In Gemes (1990) I examined certain formal versions of hypothetico-deductivism (H-D) showing that they have the unacceptable consequence that "Abe is a white raven" confirms "All ravens are black"! In Gemes (1992) I developed a new notion of content that could save H-D from this bizarre consequence. In this paper, I argue that more traditional formulations of H-D also need recourse to this new notion of content. I present a new account of the vexing notion of the natural (...) axiomatization of a theory. The notion is used to construct a form of H-D that allows for the type of selective confirmation without which Glymour (1980a,b) claims H-D is hopeless. (shrink)

Since Christensen refuted the Bootstrap theory of confirmation in 1990, there have been some trials to improve the Hypothetico-Deductive theory of confirmation. After some trials, Gemes (1998) declared that his revised version completely overcame the difficulties of Hypothetico-Deductivism without generating any new difficulties. In this paper, I will assert that Gemes's revised version encounters some new difficulties, so it cannot be a true alternative to the Bootstrap theory of confirmation and to classical Hypothetico-Deductivism. Also I (...) will assert that, in principle, such new difficulties cannot be overcome by any trials dependent only on formal logic. (shrink)

Alleged counter-examples deployed in Park [Erkenntnis 60: 229–240] against the account of selective hypothetico-deductive confirmation offered in Gemes [Erkenntnis 49: 1–20] are shown to be ineffective. Furthermore, the reservations expressed in Gemes [ibid] and [Philosophy of Science 62: 477–487] about hypothetico-deductivism are retracted and replaced with the conclusion that H-D is a viable account of confirmation that captures much of the practice of working scientists. However, because it cannot capture cases of inference to the best explanation and (...) cases of the observational confirmation of statistical hypotheses, it is concluded that H-D cannot supply a complete theory of confirmation. (shrink)

: Any precise version of H-D needs to handle various problems, most notably, the problem of selective confirmation: Precise formulations of H-D should not have the consequence that where S confirms T, for any T', S confirms T&T'. It is the perceived failure of H-D to solve such problems that has lead John Earman to recently conclude that H-D is "very nearly a dead horse". This suggests the following state of play: H-D is an intuitively plausible idea that breaks down (...) in the attempt to give it a precise formulation. Indeed I think that fairly captures the view among specialists in the field of confirmation theory. Here I argue that the truth about H-D is largely the reverse: H-D can be given a precise formulation that avoids the longstanding technical problems, however, it relies on a fundamentally unsound philosophical intuition. The bulk of this paper involves reviewing the problems affecting previous attempts at giving precise formulations of H-D and displaying some recent versions that can handle these problems. It then briefly explains why the basic intuition behind H-D is itself unsound, namely, because H-D involves a tacit assumption of inductive scepticism. Finally, the historical relation between H-D and the positivists' quest for a criterion of empirical significance will be reconsidered with the surprising result that having glossed H-D as fundamentally unsound it is concluded that a sound version of the criterion of empirical significance is now available. The demarcation criterion, the positivists' philosopher's stone that serves to separate claims with empirical significance from claims lacking empirical significance having finally been found, it is argued that we should regard empirical significance as just one among a variety of virtues and not follow the positivists in taking it to be a sin qua non for all meaningful statements. (shrink)

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We use recently developed approaches in argumentation theory in order to revamp the hypothetico-deductive model of confirmation, thus alleviating the well-known paradoxes the H-D account faces. More specifically, we introduce the concept of dialectic confirmation on the background of the so-called theory of dialectical structures (Betz 2010, 2012b). Dialectic confirmation generalises hypothetico-deductive confirmation and mitigates the raven paradox, the grue paradox, the tacking paradox, the paradox from conceptual difference, and the problem of surprising evidence.

In his paper, "Explanations of Irrelevance" (1983), Paul Horwich proposes an amended version of hypothetico-deductivism, (H-D * ). In this discussion note it is shown that (H-D * ) has the consequence that "A is a non-black raven" confirms "All ravens are black" relative to any tautology! It is noted that Horwich's (H-D * ) bears a strong resemblance to Hempel's prediction criterion of confirmation and that the prediction criterion faces the same obstacle. A related problem for (...) class='Hi'>hypothetico-deductivism in its simplest form--that is, E confirms H iff E is an (observational) consequence of H--is displayed. The discussion concludes with a suggestion about how (H-D * ) and simple hypothetico-deductivism might be amended in order to avoid these results. (shrink)

Clark Glymour has argued that hypothetico-deductivism, which many take to be an important method of scientific confirmation, is hopeless because it cannot be reconstructed in classical logic. Such reconstructions, as Glymour points out, fail to uphold the condition of relevance between theory and evidence. I argue that the source of the irrelevant confirmations licensed by these reconstructions lies not with hypothetico-deductivism itself, but with the classical logic in which it is typically reconstructed. I present a new (...) reconstruction of hypothetico-deductivism in relevance logic that does maintain the condition of relevance between theory and evidence. Hence, if hypothetico-deductivism is an important rationale in science, we have good reason to believe that the logic underlying scientific discourse is captured better by relevance logic than by its classical counterpart. (shrink)

Hypothetico-deductivists have struggled to develop qualitative confirmation theories not raising the so-called tacking by disjunction paradox. In this paper, I analyze the difficulties yielded by the paradox and I argue that the hypothetico-deductivist solutions given by Gemes (1998) and Kuipers (2000) are questionable because they do not fit such analysis. I then show that the paradox yields no difficulty for the Bayesian who appeals to the Total Evidence Condition. I finally argue that the same strategy is unavailable to (...) the hypothetico-deductivist. (shrink)

William Whewell tried to explain how scientific knowledge of necessary and certain truth was possible by tracing it to ideas that arose not out of experience but had an independent origin in the mind. Although Whewell has generally been regarded as an a priorist in some sense and as a proponent of hypothetico-deductivism, Snyder tries to show that he can be assimilated to the twentieth-century inductivist mainstream. She fails to make her case, however, in part because she fails (...) to pay sufficient attention to Whewell’s insistence that scientific discovery is beyond the reach of method and always involves happy guesses. (shrink)

Do the methods of science lead to atheism? This is different from asking whether the results of science (e.g., well‐confirmed theories in evolutionary biology or cosmology) have that consequence. In this chapter, I consider several philosophical theories about scientific reasoning and trace out their implications for atheism, theism, and agnosticism. These theories include different versions of empiricism, logical positivism, inference to the best explanation, Bayesianism, hypothetico‐deductivism, and the principle of parsimony (Ockham's razor).

climate scientists have been engaged in a decades-long debate over the standing of satellite measurements of the temperature trends of the atmosphere above the surface of the earth. This is especially significant because skeptics of global warming and the greenhouse effect have utilized this debate to spread doubt about global climate models used to predict future states of climate. I use this case from an under-studied science to illustrate two distinct philosophical approaches to the relation among data, scientists, measurement, models, (...) and theory. I argue that distinguishing between 'direct' empiricist and 'complex' empiricist approaches helps us understand and analyze this important scientific episode. I also introduce a complex empiricist account of testing and evaluation, and contrast it with the basic Hypothetico-Deductive approach to the climate models used by the direct empiricists. This more developed complex empiricist apporach will serve philosophy of science well, as computational models become more wide-spread in the sciences. (shrink)

It is commonly acknowledged that, in order to test a theoretical hypothesis, one must, in Duhem' s phrase, rely on a "theoretical scaffolding" to connect the hypothesis with something measurable. Hypothesis-confirmation, on this view, becomes a three-place relation: evidence E will confirm hypothesis H only relative to some such scaffolding B. Thus the two leading logical approaches to qualitative confirmation--the hypothetico-deductive (H-D) account and Clark Glymour' s bootstrap account--analyze confirmation in relative terms. But this raises questions about the philosophical (...) interpretation of the technical conditions these accounts describe. What does it mean to say that E confirms H "relative to B"? How should we interpret the relation we are trying to analyze? (shrink)

Franz Huber’s (2008a) attempt to unify inductivist and hypothetico-deductivist intuitions on confirmation by means of a single measure are examined and compared with previous work on the theory of verisimilitude or truthlikeness. The idea of connecting ‘the logic of confirmation’ with ‘the logic of acceptability’ is also critically discussed, and it is argued that ‘acceptability’ takes necessarily into account some pragmatic criteria, and that at least two normative senses of ‘acceptability’ must be distinguished: ‘acceptable’ in the sense of ‘being (...) allowed to accept’, and ‘acceptable’ in the sense of ‘being obliged to accept’. Lastly, some connections of confirmation theory with naturalism, intertheoretic reduction, and explanation vs. understanding are explored. (shrink)

What is it to be scientific? Is there such a thing as scientific method? And if so, how might such methods be justified? Robert Nola and Howard Sankey seek to provide answers to these fundamental questions in their exploration of the major recent theories of scientific method. Although for many scientists their understanding of method is something they just pick up in the course of being trained, Nola and Sankey argue that it is possible to be explicit about what this (...) tacit understanding of method is, rather than leave it as some unfathomable mystery. They robustly defend the idea that there is such a thing as scientific method and show how this might be legitimated. This book begins with the question of what methodology might mean and explores the notions of values, rules and principles, before investigating how methodologists have sought to show that our scientific methods are rational. Part 2 of this book sets out some principles of inductive method and examines its alternatives including abduction, IBE, and hypothetico-deductivism. Part 3 introduces probabilistic modes of reasoning, particularly Bayesianism in its various guises, and shows how it is able to give an account of many of the values and rules of method. Part 4 considers the ideas of philosophers who have proposed distinctive theories of method such as Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend and Part 5 continues this theme by considering philosophers who have proposed naturalised theories of method such as Quine, Laudan and Rescher. This book offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the idea of scientific method and a wide-ranging discussion of how historians of science, philosophers of science and scientists have grappled with the question over the last fifty years. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the so-called "tacking by disjunction problem". Namely, the problem to the effect that, if a hypothesis H is confirmed by a statement E, H is confirmed by the disjunction E v F, for whatever statement F. I show that the attempt to settle this difficulty made by Grimes 1990, in a paper apparently forgotten by today methodologists, is irremediably faulty.

Claude Bernard, the father of scientific physiology, believed that if medicine was to become truly scientiifc, it would have to be based on rigorous and controlled animal experiments. Bernard instituted a paradigm which has shaped physiological practice for most of the twentieth century. ln this paper we examine how Bernards commitment to hypothetico-deductivism and determinism led to (a) his rejection of the theory of evolution; (b) his minima/ization of the role of clinical medicine and epidemiological studies; and (c) (...) his conclusion that experiments on nonhuman animals were, "entirely conclusive for the toxicology and hygiene of man". We examine some negative consequences of Bernardianism for twentieth century medicine, and argue that physio/ogy's continued adherence to Bernardianism has caused it to diverge from the other biological sciences which have become increasingly infused with evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Glymour's "bootstrap" account of confirmation is designed to provide an analysis of evidential relevance, which has been a serious problem for hypothetico-deductivism. As set out in Theory and Evidence, however, the "bootstrap" condition allows confirmation in clear cases of evidential irrelevance. The difficulties with Glymour's account seem to be due to a basic feature which it shares with hypothetico-deductive accounts, and which may explain why neither can give a satisfactory analysis of evidential relevance.

A study of the development of Mill's thought through successive editions of _A System of Logic. His view of the genesis of most scientific laws, it is argued, progressively shifted from inductivism to hypothetico-deductivism. Mill's analysis of hypotheses and of methods for their assessment is considered in detail. New light is shed on relations between Mill's metascience and that of William Whewell.

This volume brings together eleven essays by the distinguished philosopher of science, Peter Achinstein. The unifying theme is the nature of the philosophical problems surrounding the postulation of unobservable entities such as light waves, molecules, and electrons. How, if at all, is it possible to confirm scientific hypotheses about "unobservables"? Achinstein examines this question as it arose in actual scientific practice in three nineteenth-century episodes: the debate between particle and wave theorists of light, Maxwell's kinetic theory of gases, and J.J. (...) Thomson's discovery of the electron. The book contains three parts, each devoted to one of these topics, beginning with an essay presenting the historical background of the episode and an introduction to the philosophical issues. There is an illuminating evaluation of various scientific methodologies, including hypothetico-deductivism, inductivism, and the method of independent warrant which combines features of the first two. Achinstein assesses the philosophical validity of both nineteenth-century and modern answers to questions about unobservables, and presents and defends his own solutions. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss how Newton’s inductive argument of the Principia can be defended against criticisms levelled against it by Duhem, Popper and myself. I argue that Duhem’s and Popper’s criticisms can be countered, but mine cannot. It requires that we reconsider, not just Newton’s inductive argument in the Principia, but also the nature of science more generally. The methods of science, whether conceived along inductivist or hypothetico-deductivist lines, make implicit metaphysical presuppositions which rigour requires we make explicit (...) within science so that they can be critically assessed, alternatives being developed and assessed, in the hope that they can be improved. Despite claiming to derive his law of gravitation by induction from phenomena without resource to hypotheses, Newton does nevertheless acknowledge in the Principia that his rules of reasoning make metaphysical presuppositions. To this extent, Newton has a more enlightened view of scientific method than most 20th and 21st century scientists and historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)

By reference to Maxwell's kinetic theory, one feature of hypothetico-deductivism is defended. A scientist need make no inference to a hypothesis when he first proposes it. He may have no reason at all for thinking it is true. Yet it may be worth considering. In developing his kinetic theory there were central assumptions Maxwell made (for example, that molecules are spherical, that they exert contact forces, and that their motion is linear) that he had no reason to believe (...) true. In this paper I develop a position that explains why they were worth considering, and that rejects the retroductive position that a hypothesis is worth considering when, if true, it would explain the observed data. (shrink)

In this paper I demonstrate that, contrary to the standard interpretations, William Whewell's view of scientific method is neither that of the hypothetico-deductivist nor that of the retroductivist. Rather, he offers a unique inductive methodology, which he calls "discoverers' induction." After explicating this methodology, I show that Kepler's discovery of his first law of planetary motion conforms to it, as Whewell claims it does. In explaining Whewell's famous phrase about "happy guesses" in science, I suggest that Whewell intended a (...) distinction between "inductions," which can be empirically verified, and "mere hypotheses"--or guesses--which cannot. Finally, I argue that Whewell's discoverers' induction is a view worthy of our attention today, because it avoids a number of problems faced by prominent alternative methodologies. (shrink)

This paper reviews all major theories of evidence such as the Bayesian theory, hypothetico-deductivism, satisfaction theories, error-statistics, Achinstein's explanationist theory and Cartwright's argument theory. All these theories fail to take adequate account of the context in which a hypothesis is established and used. It is argued that the context of an inquiry determines important facts about what evidence is, and how much and what kind has to be collected to establish a hypothesis for a given purpose.

The main purpose of this paper is to argue, against the formalist or hypothetico-deductivist approach now dominant, that God or substance is for Spinoza a discovery, or indeed a kind of revelation. In both TdlE and Ethics, Spinoza affirms substance as the outcome of a search for salvation. He could not have held that a postulate or presupposition, even if thought necessary, can save man through abstract entailment. Indeed, salvation depends on “the quality of the object to which we (...) cling with love”, the object being “the eternal and infinite thing”. (shrink)

This paper explores the use of Popper's philosophy of science by cladists in their battle against evolutionary and numerical taxonomy. Three schools of biological systematics fiercely debated each other from the late 1960s: evolutionary taxonomy, phenetics or numerical taxonomy, and phylogenetic systematics or cladistics. The outcome of that debate was the victory of phylogenetic systematics/cladistics over the competing schools of thought. To bring about this "cladistic turn" in systematics, the cladists drew heavily on the philosopher K.R. Popper in order to (...) dress up phylogenetic systematics as a hypothetico-deductivist, indeed falsificationist, research program that would put an end to authoritarianism. As the case of the "cladistic revolution" demonstrates, scientists who turn to philosophy in defense of a research program read philosophers with an agenda in mind. That agenda is likely to distort the philosophical picture, as happened to Popper's philosophy of science at the hands of cladists. (shrink)

A broad class of inductive logics that includes the probability calculus is defined by the conditions that the inductive strengths [A|B] are defined fully in terms of deductive relations in preferred partitions and that they are asymptotically stable. Inductive independence is shown to be generic for propositions in such logics; a notion of a scale-free inductive logic is identified; and a limit theorem is derived. If the presence of preferred partitions is not presumed, no inductive logic is definable. This no-go (...) result precludes many possible inductive logics, including versions of hypothetico-deductivism. (shrink)

John Herschel's discussion of hypotheses in the Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy has generated questions concerning his commitment to the principle that hypothetical speculation is legitimate only if warranted by inductive evidence. While Herschel explicitly articulates an inductivist philosophy of science, he also asserts that “it matters little how {a hypothesis or theory} has been originally framed” when it can withstand extensive testing and empirical scrutiny. This evidence has convinced some that Herschel endorses an early form of hypothetico-deductivism. (...) I aim to clarify this interpretive puzzle and adduce evidence in support of the inductivist interpretation of Herschel's philosophy of science by examining his published account of a series of experiments in the domain of electromagnetism. (shrink)

An approach to inference to the best explanation integrating a Popperianconception of natural laws together with a modified Hempelian account of explanation, one the one hand, and Hacking's law of likelihood (in its nomicguise), on the other, which provides a robust abductivist model of sciencethat appears to overcome the obstacles that confront its inductivist,deductivist, and hypothetico-deductivist alternatives.This philosophy of scienceclarifies and illuminates some fundamental aspects of ontology and epistemology, especially concerning the relations between frequencies and propensities. Among the most (...) important elements of this conception is thecentral role of degrees of nomic expectability in explanation, prediction,and inference, for which this investigation provides a theoretical defense. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the program of L. Laudan et al for empirically testing historiographical philosophies of science ("the VPI program") does not succeed in providing a consistent naturalist program in philosophy of science. In particular, the VPI program endorses a nonnaturalist metamethodology that insists on a hypothetico-deductive structure to scientific testing. But hypothetico-deductivism seems to be both inadequate as an account of scientific theory testing in general and fundamentally at odds with most of the (...) historiographic philosophies under test. I sketch an account of testing historiographic philosophies of science more consistent with the views about scientific testing of those philosophies and argue that such a program is neither viciously circular nor necessarily self-refuting. (shrink)

A broad class of inductive logics that includes the probability calculus is defined by the conditions that the inductive strengths [A|B] are defined fully in terms of deductive relations in preferred partitions and that they are asymptotically stable. Inductive independence is shown to be generic for propositions in such logics; a notion of a scale-free inductive logic is identified; and a limit theorem is derived. If the presence of preferred partitions is not presumed, no inductive logic is definable. This no-go (...) result precludes many possible inductive logics, including versions of hypothetico-deductivism. (shrink)

Jean Perrin’s argument for the existence of molecules from his 1908 experimental determination of Avogadro’s number raises two questions considered in this article. One is historical: Why as late as 1908 should Perrin have thought it necessary to argue that molecules exist? The other, which takes up the bulk of this article, is philosophical: In view of the fact that his argument appears to assume the existence of molecules as a premise, how, if at all, can a charge of circularity (...) be avoided? I criticize attempted reconstructions of his argument by Salmon, Glymour, and hypothetico-deductivists. And I propose a probabilistic solution that avoids circularity. Finally, I consider whether Perrin’s reasoning, so construed, is an empirical argument for scientific realism. (shrink)

Big Data and methods for analyzing large data sets such as machine learning have in recent times deeply transformed scientific practice in many fields. However, an epistemological study of these novel tools is still largely lacking. After a conceptual analysis of the notion of data and a brief introduction into the methodological dichotomy between inductivism and hypothetico-deductivism, several controversial theses regarding big data approaches are discussed. These include, whether correlation replaces causation, whether the end of theory is in (...) sight and whether big data approaches constitute entirely novel scientific methodology. In this Element, I defend an inductivist view of big data research and argue that the type of induction employed by the most successful big data algorithms is variational induction in the tradition of Mill's methods. Based on this insight, the before-mentioned epistemological issues can be systematically addressed. (shrink)

Frederick Suppe would have us reject hypothetico-deductivism, Bayesianism, and Inference to the Best Explanation, on the grounds that none of these philosophical models can account for the argumentative structure that virtually all data-based papers in science share, a structure exemplified by W. Jason Morgan's landmark paper in plate tectonics. At the core of that putative universal structure is a strategy whereby recalcitrant data are given interpretations designed to show that the theory or scientific model being advanced need not (...) take them into account. Pity Karl Popper: immunizing stratagems are the soul of scientific argument. (shrink)

An approach to inference to the best explanation integrating a Popperianconception of natural laws together with a modified Hempelian account of explanation, one the one hand, and Hacking's law of likelihood (in its nomicguise), on the other, which provides a robust abductivist model of sciencethat appears to overcome the obstacles that confront its inductivist,deductivist, and hypothetico-deductivist alternatives.This philosophy of scienceclarifies and illuminates some fundamental aspects of ontology and epistemology, especially concerning the relations between frequencies and propensities. Among the most (...) important elements of this conception is thecentral role of degrees of nomic expectability in explanation, prediction,and inference, for which this investigation provides a theoretical defense. (shrink)

Neurolaw is the emerging research field and practice of applying neuroscientific knowledge to legal standards and proceedings. This intersection of neuroscience and law has put up some serious claims, the most significant of which is the overall transformation of the legal system as we know it. The claim has met with strong opposition from scholars of law, such as Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson (2011), who argue that neurolaw (and neuroscience more generally) is conceptually wrong and thus perceive most of (...) it as “nonsense” (Patterson, 2003). I expose a flaw in Pardo and Patterson’s arguments by means of confirmation theory. My main point is that Pardo and Patterson use implicit hypothetico-deductivism in their attack on neurolaw, and that we have good reasons to doubt the employment of such a model, because it faces serious theoretical problems. I then demonstrate how the alleged problems associated with neurolaw disappear if we use a quantitative probabilistic account of confirmation. I also explain why it provides a better account for the way the legal system actually works. (shrink)

This paper briefly recounts the importance of the notion of natural axiomatizations for explicating hypothetico‐deductivism, empirical significance, theoretical reduction, and organic fertility. Problems for the account of natural axiomatizations developed by John Watkins in Science and Scepticism and the revised account developed by Elie Zahar are demonstrated. It is then shown that Watkins's account can be salvaged from various counter‐examples in a principled way by adding the demand that every axiom of a natural axiomatization should be part of (...) the content of the theory being axiomatized. The crucial point here is that content cannot simply be identified with the set of logical consequences of a theory, but must be restricted to a proper subset of the consequence set. It is concluded that the revised Watkins account has certain advantages over the account of natural axiomatizations offered in Gemes. (shrink)

This paper briefly recounts the importance of the notion of natural axiomatizations for explicating hypothetico‐deductivism, empirical significance, theoretical reduction, and organic fertility. Problems for the account of natural axiomatizations developed by John Watkins in Science and Scepticism and the revised account developed by Elie Zahar are demonstrated. It is then shown that Watkins's account can be salvaged from various counter‐examples in a principled way by adding the demand that every axiom of a natural axiomatization should be part of (...) the content of the theory being axiomatized. The crucial point here is that content cannot simply be identified with the set of logical consequences of a theory, but must be restricted to a proper subset of the consequence set. It is concluded that the revised Watkins account has certain advantages over the account of natural axiomatizations offered in Gemes. (shrink)

A collective understanding that traces a debate between ‘what is science?’ and ‘what is a science about?’ has an extraction to the notion of scientific knowledge. The debate undertakes the pursuit of science that hardly extravagance the dogma of pseudo-science. Scientific conjectures invoke science as an intellectual activity poured by experiences and repetition of the objects that look independent of any idealist views (believes in the consensus of mind-dependence reality). The realistic machinery employs in an empiricist exposition of the objective (...) phenomenon by synchronizing the general method to make observational predictions that cover all the phenomena of the particular entity without any exception. The formation of science encloses several epistemological purviews and a succession of conjectures cum refutation that a newer theorem could reinstate. My attempt is to advocate a holistic plea of scientific conjectures that outruns the restricted regulation of experience or testable hypothesis to render the validity of a chain of logical reasoning (deductive or inductive) of basic scientific statements. The milieu of scientific intensification integrates speculation that loads efficiency towards a new experimental dimension where the reality is not itself objective or observers relative; in fact the observed phenomenon divulges in the constructive progression of preferred methods of falsifiability and uncertainty. (shrink)

This paper examines the negative response to Dalton’s atomic symbols by situating them in the context of the normative eighteenth-century representational system of affinity tables. Aesthetic analysis of the affinity tables reveals them as schema embedded with a potent functionalist empiricism. In contrast, the aesthetics of Dalton's symbols is associated with hypothetico-deductivism and alchemical iconicism.

After a chapter which is an introduction to and summary of the rest of the book, chapter 2 begins by criticizing various attempts to do away with theories, such as the Reichenbach-Salmon conception of theoretical truth in terms of observational consequences, and the Ramsey strategy of replacing first-order theoretical sentences by second-order nontheoretical ones; it then argues against hypothetico-deductivist theories of confirmation on the grounds that they are unable to handle the relevance of evidence to theory, whether or not (...) other formal constraints or even nonformal ones such as simplicity and explanatory power are added to those theories; it ends with an exposition of the Reichenbach-Carnap conventionalist thesis that the confirmation of hypotheses with evidence presupposes analytic principles connecting hypothetical and empirical concepts. Chapter 3 criticizes Bayesian theories of confirmation on such grounds as that the a priori arguments for Bayesian restrictions on beliefs are insufficient; that the Bayesian explanations of notions like variety of evidence, ad hocness, and simplicity are inadequate; and that they cannot account, without drastic revisions, for the relevance of evidence to theory, especially old evidence to new theory. Chapter 4 is an unsympathetic account of historically oriented philosophies of science; Lakatos’s notion of progressive research programs and Laudan’s theory of problem-solving effectiveness are found to be insufficiently precise and dubbed examples of "new fuzziness", while the Sneed-Stegmüller dynamics of theories is regarded as "a paradigm of misplaced rigor" ; and all three are criticized as unable to explicate the concept of evidential relevance. Chapter 5 is a formal and informal elaboration of the basic idea in Glymour’s account of theory and evidence, namely that confirmation or support is a three-term relation among evidence, hypothesis, and theory, so that evidence confirms an hypothesis only relative to a theory, and such that evidence e confirms hypothesis h relative to T if T with e implies, but T without e does not imply, an instance of h, and T with e does not imply a comparable hypothesis h’ different from h; the most interesting part of this chapter is a series of discussions showing how such an idea makes sense of the "methodological truisms" that it is possible selectively to test certain parts of a theory but not others, that a theory is supported better by a greater variety of evidence, that redundant or physically meaningless quantities are an undesirable feature of theories, that there are no inviolable rules, that a "white shoe" does not confirm "all ravens are black," that a theory is more useful and better supported than the set of its observational consequences, and that the hypothetico-deductive method often works. Since Glymour claims no originality for the conception of this general account, but only for its description, he plausibly thinks it necessary to apply it to some important historical cases of actual science; he does so in the next chapter by discussing at some length the structure and merits of Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy, of Newton’s universal gravitation, of nineteenth century atomism, of Freud’s Rat Man, and of general relativity. For example, he argues convincingly that Copernicanism was better supported by the evidence available even before the telescope because it alone, and not the Ptolemaic theory, can determine some planetary properties which are presupposed by both theories, can test and confirm some common hypotheses, and can be confirmed in an essential rather than incidental manner; and though Glymour admits that the Copernicans tended to argue in terms of explanatory rather than confirmatory superiority, he sketches an interesting account of the relation between explanation and confirmation which strengthens his case. He also analyzes the text at the beginning of book 3 of Newton’s Principia and compiles a reconstruction of the intricate details of the inferential structure of the argument to universal gravitation; his impressive reconstruction clearly shows that Newton’s method is neither the inductivist one he himself thought he was following, nor the one attributed to him by Pierre Duhem, but rather one in accordance with Glymour’s so-called "bootstrap strategy" of repeatedly using the evidence from Kepler’s second and third laws, from lunar data, and from falling bodies, together with the theory consisting of the second and third laws of motion, to arrive at increasingly general instances of the principle of universal gravitation. Glymour’s account of arguments for and against the atomic theory from Thomson to Cannizzaro is his longest historical example, but he himself admits that this illustration of the bootstrap strategy is "certainly not the neatest", and rather "diffuse, and perhaps disconnected". Chapter 7 is a detailed application of the same principles to the technique known among social scientists as "causal modeling"; since such "causal models" are essentially systems of algebraic equations, Glymour’s account shows indirectly that the bootstrap strategy is applicable to any scientific theory presented as a set of algebraic equations; this, of course is not surprising, since the formal considerations with which Glymour begins the exposition of his theory in chapter 5 involve systems of algebraic equations. Chapter 8 is an attempt to apply Glymour’s theory of evidence to the very common scientific practice of curve-fitting, where one measures values of two or more quantities and then infers a functional relationship; Glymour argues that simpler polynomials are preferred because they are tested more frequently and more severely by the data and because they are more informative; but then he criticizes his own explanation and concludes that "the bootstrap procedures of chapter 5 do not seem to help the problem much more than a whit" ; this is admirably honest, but if one wants an additional logical or methodological rationale, then one would perhaps have to go to the meta-level and say that Glymour is here testing his own theory, and he is more interested in a further illustration of the bootstrap methodology even with a failed test, than he is to claim universal or exclusive validity for it. In chapter 9 Glymour uses his bootstrap theory of confirmation to criticize geometrical conventionalism; he considers the alternative theories of space or space-time proposed by conventionalists to show the radical undetermination of geometries by evidence, for example, a non-Euclidean geometry with no universal force instead of Newtonian gravitation with Euclidean geometry; he argues that such alternatives are simply not as well tested as the originals and that their equivalence to the originals is questionable. The last chapter is a brief discussion of further problems worthy of future investigation. (shrink)