner or later arrive at the final theory of the fundamental constituents of matter. At that stage, all fundamental truths about nature will be discovered so that the search for basic principle seems bound to come to a halt. I explore options for a non-convergent scientific realism that allows for sustained progress in basic research. I defend the views that the coherence of non-convergent realism requires an emergence claim and that this claim can (...) be supported. I develop the example of the relation between equivalence classes among biological functions and their physiological realizations. Given strongly emergent laws in the sense elaborated in the paper, progress in basic research may survive the discovery of the laws governing the tinymost parts of matter. (shrink)

En On the Origin of Species Darwin distingue explícitamente entre tres tipos de selección: la selección natural, la artificial y la sexual. En este trabajo, a partir de un estudio más sistemático que historiográfico, se intenta encontrar la relación entre estos tres tipos de selección en la obra de Darwin. Si bien la distinción entre estos distintos mecanismos es de suma importancia en la obra de Darwin, la tesis de este trabajo es que tanto la selección artificial como la sexual (...) no son mecanismos distintos de la selección natural. Particularmente se sostiene que la selección artificial y la sexual son casos de la natural, y por esto sirven para su contrastación. (shrink)

The disciplinary characterisation (DC) is the most popular approach to defining metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. It defines metaphysical naturalism with reference to scientific theories and defines physicalism with reference to physical theories, and suggests that every entity that exists is a posited entity of these theories. DC has been criticised for its inability to solve Hempel’s dilemma and a list of problems alike. In this paper, I propose and defend a novel version of DC that can be called a historical (...) paths approach. The idea is (roughly) that metaphysical naturalism can be defined with reference to the historical ideas that current scientific ideas descend from. I argue that it is not rendered implausible by the above problems, and hence that DC is more defensible and attractive than it may first appear. I then argue that the approach also provides a useful framework for the naturalisation of the philosophy of mind and phenomenology. (shrink)

In many fields of biology, researchers explain a phenomenon by characterizing the responsible mechanism. This requires identifying the candidate mechanism, decomposing it into its parts and operations, recomposing it so as to understand how it is organized and its operations orchestrated to generate the phenomenon, and situating it in its environment. Mechanistic researchers have developed sophisticated tools for decomposing mechanisms but new approaches, including modeling, are increasingly being invoked to recompose mechanisms when they involve nonsequential organization of nonlinear operations. The (...) results often are dynamical mechanistic explanations. The steps in mechanistic research are illustrated using research on circadian rhythms. (shrink)