Bayesian probabilistic explication of inductive inference conflates neutrality of supporting evidence for some hypothesis H ("not supporting H") with disfavoring evidence ("supporting not-H"). This expressive inadequacy leads to spurious results that are artifacts of a poor choice of inductive logic. I illustrate how such artifacts have arisen in simple inductive inferences in cosmology. In the inductive disjunctive fallacy, neutral support for many possibilities is spuriously converted into strong support for their disjunction. The Bayesian "doomsday argument" is shown to rely entirely (...) on a similar artifact. Copyright 2010 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Supertasks recently discussed in the literature purport to display a failure ofenergy conservation and determinism in Newtonian mechanics. We debatewhether these supertasks are admissible as Newtonian systems, with Earmanand Norton defending the affirmative and Alper and Bridger the negative.

This document collects discussion and commentary on issues raised in the workshop by its participants. Contributors are: Greg Frost-Arnold, David Harker, P. D. Magnus, John Manchak, John D. Norton, J. Brian Pitts, Kyle Stanford, Dana Tulodziecki.

A historical perspective on the future of the car Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9479-z Authors Peter D. Norton, Department of Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4744, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Norton's case against Brown's rationalism about thought experiments suffers from serious shortcomings, which relate to the nature of induction.

Psychiatric diagnosis and prognosis is fraught with important philosophical and conceptual problems. This chapter focuses on some epistemological issues and moral issues that arise in contemporary psychiatric practice. It examines various clinical and actuarial techniques for psychiatric diagnosis, ordered very loosely in terms of how "structured" or "automated" they are. The chapter makes the case for assessing psychiatric treatments with controlled experiments, raises several epistemological dangers that arise from relying on uncontrolled investigations, and considers some of the unique methodological and (...) ethical issues that arise when trying to assess talk therapy. (shrink)

There is a standard story told about the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy: it was a widespread, if not dominant, approach to philosophy in Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II up until the early 1960s, but with the development of systematic approaches to the study of language—formal semantic theories on one hand and Gricean pragmatics on the other—ordinary language philosophy more or less disappeared. In this paper we present quantitative evidence to evaluate the standard story (...) of the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy, building on the topic model of over 30,000 philosophy articles in Weatherson (2022). Using a combination of qualitative judgment and a topic-model-based measurement of similarity between individual articles, we find evidence that supports the first part of the standard story, according to which ordinary language philosophy arises in the 1940s, peaks between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, and then rapidly declines. But we argue that there is also evidence of a "new wave" of ordinary language philosophy in the early 21st century that defies the second part of the standard story. (shrink)

The focus of this study was to analyze the content, distribution, and comparative genome relationships of 996 chromosome bin-mapped expressed sequence tags accounting for 2266 restriction fragments on the homoeologous group 3 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat. Of these loci, 634, 884, and 748 were mapped on chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D, respectively. The individual chromosome bin maps revealed bins with a high density of mapped ESTs in the distal region and bins of low density in the proximal region of the (...) chromosome arms, with the exception of 3DS and 3DL. These distributions were more localized on the higher-resolution group 3 consensus map with intermediate regions of high-mapped-EST density on both chromosome arms. Gene ontology classification of mapped ESTs was not significantly different for homoeologous group 3 chromosomes compared to the other groups. A combined analysis of the individual bin maps using 537 of the mapped ESTs revealed rearrangements between the group 3 chromosomes. Approximately 232 of the consensus mapped ESTs matched sequences on rice chromosome 1 and revealed large- and small-scale differences in gene order. Of the group 3 mapped EST unigenes ∼21 and 32% matched the Arabidopsis coding regions and proteins, respectively, but no chromosome-level gene order conservation was detected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Reading of Bayle: An Inquiry into the Source and Role of the Memoranda J. P. PITTION MY PURPOSE IN THIS PAPER is to discuss an aspect of Hume's reading of Pierre Bayle, the French "Philosopher of Rotterdam. ''1 I am not concerned here with the identification of Hume's direct borrowings from Bayle in the Treatise, nor with the much wider problem of a probable influence of Bayle on (...) Hume. It is indeed possible to identify in the Treatise a number of specific points taken from Bayle. Kemp Smith listed four at least: the account of skepticism, the discussion of Spinoza, the discussion of animal intelligence, and the criticism of the argument from design. 2 All of these come from Bayle's Dictionnaire. External evidence confirms that in 1732 Hume had a work of Bayle, presumably a copy of the Dictionnaire. Other borrowings from Bayle have been identified in the Treatise and in Hume's other works. This is no surprise, for in the eighteenth century Bayle's Dictionnaire was used as it was intended in the first instance, that is, as a reference work. In detailing the borrowings from Bayle, Kemp Smith also touched upon the broader question of influence when he stated that Hume's Pyrrhonism, particularly in relation to his treatment of religion, may also come from Bayle. Many recent scholars have followed suit. A problem of influence however is always a difficult one, and particularly so in this case. There was, as R. H. Popkin has pointed out, a broad awareness of continental skepticism among British philosophers of the eighteenth century. 3 However, apropos Berkeley, A. A. Luce has remarked that the trouble with eighteenth-century continental skepticism was that it had various objectives and took various forms. 4 This is true of Bayle himself. Within skepticism Bayle's position was known for its extremism, and it was this extremism that brought him notoriety. During the eighteenth century Bayle was the philosopher who promoted a systematic use of the Pyrrhonic mode of argument. He was acknowledged above all for having set up a double paradox: that any attempt at a rational theodicy must lead to Manicheism and that to argue for a rationalist Christian ethics is to argue the case of an atheistic one as well. In other words, in the early eighteenth century Bayle played the part of a contemporary Pyrrho and Zeno of Elea: he was known for this double stance, and it is for ' This is a slightly revised version of a paper read at the McGill Bicentennial Hume Conference, held at McGiUUniversity, Montreal, in September, 1976. I wishto offer my thanks to Professors H. M. Bracken and D. F. Norton for their assistanceon this version, and I am particularly grateful to Professor James Moore of Concordia University for his comments on the interpretation put forward here in relation to section III of the Memoranda (seen. 8). 2N. KempSmith, The Philosophy of David Hume (NewYork, 1964),pt. III, chap. XIV, app. C. 3 "David Hume and the Pyrrhonian Controversy," Review of Metaphysics VI (September, 1952):65-81. 4 The Dialectic of Immaterialisrn (London, 1963),p. 67. [373] 374 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY this stance that he was mentioned. It is doubtful whether many of those who do refer to Bayle during this period understood him beyond these terms, whether they sought to understand, or whether they even bothered to read Bayle's lengthy arguments. It is clear that few really grasped his complex, often ambiguous objectives. Mention of a Baylian position by an eighteenth-century writer is therefore no guarantee that the writer has actually read Bayle's works: Bayle is a sort of figurehead for Pyrrhonism, Manicheism, or often even atheism, but one can doubt that there is behind the mention of these basic positions any serious reflection on his thought. There are exceptions of course. Luce and H. M. Bracken have shown that Bayle played a seminal role in the formation of Berkeley's thought? But as a rule, knowledge of Bayle among writers of the Enlightenment was vague; references to him, nonspecific. In most cases it is scarcely possible to speak of an influence. My aim in this... (shrink)

This paper examines narrativism’s claim that the historical past cannot be known once and for all because it must be continuously re-described from the standpoint of the present. We argue that this claim is based on a non sequitur. We take narrativism’s claim that the past must be re-described continuously from the perspective of the present to be the result of the following train of thought: 1) “all knowledge is conceptually mediated”; 2) “the conceptual framework through which knowledge of reality (...) is mediated changes with every new generation of historians”; therefore (narrativism’s claim) “the historical past changes with every new generation of historians”. The idea of an unchanging past, for the narrativist, requires denying premise 1 (all knowledge is conceptually mediated”) and therefore rests on a problematic commitment to the chimerical notion of the past as it is in-itself, wie es eigentlich gewesen. We argue that the narrativist’s conclusion does not follow unless one adds a further premise, namely 3) “it is not possible to view reality through the categorial framework of historical agents”. If one asserts the possibility of grasping reality through the categorial framework of others, be they contemporary or past agents (as much philosophy of history written in an idealist key does), then one no longer has to accept the narrativist’s inference that since the past cannot be known in-itself or independently of conceptual mediation, then it cannot be known as it always was for the historical agents. Narrativism’s inference that the past cannot be known as it always was does not follow from premises 1 and 2 unless one smuggles in another problematic premise, premise 3. In this paper we defend the claim that the past can be known as it always was (not as it is in-itself) by invoking a different conception of the role of conceptual mediation in historical knowledge, one which assumes the possibility of viewing reality through the categorial framework of others. This notion of the role of conceptual mediation in historical knowledge is prevalent in the idealist tradition but, in the interest of brevity, we will defend this notion of mediacy by specific reference to the idealist philosophy of R.G. Collingwood. (shrink)

The Church of England By Law Established, in incidental payment for secular privilege, has submitted to the bonds of established clichá, in particular to the reproach that its rulers seem more concerned with the external or practical working of Anglican faith and ritual than with their intellectual definition and justification. This intellectual looseness remained unimportant in practice as long as a forceful anti–Roman spirit blew all waves of opinion in one practical direction. In time, however, that wind gradually lost force (...) and positive cross–currents of Anglican belief came to the public surface. The legislators of the sixteenth century had formulated the positive rules of the Thirty–Nine Articles and the Prayer Book in tolerantly broad language. They left no decisive teaching authority to explain their texts and to meet the challenge of shifting ritual and speculative doubt. Time has subjected both instruments to an everwidening range of individual interpretation especially since the early nineteenth century, when the Anglican monopoly of political, social and educational institutions was disputed by fresh tides of Protestant dissenters, renascent Catholics and nascent agnostics. To–day, as Mr. Cockshut wryly comments: “to throw doubt on the Anglican formularies is itself part of the Anglican tradition”. (shrink)

The meticulous printing at a moderate price of this remarkable work is a credit to the publisher. During the past thirty years M. Gilson has been the greatest single influence upon lay readers in reviving serious interest in the clerical speculation, which for twelve hundred years conscientiously spanned the gap between the collapse of Greek science and Roman law and the late sweep of modern sciences and their secular philosophies. Preoccupation with short-term apologetics after the Reformation increased clerical aloofness from (...) professional science and philosophy and probably increased the non-scholastic’s assumption that the Christian Era was merely a dark or middle age between ancient and modern intellectual life. In fact, early and medieval thinkers gradually confronted their Christian faith and pagan science and against the basso ostinato of secular warfare developed the varied themes of scientific theology and human philosophy, which crystallized into the mature Scholasticism of the thirteenth century. Hence the seventeenth century founders of modern philosophy, as M. Gilson first found à propos of Descartes, started to philosophize from a metaphysical inheritance much richer than the original Greek patrimony, especially in the light it cast upon the reality of God, the origin of the universe in which man lives, the nature and destiny of man himself. To overlook this linking inheritance, is to make modern philosophy less intelligible; while to personally judge its value, we must return to its historical sources. This is the task to which M. Gilson has devoted his pioneering judgment; this work is probably the final synthesis of his scholarship. (shrink)