Not since Ernest Nagel’s 1939 monograph on the theory of probability has there been a comprehensive elementary survey of the philosophical problems of probablity and induction. This is an authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the subject, and yet it is relatively brief and nontechnical. Hume’s skeptical arguments regarding the justification of induction are taken as a point of departure, and a variety of traditional and contemporary ways of dealing with this problem are considered. The author then sets forth his own (...) criteria of adequacy for interpretations of probability. Utilizing these criteria he analyzes contemporary theories of probability, as well as the older classical and subjective interpretations. (shrink)

In this article we argue for the existence of ‘analogue simulation’ as a novel form of scientific inference with the potential to be confirmatory. This notion is distinct from the modes of analogical reasoning detailed in the literature, and draws inspiration from fluid dynamical ‘dumb hole’ analogues to gravitational black holes. For that case, which is considered in detail, we defend the claim that the phenomena of gravitational Hawking radiation could be confirmed in the case that its counterpart is detected (...) within experiments conducted on diverse realizations of the analogue model. A prospectus is given for further potential cases of analogue simulation in contemporary science. 1 Introduction2 Physical Background2.1 Hawking radiation in semi-classical gravity2.2 Modelling sound in fluids2.3 The acoustic analogue model of Hawking radiation3 Simulation and Analogy in Physical Theory3.1 Analogical reasoning and analogue simulation3.2 Confirmation via analogue simulation3.3 Recapitulation4 The Sound of Silence: Analogical Insights into Gravity4.1 Experimental realization of analogue models4.2 Universality and the Hawking effect4.3 Confirmation of gravitational Hawking radiation5 Prospectus. (shrink)

How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the cognitive-social-cultural (...) context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. (shrink)

Lloyd (2009) contends that climate models are confirmed by various instances of fit between their output and observational data. The present paper argues that what these instances of fit might confirm are not climate models themselves, but rather hypotheses about the adequacy of climate models for particular purposes. This required shift in thinking—from confirming climate models to confirming their adequacy-for-purpose—may sound trivial, but it is shown to complicate the evaluation of climate models considerably, both in principle and in practice.

In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation" Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse's approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse's approach to scientific explanation formulated in the 1960s (...) and argues that rereading Hesse's account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen's. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine. (shrink)

By Parallel Reasoning is the first comprehensive philosophical examination of analogical reasoning in more than forty years designed to formulate and justify standards for the critical evaluation of analogical arguments. It proposes a normative theory with special focus on the use of analogies in mathematics and science. In recent decades, research on analogy has been dominated by computational theories whose objective has been to model analogical reasoning as a psychological process. These theories have devoted little attention to normative questions. In (...) this book Bartha proposes that a good analogical argument must articulate a clear relationship that is capable of generalization. This idea leads to a set of distinct models for the critical analysis of prominent forms of analogical argument. The same core principle makes it possible to relate analogical reasoning to norms and values of scientific practice. Reasoning by analogy is justified because it strikes an optimal balance between conservative values, such as simplicity and coherence, and progressive values, such as fruitfulness and theoretical unification. Analogical arguments are also justified by appeal to symmetry--like cases are to be treated alike. In elaborating the connection between analogy and these broad epistemic principles, By Parallel Reasoning offers a novel contribution to explaining how analogies can play an important role in the confirmation of scientific hypotheses. (shrink)

Philosophers of science increasingly recognize the importance of idealization: the intentional introduction of distortion into scientific theories. Yet this recognition has not yielded consensus about the nature of idealization. e literature of the past thirty years contains disparate characterizations and justifications, but little evidence of convergence towards a common position.

This classic work in the philosophy of physical science is an incisive and readable account of the scientific method. Pierre Duhem was one of the great figures in French science, a devoted teacher, and a distinguished scholar of the history and philosophy of science. This book represents his most mature thought on a wide range of topics.

(This insularity was further promoted by the guileless duplicity of scholars in other fields, who were all too prepared to bequeath "the problem of ...

Jaakko Hintikka (1998) has argued that clarifying the notion of abduction is the fundamental problem of contemporary epistemology. One traditional interpretation of Peirce on abduction sees it as a recipe for generating new theoretical discoveries . A second standard view sees abduction as a mode of reasoning that justifies beliefs about the probable truth of theories. While each reading has some grounding in Peirce's writings, each leaves out features that are crucial to Peirce's distinctive understanding of abduction. I develop and (...) defend a third interpretation, according to which Peirce takes abductive reasoning to lead to judgments about the relative pursuitworthiness of theories; conclusions that can be thoroughly disconnected from assessments of truth-value. Even if Peirce's use of "abduction" slides around among each of these three importantly different though potentially compatible senses, this neglected third understanding makes sense of a large number of Peirce's remarks and directs our attention to the cognitive structure of judgments that scientists face after the initial proposal of explanatory hypotheses but prior to their experimental testing; a topic which should be of interest to contemporary philosophers of science. (shrink)

The distinction between discovery and justification is ambiguous. This obscures the debate over a logic of discovery. For the debate presupposes the distinction. Real discoveries are well established. What is well established is justified. The proper distinctions are three: initial thinking, plausibility, and acceptability. Logic is not essential to initial thinking. We do not need good supporting reasons to initially think of an hypothesis. Initial thoughts need be neither plausible nor acceptable. Logic is essential, as Hanson noted, to both plausibility (...) and acceptability. An hypothesis needs good supporting reasons to be either plausible or acceptable. Such reasons need not be relative to the particular scientific theory undergoing test at the time. There is no fundamental difference between reasons relevant to plausibility and acceptability. The difference is one of degree. Acceptability requires more than plausibility. (shrink)

Most recent philosophical thought about the scientific representation of the world has focused on dyadic relationships between language-like entities and the world, particularly the semantic relationships of reference and truth. Drawing inspiration from diverse sources, I argue that we should focus on the pragmatic activity of representing, so that the basic representational relationship has the form: Scientists use models to represent aspects of the world for specific purposes. Leaving aside the terms "law" and "theory," I distinguish principles, specific conditions, models, (...) hypotheses, and generalizations. I argue that scientists use designated similarities between models and aspects of the world to form both hypotheses and generalizations. (shrink)

Analogical reasoning addresses the question how evidence from various phenomena can be combined and made relevant for theory development and prediction. In the first part of my contribution, I review some influential accounts of analogical reasoning, both historical and contemporary, focusing in particular on Keynes, Carnap, Hesse, and more recently Bartha. In the second part, I sketch a general framework. To this purpose, a distinction between a predictive and a conceptual type of analogical reasoning is introduced. I then take up (...) a common intuition according to which analogical inferences hold if the differences between source and target concern only irrelevant circumstances. I attempt to make this idea more precise by addressing possible objections and in particular by specifying a notion of causal irrelevance based on difference making in homogeneous contexts. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to critically investigate Kuhn’s stance on the assessment of the pursuit worthiness of scientific theories, and, on the other hand, to show the actuality of some of Kuhn’s points on this issue, in view of their critical analysis. To this end we show that Kuhn presents certain tools, which may help scientists to overcome communication breakdowns when engaging in the process of rational deliberation regarding the question whether a theory is (...) worthy of further pursuit. These tools are persuasion, translation and interpretation. However, we argue that the perspective of epistemic semantic monism present in Kuhn’s work obstructs the full applicability of these tools. We show that dropping this perspective makes the notions of persuasion and interpretation more fruitful, and moreover, allows for a pluralism of scientific theories and practices that complements the pluralism based on disagreement among scientists, emphasized by Kuhn. (shrink)

Drawing on diverse historical cases, this paper describes and examines various aspects of a modality of scientific appraisal which has remained largely unexplored, theory pursuit. Specifically, it addresses the following issues: the epistemic and pragmatic commitments involved in theory pursuit, including how these differ from those characteristic of theory acceptance; how the research interests of scientists enter into their pursuit decisions; some of the strategies for the refinement and extension of a theory's empirical abilities which typify theory pursuit; and the (...) need to distinguish between individual and community rationality in contexts of pursuit. (shrink)

Scientific understanding, this paper argues, can be analyzed entirely in terms of a mental act of “grasping” and a notion of explanation. To understand why a phenomenon occurs is to grasp a correct explanation of the phenomenon. To understand a scientific theory is to be able to construct, or at least to grasp, a range of potential explanations in which that theory accounts for other phenomena. There is no route to scientific understanding, then, that does not go by way of (...) scientific explanation. (shrink)

In this work, Paul Bartha proposes a normative theory of analogical arguments and raises questions and proposes answers regarding the criteria for evaluating analogical arguments, the philosophical justification for analogical reasoning, and the place of scientific analogies in the context of theoretical confirmation.

Scientists typically do something other than accept or reject their theories, they pursue them. Throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century numerous chemists devoted their research energy and resources to the development of Daltonian theory, declaring themselves willing to make use of the atomic theory in their research but reluctant or unwilling to accept it. When Frankland, for example, declared that he did not want to be considered a “blind believer” in the atomic theory and could not “accept it (...) as true”, but that he had been—and planned to continue—using it “as a useful ladder”, he had arrived at a decision shared by many of his colleagues that while the theory was not acceptable, it was promising and worthy of pursuit.1 And when Van’t Hoff measured the kinetic-molecular theory by its fruits in the 1880’s, he judged that it barely gave the then-current 4% interest rate, and so was an unpromising theory, unworthy of pursuit (van Nelsen 1960. p. 151). (shrink)

How do vague notions about how one might understand certain physical phenomena get transformed into scientific concepts such as “field”, “quark”, and “gene”? Philosophers of as disparate views as Reichenbach and Feyerabend have held that the process through which scientific concepts emerge is not a reasoned process. In a manner completely mysterious and unanalyzable, scientific concepts emerge fully grown, like Athena from the head of Zeus. However, when one examines actual cases of concept formation in science, a different picture can (...) be painted: Scientific concepts do not pop out of heads, but are constructed in response to specific problems by utilizing methods appropriate to the solution of the problem. Thus, as with other aspects of the scientific enterprise, concept formation is a problem-solving process that involves the application of systematic procedures in the attempt to solve specific problems. It is a reasoned process. (shrink)

This article addresses the historical problem of how it was possible for Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch to arrive at their novel interpretation of nuclear fission at the end of 1938. To understand this requires an analysis of the origin and subsequent development of the liquid-drop model of the nucleus. We begin by discussing George Gamow’s conception of the liquid-drop model in 1928 and then explore its extension, particularly by Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, between (...) 1933 and 1936. We then examine the role played by the liquid-drop model in Niels Bohr’s theory of the compound nucleus between 1936 and 1938. We argue that these two stages in the development of the liquid-drop model focused on two distinctly different features of the model, its static and dynamic characteristics, which were employed to understand two distinctly different phenomena, nuclear mass defects and nuclear reactions and excitations. The liquid-drop model thus became embedded in two distinctly different scientific traditions. We conclude by showing how these two traditions merged in the minds of Meitner and Frisch, leading them to their interpretation of nuclear fission. (shrink)

This article analyzes the epistemic value of understanding and offers an account of the role of understanding in science. First, I discuss the objectivist view of the relation between explanation and understanding, defended by Carl Hempel and J. D. Trout. I challenge this view by arguing that pragmatic aspects of explanation are crucial for achieving the epistemic aims of science. Subsequently, I present an analysis of these pragmatic aspects in terms of ‘intelligibility’ and a contextual account of scientific understanding based (...) on this notion. †To contact the author, please write to: Faculty of Philosophy, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The comparative method grants epistemic access to the biological past. Comparing lineages provides empirical traction on both hypotheses about particular lineages and models of trait evolution. Understanding this evidential role is important. Although philosophers have recently turned their attention to relations of descent, little work exists exploring the status of evidence from convergences. I argue that, where they exist, convergences play a central role in the confirmation of adaptive hypotheses. I focus on ‘analogous inferences’, show how such inferences ought to (...) be analysed and suggest three methods for strengthening their evidential weight. 1 Introduction2 Analogous Inferences2.1 Adaptive explanations and analogies2.2 Analogous inferences2.3 Scope, grain, and specificity3 Parallel Modelling, Integrated Explanations, and Convergent Modelling3.1 Parallel modelling3.2 Integrated explanations3.1 Convergent modelling4 Conclusion. (shrink)

In order to make scientific results relevant to practical decision making, it is often necessary to transfer a result obtained in one set of circumstances—an animal model, a computer simulation, an economic experiment—to another that may differ in relevant respects—for example, to humans, the global climate, or an auction. Such inferences, which we can call extrapolations, are a type of argument by analogy. This essay sketches a new approach to analogical inference that utilizes chain graphs, which resemble directed acyclic graphs (...) (DAGs) except in allowing that nodes may be connected by lines as well as arrows. This chain graph approach generalizes the account of extrapolation I provided in my (2008) book and leads to new insights that integrate the contributions of the other participants of this symposium. More specifically, this approach explicates the role of “fingerprints,” or distinctive markers, as a strategy for avoiding an underdetermination problem having to do with spurious analogies. Moreover, it shows how the extrapolator’s circle, one of the central challenges for extrapolation highlighted in my book, is closely tied to distinctive markers and the Markov condition as it applies to chain graphs. Finally, the approach suggests additional ways in which investigations of a model can provide information about a target that are illustrated by examples concerning nanomaterials in sunscreens and Wendy Parker’s discussion of fingerprints in climate science. (shrink)

Mary Hesse's well-known work on models and analogies gives models a creative role to play in science, which rests on developing certain analogical properties considered neutral between the two fields. Case study material from Irving Fisher's work (The Purchasing Power of Money, 1911), in which he used analogies to construct models of monetary relations and the monetary system, highlights certain omissions in Hesse's account. The analysis points to the importance of taking account of the negative properties in the analogies and (...) to certain differences between "ready-made" analogies (models of systems based on existing analogical structures) and "designed" analogies (models built up from separate analogical features). (shrink)

This paper defends an account of explanatory reasoning generally, and inference to the best explanation in particular, according to which it first and foremost justifies pursuing hypotheses rather than accepting them as true. This side-steps the problem of why better explanations should be more likely to be true. I argue that this account faces no analogous problems. I propose an account of justification for pursuit and show how this provides a simple and straightforward connection between explanatoriness and justification for pursuit.

Concept formation in science is a reasoned process, commensurate with ordinary problem-solving processes. An account of how analogical reasoning and reasoning from imagistic representations generate new scientific concepts is presented. The account derives from case studies of concept formation in science and from computational theories of analogical problem solving in cognitive science. Concept formation by analogy is seen to be a process of increasing abstraction from existing conceptual structures.