The causal theory of reference is often taken to provide a solution to the problems, such as incomparability and referential discontinuity, that the meaning-change thesis raised. I show that Kuhn successfully questioned the causal theory and Putnam's idea that reference is determined via the sameness relation of essences that holds between a sample and other members of a kind in all possible worlds. Putnam's single ‘essential’ properties may be necessary but not sufficient to determine membership in a kind category. Kuhn argued that extension is fixed by similarity-dissimilarity relations that are liable to change in taxonomic reorganizations of science.

It is now commonly accepted that N. Goodman's predicate “grue” presents the theory of confirmation of C. G. Hempel (and other such theories) with grave difficulties. The precise nature and status of these “difficulties” has, however, never been made clear. In this paper it is argued that it is very unlikely that “grue” raises any formal difficulties for Hempel and appearances to the contrary are examined, rejected and an explanation of their intuitive appeal offered. However “grue” is shown to raise an informal, “over-arching” difficulty of great magnitude for all theories of confirmation, including Hempel's theory.

There should be no disagreement with the proposal for research into the role of applied social science in the formation of policy. The relation between social science and the formation of social policy and social action is, in fact, one of the more important areas of study in the general field of social control. The outline for research prepared by Mr. Merton constitutes a good framework for the investigation of important aspects of the relationship between social science and the world of practical affairs. But there is room for vigorous disagreement with a fundamental assumption about the role of applied social science with which he starts, and there are various broad considerations of importance in framing the proposed study which merit mention or greater elaboration. It is to these matters that this essay is addressed.

This paper examines problems of order and periodicity which arise when the attempt is made to define a confirmation function for a language containing elementary number theory as applied to a universe in which the individuals are considered to be arranged in some fixed order. Certain plausible conditions of adequacy are stated for such a confirmation function. By the construction of certain types of predicates, it is proved, however, that these conditions of adequacy are violated by any confirmation function defined for the type of language in question.

Various possible solutions to these difficulties are explored and found tobe inadequate. In particular, a proposal which stems from the suggestion to restrict a fundamental principle of confirmation to hypotheses containing only non-positional predicates is cited. This proposal, however, is shown to prevent confirmation functions from taking periodicities into account, and so is deemed unsatisfactory. A general theorem is proved to the effect that if non-positional predicates are taken to satisfy the conditions of adequacy which have been formulated, then no periodicity predicates whatsoever (i.e., predicates used in formulating hypotheses which foretell periodicities) can be subject to these conditions, on pain of contradiction. Yet it seems that periodicity predicates must be subject to these conditions of adequacy if a confirmation function is to recognize periodic occurrences. Thus, an impasse seems to be reached.

In the final sections we consider the beginnings of one possible solution to these difficulties. Our proposal involves treating sets of individuals, rather than individuals themselves, as instances, of an hypothesis which predicts a periodicity. On this basis we formulate new conditions of adequacy which are free from the previous difficulties and which will permit a confirmation function that satisfies them to take periodicities into account.

The Gibbs’ Paradox is commonly explained by invoking some type of “principle of indistinguishability,” which asserts that the interchange of identical particles is not a real physical event, i.e., is operationally meaningless. However, if this principle is to provide a satisfactory resolution of the Paradox, it must be operationally possible to determine whether, in fact, two given systems are identical or not. That is, the assertion that the Gibbs’ Paradox is resolvable by an indistinguishability principle actually is an assertion that we can in principle possess a complete set of effective procedures for determining the identity or non-identity of arbitrary physical systems. We show that, in rather general situations, an assertion of this type is not well founded. It is further pointed out that a failure to recognize an incomplete set of “sameness criteria” can lead to serious blunders in physics and in biology.

The investigation of probabilistic causality has been plagued by a variety of misconceptions and misunderstandings. One has been the thought that the aim of the probabilistic account of causality is the reduction of causal claims to probabilistic claims. Nancy Cartwright (1979) has clearly rebutted that idea. Another ill-conceived idea continues to haunt the debate, namely the idea that contextual unanimity can do the work of objective homogeneity. It cannot. We argue that only objective homogeneity in combination with a causal interpretation of Bayesian networks can provide the desired criterion of probabilistic causality.

The concept of disease remains hotly contested. In light of problems with existing accounts, some theorists argue that the disease concept ought to be eliminated. We answer this skeptical challenge by reframing the discussion in terms of the role that the disease concept plays in the complex network of health care institutions in which it is deployed. We argue that while prevailing accounts do not suffer from the particular defects that critics have identified, they do suffer from other deficits, and this leads us to propose a new account that satisfies the desiderata for a concept of disease in human medicine.

Despite the platitude that analytic philosophy is deeply concerned with language, philosophers of science have paid little attention to methodological issues that arise within historical linguistics. I broach this topic by arguing that many inferences in historical linguistics conform to Reichenbach's common cause principle (CCP). Although the scope of CCP is narrower than many have thought, inferences about the genealogies of languages are particularly apt for reconstruction using CCP. Quantitative approaches to language comparison are readily understood as methods for detecting the correlations that serve as premises for common cause inferences, and potential sources of error in historical linguistics correspond to well-known limitations of CCP.

The growing acceptance and success of experimental economics has increased the interest of researchers in tackling philosophical and methodological challenges to which their work increasingly gives rise. I sketch some general issues that call for the combined expertise of experimental economists and philosophers of science, of experiment, and of inductive-statistical inference and modeling.

Some of the most imaginative analyses in contemporary science have been fostered by the paradox of irreversibility. Rendered as a question the paradox reads: How can the anisotropic macrophysical behavior of a system of molecules be reconciled with the underlying reversible molecular model? Attempts to resolve and dissolve the paradox have appealed to large numbers of particles, jammed correlations, unseen perturbations, hidden variables or constraints, uncertainty principles, averaging procedures (e.g., coarse graining and time smoothing), stochastic flaws, cosmological origins, etc.

While acknowledging these efforts as important articulations of basic ideas of statistical mechanics, we question their relevance to irreversibility as it occurs in nature. It seems to us that once the emergence of the phenomenon of equilibrium is understood in terms of molecular dynamics, the macroscopic appearance of irreversibility can also be understood in terms of the frequency of forced withdrawals from young equilibria. We believe that the paradox of irreversibility can be resolved in a simple, logically clear, and aesthetically pleasing manner.

Philosophy of science is the organized expression of a growing intent among philosophers and scientists to clarify, perhaps unify, the programs, methods and results of the disciplines of philosophy and of science. The examination of fundamental concepts and presuppositions in the light of the positive results of science, systematic doubt of the positive results, and a thorough-going analysis and critique of logic and of language, are typical projects for this joint effort. It is not necessary to be committed to a belief that science and philosophy are or should be one, or else that “never the twain shall meet.” If anything, there is to be expected a wholesome regard for the value of established science in furnishing a foil for philosophy and a check on its old extravagances. This does not mean that even the best-established science may not be subject to most devastating criticism by analysis of its foundations. In fact, despairing of the philosophy of the schools, science has done it largely for itself. The theories of gravitation, atomicity, electro-magnetism, evolution, relativity and quanta have all arisen through drastic revisions of complacent fundamental “truths.”

Physicalism is an empirical theory of the mind and its place in nature. So the physicalist must show that current neuroscience does not falsify physicalism, but instead supports it. Current neuroscience shows that a nervous system is what I call a vector function system. I provide a brief outline of the resources that empirical research has made available within the constraints of the vector function approach. Then I argue that these resources are sufficient, indeed apt, for the physicalist enterprise, by offering a vector functional, hence physicalist, theory of the percept—the perceptual experience itself, a paradigm of phenomenally immediate, introspectively accessible consciousness.

Extensive measurement is called weak if the axioms allow two objects to have the same scale value without being indifferent with respect to the order. Necessary and/or sufficient conditions for such representations are given. The Archimedean and the non-Archimedean case are dealt with separately.

Modern science’s ability to produce, store, and analyze big datasets is changing the way that scientific research is practiced. Philosophers have only begun to comprehend the changed nature of scientific reasoning in this age of “big data.” We analyze data-focused practices in biology and climate modeling, identifying distinct species of data-centric science: phenomena-laden in biology and phenomena-agnostic in climate modeling, each better suited for its own domain of application, though each entail trade-offs. We argue that data-centric practices in science are not monolithic because the opportunities and challenges presented by big data vary across scientific domains.

This paper examines the nomic covariationist strategy of using idealization to define representation. While the literature has focused upon the possibility of defining ideal conditions for perception, I argue that nomic covariationist appeals to idealization are pseudoscientific and contrary to a foundational and empirically well-supported methodological presupposition in cognitive science. Moreover, one major figure in this camp fails to come to grips with its role and its problems in mainstream science. Thus he forwards a false dichotomy of the sciences and treats idealization as a blank check written by scientists on an unknown bank. Finally, I consider and reject alternative formulations of the nomic covariationist's idealization strategy.

In this article, I offer a partial analysis of the role of values in qualitative data collection in social research. The partial analysis shows that nonepistemic values have both required and permissible roles to play during this phase of research. By appeal to the analysis, I reject the ideal of value-free science as applied to qualitative data collection, and I demonstrate why two alternative ideals should likewise be dismissed as standards for values in qualitative data collection. Also, I briefly discuss the extent to which the partial analysis carries over to quantitative data collection in social research.

I discuss a broad critique of the classical approach to the foundations of statistical mechanics (SM) offered by N. S. Krylov. He claims that the classical approach is in principle incapable of providing the foundations for interpreting the “laws” of statistical physics. Most intriguing are his arguments against adopting a de facto attitude towards the problem of irreversibility. I argue that the best way to understand his critique is as setting the stage for a positive theory which treats SM as a theory in its own right, involving a completely different conception of a system's state. As the orthodox approach treats SM as an extension of the classical or quantum theories (one which deals with large systems), Krylov is advocating a major break with the traditional view of statistical physics.