Starting with a discussion of what I call ‘Koyré's paradox of conceptual novelty’, I introduce the ideas of Damerow et al. on the establishment of classical mechanics in Galileo's work. I then argue that although their view on the nature of Galileo's conceptual innovation is convincing, it misses an essential element: Galileo's use of the experiments described in the first day of the Two New Sciences. I describe these experiments and analyze their function. Central to my analysis is the idea that Galileo's pendulum experiments serve to secure the reference of his theoretical models in actually occurring cases of free fall. In this way, Galileo's experiments constitute an essential part of the meaning of the new concepts of classical mechanics.

The writer of this paper is not an expert on probability from either the mathematical or the philosophical side, but a theoretical physicist forced by the exigencies of work in his own field to make his peace with the concept of probability. The present contribution is a sequel to remarks on two different types of probability in a recent paper on the relation between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics.

Confirmation bias has been widely studied for its role in failures of reasoning. Individuals exhibiting confirmation bias fail to engage with information that contradicts their current beliefs, and, as a result, can fail to abandon inaccurate beliefs. But although most investigations of confirmation bias focus on individual learning, human knowledge is typically developed within a social structure. We use network models to show that moderate confirmation bias often improves group learning. However, a downside is that a stronger form of confirmation bias can hurt the knowledge-producing capacity of the community.

The concept of scaffold is widespread in science and increasingly common in evolutionary biology. While this concept figures in causal explanations, it is not clear what scaffolds are and what role they play in those explanations. Here we present evolutionary scaffolding explanation as a distinct type of explanatory strategy, distinguishing it from other types of evolutionary explanation. By doing so, we clarify the meaning of “scaffold” as a causal concept and its potential contribution to accounts of evolutionary novelty and major transitions.

A proper understanding of black hole complementarity as a response to the information loss paradox requires recognizing the essential role played by arguments for the applicability and limitations of effective semiclassical theories. I argue that this perspective sheds important light on the arguments advanced by Susskind, Thorlacius, and Uglum—although ultimately I argue that their position is unsatisfactory. I also consider the argument offered by 't Hooft for the breakdown of microcausality around black holes, and conclude that it relies on a mistaken treatment of measurement collapse. There is, however, a legitimate argumentative role for black hole complementarity, exemplified by the position of Kiem, Verlinde, and Verlinde, that calls for a more subtle analysis of the limitations facing our effective theories.

This paper introduces a new equilibrium concept for normal form games called dependency equilibrium; it is defined, exemplified, and compared with Nash and correlated equilibria in Sections 2–4. Its philosophical motive is to rationalize cooperation in the one shot prisoners’ dilemma. A brief discussion of its meaningfulness in Section 5 concludes the paper.

Agent-based models (ABMs) are widely used to study how individual interactions shape collective behaviors. Critics argue that ABMs are often too simplistic to capture real-world complexities. We address this by integrating artificial neural networks into ABMs, focusing on enhancing the Hegselmann–Krause (HK) model. By using multilayer perceptrons as agents, we create more realistic ABMs that better reflect actual agents. This approach yields multiple models, as core elements of the HK model can be defined in various ways. We conduct two computational studies to compare these models with each other and with traditional individual-learning paradigms.

Kurt Gödel criticizes Rudolf Carnap's conventionalism on the grounds that it relies on an empiricist admissibility condition, which, if applied, runs afoul of his second incompleteness theorem. Thomas Ricketts and Michael Friedman respond to Gödel's critique by denying that Carnap is committed to Gödel's admissibility criterion; in effect, they are denying that Carnap is committed to any empirical constraint in the application of his principle of tolerance. I argue in response that Carnap is indeed committed to an empirical requirement vis-à-vis tolerance, a fact that becomes clear upon closer scrutiny of Carnap's relevant writings.

We examine arguments regarding the use of mechanistic evidence in assessing treatment efficacy and find that advocates and critics of EBM+ have largely been talking past each other due to a difference in focus. We explore aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease as a case that may speak to the role of EBM+ in pharmaceutical regulation. The case suggests the debate may be more fruitful if philosophers confine debates to particular domains of medicine and weigh in prospectively instead of relying on historical cases in which outcomes are known and that are susceptible to hindsight bias.

We provide three innovations to recent debates about whether topological or “network” explanations are a species of mechanistic explanation. First, we more precisely characterize the requirement that all topological explanations are mechanistic explanations and show scientific practice to belie such a requirement. Second, we provide an account that unifies mechanistic and non-mechanistic topological explanations, thereby enriching both the mechanist and autonomist programs by highlighting when and where topological explanations are mechanistic. Third, we defend this view against some powerful mechanist objections. We conclude from this that topological explanations are autonomous from their mechanistic counterparts.

The Black-Scholes(-Merton) model of options pricing establishes a theoretical relationship between the “fair” price of an option and other parameters characterizing the option and prevailing market conditions. Here I discuss a common application of the model with the following striking feature: the (expected) output of analysis apparently contradicts one of the core assumptions of the model on which the analysis is based. I will present several attitudes one might take toward this situation and argue that it reveals ways in which a “broken” model can nonetheless provide useful (and tradeable) information.

Computer scientists have provided a distinct justification of Occam’s Razor. Using the probably approximately correct framework, they provide a theorem that they claim demonstrates that we should favor simpler hypotheses. The argument relies on a philosophical interpretation of the theorem. I argue that the standard interpretation of the result in the literature is misguided and that a better reading does not, in fact, support Occam’s Razor at all. To this end, I state and prove a very similar theorem that, if interpreted the same way, would justify the contradictory Anti-Occam’s Razor—the principle that we should favor more complex hypotheses.

Harvey Siegel's (1985) attempts to revive the traditional epistemological formulation of the rationality of science. Contending that “a general commitment to evidence” is constitutive of method and rationality in science, Siegel advances its compatibility with specific, historically attuned formulations of principles of evidential support as a virtue of his aprioristic candidate for science's rationality. In point of fact, this account is compatible with virtually any formulation of evidential support, which runs afoul of Siegel's claim that scientific beliefs must be evaluated with respect to their rationality. The unwelcome consequence of Siegel's view is that most any belief, scientific or pseudoscientific, can be defended as rational. Indeed, if we want to furnish a warrant for rational choice, we must turn to the very historically informed principles of evidential support that are dismissed by Siegel as providing a misleading portrait of science's rationality.

In his (1984) John Beatty correctly identifies the issue of the role of chance in evolution as one of the liveliest disputes in evolutionary biology. He argues, on the basis of a carefully articulated example, that “Even on a proper construal of ‘natural selection’, it is difficult to distinguish between the ‘improbable results of natural selection’ and evolution by random drift”. His other remarks indicate that he is thinking of conceptual as well as practical indistinguishability. In this discussion I take issue with one of the consequences Beatty draws from his example. I argue that the example at most shows that the effects of drift and selection are sometimes difficult to separate in practice, but that the stronger conceptual claim is not warranted. The deeper problems raised by the example are seen to demand causal, rather then conceptual, analysis.

The logical pattern underlying twentieth century science is strikingly uniform from physics through biology and psychology to social science. Our purpose will be to analyze and illustrate this pattern, to trace its development, especially from the Middle Ages to the present time, and to suggest some possible consequences for the future.

Doppelt (1986,1990), Siegel (1990), and Rosenberg (1996) argue that the pivotal feature of Laudan's normative naturalism, namely his axiology, lacks a naturalistic foundation. In this paper I show that this objection turns on a misunderstanding of Laudan's use of the term ‘naturalism’. Specifically, I argue that there are two important senses of naturalism running through Laudan's work. Once these two strands are made explicit, the objection raised by Doppelt and others simply disappears.

The primary title of this essay is derived from Arthur Fine's recent book, The Shaky Game (1986), which is a rephrasing of “risky game”, a term Einstein applied to the defenders of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, claiming that “‘most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality‘” (Fine 1986, 2). Just as Einstein's term indicates his disagreement with this standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, Fine's term is being used to express disapproval of his interpretation of the philosophy of physics of Einstein and Bohr. The subtitle forecasts my evaluation of Fine's attempt in NOA (the “Natural Ontological Attitude”) to provide a satisfactory ontological basis of scientific inquiry.

The antireductionist arguments of many philosophers (e.g., Baker, Fodor and Davidson) are motivated by a worry that successful reduction would eliminate rather than conserve the mental. This worry derives from a misunderstanding of the empiricist account of reduction, which, although it does not underwrite “cognitive suicide”, should be rejected for its positivist baggage. Philosophy of psychology needs more detailed attention to issues in natural science which serve as analogies for reduction of the mental. I consider a range of central cases, including water and H2O, genes and DNA, and common sense and scientific solidity. The last case is illuminated by Eddington's Two Tables paradox, a resolution which suggests the plasticity of the mental under reduction. If reduction of the mental is like any of these cases, it is neither empiricist nor eliminative.

van Fraassen's constructivist empiricist account of theories makes an epistemic distinction between entities that can and cannot be observed with the naked eye. A belief about the correctness of a theoretical description of an entity that is observable with the naked eye can be warranted by a theory. In contrast, no theory can warrant a belief about the correctness of a description of an unobservable entity.

I argue that we ought to instead adopt a view that takes account of the fact that some entities that cannot be observed with the naked eye can nevertheless be observed on the basis of the same physical principle as those entities that can be. This suggests that there is a distinction different from van Fraassen's that might do the work van Fraassen intends his to do, but a distinction that is principled. Understanding why this is so suggests that his distinction is grounded merely in human chauvinism.