Switch to: References

Citations of:

Laws and symmetry

New York: Oxford University Press (1989)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Explanation and the Nature of Scientific Knowledge.Kevin McCain - 2015 - Science & Education 24 (7-8):827-854.
    Explaining phenomena is a primary goal of science. Consequently, it is unsurprising that gaining a proper understanding of the nature of explanation is an important goal of science education. In order to properly understand explanation, however, it is not enough to simply consider theories of the nature of explanation. Properly understanding explanation requires grasping the relation between explanation and understanding, as well as how explanations can lead to scientific knowledge. This article examines the nature of explanation, its relation to understanding, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Inference to the Best Explanation in Uncertain Evidential Situations.Borut Trpin & Max Pellert - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (4):977-1001.
    It has recently been argued that a non-Bayesian probabilistic version of inference to the best explanation (IBE*) has a number of advantages over Bayesian conditionalization (Douven [2013]; Douven and Wenmackers [2017]). We investigate how IBE* could be generalized to uncertain evidential situations and formulate a novel updating rule IBE**. We then inspect how it performs in comparison to its Bayesian counterpart, Jeffrey conditionalization (JC), in a number of simulations where two agents, each updating by IBE** and JC, respectively, try to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Clinical Equipoise and Moral Leeway: An Epistemological Stance.Daniele Chiffi & Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen - 2019 - Topoi 38 (2):447-456.
    Clinical equipoise has been proposed as an ethical principle relating uncertainty and moral leeway in clinical research. Although CE has traditionally been indicated as a necessary condition for a morally justified introduction of a new RCT, questions related to the interpretation of this principle remain woefully open. Recent proposals to rehabilitate CE have divided the bioethical community on its ethical merits. This paper presents a new argument that brings out the epistemological difficulties we encounter in justifying CE as a principle (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • On the Possibility of Crucial Experiments in Biology.Tudor Baetu - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70 (2):407-429.
    The article analyses in detail the Meselson–Stahl experiment, identifying two novel difficulties for the crucial experiment account, namely, the fragility of the experimental results and the fact that the hypotheses under scrutiny were not mutually exclusive. The crucial experiment account is rejected in favour of an experimental-mechanistic account of the historical significance of the experiment, emphasizing that the experiment generated data about the biochemistry of DNA replication that is independent of the testing of the semi-conservative, conservative, and dispersive hypotheses. _1_ (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Explanation, confirmation, and Hempel's paradox.William Roche - 2017 - In Kevin McCain & Ted Poston (eds.), Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 219-241.
    Hempel’s Converse Consequence Condition (CCC), Entailment Condition (EC), and Special Consequence Condition (SCC) have some prima facie plausibility when taken individually. Hempel, though, shows that they have no plausibility when taken together, for together they entail that E confirms H for any propositions E and H. This is “Hempel’s paradox”. It turns out that Hempel’s argument would fail if one or more of CCC, EC, and SCC were modified in terms of explanation. This opens up the possibility that Hempel’s paradox (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Interpretation and equivalence; or, equivalence and interpretation.Neil Dewar - 2023 - Synthese 201 (4):1-24.
    This paper argues that much of the literature on interpreting scientific theories presupposes a certain picture of what interpretation involves: a picture according to which interpreting a theory is like translating from one language to another. In place of this “external” approach to interpretation, this paper proposes an “internal” approach, according to which interpretation is more concerned with delineating a theory’s internal semantic architecture.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Fundamental Uncertainty and Values.Daniele Chiffi & Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen - 2017 - Philosophia 45 (3):1027-1037.
    This paper explores the intertwining of uncertainty and values. We consider an important but underexplored field of fundamental uncertainty and values in decision-making. Some proposed methodologies to deal with fundamental uncertainty have included potential surprise theory, scenario planning and hypothetical retrospection. We focus on the principle of uncertainty transduction in hypothetical retrospection as an illustrative case of how values interact with fundamental uncertainty. We show that while uncertainty transduction appears intuitive in decision contexts it nevertheless fails in important ranges of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Optimality justifications: new foundations for foundation-oriented epistemology.Gerhard Schurz - 2018 - Synthese 195 (9):3877-3897.
    In this paper a new conception of foundation-oriented epistemology is developed. The major challenge for foundation-oriented justifications consists in the problem of stopping the justificational regress without taking recourse to dogmatic assumptions or circular reasoning. Two alternative accounts that attempt to circumvent this problem, coherentism and externalism, are critically discussed and rejected as unsatisfactory. It is argued that optimality arguments are a new type of foundation-oriented justification that can stop the justificational regress. This is demonstrated on the basis of a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Kant on the Laws of Nature: Laws, Necessitation, and the Limitation of Our Knowledge.James Kreines - 2008 - European Journal of Philosophy 17 (4):527-558.
    Consider the laws of nature—the laws of physics, for example. One familiar philosophical question about laws is this: what is it to be a law of nature? More specifically, is a law of nature a regularity, or a generalization stating a regularity? Or is it something else? Another philosophical question is: how, and to what extent, can we have knowledge of the laws of nature? I am interested here in Kant's answers to these questions, and their place within his broader (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Abstract versus Causal Explanations?Reutlinger Alexander & Andersen Holly - 2016 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (2):129-146.
    In the recent literature on causal and non-causal scientific explanations, there is an intuitive assumption according to which an explanation is non-causal by virtue of being abstract. In this context, to be ‘abstract’ means that the explanans in question leaves out many or almost all causal microphysical details of the target system. After motivating this assumption, we argue that the abstractness assumption, in placing the abstract and the causal character of an explanation in tension, is misguided in ways that are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Realismo/Anti-Realismo.Eduardo Castro - 2014 - Compêndio Em Linha de Problemas de Filosofia Analítica.
    State of the art paper on the topic realism/anti-realism. The first part of the paper elucidates the notions of existence and independence of the metaphysical characterization of the realism/anti-realism dispute. The second part of the paper presents a critical taxonomy of the most important positions and doctrines in the contemporary literature on the domains of science and mathematics: scientific realism, scientific anti-realism, constructive empiricism, structural realism, mathematical Platonism, mathematical indispensability, mathematical empiricism, intuitionism, mathematical fictionalism and second philosophy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Gradations of Guessing: Preliminary Sketches and Suggestions.Mark Tschaepe - 2013 - Contemporary Pragmatism 10 (2):135-154.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Chance, Possibility, and Explanation.Nina Emery - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (1):95-120.
    I argue against the common and influential view that non-trivial chances arise only when the fundamental laws are indeterministic. The problem with this view, I claim, is not that it conflicts with some antecedently plausible metaphysics of chance or that it fails to capture our everyday use of ‘chance’ and related terms, but rather that it is unstable. Any reason for adopting the position that non-trivial chances arise only when the fundamental laws are indeterministic is also a reason for adopting (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  • Fundamentality, Effectiveness, and Objectivity of Gauge Symmetries.Aldo Filomeno - 2016 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (1):19-37.
    Much recent philosophy of physics has investigated the process of symmetry breaking. Here, I critically assess the alleged symmetry restoration at the fundamental scale. I draw attention to the contingency that gauge symmetries exhibit, that is, the fact that they have been chosen from an infinite space of possibilities. I appeal to this feature of group theory to argue that any metaphysical account of fundamental laws that expects symmetry restoration up to the fundamental level is not fully satisfactory. This is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)Simplicity, Language-Dependency and the Best System Account of Laws.Billy Wheeler - 2014 - Theoria : An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science 31 (2):189-206.
    It is often said that the best system account of laws needs supplementing with a theory of perfectly natural properties. The ‘strength’ and ‘simplicity’ of a system is language-relative and without a fixed vocabulary it is impossible to compare rival systems. Recently a number of philosophers have attempted to reformulate the BSA in an effort to avoid commitment to natural properties. I assess these proposals and argue that they are problematic as they stand. Nonetheless, I agree with their aim, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Refutations of the Two Pessimistic Inductions.Seungbae Park - 2016 - Philosophia 44 (3):835-844.
    Both the pessimistic inductions over scientific theories and over scientists are built upon what I call proportional pessimism: as theories are discarded, the inductive rationale for concluding that the next theories will be discarded grows stronger. I argue that proportional pessimism clashes with the fact that present theories are more successful than past theories, and with the implications of the assumptions that there are finitely and infinitely many unconceived alternatives. Therefore, the two pessimistic inductions collapse along with proportional pessimism.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Explanatory Judgment, Probability, and Abductive Inference.Matteo Colombo, Marie Postma & Jan Sprenger - 2016 - In A. Papafragou, D. Grodner, D. Mirman & J. C. Trueswell (eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 432-437) Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society. pp. 432-437.
    Abductive reasoning assigns special status to the explanatory power of a hypothesis. But how do people make explanatory judgments? Our study clarifies this issue by asking: How does the explanatory power of a hypothesis cohere with other cognitive factors? How does probabilistic information affect explanatory judgments? In order to answer these questions, we conducted an experiment with 671 participants. Their task was to make judgments about a potentially explanatory hypothesis and its cognitive virtues. In the responses, we isolated three constructs: (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Against deliberative indispensability as an independent guide to what there is.Brendan Cline - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (12):3235-3254.
    David Enoch has recently proposed that the deliberative indispensability of irreducibly normative facts suffices to support their inclusion in our ontology, even if they are not necessary for the explanation of any observable phenomena. He challenges dissenters to point to a relevant asymmetry between explanation and deliberation that shows why explanatory indispensability, but not deliberative indispensability, is a legitimate guide to ontology. In this paper, I aim to do just that. Given that an entity figures in the actual explanation of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Reconstructed Empiricism.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Acta Analytica 32 (1):95-113.
    According to Bas van Fraassen, scientific realists and anti-realists disagree about whether accepting a scientific theory involves believing that the theory is true. On van Fraassen’s own anti-realist empiricist position, accepting a theory involves believing only that the theory is correct in its claims about observable aspects of the world. However, a number of philosophers have argued that acceptance and belief cannot be distinguished and thus that the debate is either confused or trivially settled in favor of the realist. In (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Quiddistic Knowledge.Jonathan Schaffer - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 123 (1):1-32.
    Is the relation between properties and the causal powers they confer necessary, or contingent? Necessary, says Sydney Shoemaker, on pain of skepticism about the properties. Contingent, says David Lewis, swallowing the skeptical conclusion. I shall argue that Lewis is right about the metaphysics, but that Shoemaker and Lewis are wrong about the epistemology. Properties have intrinsic natures (quiddities), which we can know.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   108 citations  
  • (1 other version)Gauge Principles, Gauge Arguments and the Logic of Nature.Christopher A. Martin - 2002 - Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S221-S234.
    I consider the question of how literally one can construe the “gauge argument,” which is the canonical means of understanding the putatively central import of local gauge symmetry principles for fundamental physics. As I argue, the gauge argument must be afforded a heuristic reading. Claims to the effect that the argument reflects a deep “logic of nature” must, for numerous reasons I discuss, be taken with a grain of salt.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  • Natural Kinds, Causes and Domains: Khalidi on how science classifies things.Vincenzo Politi - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 54:132-137.
    Natural Categories and Human Kinds is a recent and timely contribution to current debate on natural kinds. Because of the growing sophistication of this debate, it is necessary to make careful distinctions in order to appreciate the originality of Khalidi’s position. Khalidi’s view on natural kinds is naturalistic: if we want to know what Nature’s joints really are, we should look at the actual carving job carried out by our best scientific practices. Like LaPorte, Khalidi is a fallibilist: our best (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Constructive empiricism, observability and three kinds of ontological commitment.Gabriele Contessa - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 37 (3):454-468.
    In this paper, I argue that, contrary to the constructive empiricist’s position, observability is not an adequate criterion as a guide to ontological commitment in science. My argument has two parts. First, I argue that the constructive empiricist’s choice of observability as a criterion for ontological commitment is based on the assumption that belief in the existence of unobservable entities is unreasonable because belief in the existence of an entity can only be vindicated by its observation. Second, I argue that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Derivative Properties in Fundamental Laws.Michael Townsen Hicks & Jonathan Schaffer - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (2).
    Orthodoxy has it that only metaphysically elite properties can be invoked in scientifically elite laws. We argue that this claim does not fit scientific practice. An examination of candidate scientifically elite laws like Newton’s F = ma reveals properties invoked that are irreversibly defined and thus metaphysically non-elite by the lights of the surrounding theory: Newtonian acceleration is irreversibly defined as the second derivative of position, and Newtonian resultant force is irreversibly defined as the sum of the component forces. We (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • Temporal arrows in space-time.Friedel Weinert - 2013 - Kairos 8:13-44.
    info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • What Was the Syntax‐Semantics Debate in the Philosophy of Science About?Sebastian Lutz - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (2):319-352.
    The debate between critics of syntactic and semantic approaches to the formalization of scientific theories has been going on for over 50 years. I structure the debate in light of a recent exchange between Hans Halvorson, Clark Glymour, and Bas van Fraassen and argue that the only remaining disagreement concerns the alleged difference in the dependence of syntactic and semantic approaches on languages of predicate logic. This difference turns out to be illusory.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • Foundations of Probability.Rachael Briggs - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 44 (6):625-640.
    The foundations of probability are viewed through the lens of the subjectivist interpretation. This article surveys conditional probability, arguments for probabilism, probability dynamics, and the evidential and subjective interpretations of probability.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Accepting Our Best Scientific Theories.Seungbae Park - 2015 - Filosofija. Sociologija 26 (3):218-227.
    Dawes (2013) claims that we ought not to believe but to accept our best scientific theories. To accept them means to employ them as premises in our reasoning with the goal of attaining knowledge about unobservables. I reply that if we do not believe our best scientific theories, we cannot gain knowledge about unobservables, our opponents might dismiss the predictions derived from them, and we cannot use them to explain phenomena. We commit an unethical speech act when we explain a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • (1 other version)Measurement and Metaphysics in van Fraassen’s Scientific Representation.Sergio A. Gallegos - 2015 - Axiomathes 25 (1):117-131.
    Van Fraassen has presented in Scientific Representation an attractive notion of measurement as an important part of the empiricist structuralism that he endorses. However, he has been criticized on the grounds that both his notion of measurement and his empiricist structuralism force him to do the very thing he objects to in other philosophical projects — to endorse a controversial metaphysics. This paper proposes a defense of van Fraassen by arguing that his project is indeed a ‘ metaphysical ’ project, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Empiricism for cyborgs.Adam Toon - 2014 - Philosophical Issues 24 (1):409-425.
    One important debate between scientific realists and constructive empiricists concerns whether we observe things using instruments. This paper offers a new perspective on the debate over instruments by looking to recent discussion in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Realists often speak of instruments as ‘extensions’ to our senses. I ask whether the realist may strengthen her view by drawing on the extended mind thesis. Proponents of the extended mind thesis claim that cognitive processes can sometimes extend beyond our brains (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Common minds, uncommon thoughts: a philosophical anthropological investigation of uniquely human creative behavior, with an emphasis on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study.Johan De Smedt - unknown
    The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data from diverse domains within a philosophical anthropological framework, I have presented a cognitive and evolutionary approach to the question of why humans, but not other animals engage in such activities. Through an application of cognitive and evolutionary perspectives to the study of these behaviors, I have sought to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Collins' core fine-tuning argument.Mark Douglas Saward - 2014 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76 (2):209-222.
    Collins (The Blackwell companion to natural theology, 2009) presents an argument he calls the ‘core fine-tuning argument’. In this paper, I show that Collins’ argument is flawed in at least two ways. First, the structure, depending on likelihoods, fails to establish anything about the posterior probability of God’s existence given fine-tuning. As an argument for God’s existence, this is a serious failing. Second, his analysis of what is appropriately restricted background knowledge, combined with the credences of a specially chosen ‘alien’, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Principled Chances.Jonathan SchaAer - unknown
    There are at least three core principles that define the chance role: ill the Principal Principle, l21 the Basic Chance Principle, and l31 the Humean Principle. These principles seem mutually incompatible. At least, no extant account of chance meets more than one of them. I ofier an account of chance which meets all three: L~-chance. So the good news is that L~-chance meets ill — l31. The bad news is that L~-chance turns out unlawful and unstable. But perhaps this is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Feminist Philosophy of Science.Lynn Hankinson Nelson - 2002 - In Peter K. Machamer & Michael Silberstein (eds.), The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of science. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. pp. 312–331.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Non-additive degrees of belief.Rolf Haenni - 2009 - In Franz Huber & Christoph Schmidt-Petri (eds.), Degrees of belief. London: Springer. pp. 121--159.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • The Application of Constraint Semantics to the Language of Subjective Uncertainty.Eric Swanson - 2016 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 45 (2):121-146.
    This paper develops a compositional, type-driven constraint semantic theory for a fragment of the language of subjective uncertainty. In the particular application explored here, the interpretation function of constraint semantics yields not propositions but constraints on credal states as the semantic values of declarative sentences. Constraints are richer than propositions in that constraints can straightforwardly represent assessments of the probability that the world is one way rather than another. The richness of constraints helps us model communicative acts in essentially the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • The Semantic View, If Plausible, Is Syntactic.Hans Halvorson - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (3):475-478.
    Halvorson argues that the semantic view of theories leads to absurdities. Glymour shows how to inoculate the semantic view against Halvorson's criticisms, namely by making it into a syntactic view of theories. I argue that this modified semantic-syntactic view cannot do the philosophical work that the original "language-free" semantic view was supposed to do.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   55 citations  
  • Phenomenal Content, Space, and the Subject of Consciousness.C. Peacocke - 2013 - Analysis 73 (2):320-329.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Interrogative Reasoning and Discovery: a New Perspective on Kepler's Inquiry.Mika Kiikeri - 1999 - Philosophica 63 (1).
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Reflexive, Symmetric and Transitive Scientific Representations.Aboutorab Yaghmaie - manuscript
    Theories of scientific representation, following Chakrawartty's categorization, are divided into two groups. Whereas cognitive-functional views emphasize agents' intentions, informational theories stress the objective relation between represented and representing. In the first part, a modified structuralist theory is introduced that takes into account agents' intentions. The second part is devoted to dismissing a criticism against the structural account of representation on which similarity as the backbone of representation raises serious problems, since it has definite logical features, i.e. reflexivity, symmetry and transitivity, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Generalizing empirical adequacy I: multiplicity and approximation.Sebastian Lutz - 2014 - Synthese 191 (14):3195-3225.
    I provide an explicit formulation of empirical adequacy, the central concept of constructive empiricism, and point out a number of problems. Based on one of the inspirations for empirical adequacy, I generalize the notion of a theory to avoid implausible presumptions about the relation of theoretical concepts and observations, and generalize empirical adequacy with the help of approximation sets to allow for lack of knowledge, approximations, and successive gain of knowledge and precision. As a test case, I provide an application (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • (1 other version)Physical Necessity is Not Necessity Tout Court.George Masterton - 2012 - Metaphysica 13 (2):175-182.
    The very last of words of Naming and Necessity are ‘The third lecture suggests that a good deal of what contemporary philosophy regards as mere physical necessity is actually necessary tout court. The question how far this can be pushed is one I leave for further work.’ Kripke (1980). To my knowledge he never conducted that further work; moreover, no one following him has wished to take up the baton either. Herein, I argue that in general, physical necessity is neither (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Science, metaphysics and method.James Ladyman - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (1):31-51.
    While there are many examples of metaphysical theorising being heuristically and intellectually important in the progress of scientific knowledge, many people wonder how metaphysics not closely informed and inspired by empirical science could lead to rival or even supplementary knowledge about the world. This paper assesses the merits of a popular defence of the a priori methodology of metaphysics that goes as follows. The first task of the metaphysician, like the scientist, is to construct a hypothesis that accounts for the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   32 citations  
  • Two accounts of laws and time.Barry Loewer - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (1):115-137.
    Among the most important questions in the metaphysics of science are "What are the natures of fundamental laws and chances?" and "What grounds the direction of time?" My aim in this paper is to examine some connections between these questions, discuss two approaches to answering them and argue in favor of one. Along the way I will raise and comment on a number of issues concerning the relationship between physics and metaphysics and consequences for the subject matter and methodology of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   166 citations  
  • Arguing for wisdom in the university: an intellectual autobiography.Nicholas Maxwell - 2012 - Philosophia 40 (4):663-704.
    For forty years I have argued that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes to seek and promote wisdom. How did I come to argue for such a preposterously gigantic intellectual revolution? It goes back to my childhood. From an early age, I desired passionately to understand the physical universe. Then, around adolescence, my passion became to understand the heart and soul of people via the novel. But I never discovered how (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • The Challenge of Scientific Revolutions: Van Fraassen's and Friedman's Responses.Vasso Kindi - 2011 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (4):327-349.
    This article criticizes the attempts by Bas van Fraassen and Michael Friedman to address the challenge to rationality posed by the Kuhnian analysis of scientific revolutions. In the paper, I argue that van Fraassen's solution, which invokes a Sartrean theory of emotions to account for radical change, does not amount to justifying rationally the advancement of science but, rather, despite his protestations to the contrary, is an explanation of how change is effected. Friedman's approach, which appeals to philosophical developments at (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Multiple Studies and Evidential Defeat.Matthew Kotzen - 2011 - Noûs 47 (1):154-180.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Counterfactuals and Scientific Realism.Michael J. Shaffer - 2012 - London and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
    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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • What is Probability?Patrick Maher - unknown
    In October 2009 I decided to stop doing philosophy. This meant, in particular, stopping work on the book that I was writing on the nature of probability. At that time, I had no intention of making my unfinished draft available to others. However, I recently noticed how many people are reading the lecture notes and articles on my web site. Since this draft book contains some important improvements on those materials, I decided to make it available to anyone who wants (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • The Metaphysics of Chance.Rachael Briggs - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (11):938-952.
    This article surveys several interrelated issues in the metaphysics of chance. First, what is the relationship between the probabilities associated with types of trials (for instance, the chance that a twenty‐eight‐year old develops diabetes before age thirty) and the probabilities associated with individual token trials (for instance, the chance that I develop diabetes before age thirty)? Second, which features of the the world fix the chances: are there objective chances at all, and if so, are there non‐chancy facts on which (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations