In the course of modern philosophy, there have been several attempts to demonstrate the existence of ultimately simple objects by purely logical methods. One of the most recent of such attempts forms part of the foundation of Wittgenstein's logical doctrine. As Wittgenstein has, until quite recently, been considered the authoritative source of Logical Positivism, an examination of his supposed demonstration of logical simples is propaedeutic to an evaluation of the method of the school.

This article develops an axiomatic theory of induction that speaks to the recent debate on Bayesian orgulity. It shows the exact principles associated with the belief that data can corroborate universal laws. We identify two types of disbelief about induction: skepticism that the existence of universal laws of nature can be determined empirically, and skepticism that the true law of nature, if it exists, can be successfully identified. We formalize and characterize these two dispositions toward induction by introducing novel axioms for subjective probabilities. We also relate these dispositions to the (controversial) axiom of σ-additivity.

Since the seventeenth century, when Descartes divided the universe into two realms, the distinctive character of one of which being its spatiality or extendedness, philosophers have been increasingly concerned with the analysis of the category of Space. Scientists, too, have been interested in the concepts of Space and Time, especially since the promulgation of the theory of relativity.

Extant accounts of trust in science focus on reconciling scientific and public value judgments, but neglect the challenge of learning audience values. I argue that for scientific experts to be epistemically trustworthy, they should adopt a cooperative approach to learning about the values of their audience. A cooperative approach, in which expert and nonexpert inquirers iteratively refine value judgments, better achieves important second-order epistemic dimensions of trustworthiness. I suggest that strong objectivity in the feminist standpoint theoretic sense is sometimes a prerequisite for trustworthiness.

This article addresses problems with a defensive turn in discussions of science and Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. Philosophers and practitioners of science have focused recent discussions on coarse-grained questions of demarcation, epistemic parity, and identity—asking questions such as “Is Indigenous knowledge science?” Using representative examples from Aotearoa New Zealand, we expose rampant ambiguities in these arguments, and show that this combative framing can overlook what is at stake. We provide a framework for analyzing these problems and suggest better ways forward.

Psychology is a discipline that has a high number of failed replications, which has been characterized as a “crisis” on the assumption that failed replications are indicative of untrustworthy research. This article uses Chang’s concept of epistemic iteration to show how a research program can advance epistemic goals despite many failed replications. It illustrates this by analyzing an ongoing large-scale replication attempt of Southgate et al.’s work exploring infants’ understanding of false beliefs. It concludes that epistemic iteration offers a way of understanding the value of replications—both failed and successful—that contradicts the narrative centered around distrust.

Despite its potential implications for the objectivity of scientific knowledge, the claim that “scientific instruments are perspectival” has received little critical attention. I show that this claim is best understood as highlighting the dependence of instruments on different perspectives. When closely analyzed, instead of constituting a novel epistemic challenge, this dependence can be exploited to mount novel strategies for resolving two old epistemic problems: conceptual relativism and theory-ladeness. The novel content of this article consists in articulating and developing these strategies by introducing two fine-grained notions of perspectives as the key units of analysis: “broad perspectives” and “narrow perspectives.”

Absolute and relative outcome measures measure a treatment’s effect size, purporting to inform treatment choices. I argue that absolute measures are at least as good as, if not better than, relative ones for informing rational decisions across choice scenarios. Specifically, this dominance of absolute measures holds for choices between a treatment and a control group treatment from a trial and for ones between treatments tested in different trials. This distinction has hitherto been neglected, just like the role of absolute and baseline risks in rational decision making that my analysis reveals. Recognizing both aspects advances the discussion on reporting outcome measures.

Recently, Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues have introduced the Theory of Constructed Emotions (TCE), in which emotions are constituted by a process of categorizing the self as being in an emotional state. The view, however, has several counterintuitive implications: for instance, a person can have multiple distinct emotions at once. Further, the TCE concludes that emotions are constitutively social phenomena. In this article, I explicate the TCE*, which, while substantially similar to the TCE, makes several distinct claims aimed at avoiding the counterintuitive implications plaguing the TCE. Further, because of the changes that comprise the TCE*, emotions are not constitutively social phenomena.

There is a persisting debate about what chemical bonds are and whether they exist. I argue that chemical bonds are real patterns of interactions between subatomic particles. This proposal resolves the problems raised in the context of existing understandings of the chemical bond and provides a novel way to defend the reality of chemical bonds.

There is danger in stressing commonalities among methods because the differences matter in fixing the meaning of our claims. Different methods can, and often do, test the same claim. But it takes a strong network of theory and empirical results to ensure that. Failing that, we are likely to fall into inference by pun. We use one set of methods to establish a claim and then draw inferences licensed by a similar-sounding claim that calls for different methods of testing. Our inferences fail, and bridges we build (or policies we set) depending on them fall down.

A superselection rule advanced in the course of a quantum-mechanical treatment of some phenomenon is an assertion to the effect that the superposition principle of quantum mechanics is to be restricted in the application at hand. Superselection accounts of measurement all have in common a decision to represent the indicator states of detectors by eigenspaces of superselection operators named in a superselection rule, on the grounds that the states in question are states of a so-called classical quantity and therefore not subject to quantum interference effects. By this strategy superselectionists of measurement expect to dispense with use of projection postulates in treatments of measurement. I shall argue that superselection accounts of measurement are self-contradictory, and that treatments of infinite systems, if they can avoid the contradiction, are not true superselection accounts.

In this paper, I offer a proof that a disastrous conclusion (namely, that any observation report confirms any hypothesis) may be derived directly from two principles of qualitative confirmation which Carl Hempel called the “Converse Consequence Condition” and the “Entailment Condition.” I then discuss three strategies which a defender of the Converse Consequence Condition may deploy to save this principle.

The two most antagonistic schools in contemporary Western philosophy are Existentialism and Logical Positivism. They have nothing in common but the name of philosophy, and even that they deny each other. There is some kind of discussion going on between even such distant schools as Pragmatism and neo-Thomism; Existentialists and Logical Positivists have nothing but sarcasms for each other. To philosophers familiar only with the Anglo-Saxon scene Existentialism must appear negligible. In the Mediterranean countries, on the other hand, where philosophy is a much more popular pastime, Existentialism has an unparalleled vogue and Logical Positivism is considered a horrible aberration from the naturally speculative course of philosophy. In South America whose philosophical life we are apt to underrate Logical Positivism seems to be known to almost nobody, whereas Existentialism, mostly in its German and anti-religious shape, has become, quite paradoxically, the rallying point of “Liberalism,” liberalism, in Spanish countries, being above all anti-catholicism. Although, ironically enough, both Logical Positivism and modern Existentialism originated in German speaking countries, the split between the two goes vaguely parallel with, and may have found some ready echo in, the different cultural inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races. Hence, the subject of this paper would seem far-fetched to those steeped in their own national tradition. There is, however, a growing consciousness of the “one world” function of philosophy, particularly with regard to Eastern and Western philosophy (Northrop, Burtt, Conger, etc.). Would it not be a prerequisite of this more ambitious enterprise to gain a clear conception about the most radical split in our own contemporary Western philosophy, the split between Logical Positivism and Existentialism? This paper is an attempt to establish a perspective permitting a just evaluation of the two philosophies.

Gibbs's phase rule treats mixtures by relating the number of independent variables governing their state to the numbers of phases and independent substances. For the case of a single substance, it provides a criterion of purity. But where more substances are involved, the notion of independent substance is less readily understood. Textbook writers sometimes use algebraic terminology in ways that are suggestive but cannot be taken as literally accurate. I suggest that a mereological interpretation applies to these cases, as it captures more concisely the insights underlying the use of algebraic terminology and illuminates the general notion of substance.

Becoming is interpreted by various sciences. The exact sciences, physics, and chemistry, interpret this universal becoming or change of all things on the model of mathematical equations. In such an equation of quantities or magnitudes, one side always balances the other. We call such a process “circular”. Numbers may be subdivided or contracted, they may change their places or positions, but the sum total of the whole equation remains immutably the same. In this manner mechanics constructs change as a change of positions of unchanging particles in a continuous but divisible space and in a continuous but divisible time. Chemistry constructs qualitative change as a change of unchanging elements in such a fashion that the sum total of the elements involved in such transactions is always completely accounted for. But in the twentieth century becoming entered these closed systems. There are no unchanging atoms now, and no unchanging chemical elements. Both the physical atom and the chemical element, thought immutable before, are now seen to disintegrate, to radiate, to change their character according to their position in the “field” of energy in which they occur.

Quantitative laws are more typical of science than are generalizations involving observational predicates, yet much discussion of scientific inference takes the confirmation of a universal generalization by its instances to be typical and paradigmatic. The important difference is that measurement necessarily involves error. It is argued that because of error laws can no more be refuted by observation than they can be verified by observation. Without much background knowledge, tests of a law mainly provide evidence for the distribution of errors of measurement of the quantities involved. With more background knowledge, the data may contribute either to our knowledge of the error distributions, or to the grounds we have for accepting or rejecting the law. With enough background knowledge, data may verify as well as refute laws.