This study of Plato's Phaedo promotes better understanding of its arguments for the soul's immortality by showing how Plato intended them, not as proofs, but as properly dialectical arguments functioning in accordance with the method of hypothesis. Unlike the argument for the soul's immortality in the Phaedrus, which does seem intended as a proof, the Phaedo arguments are proceeding toward the first principles that could serve as the basis for a proof - the most important being an account (...) of the soul's own essential nature. This study attends to the substantial progress the Phaedo makes toward such an account. It also considers Socrates' epistemic situation in the dialogue and the problem of whether his confidence in the face of death is misplaced if his arguments have not been proofs before considering how the concluding myth draws together several of the dialogue's main themes. (shrink)

The Meno is often interpreted as an illustration of Plato’s decision to replace elenchus with recollection and the method of hypothesis. My paper challenges this view and defends instead two theses: that far from replacing elenchus, the method of hypothesis incorporates and uses elenctic arguments in order to test and build its own steps; and that recollection is not a method of search on a par with elenchus and the method of hypothesis, but (...) is rather primarily a theory that accounts for the metaphysical horizon within which the method of hypothesis, coupled with elenchus and perhaps other dialectical methods, can lead us from opinions to knowledge. (shrink)

Renouvier was among the first philosophers in France to break with the nineteenth-century inductivist tradition and defend the use of hypotheses in science. Earlier in the century, the humanistically-educated eclectic spiritualist philosophers who dominated French academic life had followed Reid in proscribing the use of hypotheses. Renouvier, who was educated in the sciences, took up the Comtean positivist alternative and developed it further. He began by defending hypotheses that anticipate laws governing the phenomena, but then eventually adopted a more liberal (...) attitude towards hypotheses that postulate unobservable entities and processes as well. He also came to the realization that, from an epistemological point of view, all of empirical science is hypothetical. Renouvier used the tentative character of scientific knowledge as a premise from which to critique those who would claim scientific status for their social philosophies, and maintained a distinction between normative philosophical and empirical scientific inquiries.Keywords: Charles Renouvier; Auguste Comte; Positivism; Hypothesis; Eclectic spiritualism. (shrink)

The present volume is the PhD thesis of Samuel Scolnicov, co-founder of the International Plato Society, published posthumously to illustrate the foundation of his interest in the 'core Plato'. The issues raised in this thesis are now of wider interest than they were then and many of his theses have found wider acceptance. The book is edited by Harold Tarrant, long-time colleague and friend of Samuel Scolnicov and preceded by a foreword not only by the editor, but also the authoris (...) niece, Hanna Scolnicov, giving a more personal and detailed introduction to the author behind the thesis and putting his achievements into a broader perspective. (shrink)

Review of L. Laudan, Science and Hypothesis. Treats Laudan on the history of methodology (and the history of epistemology) focusing on the method of hypothesis.

Review of Larry Laudan, Science and Hypothesis.

This volume, a lightly-edited version of Professor Samuel Scolnicov’s 1974 Ph.D. thesis, is a fitting tribute to his impressive career. It will perhaps be most useful for those interested in better understanding Scolnicov’s work and his views on Plato as a whole, not least for the comprehensive list of his publications that requires a full twelve pages of print. Scholars with an interest in Plato’s method of hypothesis will also find some useful remarks on key passages in the (...) Meno, Phaedo, and Republic as well as on Greek mathematical analysis.Illuminating other aspects of Scolnicov’s work is clearly part of the intention behind enabling broader access to this study. As Harold Tarrant notes in his introduction... (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: In accounts of the two-factor theory of delusional belief, the second factor in this theory has been referred to only in the most general terms, as a failure in the processes of hypothesis evaluation, with no attempt to characterise those processes in any detail. Coltheart and Davies attempted such a characterisation, proposing a detailed eight-step model of how unexpected observations lead to new beliefs based on the concept of abductive inference as introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce. METHODS: In (...) this paper, we apply that model to the explanation of various forms of delusional belief. RESULTS: We provide evidence that in cases of delusion there is a specific failure of the seventh step in our model: the step at which predictions from hypotheses are considered in the light of relevant evidence. CONCLUSIONS: In the two-factor theory of delusional belief, the second factor consists of a failure to reject hypotheses in the face of disconfirmatory evidence. (shrink)

플라톤 대화편에서는 엘렌코스, 가정의 방법, 그리고 나눔과 모음의 방법 등 다양한 철학적 탐구 방법이 사용된다. 기존 연구는 각각의 방법들이 서로가 서로를 대치한다고 보는 해석과, 각 방법들은 서로 긴밀하게 연결되어 발전한다는 해석으로 나뉜다. 이 논문에서는 플라톤의 철학적 탐구 방법이 하나로 통일되어 사용되면서 대상에 대한 위계적인 지식 뿐 아니라 네트워크적인 지식까지도 얻을 수 있게 하는 탐구 방법이라는 사실을 보인다. 이를 위해 『필레보스』 후반에서 지식의 종류를 나누는 과정을 분석하여 지식의 종류를 구분하여, 산술과 같이 다양한 영역에 걸쳐있는 지식의 성격을 드러낼 수 있는 나눔과 모음의 (...) 방법의 특징을 검토한다. 결론적으로 대상에 대한 지식을 갖지 않은 대화자들 사이에서도 지식을 획득할 수 있게 해주는 이상적인 탐구 방법으로서의 나눔과 모음의 방법이????필레보스????에서 사용되었다고 주장한다. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper may be found in the following quotation. “Whenever an argument can be made to lead to a descending infinitude of natural numbers the hypothesis upon which the argument rests becomes untenable. This method of proof is called the method of infinite descent;.... It would be interesting and valuable to compare this method with the method of mathematical induction.”.

Illustrations: Numerous B/w Figures Description: Key questions in the history of Navya-nyaya (New Nyaya) remain unresolved: when did this school of logic begin, who was its founder, what distinguishes Navya-nyaya from Pracina-nyaya (Old Nyaya), and so on. This book attempts to answer these key questions in Part I. Part II provides a translation, analysis, and critical edition of the Lion and Tiger Definitions of Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Simha-vyaghra-laksana: LT Chapter) of the Tattva-cintamani-rahasya (TCR) of Mathuranatha (16th-17th c.). The hypothesis (...) adopted by the author with regard to the first question is that Udayana, who lived in the 11th century, is the founder of Navya-nyaya. This hypothesis is closely linked to the hypothesis offered regarding the second question, which is that the feature that distinguishes Navya-nyaya from the earlier school is its description of concepts and the structure of the world in terms of relation. Early Navya-nyaya authors, who flourished between Udayana and Gangesa (14th c.), devised specific terminology, of which delimitor (avacchedaka) and describer (niËpaka) are the most important, in order to identify or specify relation. This book attempts to illustrate the function of these and other Navya-nyaya terms from the viewpoint of relation. The main sources upon which the author has based his conclusions are Udayana s Laksanavali and the chapters on invariable concomitance or pervasion (vyapti) of the Nyaya-siddhanta-dipa (NSD) of Sasadhara (13rd-14th c.), the Tattva-cintamaÆi (TC) of Gangesa, and the TCR. Of these Sanskrit texts no scholar has worked on the Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Vyapti-vada) of the NSD in detail or the LT Chapter of the TCR. The latter chapter follows in the TCR the Five Definitions of Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Vyapti-pancaka), which Ingalls edited, translated, and analyzed in his epoch-making book Materials for the Study of Navya-Nyaya Logic (1951). One major innovation of this book made in Part II is to explain the structure of Navya-nyaya analysis by employing 86 diagrams based on the dharma-dharmin (property and property-possessor) relation, which serve as a visual aid and help readers to more easily understand the complicated structure of its analysis. The diagrams are also helpful in ascertaining how the definitions of invariable concomitance apply to individual cases and how the entities are connected in the application of the definitions. Another major innovation is: almost every sub-section of the LT Chapter of the TCR contains Mathuranatha s clarification of part of the two definitions; but this clarification does not give the definition incorporating prior clarifications and insertions; this book provides such a definition accompanied by a diagram. In other words, Part II illustrates the structure of the whole definition at every process of the clarification, which (definition) is never presented as such in Mathuranatha s text. (shrink)

Nowadays, it is a truism that hypotheses and theories play an essential role in scientific practice. This, however, was far from an obvious given in seventeenth-century British natural philosophy. Different natural philosophers had different views on the role and status of hypotheses and theories, ranging from fierce promotion to bold rejection, and to both they ascribed varying meanings and connotations. The guiding idea of this chapter is that, in seventeenth-century British natural philosophy, the terms ‘hypothesis’/‘hypothetical’ and ‘theory’/‘theoretical’ were imbedded (...) in a semantic network of interconnected epistemological and methodological notions – such as ‘knowledge’, ‘method’, ‘probability’, ‘certainty’, ‘induction’, ‘deduction’, ‘experimental philosophy’, ‘speculative philosophy’, and the like). As these semantic networks changed overtime, the meaning and significance of ‘hypothesis’ and ‘theory’ likewise shifted. Without pretence of completeness, this chapter highlights chronologically some of the defining moments in the semantic transformation of these two terms within the context of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. (shrink)

This article deals with the methodological procedures employed by Johannes Kepler, particularly those used in the process of elaboration of the two first laws of planetary movements. Its aim is to show that the astronomical practice of Kepler is linked with the proposal of (physical and mathematical) hypothesis and with valuing precision in observational data, with the goal of obtaining, by means of rigorous procedures, the (mathematically expressed) regularities of planetary motions. It was only afterwards that Kepler looked for (...) an explanation of the regularities (laws) discovered, formulating the hypothesis of the magnetic action exerted by the Sun, which is located at the physical center of the system. In the new astronomy, he modifies the methodological status of astronomical hypotheses in the beginning of 17th century (present in Ptolemy, Copernicus and Brahe), promoting the passage from a mathematical descriptive astronomy to a physical-mathematical explicative astronomy. (shrink)

Alexander’s "Infinitesimal. How a dangerous mathematical theory shaped the modern world"(London: Oneworld Publications, 2015) is right to argue that the Jesuits had a chilling effect on Italian mathematics, but I question his account of the Jesuit motivations for suppressing indivisibles. Alexander alleges that the Jesuits’ intransigent commitment to Aristotle and Euclid explains their opposition to the method of indivisibles. A different hypothesis, which Alexander doesn’t pursue, is a conflict between the method of indivisibles and the Catholic doctrine (...) of the Eucharist. This is a pity, for the conflict with the Eucharist has advantages over the Jesuit commitment to Aristotle and Euclid. The method of indivisibles was a method that developed in the course of the seventeenth century, and those who developed ‘beyond the Alps’ relied upon Aristotelian and Euclidean ideals. Alexander’s failure to recognize the importance of Aristotle and Euclid for the development of the method of indivisibles arises from an unwarranted conflation of indivisibles and infinitesimals. Once indivisibles and infinitesimals are distinguished, we observe that the development of the method of indivisibles exhibits an unmistakable sympathy for Aristotle and Euclid. Thus, it makes sense to consider an alternative explanation for the Jesuit abhorrence of indivisibles. And indeed, indivisibles but not infinitesimals conflict with the doctrine of the Eucharist, the central dogma of the Church. (shrink)

This paper addresses the role of specification tests in the selection of a statistically admissible model used to evaluate economic hypotheses. The issue is formulated in the context of recent philosophical accounts on the nature of models and related to some results in the literature on specification search. In contrast to enumerative induction and a priori theory, powerful search methodologies are often adequate substitutes for experimental methods. They underwrite and support, rather than distort, statistical hypothesis tests. Their success is (...) grounded in a systematic effort to mold appropriate models to, and test them against, constraints of the data. (shrink)

In this paper we will show Peirce’s distinction between deduction, induction and abduction. The aim of the paper is to show how Peirce changed his views on the subject, from an understanding of deduction, induction and hypotheses as types of reasoning to understanding them as stages of inquiry very tightly connected. In order to get a better understanding of Peirce’s originality on this, we show Peirce’s distinctions between qualitative and quantitative induction and between theorematical and corollarial deduction, passing then to (...) the distinction between mathematics and logic. In the end, we propose a sketch of a comparison between Peirce and Whitehead concerning the two thinkers’ view of mathematics, hoping that this could point to further inquiries. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

One of the most enduring contributions of Sir Karl Popper to the philosophy of science was his deductive approach to the scientific method, as opposed to Hilary Putnam’s absolute faith in science as an inductive process. Popper’s logic of discovery counters the whole inductive procedure that modern science is so often identified with. While the inductive method has generally characterized how scientists commence their work in laboratories, for Popper scientific theories actually start with generalizations inside our mind whose (...) validity the scientific method must test until those come to be falsified. A step further in the scientific method is the function of paradigms that Thomas Kuhn’s revolutionary science has developed. Kuhn’s community and consensus-based approach and Popper’s hypothesis-based approach are both important in the development of science as it is. This paper seeks to show how models of development may be integrated in the above debate in order to derive insightful implications that are crucial to the understanding of economic progress and human development. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The question of language development and origin is a subject that is vital to our understanding of what it means to be human. This is reflected in the large range of academic disciplines that are dedicated to the subject. Language development has in particular been related to studies in cognitive capacity and the ability for mind reading, often termed a theory of mind. The Social Brain Hypothesis has been the only attempt to correlate a cognitive scale of complexity incorporating (...) a theory of mind and intentionality orders to the archaeological record and hominin phylogeny. However, a method is still lacking that allows a correlation of the orders of intentionality to the archaeological signatures that represent the physical expression of hominin behaviour. This paper is primarily concerned with introducing a new theoretical perspective – termed the identity model – which facilitates such a correlation between a scale of cognitive acuity, hominin behaviour through the archaeological record and subsequently language development within an evolutionary context. (shrink)

In this paper, I ponder the question of whether Socrates follows a method of investigation — the method of hypothesis — which he advocates in Plato's Phaedo. The evidence in the dialogue suggests that he does not follow the method, which raises additional questions: If he fails to do so, why does he articulate the method? Does his statement of method affect his actions or is it mainly forgotten? Although Socrates is a fictional character, (...) his actions in the Phaedo suggests questions about the function of espoused methods in actual situations. (shrink)

I apply the Method of Phenomenal Contrast to examples involving aesthetic experience and sensory illusion. While the method can provide reasons to prefer one form of content hypothesis over others, it may be of no help in answering substantive questions about the nature and structure of such content. I suggest that successful application of the method can leave us with a difficult question. Why would a sensory system have the function of representing a property that it (...) cannotdetect? (shrink)

In an effort to account for our a priori knowledge of synthetic necessary truths, Kant proposes to extend the successful method used in mathematics and the natural sciences to metaphysics. In this paper, a uniform account of that method is proposed and the particular contribution of the ‘Copernican hypothesis’ to our knowledge of necessary truths is explained. It is argued that, though the necessity of the truths is in a way owing to the object's relation to our (...) cognition, the truths we come to know are fully objective, expressing necessary relations between properties. Kant's distinction between ‘phenomena’ and ‘noumena’ is shown to serve to properly restrict the scope of the necessity claims so that they do express necessary connections between properties. (shrink)

The dissertation under comment is a contribution to the area of Set Theory concerned with the interactions between the method of Forcing and the so-called Large Cardinal axioms.The dissertation is divided into two thematic blocks. In Block I we analyze the large-cardinal hierarchy between the first supercompact cardinal and Vopěnka’s Principle. In turn, Block II is devoted to the investigation of some problems arising from Singular Cardinal Combinatorics.We commence Part I by investigating the Identity Crisis phenomenon in the region (...) comprised between the first supercompact cardinal and Vopěnka’s Principle. As a result, we generalize Magidor’s classical theorems [2] to this higher region of the large-cardinal hierarchy. Also, our analysis allows to settle all the questions that were left open in [1]. Finally, we conclude Part I by presenting a general theory of preservation of $C^{}$ -extendible cardinals under class forcing iterations. From this analysis we derive several applications. For instance, our arguments are used to show that an extendible cardinal is consistent with “ $^{\mathrm {HOD}}<\lambda ^+$, for every regular cardinal $\lambda $.” In particular, if Woodin’s HOD Conjecture holds, and therefore it is provable in ZFC + “There exists an extendible cardinal” that above the first extendible cardinal every singular cardinal $\lambda $ is singular in HOD and $^{\textrm {{HOD}}}=\lambda ^+$, there may still be no agreement at all between V and HOD about successors of regular cardinals.In Part II and Part III we analyse the relationship between the Singular Cardinal Hypothesis with other relevant combinatorial principles at the level of successors of singular cardinals. Two of these are the Tree Property and the Reflection of Stationary sets, which are central in Infinite Combinatorics.Specifically, Part II is devoted to prove the consistency of the Tree Property at both $\kappa ^+$ and $\kappa ^{++}$, whenever $\kappa $ is a strong limit singular cardinal witnessing an arbitrary failure of the SCH. This generalizes the main result of [3] in two senses: it allows arbitrary cofinalities for $\kappa $ and arbitrary failures for the SCH.In the last part of the dissertation we introduce the notion of $\Sigma $ -Prikry forcing. This new concept allows an abstract and uniform approach to the theory of Prikry-type forcings and encompasses several classical examples of Prikry-type forcing notions, such as the classical Prikry forcing, the Gitik-Sharon poset, or the Extender Based Prikry forcing, among many others.Our motivation in this part of the dissertation is to prove an iteration theorem at the level of the successor of a singular cardinal. Specifically, we aim for a theorem asserting that every $\kappa ^{++}$ -length iteration with support of size $\leq \kappa $ has the $\kappa ^{++}$ -cc, provided the iterates belong to a relevant class of $\kappa ^{++}$ -cc forcings. While there are a myriad of works on this vein for regular cardinals, this contrasts with the dearth of investigations in the parallel context of singular cardinals. Our main contribution is the proof that such a result is available whenever the class of forcings under consideration is the family of $\Sigma $ -Prikry forcings. Finally, and as an application, we prove that it is consistent—modulo large cardinals—the existence of a strong limit cardinal $\kappa $ with countable cofinality such that $\mathrm {SCH}_\kappa $ fails and every finite family of stationary subsets of $\kappa ^+$ reflects simultaneously. (shrink)

After the publication of Sidereus Nuncius, in the controversy with Ch. Scheiner, Galileo developed several arguments on behalf of the hypothesis that sunspots are contiguous to the surface of the Sun, and presented them in his Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari e loro accidenti. One of them, named by Galileo a Practical Method, advocates very clearly the correctness of the hypothesis. In the paper the method in question is briefly described. It is argued that (...) the Practical Method is not a thought experiment, but rather a mental model proposed precisely in order to solve the problem of sunspots’ location. (shrink)

In my 2013 article, “A New Theory of Free Will”, I argued that several serious hypotheses in philosophy and modern physics jointly entail that our reality is structurally identical to a peer-to-peer (P2P) networked computer simulation. The present paper outlines how quantum phenomena emerge naturally from the computational structure of a P2P simulation. §1 explains the P2P Hypothesis. §2 then sketches how the structure of any P2P simulation realizes quantum superposition and wave-function collapse (§2.1.), quantum indeterminacy (§2.2.), wave-particle duality (...) (§2.3.), and quantum entanglement (§2.4.). Finally, §3 argues that although this is by no means a philosophical proof that our reality is a P2P simulation, it provides ample reasons to investigate the hypothesis further using the methods of computer science, physics, philosophy, and mathematics. (shrink)

In this account of the philosophical and scientific pursuits of Pierre Gassendi , I challenge a traditional view which says that the inspiration, motivation, and demonstrative grounds for his physical atomism consist not in his empiricism but in his historicist commitments. Indeed, Gassendi suggests that it's a consequence of our best theory of knowledge and sound scientific method that we get evidence which warrants his microphysical theory. ;The primary novelty of his theory of empirical knowledge is his proposal, against (...) the Stoics and Descartes, that it is not a necessary condition of our knowing some claim that we are certain of it. This move immediately broadens the scope of what we can know through the senses, as does his suggestion that we include among such knowledge claims those assertions about what is hidden to the senses which we legitimately infer from the evidence of the perceptually given. ;On the basis of these epistemological positions, Gassendi develops his views on scientific method according to which we attain and justify our best empirical claims by deduction yet, he believes, these claims are at root probabilistic, and we may maintain hypotheses as the basis of our scientific reasoning so long as there is some empirical evidence for them, however broadly construed. ;Hence Gassendi suggests that his atomism constitutes a 'most likely hypothesis' for which we have empirical evidence--which of necessity is found indirectly in 'indicative' signs, those surface level phenomena for which he takes the existence of atoms to be a sine qua non condition. Perhaps the paramount case of such evidence consists in those microscopic observations of crystalline formation and dissolution that he takes to demonstrate the molecular structure of matter--a key and innovative consequence of his atomism. ;The robust character of Gassendi's method emerges in his appeals to indirect evidence for claims about the unobservable and his willingness to count this as adequate empirical grounds for maintaining an atomist hypothesis. Remarkably, he stands at the dawn of the modern era with at least a proposal as to how to resolve one of empiricism's more vexing difficulties, still with us in some form today. (shrink)

Quality of life is a difficult concept to define and to measure. An hypothesis is proposed which suggests that the quality of life measures the difference, or the gap, at a particular period of time between the hopes and expectations of the individual and that individual's present experiences. Quality of life can only be described by the individual, and must take into account many aspects of life. The approach is goal-orientated, and one of task analysis. The hypothesis is (...) developed in a diagramatic way, and several methods of testing the hypothesis suggested. (shrink)

The Parmenides has been unduly overlooked in discussions of hypothesis in Plato. It contains a unique method for testing first principles, a method I call ‘exploring both sides’. The dialogue recommends exploring the consequences of both a hypothesis and its contradictory and thematizes this structure throughout. I challenge the view of Plato’s so-called ‘method of hypothesis’ as an isolated stage in Plato’s development; instead, the evidence of the Parmenides suggests a family of distinct hypothetical (...) methods, each with its own peculiar aim. Exploring both sides is unique both in its structure and in its aim of testing candidate principles. (shrink)