Wright’s “adaptive landscape” has been influential in evolutionary thinking but controversial, especially because the landscape that organisms encounter is altered by the evolutionary process itself and the effects organisms have on their environments. Lewontin offered a mathematical heuristic describing the coupling of niche construction and adaptive evolution. Here, we propose a “dual landscape” model to view these relationships. Our model represents change as simultaneous movement on two landscapes, each a function of phenotype and environment. This model clarifies the evolutionary feedback generated by niche construction. We relate our model to Lewontin’s niche construction equations and illustrate it with three examples.

The standard philosophical definition of placebos offered by Grünbaum is incompatible with Cartwright’s conception of randomized clinical trials. I offer a modified account of placebos that respects this role and clarifies why many current medical trials fail to warrant the conclusions they are typically seen as yielding. I then consider recent changes to guidelines for reporting medical trials and show that pessimism over parsing out the cause of “unblinding” is premature. Specifically, using a trial of antidepressants, I show how more sophisticated statistical analyses can parse out the source of such effects and serve as an alternative to placebo control.

I first propose to distinguish between two kinds of external validity inferences, predictive and explanatory. I then argue that we have a satisfactory answer to the question of the conditions under which predictive external validity inferences are good. If this claim is correct, then it has two immediate consequences: First, some external validity inferences are deductive, contrary to what is commonly assumed. Second, Steel’s requirement that an account of external validity inference break what he calls the ‘Extrapolator’s Circle’ is misplaced, at least when it comes to predictive external validity inferences.

This article examines the adequacy of causal graph theory as a tool for modeling biological phenomena. I argue that the causal graph approach reaches its limits when it comes to modeling biological phenomena that involve complex spatial and chemical-structural relations. Using a case study from molecular biology, I show why causal graph models fail to adequately represent and explain biological phenomena of this kind. The inadequacy of these models is due to their failure to include relevant spatial-structural information in a way that does not render the models nonexplanatory, unmanageable, or inconsistent with basic assumptions of causal graph theory.

Current axiomatizations for extensive measurement postulate the existence of infinitely small objects. This assumption is neither necessary nor reasonable. This paper develops this theme and presents a more acceptable axiom system. A representation theorem is stated and proved in detail. This work improves some previous results of the author.

I argue that, contrary to the recent claims of physicists and philosophers of physics, general relativity requires no interpretation in any substantive sense of the term. I canvass the common reasons given in favor of the alleged need for an interpretation, including the difficulty in coming to grips with the physical significance of diffeomorphism invariance and of singular structure, and the problems faced in the search for a theory of quantum gravity. I find that none of them shows any defect in our comprehension of general relativity as a physical theory. I conclude by comparing general relativity with quantum mechanics, a theory that manifestly does stand in need of an interpretation in an important sense. Although many aspects of the conceptual structure of general relativity remain poorly understood, it suffers no incoherence in its formulation as a physical theory that only an ‘interpretation’ could resolve.

Neuroeconomics is a research program founded on the thesis that cognitive and neurobiological data constitute evidence for answering economic questions. I employ confirmation theory in order to reject arguments both for and against neuroeconomics. I also emphasize that some arguments for neuroeconomics will not convince the skeptics because these arguments make a contentious assumption: economics aims for predictions and deep explanations of choices in general. I then argue for neuroeconomics by appealing to a much more restrictive (and thereby skeptic-friendly) characterization of the aims of economics.

This paper is concerned with the description of the process of measurement within the context of a quantum theory of the physical world. It is noted that quantum mechanics permits a quasi-classical description (classical in the limited sense implied by the correspondence principle of Bohr) of those macroscopic phenomena in terms of which the observer forms his perceptions. Thus, the process of measurement in quantum mechanics can be understood on the quasi-classical level by transcribing from the strictly classical observables of Newtonian physics to their quasi-classical counterparts the known rules for the measurement of the former. The remaining physical problem is the delineation of the circumstances in which the correlation of a peculiarly quantum mechanical observable A with a classically measurable observable B can result in a significant measurement of A. This is undertaken within the context of quantum theory. The resulting clarification of the process of measurement has important implications relative to the philosophic interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Hobbes' philosophy of geometry was eccentric to contemporary movements and worsted in specific controversy. But he laid down stipulations defining geometry and its method which might provide a significant and workable alternative “meta-geometry”. Some of these are isolated and reinterpreted here, especially those concerned with describing magnitudes, motions and quantities, and with his use of proportions. Rather than refutation of commentaries and historical rehash, the effort here is to isolate definitive texts and to offer a reinterpretation of their arguments in succinct form showing their coherence and their interdependence with his other philosophic principles.

A dynamical system is called chaotic if small changes to its initial conditions can create large changes in its behavior. By analogy, we call a dynamical system structurally chaotic if small changes to the equations describing the evolution of the system produce large changes in its behavior. Although there are many definitions of “chaos,” there are few mathematically precise candidate definitions of “structural chaos.” I propose a definition, and I explain two new theorems that show that a set of models is structurally chaotic if it contains a chaotic function. I conclude by discussing the relationship between structural chaos and structural stability.

In the social sciences we hardly can create laboratory conditions, we only can try to find out which kinds of experiments Nature has carried out. Knowledge about Nature's designs can be used to infer conditions for reliable predictions. This problem was explicitly dealt with in Haavelmo's (1944) discussion of autonomous relationships, Friedman's (1953) as-if methodology, and Simon's (1961) discussions of nearly-decomposable systems. All three accounts take Marshallian partitioning as starting point, however not with a sharp ceteris paribus razor but with the blunt knife of negligibility assumptions. As will be shown, in each account reflection on which influences are negligible, for what phenomena and for how long, played a central role.

Analogies have always had an important place in the reconstruction of past cultures by archaeologists. However, archaeologists and philosophers have objected on various grounds to the importance granted to analogy. Heider proposed the use of multiple analogies—analogies incorporating several sources—as a way of overcoming these objections. However, the merits and even the meaning of this proposal have not been explored adequately. This article presents an examination of instances of multiple analogies in the archaeological literature in order to motivate an adequate account of them in terms of the Multiconstraint theory of analogy, and in order to examine their role in archaeological inference. This article does not end the debate over analogies once and for all, but it does bring some needed clarity to this issue of central importance to the philosophy of archaeology.

One style of conducting scientific research involves the application of theoretical propositions to an empirical domain under investigation. The investigator plans his research in terms of the theoretical propositions and states his findings in these terms as well. We wish to examine not the merits of this style of research but a difficulty inherent in it. The difficulty concerns what is to be done when disconfirmative results are produced by some discrete study or experiment in the course of such research.

In this paper, I consider ways of responding to critiques of natural kinds monism recently suggested from the pluralist camp. Even if monism is determined to be untenable in certain domains (say, about species), it might well be tenable in others. Chemistry is suggested to be such a monist-friendly domain. Suggestions of trouble for chemical kinds can be defused by attending to the difference between monism as a metaphysical thesis and as a claim about classification systems. Finally, I consider enantiomers as a test case for the monism/pluralism debate. The question of whether enantiomers differ in kind does not appear easily answerable. I suggest that this legislates for pluralism in chemistry.

Goldman joins the ranks of epistemologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars trying to use economic models of science. For Goldman, these models are part of social rather than individual epistemics. His hope is that these models will illustrate that non-epistemic goals of individual scientists such as professional success do not necessarily undermine epistemic aims of science such as the acquisition of truth. This paper shows that there are inconsistencies between Goldman's individual and social epistemics, that these models do not live up to Goldman's standards of evaluation, and that the economic models that Goldman uses are not social.

Assessing the hydrogeological modeling at the Yucca Mountain and Maxey Flats nuclear repositories reveals a number of important ways in which theory choice can go wrong. The two cases suggest that there are at least six important criteria for evaluating the suitability of scientific models to be used for predictions intended to serve public policy. More generally, the paper argues that applied philosophy of science, as practiced in environmental policymaking, requires one to employ ethical rationality as well as scientific rationality, to heed the advice of the moral philosopher, not merely that of the epistemologist or philosopher of science.

In this paper it is suggested that Freud's ‘tally argument’ (Grünbaum 1984) is not best interpreted as a risky claim concerning the efficacy of psychoanalytic therapy, but as a risky claim concerning the implications of theoretical psychoanalytic explanations of the efficacy of psychoanalytic therapy. Despite the fact that Freud never empirically established that these implications hold, the ‘tally argument’ does draw attention to a critical distinction that is too often neglected in contemporary empirical studies of psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy: between empirical evaluations of the efficacy of psychotherapy and empirical evaluations of theoretical explanations of the efficacy of psychotherapy, and the different forms of comparative enquiry relevant to each. It is argued that the contemporary neglect of this critical distinction, in conjunction with the common negative conception of placebo control treatments in psychotherapy research, has led to the epistemic impoverishment of experimental studies of the various professional psychotherapies. In consequence, although there is good empirical evidence for the efficacy of psychoanalysis and other forms of professional psychotherapy, there is no good empirical evidence for theoretical psychoanalytic explanations of the efficacy of psychoanalysis, or for traditional theoretical explanations of the efficacy of other forms of professional psychotherapy.

The paper has two main aims. The first is to reformulate Hempel's version of the thesis of the symmetry of explanation and prediction, as regards the deductive covering-law model, so as to generalise it and make it no longer subject to some of the criticisms which have been directed at it (Section II). The second aim is to consider, with special critical reference to Hempel's recent treatment in Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York and London, 1965), some central criticisms of both the constituent parts of the above symmetry thesis, viz. that adequate explanations are potentially predictive (Section III), and that adequate predictive arguments are potentially explanatory (Section IV).