Eliminative reasoning seems to play an important role in the sciences, but should it be part of our best theory of science? Statistical evidence, prevalent across the sciences, causes problems for eliminative inference, supporting the view that probabilistic theories of confirmation provide a better framework for reasoning about evidence. Here I argue that deductive elimination has an important inferential role to play in science, one that is compatible with probabilistic approaches to evidence. Eliminative inferences help frame testing problems, an essential (...) step that determines the context for evaluating statistical evidence. I illustrate this process with examples from molecular evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Sober has reconstructed the biological design argument in the framework of likelihoodism, purporting to demonstrate that it is defective for intrinsic reasons. We argue that Sober’s restriction on the introduction of auxiliary hypotheses is too restrictive, as it commits him to rejecting types of everyday reasoning that are clearly valid. Our account shows that the design argument fails, not because it is intrinsically untestable but because it clashes with the empirical evidence and fails to satisfy certain theoretical desiderata (in particular, (...) unification). Likewise, Sober’s critique of the arguments from imperfections and from evil against design is off the mark. (shrink)

This book is a sustained defense of the compatibility of the presence of idealizations in the sciences and scientific realism. So, the book is essentially a detailed response to the infamous arguments raised by Nancy Cartwright to the effect that idealization and scientific realism are incompatible.

The sheer multitude of criteria of empirical significance has been taken as evidence that the pre-analytic notion being explicated is too vague to be useful. I show instead that a significant number of these criteria—by Ayer, Popper, Przełęcki, Suppes, and David Lewis, among others—not only form a coherent whole, but also connect directly to the theory of definition, the notion of empirical content as explicated by Ramsey sentences, and the theory of measurement; two criteria by Carnap and Sober are trivial, (...) but can be saved and connected to the other criteria by slight modifications. A corollary is that the ordinary language defense of Lewis, the conceptual arguments by Ayer and Popper, the theoretical considerations by Przełęcki, and the practical considerations by Suppes all apply to the same criterion or closely related criteria. Furthermore, the equivalence of some criteria allows for their individual justifications to be taken cumulatively and, together with the entailment relations between nonequivalent criteria, suggest criteria for general auxiliary assumptions, comparative criteria, and more liberal conceptions of observation. (shrink)

Selectionist evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making novel predictions that are surprising, risky, and correct. I argue that it in fact exhibits the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to two other virtues: explanatory unification and model fitting. Two case studies show the predictive capacity of selectionist evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in E. coli, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.

When conceived as an empirical claim, it is natural to wonder how one might test the hypothesis of multiple realization. I consider general issues of testability, show how they apply specifically to the hypothesis of multiple realization, and propose an auxiliary assumption that, I argue, must be conjoined to the hypothesis of multiple realization to ensure its testability. I argue further that Bechtel and Mundale go astray because they fail to appreciate the need for this auxiliary assumption. †To contact the (...) author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 5185 Helen C. White Hall, 600 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

While a great deal of abuse has been directed at intelligent design theory (ID), its starting point is a fact about biological organisms that cries out for explanation, namely "specified complexity" (SC). Advocates of ID deploy three kind of argument from specified complexity to the existence of a designer: an eliminative argument, an inductive argument, and an inference to the best explanation. Only the first of these merits the abuse directed at it; the other two arguments are worthy of respect. (...) If they fail, it is only because we have a better explanation of SC, namely Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

On analogy with testimony, I define a notion of a scientific theory’s lacking or having candor, in a testing situation, according to whether the theory under test is probabilistically relevant to the processes in the test procedures, and thereby to the reliability of test outcomes. I argue that this property identifies what is distinctive about those theories that Karl Popper denounced as exhibiting “reinforced dogmatism” through their self-protective behavior (e.g., psychoanalysis, Hegelianism, Marxism). I explore whether lack of candor interferes with (...) the testing of theories, and conclude that (1) our default attitude toward theories that lack candor in a given test should be suspicion, but (2) the circumstance that a theory lacks candor in a testing situation does not preclude obtaining independent evidence for the auxiliary assumptions to which the theory is probabilistically relevant, and thereby eliminating the problem that lack of candor creates. Thus, Popper was right to think that lack of candor is a bad thing, but wrong to conclude that candor is a criterion of the scientificity of a theory. Seeing this requires recognition of some differences between intuitive relevance and probabilistic relevance, and proper appreciation of the notion of screening off and of the fact that probabilistic relevance is not transitive. (shrink)

Lloyd analyzes every proposed evolutionary explanation of female orgasm and argues that all but one suffers from serious evidential errors. Lloyd attributes these errors to two main biases: androcentrism and adaptationism. This paper begins by arguing that the explanation Lloyd favors—the by-product account—is guilty of the androcentrism which supposedly implicates the other explanations of female orgasm with numerous evidential discrepancies. This suggests that there is another error afflicting orgasm research in addition to the biases Lloyd identities. I attempt to diagnose (...) and characterize this additional error. In short, I think the error is using an imprecise definition of the trait in question. Further, Lloyd takes her analysis to support Longino’s contextual empiricist model of scientific objectivity. I consider what implications this analysis has for contextual empiricism. Finally, I argue that theorizing about female orgasm should be done from a conceptual engineering approach. (shrink)

Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains only loosely connected both to its computational framework and to its hypothetical biological underpinnings, which makes its fundamentals unclear. Instead of offering explanations that refer to the same set of (...) principles, we observe systematic equivocations in PP‐based models, or outright contradictions with its avowed principles. To make matters worse, PP‐based models are seldom empirically validated, and they are frequently offered as mere just‐so stories. The large number of PP‐based models is thus not evidence of theoretical progress in unifying perception, action, and cognition. On the contrary, we maintain that the gap between theory and its biological and computational bases contributes to the arrested development of PP as a unificatory theory. Thus, we urge the defenders of PP to focus on its critical problems instead of offering mere re‐descriptions of known phenomena, and to validate their models against possible alternative explanations that stem from different theoretical assumptions. Otherwise, PP will ultimately fail as a unified theory of cognition. (shrink)

Recent research in science indicates that we are living in a fine-tuned universe. Only a very small parameter space of universal fundamental constants in Physics is congenial for the existence of life. Moreover, recent studies in Biological evolution also reveal that fine-tuning did exist in the evolution. It seems that we are so lucky to exist as all universal fundamental constants and life-permitting factors really fall into such a very small life-allowing region. This problem is known as the fine-tuning problem. (...) Does this phenomenon need an explanation? Can the fine-tuning problem point to the existence of God? Modern Science invokes the idea of multiverse to address the fine-tuning problem. Some scientists suggest that each universe in a set of infinitely many universes contains a typical set of fundamental constants. We should not be surprised why our universe is fine-tuned because we would not exist if the constants are not the life-allowed values. Some suggest that the existence of God can explain this fine-tuning problem. The naturalistic multiverse theory and the existence of God are the two most robust proposals to address the fine-tuning problem. Moreover, some argue that the fine-tuning problem is not real because we are just subject to observational selection effect. In this thesis, I will provide a comprehensive discussion on the fine-tuning phenomena in our universe. In particular, I will use the confirmation principle and the inference to the best explanation simultaneously to evaluate different hypotheses in a more systematic way and give some of the new and updated scientific and philosophical arguments to respond to the recent criticisms of the fine-tuning arguments. I conclude that the theistic hypothesis is the best among all to address the fine-tuning problem. (shrink)

Pierre Duhem’s influential argument for holism relies on a view of the role that background theory plays in testing: according to this still common account of “auxiliary hypotheses,” elements of background theory serve as truth-apt premises in arguments for or against a hypothesis. I argue that this view is mistaken. Rather than serving as truth-apt premises in arguments, auxiliary hypotheses are employed as “epistemic tools”: instruments that perform specific tasks in connecting our theoretical questions with the world but that are (...) not premises in arguments. On the resulting picture, the acceptability of an auxiliary hypothesis depends not on its truth but on contextual factors such as the task or purpose it is put to and the other tools employed alongside it. (shrink)

Should we insist on prediction, i.e. on correctly forecasting the future? Or can we rest content with accommodation, i.e. empirical success only with respect to the past? I apply general considerations about this issue to the case of economics. In particular, I examine various ways in which mere accommodation can be sufficient, in order to see whether those ways apply to economics. Two conclusions result. First, an entanglement thesis: the need for prediction is entangled with the methodological role of orthodox (...) economic theory. Second, a conditional predictivism: if we are not committed to orthodox economic theory, then we should demand prediction rather than accommodation – against most current practice. (shrink)

Does confirmation holism imply meaning holism? A plausible and novel argument, all of whose premises enjoy significant support among contemporary philosophers, links the two theses. This article presents this argument and diagnoses it with a weakness. The weakness illustrates a general difficulty with drawing morals for the nature of ordinary thought and language from claims about the nature of science. The diagnosis is instructive: It suggests more fruitful relations between theories of scientific theory confirmation and semantic theories of our everyday (...) thoughts and statements. (shrink)

This paper concerns local yet systematic problems of contrastive underdetermination of model choice in cognitive neuroscience debates about the so-called two visual systems hypothesis. The underdetermination problem is systematically generated by the way certain assumptions about the representationalist nature of computation are translated into experimental practice. The problem is that behavioural data underdetermine the choice between competing representational models. In this paper, I diagnose how these assumptions generate underdetermination problems in the choice between competing functional models of perception–action. Using the (...) tools of philosophy of science, I describe the type of underdetermination and sketch a possible cure. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn order to explain the effects found in the heuristics and biases literature, dual-process theories of reasoning claim that human reasoning is of two kinds: Type-1 processing is fast, automatic, and associative, while Type-2 reasoning is slow, controlled, and rule based. If human reasoning is so divided, it would have important consequences for morality, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. Although dual-process theorists have typically argued for their position by way of an inference to the best explanation, they have generally failed (...) to consider alternative hypotheses. Worse still, it is unclear how we might test dual-process theories. In this article, I offer a one-system theory, which I call the Sound-Board Account of Reasoning, according to which there is one reasoning system which is flexible, allowing the properties used to distinguished Type-1 and Type-2 reasoning to cross-cut one another. I empirically distinguish my theory from the two dominant versions of dual-process theory (parallel... (shrink)

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...) follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. -/- This book offers a comprehensive study of Quine’s naturalism. Building on Quine’s published corpus as well as thousands of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, this book aims to reconstruct both the nature (chapters 2-4) and the development (chapter 5-7) of his naturalism. As such, this book aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. (shrink)

Much recent work in neuroscience aims to shed light on whether we have free will. Can it? Can any science? To answer, we need to disentangle different notions of free will, and clarify what we mean by ‘empirical’ and ‘testable’. That done, my main conclusion is, duly interpreted: that free will is not a testable hypothesis. In particular, it is neither verifiable nor falsifiable by empirical evidence. The arguments for this are not a priori but rather are based on a (...) posteriori consideration of the relevant neuroscientific investigations, as well as on standard philosophy of science work on the notion of testability. (shrink)

This paper details how ghost hunting, as a set of learning activities, can be used to enhance critical thinking and philosophy of science classes. We describe in some detail our own work with ghost hunting, and reflect on both intended and unintended consequences of this pedagogical choice. This choice was partly motivated by students’ lack of familiarity with science and philosophic questions about it. We offer reflections on our three different implementations of the ghost hunting activities. In addition, we discuss (...) the practical nuances of implementing these activities, as well the relation of ghost hunting to our course content, including informal fallacies and some models for scientific inference. We conclude that employing ghost hunting along-side traditional activities and content of critical thinking and philosophy of science offers a number of benefits, including being fun, increasing student attendance, enhancing student learning, and providing a platform for campus wide dialogues about philosophy. (shrink)

Evidential holism begins with something like the claim that “it is only jointly as a theory that scientific statements imply their observable consequences.” This is the holistic claim that Elliott Sober tells us is an “unexceptional observation”. But variations on this “unexceptional” claim feature as a premise in a series of controversial arguments for radical conclusions, such as that there is no analytic or synthetic distinction that the meaning of a sentence cannot be understood without understanding the whole language of (...) which it is a part and that all knowledge is empirical knowledge. This paper is a survey of what evidential holism is, how plausible it is, and what consequences it has. Section 1 will distinguish a range of different holistic claims, Sections 2 and 3 explore how well motivated they are and how they relate to one another, and Section 4 returns to the arguments listed above and uses the distinctions from the previous sections to identify holism's role in each case. (shrink)

Quine is routinely perceived as having changed his mind about the scope of the Duhem-Quine thesis, shifting from what has been called an 'extreme holism' to a more moderate view. Where the Quine of 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' argues that “the unit of empirical significance is the whole of science” (1951, 42), the later Quine seems to back away from this “needlessly strong statement of holism” (1991, 393). In this paper, I show that the received view is incorrect. I distinguish (...) three ways in which Quine's early holism can be said to be wide-scoped and show that he has never changed his mind about any one of these aspects of his early view. Instead, I argue that Quine's apparent change of mind can be explained away as a mere shift of emphasis. (shrink)

This paper is meant to link the philosophical debate concerning the underdetermination of theories by evidence with a rather significant socio-political issue that has been taking place in Canada over the past few years: the so-called ‘death of evidence’ controversy. It places this debate within a broader philosophical framework by discussing the connection between evidence and theory; by bringing out the role of epistemic values in the so-called scientific method; and by examining the role of social values in science. While (...) it should be admitted that social values play an important role in science, the key question for anyone who advocates this view is: what and whose values? The way it is answered makes an important epistemic difference to how the relation between evidence and theory is appraised. I first review various arguments for the claim that evidence underdetermines theory and shows their presuppositions and limitations, using conceptual analysis and historical examples. After broaching the relation between evidence and method in science by highlighting the need to incorporate epistemic values into the scientific method, my discussion focuses on recent arguments for the role of social values in science. Finally, I address the implications of the approach outlined for the current ‘death of evidence’ debate in Canada. (shrink)

This chapter offers a critique of intelligent design arguments against evolution and a philosophical discussion of the nature of science, drawing several lessons for the teaching of evolution and for science education in general. I discuss why Behe’s irreducible complexity argument fails, and why his portrayal of organismal systems as machines is detrimental to biology education and any under-standing of how organismal evolution is possible. The idea that the evolution of complex organismal features is too unlikely to have occurred by (...) random mutation and selection (as recently promoted by Dembski) is very widespread, but it is easy to show students why such small probability arguments are fallacious. While intelligent design proponents have claimed that the exclusion of supernatural causes mandated by scientific methods is dogmatically presupposed by science, scientists have an empirical justification for using such methods. This justification is instructive for my discussion of how to demarcate science from pseudoscience. I argue that there is no universal account of the nature of science, but that the criteria used to judge an intellectual approach vary across historical periods and have to be specific to the scientific domain. Moreover, intellectual approaches have to be construed as practices based on institutional factors and values, and to be evaluated in terms of the activities of their practitioners. Science educators should not just teach scientific facts, but present science as a practice and make students reflect on the nature of science, as this gives them a better appreciation of the ways in which intelligent design falls short of actual science. (shrink)

There are various questions that arise in connection with the “intelligent design” (ID) controversy. This introductory section aims to distinguish five of these questions. Later sections are devoted to detailed discussions of each of these five questions. The first (and central) question is the one that has been discussed most frequently in the news lately: (Q1) Should ID be taught in our public schools? It is helpful to break this general “public school curriculum question” into the following two more specific (...) sub-questions: (Q1.1) Should ID be included in the science curriculum of our public schools? (Q1.2) Should ID be included in some part of our public school curriculum? Of course, these public school curriculum questions should be distinguished from other (perhaps related, but distinct) questions that are often asked about ID. Here is another question that is very frequently discussed, not only in the debate about (Q1), but in the ID controversy generally: (Q2) What is ID? In other words, is ID a scientific theory, a religious doctrine, an.. (shrink)

Precise measurements of well-being would be of profound societal importance. Yet, the sceptical worry that we cannot use social science instruments and tests to measure well-being is widely discussed by philosophers and scientists. A recent and interesting philosophical argument has pointed to the psychometric procedures of construct validation to address this sceptical worry. The argument has proposed that these procedures could warrant confidence in our ability to measure well-being. The present paper evaluates whether this type of argument succeeds. The answer (...) is that it depends on which methodological background assumptions are motivating the sceptical worry to begin with. We show this by doing two things. First, we clarify (a) the different types of well-being theories involved in the science of well-being, and (b) the general methodological dimensions of well-being theorising. Second, we apply these distinctions and argue that construct validation is an unsuccessful response to measurement scepticism if this scepticism is motivated by a form of methodological non-naturalism. In the light of this, the overall point of the paper is that philosophers and scientists, when discussing measurement of well-being, should explicate their deeper methodological commitments. We further suggest that making such explicit commitments might present philosophers with a dilemma. (shrink)

Thomas Crisp has attempted to revive something akin to Alvin Plantinga’s Principle of Dwindling Probabilities to argue that the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus does not make the posterior probability of the resurrection very high. I argue that Crisp’s argument fails because he is attempting to evaluate a concrete argument in an a priori manner. I show that the same moves he uses would be absurd in other contexts, as applied both to our acquaintance with human beings and (...) to evidence for divine intervention. Crisp’s attempt to relate the evidence for a specific act of God such as the resurrection to generic theism, thereby creating skepticism about the power of the evidence, is symptomatic of a larger problem in the philosophy of religion which I dub “separationism” and which has characterized the work of both advocates of classical apologetics and philosophers of science. (shrink)

As every philosopher knows, “the design argument” concludes that God exists from premisses that cite the adaptive complexity of organisms or the lawfulness and orderliness of the whole universe. Since 1859, it has formed the intellectual heart of creationist opposition to the Darwinian hypothesis that organisms evolved their adaptive features by the mindless process of natural selection. Although the design argument developed as a defense of theism, the logic of the argument in fact encompasses a larger set of issues. William (...) Paley saw clearly that we sometimes have an excellent reason to postulate the existence of an intelligent designer. If we find a watch on the heath, we reasonably infer that it was produced by an intelligent watchmaker. This design argument makes perfect sense. Why is it any different to claim that the eye was produced by an intelligent designer? Both critics and defenders of the design argument need to understand what the ground rules are for inferring that an intelligent designer is the unseen cause of an observed effect. (shrink)

It is mostly agreed that Popper's criterion of falsifiability fails to provide a useful demarcation between science and pseudo-science, because ad-hoc assumptions are always able to save any theory that conflicts with the empirical data, and a characterization of ad-hoc assumptions is lacking. Moreover, adding some testable predictions is not very difficult. It should be emphasized that the Duhem-Quine argument does not simply make the demarcation approximate, but it makes it totally useless. Indeed, no philosophical criterion of demarcation is presently (...) able to rule out even some of the most blatant cases of pseudo-science, not even approximatively. This is in sharp contrast with our firm belief that some theories are clearly not scientific. Where does this belief come from? In this paper I argue that it is necessary and possible to recognize the notion of syntactic simplicity that is able to tell the difference between empirically equivalent scientific and non-scientific theories, with a precision that is adequate to many important practical purposes, and it fully agrees with the judgments generally held in the scientific community. (shrink)

A dominant view in contemporary cognitive neuroscience is that low-level, comparator-based mechanisms of motor control produce a distinctive experience often called the feeling of agency . An opposing view is that comparator-based motor control is largely non-conscious and not associated with any particular type of distinctive phenomenology . In this paper, I critically evaluate the nature of the empirical evidence researchers commonly take to support FoA-hypothesis. The aim of this paper is not only to scrutinize the FoA-hypothesis and data supposed (...) to support it; it is equally to argue that experimentalists supporting the FoA-hypothesis fail to establish that the experimental outcomes are more probable given the FoA-hypothesis than given the simpler hypothesis. (shrink)

The indispensability argument is sometimes seen as weakened by its reliance on a controversial premise of confirmation holism. Recently, some philosophers working on the indispensability argument have developed versions of the argument which, they claim, do not rely on holism. Some of these writers even claim to have strengthened the argument by eliminating the controversial premise. I argue that the apparent removal of holism leaves a lacuna in the argument. Without the holistic premise, or some other premise which facilitates the (...) transfer of evidence to mathematical portions of scientific theories, the argument is implausible. (shrink)

Do accounts of scientific theory formation and revision have implications for theories of everyday cognition? We maintain that failing to distinguish between importantly different types of theories of scientific inference has led to fundamental misunderstandings of the relationship between science and everyday cognition. In this article, we focus on one influential manifestation of this phenomenon which is found in Fodor's well-known critique of theories of cognitive architecture. We argue that in developing his critique, Fodor confounds a variety of distinct claims (...) about the holistic nature of scientific inference. Having done so, we outline more promising relations that hold between theories of scientific inference and ordinary cognition. (shrink)

Kai Nielsen is one of Canada’s most distinguished political philosophers. In a career spanning over 40 years, he has published more than 400 papers in political philosophy, ethics, meta-philosophy, and philosophy of religion. He has engaged much of the best work in Anglophone political philosophy, shedding light on many of the central debates and controversies of our time but throughout has remained a unique voice on the political left. _ Pessimism of the Intellect _presents a thoughtful collection of Nielsen’s essays (...) complemented by an extended reflective interview with Nielsen. This collection allows the reader to grasp the systematic scope of his thought and methodology. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of three parts. Part I is a defense of an artificial language methodology in philosophy and a historical and systematic defense of the logical empiricists' application of an artificial language methodology to scientific theories. These defenses provide a justification for the presumptions of a host of criteria of empirical significance, which I analyze, compare, and develop in part II. On the basis of this analysis, in part III I use a variety of criteria to evaluate the scientific (...) status of intelligent design, and further discuss confirmation, reduction, and concept formation. (shrink)

This paper argues for two conclusions: (1) evaluating the success of engineered concepts necessarily involves empirical work; and (2) the Carnapian Explication criterion precision ought to be a methodological standard in conceptual engineering. These two conclusions provide a new analysis of the race and gender debate between Sally Haslanger and Jennifer Saul. Specifically, the argument identifies the resources Haslanger needs to respond to Saul’s main objections. Lastly, I contrast the methodology advocated here with the so-called “method of cases” and draw (...) out some general implications for how we should think about concepts. (shrink)

This paper argues for two conclusions: (1) evaluating the success of engineered concepts necessarily involves empirical work; and (2) the Carnapian Explication criterion precision ought to be a methodological standard in conceptual engineering. These two conclusions provide a new analysis of the race and gender debate between Sally Haslanger and Jennifer Saul. Specifically, the argument identifies the resources Haslanger needs to respond to Saul’s main objections. Lastly, I contrast the methodology advocated here with the so-called “method of cases” and draw (...) out some general implications for how we should think about concepts. (shrink)

Milner and Goodale's Two Visual Systems Hypothesis is regarded as common ground in recent discussions of visual consciousness. A central part of TVSH is a functional model of vision and action. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of these current discussions and argue that there is ambiguity between a strong and a weak version of PAM. I argue that, given a standard way of individuating computational mechanisms, the available evidence cannot be used to distinguish between these versions. This (...) not only has consequences for philosophical theories of the role of visual consciousness but also for the role of experimental evidence in model testing in cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Theory choice can be approached in at least four ways. One of these calls for the application of decision theory, and this article endorses this approach. But applying standard forms of decision theory imposes an overly demanding standard of numeric information, supposedly satisfied by point-valued utility and probability functions. To ameliorate this difficulty, a version of decision theory that requires merely comparative utilities and plausibilities is proposed. After a brief summary of this alternative, the article illustrates how comparative decision theory (...) affords a rational reconstruction of decisions made by exemplary scientists in two cases of theory choice: Buffon’s law and the luminiferous ether. It also offers a rational reconstruction of two cases of theory diagnosis: Mendeleev’s anomalies and the Pioneer anomaly. (shrink)

Due to the logical relations between theism and intelligent design (id), there are two challenges to theism that also apply to id. In the falsifiability challenge, it is charged that theism is compatible with every observation statement and thus asserts nothing. I argue that the contentious assumptions of this challenge can be avoided without loss of precision by charging theism (and thus id) directly with the lack of observational assertions. In the translatability challenge, it is charged that theism can be (...) translated into a (non-theistic) set of observation statements without loss of cognitive content. I argue that the contentious assumptions of this challenge are avoided by the related charge that the (non-theistic) evolutionary theory makes all the observational assertions of id, while the converse does not hold. Elliott Sober has argued that id meets the falsifiability challenge, but, since it makes almost no observational assertions, is not testable. I point out two problems with Sober’s argument and show that id is both deductively and probabilistically testable. Sober’s argument, I suggest, inconsistently combines the modified falsifiability challenge with the modified translatability challenge. If his claims about id’s observational assertions are true, however, id succumbs to the modified translatability challenge. (shrink)

The focus of this study is cognitive choice: the selection of one cognitive option (a hypothesis, a theory, or an axiom, for instance) rather than another. The study proposes that cognitive choice should be based on the plausibilities of states posited by rival cognitive options and the utilities of these options' information outcomes. The proposal introduces a form of decision theory that is novel because comparative; it permits many choices among cognitive options to be based on merely comparative plausibilities and (...) utilities. This form of decision theory intersects with recommendations by advocates of decision theory for cognitive choice, on the one hand, and defenders of comparative evaluation of scientific hypotheses and theories, on the other. But it differs from prior decision-theoretic proposals because it requires no more than minimal precision in specifying plausibilities and utilities. And it differs from comparative proposals because none has shown how comparative evaluations can be carried out within a decision-theoretic framework. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of evidential holism, a prominent position in epistemology and the philosophy of science which claims that experiments only ever confirm or refute entire theories. The position is historically associated with W.V. Quine, and it is at once both popular and notorious, as well as being largely under-described. But even though there’s no univocal statement of what holism is or what it does, philosophers have nevertheless made substantial assumptions about its content and its truth. Moreover they (...) have drawn controversial and important conclusions from these assumptions. In this paper I distinguish three types of evidential holism and argue that the most oft-cited and controversial thesis is entirely unmotivated. The other two theses are much overlooked, but are well-motivated and free from controversial implications. (shrink)

This paper defends two theses about probabilistic reasoning. First, although modus ponens has a probabilistic analog, modus tollens does not – the fact that a hypothesis says that an observation is very improbable does not entail that the hypothesis is improbable. Second, the evidence relation is essentially comparative; with respect to hypotheses that confer probabilities on observation statements but do not entail them, an observation O may favor one hypothesis H1 over another hypothesis H2 , but O cannot be said (...) to confirm or disconfirm H1 without such relativization. These points have serious consequences for the Intelligent Design movement. Even if evolutionary theory entailed that various complex adaptations are very improbable, that would neither disconfirm the theory nor support the hypothesis of intelligent design. For either of these conclusions to follow, an additional question must be answered: With respect to the adaptive features that evolutionary theory allegedly says are very improbable, what is their probability of arising if they were produced by intelligent design? This crucial question has not been addressed by the ID movement. (shrink)

If intelligent design (id) is to compete with evolutionary theory (et), it must meet the modified falsifiability challenge, that is, make some deductive or probabilistic observational assertions. It must also meet the modified translatability challenge, which it fails if et makes all the observational assertions of id, while id does not make all the observational assertions of et. I discuss four prominent but diverse formulations of id and show that each either fails one of the two challenges or is analytically (...) false. (shrink)

The paper examines Wesley Salmon’s claim that the primary role of plausibility arguments in the history of science is to impose constraints on the prior probability of hypotheses. A detailed look at Copernicanism and Darwinism and, more briefly, Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus reveals a further and arguably more important role of plausibility arguments. It resides in the consideration of likelihoods, which state how likely a given hypothesis makes a given piece of evidence. In each case the likelihoods raise (...) the probability of one of the competing hypotheses and diminish the credibility of its rival, and this may happen either on the basis of ‘old’ or ‘new’ evidence.Keywords: Copernicanism; Darwinism; Atom models; Bayesianism; Likelihoods; Probability arguments. (shrink)

I discuss two versions of the doomsday argument. According to ``Gott's Line'',the fact that the human race has existed for 200,000 years licences the predictionthat it will last between 5100 and 7.8 million more years. According to ``Leslie'sWedge'', the fact that I currently exist is evidence that increases the plausibilityof the hypothesis that the human race will come to an end sooner rather than later.Both arguments rest on substantive assumptions about the sampling process thatunderlies our observations. These sampling assumptions have (...) testable consequences,and so the sampling assumptions themselves must be regarded as empirical claims.The result of testing some of these consequences is that both doomsday argumentsare empirically disconfirmed. (shrink)

This essay discusses Elliott Sober’s Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science. Valuable to both philosophers and biologists, Sober analyzes the testing of different kinds of evolutionary hypotheses about natural selection or phylogenetic history, including a thorough critique of intelligent design. Not at least because of a discussion of different schools of hypothesis testing (Bayesianism, likelihoodism, and frequentism), with Sober favoring a pluralism where different inference methods are appropriate in different empirical contexts, the book has lessons for philosophy of (...) science beyond its evolutionary focus. I criticize Sober for not including epistemic values and social aspects of scientific practice in his epistemological framework. (shrink)

Specification denotes the type of pattern that highly improbable events must exhibit before one is entitled to attribute them to intelligence. This paper analyzes the concept of specification and shows how it applies to design detection (i.e., the detection of intelligence on the basis of circumstantial evidence). Always in the background throughout this discussion is the fundamental question of Intelligent Design (ID): Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of (...) an intelligent cause? This paper reviews, clarifies, and extends previous work on specification in my books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. (shrink)

“Naturalized epistemology” is a recent attempt to transform the theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. Traditional epistemologists object to this proposal on the grounds that it eliminates the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this thesis, I argue that traditional philosophers are justified in their reluctance to accept naturalism, but that their ongoing inability to refute it points to deeper problems inherent in traditional epistemology. I establish my thesis first by critiquing three versions of naturalism, showing that (...) each version either fails to implement its objectives consistently or starts from dubious objectives. “Optimistic naturalism” attempts to use naturalistic methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions (such as by affirming that our beliefs can be justified). This fails because the form of traditional questions requires the concept “belief,” a concept that I argue naturalistic methodology cannot countenance (because of the severe constraints of naturalistic semantic theory). “Pessimistic naturalism,” the version advocated by Quine, is more consistent with naturalistic methodology, but fails because hidden behind its conclusions are assumptions (such as the underdetermination thesis) that cannot themselves be naturalized in the full context of scientific evidence. A final attempt to naturalize epistemology, deflationary naturalism, dispenses with traditional questions entirely, urging that the terms “knowledge” and “justification” be taken as mere pragmatic devices whose use can, nevertheless, be studied scientifically. Curiously, this view fails to take account of important facts about the actual use of those terms, as studied by psychologists. In the end, despite problems with each of these versions, traditional philosophers can learn something from their encounter with naturalism. In the course of showing how various naturalistic doctrines cannot themselves be naturalized, I identify the flaws in traditional epistemology (such as its reliance on a priorism, and its resulting inability to articulate a workable empirical foundationalist theory of justification) that make naturalism harder to challenge. These flaws must be corrected if philosophers are to preserve the autonomy of their discipline. (shrink)