This paper attempts to place Goodman's “New Riddle of Induction” within the context of a subjectivist understanding of inductive logic. It will be argued that predicates such as ‘grue’ cannot be denied projectible status in any a priori way, but must be considered in the context of a situation of inductive support. In particular, it will be argued that questions of projectibility are to be understood as a variety of questions about the ways a given sample is random. Various examples are considered, including cases when ‘grue’ (as opposed to 'green') should be projected, and some remarks are offered on what is meant when it is claimed that a sample is random (in ways relevant to inductive support) and how such randomness is determined. The view presented helps to make clear the relation between such apparently non-projectible predicates as 'grue' and the concept of being examined.

The use that the scientist makes of his principles is well known. In the normal course of scientific investigation, a hypothesis which explains some physical phenomenon adequately in every particular, but which runs counter to, say, the laws of inertia, cannot be held without further experimentation. Such experimentation must continue until the irreconcilability of the hypothesis with the laws is resolved. In most cases the hypothesis will fail to submit to further tests, will be declared inadequate, and will give way to a new one.

This article unpacks a particular use of ‘cases’ within developmental biology, namely as a means of describing the typical or canonical patterns of phenomena. The article explores how certain cases have come to be established within the field and argues that although they were initially selected for reasons of convenience or ease of experimental manipulation, these cases come to serve as key reference points within the field because of the epistemological structures imposed on them by the scientists using them and, hence, become usable in a wider variety of circumstances including future theory development.

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.

1. Introduction. Attempts to utilize the probability calculus to prove or disprove various inductive or inductive skeptical theses are, I believe, highly problematic. Inductivism and inductive skepticism are substantive (logically consistent) philosophical positions that do not allow of merely formal proofs or disproofs. Often the problems with particular alleged formal proofs of inductive or inductive sceptical theses turn on subtle technical considerations. In the following I highlight such considerations in pointing out the flaws of two proofs, one an alleged proof of an inductive sceptical conclusion due to Karl Popper, the other an alleged proof of an inductivist thesis originally due to Harold Jeffreys and later advocated by John Earman. Surprisingly, in examining Popper's argument it is shown that certain apparently weak premises, often embraced by both inductivists and deductivists, lend themselves to inductive conclusions. However it is argued that those premises are still philosophically substantive and not amenable to a purely formal demonstration. The lesson to be learnt here is twofold. First, we need to be very careful in determining which formal theses entail, and which are entailed by, inductive skepticism and inductivism. Second, we need to take great care in laying out and examining the assumptions presumed in formal arguments directed for and against such formal theses. In a follow up article I will consider various attempts by David Stove and Karl Popper and David Miller to identify the exact content of inductive skepticism and propose a new identification based on the theory of content developed in Gemes 1994. Finally I will compare this new version with that proposed recently in Alberto Mura 1990.

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.

“Accessibility” is a crucial concept of possible worlds semantics. The simplest approach to accessibility is the “magical theory” that construes this relation as analogous to spatial or temporal relations. In this paper I give a nonmagical structural account of the accessibility relation that can be used to give a necessitarian account of kinds and laws. Laws are characterized in a structural way as stable invariants of the world's gestalt. Finally, I point out how the structural approach can be embedded in a general representational theory of modality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Women are cited less frequently than men in a variety of scientific fields. Drawing theoretical resources from Fricker and Hookway, I argue that these gendered citation practices constitute a form of participatory epistemic injustice insofar as they prevent female scientists from fully engaging in the epistemic practices of science. Furthermore, Longino’s notion of “uptake” gives us a way of understanding gendered citation practices as an epistemic harm accrued not simply by individuals but by scientific communities as a whole. Finally, I discuss the cumulative harms of this kind of participatory epistemic injustice for individuals and for marginalized groups.

Evolutionary conceptions of species place special weight on each species having dynamic independence as a unit of evolution. However, the idea that species have their own historical fates, tendencies, or roles has resisted systematic analysis. Growing evidence from population genomics shows that many paradigm species regularly engage in hybridization. How can species be defined in terms of independent evolutionary identities if their genomes are dynamically coupled through lateral exchange? I introduce the concept of a “composite lineage” to distinguish species and subspecies on the basis of the proportion of a group’s heritable traits that are uncoupled from reproductive exchange.

1. The Problem. The purpose of this paper is twofold. One aim is to examine briefly the criteria basic to the notions of the culture area and the language area; the second is to indicate a method which would allow for the construction of systems which could profitably be compared and held correlate in any problem involving, on the historical level, the development and diffusion of cultural and linguistic patterns, and, on the synchronic level, the precise nature of that complex of human behavior patterns, linguistic and non-linguistic, which is characteristic of man in society.

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.

If the problem of induction were soluble, it should be solved inductively: by observing how scientists observe, etc. The fact is that scientific research is successful, and the real question is, will it be so in future? If there is a formula of induction by which success is achieved, then by this formula we can say, as long as it will be used science will succeed. If there is no formula it looks as if future success in scientific research is most doubtful. Hence, a transcendental argument for induction goes, there is an inductive formula. Since, however, such a view of induction is rejected even by inductivists as naive, the argument collapses. Hence the question is, on what basis do we project the future success of science? My answer is that this future success is built into our social institutions and is partially institutionally safeguarded.

Six recently discussed problems in discrete probabilistic sample space, which have been found puzzling and even paradoxical, are reexamined. The importance is stressed of a sharp distinction between the formalization of mathematical problems and their formal solution that, applied to probability theory, must lead through the explicit partitioning of a sample space. If this approach is consistently followed, such problems reveal themselves to be either inherently ambiguous, and therefore without solution, or quite straightforward. In both cases nothing remains of any sense of paradox.

In a recent article (Sober 1982), I criticized an account of causation proposed by Giere (1979, 1980) by describing a series of examples concerning natural selection. Collier (1983) has criticized my criticisms, saying that I misapplied Giere's proposal and misconstrued the biology. More recently, Giere (1984) has defended his theory against my criticisms. Here I argue that my criticisms still stand.

An increasing number of arguments for causal pluralism invoke empirical psychological data. Different aspects of causal cognition—specifically, causal perception and causal inference—are thought to involve distinct cognitive processes and representations, and they thereby distinctively support transference and dependency theories of causation, respectively. We argue that this dualistic picture of causal concepts arises from methodological differences, rather than from an actual plurality of concepts. Hence, philosophical causal pluralism is not particularly supported by the empirical data. Serious engagement with cognitive science reveals that the connection between psychological concepts of causation and philosophical notions is substantially more complicated than is traditionally presumed.