Psychologists say a measure has construct validity when it, in fact, measures the construct it is intended to measure. Construct validity is both an important notion in psychological research methods and the source of much confusion and debate among psychologists. I argue that this confusion arises, in part, because of a failure to distinguish between construct validity, a feature of measures relative to a construct, and construct legitimacy, a feature of the construct itself. I propose a prescriptive account of construct validity on the basis of this distinction, then provide evidence for my account through two examples from research psychology.

The postulates of rational preference suggested by Von Neumann and Morgenstern have been defended as descriptive or empirical generalizations and as normative principles. It is argued that the postulates are inaccurate empirical generalizations and unacceptable normative principles.

In his 1983 article, Paul A. Roth defends the Quinean project of naturalized epistemology from the criticism presented in my 1980 article. In this note I would like to respond to Roth's effort. I will argue that, while helpful in advancing and clarifying the issues, Roth's defense of naturalized epistemology does not succeed. The primary topic to be clarified is Quine's “no first philosophy” doctrine; but I will address myself to other points as well.

It is possible for a causal factor to raise the probability of a second factor in some situations while lowering the probability of the second factor in other situations. Must a genuine cause always raise the probability of a genuine effect of it? When it does not always do so, an “interaction“ with some third factor may be the reason. I discuss causal interaction from the perspectives of Giere's counterfactual characterization of probabilistic causal connection (1979, 1980) and the “contextual unanimity” model developed by, among others, Cartwright (1979) and Skyrms (1980). I argue that the contextual unanimity theory must exercise care, in a new way that seems to have gone unnoticed, in order to adequately accommodate the phenomenon, and that the counterfactual theory must be substantially revised; although it will still, pending clarification of a second kind of revision, be unable to accommodate a kind of interaction exemplified in cases like those described by Sober (1982).

This paper aims to establish three major theses: (1) Not only declarative sentences, but also interrogatives and imperatives, may be classified as true or as false. (2) Declarative, imperative, and interrogative utterances may also be classified as honest or as dishonest. (3) Whether an utterance is honest or dishonest is logically independent of whether it is true or is false.

The establishment of the above theses follows upon the adoption of a principle for identifying what is meant by any sentence, declarative, interrogative, or imperative. The analysis aims to show that meaning is to be attributed to the uttered or written sentence-token, rather to the thereby exhibited sentence-type. Further, the meaning of the sentential token is to be identified with a purpose of the speaker, that the speaker would reveal to the addressee by uttering the sentence.

The to be revealed purpose is analysed into two components: an ultimate concern (that the addressee stand in such and such a relation—e.g., of believing, or informing the speaker about, or making it true that) and an ultimate topic of concern (the state of affairs, i.e., proposition, relative to which the speaker would have the addressee stand in the specified relation).

Sentential utterances “signify” different purposes by “expressing” different ultimate concerns and “indicating ”different ultimate topics of concern. Variations in expressed concern are correlated with variations in sentential form, such as declarative, interrogative and imperative. Variations in indicated topic of concern are correlated with variations in the subject and predicate of the uttered sentence. Thus, for example, utterances of “Johnny will jump in the lake,” “Will Johnny jump in the lake?” and “Johnny, go jump in the lake! ” all indicate one and the same ultimate topic of concern but express different ultimate concerns with this topic.

A sentential utterance is true or false according as its indicated topic of concern is true or false. Hence, declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives may all be classified as true or as false. But honesty or dishonesty is a function (explained in the paper) of the expressed concern, rather than of the topic of concern. Hence, although utterances of all sentential forms are honest or dishonest, their honesty or dishonesty is logically independent of their truth or falsity.

Physicalism and antireductionism are the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of biology. But these two theses are difficult to reconcile. Merely embracing an epistemic antireductionism will not suffice, as both reductionists and antireductionists accept that given our cognitive interests and limitations, non-molecular explanations may not be improved, corrected or grounded in molecular ones. Moreover, antireductionists themselves view their claim as a metaphysical or ontological one about the existence of facts molecular biology cannot identify, express or explain. However, this is tantamount to a rejection of physicalism and so causes the antireductionist discomfort. In this paper we argue that vindicating physicalism requires a physicalistic account of the principle of natural selection, and we provide such an account. The most important payoff to the account is that it provides for the very sort of autonomy from the physical that antireductionists need without threatening their commitment to physicalism.

The purpose of this paper is to show that there are as many formulations of the process of falsification as there are archetypal, philosophical systems of inquiry. This paper explores several systems of inquiry which are based on Churchman's reading of the history of Western epistemology. It is argued that (1) the falsification of scientific theories can never be a purely formal process although it is perpetually open to formal exploration ; (2) that contrary to current belief, falsification can never be more certain than confirmation because falsification involves judgments which are no more certain than those involved in confirmation. The supposed asymmetry between confirmation and falsification is severely challenged. Finally, a Feyerabendian and a Hegelian notion of falsification are explicitly developed and contrasted.

Language is the primary fact which concerns contemporary philosophy. Men have been speaking and writing for a long time, but it is only recently that the task of philosophy has been said to be the analysis of language. Ethical perplexities, social anxieties, the nature of scientific knowledge, religious speculations, are held not to be directly the problems of the philosopher. They enter his study by way of a domain of languages and sub-languages. This preoccupation with language is itself an unusual phenomenon in our intellectual history. It challenges the sociologist of philosophic ideas for an explanation, and it leads one to wonder upon what evidence philosophers have accepted the doctrine of linguistic primacy.

Different chemical species are often cited as paradigm examples of structurally delimited natural kinds. While classificatory monism may thus seem plausible for simple molecules, it looks less attractive for complex biological macromolecules. I focus on the case of proteins that are most plausibly individuated by their functions. Is there a single, objective count of proteins? I argue that the vagaries of function individuation infect protein classification. We should be pluralists about macromolecular classification.

Historically, one of the most controversial aspects of Darwinian evolution has been the prominent role that randomness and random change play in it. Most biologists agree that mutations in DNA have random effects on fitness. However, fitness is a highly simplified scalar representation of an enormously complex phenotype. Challenges to Darwinian thinking have focused on such complex phenotypes. Whether mutations affect such complex phenotypes randomly is ill understood. Here I discuss three very different classes of well-studied molecular phenotypes in which mutations cause nonrandom changes, based on our current knowledge. What is more, this nonrandomness facilitates evolutionary adaptation. Thus, living beings may translate DNA change into nonrandom phenotypic change that facilitates Darwinian evolution.

This paper explains the metaphysical implications of the view that species are individuals (SAI). I first clarify SAI in light of the separate distinctions between individuals and classes, particulars and universals, and abstract and concrete things. I then show why the standard arguments given in defense of SAI are not compelling. Nonetheless, the ontological status of species is linked to the traditional “species problem,” in that certain species concepts do entail that species are individuals. I develop the idea that species names are rigid designators and show how this provides additional motivation for SAI.

By a logical theory I mean a formal system together with its semantics, meta-theory, and rules for translating ordinary language into its notation. Logical theories can be used descriptively (for example, to represent particular arguments or to depict the logical form of certain sentences). Here the logician uses the usual methods of empirical science to assess the correctness of his descriptions. However, the most important applications of logical theories are normative, and here, I argue, the epistemology is that of wide reflective equilibrium. The result is that logic not only assesses our inferential practice but also changes it. I tie my discussion to Thagard's views concerning the relationship between psychology and logic, arguing against him that psychology has and should have only a peripheral role in normative (and most descriptive) applications of logic.

Many explanations in physics rely on idealized models of physical systems. These explanations fail to satisfy the conditions of standard accounts of explanation. Recently, some philosophers have claimed that idealizations can be used to underwrite explanation nonetheless but only when they are what have variously been called representational, Galilean, controllable, or harmless idealizations. This article argues that such a half-measure is untenable and that idealizations not of this sort can have explanatory capacities.

We present a dynamic model of the evolution of communication in a Lewis signaling game while systematically varying the degree of common interest between sender and receiver. We show that the level of common interest between sender and receiver is strongly predictive of the amount of information transferred between them. We also discuss a set of rare but interesting cases in which common interest is almost entirely absent, yet substantial information transfer persists in a “cheap talk” regime, and offer a diagnosis of how this may arise.

This paper discusses the D-N model of scientific explanation. It is suggested that explanation is a part of assertive discourse where certain principles must be observed. Then use is made of the relation between the informative content and logical content of a sentence (as shown, for instance, by Popper) to draw some of the conditions necessary for a sound model. It is claimed that the conditions of the model proposed in the present paper exhaust the insights of the papers in the literature, solve the difficulties encountered by other authors, but have some damaging consequences on the D-N model of scientific explanation.

Theoretical virtues play an important role in the acceptance and belief of theories in science and philosophy. Philosophers have well-developed views on which virtues ought and ought not to influence one’s acceptance and belief. But what do scientists think? This paper presents the results of a quantitative study with scientists from the natural and social sciences and compares their views to those held by philosophers. Some of the more surprising results are: (i) all three groups have a preference order regarding theoretical virtues, making theory choice a much more determinate matter than what has sometimes been suggested; (ii) the preference orders are very similar for the three groups; (iii) simplicity is viewed as an epistemic virtue particularly by social scientists (but not by philosophers); and (iv) syntactic parsimony is preferred to ontological parsimony by all three groups.

Leuridan argued that mechanisms cannot provide a genuine alternative to laws of nature as a model of explanation in the sciences, and he advocates Mitchell's pragmatic account of laws. I first demonstrate that Leuridan gets the order of priority wrong among mechanisms, regularity, and laws, and then make some clarifying remarks about how laws and mechanisms relate to regularities. Mechanisms are not an explanatory alternative to regularities; they are an alternative to laws. The existence of stable regularities in nature is necessary for either model of explanation: regularities are what laws describe and what mechanisms explain.

After describing a new method of synchronizing spatially separated clocks by means of clock transport, this paper discusses the philosophical import of the existence of such methods, including those of Ellis and Bowman and of Bridgman, with special reference to the Ellis-Bowman claim that “the thesis of the coventionality of distant simultaneity ... is thus either trivialized or refuted.” I argue that the physical facts do not support this philosophical conclusion, and that a substantial part of their argument against Reichenbach, in particular, is misdirected. Finally, I suggest that Ellis and Bowman employ seriously unclear notions of triviality and “good physical reasons” that tend to obscure rather than clarify the basic philosophical issues. An objective criterion of nontriviality of conventions is advanced.

This article describes research pursued by members of the McDonnell Collaborative on Causal Learning. A number of members independently converged on a similar idea: one of the central functions served by claims of actual causation is to highlight patterns of dependence that are highly portable into novel contexts. I describe in detail how this idea emerged in my own work and also in that of the psychologist Tania Lombrozo. In addition, I use the occasion to reflect on the nature of interdisciplinary collaboration in general and on the interaction between philosophy and psychology in particular.