Scientific articles exemplify standard functional units constraining argumentative structures. Severe space limitations demand every paragraph and illustration contribute to establishing the paper's claims. Philosophical testing and confirmation models should take into account each paragraph, table, and illustration. Hypothetico-Deductive, Bayesian Inductive, and Inference-to-the-Best-Explanation models do not, garbling the logic of papers. Micro-analysis of the fundamental paper in plate tectonics reveals an argumentative structure commonplace in science but ignored by standard philosophical accounts that cannot be dismissed as mere rhetorical embellishment. Papers with (...) illustrations often display a second argumentative structure differing from the text's. Constraints on adequate testing and confirmation analyses are adduced. “Experiments are about the assembly of persuasive arguments, ones that will stand up in court. … The task at hand is to capture the building-up of a persuasive argument about the world even in the absence of the logician's certainty.”—Galison, How Experiments End, 277. (shrink)

Suppe, F. The search for philosophic understanding of scientific theories (p. [1]-241)--Proceedings of the symposium.--Bibliography, compiled by Rew A. Godow, Jr. (p. [615]-646).

This article seeks rapprochement between the sociology of knowledge and philosophy of science by attempting to capture the best social constructionist insights within a strongly realistic philosophy of science. Key to doing so are separating the grounds for the individual scientist coming to know that P from those grounds for socially credentialing the claim that P within the relevant scientific subcommunity and showing how truth considerations can enter into the analysis of knowledge without interfering with social constructionist treatments of credentialing (...) claims. A detailed epistemology and associated account of the social credentialing of knowledge claims are presented. Close attention is paid to the epistemological and social aspects of the nature and role of observation reports, the interpretation of data, simplifications, idealizations, and approximations, and the nature of replication. The article contains a National Aeronautics and Space Administration remote-sensing case study and a detailed analysis of replication in the 1881–1933 Michelson-Morley-Miller interferometer ether studies. (shrink)

Identifying demonstratives are of the form 'this d', Where d is a descriptive noun phrase. I am concerned with the effect of a misidentifying identifying demonstrative on the truth of propositions such as 'this d is p'; I argue there are circumstances in which 'this d is p' can be true when the referent of 'this d' is a p but is not a d. Extending the results, I argue there are circumstances where 'i know that this d is p' (...) and 'i believe that this d is p' can be true when the referent of 'this d' is a p but is not a d. The philosophical importance of the results is discussed. (shrink)

Quine has proposed an alternative criterion for identifying observation sentences which has not yet received serious evaluation. We investigate this new criterion, showing how it differs from more traditional criteria and measuring it against the major objections to traditional criteria. Our judgment is that it meets Suppe's and Achinstein's objections and one version of the theory-ladenness objection offered by Hanson, Feyerabend, and Kuhn. We suggest how it might also provide an answer to the more serious version of the theory-ladenness objection. (...) To determine whether it meets this final objection, though, requires actual analysis of scientific cases, which has not yet been performed. (shrink)

The contents of this book were originally published in the September 1966 issue of Scientific American. A more appropriate-but perhaps less "catchy"—title would have been "Computers." The book is all about them and what they can—and cannot—do. Conspicuously missing is a chapter on the underlying mathematical theories of information, control, and computation. Nevertheless, there is a good deal of interesting material between the covers of this book. Of greatest concern to philosophers are the chapters on "Information" by John McCarthy, "Computer (...) Logic and Memory" by David C. Evans, "The Uses of Computers in Science" by Anthony G. Oettinger, "The Uses of Computers in Education" by Patrick Suppes, and "Artificial Intelligence" by Marvin L. Minsky. The first of these consists of a brief history of computing machines, an outline of the general principles of digital computers, and an interesting discussion of some of the moral and social issues which such machines raise. Evans' article is a popular description of binary logics and logic devices. The present reviewer has used some of the material in this chapter as embellishments in an undergraduate course in logic. Oettinger's article describes the novel way in which computers may aid in the formation of scientific theories. The paper by Suppes ought to be required reading for members of the "Teaching machines undermine intellectual development" school of thought. Finally, a philosopher of mind might have a field day with some of the remarkable and outrageous notions in Minsky's article; what, for example, is the difference between "thinking" and "exhibiting intelligence"? In sum, this is a stimulating book about a technological development which, for good or ill, is going to affect all of us.—H. P. K. (shrink)

The emphasis in this collection is clearly on logic, and this is one reason why it lacks the overall diversity and richness of the 1960 Stanford volume. However, the eight sections do contain much interesting material; in the mathematical logic section Kochen and Specker continue their study of logics appropriate for quantum theory, Vaught presents several new results about the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, and Büchi studies second-order ordinal theory from the viewpoint of automata theory; the section on foundations of mathematical theories (...) contains papers on higher-order logic by Kaplan and Montague, model theory and ultra-products by Keisler, definability in set theory by Lévy. The topic of the justification of formal theories was the essential topic of the philosophy of logic section: an especially interesting paper is that of A. Robinson in which the present state of Hilbertean Formalism is analyzed, and in which the notion of potential truth is formalized. The section on the philosophy of science contains a single paper, by Hesse, on metaphor and explanation; Braithwaite, Hintikka, Jeffrey, and Kyburg contribute to a lively section on probability and induction; the section on methodology in physical science takes as topics the theory of relativity, causality, and irreversibility. The last two sections, on the philosophy of the life sciences, and on history of logic and philosophy of science, contain, respectively, papers by Davidson and Suppes on meaning and concept formation, and essays by Church and Geach on existential import historically considered and intentionality among the medievals. The collection would have been better if more of the contributed papers had been included.—P. J. M. (shrink)

This recent addition to the well-known "Studies in Logic" series is sure to be of first importance to serious students of inductive logic, confirmation theory, and related issues. The book is an anthology of fourteen papers, which are classified under five different headings: "Extensions of Inductive Logic," "Induction and Information," "Prospects of Confirmation Theory," "The Paradoxes of Confirmation," and "Probability and Foundational Problems." Needless to say, all of the papers are of uniformly high quality. Especially worthy of mention are two (...) papers by Hintikka and Hilpinen which deal with an interesting generalization of Carnap's continuum of inductive methods, and which lead to a somewhat more plausible treatment of non-logically-true closed sentences. Suppes contributes two papers dealing with the recently revived Bayesian methods and their significance for concept formation in psychology and confirmation theory in the philosophy of science. Also under the heading of confirmation theory, one might mention Max Black's paper, "Notes on the Paradoxes of Confirmation," a lucid and rather novel approach to this problem. There is also an important paper by Dana Scott and Peter Krauss entitled "Assigning Probabilities to Logical Formulas." This piece of work presents a set-theoretical method for bridging the gap between the standard treatment of probability by means of axioms defining a real measure over a Boolean algebra and the usual logical inquiries into "degree of confirmation" and the like. The reference value of the book is enhanced by a subject index of terms and concepts dealt with in the various papers.—H. P. K. (shrink)

Yet another introductory text of symbolic logic and a very good one, at that. The four principal chapters of this book treat propositional logic and predicate calculus, devoting two chapters to each. Each of these subsections is roughly organized as follows: An initial chapter presents the basic notational devices, translation methods, and intuitive discussion of arguments and validity. The subsequent chapter gives exact formation and transformation rules, proofs and metalinguistic considerations of questions of consistency and completeness. Lemmon's notation is similar (...) to that of Suppes, and his system bears some similarity to the rules of inference in Fitch's 1951 text, although Lemmon's system is a "standard" one. Two appendices, dealing with normal forms and elementary set theory, and an annotated bibliography of relevant works complete this high-quality text. An obviously promising career was cut tragically short by the premature death of the author in 1966.—H. P. K. (shrink)

The process of abstraction and concretisation is a label used for an explicative theory of scientific model-construction. In scientific theorising this process enters at various levels. We could identify two principal levels of abstraction that are useful to our understanding of theory-application. The first level is that of selecting a small number of variables and parameters abstracted from the universe of discourse and used to characterise the general laws of a theory. In classical mechanics, for example, we select position and (...) momentum and establish a relation amongst the two variables, which we call Newton’s 2nd law. The specification of the unspecified elements of scientific laws, e.g. the force function in Newton’s 2nd law, is what would establish the link between the assertions of the theory and physical systems. In order to unravel how and with what conceptual resources scientific models are constructed, how they function and how they relate to theory, we need a view of theory-application that can accommodate our constructions of representation models. For this we need to expand our understanding of the process of abstraction to also explicate the process of specifying force functions etc. This is the second principal level at which abstraction enters in our theorising and in which I focus. In this paper, I attempt to elaborate a general analysis of the process of abstraction and concretisation involved in scientific- model construction, and argue why it provides an explication of the construction of models of the nuclear structure. (shrink)

A collection of papers delivered at a colloquium in 1960. Most are quite brief; all are at a rather high level of technical sophistication. Of general interest are L. Apostel's "Toward the Formal Study of Models in the Non-Formal Sciences," which concludes that a unique definition of models in terms of their function should be the basis for a general description of this "multiform concept"; H. Freudenthal's discussion of "models in Applied Probability"; a historical treatment of "Model and Insight" by (...) A. Kuipers; and P. Suppes's "Comparison of the Meaning and Uses of Models in Mathematics and the Empirical Sciences," which stresses the "set-theoretical" notion of model and emphasizes the possibility of greater formalization of the empirical sciences through the former. Among other authors represented are E. W. Beth, J. L. Destouches, and J. B. Ubbink.--R. D. P. (shrink)

This collects some of the remarks made at the 2016 Pacific APA Memorial session for Patrick Suppes and Jaakko Hintikka. The full list of speakers on behalf of these two philosophers: Dagfinn Follesdal; Dana Scott; Nancy Cartwright; Paul Humphreys; Juliet Floyd; Gabriel Sandu; John Symons.

In einer Kritik der Hempelschen Erklärungstheorie hat W. Stegmüller gezeigt, daß zur Erklärung nur die "wirklichen Realgründe", also die Ursachen eines Ereignisses herangegezogen werden können, und W. C. Salmon hat darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß in Erklärungen nur relevante Faktoren angeführt werden dürfen. Für die Theorie der wissenschaftlichen Erklärung ist daher heute die probabilistische Kausalitätstheorie von P. Suppes besonders interessant; denn Suppes versucht, den Begriff der Ursache statistisch zu fassen und auf den Begriff der statistischen Relevanz zurückzuführen. In diesem Aufsatz werden (...) deshalb die Grundzüge der Kausalitätstheorie von Suppes dargestellt und diskutiert. Dabei ergibt sich zunächst, daß Suppes' eigene Formulierung dieser Theorie nicht adäquat ist, da in ihr die Carnapsche Forderung des Gesamtdatums nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt wird. Diese Schwierigkeit kann jedoch überwunden werden, wenn man den Begriff der "kausalen Abschirmung" bzw. der "nur scheinbaren Ursache" - in engerer Anlehnung an die Überlegungen Salmons - etwas anders definiert als Suppes und wenn man darüberhinaus bei der Beurteilung der statistischen Relevanz einzelner Faktoren jeweils die Menge aller für ein gegebenes Ereignis statistisch relevanten Ereignisse berücksichtigt. Zum Abschluß wird kurz die Frage aufgeworfen, inwieweit es überhaupt sinnvoll sein kann, den Begriff der Kausalität statistisch zu definieren. Es wird argumentiert, daß sich diese Frage nicht definitiv beantworten läßt, da in diesem Zusammenhang Konventionen eine entscheidende Rolle spielen, daß es jedoch einige - wenn auch eher intuitive - Argumente gegen statistische Kausalitätstheorien gibt, die es wahrscheinlich machen, daß z. B. die Überlegungen J. L. Mackies zum Begriff der Kausalität unserem alltagssprachlichen Begriff der Verursachung sehr viel mehr gerecht werden als die Überlegungen von Suppes. (shrink)

The aim of this series is to inform both professional philosophers and a larger readership (of social and natural scientists, methodologists, mathematicians, students, teachers, publishers, etc.) about what is going on, who's who, and who does what in contemporary philosophy and logic. PROFILES is designed to present the research activity and the results of already outstanding personalities and schools and of newly emerging ones in the various fields of philosophy and logic. There are many Festschrift volumes dedicated to various philosophers. (...) There is the celebrated Library of Living Philosophers edited by P.A. Schilpp whose format influenced the present enterprise. Still they can only cover very little of the contemporary philosophical scene. Faced with a tremenƯ dous expansion of philosophical information and with an almost frightenƯ ing division of labor and increasing specialization we need systematic and regular ways of keeping track of what happens in the profession. PROƯ FILES is intended to perform such a function. Each volume is devoted to one or several philosophers whose views and results are presented and discussed. The profiled philosopher(s) will summarize and review his (their) own work in the main fields of signifiƯ cant contribution. This work will be discussed and evaluated by invited contributors. Relevant historical and/or biographical data, an up-to-date bibliography with short abstracts of the most important works and, whenever possible, references to significant reviews and discussions will also be included. (shrink)

The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record (...) of scientific inquiry, Stanford suggests, is characterized by what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives. Past scientists have routinely failed even to conceive of alternatives to their own theories and lines of theoretical investigation, alternatives that were both well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and sufficiently serious as to be ultimately accepted by later scientific communities. Stanford supports this claim with a detailed investigation of the mid-to-late 19th century theories of inheritance and generation proposed in turn by Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and August Weismann. He goes on to argue that this historical pattern strongly suggests that there are equally well-confirmed and scientifically serious alternatives to our own best theories that remain currently unconceived. Moreover, this challenge is more serious than those rooted in either the so-called pessimistic induction or the underdetermination of theories by evidence, in part because existing realist responses to these latter challenges offer no relief from the problem of unconceived alternatives itself. Stanford concludes by investigating what positive account of the spectacularly successful edifice of modern theoretical science remains open to us if we accept that our best scientific theories are powerful conceptual tools for accomplishing our practical goals, but abandon the view that the descriptions of the world around us that they offer are therefore even probably or approximately true. (shrink)

The place of the emotions among the passions -- The analytic of the emotions I -- The analytic of the emotions II -- The dialectic of the emotions -- Pride, arrogance, and humility -- Shame, embarrassment, and guilt -- Envy -- Jealousy -- Anger -- Love -- Friendship -- Sympathy and empathy.

Frederick Suppe has come to enjoy a position of undisputed leadership in the post-positivistic philosophy of science.

The concept of normal is so familiar that it can be hard to imagine contemporary life without it. Yet the term entered everyday speech only in the mid-twentieth century. Before that, it was solely a scientific term used primarily in medicine to refer to a general state of health and the orderly function of organs. But beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, normal broke out of scientific usage, becoming less precise and coming to mean a balanced condition to (...) be maintained and an ideal to be achieved. In Normality, Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens offer an intellectual and cultural history of what it means to be normal. They explore the history of how communities settle on any one definition of the norm, along the way analyzing a fascinating series of case studies in fields as remote as anatomy, statistics, criminal anthropology, sociology, and eugenics. Cryle and Stephens argue that since the idea of normality is so central to contemporary disability, gender, race, and sexuality studies, scholars in these fields must first have a better understanding of the context for normality. This pioneering book moves beyond binaries to explore for the first time what it does—and doesn’t—mean to be normal. (shrink)

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cognitive Modelling presents a new approach to cognition that challenges long-held views. It systematically develops a broad-based framework to model cognition, which is mathematically equivalent to the emerging 'quantum-like modelling' of the human mind. The book argues that a satisfactory physical and philosophical basis of such an approach is missing, a particular issue being the application of quantization to the mind for which there is no empirical evidence as yet. In response to this issue, the book (...) adopts a COM (classical optical modelling) approach, broad-based but mathematically equivalent to quantum-like modelling while avoiding its problematic features. It presents a philosophically informed and empirically motivated mathematical model of cognition, mainly concerning decision making processes. It also deals with applications to different areas of the social sciences. It will be of interest to scholars and research students interested in the mathematical modelling of cognition and decision making, and also interdisciplinary researchers interested in broader issues of cognition. (shrink)

This study concerns the ideas of one particular philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose views of time, intuition, and creativity have had a significant impact on art, literature, and the humanities, both in his time and in our own. Although it is generally recognized that Bergson's ideas have significantly impacted the arts and the humanities, it has not been recognized how they have also had a creative influence on the sciences as well. Nor has it been realized that this was one of (...) his most basic contentions. Bergson's conception of intuition--his fundamental insight into reality--was not limited to fugitive insights into human existence. By realizing previously unsuspected possibilities for research and discovery, his endeavors were also meant to make possible new advances in the sciences. If it enabled his cousin by marriage, Marcel Proust, to explore human memory in depth, it also inspired psychologists like Daniel Schachter to use Bergson's ideas to make real contributions to contemporary memory science. If his notion of creative evolution brought many thinkers to a belief in human creative freedom, it brought others (notably Alexis Carrel and Pierre Lecomte de Noüy) to a scientific study of biological time. Among his successful speculations was the theory of the Big Bang cosmology. 'Getting Bergson Straight' shows many points at which Bergson's ideas anticipated future developments in the sciences. This was seen clearly by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis de Broglie who viewed Bergson's physics as presaging quantum physics. Thus, the text is well situated for arts, humanities, social science, and natural science classrooms studying creative thinking and/or intellectual history. (shrink)

Achinstein, Putnam, and others have urged the rejection of the received view on theories (which construes theories as axiomatic calculi where theoretical terms are given partial observational interpretations by correspondence rules) because (i) the notion of partial interpretation cannot be given precise formulation, and (ii) the observational-theoretical distinction cannot be drawn satisfactorily. I try to show that these are the wrong reasons for rejecting the received view since (i) is false and it is virtually impossible to demonstrate the truth of (...) (ii). Nonetheless, the received view should be rejected because it obscures a number of epistemologically important features of scientific theorizing. I show this by sketching an alternative analysis which reveals some of these features and gives a more faithful picture of scientific theorizing. (shrink)

The positivistic Received View construed scientific theories syntactically as axiomatic calculi where theoretical terms were given a partial semantic interpretation via correspondence rules connecting them to observation statements. This paper assesses what, with hindsight, seem the most important defects in the Received View; surveys the main proposed successor analyses to the Received View--various Semantic Conception versions and the Structuralist Analysis; evaluates how well they avoid those defects; examines what new problems they face and where the most promising require further development (...) or leave unanswered questions; explores implications of recent work on models for understanding theories; and rebuts the few criticisms of the Semantic Conception that have surfaced. (shrink)

Profoundly important ethical and political controversies turn on the question of whether biological life is an essential aspect of a human person, or only an extrinsic instrument. Lee and George argue that human beings are physical, animal organisms - albeit essentially rational and free - and examine the implications of this understanding of human beings for some of the most controversial issues in contemporary ethics and politics. The authors argue that human beings are animal organisms and that their personal identity (...) across time consists in the persistence of the animal organisms they are; they also argue that human beings are essentially rational and free and that there is a radical difference between human beings and other animals; criticize hedonism and hedonistic drug-taking; present detailed defenses of the prolife positions on abortion and euthanasia; and defend the traditional moral position on marriage and sexual acts. (shrink)

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is yes (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork's overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden, aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., "the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically prurient perspective on its female lead.'' Such a "non-summative" judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like "it's a 6/10" or "it's a pretty good movie!" I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people's character. (shrink)

This practical and essential text, co-authored by an engineer and an ethicist, covers ethical dilemmas that any engineer might encounter on the job, emphasizing the responsibility of a practicing engineer to act in an ethical manner. To illustrate the complexities involved, the authors present characters who encounter situations that test the engineering code of ethics. The dialogue between the characters highlights different perspectives of each dilemma. As they proceed through the book, students see how the code of ethics can help (...) in decision making, as well as the implications of various decisions. The philosophical theory that supports the ethical situations encountered is presented as boxed material following each section. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

In worlds that lack life, there is no value. For all that, there is no mystery about 'the existence of values in a world of facts'. The world does not consist of facts, rather true descriptions of the world consist of statements of fact. It is as much a fact concerning the world that there are things that are of value to living things, that human beings value things and possess valuable characteristics, perform valuable deeds, stand in valuable relationships to (...) others, as it is a fact that there is life on earth. (shrink)

A critical note on Christopher Bartel and Jack M. C. Kwong, ‘Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art’, Estetika 58 (2021): 100–113. Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word ‘art’ in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead (...) us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word ‘art’, if one wants it, but only in a loose, conversational sense. The upshot of pluralism is that talk of art in general cannot be asked to do theoretical and philosophical work. (shrink)

Scientific articles exemplify standard functional units constraining argumentative structures. Severe space limitations demand every paragraph and illustration contribute to establishing the paper's claims. Philosophical testing and confirmation models should take into account each paragraph, table, and illustration. Hypothetico-Deductive, Bayesian Inductive, and Inference-to-the-Best-Explanation models do not, garbling the logic of papers. Micro-analysis of the fundamental paper in plate tectonics reveals an argumentative structure commonplace in science but ignored by standard philosophical accounts that cannot be dismissed as mere rhetorical embellishment. Papers with (...) illustrations often display a second argumentative structure differing from the text's. Constraints on adequate testing and confirmation analyses are adduced. "Experiments are about the assembly of persuasive arguments, ones that will stand up in court.... The task at hand is to capture the building-up of a persuasive argument about the world even in the absence of the logician's certainty." --Galison, How Experiments End, 277. (shrink)