My Representing and Intervening (1983) concludes with what it calls an experimental argument for scientific realism about entities. The argument is evidently inapplicable to extragalactic astrophysics, but leaves open the possibility that there might be other grounds for scientific realism in that domain. Here I argue for antirealism in astrophysics, although not for any particular kind of antirealism. The argument is conducted by a detailed examination of some current research. It parallels the last chapter of (1983). Both represent the methodological opinion that abstract or semantic realism/antirealism debates are empty, and typically lead to confused or wrong conclusions because they pay so little attention to the details of a science.

Mundy (1983) presented the formal apparatus of certain relationist theories of space and space-time taking quantitative relations as primitive. The present paper discusses the philosophical and physical interpretation of such theories, and replies to some objections to such theories and to relationism in general raised in Field (1985). Under an appropriate second-order naturalistic Platonist interpretation of the formalism, quantitative relationist theories are seen to be entirely comparable to spatialist ones in respect of the issues raised by Field. Moreover, it appears that even if accepted as sound, Field's general line of criticism would not diminish the significance of relationism for philosophy of science, since this derives primarily from its connection to physical rather than to mathematical or philosophical ontology.

It is quite extraordinary, philosophically speaking, that according to the orthodox interpretation:

1. (a) quantum mechanics is a complete and comprehensive theory of microphysics, and yet

2. (b) the role of measurement, in quantum mechanics, cannot be analyzed in terms of the collective effects of the microphysical particles making up the apparatus.

It follows that, if the orthodox interpretation is correct, the measurement apparatus and its quantum physical effects cannot be accounted for microreductively. This is significant because it is widely believed that the relation between physical wholes and parts is microreductive. Indeed, many philosophers are persuaded of the inevitability of universal microreduction to the basic elements of microphysics. This is the viewpoint embodied in the program for the unity of science, espoused in recent years, most notably by Robert Causey (1977).

An option available to an agent is stable if it maximizes expected utility on the hypothetical assumption that the agent is going to choose it. As is well known, some decision problems lack a stable solution.

Paul Weirich (1986 and 1988) has recently proposed a decision principle which prescribes that the option chosen should be at least weakly stable—or “weakly ratifiable”, to use his terminology. According to him, full stability is an excessively strong demand. I shall argue that Weirich's proposal conflicts with the familiar condition of dominance. But I shall also prove that this difficulty can be avoided if we replace weak stability by “moderate” stability—where the latter property is somewhat stronger than the former.

It will be seen, however, that this modification does not help against other ailments connected with stability. In particular, to heed the demand of stability (of any kind) is to engage in a form of “wishful acting”. Also, the different stability demands all conflict with a close relative of the dominance condition: the condition of “indifference”. According to this condition, two actions are equally choiceworthy if they would always lead to the same outcomes—whatever state the world is in. On the other hand, the conditions of dominance and indifference would both be satisfied if we replaced a demand for stability (of some kind) by a related but distinct principle of “retrievability”. Retrievability and (full) stability are mutually independent properties of options, but each of them entails moderate stability. The paper ends with a discussion of the relevance of retrievability to theories of choiceworthiness and practical reason.

This paper examines a promising probabilistic theory of singular causation developed by David Lewis. I argue that Lewis' theory must be made more sophisticated to deal with certain counterexamples involving pre-emption. These counterexamples appear to show that in the usual case singular causation requires an unbroken causal process to link cause with effect. I propose a new probabilistic account of singular causation, within the framework developed by Lewis, which captures this intuition.

Stephen Stich has argued that psychological theories that instantiate his Syntactic Theory of Mind are to be preferred to content-based or representationalist theories, because the former can capture and explain a wider range of generalizations about cognitive processes than the latter. Stich's claims about the relative merits of the Syntactic Theory of Mind are unfounded. Not only is it false that syntactic theories can capture psychological generalizations that content-based theories cannot, but a large class of behavioral regularities, readily explained by content-based theories, appear to be beyond their explanatory reach.

Dunn and Hellman's objection to Popper and Miller's alleged disproof of inductive probability is considered and rejected. Dunn and Hellman base their objection on a decomposition of the incremental support P(h/e)-P(h) of h by e dual to that of Popper and Miller, and argue, dually to Popper and Miller, to a conclusion contrary to the latters' that all support is deductive in character. I contend that Dunn and Hellman's dualizing argument fails because the elements of their decomposition are not supports of parts of h. I conclude by reinforcing a different line of criticism of Popper and Miller due to Redhead.

Paul Horwich has formulated a paradox which he believes to be even more virulent than the related Hempel paradox. I show that Horwich's paradox, as originally formulated, has a purely logical solution, hence that it has no bearing on the theory of confirmation. On the other hand, it illuminates some undesirable traits of classical predicate logic. A revised formulation of the paradox is then dealt with in a way that implies a modest revision of Nicod's criterion.

The most recent attempt at factually establishing a “true” value for the oneway velocity of light is shown to be faulty. The proposal consists of two round-trip photons travelling first in vacuo and then through a medium of refractive index n before returning to their common point of origin. It is shown that this proposal, as well as a similar one considered by Salmon (1977), presupposes that the one-way velocities of light are equal to the round-trip value. Furthermore, experiments of this type, involving regions of space with varying refractive indices, cannot “single out” any factual value for the Reichenbach-Grünbaum ∊ factor thus posing no threat to the conventionalist thesis.

Some criticisms are offered of Barwise and Etchemendy's theory of truth, the principal one being that it violates a feature of truth called “supervenience”.