In this paper I examine Albert's (2000) claim that the low entropy state of the early universe is sufficient to explain irreversible thermodynamic phenomena. In particular, I argue that conditionalizing on the initial state of the universe does not have the explanatory power it is presumed to have. I present several arguments to the effect that Albert's ‘past hypothesis’ alone cannot justify the belief in past nonequilibrium conditions or ground the veracity of records of the past.

The paper is based on ranking theory, a theory of degrees of disbelief (and hence belief). On this basis, it explains enumerative induction, the confirmation of a law by its positive instances, which may, indeed, take various schemes. It gives a ranking theoretic explication of a possible law or a nomological hypothesis. It proves, then, that such schemes of enumerative induction uniquely correspond to mixtures of such nomological hypotheses. Thus, it shows both that de Finetti's probabilistic representation theorems may be transformed into an account of confirmation of possible laws and that enumerative induction is equivalent to such an account. The paper concludes with some remarks about the apriority of lawfulness, or the uniformity of nature.

In a recent essay, John Norton proposes a material theory of induction, according to which all justification for inductive inference ultimately stems from the particular facts of the case at hand. Despite being sympathetic to the pluralistic spirit of this proposal, I argue that central controversies among leading theories of inductive inference turn not on material facts but upon normative judgments regarding the proper standards and aims of induction. Thus, a pluralistic approach to induction can be successfully developed only given an explanation of how the choice of such aims and standards depends on features of particular cases.

In this paper we argue that the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum reality involves two elements: self-induced decoherence and macroscopicity. Self-induced decoherence does not require the openness of the system and its interaction with the environment: a single closed system can decohere when its Hamiltonian has continuous spectrum. We show that, if the system is macroscopic enough, after self-induced decoherence it can be described as an ensemble of classical distributions weighted by their corresponding probabilities. We also argue that classicality is an emergent property that arises when the behavior of the system is described from an observational perspective.

In his discussion of “Scientific Explanation and the Sense of Understanding” (Trout 2002), de Regt (2004) argues that Trout “denounces understanding as irrelevant, if not dangerous, from an epistemic perspective…” (de Regt 2004, 98), and that Trout prefers “a thoroughly objectivist view, in which understanding has no epistemic function and explanations require only accurate theories” (100). I argue that this is a fundamental misinterpretation of the objectivist proposal of Trout (2002), and that it results from de Regt's failure to address the distinction announced there between genuine and counterfeit understanding. De Regt also advances a pragmatic alternative to my realist account of understanding in scientific explanation, one that focuses on the skills of scientists and the intelligibility of theories. After supplementing my earlier account of genuine understanding, I argue that de Regt's pragmatic account obscures the nature of scientific explanation, and is vulnerable on several additional fronts.

Does the need to find a quantum theory of gravity imply that the gravitational field must be quantized? Physicists working in quantum gravity routinely assume an affirmative answer, often without being aware of the metaphysical commitments that tend to underlie this assumption. The ambition of this article is to probe these commitments and to analyze some recently adduced physical—as opposed to metaphysical—arguments pertinent to the issue of quantization. While there exist good reasons to quantize gravity, as this analysis will show, alternative approaches to gravity challenge the received wisdom. These renegade approaches do not regard gravity as a fundamental force, but rather as effective, i.e., as merely supervening on fundamental physics. I will urge that these alternative accounts at least prove the tenability of an opposition to quantization.

David Lewis (1979) defends the thesis of the asymmetry of overdetermination: later affairs are seldom overdetermined by earlier affairs, but earlier affairs are usually overdetermined by later affairs. Recently, Carol Cleland (2002) has argued that since the distinctive methodologies of historical science and experimental science exploit different aspects of this asymmetry, the methodology of historical science is just as good, epistemically speaking, as that of experimental science. This paper shows, first, that Cleland's epistemological conclusion does not follow from the thesis of the asymmetry of overdetermination, because overdetermination (in Lewis's sense) is compatible with epistemic underdetermination. The paper also shows, contra Cleland, that there is at least one interesting sense in which historical science is epistemically inferior to experimental science, after all, because local underdetermination problems are more widespread in historical than in experimental science.

Modal interpretations are hidden-variable, no-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics that were designed to solve the measurement problem and reconcile this theory with relativity. Yet, as no-go theorems by Dickson and Clifton (1998), Arntzenius (1998) and Myrvold (2002) demonstrate, current modal interpretations are incompatible with relativity. In the mainstream modal interpretations, properties of composite systems are generally unrelated to the properties of their subsystems. We propose holistic and relational interpretations of properties to explain this failure of property composition. Based on these interpretations, we consider strategies for circumventing Myrvold's theorem, which are also effective against the other two theorems.

There is a very plausible transitivity principle for theory choice. It says that if all criteria of theory evaluation are considered, and theory A is a better theory than theory B, and theory B is a better theory than theory C, then A is a better theory than C. I argue against this principle. It turns out that whenever there are two or more relevant and independent criteria of theory evaluation, and that whenever at least of one the criteria is ‘nonlinear’ in a certain sense, there may be violations of transitivity that do not violate any standards of rationality (of theory choice). This shows, again, that theory choice cannot be seen as merely the application of given rules of rational theory choice.