In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Communities of Musical Practice by Ailbhe KennyFrank HeuserAilbhe Kenny Communities of Musical Practice ( New York: Routledge, 2016)When struggling in the confines of a practice room to overcome a technical difficulty on an instrument or explore different ways to shape a phrase, music learning can be a solitary and seemingly lonely enterprise. In such settings it is easy to assume that personal effort is the primary contributor to (...) an individual's musical expertise. Cognitive scientists steven sloman and Philip Fernbach1 argue against this view of human learning and suggest that much of what we know and accomplish results from working and living with others in a rich community of socially generated knowledge rather than by relying only on own efforts. This implies that the ability to develop sophisticated understandings in a discipline depends more on working collectively with others with whom we can share the labors of our cognitive efforts than on individual processes. This lends credence to the concept of learning in "communities of practice" that emerged during the 1990s.2Researchers have embraced this concept in music education and investigated the learning and relationships that develop in musical communities. June Countryman3 and N. Whitaker4 both examined how such communities impact learners in school-based music instructional settings. Deborah V. Blair developed [End Page 214] a professional development program for novice music educators that evolved into a community of practice.5 such communities offer members a place for identity formation and facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge in the discipline that is refined through active participation in meaningful learning experiences. In her book, Communities of Musical Practice, Ailbhe Kenny examines three music learning communities based in Limerick, Ireland and develops a model for community of practice that is specific to musical settings. This model can inform researchers investigating the fields of music education and community music. although it was not designed as a study in music education philosophy, the book is an example of excellent philosophical practices. as Wayne Bowman and ana Lucia Frega have suggested, if philosophy seeks to make "action more intelligent, more informed, more congruent with responsibly held beliefs,"6 Communities of Musical Practice offers a case study of the kind of reflective thinking that is central to philosophical practice. It is an example of how applying a reflective process to research data might provide the profession with both practical and philosophical insights.The book consists of seven chapters which are divided into three major sections. Part I, a Place for Communities of Musical Practice, defines communities of musical practice and describes the methodologies employed in the study. Part II, Illustrations of Communities of Musical Practices, offers case studies of three communities of musical practice that provide readers with examples of how the paradigm can be applied to investigate contrasting settings. Part III, Insights from Communities of Musical Practice, which summarizes the communities of musical practice framework, presents a model of how collective knowledge through common experiences contributes to senses of belonging, identity, and meaning-making and offers suggestions for nurturing these communities and developing policies that might contribute to increasing group music-making opportunities in communities. Following a review of these chapters, examples are given of how philosophical insights might be derived from this type of research.The central research question informing the work presented in the book is: How are communities of musical practice developed and sustained in practice?"7 This fundamental issue is refined through a series of sub-questions relating to the actual practices taking place within these communities of musical practices, the variety of relationships, actions, behaviors and experiences that are present within them, and the ways musical identities are created within and informed through participation in them. In Part I, Kenny develops a theoretical framework for examining communities of music practice by drawing from philosophy of practice, socio-cultural studies, and research in both education and music education which is based primarily on the writings of Bourdieu, Blacking, and Wenger. In particular, she employs etienne Wenger's framework of mutual engagement, [End Page 215] joint enterprise, and shared repertoire (or practices)8 as a scaffold to analyze and interpret "'situated' and collaborative musical... (shrink)

Heuser, Eller and Byrne provide important descriptive ethics data about how physicians counsel women on the clinical management of pregnancies complicated by severe fetal anomalies. The authors present an account of what such counselling ought to be based on, the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient and the professional responsibility model of obstetric ethics. When there is certainty about the diagnosis and either a very high probability of either death as the outcome of the anomaly or survival (...) with severe and irreversible deficit of cognitive developmental capacity as a result of the anomaly diagnosed, the pregnant woman should be offered the alternatives of aggressive and non-aggressive obstetric management and induced abortion before viability. It is also ethically permissible to offer feticide followed by termination of pregnancy after viability in such cases. This ethically justified approach will reduce the variation in the actual practices of specialists in maternal–fetal medicine described by Heuser, Eller and Byrne. (shrink)

Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this "beautiful question." With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek's groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. In fact, every major advance in his career came from this intuition: to assume that the universe (...) embodies beautiful forms, forms whose hallmarks are symmetry--harmony, balance, proportion--and economy. There are other meanings of "beauty," but this is the deep logic of the universe--and it is no accident that it is also at the heart of what we find aesthetically pleasing and inspiring. As he reveals here, this has been the heart of scientific pursuit from Pythagoras, the ancient Greek who was the first to argue that "all things are number," to Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and into the deep waters of twentieth-century physics. Gorgeously illustrated, A Beautiful Question is a mind-shifting book that braids the age-old quest for beauty and the age-old quest for truth into a thrilling synthesis. Yes: the world is a work of art, and its deepest truths are ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls.--From publisher description. (shrink)

One of our great contemporary scientists presents ten insights that illuminate what every thinking person needs to know about what the world is and how it works. Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek's Fundamentals is built around a simple but profound idea: the models of the world we construct as children are practical and adequate for everyday life, but they do not bring in the surprising and mind-expanding revelations of modern science. To do that, we must look at the world (...) anew, combining clear thinking with an openness to wonder. This "born again" world is in many ways larger, fuller, and much stranger than it appears. Through an exploration of space, time, matter, and ideas--and equipped with facts, questions, and brilliant speculations--Wilczek guides us through the past, present, and future of fundamental science. Readers will emerge with an expanded vision of our universe. Author Bio: Frank Wilczek won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for work he did as a graduate student. He was among the earliest MacArthur fellows, and has won many awards both for his scientific work and his writing. He is the author of A Beautiful Question, The Lightness of Being, Fantastic Realities, Longing for the Harmonies, and hundreds of articles in leading scientific journals. His "Wilczek's Universe" column appears regularly in the Wall Street Journal. Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founding director of the T. D. Lee Institute and chief scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center in Shanghai, China, and a distinguished professor at Arizona State University and Stockholm University. (shrink)

Die {raquo}Revolution der Denkart{laquo} hat nicht nur den Anlauf genommen, welchem sie ihren Namen verdankt.! Gezahlt werden noch weitere Umstellungen der Theorie bildung als bloG die kopernikanische Kants. Hier interessieren gleich zwei. Die eine liefert den Gegenstand, die entsprechende, RevolutionPhanomenologie.

The author suggests that a synchronic reading of Bonhoeffer's major works yields a typology of the two main images around which Bonhoeffer's political ethics orbit: disciple and citizen. Concentrating on the latter, the author shows the centrality of the question of power for Bonhoeffer's political ethics, and how it relates to responsibility and vocation. He argues that Bonhoeffer's ethics follows a christological grammar which constitutes its specific realism and provides its focus on institutions and good works. The essay concludes that (...) the call to citizenship, the vocation of co-operative, representative and vicarious action, forms the central idea of Bonhoeffer's political ethics, which is still highly relevant for political ethics today. (shrink)

**** Reprint of the Indiana U. Press edition of 1966--which is cited in BCL3. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of (...) a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. This difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

Der Übergang vom Verhältnisbewußtsein zum Selbstbewußtsein kann unmöglich nur vom Verhältnisbewußtsein aus gedacht werden, weil wir uns eine Welt, in der das Bewubtsein unserer selbst verteilt ist auf die Dimensionen der Handlung vor deren Zentrierung in uns, gar nicht vorstellen können. Jedes Tableau der Handlungsmöglichkeiten, so abstrakt es auch abgefaßt sein mag, ist gebunden an Vorstellungen möglicher Handlungssubjekte, denen wir Handlungsmöglichkeiten zuschreiben. Handlungstheorie ist daher notwendig Reflexion unserer Praxis, in der wir uns selbst als Selbstbewußtsein erfahren, das seinem Verhältnisbewubtsein enthoben (...) ist, ohne dieses dadurch selbst schon aufzuheben zu können. Daß uns Freiheit im Handeln unaufhebbar prekär und problematisch bleiben mub, ist die Grundvoraussetzung dafür, dab wir Handlungstheorien historisch und bereichsbezogen ständig neu entwerfen müssen. Das Verhältnis von Handlungsphilosophie zu Handlungstheorien kann daher so gefaßt werden, daß Handlungsphilosophie die Grundbegrifflichkeit in kritischer Absicht bereitstellt, die den bereichsorientierten, mehr oder weniger deskriptiven Handlungstheorien abgehen muß. Dazu muß die ontologische Differenz von Handlung und Interpretation methodologisch ernst genommen werden. Die radikale Andersheit der hier zu begründenden Konzeption liegt vor allem in der Ansicht, daß Handlungen nicht als isolierbare Ereignis-Entitäten aufgefaßt werden können, die gegenüber der »Welt der Tatsachen des Bewußtseins« eine kausale, d.h. von der Welt des Bewußtseins abgetrennte Rolle übernehmen. (shrink)

Objective Standards of care regarding obstetric management of life-threatening anomalies are not defined. It is hypothesised that physicians' management of these pregnancies is variable and influenced by demographic factors. Design A questionnaire was mailed to members of the Society of Maternal–Fetal Medicine with valid US addresses assessing obstetric management of both ‘uniformly lethal’ (eg, anencephaly, renal agenesis) and ‘uniformly severe, commonly lethal’ (eg, trisomy 13 and 18) anomalies. Respondents were asked to answer as if not limited by state/institutional restrictions. Fisher's (...) exact or χ2 tests were used as appropriate and correction made for multiple comparisons in analyses that were not prespecified. Results The response rate was 36% (732/2038). Nearly 100% of respondents discuss termination for both uniformly and commonly lethal anomalies. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for obstetric non-intervention 99% of providers would comply for either uniformly or commonly lethal anomalies. The majority ‘encourage’ such management, but some were non-directive or discouraged this management. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request for full obstetric intervention the majority of respondents was willing to comply for both uniformly (71%) and commonly (82%) lethal anomalies. While most practitioners ‘discouraged’ full intervention, some were non-directive or encouraged this management. Demographics and severity of anomaly influenced counselling. Conclusion Discrepancies exist regarding the management of life-threatening fetal anomalies. Patients may be offered different options based on practitioner demographics. The majority of physicians comply with patient wishes. Differences were noted when comparing the management of lethal with that of severe commonly lethal anomalies, suggesting that practitioners make a distinction when counselling patients. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Some properties are causally relevant for a certain effect, others are not. In this paper we describe a problem for our understanding of this notion and then offer a solution in terms of the notion of a program explanation.

War has been conceptualised from a military perspective, but also from ethical, legal, and philosophical viewpoints. These different analytical perspectives are all necessary to understand the many dimensions war, the continua on which war is situated - from small-scale to large-scale, from limited in time or long, from less to extremely destructive, with varying aims, and degrees of involvement of populations. Western civilisations have conceptualised war in binary ways denying the variety of manifestations of war along these continua. While binary (...) definitions are necessary to capture different conditions legally, they hamper analysis. The binaries include inter-State and intestine war, just war and unjust war, citizen-soldiers and professionals, civilians and combatants. Yet realities have mostly straddled such demarcations. Even citizen-armies have usually included professionals, civilians have been treated as enemies and sometimes even formally defined as enemies, and rules have not conformed with binary distinctions, if they were respected at all. While customary rules governing the conduct of war have been turned into International Law, this is the only aspect of war that has developed in a fairly linear way, while the rise, disappearance, and renaissance of the just war tradition has been anything but linear. This non-linearity also applies to the brutality with which war has been fought, especially towards civilians, who for long stretches of European history must have been the main victims of war, notwithstanding increasing protection they were afforded in theory by customary law. To understand war, we must shed some of these binaries. (shrink)

Die Arbeit vergewissert sich der Bedeutung der teils willkürlichen, teils notwendigen Positivität des äusseren Rechts nach der Rechtslehre Kants. Sie erschliesst sich deshalb die in diesem Werk aufgewiesene Wirklichkeit des praktischen Begriffs der Freiheit des Willens im äusseren Verhältnis der Menschen untereinander. Die Rechtslehre wird somit insgesamt als ein?System der Erkenntnis aus reinen Begriffen± interpretiert und damit erstmals die ihr zugrunde liegende verstandesbegriffliche Verfassung entschlüsselt. Entstanden ist ein nahezu durchgängiger Textkommentar, der den metaphysischen (d. h. rein begrifflichen) Anspruch des Werkes (...) ernst nimmt, indem er den gedanklichen Gehalt durch die Nachzeichnung der Kantischen Methode philosophischer Erkenntnis gewinnt. Beiläufig beglaubigt sich dabei, dass die originale Textgestalt der Rechtslehre nichts weniger als korrupt ist. In ihr erscheint vielmehr die streng durchkomponierte Entwicklung des Rechtsbegriffs in seiner Totalität als Rechtsidee. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the relationship between Inference to the Best Explanation and Bayesianism, both of which are well-known accounts of the nature of scientific inference. In Sect. 2, I give a brief overview of Bayesianism and IBE. In Sect. 3, I argue that IBE in its most prominently defended forms is difficult to reconcile with Bayesianism because not all of the items that feature on popular lists of “explanatory virtues”—by means of which IBE ranks competing explanations—have confirmational import. (...) Rather, some of the items that feature on these lists are “informational virtues”—properties that do not make a hypothesis \ more probable than some competitor \ given evidence E, but that, roughly-speaking, give that hypothesis greater informative content. In Sect. 4, I consider as a response to my argument a recent version of compatibilism which argues that IBE can provide further normative constraints on the objectively correct probability function. I argue that this response does not succeed, owing to the difficulty of defending with any generality such further normative constraints. Lastly, in Sect. 5, I propose that IBE should be regarded, not as a theory of scientific inference, but rather as a theory of when we ought to “accept” H, where the acceptability of H is fixed by the goals of science and concerns whether H is worthy of commitment as research program. In this way, IBE and Bayesianism, as I will show, can be made compatible, and thus the Bayesian and the proponent of IBE can be friends. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey was the greatest of the remarkable generation of Cambridge philosophers and logicians which included G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maynard Keynes. Before his tragically early death in 1930 at the age of twenty-six, he had done seminal work in mathematics and economics as well as in logic and philosophy. This volume, with a new and extensive introduction by D. H. Mellor, contains all Ramsey's previously published writings on philosophy and the foundations of mathematics. The (...) latter gives the definitive form and defence of the reduction of mathematics to logic undertaken in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica; the former includes the most profound and original studies of universals, truth, meaning, probability, knowledge, law and causation, all of which are still constantly referred to, and still essential reading for all serious students of these subjects. (shrink)

In dialogue with the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Seyla Benhabib the author draws on the idea of a right to have rights and raises the question under which political conditions asylum can be a subjective right for political refugees. He argues that mere spontaneous acts of humanitarianism will not suffice to define the institutional commitments of liberal democracies in refugee policy. At the same time, no duty for any particular state to take up refugees can be derived from (...) a right to have rights. The quest for institutional solutions for a timely migration and asylum policy will rather enhance the discourses on the self-understanding of liberal democracies. With a critical eye on German asylum legislation and legal practice, the author contends that it will be a task of any co-ordinated European right of asylum to define political persecution in relation to the first dimension of human rights in order to differentiate the right of asylum from immigration legislation. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an analysis of the radical disagreement over the adequacy of string theory. The prominence of string theory despite its notorious lack of empirical support is sometimes explained as a troubling case of science gone awry, driven largely by sociological mechanisms such as groupthink (e.g. Smolin 2006). Others, such as Dawid (2013), explain the controversy by positing a methodological revolution of sorts, according to which string theorists have quietly turned to nonempirical methods of theory assessment given (...) the technological inability to directly test the theory. The appropriate response, according to Dawid, is to acknowledge this development and widen the canons of acceptable scientific methods. As I’ll argue, however, the current situation in fundamental physics does not require either of these responses. Rather, as I’ll suggest, much of the controversy stems from a failure to properly distinguish the “context of justification” from the “context of pursuit”. Both those who accuse string theorists of betraying the scientific method and those who advocate an enlarged conception of scientific methodology objectionably conflate epistemic justification with judgements of pursuit-worthiness. Once we get clear about this distinction and about the different norms governing the two contexts, the current situation in fundamental physics becomes much less puzzling. After defending this diagnosis of the controversy, I’ll show how the argument patterns that have been posited by Dawid as constituting an emergent methodological revolution in science are better off if reworked as arguments belonging to the context of pursuit. (shrink)

We develop a Bayesian framework for thinking about the way evidence about the here and now can bear on hypotheses about the qualitative character of the world as a whole, including hypotheses according to which the total population of the world is infinite. We show how this framework makes sense of the practice cosmologists have recently adopted in their reasoning about such hypotheses.

Ocupa-se do problema do começo em filosofia e o relaciona com as dificuldades de pôr em curso o ensinar e o aprender a filosofar. Apresenta as tentativas de fundar um começo absoluto do pensar feitas por Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel e Feuerbach, para, então, tratar do começo da filosofia e do pensar no pensamento problematizado por Deleuze.

Rival paradigms of genetics suggest different perceptions of human life and, correspondingly, of the task of medicine. In dialogue with two paradigmatic heuristics of genetics, I will show that bioethics needs to articulate a narrative that encourages a renewed understanding of the complexity of the phenomena of human life to which molecular medicine must be open. These considerations will be put to the test by discussing the ethical implications of the recent developments in stem cell research and in personal genetics.

Este artigo considera a marcante instabilidade da Filosofia nos currículos da Educação brasileira, assim como seu desaparecimento como disciplina, na versão aprovada da Base Nacional Comum Curricular. Apresenta as prováveis alterações que esse documento promoverá na Educação, referente à formação de professores, ao impacto político e à autonomia docente na criação de aulas, para, então, dedicar-se aos espólios filosóficos restantes na Base, sobretudo àqueles relativos à ética. Mostra que a dimensão ética atravessa o documento e está presente nas “Competências Gerais” (...) a serem desenvolvidas ao longo da Educação Básica, sendo, portanto, uma preocupação de todas as áreas do conhecimento, sobretudo no que se refere às Tecnologias Digitais de Informação e Comunicação e à sustentabilidade ambiental. Volta à definição de ética no documento e às suas bases, a saber, justiça, solidariedade e livre-arbítrio; problematiza seus sentidos e marca algumas incoerências. Evidencia que o documento, apesar de incentivar que a Educação dos jovens esteja, de um lado, voltada àquilo que fizemos e sabemos do mundo, por outro, para o aberto e indeterminado; dá ênfase excessiva à busca de soluções e ao aprendizado de respostas, dando prioridade, no que respeita à Filosofia, à resposta socrática para a questão “O que é o ser humano?” Destaca a ideia apresentada no documento de que o nosso tempo requer uma “nova mentalidade”, regida por uma “ética diferente”, e defende que é por meio do contato com modos de pensar filosóficos, presentes nos textos primários de Filosofia, trabalhados por professores habilitados para isso, que os estudantes tornar-se-ão competentes e hábeis nos dois principais sentidos éticos da Base – 1) da nossa relação com a natureza, com o Planeta e seus bens finitos; e 2) da relação consigo mesmo, o modo de ser. Afirma, por fim, que, apesar da espoliação sofrida pela Filosofia na Base, nenhum projeto de Educação pode ser sustentado sem ela. Palavras-chave: BNCC. Filosofia. Ética. Ensino de Filosofia. (shrink)

INSPIRED by a dynamist Naturphilosophie and looking for a mathematics of the natura naturans, the founders of modern mathematics in Germany made some lasting contributions in the attempt to go beyond perceptible space. Hermann Grassmann’s extension theory, Johann Benedict Listing’s topology, Bernhard Riemann’s non-Euclidean manifold theory, Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi’s approach to non-mechanistic theory and last but not least Georg Cantor’s transfinite set theory were all influenced by the tradition of Naturphilosophie. One central motivation for the new mathematics was to (...) decipher the so-called “inner side of nature” which was thought to be invisible but nonetheless physical. As a result, mathematics was understood not only in terms of quantity but of morphogenetic quality and as a tool to recognize the intrinsic possibilities of structuring and organizing nature. This essay focuses on the philosophical viewpoints of Christian Samuel Weiss, Justus and Hermann Grassmann, Bernhard Riemann and their reception of Schelling’s philosophy. Riemann deconstructed empiricist theories of space so as to glean the fundamental constitution of space. One result was that a given, fixed and static metric is not necessary for the understanding of space. The underlying topological substratum has no specific metric but is capable of exhibiting any possible metric. Riemann’s claims are compared with Schelling’s theory of space in his “Darstellung des Naturprocesses”. My thesis is that Schelling’s philosophy of the emergence of space can be read in Riemannian terms and that it is an interesting model in the context of modern questions. (shrink)

In the context of discovery-oriented hypothesis testing research, behavioral scientists widely accept a convention for false positive (α) and false negative error rates (β) proposed by Jacob Cohen, who deemed the general relative seriousness of the antecedently accepted α = 0.05 to be matched by β = 0.20. Cohen’s convention not only ignores contexts of hypothesis testing where the more serious error is the β-error. Cohen’s convention also implies for discovery-oriented hypothesis testing research that a statistically significant observed effect is (...) four times more probable to be a mistaken discovery than for a statistically significant true observed effect to be independently replicable. In the long run, Cohen’s convention thus is epistemically harmful to the development of a progressive science of human behavior, making its acceptance crucial in explaining the replication crisis in behavioral science. The balance between α- and β-errors generally ought to be struck using both epistemic and practical considerations. Yet epistemic considerations alone imply that making a genuine contribution to the body of knowledge in behavioral science requires error rates that are not only small but also symmetrical. (shrink)

This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.

An introduction to informal logic, critical thinking and rhetoric utilizing actual public discourse .

" In the generations since, its influence has grown-today it is accepted as a classic of general jurisprudence.The work is a bold and persuasive attack on the ...

In this article, I consider an important challenge to the popular theory of scientific inference commonly known as ‘inference to the best explanation’, one that has received scant attention.1 1 The problem is that there exists a wide array of rival models of explanation, thus leaving IBE objectionably indeterminate. First, I briefly introduce IBE. Then, I motivate the problem and offer three potential solutions, the most plausible of which is to adopt a kind of pluralism about the rival models of (...) explanation. However, I argue that how ranking explanations on this pluralistic account of IBE remains obscure and pluralism leads to contradictory results. In light of these objections, I attempt to dissolve the problem by showing why IBE does not require a ‘model’ of explanation and by giving an account of what explanation consists in within the context of IBE. (shrink)

We attempt to extend the nominalistic project initiated in Hartry Field's Science Without Numbers to modern physical theories based in differential geometry.

In this article, I will provide a critical overview of the form of non-deductive reasoning commonly known as “Inference to the Best Explanation” (IBE). Roughly speaking, according to IBE, we ought to infer the hypothesis that provides the best explanation of our evidence. In section 2, I survey some contemporary formulations of IBE and highlight some of its putative applications. In section 3, I distinguish IBE from C.S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. After underlining some of the essential elements of IBE, (...) the rest of the entry is organized around an examination of various problems that IBE confronts, along with some extant attempts to address these problems. In section 4, I consider the question of when a fact requires an explanation, since presumably IBE applies only in cases where some explanation is called for. In section 5, I consider the difficult question of how we ought to understand IBE in light of the fact that among philosophers, there is significant disagreement about what constitutes an explanation. In section 6, I consider different strategies for justifying the truth-conduciveness of the explanatory virtues, e.g., simplicity, unification, scope, etc., criteria which play an indispensable role in any given application of IBE. In section 7, I survey some of the most recent literature on IBE, much of which consists of investigations of the status of IBE from the standpoint of the Bayesian philosophy of science. (shrink)