The possibility of time travel, as permitted in General Relativity, is responsible for constraining physical fields beyond what laws of nature would otherwise require. In the special case where time travel is limited to a single object returning to the past and interacting with itself, consistency constraints can be avoided if the dynamics is continuous and the object's state space satisfies a certain topological requirement: that all null-homotopic mappings from the state-space to itself have some fixed point. Where consistency constraints do exist, no new physics is needed to enforce them. One needs only to accept certain global topological constraints as laws, something that is reasonable in any case.

Although Hale and Resnik are correct in their specific objection to my proposal for nominalizing science, the proposal can be saved by means of a simple and plausible modification.

In this article, I discuss calls for access to empirical data within controversies about climate science, as revealed and highlighted by the publication of the e-mail correspondence involving scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in 2009. I identify several arguments advanced for and against the sharing of scientific data. My conclusions are that, whereas transparency in science is to be valued, appeals to an unproblematic category of ‘empirical data’ in climate science do not reflect the complexities of scientific practice in this field.

In 1932, John von Neumann argued for the equivalence of the thermodynamic entropy and −Trρlnρ, since known as the von Neumann entropy. Meir Hemmo and Orly R. Shenker recently challenged this argument by pointing out an alleged discrepancy between the two entropies in the single-particle case, concluding that they must be distinct. In this article, their argument is shown to be problematic as it (a) allows for a violation of the second law of thermodynamics and (b) is based on an incorrect calculation of the von Neumann entropy.

1. Introduction. In (Kripke 1970), Saul Kripke distinguished rigid from accidental designators to refute the Frege-Russell theory of names, to rehabilitate natural necessity, and to subvert mind-body dualism. Discussions of Kripke's work have tended to follow this agenda. Here I examine a possible extension of Kripke's apparatus to scientific reduction and physical necessity. My overall conclusions are negative: while Kripkean arguments appear to yield surprising conclusions that cut against empiricism, these conclusions merely restate empiricist tenets in mildly paradoxical terms. The larger moral is that contemporary essentialism is less philosophically significant that has perhaps been supposed.

This paper points to some problems for the position that D.M. Walsh calls “alternative individualism,” and argues that in defending this view Walsh has omitted an important part of what separates individualists and externalists in psychology. Walsh's example of Hox gene complexes is discussed in detail to show why some sort of externalism about scientific taxonomy more generally is a more plausible view than any extant version of individualism.

A recent article (Leeds and Healey 1996) argues that the modal interpretation (Copenhagen variant) of quantum mechanics does not do justice to immediately repeated non-disturbing measurements. This objection has been raised before, but the article presents it in a new, detailed, precise form. I show that the objection is mistaken.

Various causal details of the genetic process of translation have been singled out to account for its privileged status as a ‘code’. We explicate the biological uses of coding talk by characterizing a class of special causal processes in which topological properties are the causally relevant ones. This class contains both the process of translation and communication theoretic coding processes as special cases. We propose a formalism in terms of graphs for expressing our theory of biological codes and discuss its utility in understanding biological systems.

The logical empiricists knew that scientific theories sometimes arise out of the attempt to reconcile or unify two existing theories. They also thought that, at best, old theories would be retained as approximations to their successors. Kuhn lost both insights when he rejected the logical empiricists' formal approach in favor of an exclusively historical and psychological one. But when Putnam tried to restore such ideas he failed to provide them with the historical support they require. An account of revolutionary unifications is defended as reconciling Putnam's realist ideas about methodology with Kuhn's historical approach.

Feyerabend's “Classical Empiricism” (1970) draws on a 17th century Jesuit argument against Protestant fundamentalism. The argument is very general, and applies to any simple foundationalist epistemology. Feyerabend uses it against Classical Empiricism—roughly, the view that what is to be believed is exactly what experience establishes, and no more—which he identifies as among other things Newton's “dogmatic ideology.”

Consider a red circle, and suppose it is a paradigmatic thing. Some philosophers maintain that a thing is ontologically analyzable into a particular exemplifying properties, those properties truly ascribed to the thing by the customary words. Our red circle, then, consists of a particular, say a; two properties, red and circle; and exemplification, a tie tying a, red, and circle into “the red circle.” Upon this analysis, a is bare, i.e., not re-recognizable as such, whereas red and circle are natured, i.e., not bare, and, further, are universal, i.e., they may be exemplified by several particulars (or, somewhat differently, they may be in several things).

Philosophers of biology generally agree that causal specificity tracks biological importance: more specific causes are more important. I argue that this correlation does not hold in much research aimed at biomedical intervention. Applying James Woodward’s analysis of causal specificity to the development and design of HIV treatments, I show that drugs that are less causally specific produce better therapeutic outcomes and are more highly valued. Thus, I conclude that the importance of biological causes does not track their specificity but instead varies depending on the biological practice we consider and the goals of that practice.

I discuss the behavior of the Akaike Information Criterion in the limit when the sample size grows. I show the falsity of the claim made recently by Stanley Mulaik in Philosophy of Science that AIC would not distinguish between saturated and other correct factor analytic models in this limit. I explain the meaning and demonstrate the validity of the familiar, more moderate criticism that AIC is not a consistent estimator of the number of parameters of the smallest correct model. I also give a short explanation why this feature of AIC is compatible with the motives for using it.

One of the most serious theoretical obstacles to contemporary spacetime substantivalism is Earman and Norton's hole argument. We argue that applying the bundle theory of substance to spacetime points allows spacetime substantivalists to escape the conclusion of this argument. Some philosophers have claimed that the bundle theory cannot be applied to substantival spacetime in this way due to problems in individuating spacetime points in symmetrical spacetimes. We demonstrate that it is possible to overcome these difficulties if spatiotemporal properties are viewed as tropes rather than universals.

I am grateful to Professor Wheatley for his note, [3], on my analysis of interrogatives, [1]. His comments bring out very clearly a number of considerations that deserve our closest attention. For example, he shows that if we can classify interrogatives as true and false—as I proposed to do—then we can properly inquire about what sentences contradict them, and what sentences are contingently or logically equivalent to them. Furthermore, he shows that, on my analysis, no indirect question can contradict any other indirect question and he accordingly, and correctly, looks for such contradictories among declarative sentences. (Different considerations than any that Professor Wheatley brought out will equally well show that no direct question will contradict any other direct question: “Is Freeman Governor of Minnesota?” and “Is not Freeman Governor of Minnesota?” express different concerns with one and the same topic of concern, hence, are equivalent.) Finally, he notes, [3], p. 54, that in my article, I have treated only inquisitive questions and have said nothing about deliberative or practical questions. While practical questions (as well as their practical answers) demand a different kind of treatment than that which Wheatley speculatively, albeit very tentatively, extrapolates for me, still these questions do form a kind of interrogative that did not get any attention in my article. (But the problems are so complex that I shall not try to say anything about them in this Reply.)

This article considers the recent work of David Lewis, Ned Hall, and Michael Thau on chance and the best system account of law. My rejoinder suggests that, though their proposals may succeed at the stated goal of reworking the problematic relationship between chance, credence, and law, the resulting account of law suffers from an even more significant difficulty. To oversimplify a bit, I argue that their account is unable to handle the nomic necessity of laws. My criticisms suggest an alternative account of law which provides, I argue, a preferable account of nomic necessity.

John Greenwood (this issue) claims that neglect of an important methodological distinction has contributed directly to the “epistemic impoverishment” of empirical studies of all forms of professional psychotherapy. I challenge this claim, as well as other important claims he makes about the efficacy of psychoanalysis and other forms of psychotherapy.

In their paper, “Vexing Expectations,” Nover and Hájek (2004) present an allegedly paradoxical betting scenario which they call the Pasadena Game (PG). They argue that the silence of standard decision theory concerning the value of playing PG poses a serious problem. This paper provides a threefold response. First, I argue that the real problem is not that decision theory is “silent” concerning PG, but that it delivers multiple conflicting verdicts. Second, I offer a diagnosis of the problem based on the insight that standard decision theory is, rightly, sensitive to order. Third, I describe a new betting scenario—the Alternating St. Petersburg Game—which is genuinely paradoxical. Standard decision theory is silent on the value of playing this game even if restrictions are placed on the order in which the various alternative payoffs are summed.