I propose, in the context of Everett interpretations of quantum mechanics, a way of understanding how there can be genuine uncertainty about the future notwithstanding that the universe is governed by known, deterministic dynamical laws, and notwithstanding that there is no ignorance about initial conditions, nor anything in the universe whose evolution is not itself governed by the known dynamical laws. The proposal allows us to draw some lessons about the relationship between chance and determinism, and to dispel one source of the tendency among Everettians to introduce consciousness as a primitive element into physical description.

The article investigates the relations between Hausdorff and non-Hausdorff manifolds as objects of general relativity. We show that every non-Hausdorff manifold can be seen as a result of gluing together some Hausdorff manifolds. In the light of this result, we investigate a modal interpretation of a non-Hausdorff differential manifold, according to which it represents a bundle of alternative space-times, all of which are compatible with a given initial data set.

This article explores some issues having to do with the use of experimental results from one-shot games to reach conclusions about the existence of social preferences that are taken to figure in the explanation of cooperation in repeated interactions in real life.

After some background setting in which it is shown how Maudlin's (1989, 1990) response to the hole argument of Earman and Norton (1987) is related to that of Rynasiewicz (1994), it is argued that the syntactic proposals of Mundy (1992) and of Leeds (1995), which claim to dismiss the hole argument as an uninteresting blunder, are inadequate. This leads to a discussion of how the responses of Maudlin and Rynasiewicz relate to issues about gauge freedom and relativity principles.

In the course of his researches in electromagnetism and the kinetic theory of gases, James Clerk Maxwell gave some thought to the nature of science itself. His observations in this field are of interest today not only because they are his, but because they are still instructive. Maxwell's views are to be found in the many asides with which he enlivened his scientific papers and treatises and in the various articles and reviews which he prepared for more popular consumption. The topics discussed bear on his own contributions to physics; they include the logic of dynamical explanation, the method of physical analogy, and the perennial question of action at a distance versus contiguity. In the present essay, I wish to discuss Maxwell's views on dynamical explanation.

David Lewis's best-system analysis of laws of nature is perhaps the best known sophisticated regularity theory of laws. Its strengths are widely recognized, even by some of its ablest critics. Yet it suffers from what appears to be a glaring weakness: It seems to grant an arbitrary privilege to the standards of our own scientific culture. I argue that by reformulating, or reinterpreting, Lewis's exposition of the best-system analysis, we arrive at a view that is free of this weakness. The resulting theory of laws has the surprising consequence that the term “law of nature” is indexical.

The papers presented at the Chicago Darwin Centennial suggest a fresh approach to the philosophical problem of ends in nature. In order to avoid the implications of “teleology,” assumed to refer only to the process of evolution as directed towards goals, the discussants use “teleonomy” in reference to the biological organism as end-directed (for reproduction). They accept “teleonomy” only as descriptive, and neglect its significance for theory.

The present thesis is that each of the three recognized phases of universal evolution: inorganic, organic, and post-organic initiated by the advent of man and his culture, is characterized and made possible by the emergence of a distinctive type of teleonomic organization. While the process of evolutionary change is not itself end-directed to any goal, the end-directed structures which arise are not only “in nature” but are themselves crucial factors in evolution, since it is on them that natural selection operates. By using the concept of teleonomy, it is argued, one can avoid the issue of “mechanism” versus “teleology.”

In the usual procedure of deriving equilibrium thermodynamics from classical statistical mechanics, Gibbsian fine-grained entropy is taken as the analogue of thermodynamical entropy. However, it is well known that the fine-grained entropy remains constant under the Hamiltonian flow. In this paper it is argued that we need not search for alternatives for fine-grained entropy, nor do we have to reject Hamiltonian dynamics, in order to solve the problem of the constancy of fine-grained entropy and, more generally, to account for the non-equilibrium part of the laws of thermodynamics. Rather, we have to weaken the requirement that equilibrium be identified with a stationary probability distribution.

While discussing the work of Kuhn and Hanson, John Greenwood (1990) misidentifies the nature of the relationship between the incommensurability of theories and the theory-ladenness of observation. After pointing out this error, I move on to consider Greenwood's main argument that the Quine-Duhem thesis suffers from a form of epistemological self-defeat if it is interpreted to mean that any recalcitrant observation can always be accommodated to any theory. Greenwood finds this interpretation implausible because some adjustments to auxiliary hypotheses undermine too much of the prior observational evidence for the test theory. I argue that Greenwood mistakes the logico-metaphysical Quine-Duhem thesis for an epistemological one. All the argument he takes to undercut it actually illustrates how well the thesis works on a practical level. This is illustrated with an example from contemporary immunology.

The subject to which I invite your attention this evening is a very recent development in mathematics which happens to be of great importance to philosophy.

The question may perhaps be raised why a terrifying topic like mathematics as introduced into an Institute of Philosophy. There are two answers to this question. In the first place my talk this evening will not be a “mathematical lecture” in any ordinary sense of the term, and no mathematical knowledge whatsoever will be presupposed. In the second place, even if it were to be a mathematical lecture, such an audience as is here assembled tonight would find nothing terrifying in the prospect.

In an earlier paper (Dupré 1984), I criticized a thesis sometimes defended by theorists of probabilistic causality, namely, that a probabilistic cause must raise the probability of its effect in every possible set of causally relevant background conditions (the “contextual unanimity thesis”). I also suggested that a more promising analysis of probabilistic causality might be sought in terms of statistical relevance in a fair sample. Ellery Eells (1987) has defended the contextual unanimity thesis against my objections, and also raised objections of his own to my positive claims. In this paper I defend and amplify both my objections to the contextual unanimity thesis and my constructive suggestion.

Many physicalists are committed to an austere dichotomy: either beliefs, desires and intentions are scientifically respectable or attributions of such attitudes are all false. One physicalist, Daniel Dennett, offers a third alternative, which seems to permit a kind of instrumentalism concerning attitudes. I argue that Dennett's attempt to reconcile an instrumentalistic account of attributions of attitudes with a thoroughgoing physicalism founders on unresolvable conflicts between his official theory and his actual treatment of key concepts. As a result, instrumentalism concerning attitudes is exposed as inadequate to be a genuine alternative to the physicalist's dichotomy.

The present paper is concerned chiefly with the problem of scientific prediction. It aims at a factual analysis of the processes leading to prediction, and ventures an appraisal, in the light of this analysis, of some modern and unconventional theories of probability and truth. But although prediction is here chosen as the central issue of discussion, I do not wish to imply that, in its usual sense, it is the only or even the dominant issue of scientific research.

Essentialism—understood as the doctrine that there are natural kinds—can be sustained with respect to the most fundamental physical entities of the world, as I elsewhere argue. In this paper I take up the question of the existence of natural kinds among complex structures built out of these elementary ones. I consider a number of objections to essentialism, in particular Locke's puzzle about the existence of borderline cases. A number of recent attempts to justify biological taxonomy are critically examined. I conclude that theory partially justifies such taxonomies but supports only a weaker form of essentialism.

I argue that post-Kuhnian approaches to rational scientific change fail to appreciate several distinct philosophical requirements and relativist challenges that have been assumed to be, and may in fact be essential to any adequate conception of scientific rationality. These separate requirements and relativist challenges are clearly distinguished and motivated. My argument then focuses on Shapere's view that there are typically good reasons for scientific change. I argue: (1) that contrary to his central aim, his account of good reasons ultimately presupposes the requirement of universal standards of scientific reasoning; (2) that the good reasons established by his account underdetermine the rationality of scientific change and allow that other changes would have been equally or even more rational; (3) that as a result, Shapere's approach fails to meet what I characterize as the challenges of moderate, sociological, and cognitive relativism.

The neutral and nearly neutral theories of molecular evolution are sometimes characterized as theories about drift alone, where drift is described solely as an outcome, rather than a process. We argue, however, that both selection and drift, as causal processes, are integral parts of both theories. However, the nearly neutral theory explicitly recognizes alleles and/or molecular substitutions that, while engaging in weakly selected causal processes, exhibit outcomes thought to be characteristic of random drift. A narrow focus on outcomes obscures the significant role of weakly selected causal processes in the nearly neutral theory.

In a series of papers, Bence Nanay has recently put forward and defended a new theory of function, which he calls the ‘Modal Theory of Function’. In this article, I critically address this theory and argue that it fails to fulfill some key desiderata that a satisfactory theory of function must comply with. As a result, I conclude that, whatever property Nanay’s notion of function refers to, it is not the property having the function that is standardly attributed in science.

Theorists working on information and representation are often not centrally concerned with “Shannon” information, as it is often put, but with some other, sometimes called “semantic,” kind of information. This perception is wrong. Shannon’s theory of information is the only one we need. I sketch a (Shannon) informational account of representation, for a certain important family of cases. This account, which represents a significant departure from the Dretskean philosophical mainstream, will show how a number of popular proposals about the purportedly noninformational ingredients in representation actually belong in the same coherent, purely information-theoretic picture.

Fictionalists believe that scientific models are about model systems that are imaginary. Michael Weisberg has claimed that fictionalism is indefensible because many scientific models are about model systems that are unimaginable. According to a certain account of imagination, what Weisberg says is plausible. According to another, more defensible account of imagination, it is not. I discuss these issues within the context of an allegedly unimaginable model system in ecology, but the conclusions I draw are more general. I then describe how fictionalism should be recast in order to deal with Weisberg’s critique.