Subjunctive conditionals have their uses, but constituting the meaning of dispositional predicates is not one of them. More germane is the analysis of dispositions in terms of “bases”—except that past efforts to maintain an ontic gap between dispositions and their bases, while not wholly misguided, have failed to appreciate the semantic birthright of dispositional concepts as a species of theoretical construct in primitive science.

Polanyi's and Popper's defenses of the status quo in science are explored and criticized. According to Polanyi, science resembles a hierarchical and tradition-oriented republic and is necessarily conservative; according to Popper's political philosophy the best republic is social democratic and reformist. By either philosopher's lights science is not a model republic; yet each claims it to be so. Both authors are inconsistent in failing to apply their own ideals. Both underplay the extent to which science depends upon the wider society; and neither makes sufficient allowance for the ways it can disrupt the social order. Polanyi even demands extraterritorial exemption for science from the scrutiny of incompetent outsiders. In their different ways, each minimizes the problems of institutionalized science and fails to consider the value, even the long-term necessity, for science of democratic criticism and control. Transnational control of science is an open challenge for democratic polities.

This article investigates the implications of string theory for the conception of scientific theory confirmation. The classical understanding of theory confirmation is based on the assumption that scientific theory building is underdetermined by the available empirical data. Several arguments are presented, which suggest a devaluation of this ‘principle of scientific underdetermination’ in the context of string theory. An altered conception of scientific progress emerges that is not based on the notion of theory succession.

Examples of classic thought experiments are presented and some morals drawn. The views of my fellow symposiasts, Tamar Gendler, John Norton, and James McAllister, are evaluated. An account of thought experiments along a priori and Platonistic lines is given. I also cite the related example of proving theorems in mathematics with pictures and diagrams. To illustrate the power of these methods, a possible refutation of the continuum hypothesis using a thought experiment is sketched.

Although most philosophical accounts about model/world relations focus on structural mappings such as isomorphism, similarity has long been discussed as an alternative account. Despite its attractions, proponents of the similarity view have not provided detailed accounts of what it means that a model is similar to a real-world target system. This article gives the outlines of such an account, drawing on the work of Amos Tversky.

The argument from inductive risk has been embraced by many as a successful account of the role of values in science that challenges the value-free ideal. We argue that it is not obvious that the argument from inductive risk actually undermines the value-free ideal. This is because the inductive risk argument endorses an assumption held by proponents of the value-free ideal: that contextual values never play an appropriate role in determining evidence. We show that challenging the value-free ideal ultimately requires rejecting this assumption.

How, according to Darwin, does chance variation affect evolutionary outcomes? In his 1866 book, On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, Darwin developed an argument that played an important role in his overall case for evolution by natural selection, as articulated in later editions of the Origin. This argument also figured significantly in Darwin's reflections on the theological dimensions of evolution by natural selection.

Carnap's inductive logic (or confirmation) project is revisited from an “increase in firmness” (or probabilistic relevance) point of view. It is argued that Carnap's main desiderata can be satisfied in this setting, without the need for a theory of “logical probability.” The emphasis here will be on explaining how Carnap's epistemological desiderata for inductive logic will need to be modified in this new setting. The key move is to abandon Carnap's goal of bridging confirmation and credence, in favor of bridging confirmation and evidential support.

If a classical system has infinitely many degrees of freedom, its Hamiltonian quantization need not be unique up to unitary equivalence. I sketch different approaches (Hilbert space and algebraic) to understanding the content of quantum theories in light of this non-uniqueness, and suggest that neither approach suffices to support explanatory aspirations encountered in the thermodynamic limit of quantum statistical mechanics.

Hintikka has criticized psychologists for “hasty epistemologizing,” which he takes to be an unwarranted transfer of ideas from psychology (a discipline dealing with questions of fact) into epistemology (a discipline dealing with questions of method and theory). Hamlyn argues, following Hintikka, that Gibson's theory of perception is an example of such an inappropriate transfer, especially insofar as Hamlyn feels Gibson does not answer several important questions. However, Gibson's theory does answer the relevant questions, albeit in a new and radical way, which suggests that the alleged distinction between psychology and epistemology is suspect. In fact, contrary to Hintikka and Hamlyn's claims, Gibson's theory of perception appears to be a valuable source of epistemological as well as psychological ideas.

Testing a point null hypothesis is a classical but controversial issue in statistical methodology. A prominent illustration is Lindley’s Paradox, which emerges in hypothesis tests with large sample size and exposes a salient divergence between Bayesian and frequentist inference. A close analysis of the paradox reveals that both Bayesians and frequentists fail to satisfactorily resolve it. As an alternative, I suggest Bernardo’s Bayesian Reference Criterion: (i) it targets the predictive performance of the null hypothesis in future experiments; (ii) it provides a proper decision-theoretic model for testing a point null hypothesis; (iii) it convincingly addresses Lindley’s Paradox.

L. Jonathan Cohen has written a number of important books and articles in which he argues that mathematical probability provides a poor model of much of what paradigmatically passes for sound reasoning, whether this be in the sciences, in common discourse, or in the law. In his book, The Probable and the Provable, Cohen elaborates six paradoxes faced by advocates of mathematical probability (PM) when treating issues of evidence as they would arise in a court of law. He argues that his system of inductive probability (PI) satisfactorily handles the issues that proved paradoxical for mathematical probability, and consequently PI deserves to be thought of as an important standard of rational thinking. I argue that a careful look at each of the alleged paradoxes shows that there is no conflict between mathematical probability and the law, except when for reasons of policy we opt for values in addition to accuracy maximization. Recognizing the role of such policies provides no basis for questioning the adequacy of PM. The significance of this critical treatment of Cohen's work is that those interested in revising the laws of evidence to allow for more explicitly mathematical approaches ought to feel that such revisions will not violate the spirit of forensic rationality.

The overall purpose of this paper is to clarify the physical meaning and epistemological status of the term ‘measurement’ as used in quantum theory. After a review of the essential logical structure of quantum physics. Part I presents interpretive discussions contrasting the quantal concepts observable and ensemble with their classical ancestors along the lines of Margenau's latency theory. Against this background various popular ideas concerning the nature of quantum measurement are critically surveyed. The analysis reveals that, in addition to internal mathematical difficulties, all the so-called quantum theories of measurement are grounded in unjustifiable, classical presuppositions.

Andrew Wayne (1995) discusses some recent attempts to account, within a Bayesian framework, for the “common methodological adage” that “diverse evidence better confirms a hypothesis than does the same amount of similar evidence” (112). One of the approaches considered by Wayne is that suggested by Howson and Urbach (1989/1993) and dubbed the “correlation approach” by Wayne. This approach is, indeed, incomplete, in that it neglects the role of the hypothesis under consideration in determining what diversity in a body of evidence is relevant diversity. In this paper, it is shown how this gap can be filled, resulting in a more satisfactory account of the evidential role of diversity of evidence. In addition, it is argued that Wayne's criticism of the correlation approach does not indicate a serious flaw in the approach.

Many philosophers have asserted that evolutionary theory is unfalsifiable. In this paper I refute these assertions by detailing some falsifiable predictions of the theory and the evidence used to test them. I then analyze both these predictions and evidence cited to support assertions of unfalsifiability in order to show both what type of predictions are possible and why it has been so difficult to spot them. The conclusion is that the apparent logical peculiarity of evolutionary theory is not a property of evolutionary theory; it is a property of our human-sized perspective on evolutionary theory.

In recent papers Hans Halvorson has offered a critique of the semantic view of theories, showing that theories may be the same although the corresponding sets of models are different and, conversely, that theories may be different although the corresponding sets of models are the same. This critique will be assessed, first, as it pertains to issues concerning scientific models in the empirical sciences and, second, independent of any concern with empirical science.

In this article, I identify several issues that arise in trying to decide whether Newtonian particle mechanics qualifies as a deterministic theory. I also give a minitutorial on the geometry and dynamical properties of Norton's dome surface. The goal is to better understand how his example works and also to better appreciate just how wonderfully strange it is.

In many domains of biology, explanation takes the form of characterizing the mechanism responsible for a particular phenomenon in a specific biological system. How are such explanations generalized? One important strategy assumes conservation of mechanisms through evolutionary descent. But conservation is seldom complete. In the case discussed, the central mechanism for circadian rhythms in animals was first identified in Drosophila and then extended to mammals. Scientists' working assumption that the clock mechanisms would be conserved both yielded important generalizations and served as a heuristic for discovery, especially when significant differences between the insect and mammalian mechanism were identified.

Does the need to find a quantum theory of gravity imply that the gravitational field must be quantized? Physicists working in quantum gravity routinely assume an affirmative answer, often without being aware of the metaphysical commitments that tend to underlie this assumption. The ambition of this article is to probe these commitments and to analyze some recently adduced physical—as opposed to metaphysical—arguments pertinent to the issue of quantization. While there exist good reasons to quantize gravity, as this analysis will show, alternative approaches to gravity challenge the received wisdom. These renegade approaches do not regard gravity as a fundamental force, but rather as effective, i.e., as merely supervening on fundamental physics. I will urge that these alternative accounts at least prove the tenability of an opposition to quantization.