While orthodox (Neyman-Pearson) statistical tests enjoy widespread use in science, the philosophical controversy over their appropriateness for obtaining scientific knowledge remains unresolved. I shall suggest an explanation and a resolution of this controversy. The source of the controversy, I argue, is that orthodox tests are typically interpreted as rules for making optimal decisions as to how to behave–-where optimality is measured by the frequency of errors the test would commit in a long series of trials. Most philosophers of statistics, however, view the task of statistical methods as providing appropriate measures of the evidential-strength that data affords hypotheses. Since tests appropriate for the behavioral-decision task fail to provide measures of evidential-strength, philosophers of statistics claim the use of orthodox tests in science is misleading and unjustified. What critics of orthodox tests overlook, I argue, is that the primary function of statistical tests in science is neither to decide how to behave nor to assign measures of evidential strength to hypotheses. Rather, tests provide a tool for using incomplete data to learn about the process that generated it. This they do, I show, by providing a standard for distinguishing differences (between observed and hypothesized results) due to accidental or trivial errors from those due to systematic or substantively important discrepancies. I propose a reinterpretation of a commonly used orthodox test to make this learning model of tests explicit.

The traditional views of science as the possessor of a special method, and as the epitome or apex of rationality, have come under severe challenges for a variety of historical, psychological, sociological, political, and philosophical reasons. As a result, many philosophers are either denying science its claim to rationality, or else casting about for a new account of its rationality. In this paper a defense of the traditional view is offered. It is argued that contemporary philosophical discussion regarding the rationality of science is plagued by a failure to distinguish among three different questions, all taken to be “the“ question of the rationality of science. Once these questions are delineated, it becomes possible to answer one of them in such a way that the traditional link between science's rationality and its method is reestablished–-although the scientific method is itself given a non-traditional rendering. In short, it is argued that there is a feature of science which is appropriately characterized as its method; that this method does in fact secure science's rationality; and that science is therefore correctly construed as preeminently rational. It is suggested in addition that the philosophy of science is itself best seen as a primarily epistemological activity, and consequently that a correction from the excessively historicist conception of recent philosophy of science is in order.

Arthur Fine's use of prism models to provide local and deterministic accounts of quantum correlation experiments is presented and analyzed in some detail. Fine's claim that “there is … no question of the consistency of prism models … with the quantum theory“ (forthcoming, p. 16) is disputed. Our criticisms are threefold: (1) consideration of the possibility of additional analyzer positions shows that prism models entail unacceptably high rejection rates in the relevant experiments; (2) similar considerations show that the models are at best only superficially local and deterministic; and (3) in any case, Fine extracts the quantum correlation statistics from prism models only by resurrecting conceptual problems similar to those that his models were to designed to solve.

The ambiguity to which Porpora (1980) objects in Wright's (1972, 1976) analysis of goal-directedness permits certain counterexamples to Porpora's analysis to be easily accommodated by Wright's. As a consequence, Ringen's (1976) claim that some operant behavior is goal-directed is in accord with Wright's analysis and with certain features of common sense that Wright's analysis captures. However, the way our commonsense conception of goal-directedness accommodates some of the counterexamples to Porpora's analysis suggests an intimate connection between goal-directedness and intentional notions like belief and desire. This suggests a possible criticism of Ringen and highlights problematic aspects of contemporary folk psychology.

This paper shows that species are individuals with respect to evolutionary theory in the sense that the laws of the theory deal with species as irreducible wholes rather than as sets of organisms. ‘Species X’ is an instantiation of a primitive term of the theory. I present a sketch of a proof that it cannot be defined within the theory as a set of organisms; the proof relies not on details of my axiomatization but rather on a generally accepted property of speciation; hence the same argument should work for any axiomatization which captures this generally accepted property of speciation.

If one proposes to analyze dispositions by means of statements involving only the ‘if-then’ of material implication–-that is, for example, to define ‘x is soluble’ by means of 'x is in water ⊃ x dissolves'–-then one faces the problem first raised by Carnap, the match which is never put in water and which therefore turns out to be not only soluble but also both soluble and insoluble. I have elsewhere argued that if one refers to appropriate laws, then one can provide an account of disposition predication that solves Carnap's problem while requiring no sense of ‘if-then’ other than that of material implication. Harré and Madden have argued that a variant of this proposal–-one in which the relevant law is restricted to one that relates the disposition to internal structures–-is more adequate. It is argued that the proposal of Harré and Madden is in fact not adequate. It leads to an implausible infinite regress of dispositions and ever finer internal structures, which Harré and Madden avoid only by introducing “Parmenidean individuals.“ The examples they give turn out to involve dispositions not grounded in internal structures, and so support our analysis; while the explicit description of such individuals by Harré and Madden involves the incoherent idea that two individuals can share all categorical properties while differing in their dispositions. The position of Harré and Madden thus turns out to be equivalent to ours or to be incoherent.

After briefly presenting Ronald Giere's (1979, 1980) recent counterfactual characterization of population-level causation, I present two counterexamples to the characterization. The difficulty discussed stems from nonaccidental correlations that can obtain between causally effective and causally neutral factors.

An interesting difficulty arises if one tries to reconcile Reichenbach's views about “absolute“ rotation in general relativity with his commitment to a “causal theory of space-time structure.” This difficulty is made precise in the form of a simple theorem about relativistic space-time geometry.

The Analysis of Matter is perhaps best known for marking Russell's rejection of phenomenalism (in both its classical and methodological forms) and his development of a variety of Lockean representationalism–-Russell's causal theory of perception. This occupies Part 2 of the work. Part 1, which is certainly less well known, contains many observations on twentieth-century physics. Unfortunately, Russell's discussion of relativity and the foundations of physical geometry is carried out in apparent ignorance of Reichenbach's and Carnap's investigations in the same period. The issue of conventionalism in its then contemporary form is simply not discussed. The only writers of the period who appear to have had any influence on Russell's conception of the philosophical issues raised by relativity were Whitehead and Eddington. Even the work of A. A. Robb fails to receive any extended discussion;1 although Robb's causal theory is certainly relevant to many of Russell's concerns, especially those voiced in Part 3, regarding the construction of points and the topology of space-time. In the case of quantum mechanics, the idiosyncrasy of Russell's selection of topics is more understandable, since the Heisenberg and Schrödinger theories were only just discovered. Nevertheless, it seems bizarre to a contemporary reader that Russell should have given such emphasis2 to G. N. Lewis's suggestion that an atom emits light only when there is another atom to receive it–-a suggestion reminiscent of Leibniz, and one to which Russell frequently returns. In short, the philosophical problems of modern physics with which Russell deals seem remote from the perspective of post-positivist philosophy of physics.