Many philosophers, and particularly those of a Kantian stripe, have suspected that claims about the ways the world and its Joints are (in contrast to claims about the joints in our models of the world and the way they are) make little sense. Recently, similar views have gained prominence in the philosophy of science and in cognitive psychology. The demise of the strong distinction between theoretical and observational terms over the past two decades is just one, among many, developments in the philosophy of science which is of a piece with such suspicions. Meanwhile, a great deal of recent theoretical work on the psychology of categorization also affirms the fundamentality of our cognitive constructs in structuring human experience.

Konrad Lorenz suggests that adequate grounds for classifying some behaviors as innate are to be found in the results of what he calls “the deprivation experiment“: ”… the experiment of withholding from the young organism information concerning certain well-defined givens of its natural environment.” (Lorenz 1965, p. 83). Thus, a stickleback fish is deprived of the information that its rival has a red belly. The stickleback is then confronted, for the first time, with a red-bellied rival (or a red-bellied dummy). If that stickleback responds with species-typical rival-fighting behavior, then (according to Lorenz) the experiment has established that the stickleback possesses certain innate information about its natural environment. On the other hand, should the stickleback fail to respond in this way, Lorenz tells us that ”…we should not be justified in asserting that this response is normally dependent on learning.

Unlike some recent authors, Hilary Putnam recognizes that we can not avoid inquiring about the normative force of the principles that guide scientific reasoning. His answer is in terms of values. In presenting his case for “Internal Realism”, he argues that values are presupposed in statements of fact (1981, pp. 128-134). The central thesis in his argument is that truth is not a correspondence with an “unconceptualized reality” and that “the claim that science seeks to discover the truth can mean no more than that science seeks to construct a world picture which, in the ideal limit, satisfies certain criteria of rational acceptability” (p. 130). We adopt these criteria because having a theory which conforms to them is valuable to us; it is part of human flourishing (pp. 133-134).

A consensus has recently emerged concerning the role of values in scientific inquiry. The idea that science is value-laden has been elaborated by writers as diverse as Kuhn, McMullin, Hempel, Putnam, Laudan, Feyerabend, Scriven, and Graham.1 Although they all agree that values, value judgment, and evaluation play an important role in science, their emphases and their arguments are different. In fact, I believe that enough work has been done, and enough issues have been raised, that it is becoming increasingly useful and instructive to discuss and explore further the main issues that divide this group of thinkers.

One of these issues is whether it is advisable to treat as a value any type of controversial position, such as belief in God or the thesis of metaphysical materialism; some writers do this, but it is questionable whether it is useful to mix together such disparate items.2

Epistemology has been socialised. Cognitive and social interactions between observers are now as important as their interventions into the course of nature. This contrasts with traditional views of how we get natural facts into our discourse about nature. These assumed the efficacy of individual observers’ causal interactions with the natural world, making their interactions with other observers irrelevant. Kant’s conclusion that empirical access depends also upon our concepts did not challenge the individualistic character of the epistemology of science. Observers’ agreement about their observations showed that each individual can have independent perceptual access to one and the same world.

Historical and sociological studies of science show that social and procedural aspects of observation in the laboratory make an essential contribution to consensus about observations (see Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay (1983) and Gooding (1985a).

The first published paper on pulsars was entitled, by its five co-authors, “Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source”. (Hewish, et al. 1968). The publication of this paper preceded by some months the coining of the word ‘pulsar’ to refer to such pulsating radio sources. Does it seem odd to talk of observing pulsars? It might seem so since much effort has subsequently gone into identifying pulsars with optically visible stars using conventional light, not radio, telescopes. We can say that the moons of Jupiter are observable since either we can see them through a telescope or, at some future date, astronauts will be able to travel close enough to Jupiter to see its moons without visual aids.

Philosopherd have long stressed a distinction between theory justification and theory discovery based on a belief that justification and discovery are essentially different processes. What makes these two processes essentially different, it was assumed, is that the process of justification is guided by criteria which are expressable as rules, while the processes involved in discovery are not rule-guided. Moreover and perhaps more importantly, it was assumed that tha rules for justification are discoverable a priori by rationalistic logical analysis but an account of discovery, whatever it turns out to be like, will be describable only a posteriori.

J.J.C. Smart says that instrumentalism makes it “surprising that the world should be such as to contain these odd and ontologically disconnected phenomena…. Is It not odd that the phenomena of the world should be such as to make a purely instrumental theory true? On the other hand, if we interpret the theory in a realist way, then we have no need for such a cosmic coincidence…. A lot of surprising facts no longer seem surprising….” (Smart 1963, p. 39).

Intuitively Smart seems right. The instrumentalist, who believes the observational consequences of some theory, but eschews any commitment to the theory itself, ends up believing something far less plausible than the realist, who can account for those consequences in terms of the theory.

A recent article in Philosophy of Science by Andrew Lugg (1985), revives interest once again in Johannes Kepler’s so-called “discovery” of the laws of planetary motion. Typically, as if by some recurring philosophical instinct, it focuses on Kepler’s finally settling on the ellipse for planetary orbits--the first of his three laws. There is a fascination with the limiting shape of what is still taken to be the scope of the Sun’s sovereign domain, rather than with the second, or, even more rarely, the third law. Ever since the famous debate between John Stuart Mill and William Whewell, philosophers and historians have been drawn to this notable advance in early modern science--in what Kepler himself calls his “war on Mars” (the planet itself named after the “god” of war).

What Daniel Hausman has called “the simple criticism of economic theory”1 is succinctly conveyed by the following passage: “We know full well not only that commodities are not infinitely divisible (which is only intended as a simplification), but businessmen do not always attempt to maximize profits and that the preferences of consumers are not always transitive. ‘Businessmen maximize profits’ and ‘a consumer’s preferences are transitive’ are fundamental economic ‘laws’. How can economists rationally accept a theory which is so full of falsehoods?” (1981a, p. 382). In a recent paper Hausman considers several defenses of neoclassical microeconomics against the simple criticism. One of them is the modal view which Hausman initially characterizes in the, following admittedly vague and ambiguous manner: “Microeconomic general statements are modal (counter-factual) claims.

In his paper on the “Methodology of Positive Economics”, Milton Friedman warned his readers that, “more than other scientists, social scientists need to be self-conscious about their methodology.” (1953, p. 34). But until quite recently, he seems either to have spoken to deaf ears or, more plausibly, to have been so successful in promoting his own views on methodology as to lead economists to be complacent about the many problems which plague their discipline. Many current textbooks, for example the one by Eugene Silberberg, present economics as a science attaining the falsificationist standards once set down by Karl Popper, despite much evidence to the contrary. Indeed, as Douglas W. Hands (1985) has recently shown, even Sir Karl did not intend economics to be subjected to such severe standards.

In present day ecology, competition is a subject typically generating controversies that pervade the whole field. Ecology is concerned with relations between organisms and their environment. As the environment of any organism has biotic besides physical components, relations between organisms are obviously important. Competition is one of them. According to many ecologists it crucially affects the fate of populations and species. Precisely this assumption has led to vigorous debates (cf. Lewin 1984).

I intend to show that elementary methodological analysis could easily dissolve the controversy. Methodology, indeed, has not always been brought to bear on biology as it should. This point is elaborated at the end of the paper.

Ecologists use a variety of descriptive units, beside individual organisms. Here the population - a group of individual organisms of the same species and the community - a group of populations are of special importance.

Glymour’s boostrapping account of confirmation is meant to show how it is that evidence can bear on a theory in a discriminating, noncircular way even when that theory is used to establish the inferential link between evidence and a test hypothesis. Evidence confirms a theory on his account if, “using the theory, we can deduce from the evidence an instance of the hypothesis i.e., an hypothesis comprising or instantiating the test theory, and the deduction is such that it does not guarantee that we would have gotten an instance of the hypothesis regardless of what the evidence might have been.” (1980, p. 127). Glymour goes on to argue that this strategy of inference should appear most explicitly in the developing and “un-natural” (social) sciences where novel theories are being formulated or applied to new domains (1980, p. 172).

The semantic view of scientific theories has been defended as more adequate than the “received” view, especially with respect to biological theories (Beatty 1980, 1981; Thompson 1983). However, the semantic view has not been evaluated on its own terms. In this paper I first show how the theory of sociobiology propounded by E.O. Wilson (1975) can be understood on the semantic approach. I then discuss the criticism that Wilson’s theory is beset by the problem of unreliable generalizations. I suggest that this problem results from the use of the model-building strategy in theory. I conclude that the problem is pressing enough to impugn the semantic view as an adequate account of sociobiological theory.

According to proponents of the semantic view of theories, scientific theories function to specify a class of “models,” interpretations, or representations of their postulates.

The last twenty-five years have seen a major shift in the philosophy of science, from a focus on the logical syntax of the language of science to attempts, based often on detailed historical research, to understand the development of scientific accounts of the world. The once “Received View” of logical empiricism assumed the adequacy of an analysis of scientific knowledge in terms of interpreted logical systems. The limitations of logic as a framework for analysis of the language of science became apparent for what one might call internal and external reasons. Internally, the attempt to formalize the logical syntax of science led to the emergence to view of fundamental problems with the logical construal of laws and with the concept of confirmation.

Responses to Newcomb-like challenges to evidential decision theories such as Jeffrey’s “logic of decision” range from allegations of incoherence and irrelevance; through stonewalling - “Just one box for me, thank you.“; to arguments that maintain that when properly applied by an ideal agent such theories get the right answers and, for example, prescribe the taking of both boxes, not just one; on to conservative revisions of evidential decision theories that are held to get these supposedly right answers while remaining true to its evidential, Humean spirit; and finally to responses of radical revisionists who claim that only causal decision theories can get all Newcomb-like problem cases right. I discuss responses of the first sort in another paper - “Newcomb-like Problems for Jeffrey’s Logic of Decision.”

In this paper I intend to discuss difficulties which face Hilary Putnam’s internal realism, difficulties which involve issues in semantics. I hope to show that Putnam has not presented a viable theory of truth. Putnam wishes to avoid relativism, which he claims is incoherent. My argument against Putnam’s theory of truth will be that Putnam has avoided relativism at only a very superficial level. On a deeper analysis we will see that Putnam has in fact not avoided relativism.

Putnam has abandoned the correspondence theory of truth since he can make no sense of the claim that our words, thoughts, images, sensations, etc. correspond to external objects. Considerations of human psychology (1983a, p.viii), as well as problems concerning reference (1981; 1983a, pp.vii-xviii; 1983b), have led Putnam to adopt the view that truth must be analyzed in terms of justification.

In his 1982 Presidential Address to the PSA Ernan McMullin proposed that the Kuhnian “revolution” in the philosophy of science amounts, in part, to the growing awareness that theory-appraisal is to be modelled on decisions and value judgments rather than rule-governed inferences (McMullin 1983). This viewpoint has its attractions but needs developing before it can satisfy skeptics, such as Larry Laudan. For Laudan complains that Kuhn has provided no general model to back up his value-geared account, and that the view leads to untenable subjectivism which Kuhn has tried to avoid.

I shall try to show that neither complaint stands to criticism, by joining two ideas. The first – that of modelling theory decisions along decision theory – is not a novel one, but even its supporters have failed to see that it makes Kuhn’s subjectivity a live but respectable possibility.

The primary significance of the adoption of Black’s (1962) interaction view of metaphor by Hesse in her network model of theories (1966, 1972 and 1974) and in her network model of meanings (1984a) is the fact that it leads to a fundamental modification of the hypothetical-deductive account of scientific theorizing and a relativization of the traditional logical positivist distinction between observation language and theory language. Hesse argues that what holds for metaphorical language in ordinary language use, namely that it is affected by the contextual interaction between the various elements present in the metaphor, is also true of scientific models. They function in a similar fashion (1972, p. 254). She does not reject the distinction between literal and metaphorical language, but claims that the distinction is a pragmatic one. The distinction concerns the way in which speakers learn, use, and if necessary, define the words of their language.

Science is made possible by the introduction of theoretical objects. Why this should be so has never been made clear. Indeed, it has never been made clear how theoretical objects are rightly to be understood, or in what ways they differ from more ordinary sorts of physical objects. What follows is a sketch of a new theory. In my view, this theory becomes explicit on the so-called “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics. But it has implicitly characterized scientific development since the revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries.

How are theoretical objects rightly to be understood? I say that they are objects whose existence is postulated by a theory is alright as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. We also need to know what theories are.