The purpose of this essay is to defend the deductive-nomological model of explanation against a number of criticisms that have been made of it. It has traditionally been thought that scientific explanations were causal and that scientific explanations involved deduction from laws. In recent years, however, this three-fold identity has been challenged: there are, it is argued, causal explanations that are not scientific, scientific explanations that are not deductive, deductions from laws that are neither causal explanations nor scientific explanations, and (...) causal explanations that involve no deductions from laws. The aim of the present essay is to defend the traditional identities, and to show that the more recent attempts at invalidating them fail in their object. More specifically, this essay argues that a Humean version of the deductive-nomological model of explanation can be defended as the correct account of scientific explanation of individual facts and processes, and as the correct account of causal explanations of individual facts and processes. The deductive-nomological model holds that to explain an event E, say that a is G, one must find some initial conditions C, say that a is F, and a law or theory T such that T and C jointly entail E, and both are essential to the deduction. (shrink)

This volume contains 12 papers addressed to researchers and advanced students in informal logic and related fields, such as argumentation, formal logic, and communications. Among the issues discussed are attempts to rethink the nature of argument and of inference, the role of dialectical context, and the standards for evaluating inferences, and to shed light on the interfaces between informal logic and argumentation theory, rhetoric, formal logic and cognitive psychology.

La exposición y crítica de las doctrinas antiguas tiene un lugar importante en los escritos de Aristóteles. Sin embargo, ciertas dudas se han vuelto corrientes acerca de la confiabilidad de sus descripciones. Más aún, se ha sostenido que Aristóteles deforma la comprensión histórica a través de la introducción de conceptos y términos propios. En este libro se aborda el problema a través de un análisis de las críticas que Aristóteles dirige a la teoría platónica de las Ideas, que permite explicar (...) la constitución y desarrollo de importantes conceptos aristotélicos a partir de la confrontación dialéctica con las doctrinas de su maestro. En efecto, las dificultades genuinas que Aristóteles descubre en el platonismo constituyen el motor para gestar nuevos conceptos, que no son ajenos, sino que surgen como implicaciones del examen crítico. Así, la imposición de términos propios no debe interpretarse como distorsión, sino como el modo que Aristóteles adopta para exhibir su particular solución a los problemas que los filósofos anteriores dejaron sin solución. (shrink)

I discuss two forms of the thesis that to have a sensation is to token a sentence in a language of thought-what I call, following Georges Rey, the sensational sentences thesis. One form of the thesis is a version of standard functionalism, while the other is a version of the increasingly popular thesis that for a sensation to have qualia is for it to have a certain kind of intentional content-that is, intentionalism. I defend the basic idea behind the sensational (...) sentences thesis, and argue that the intentionalist version is either false or collapses into the standard functionalist thesis. (shrink)

The relation between universal and particular is considered to be the Achilles’ heel of universal realism. However, modern universal realism with facts does not have the difficulties which traditional Platonic universal realism had. Its exemplification relation connecting particulars and universals in atomic facts is very different from Platonic participation. Bradley’s regress argument against the exemplification relation can be refuted in two different ways. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to avoid the assumption of an exemplification relation and thus to go without (...) the Achilles’ heel altogether. (shrink)

The very idea of informative analysis gives rise to a well-known paradox. Yet a parallel puzzle, herein called the paradox of synonymy, arises for statements which do not express analyses. The paradox of synonymy has a straightforward metalinguistic solution: certain words are referring to themselves. Likewise, the paradox of analysis can be solved by recognizing that certain expressions in an analysis statement are referring to their own semantic structures.

SummaryHempel's Deductive‐Nomological model of explanation is compared to Sellars' brand of essentialism. The source of their differences is shown to lie in their views on the explanatory role of inductively based generalizations. An adequate explanation requires a reasoned account of why an empirical generalization fails. On Sellars' view this entails concentrating on the nature of the things whose behavior is in question. We thereby remove ourselves from the misleading positivist methodology in which one counterinstance renders a generalization uninteresting. It is (...) suggested instead that “disconfirmed” generalizations are of crucial positive methodological importance for purposes of theory development.RésuméLe modèle déductif‐nomologique de Hempel est comparéà l'essentialisme dans la version qu'en propose Sellars. L'auteur montre que leurs différences proviennent de ce qu'ils jugent différemment le rôle explicatif des généralisations inductives et les raisons de l'échec d'une généralisation empirique. D'après Sellars, il faut par conséquent se concentrer sur la nature des choses dont on observe le comportement; on évite ainsi les problèmes méthodologiques soulevés par les théories positivistes standard de la confirmation. L'auteur conclut en montrant que des généralisations infirmées ont une importance positive capitale pour le développement des théories. (shrink)

Susan Mills and John Beatty's propensity interpretation of fitness encountered very different philosophical criticisms by Alexander Rosenberg and Kenneth Waters. These criticisms and the rejoinders to them are both predictable and important. They are predictable as raisingkinds of issues typically associated with disposition concepts (this is established through a systematic review of the problems generated by Carnap's dispositional interpretation of all scientific terms). They are important as referring the resolution of these issues to the development of evolutionary biology. This historical (...) approach to the propensity interpretation of fitness draws attention to the precarious relation between philosophical clarification of scientific concepts and any given state of the empirical arts. (shrink)

Paradigm intensional contexts result from the unmarked use of referential expressions as “self‐signs”, signs that refer to themselves as tokens, types, or members of Sellarsian “dot‐quoted” kinds. Self‐signing (but unquoted) linguistic expressions are more difficult to recognize than non‐linguistic self‐signs such as the color of a felt pen's casing that represents the color of ink inside. I will discuss non‐linguistic self‐signing, then examine self‐signing in quotation, in “said that …” contexts and in “believes that … ” contexts. The phenomenon of (...) intensionality may reduce to a kind of equivocation, a matter of notation rather than a necessary feature of language. (shrink)

Qualia, Sensa and absolute Processes. In this paper, the development of Sellars' thoughts concerning the mind-body-problem is reconstructed. Starting from an elaborate critique of the identity theory, Sellars claims that the ultimate 'Scientific Image' must contain a concept of sensa as the bearers of certain properties of manifest sense impressions. In his later work Sellars' notion of absolute processes leads him to a new monism and thus to an extended critique of rival theories. It is argued that these Sellarsian thoughts (...) can be helpful in the actual discussion of the mind-body-problem. (shrink)

Recent attempts to define and support realism in semantics seem to acknowledge, as the only defence from skeptical attacks to the notion of meaning, a flat acceptance of the existence of representational relations between language and things in the world. In this paper I reconsider part of the mistrust about the normative character of meaning, in order to show that some of the worries urging the realists to cling on representationalism actually rest on misconceptions. To the contrary, I suggest that (...) normativity is the main strength of a stable realist stance in semantics. Support to this suggestion comes from the reanalysis of some oft-ignored sellarsian themes. (shrink)