It is shown by means of a simple example that a good explanation of an event is not necessarily corroborated by the occurrence of that event. It is also shown that this contention follows symbolically if an explanation having higher “explicativity” than another is regarded as better.

In this paper, I critically examine Harré and Madden's attempt, largely as it occurs in their Causal Powers, to secure for causes and laws of nature a kind of necessity which although consistent with commonsensical empiricism and anti-idealistic philosophy of science nevertheless runs counter to the humean-positivistic tradition, which denies the existence of any distinctively “natural” or causal necessity. In the course of the paper, I reveal the multifarious nature of their account and show that each part of that account, commonsensical or ontological, is inadequate. I indicate as well how the multifarious nature of the account allows and even encourages an evasive shifting about in the face of adversity, which shifting no doubt contributes to whatever illusion of adequacy is present in their treatment.

Stanley Stevens draws a useful distinction among ordinal scales, interval scales, and ratio scales. Most recent discussions of confirmation measures have proceeded on the ordinal level of analysis. In this article, I give a more quantitative analysis. In particular, I show that the requirement that our desired confirmation measure be at least an interval measure naturally yields necessary conditions that jointly entail the log-likelihood measure. Thus, I conclude that the log-likelihood measure is the only good candidate interval (or ratio) measure.

Modern physics, which had its beginnings in the inclined-plane experiments of Galileo, deals with the measurable aspects of the world about us. The laws and definitions of classical physics are, at least superficially, differential equations in which each variable represents the result of a particular kind of measurement. These variables are usually called physical quantites. Starting from a few general laws and definitions we can derive formally further relations between the physical quantities and their rates of change in space and time. If the original definitions are self-consistent and the original laws accurate, the relations we derive from them should enable us to predict what the numerical result of a certain measurement will be whenever certain other measurements have yielded specified numerical results.

We wish here to consider the theory of a population or system made up of individuals whose number and size change with time. As usual, the description of these changes will be referred to as the kinetics, whereas the description of the special circumstances under which unchanging (equilibrium) conditions subsist will be called the statics of the population. A third category, the conditions for a steady state, i.e., when the variables inside the system do not change, but linked variables outside (or at the boundary) do, will be described by what we shall call the rheostatics of the system. All three, statics, rheostatics, and kinetics are subdivisions of the general dynamics of the system.

The problem of this paper is the discovery of criteria to identify conventions and the description of some of the more general properties of conventions with particular reference to scientific inquiry. Numerous specialized methodological investigations testify to the importance of conventions in inquiry, but none provide a general account of their operation. This paper aims to provide a necessary, if not sufficient, basis for such an account. The discussion falls into three parts: (I) common senses of the term ‘convention’, (II) a provisional formulation of conditions under which a certain type of behavior, which we shall call conventional, occurs, as well as a description of its characters, and (III) a brief consideration of one context of inquiry in which it appears.

Measuring the climates of the deep past requires the use of paleoclimate proxies. I describe two proxy data and measurement practices, regarding proxy calibration and proxy data infrastructure. I document how at least some data and measurement practices in paleoclimatology are disunified: these practices do not involve intercalibration or otherwise statistical combination of multiple proxy records, and metadata necessary for proxy data to be reused or intercompared is often not provided. I argue that, perhaps counterintuitively, this lack of standardization and unification of proxy data and measurements has several benefits, especially related to the management of error and uncertainty.

Imitating nature is an ever more popular strategy in many fields of science and engineering research, from ecological engineering to artificial intelligence. But while biomimetics and related fields have recently attracted increased attention from philosophers, there has been relatively little engagement with what I suggest we see as their basic epistemological presupposition: that we may acquire knowledge from nature. I argue that emphasizing and exploring this presupposition opens up a new approach to epistemology, based on a shift from a conventional epistemological relationship to nature as object of knowledge to a biomimetic relationship to nature as source of knowledge.

We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that this is because inductive inference supports belief in non-quantificational—or generic—generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of inductive inference. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would make.

The Abstract, Contrasted with the Intuitional-Causal Approach. There are two states of sophistication in the attitude which men of science have taken towards theories of natural phenomena. In the more abstract state, the purpose has been to seek the most harmonious scheme of coordination of the phenomena without raising the question of underlying causes and without adherence to some, or any, set of preconceived principles regarded primarily as fundamental starting points. In this state, the starting points have been sought in the phenomena themselves.

An important class of teleological theories cannot explain the representational content of visual states because they fail to address the relationship between the world, projected retinal stimuli, and perception. A different approach for achieving a naturalized theory of visual content is offered that rejects the traditional internalism/externalism debate in favor of what is termed “empirical externalism.” This position maintains that, while teleological considerations can underwrite a broad understanding of representation, the content of visual representation can only be determined empirically according to accumulated past experience. A corollary is that a longstanding problem concerning the indeterminacy of visual content is dissolved.

In concluding section 2, chapter VI of part II of [6], Duhem claimed:

1. (I) ... the physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses ... ([6], p. 187)

2. (II) ... when the experiment is in disagreement with his predictions, what he learns is that at least one of the hypotheses constituting this group is unacceptable and ought to be modified; but the experiment does not designate which one should be changed'. ([6], p. 187)

Dialectic, like love, has a good and a bad reputation. This ambivalence may be illustrated in different ways in almost every period of philosophical history. One may even suspect that this richness borders upon confusion. And yet, the attempt to orientate oneself in this jungle of meanings can be expected to be profitable, for the term “dialectic” has always referred, although often obscurely, to notions and processes of the first importance. The definition, illustration, and evaluation of the uses of this term should, accordingly, be a task promising some value.

Fred Suppe claims that the refereed journal article is an appropriate unit of scientific debate for philosophical analysis. He also claims that when we regiment scientific papers correctly, we can see that the hypothetico-deductive method, Baysian induction, and inference to the best explanation fail to capture the structure of scientific articles adequately. In what follows I demonstrate that the coding scheme Suppe used for uncovering the structure of a scientific paper is not appropriate under all circumstances, illustrate alternative structures found in various scientific articles, and show that the hypothetico-deductive method can accommodate the alternative structures I find. My conclusions are that the article that Suppe analyzed is not paradigmatic of published scientific articles, that different papers have different structures, that the structure depends upon the rhetorical goals of the article, and that, because of the different structures and different goals, no one philosophical account of testing is going to suffice.