There is a venerable position in the philosophy of space and time that holds that the geometry of spacetime is conventional, provided one is willing to postulate a “universal force field.” Here we ask a more focused question, inspired by this literature: in the context of our best classical theories of space and time, if one understands “force” in the standard way, can one accommodate different geometries by postulating a new force field? We argue that the answer depends on one’s theory. In Newtonian gravitation the answer is yes; in relativity theory, it is no.

In the curve fitting problem two conflicting desiderata, simplicity and goodness-of-fit, pull in opposite directions. To this problem, we propose a solution that strikes a balance between simplicity and goodness-of-fit. Using Bayes’ theorem we argue that the notion of prior probability represents a measurement of simplicity of a theory, whereas the notion of likelihood represents the theory’s goodness-of-fit. We justify the use of prior probability and show how to calculate the likelihood of a family of curves. We diagnose the relationship between simplicity of a theory and its predictive accuracy.

Acupuncture, the traditional Chinese practice of needling to alleviate pain, offers a striking case where scientific accounts in two cultures, East and West, diverge sharply. Yet the Chinese comfortably embrace the apparent ontological incommensurability. Their pragmatic posture resonates with the New Experimentalism in the West—but with some provocative differences. The development of acupuncture in China (and not in the West) further suggests general research strategies in the context of discovery. My analysis also exemplifies how one might fruitfully pursue a comparative philosophy of science that explores how other cultures investigate and validate their conclusions about the natural world.

1. Introduction. The papers by Hellman and Mayo offer up a rich menu of problems and proposed solutions, so there is much here for a friendly critic to fasten on. In order to bring a modicum of focus to my commentary, I shall limit my remarks to the Duhem problem and its radiations in epistemology and methodology. Both Mayo and Hellman claim to have solutions to that hoary old problem and they tout these solutions as key indicators of the explanatory power of their respective technical epistemologies, whether Bayesian or Neyman/Pearsonian. Like Mayo, I shall be arguing that the Bayesian treatment of Duhem's problem is no solution at all; that, indeed, it fails to grapple with the core challenges posed by the purported ambiguities of falsification. My response to Mayo's more detailed, and I think more right-headed, treatment of the Duhem problem will be more complex. While I believe that she is moving in the right direction in many respects, I think that she fails to see one key dimension of the Duhemian conundrum. Indeed, she risks solving not Duhem's problem but quite a different one. I shall gently try to encourage her to steer her way back towards the central task.

L. J. Savage and I. J. Good have each demonstrated that the expected utility of free information is never negative for a decision maker who updates her degrees of belief by conditionalization on propositions learned for certain. In this paper Good's argument is generalized to show the same result for a decision maker who updates her degrees of belief on the basis of uncertain information by Richard Jeffrey's probability kinematics. The Savage/Good result is shown to be a special case of the more general result.

A Quantum-Mechanical automaton, equipped with mechanisms for the measurement and the recording and the prediction of certain physical properties of the world, is described. It is inquired what sort of empirical description such an automaton would produce of itself. It turns out that this description would be a very novel one, one such as was never imagined in the conventional discussions of measurement.

Mammals are usually considered unproblematic as biological individuals. This article contends the opposite. Once we consider pregnancy, criteria for biological individuality are not easily applicable in mammals and give conflicting results: mammalian pregnancy poses a problem for biological individuality. This may open fruitful new approaches to biological individuality and is of relevance to metaphysicians interested in (human) organisms.

According to a familiar argument, iterated prisoner's dilemmas of known finite lengths resolve for ideally rational and well-informed players: They would defect in the last round, anticipate this in the next to last round and so defect in it, and so on. But would they anticipate defections even if they had been cooperating? Not necessarily, say recent critics. These critics “lose” the backward-induction paradox by imposing indicative interpretations on rationality and information conditions. To regain it I propose subjunctive interpretations. To solve it I stress that implications for ordinary imperfect players are limited.

This article argues that the controversy over genetically modified crops is best understood not in terms of the supposed bias, dishonesty, irrationality, or ignorance on the part of proponents or critics, but rather in terms of differences in values. To do this, the article draws on and extends recent work of the role of values and interests in science, focusing particularly on inductive risk and epistemic risk, and it shows how the GMO debate can help to further our understanding of the various epistemic risks that are present in science and how these risks might be managed.

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found (i) that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, (ii) that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, (iii) that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard characterizations, and (iv) that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism.

Optogenetics makes possible the control of neural activity with light. In this article, I explore how the development of this experimental tool has brought about methodological and theoretical advances in the neurobiological study of memory. I begin with Semon’s distinction between the engram and the ecphory, explaining how these concepts present a methodological challenge to investigating memory. Optogenetics provides a way to intervene into the engram without the ecphory that, in turn, opens up new means for testing theories of memory error. I focus on a series of experiments where optogenetics is used to study false memory and forgetting.

This essay examines the claim “path dependence entails irreversibility” from the point of view of evolutionary biology. I argue that evolutionary irreversibility possesses many faces, sometimes conflicting with path dependence. I propose an account of path dependence that does not rely on irreversibility and explain why it more naturally coexists with the notion of (contingent) irreversibility developed by the Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo. However, I argue that we should not conceive of this relationship as necessary.

There is good reason to suppose that our best physical theories are false: In addition to its own internal problems, the standard formulation of quantum mechanics is logically incompatible with special relativity. I will also argue that we have no concrete idea what it means to claim that these theories are approximately true.

In his award-winning contribution to the biannual PSA conference at Pittsburgh in 2008, Christian Wüthrich mounted an argument against structuralism about space-time in the context of the general theory of relativity (GTR), to the effect that structuralists cannot discern space-time points: an “abysmal embarrassment” for the structuralist, Wüthrich judged. Wüthrich's characterization of space-time structuralism is however incorrect. We demonstrate how, on the basis of a correct characterization of space-time structuralism, it is possible to discern space-time points in the GTR structures under consideration. Thus Wüthrich's argument crumbles.

In some recent papers, Max Coltheart has questioned the ability of neuroimaging techniques to tell us anything interesting about the mind and has thrown down the gauntlet before neuroimagers, challenging them to prove he is mistaken. Here I analyze Coltheart's challenge, show that as posed its terms are unfair, and reconstruct it so that it is addressable. I argue that, so modified, Coltheart's challenge is able to be met and indeed has been met. In an effort to delineate the extent of neuroimaging's ability to address Coltheart's concerns, I explore how different brain structure-function relationships would constrain the ability of neuroimaging to provide insight about psychological questions.

Philosophically, one of the most important questions in the enterprise termed confirmation theory is this: Why should one stick to well confirmed theories rather than to any other theories? This paper discusses the answers to this question one gets from absolute and incremental Bayesian confirmation theory. According to absolute confirmation, one should accept “absolutely well confirmed” theories, because absolute confirmation takes one to true theories. An examination of two popular measures of incremental confirmation suggests the view that one should stick to incrementally well confirmed theories, because incremental confirmation takes one to (the most) informative (among all) true theories. However, incremental confirmation does not further this goal in general. I close by presenting a necessary and sufficient condition for revealing the confirmational structure in almost every world when presented separating data.

The mutual influence of science and values in biology is exhibited in several cases from the biological literature. It is argued in a number of cases, from R. A. Fisher's argument for the optimality of a 50:50 sex ratio to A. Jensen's defense of a genetic basis for intelligence, and including work on the evolution of sexual dimorphism and muted aggression, that the credence accorded the views is disproportionate with their theoretical and empirical warrant. It is, furthermore, suggested that the proper explanation for the attraction and persistence of such views lies in their conformity with ideological norms. There is thus an important, if circumscribed, role for ideological critique in the evaluation of scientific theories; in particular, it lies in the explanation of the acceptance and persistence of scientific views, given independent grounds for questioning their justifiability.

Arguments favoring the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence nearly always contain an overt appeal to big numbers, often combined with a covert reliance on generalization from a single instance. In this paper I examine both motifs, and consider whether big numbers might actually make palatable otherwise implausible single-case inductions. In the end, the dispute between believers and skeptics is seen to boil down to a conflict of intuitions which can barely be engaged, let alone resolved, given our present state of knowledge.

Husserl's mathematical philosophy of science can be considered an anticipation of the contemporary postpositivistic semantic approach, which regards mathematics and not logic as the appropriate tool for the exact philosophical reconstruction of scientific theories. According to Husserl, an essential part of a theory's reconstruction is the mathematical description of its domain, that is, the world (or the part of the world) the theory intends to talk about. Contrary to the traditional micrological approach favored by the members of the Vienna Circle, Husserl, inspired by modern geometry and set theory, aims at a macrological analysis of scientific theories that takes into account the global structures of theories as structured wholes. This is set in the complementary theories of manifolds and theory forms considered by Husserl himself as the culmination of his formal theory of science.