In Science, Truth, and Democracy, Philip Kitcher develops the notion of well-ordered science: scientific inquiry whose research agenda and applications (but not methods) are subject to public control guided by democratic deliberation. Kitcher's primary departure from his earlier views involves rejecting the idea that there is any single standard of scientific significance. The context-dependence of scientific significance opens up many normative issues to philosophical investigation and to resolution through democratic processes. Although some readers will feel Kitcher has not moved far enough from earlier epistemological positions, the book does represent an important addition to literature on science, society, and values.

The semantic concept of information is one of the most important, and one of the most problematical concepts in biology. I suggest a broad definition of biological information: a source becomes an informational input when an interpreting receiver can react to the form of the source (and variations in this form) in a functional manner. The definition accommodates information stemming from environmental cues as well as from evolved signals, and calls for a comparison between information-transmission in different types of inheritance systems—the genetic, the epigenetic, the behavioral, and the cultural-symbolic. This comparative perspective highlights the different ways in which information is acquired and transmitted, and the role that such information plays in heredity and evolution. Focusing on the special properties of the transfer of information, which are very different from those associated with the transfer of materials or energy, also helps to uncover interesting evolutionary effects and suggests better explanations for some aspects of the evolution of communication.

Bechtel and Mundale (1999) argue that multiple realizability is not plausible. They point out that neuroscientists assume that psychological traits are realized similarly in homologous brain structures and contend that a biological aspect of the brain that is relevant to neuropsychological state individuation provides evidence against multiple realizability. I argue that Bechtel and Mundale adduce the wrong sort of evidence against multiple realizability. Homologous traits do not provide relevant evidence. It is homoplasious traits of brains that can provide evidence for or against multiple realizability.

Naive deductive accounts of confirmation have the undesirable consequence that if E confirms H, then E also confirms the conjunction H & X, for any X—even if X is utterly irrelevant to H (and E). Bayesian accounts of confirmation also have this property (in the case of deductive evidence). Several Bayesians have attempted to soften the impact of this fact by arguing that—according to Bayesian accounts of confirmation— E will confirm the conjunction H & X less strongly than E confirms H (again, in the case of deductive evidence). I argue that existing Bayesian “resolutions” of this problem are inadequate in several important respects. In the end, I suggest a new-and-improved Bayesian account (and understanding) of the problem of irrelevant conjunction.

A condition is formulated in terms of the probabilities of two pairs of correlated events in a classical probability space which is necessary for the two correlations to have a single (Reichenbachian) common-cause and it is shown that there exists pairs of correlated events, probabilities of which violate the necessary condition. It is concluded that different correlations do not in general have a common common-cause. It is also shown that this conclusion remains valid even if one weakens slightly Reichenbach's definition of common-cause. The significance of the difference between common-causes and common common-causes is emphasized from the perspective of Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle.

In Epistemic Cultures (1999), Karin Knorr Cetina argues that different scientific fields exhibit different epistemic cultures. She claims that in high energy physics (HEP) individual persons are displaced as epistemic subjects in favor of experiments themselves. In molecular biology (MB), by contrast, individual persons remain the primary epistemic subjects. Using Ed Hutchins’ (1995) account of navigation aboard a traditional US Navy ship as a prototype, I argue that both HEP and MB exhibit forms of distributed cognition. That is, in both fields cognition is distributed across individual persons and complex artifacts. The cognitive system producing the knowledge is heterogeneous. Nevertheless, in both fields we can reserve epistemic agency for the human components of these systems. We do not need to postulate new distributed cognitive agents, let alone ones exhibiting new forms of consciousness.

This essay reviews two recent books commenting on, and contributing to, the “science wars.” In Who Rules in Science? James Robert Brown respectfully but firmly rejects the “nihilist” and the “naturalist” wings of social constructivism. He rejects attempts to debunk science in the name of a relativist or anarchist epistemology. He also criticizes the “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge and its implied contrast between reasons and causes. In Prometheus Bedeviled Norman Levitt examines the cultural roots of current discontent with science. Levitt's analysis—and polemic—charges contemporary culture with a pervasive cheapening of intellectual standards.