Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193025
S. Fuller
I aim to recover some of the original cultural significance that was attached to the realism-instrumentalism debate (RID) when it was hotly contested by professional scientists in the decades before World War I. Focusing on the highly visible Mach-Planck exchange of 1908-13, I show that arguments about the nature of scientific progress were used to justify alternative visions of science education. Among the many issues revealed in the exchange are realist worries that instrumentalism would subserve science entirely to human interests, as well as instrumentalist worries that realism could become the basis of a science-based religion. I conclude by addressing some issues relating to RID that are now occluded because of Planck's triumph over Mach.
{"title":"Retrieving the Point of the Realism-Instrumentalism Debate: Mach vs. Planck on Science Education Policy","authors":"S. Fuller","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193025","url":null,"abstract":"I aim to recover some of the original cultural significance that was attached to the realism-instrumentalism debate (RID) when it was hotly contested by professional scientists in the decades before World War I. Focusing on the highly visible Mach-Planck exchange of 1908-13, I show that arguments about the nature of scientific progress were used to justify alternative visions of science education. Among the many issues revealed in the exchange are realist worries that instrumentalism would subserve science entirely to human interests, as well as instrumentalist worries that realism could become the basis of a science-based religion. I conclude by addressing some issues relating to RID that are now occluded because of Planck's triumph over Mach.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121910539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193008
D. Allchin
Several diagrams and tables from review articles during the Ox-Phos Controversy serve as an occasion to assess the nature of competition in models of theory choice in science. Many models follow "Super-Bowl" principles of polar, either-or, winner-take-all competition. A significant alternative highlighted by this episode, however, is the differentiation of domains. Incommensurability and the partial divergence of overlapping domains serve both as signals and context for shifting frameworks of competition. Appropriate strategies may thus help researchers diagnose the status of competition and shape their research accordingly.
{"title":"The Super Bowl and the Ox-Phos Controversy: \"Winner-Take-All\" Competition in Philosophy of Science","authors":"D. Allchin","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193008","url":null,"abstract":"Several diagrams and tables from review articles during the Ox-Phos Controversy serve as an occasion to assess the nature of competition in models of theory choice in science. Many models follow \"Super-Bowl\" principles of polar, either-or, winner-take-all competition. A significant alternative highlighted by this episode, however, is the differentiation of domains. Incommensurability and the partial divergence of overlapping domains serve both as signals and context for shifting frameworks of competition. Appropriate strategies may thus help researchers diagnose the status of competition and shape their research accordingly.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123977562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192949
Marc Ereshefsky
Several authors have argued for taxonomic pluralism in biology -the position that there is a plurality of equally legitimate classifications of the organic world. Others have objected that such pluralism boils down to a position of anything goes. This paper offers a response to the anything goes objection by showing how one can be a discerning pluralist. In particular, methodological standards for choosing taxonomic projects are derived using Laudan's normative naturalism. This paper also sheds light on why taxonomic pluralism occurs in biology as well as illustrates the usefulness of normative naturalism.
{"title":"Pluralism, Normative Naturalism, and Biological Taxonomy","authors":"Marc Ereshefsky","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192949","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192949","url":null,"abstract":"Several authors have argued for taxonomic pluralism in biology -the position that there is a plurality of equally legitimate classifications of the organic world. Others have objected that such pluralism boils down to a position of anything goes. This paper offers a response to the anything goes objection by showing how one can be a discerning pluralist. In particular, methodological standards for choosing taxonomic projects are derived using Laudan's normative naturalism. This paper also sheds light on why taxonomic pluralism occurs in biology as well as illustrates the usefulness of normative naturalism.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117338376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192931
Janet Folina
In his first philosophy book, Science and Hypothesis, Poincare provides a picture in which the different sciences are arranged in a hierarchy. Arithmetic is the most general of all the sciences because it is presupposed by all the others. Next comes mathematical magnitude, or the analysis of the continuum, which presupposes arithmetic; and so on. Poincare's basic view was that experiment in science depends on fixing other concepts first. More generally, certain concepts must be fixed before others: hence the hierarchy. This paper attempts to dissolve some potential problems regarding Poincare's hierarchy. One is an apparent epistemological circularity in the hierarchy. A more serious problem regarding the epistemology of analysis is also addressed.
{"title":"Poincare on Mathematics, Intuition and the Foundations of Science","authors":"Janet Folina","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192931","url":null,"abstract":"In his first philosophy book, Science and Hypothesis, Poincare provides a picture in which the different sciences are arranged in a hierarchy. Arithmetic is the most general of all the sciences because it is presupposed by all the others. Next comes mathematical magnitude, or the analysis of the continuum, which presupposes arithmetic; and so on. Poincare's basic view was that experiment in science depends on fixing other concepts first. More generally, certain concepts must be fixed before others: hence the hierarchy. This paper attempts to dissolve some potential problems regarding Poincare's hierarchy. One is an apparent epistemological circularity in the hierarchy. A more serious problem regarding the epistemology of analysis is also addressed.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"262 1-2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116841121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193029
James Hawthorne
The objectivity of Bayesian induction relies on the ability of evidence to produce a convergence to agreement among agents who initially disagree about the plausibilities of hypotheses. I will describe three sorts of Bayesian convergence. The first reduces the objectivity of inductions about simple "occurrent events" to the objectivity of posterior probabilities for theoretical hypotheses. The second reveals that evidence will generally induce converge to agreement among agents on the posterior probabilities of theories only if the convergence is 0 or 1. The third establishes conditions under which evidence will very probably compel posterior probabilities of theories to converge to 0 or 1.
{"title":"On the Nature of Bayesian Convergence","authors":"James Hawthorne","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193029","url":null,"abstract":"The objectivity of Bayesian induction relies on the ability of evidence to produce a convergence to agreement among agents who initially disagree about the plausibilities of hypotheses. I will describe three sorts of Bayesian convergence. The first reduces the objectivity of inductions about simple \"occurrent events\" to the objectivity of posterior probabilities for theoretical hypotheses. The second reveals that evidence will generally induce converge to agreement among agents on the posterior probabilities of theories only if the convergence is 0 or 1. The third establishes conditions under which evidence will very probably compel posterior probabilities of theories to converge to 0 or 1.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"154 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132026501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192936
E. Mcmullin
If classics of science were to be defined as works that mark scientific revolutions, in the sense of sharp shifts in research tradition, then none of the three works discussed in our symposium quite qualifies. I briefly indicate the fate of each. While impressed by his argument, I express some reservations about Lennox's claim to have dissolved the "problem of demonstration" for Aristotle's De Partibus Animalium. I question Finocchiaro's challenging assertion that in structuring the Dialogo as he did, Galileo "operated within the restrictions" laid on him. Finally, I argue that the legacy of Newton's Opticks was in crucial respects a divided one for the generations that followed.
{"title":"Scientific Classics and Their Fates","authors":"E. Mcmullin","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192936","url":null,"abstract":"If classics of science were to be defined as works that mark scientific revolutions, in the sense of sharp shifts in research tradition, then none of the three works discussed in our symposium quite qualifies. I briefly indicate the fate of each. While impressed by his argument, I express some reservations about Lennox's claim to have dissolved the \"problem of demonstration\" for Aristotle's De Partibus Animalium. I question Finocchiaro's challenging assertion that in structuring the Dialogo as he did, Galileo \"operated within the restrictions\" laid on him. Finally, I argue that the legacy of Newton's Opticks was in crucial respects a divided one for the generations that followed.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"291 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134564950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193017
Carolyn Brighouse
John Earman and John Norton have argued that substantivalism leads to a radical form of indeterminism within local spacetime theories. I compare their argument to more traditional arguments typical in the Relationist/Substantivalist dispute and show that they all fail for the same reason. All these arguments ascribe to the substantivalist a particular way of talking about possibility. I argue that the substantivalist is not committed to the modal claims required for the arguments to have any force, and show that this naturally leads to an alteration in the way determinism is characterized for local spacetime theories.
{"title":"Spacetime and Holes","authors":"Carolyn Brighouse","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193017","url":null,"abstract":"John Earman and John Norton have argued that substantivalism leads to a radical form of indeterminism within local spacetime theories. I compare their argument to more traditional arguments typical in the Relationist/Substantivalist dispute and show that they all fail for the same reason. All these arguments ascribe to the substantivalist a particular way of talking about possibility. I argue that the substantivalist is not committed to the modal claims required for the arguments to have any force, and show that this naturally leads to an alteration in the way determinism is characterized for local spacetime theories.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116411361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192940
P. Taylor
I characterize and then complicate Solomon, Thagard and Goldman's framing of the issue of integrating cognitive and social factors in explaining science. I sketch a radically different framing which distributes the mind beyond the brain, embodies it, and has that mind-body-person become, as s/he always is, an agent acting in a society. I also find problems in Solomon's construal of multivariate statistics, Thagard's analogies for multivariate analysis, and Goldman's faith in the capacity of the community of users of scientific method to home in on true beliefs.
{"title":"Shifting Frames: From Divided to Distributed Psychologies of Scientific Agents","authors":"P. Taylor","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192940","url":null,"abstract":"I characterize and then complicate Solomon, Thagard and Goldman's framing of the issue of integrating cognitive and social factors in explaining science. I sketch a radically different framing which distributes the mind beyond the brain, embodies it, and has that mind-body-person become, as s/he always is, an agent acting in a society. I also find problems in Solomon's construal of multivariate statistics, Thagard's analogies for multivariate analysis, and Goldman's faith in the capacity of the community of users of scientific method to home in on true beliefs.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"226 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116845003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193019
D. Rothbart
The success of chemistry is directly credited to the capacity of instruments to provide human contact to the structures of physical reality. Empiricist philosophers have given scant attention to instruments as a separate topic of inquiry on the grounds that reliability of instruments is reducible to the epistemology of common sense experience. I argue that the reliability of many modern instruments is based on their design as analogical replication of natural systems. Scientists designed absorption spectrometers as artificial technological replicas of familiar physical systems. Such designs are generated by analogical projections of theoretical insights from known physical systems to unknown terrain. Instrumentation enables scientists to extend theoretical understanding to previously hidden domains. After exploring this analogical function of instruments, the nature of instrumental data is discussed, followed by an explicit rejection of both skepticism and naive realism. In the end I argue for an experimental realism which lacks any theory-neutral access to the fundamental analogies of nature.
{"title":"Spectrometers as Analogues of Nature","authors":"D. Rothbart","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.1.193019","url":null,"abstract":"The success of chemistry is directly credited to the capacity of instruments to provide human contact to the structures of physical reality. Empiricist philosophers have given scant attention to instruments as a separate topic of inquiry on the grounds that reliability of instruments is reducible to the epistemology of common sense experience. I argue that the reliability of many modern instruments is based on their design as analogical replication of natural systems. Scientists designed absorption spectrometers as artificial technological replicas of familiar physical systems. Such designs are generated by analogical projections of theoretical insights from known physical systems to unknown terrain. Instrumentation enables scientists to extend theoretical understanding to previously hidden domains. After exploring this analogical function of instruments, the nature of instrumental data is discussed, followed by an explicit rejection of both skepticism and naive realism. In the end I argue for an experimental realism which lacks any theory-neutral access to the fundamental analogies of nature.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126796928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1994-01-01DOI: 10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192918
N. Huggett
I criticize a certain view of the 'quanta' of quantum mechanics that sees them as fundamentally non-atomistic and fundamentally significant for our understanding of quantum fields. In particular, I have in mind work by Redhead and Teller (1991, 1992 and Teller 1990). I prove that classical particles do not have the rather strong flavour of identity often associated with them; permuting positions and momenta does not produce distinct states. I show that even the label free excitation formalism is compatible with a mild form of atomism. Finally, I summarise some of the principle objections to an 'oscillator' interpretation of quantum fields.
{"title":"What Are Quanta, and Why Does It Matter?","authors":"N. Huggett","doi":"10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1994.2.192918","url":null,"abstract":"I criticize a certain view of the 'quanta' of quantum mechanics that sees them as fundamentally non-atomistic and fundamentally significant for our understanding of quantum fields. In particular, I have in mind work by Redhead and Teller (1991, 1992 and Teller 1990). I prove that classical particles do not have the rather strong flavour of identity often associated with them; permuting positions and momenta does not produce distinct states. I show that even the label free excitation formalism is compatible with a mild form of atomism. Finally, I summarise some of the principle objections to an 'oscillator' interpretation of quantum fields.","PeriodicalId":288090,"journal":{"name":"PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123077342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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