Results for 'scientific evidence'

975 found
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  1. Scientific Evidence and the Internalism–Externalism Distinction.Jonathan Egeland - 2022 - Acta Analytica 37 (3):375-395.
    Considerations of scientific evidence are often thought to provide externalism with the dialectical upper hand in the internalism–externalism debate. How so? A couple of reasons are forthcoming in the literature. (1) Williamson (2000) argues that the E = K thesis (in contrast to internalism) provides the best explanation for the fact that scientists appear to argue from premises about true propositions (or facts) that are common knowledge among the members of the scientific community. (2) Kelly (Philosophy Compass, (...)
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  2.  67
    Creating clear and reliable scientific evidence for marine stakeholders with felt responsibility to act against climate change.Minh-Hoang Nguyen, Ruining Jin, Minh-Phuong Thi Duong, Tam-Tri Le & Quan-Hoang Vuong - manuscript
    Climate change prevention necessitates the communication of transparent and reliable scientific evidence to improve public awareness and support. Felt responsibility is an essential factor influencing human environment-related psychology and behavior. However, the knowledge about the relationship between the felt responsibility and perceived uncertainty of scientific evidence regarding climate change has remained limited. The current study examines factors associated with the perceived uncertainty of scientific evidence (including felt responsibility to act on climate change) among stakeholders (...)
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  3. The ‘extendedness’ of scientific evidence.Eric Kerr & Axel Gelfert - 2014 - Philosophical Issues 24 (1):253-281.
    In recent years, the idea has been gaining ground that our traditional conceptions of knowledge and cognition are unduly limiting, in that they privilege what goes on inside the ‘skin and skull’ of an individual reasoner. Instead, it has been argued, knowledge and cognition need to be understood as embodied, situated, and extended. Whether these various interrelations and dependencies are ‘merely’ causal, or are in a more fundamental sense constitutive of knowledge and cognition, is as much a matter of controversy (...)
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  4. The Scientific Evidence for Materialism About Pain.Andrew Melnyk - 2015 - In Steven M. Miller (ed.), The Constitution of Phenomenal Consciousness: Toward a Science and Theory. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. pp. 310-329.
    This paper argues in unprecedented empirical and philosophical detail that, given only what science has discovered about pain, we should prefer the materialist hypothesis that pains are purely material over the dualist hypothesis that they are immaterial. The empirical findings cited provide strong evidence for the thesis of empirical supervenience: that to every sort of introspectible change over time in pains, or variation among pains at a time, there corresponds in fact a certain sort of simultaneous neural change over (...)
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  5. The Scientific Evidence of the Buddhist Teaching’s Separation F Body and Mind When Humans and Animals Die.Jargal Dorj - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):12.
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  6. Judging Mechanistic Neuroscience: A Preliminary Conceptual-Analytic Framework for Evaluating Scientific Evidence in the Courtroom.Jacqueline Anne Sullivan & Emily Baron - 2018 - Psychology, Crime and Law (00):00-00.
    The use of neuroscientific evidence in criminal trials has been steadily increasing. Despite progress made in recent decades in understanding the mechanisms of psychological and behavioral functioning, neuroscience is still in an early stage of development and its potential for influencing legal decision-making is highly contentious. Scholars disagree about whether or how neuroscientific evidence might impact prescriptions of criminal culpability, particularly in instances in which evidence of an accused’s history of mental illness or brain abnormality is offered (...)
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  7. Scientific Theories as Bayesian Nets: Structure and Evidence Sensitivity.Patrick Grim, Frank Seidl, Calum McNamara, Hinton E. Rago, Isabell N. Astor, Caroline Diaso & Peter Ryner - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (1):42-69.
    We model scientific theories as Bayesian networks. Nodes carry credences and function as abstract representations of propositions within the structure. Directed links carry conditional probabilities and represent connections between those propositions. Updating is Bayesian across the network as a whole. The impact of evidence at one point within a scientific theory can have a very different impact on the network than does evidence of the same strength at a different point. A Bayesian model allows us to (...)
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  8. Review of P. Copan and Craig, W. (eds.) The Kalām Cosmological Argument Volume Two: Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe. [REVIEW]Graham Oppy - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (3):225-229.
    This is a commissioned review of Copan, P. and Craig, W. The Kalām Cosmological Argument Volume Two: Scientific Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe New York: Bloomsbury, US$172.50, ISBN 978-1-50-133587-7.
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  9. Scientific Disagreements, Fast Science and Higher-Order Evidence.Daniel C. Friedman & Dunja Šešelja - 2023 - Philosophy of Science 90 (4):937-957.
    Scientific disagreements are an important catalyst for scientific progress. But what happens when scientists disagree amidst times of crisis, when we need quick yet reliable policy guidance? In this paper we provide a normative account for how scientists facing disagreement in the context of ‘fast science’ should respond, and how policy makers should evaluate such disagreement. Starting from an argumentative, pragma-dialectic account of scientific controversies, we argue for the importance of ‘higher-order evidence’ (HOE) and we specify (...)
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  10. Genesis and development of the “medical fact”. Thought style and scientific evidence in the epistemology of Ludwik Fleck.Sofia Siwecka - 2011 - Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences 4 (2):37-39.
    A diagnosis based exclusively on the so-called scientifi c evidence does not take into account the problem of the theoryladenness, widely debated in Twentieth Century epistemology. The theory of knowledge developed by Ludwik Fleck, physician and philosopher active in the 30s, can still be useful for shedding light on how psychiatric diagnoses are infl uenced by a specifi c thought style that directs the observations and affects the development of knowledge and the formation of connections between concepts.
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  11. How scientific research changes the Vietnamese higher education landscape: Evidence from social sciences and humanities between 2008 and 2019.Thi-Huyen-Trang Nguyen, Trung Tran, The-Tung Dau, Thi-Song-Ha Nguyen, Thanh-Hung Nguyen & Manh-Toan Ho - 2020 - F1000Research 9 (152):1-11.
    Background: In the context of globalization, Vietnamese universities, whose primary function is teaching, there is a need to improve research performance. Methods: Based on SSHPA data, an exclusive database of Vietnamese social sciences and humanities researchers’ productivity, between 2008 and 2019 period, this study analyzes the research output of Vietnamese universities in the field of social sciences and humanities. Results: Vietnamese universities have been steadily producing a high volume of publications in the 2008-2019 period, with a peak of 598 articles (...)
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  12. Photographic Evidence and the Problem of Theory-Ladenness.Nicola Mößner - 2013 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 44 (1):111–125.
    Scientists use visualisations of different kinds in a variety of ways in their scientific work. In the following article, we will take a closer look at the use of photographic pictures as scientific evidence. In accordance with Patrick Maynard’s thesis, photography will be regarded as a family of technologies serving different purposes in divergent contexts. One of these is its ability to detect certain phenomena. Nonetheless, with regard to the philosophical thesis of theory-ladenness of observation, we encounter (...)
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  13. Towards Descartes’ Scientific Method: a posteriori Evidence and the Rhetoric of Les Météores.Patrick Brissey - 2018 - In James A. T. Lancaster & Richard Raiswell (eds.), Evidence in the Age of the New Sciences. Cham: Springer. pp. pp. 77-99.
    I argue that Descartes uses his method as evidence in the Discours and Les Météores. I begin by establishing there is a single method in Descartes’ works, using his meteorology as a case study. First, I hold that the method of the Regulae is best explained by two examples: one scientific, his proof of the anaclastic curve (1626), and one metaphysical, his question of the essence and scope of human knowledge (1628). Based on this account, I suggest that (...)
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  14. (1 other version)Scientific Realism meets Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics.Juha Saatsi - 2017 - In Philosophers Think About Quantum Theory.
    I examine the epistemological debate on scientific realism in the context of quantum physics, focusing on the empirical underdetermin- ation of different formulations and interpretations of QM. I will argue that much of the interpretational, metaphysical work on QM tran- scends the kinds of realist commitments that are well-motivated in the light of the history of science. I sketch a way of demarcating empirically well-confirmed aspects of QM from speculative quantum metaphysics in a way that coheres with anti-realist (...) from the history of science. The minimal realist attitude sketched withholds realist com- mitment to what quantum state |Ψ⟩ represents. I argue that such commitment is not required for fulfilling the ultimate realist motiva- tion: accounting for the empirical success of quantum mechanics in a way that is in tune with a broader understanding of how theoretical science progresses and latches onto reality. (shrink)
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  15. Understanding Scientific Progress: Aim-Oriented Empiricism.Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - St. Paul, USA: Paragon House.
    "Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and numerous others. He lauds Popper for advancing (...)
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  16. Dejustifying Scientific Progress.Finnur Dellsén & James Norton - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    Stegenga (forthcoming) formulates and defends a novel account of scientific progress, according to which science makes progress just in case there is a change in scientific justification. Here we present several problems for Stegenga’s account, concerning respectively (i) obtaining misleading evidence, (ii) losses or destruction of evidence, (iii) oscillations in scientific justification, and (iv) the possibility of scientific regress. We conclude by sketching a substantially different justification-based account of scientific progress that avoids these (...)
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  17.  87
    A Closer Look to the Problem of Scientific Misinformation.Inmaculada de Melo-Martin - manuscript
    Science is our most reliable producer of knowledge. Nonetheless, a significant amount of evidence shows that pluralities of members of publics question a variety of accepted scientific claims as well as policies and recommendation informed by the scientific evidence. Scientific misinformation is considered to play a central role in this state of affairs. In this paper, I challenge the emphasis on misinformation as a primary culprit on two grounds. First, the phenomenon of misinformation is far (...)
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  18. On Evidence, Medical and Legal.Donald W. Miller & Clifford Miller - 2005 - Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 10 (3):70-75.
    Medicine, like law, is a pragmatic, probabilistic activity. Both require that decisions be made on the basis of available evidence, within a limited time. In contrast to law, medicine, particularly evidence-based medicine as it is currently practiced, aspires to a scientific standard of proof, one that is more certain than the standards of proof courts apply in civil and criminal proceedings. But medicine, as Dr. William Osler put it, is an "art of probabilities," or at best, a (...)
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  19. How much evidence should one collect?Remco Heesen - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (9):2299-2313.
    A number of philosophers of science and statisticians have attempted to justify conclusions drawn from a finite sequence of evidence by appealing to results about what happens if the length of that sequence tends to infinity. If their justifications are to be successful, they need to rely on the finite sequence being either indefinitely increasing or of a large size. These assumptions are often not met in practice. This paper analyzes a simple model of collecting evidence and finds (...)
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  20. Extensional Scientific Realism vs. Intensional Scientific Realism.Seungbae Park - 2016 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 59:46-52.
    Extensional scientific realism is the view that each believable scientific theory is supported by the unique first-order evidence for it and that if we want to believe that it is true, we should rely on its unique first-order evidence. In contrast, intensional scientific realism is the view that all believable scientific theories have a common feature and that we should rely on it to determine whether a theory is believable or not. Fitzpatrick argues that (...)
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  21. Does my total evidence support that I’m a Boltzmann Brain?Sinan Dogramaci - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (12):3717-3723.
    A Boltzmann Brain, haphazardly formed through the unlikely but still possible random assembly of physical particles, is a conscious brain having experiences just like an ordinary person. The skeptical possibility of being a Boltzmann Brain is an especially gripping one: scientific evidence suggests our actual universe’s full history may ultimately contain countless short-lived Boltzmann Brains with experiences just like yours or mine. I propose a solution to the skeptical challenge posed by these countless actual Boltzmann Brains. My key (...)
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  22. Corroborating evidence‐based medicine.Alexander Mebius - 2014 - Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 20 (6):915-920.
    Proponents of evidence-based medicine have argued convincingly for applying this scientific method to medicine. However, the current methodological framework of the EBM movement has recently been called into question, especially in epidemiology and the philosophy of science. The debate has focused on whether the methodology of randomized controlled trials provides the best evidence available. This paper attempts to shift the focus of the debate by arguing that clinical reasoning involves a patchwork of evidential approaches and that the (...)
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  23. Is It Possible to Provide Evidence of Insufficient Evidence? The Precautionary Principle at the WTO.Elisa Vecchione - 2012 - Chicago Journal of International Law 13 (1).
    This Article aims to demonstrate that the WTO jurisprudence on science-related trade disputes has become imbued with a specific vision of science that has prevented any possible application of the precautionary principle. This situation is due both to the WTO’s specific dispute settlement procedures and to the substantive nature of precautionary measures. Indeed, such measures’ foundation on “insufficient scientific evidence” dramatically undermines the probative value of science in WTO adjudication and creates a seeming contradiction: The system requires defendants (...)
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  24. The philosophical limits of scientific essentialism.George Bealer - 1987 - Philosophical Perspectives 1:289-365.
    Scientific essentialism is the view that some necessities can be known only with the aid of empirical science. The thesis of the paper is that scientific essentialism does not extend to the central questions of philosophy and that these questions can be answered a priori. The argument is that the evidence required for the defense of scientific essentialism is reliable only if the intuitions required by philosophy to answer its central questions is also reliable. Included is (...)
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  25. Reconciling the opposing effects of neurobiological evidence on criminal sentencing judgments.Corey Allen, Karina Vold, Gidon Felson, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby & Eyal Aharoni - 2019 - PLoS ONE 1:1-17.
    Legal theorists have characterized physical evidence of brain dysfunction as a double-edged sword, wherein the very quality that reduces the defendant’s responsibility for his transgression could simultaneously increase motivations to punish him by virtue of his apparently increased dangerousness. However, empirical evidence of this pattern has been elusive, perhaps owing to a heavy reliance on singular measures that fail to distinguish between plural, often competing internal motivations for punishment. The present study employed a test of the theorized double-edge (...)
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  26. Assessing Scientific Theories: The Bayesian Approach.Stephan Hartmann & Radin Dardashti - 2019 - In Dawid Richard, Dardashti Radin & Thebault Karim (eds.), Epistemology of Fundamental Physics: Why Trust a Theory? Cambridge University Press. pp. 67–83.
    Scientific theories are used for a variety of purposes. For example, physical theories such as classical mechanics and electrodynamics have important applications in engineering and technology, and we trust that this results in useful machines, stable bridges, and the like. Similarly, theories such as quantum mechanics and relativity theory have many applications as well. Beyond that, these theories provide us with an understanding of the world and address fundamental questions about space, time, and matter. Here we trust that the (...)
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  27. On the Origins of Old Evidence.Benjamin Eva & Stephan Hartmann - 2020 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (3):481-494.
    The problem of old evidence, first described by Glymour [1980], is still widely regarded as one of the most pressing foundational challenges to the Bayesian account of scientific reasoning. Many solutions have been proposed, but all of them have drawbacks and none is considered to be definitive. Here, we introduce and defend a new kind of solution, according to which hypotheses are confirmed when we become more confident that they provide the only way of accounting for the known (...)
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  28. The Evidence for Free Trade and Its Background Assumptions: How Well-Established Causal Generalisations Can Be Useless for Policy.Luis Mireles-Flores - 2022 - Review of Political Economy 34 (3):534-563.
    In this article, I offer a methodological analysis of the empirical research on the causal effects of trade liberalisation, and assess whether such studies can be of any use for guiding policy prescriptions in real-world economies. The analysis focuses on the mainstream economic research that has been used to support arguments in favour of trade liberalisation during the last decades. Even though there are empirical results that could be taken as valid evidence for a causal connection between free trade (...)
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  29. Fundamentals of Logic, Reasoning, and Argumentation: An evidence-supported curriculum targeting scientific literacy to increase public understanding and engagement in science.La Shun L. Carroll - 2020 - Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences 7 (1):72-88.
    The purpose of this article is to present an evidence-supported curriculum covering the fundamentals of logic, reasoning, and argumentation skills to address the emphasized basic knowledge, skills, and abilities required to be scientifically literate, which will prepare the public to understand and engage with science meaningfully. An analytic-synthetic approach toward understanding the notion of public is taken using a theoretical biomimetics framework that identifies naturally occurring objects or phenomena that descriptively captures the essence of a construct to facilitate creative (...)
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  30. Material Evidence.Alison Wylie & Robert Chapman (eds.) - 2014 - New York / London: Routledge.
    How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence is a collection of 19 essays that take a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring key instances of exemplary practice, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. -/- Archaeologists make compelling use (...)
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  31. Scientific Images as Circulating Ideas: An Application of Ludwik Fleck’s Theory of Thought Styles.Nicola Mößner - 2016 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 47 (2):307-329.
    Without doubt, there is a great diversity of scientific images both with regard to their appearances and their functions. Diagrams, photographs, drawings, etc. serve as evidence in publications, as eye-catchers in presentations, as surrogates for the research object in scientific reasoning. This fact has been highlighted by Stephen M. Downes who takes this diversity as a reason to argue against a unifying representation-based account of how visualisations play their epistemic role in science. In the following paper, I (...)
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  32. Introspective evidence in psychology.Gary Hatfield - 2005 - In Peter Achinstein (ed.), Scientific Evidence: Philosophical Theories & Applications. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
    In preparation for examining the place of introspective evidence in scientific psychology, the chapter begins by clarifying what introspection has been supposed to show, and why some concluded that it couldn't deliver. This requires a brief excursus into the various uses to which introspection was supposed to have been put by philosophers and psychologists in the modern period, together with a summary of objections. It then reconstructs some actual uses of introspection (or related techniques, differently monikered) in the (...)
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  33. Trusting scientific experts in an online world.Kenneth Boyd - 2022 - Synthese 200 (1):1-31.
    A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project (...)
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  34. Disagreement about Evidence-based Policy.Nick Cowen & Nancy Cartwright - 2024 - In Maria Baghramian, J. Adam Carter & Rach Cosker-Rowland (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement. New York, NY: Routledge.
    Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to ideologically-driven or merely intuitive “common-sense” approaches to public policy. More specifically, the EBP paradigm places great weight on the results of experimental research designs, especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and systematic literature reviews that place evidential weight on experimental results. One hope is that such research (...)
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  35. Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans.Jonathan Birch, Charlotte Burn, Alexandra Schnell, Heather Browning & Andrew Crump - manuscript
    Sentience is the capacity to have feelings, such as feelings of pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. It is not simply the capacity to feel pain, but feelings of pain, distress or harm, broadly understood, have a special significance for animal welfare law. Drawing on over 300 scientific studies, we evaluate the evidence of sentience in two groups of invertebrate animals: the cephalopod molluscs or, for short, cephalopods (including octopods, squid and cuttlefish) and the decapod (...)
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  36. Ethical Evidence.Steven Diggin - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-24.
    This paper argues that ethical propositions can legitimately be used as evidence for and against empirical conclusions. Specifically, I argue that this thesis is entailed by several uncontroversial assumptions about ethical metaphysics and epistemology. I also outline several examples of ethical-to-empirical inferences where it is extremely plausible that one can rationally rely upon their ethical evidence in order to gain a justified belief in an empirical conclusion. The main upshot is that ethical propositions can, under perfectly standard conditions, (...)
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  37. The Real World Failure of Evidence-Based Medicine.Donald W. Miller & Clifford Miller - 2011 - International Journal of Person Centered Medicine 1 (2):295-300.
    As a way to make medical decisions, Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) has failed. EBM's failure arises from not being founded on real-world decision-making. EBM aspires to a scientific standard for the best way to treat a disease and determine its cause, but it fails to recognise that the scientific method is inapplicable to medical and other real-world decision-making. EBM also wrongly assumes that evidence can be marshaled and applied according to an hierarchy that is determined in an (...)
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  38. Fragmentation and Old Evidence.Will Fleisher - 2023 - Episteme 20 (3):542-567.
    Bayesian confirmation theory is our best formal framework for describing inductive reasoning. The problem of old evidence is a particularly difficult one for confirmation theory, because it suggests that this framework fails to account for central and important cases of inductive reasoning and scientific inference. I show that we can appeal to the fragmentation of doxastic states to solve this problem for confirmation theory. This fragmentation solution is independently well-motivated because of the success of fragmentation in solving other (...)
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  39. The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal.James Franklin - 2001 - Baltimore, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    How were reliable predictions made before Pascal and Fermat's discovery of the mathematics of probability in 1654? What methods in law, science, commerce, philosophy, and logic helped us to get at the truth in cases where certainty was not attainable? The book examines how judges, witch inquisitors, and juries evaluated evidence; how scientists weighed reasons for and against scientific theories; and how merchants counted shipwrecks to determine insurance rates. Also included are the problem of induction before Hume, design (...)
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  40. Empirical evidence for perspectival similarity.Jorge Morales & Chaz Firestone - 2023 - Psychological Review 1 (1):311-320.
    When a circular coin is rotated in depth, is there any sense in which it comes to resemble an ellipse? While this question is at the center of a rich and divided philosophical tradition (with some scholars answering affirmatively and some negatively), Morales et al. (2020, 2021) took an empirical approach, reporting 10 experiments whose results favor such perspectival similarity. Recently, Burge and Burge (2022) offered a vigorous critique of this work, objecting to its approach and conclusions on both philosophical (...)
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  41. Evidence and simplicity: why we should reject homeopathy.Scott Sehon & Donald Stanley - 2010 - Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 16 (2):276-281.
    Homeopathic medications are used by millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on these remedies in the USA alone. In the UK, the NHS covers homeopathic treatments. Nonetheless, homeopathy is held in considerable disrepute by much of the medical and scientific community.Many proponents of homeopathy are well aware of these criticisms but remain unimpressed. The differences of opinion run deep, and the debate seems deadlocked. We aim to shed some light on this situation. We briefly recap some (...)
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  42. What evidence for a cholera vaccine? Jaime Ferrán’s submissions to the Prix Bréant.David Teira & Clara Uzcanga - 2023 - Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.
    This article analyses how the French Academy of Sciences assessed Jaime Ferrán’s cholera vaccine submitted for the Prix Bréant in the 1880s. Ferrán, a Spanish independent physician, discovered the treatment in 1884 and tried it on thousands of patients during the cholera outbreak in Valencia the following year. His evaluation sparked a controversy in Spain and abroad on the vaccine’s efficacy. The Bréant jury did not see any evidence for it in Ferrán’s submission, a decision usually interpreted in terms (...)
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  43. Does the Scientific Community Misconstrue the Nature of Science?Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - Global Journal of Research and Review 8 (5):83.
    The scientific community takes for granted a view of science that may be called standard empiricism. This holds that the basic intellectual aim of science is truth, nothing being presupposed about the truth, the basic method being to assess theories with respect to evidence. A basic tenet of the view is that science must not accept any thesis about the world as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence, let alone in violation of evidence. (...)
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  44. The rationality of scientific discovery part I: The traditional rationality problem.Nicholas Maxwell - 1974 - Philosophy of Science 41 (2):123-153.
    The basic task of the essay is to exhibit science as a rational enterprise. I argue that in order to do this we need to change quite fundamentally our whole conception of science. Today it is rather generally taken for granted that a precondition for science to be rational is that in science we do not make substantial assumptions about the world, or about the phenomena we are investigating, which are held permanently immune from empirical appraisal. According to this standard (...)
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  45. Status Distrust of Scientific Experts.Hugh Desmond - 2022 - Social Epistemology 36 (5):586-600.
    Distrust in scientific experts can be surprisingly stubborn, persisting despite evidence supporting the experts’ views, demonstrations of their competence, or displays of good will. This stubborn distrust is often viewed as a manifestation of irrationality. By contrast, this article proposes a logic of “status distrust”: low-status individuals are objectively vulnerable to collective decision-making, and can justifiably distrust high-status scientific experts if they are not confident that the experts do not have their best interests at heart. In phenomena (...)
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  46. Misunderstanding Understanding Scientific Progress.Nicholas Maxwell - manuscript
    In my book Understanding Scientific Progress, I argue that fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, above all the problem of induction, cannot be solved granted standard empiricism (SE), a doctrine which most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted. A key tenet of SE is that no permanent thesis about the world can be accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence. For a number of reasons, we need to adopt a rather different (...)
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  47. Chimpanzee normativity: evidence and objections.Simon Fitzpatrick - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (4):1-28.
    This paper considers the question of whether chimpanzees possess at least a primitive sense of normativity: i.e., some ability to internalize and enforce social norms—rules governing appropriate and inappropriate behaviour—within their social groups, and to make evaluations of others’ behaviour in light of such norms. A number of scientists and philosophers have argued that such a sense of normativity does exist in chimpanzees and in several other non-human primate and mammalian species. However, the dominant view in the scientific and (...)
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  48. Expanding the Notion of "Scientific".Kirk W. Junker - 2003 - Cybernetics and Systems: An International Journal (34):401-408.
    In reading Barbara Koslowski's "Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning", one may be convinced that the ancient debate between classical rationalists and empiricists is alive. And like most people who carefully investigate the ability of either rationalism or empiricism truly to account for all of our ability to know, Koslowski arrives at the position of saying that knowledge (in this case scientific knowledge) is a product of both: "neither theory nor data alone is sufficient to (...)
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  49. Scientific pluralism and the Chemical Revolution.Martin Kusch - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49:69-79.
    In a number of papers and in his recent book, Is Water H₂O? Evidence, Realism, Pluralism (2012), Hasok Chang has argued that the correct interpretation of the Chemical Revolution provides a strong case for the view that progress in science is served by maintaining several incommensurable “systems of practice” in the same discipline, and concerning the same region of nature. This paper is a critical discussion of Chang's reading of the Chemical Revolution. It seeks to establish, first, that Chang's (...)
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  50. Evidence and explanation in Cicero's On Divination.Frank Cabrera - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 82 (C):34-43.
    In this paper, I examine Cicero’s oft-neglected De Divinatione, a dialogue investigating the legitimacy of the practice of divination. First, I offer a novel analysis of the main arguments for divination given by Quintus, highlighting the fact that he employs two logically distinct argument forms. Next, I turn to the first of the main arguments against divination given by Marcus. Here I show, with the help of modern probabilistic tools, that Marcus’ skeptical response is far from the decisive, proto-naturalistic assault (...)
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