The first theory of confirmation that Carnap developed in detail is to be found in "Testability and Meaning". In this paper, he addressed the issue of a definition of empiricism, several years after abandoning the quest for a unique and universal logical framework supposed to be the basis of a clear distinction between the meaningful sentences of science and the pseudo-sentences of metaphysics. The principle of tolerance (according to which everyone is free to build up his own form (...) of language as he wishes) had been adopted near the end of 1932, at a time when it was already obvious to Carnap that a strictly verificationist criterion of meaning was inadequate. He therefore considered a variety of empiricisms and a variety of choices for the language of science. As Carnap put it, "there are many different possibilities in framing an empiricist language" and, correspondingly, several degrees of liberalization of the criterion of meaning. It was in this context that Carnap provided both a logical (syntactical) and an empirical analysis of confirmation (and of testing), before distinguishing requirements of different strengths which served the purpose of defining several versions of empiricism. (shrink)

This experimental study provides further support for a theory of meaning first put forward by Bar-Hillel and Carnap in 1953 and foreshadowed by Asimov in 1951. The theory is the Popperian notion that the meaningfulness of a proposition is its a priori falsity. We tested this theory in the first part of this paper by translating to logical form a long, tightly written, published text and computed the meaningfulness of each proposition using the a priori falsity measure. (...) We then selected the top propositions—by a priori falsity—and strung them together to form ad hoc abstracts and compared these abstracts with the published summary. The results were startling: translation to logical form, followed by application of the Asimovian idea and Bar-Hillel/Carnap mathematics as elaborated into an AI/NLP proposal in Fulda (1986, 1988), produced excellent abstracts, thereby providing a proof-of-concept that merely by knowing the logical form of long text passages, one can produce reasonable abstracts of them—without actually understanding the text. We here report on a second experiment analyzing, in the exact same manner, the correspondence that followed the published text of the first experiment. While the results of this confirming experiment are less startling, they nevertheless provide additional confidence in the promise of the technique. In other words, were the results of these two experiments to generalize, that would show that logical form captures much more semantics than has heretofore been considered likely. Far from (as is commonly supposed) being merely the syntactical rewrite of text into formal notation, translation to logical form, even when undertaken with almost no knowledge about the particular predicates, individual constants, or other objects referred to in that form, might capture the core of the meaning in some important sense. -/- Note: There is a key difference in the /style/ of the texts analyzed in I and II in this long paper, divided into two only for practical reasons—space; the first text analyzed is written in a tight mathematical style, while the second is written in the discursive style of philosophy. -/- Finally, the unusual (for me) length of this two-part paper is justified by its being data-driven. (shrink)

Among the various meanings in which the word ‘probability’ is used in everyday language, in the discussion of scientists, and in the theories of probability, there are especially two which must be clearly distinguished. We shall use for them the terms ‘probability1’ and ‘probability2'. Probability1 is a logical concept, a certain logical relation between two sentences ; it is the same as the concept of degree of confirmation. I shall write briefly “c” for “degree of confirmation,” and “c” (...) for “the degree of confirmation of the hypothesis h on the evidence e“; the evidence is usually a report on the results of our observations. On the other hand, probability2 is an empirical concept; it is the relative frequency in the long run of one property with respect to another. The controversy between the so-called logical conception of probability, as represented e.g. by Keynes, and Jeffreys, and others, and the frequency conception, maintained e.g. by v. Mises and Reichenbach, seems to me futile. These two theories deal with two different probability concepts which are both of great importance for science. Therefore, the theories are not incompatible, but rather supplement each other. (shrink)

The argument from analogy is examined from the point of view of Carnap's confirmation theory. It is argued that if inductive arguments are to be applicable to the real world, they must contain elementary analogical inferences. Carnap's system as originally developed (theλ -system) is not strong enough to take account of analogical arguments, but it is shown that the new system, which he has announced but not published in detail (theη -system), is capable of satisfying the (...) conditions of inductive analogy. Finally it is shown that an elementary analysis of analogical inference yields postulates of the η -system with a minimum of arbitrary assumptions. (shrink)

The argument from analogy is examined from the standpoint of Carnap's confirmation theory. Carnap's own discussion of analogy in relation to his c*— function is restricted to cases where the analogues are known to be similar, but not known to be different in any respect. It has been argued by the author in a previous work,, and by P. Achinstein, that typical analogy arguments involve known differences between the analogues as well as similarities. Achinstein shows that (...) for such arguments none of Carnap's Δ— system of conflrmation functions gives satisfactory values, and it is further shown in the present paper that for these arguments the confirmation never rises above its initial value, irrespective of evidence drown from an analogue. it is argued that even if inductive arguments are to be applicable to the real world, they must in principle be capable of taking into account known differences between the instances of an inductive generalization. Hence Carnap's Δ— system is inadequate as an explication of both induction and analogy.Three conditions are stated as necessary for any confirmation theory which gives a satisfactory explication of analogical inference:I. If two individuals a and b are known to agree in certain properties and differ in others, and if in addition a has a further property, then the confirmation of the hypothesis that b also has this property is greater than its initial confirmation, at least if the weight of the similarities is sufficiently great compared with the weight of the differences.II. The confirmation‐value increases or decreases with the weight of the similarities between the analogues compared with the weight of their differences.III. The confirmation that b has a certain property is greater if a has that property than if a does not have it.The Δ— system sastisfles none of these conditions. Carnap and Stegmüller have now, however, presented a new anxiom system for confirmation functions. the — system, Which is introduced primarily to deal with languages whose primitive predicates fall into families such that each individual can only be qualified by one predicate of each family. They construct a c‐ function which, as well as dealing with a language having two families of such predicates, also depends, unlike the functions in the Δ— system, on similarities between otherwise different individuals. The system is not developed far enough in this Appendix to enable the authors to discuss the confirmation in analogy arguments satisfying conditions I — III above, but it is shown in the present paper that, with a simple generalization of the measure‐function defined by Carnap and Stegmüller, and in the simplest non‐trivial case, condition I — III are all satisfied, indeed a stronger form of condition I is satisfied, in which no known similarity of the analogues is postulated.Finally it is remarked that Carnap and Stegmüller's method of introducing their Δ— system is extremely arbitrary and ad hoc, and an alternative method of introducing is suggested. Bearing in mind the fundamental nature of the argument from analogy in all application of induction to the real world, it is suggesetd that the fundamental inductive inference needing explication is not the inference of‘P1b, from ‘P,1a, but the analogical infeence of‘P2b, from‘P1P2a.P1b,. It is posinitial confirmation of‘P2b, and the confirmation of‘P2b, given‘P2a” and that the later two confirmation‐values are equivalent to those in the Δ— system. It is then shown that Carnap and Stegmüller's new measure‐function follows from their axiom system together with these postulates. Thus some of the arbitrariness of the — system is removed by general considérations regarding inductive and analogical inference. (shrink)

Recent scholarship (by mainly Michael Friedman, but also by Thomas Uebel) on the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap covering the period from the publication of Carnap’s’ 1928 book Der Logische Aufbau der Welt through to the mid to late 1930’s has tended to view Carnap as espousing a form of conventionalism (epitomized by his adoption of the principle of tolerance) and not a form of empirical foundationalism. On this view, it follows that Carnap’s 1934 The Logical Syntax of Language is the (...) pinnacle of his work during this era, this book having developed in its most complete form the conventionalist approach to dissolving the pseudoproblems that often attend philosophical investigation. My task in this paper, in opposition to this trend, is to resuscitate the empiricist interpretation of Carnap’s work during this time period. The crux of my argument is that Carnap’s 1934 book, by eschewing for the most part the empiricism he espouses in the Aufbau and in his 1932 The Unity of Science, is led to a form of conventionalism that faces the serious hazard of collapsing into epistemological relativism. My speculation is that Carnap came to recognize this deficiency in his 1934 book, and in subsequent work (“Testability and Meaning”, published in 1936/37) felt the need to re-instate his empiricist agenda. This subsequent work provides a much improved empiricist epistemology from Carnap’s previous efforts and, ashistory informs us, sets the standard for future research in the theory of confirmation. (shrink)

Confirmation theorists seek to define a function that will take into account the various factors relevant in determining the degree to which an hypothesis is confirmed by its evidence. Among confirmation theorists, only Rudolf Carnap has constructed a system which purports to consider factors in addition to the number of instances, viz. the variety manifested by the instances and the amount of analogy between the instances. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the problem which these (...) additional factors raise for confirmation theory, and to prove that, despite Carnap's claim, no confirmation function satisfying the requirements he has specified can take account of variety and analogy. This result is first proved for a special case, and then, in a subsequent section, is generalized through the introduction of a theorem (the proof of which is given in Appendix I). In the final section of the paper it is shown that, contrary to a claim which Carnap has made, not even the concept of the "logical width" of a predicate will enable confirmation functions satisfying his requirements to take adequate account of analogies between instances. (shrink)

The theme of this paper was inspired by studies related to the subject of my doctoral dissertation,1 and, more specifically, by the work of A. Richardson and M. Friedman on the same subject presented in their two recently published books.2 The material in these books which addresses the connection between Russell and Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt reveals the same basic perspective in both authors and, in fact, represents the first in depth enquiry of this connection, despite certain fairly (...) essential limitations which I hope to reveal in this paper. The line of investigation I intend to take in the following may therefore be outlined as such; to examine, albeit briefly, the extent to which Richardson’s and Friedman’s perspective can offer us a correct historical and philosophical approach to the influence of Russell’s philosophy on the Aufbau, and, by confirming the existence of the limitations alluded to, to determine whether this perspective may be adequately reformulated independently of their existence, and to determine how, in general terms, it may in fact be reformulated. Thus, although my analyses and commentaries do not fall within a strictly historiographical framework, as is the case in the work developed by Richardson and Friedman, it is nevertheless possible to achieve certain objectives characteristic of this framework which, eventually, may become the subject of a future historiography of the philosophy of Russell and his influence on the Aufbau.3 In order to achieve these objectives my main aim is neither negative nor destructive but essentially philosophical; I see myself together with the authors in question as partners in the investigation and resolution of problems arising from the presentation, discussion and testing of competitive theories, an example of what occurs in the scientific enquiry. In these circumstances, and from this point of view, I see myself as a philosopher who points to certain difficulties and problems in the theory put forward by these authors to explain the Aufbau, and, with particular reference to Russell’s philosophy, concludes by suggesting an alternative theory. (shrink)

The empiricist bent of philosophy of science and epistemology over the past four decades has recently been challenged, partly by arguments that exploit the uncertainty about what precisely the given is. It is claimed that this uncertainty stems from the fact that all observation is theory-laden; different "enities" [[sic]] are said to be observed as the theory constituting them is varied. Observations therefore do not test theories. So-called tests are really circular arguments, if they confirm the theory, (...) or question-begging, if they disconfirm it. Such is roughly the line of argument advanced by the new philosophy of science. (shrink)

In Carnap’s autobiography, he tells the story how one night in January 1931, “the whole theory of language structure” in all its ramifications “came to [him] like a vision”. The shorthand manuscript he produced immediately thereafter, he says, “was the first version” of Logical Syntax of Language. This document, which has never been examined since Carnap’s death, turns out not to resemble Logical Syntax at all, at least on the surface. Wherein, then, did the momentous insight of 21 January (...) 1931 consist? We seek to answer this question by placing Carnap’s shorthand manuscript in the context of his previous efforts to accommodate scientific theories and metalinguistic claims within Wittgenstein’s Tractatus theory of meaning. The breakthrough of January 1931 consists, from this viewpoint, in the rejection of the Tractatus theory in favor of the meta-mathematical perspective of Hilbert, Gödel, and Tarski. This was not yet the standpoint of the published Logical Syntax, as we show, but led naturally to the “principle of tolerance” and thus to Carnap’s mature philosophy, in which the inconsistencies between this first view and the principle of tolerance, which survived into the published Syntax, were overcome. (shrink)

The article presents a critical semantic analysis of the so-called analytical truths as they were discussed by R. Carnap and building on some new empirical data that are not fully satisfactorily explained by Carnap’s theory. A theoretical reconstruction of Carnap’s theory of analytical truths is proposed. It is demonstrated how his understanding of analytical truths, as statements that are true in all possible worlds and amenable to a quite obvious definition on a par with the concepts of sense (...) (meaning) and synonymy, applies exclusively to artificial languages of logic. Therefore, Carnap’s theory remains unreachable for the well-known criticism of W. Quine, who, in turn, pointed out the difficulties in defining these concepts for natural languages. A theoretical reconstruction of Carnap’s explication of the mentioned concepts in the theory of meaning for natural languages is carried out. The connection of Carnap’s approach with the perspective of contemporary formal semantics is established. Subsequently, problematic cases and the difficulties they pose for Carnap’s concept are examined. An explanation is proposed for analytical truths as containing in their logical form an (unpronounced) quantifier over possible worlds (situations). (shrink)

In 1929 Carnap gave a paper in Prague on Investigations in General Axiomatics; a briefsummary was published soon after. Its subject lookssomething like early model theory, and the mainresult, called the Gabelbarkeitssatz, appears toclaim that a consistent set of axioms is complete justif it is categorical. This of course casts doubt onthe entire project. Though there is no furthermention of this theorem in Carnap''s publishedwritings, his Nachlass includes a largetypescript on the subject, Investigations inGeneral Axiomatics. We examine this work (...) here,showing that it provides important insights intoCarnap''s development during this critical period, thetransition from Aufbau to Syntax,especially regarding the nature and motivation ofCarnap''s logicism. Moreover, we show how theAxiomatics influenced Carnap''s student Gödel inreaching the fundamental logical results that soonafterwards undermined Carnap''s project. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to obtain in-depth knowledge about caring confirmation of patients with cancer, from the patients’ point of view. The research topic was: what is the significance for patients of their being confirmed by nursing personnel? Fifteen men and women between 43 and 80 years of age participated in this study. The method of data collection used was qualitative research interviewing. A hermeneutic approach was used to interpret the data, in which Kvale’s self-perception, the ‘common (...) sense’ level, and theoretical levels were applied. The results are summarized in three areas: an outer confirmation, an inner confirmation, and a lack of the latter. Outer confirmation meant being understood and taken seriously; the maintenance of human dignity and worth indicated inner confirmation. A lack of inner confirmation is primarily manifest in terms of patients’ mental, spiritual and existential concerns. In relation to the theory of Eriksson, these patients were confirmed at the level of having and being, but seldom at the level of becoming. (shrink)

Due to their acceptance of the verifiability principle, the only way left for logical positivists to argue for the meaningfulness of religious language was to accept some sort of emotivistic conception of it or to reduce it to the description of religious attitude. The verifiability principle, however, suffers from some severe limitations that make it inadequate as a criterion for cognitive meaning. To resolve these problems, logical positivists gave up the requirement of conclusive verifiability and defended a sort of ‘liberalization’ (...) of the verifiability principle. Carnap’s confirmability criterion for cognitive meaning, which is a liberalized form of the verifiability principle, is compatible with an orthodox conception of religious language since, from a theistic perspective, the existence of God can be confirmed through our observational statements. (shrink)

L'idée d'associer probabilité et induction n'est pas propre au xxe siècle, mais elle a reçu un développement systématique lorsque les philosophes néo-positivistes s'en sont emparés. Dès les années 1940, le philosophe Rudolf Carnap s'est proposé de relever le «défi humien» en fondant une théorie de la confirmation par la construction d'une logique probabiliste dite «inductive». Ce projet avait été esquissé à Cambridge dans les années 1920 par l'économiste John M. Keynes. Examiner le programme de Carnap dans sa totalité, le (...) situer dans son contexte historique, suivre son évolution et les influences qu'il a eues, tels sont les buts de cet article. The idea of associating probability and induction is not a theme suitable for the xxth century but it has received a systematic development when the neo-positivist philosophers seized it. Beginning with the 1940's, the philosopher Rudolph Carnap proposed to affront the «Humian challenge» by founding a theory of confirmation through the construction of a probabilistic logic called «inductive». This project had been outlined in Cambridge during the 1920's by the economist John M. Keynes. To examine Carnap's program in its totality, to situate it in its historical context, to follow its evolution and the influences it has had, these are the aims of this article. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to make a simple observation regarding the Johnson -Carnap continuum of inductive methods. From the outset, a common criticism of this continuum was its failure to permit the confirmation of universal generalizations: that is, if an event has unfailingly occurred in the past, the failure of the continuum to give some weight to the possibility that the event will continue to occur without fail in the future. The Johnson -Carnap continuum is the mathematical (...) consequence of an axiom termed Johnson 's sufficientness postulate, the thesis of this paper is that, properly viewed, the failure of the Johnson -Carnap continuum to confirm universal generalizations is not a deep fact, but rather an immediate consequence of the sufficientness postulate; and that if this postulate is modified in the minimal manner necessary to eliminate such an entailment, then the result is a new continuum that differs from the old one in precisely one respect: it enjoys the desideratum of confirming universal generalizations. (shrink)

David Lewis presented Convention as an alternative to the conventionalism characteristic of early-twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Rudolf Carnap is well known for suggesting the arbitrariness of any particular linguistic convention for engaging in scientific inquiry. Analytic truths are self-consistent, and are not checked against empirical facts to ascertain their veracity. In keeping with the logical positivists before him, Lewis concludes that linguistic communication is conventional. However, despite his firm allegiance to conventions underlying not just languages but also social customs, he pioneered (...) the view that convening need not require any active agreement to participate. Lewis proposed that conventions arise from “an exchange of manifestations of a propensity to conform to a regularity” (87–8). In reasserting the conventional quality of languages and other practices resting on mutual expectations, Lewis comfortably works within the analytic tradition. Yet he also deviates from his predecessors because his conventionalist approach is comprehensively grounded in instrumentalism. Lewis adopts an extension of David Hume's desire-belief psychology articulated in rational choice theory. He develops his philosophy of convention relying on the highly formal mid-twentieth-century expected utility and game theories. This attempt to account for language and social customs wholly in terms of instrumental rationality has the implication of reducing normativity to preference satisfaction. Lewis’ approach continues in the trend of undermining normative political philosophy because institutions and practices arise spontaneously, without the deliberate involvement of agents. Perhaps Lewis’ Convention is best seen as a resurgent form of analytic philosophy, characterized by “a style of argument, hostility to [ambitious] metaphysics, focus on language, and the dominance of logic and formalization” that solves the dilemma of “combining the analytic inheritance…with normative concerns” by reducing normativity to individuals’ preference fulfillment consistent with the axioms of rational choice. (shrink)

It is customary to distinguish experimental from purely observational sciences. The former include physics and molecular biology, the latter astronomy and palaeontology. Experiments involve actively intervening in the course of nature, as opposed to observing events that would have happened anyway. When a molecular biologist inserts viral DNA into a bacterium in his laboratory, this is an experiment; but when an astronomer points his telescope at the heavens, this is an observation. Without the biologist’s handiwork the bacterium would never have (...) contained foreign DNA; but the planets would have continued orbiting the sun whether or not the astronomer had directed his telescope skyward. The observational/experimental distinction would probably be difficult to make precise 1, as the notion of an ‘intervention’ is not easily defined, but it is intuitively fairly clear, and is frequently invoked by scientists and historians of science. Experimentation, or ‘putting questions to nature’, is often cited as a hallmark of the modern scientific method, something that permitted the enormous advances of the last 350 years. And it is sometimes said that the social sciences lag behind the natural because controlled experiments cannot be done so readily in the former. Moreover in certain sciences, e.g. epidemiology, students are explicitly taught that experimental data is preferable to observational data, particularly for doing causal inference. So the distinction between observational and experimental science has quite wide currency, and is often regarded as methodologically significant. Surprisingly, mainstream philosophy of science has had rather little to say about the observational/experimental distinction. 2 For example, discussions of confirmation usually invoke a notion of ‘evidence’, to be contrasted with ‘theory’ or ‘hypothesis’; the aim is to understand how the evidence bears on the hypothesis. But whether this ‘evidence’ comes from observation or experiment generally plays no role in the discussion; this is true …. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Bayesian Orthodoxy Idealization Two Approaches to a Theory of Probability Adjustment for Nonclassical Logics Carnap's Confirmation Theory Proportional Syllogisms Kyburg's Fuzzy Probabilities Levi's Indeterminate Systems Qualitative Theories of Probability The Dynamics of Subjective Probability Probability Theory and Quantum Theory.

The title of this symposium, “Formal Simplicity as a Weight in the Acceptability of Scientific Theories,” to some people might seem to suggest that we are to be making positive proposals about how the concept of simplicity could be defined for formalized languages, defined so as to figure in a formalized theory of confirmation. I must confess at the start that I do not have any such ambitious object in view. I now feel, indeed, that premature formalizations have (...) little power to illuminate the philosophically interesting questions which cluster round the problem of the role of simplicity in scientific thinking. So in this short paper I wish merely to present some elementary considerations, not very novel ones, concerning the role which simplicity seems to me to play in our non-demonstrative reasoning about matters of empirical fact. Although many writers have sought to analyze the logical character of such reasoning, little unanimity has been attained in their over-all views; thus it is that though the considerations which I wish to present are elementary, they are not wholly uncontroversial. But because these matters are elementary in nature, I do feel it appropriate in discussing them to use homely examples of uncomplicated kinds, rather than elaborate examples drawn from the more sophisticated reaches of scientific theory; in doing so, I am taking it for granted that scientific inference as regards its logical character is fundamentally a refinement of everyday thinking, rather than a procedure of some essentially different nature. (shrink)

This article presents the results of an experiment that completely measures the utility function and probability weighting function for different positive and negative monetary outcomes, using a representative sample of N = 1,935 from the general public. The results confirm earlier findings in the lab, suggesting that utility is less pronounced than what is found in classical measurements where expected utility is assumed. Utility for losses is found to be convex, consistent with diminishing sensitivity, and the obtained loss-aversion coefficient of (...) 1.6 is moderate but in agreement with contemporary evidence. The estimated probability weighting functions have an inverse-S shape and they imply pessimism in both domains. These results show that probability weighting is also an important phenomenon in the general population. Women and lower educated individuals are found to be more risk averse, in agreement with common findings. In contrast to previous studies that ascribed gender differences in risk attitudes solely to differences in the degree utility curvature, however, our results show that this finding is primarily driven by loss aversion and, for women, also by a more pessimistic psychological response toward the probability of obtaining the best possible outcome. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aristotelianism of Locke's PoliticsJ. S. MaloyThose, then, who think that the positions of statesman, king, household manager, and master of slaves are the same are not correct. For they hold that each of these differs not innly in whether the subjects ruled are few or many... the assumption being that there is no difference between a large household and a small city-state.... But these claims are not true.Aristotle, (...) Politics, 1252a1The Power of a Magistrate over a Subject may be distinguished from that of a Father over his Children, a Master over his Servant, a Husband over his Wife, and a Lord over his Slave. All which distinct Powers happening sometimes together in the same Man, if he be considered under these different Relations, it may help us to distinguish these Powers one from another, and show the difference betwixt a Ruler of a Common-wealth, a Father of a Family, and a Captain of a Galley.Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.22 [End Page 235]When the political theory of John Locke first appeared in print in 1689, the imposing authority of Aristotle stood ready to defeat it. So believed many of Locke's critics, at any rate. After his death in 1704, when it was confirmed that the internationally renowned author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding had also written the anonymously published Two Treatises of Government, Locke was widely taken to represent a distinctive type of political theory based on individual rights and the social contract. Learned opposition to this sort of voluntaristic account of politics has often rested on Aristotle, "the Philosopher," the ancient authority on the human instinct for sociability and the hierarchal communities arising therefrom. Within the modern academy "liberals," "communitarians," and "republicans" have again made a habit of pronouncing the names of Locke and Aristotle in tones of antagonism. In broad outline the reasons have not changed in two or three centuries ago: the first stands for natural-rights individualism and the second for an organic conception of community.3What are we to make of this conventional opposition in light of the awkward fact that the second of Locke's Two Treatises, "Of Civil Government," takes the reclamation of the Aristotelian conception of political power as its principal purpose? Locke announced in the opening chapter of that essay that his chief target, Robert Filmer, had misunderstood the nature of distinctively political relationships, mainly by ignoring the differences between authority in political society and authority within the family (L 2.1–2). Locke alleged that this basic conceptual mistake of the Filmerian theory of "absolute" and "arbitrary" government was the source of its disastrous practical ramifications, which he had summed up in the first Treatise as "Chains for all Mankind" (L 1.1). Filmer, in turn, had taken Plato's side in the debate about political and familial rule which Aristotle had joined in the opening lines of his Politics (A 1252a). Though a perceptive reader long ago noticed the Aristotelianism of Locke's response to Filmer—Locke and Algernon Sidney were the "two famous men" to whom Rousseau alluded as having defended Aristotle against Filmer's Platonic notions of power—no modern scholar has attempted a full explanation of the significance of Locke's intervention in this debate.4 [End Page 236]The analysis below will show that Aristotle was the classic source for both the principal theoretic argument of Locke's second Treatise and the method employed to pursue it, i.e. using analogies of power for conceptual comparison and distinction. But my argument for the Aristotelianism of Locke's politics will rest on contextual as well as textual grounds. Not only was Locke pursuing an evident variation on the central theme of bk. 1 of Aristotle's Politics; he was far from alone in doing so. This sort of project was by the 1680s typical of radical constitutionalist writing in Europe, including not only English Whigs like Sidney and James Tyrrell but also a long line of writers on both sides of the English Channel, stretching back at least a century, who deployed a particular interpretation of Aristotle in the service... (shrink)

Suggestions that academic medicine is systemically racist are increasingly common in the medical literature. Such suggestions often rely upon expansive notions of systemic racism that are deeply controversial. The author argues for an empirical concept of systemic racism and offers a counter argument to a recent suggestion that academic medicine is systemically racist in its treatment of medical trainees: Anderson et al.’s (Academic Medicine, 98(8S), S28–S36, 2023) “The Long Shadow: a Historical Perspective on Racism in Medical Education.” Contra the authors (...) of “The Long Shadow,” the author argues that racial performance disparities in medical education cannot be validly attributed to racism without careful empirical confirmation; he further argues that standards of assessment in medical education cannot be properly deemed racist merely because minority trainees are disproportionately disadvantaged by them. Furthermore, the history of medicine and society in the Anglo-European West is not, as argued by the authors of “The Long Shadow,” best viewed as one long tale of racial oppression culminating in the present day pervasive racism of academic medicine in the United States. Racism is a deplorable stain on our history and our present but it is not the historical essence of Christianity, European civilization, Western medicine, or contemporary academic medical institutions. (shrink)

The faults of logical empiricist accounts of metascientific discourse are examined through a study of the modifications Carnap makes to his version of the program over four decades. As empiricists acquiesced on the distinction between theory and observation, Carnap attempted to retain and insulate an equally suspect sharp distinction between the theoretic and the pragmatic. Carnap's later philosophy was understood as a modification of the program in the direction of pragmatism. But neither the key notion of "external questions" (...) nor an instrumentalist understanding of "pragmatic utility" are genuinely compatible with pragmatism. This underlines the need to clarify what is unique to pragmatic views of cognitive evaluation and normative discourse as they affect scientific reasoning. I conclude by suggesting how pragmatic conceptions of metascientific discourse can work to correct misconceptions about norm generation and governance that are shared in logicist and historicist accounts. (shrink)

A major difficulty for currently existing theories of inductive inference involves the question of what to do when novel, unknown, or previously unsuspected phenomena occur. In this paper one particular instance of this difficulty is considered, the so-called sampling of species problem.The classical probabilistic theories of inductive inference due to Laplace, Johnson, de Finetti, and Carnap adopt a model of simple enumerative induction in which there are a prespecified number of types or species which may be observed. But, realistically, this (...) is often not the case. In 1838 the English mathematician Augustus De Morgan proposed a modification of the Laplacian model to accommodate situations where the possible types or species to be observed are not assumed to be known in advance; but he did not advance a justification for his solution. (shrink)

This paper explores some lines of argument in wittgenstein's post-Tractatus writings in order to indicate the relations between wittgenstein's philosophical psychology, On the one hand, And his philosophy of language, His epistemology, And his doctrines about the nature of philosophical analysis on the other. The authors maintain that the later writings of wittgenstein express a coherent doctrine in which an operationalistic analysis of confirmation and language supports a philosophical psychology of a type the authors call "logical behaviorism." they also (...) maintain that there are good grounds for rejecting the philosophical theory implicit in wittgenstein's later works. In particular, They first argue that wittgenstein's position leads to some implausible conclusions concerning the nature of language and psychology; second, They maintain that the arguments wittgenstein provides are inconclusive; and third, They sketch an alternative position which they believe avoids many of the difficulties implicit in wittgenstein's philosophy. (shrink)

The notion of a severe test has played an important methodological role in the history of science. But it has not until recently been analyzed in any detail. We develop a generally Bayesian analysis of the notion, compare it with Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical approach by way of sample diagnostic tests in the medical sciences, and consider various objections to both. At the core of our analysis is a distinction between evidence and confirmation or belief. These notions must be kept (...) separate if mistakes are to be avoided; combined in the right way, they provide an adequate understanding of severity. Those who think that the weight of the evidence always enables you to choose between hypotheses “ignore one of the factors (the prior probability) altogether, and treat the other (the likelihood) as though it ...meant something other than it actually does. This is the same mistake as is made by someone who has scruples about measuring the arms of a balance (having only a tape measure at his disposal ...), but is willing to assert that the heavier load will always tilt the balance (thereby implicitly assuming, although without admitting it, that the arms are of equal length!). (Bruno de Finetti, Theory of Probability)2. (shrink)

A structure ${\mathbb Y}$ of a relational language L is called almost chainable iff there are a finite set $F \subset Y$ and a linear order $\,<$ on the set $Y\setminus F$ such that for each partial automorphism $\varphi $ of the linear order $\langle Y\setminus F, <\rangle $ the mapping $\mathop {\mathrm {id}}\nolimits _F \cup \varphi $ is a partial automorphism of ${\mathbb Y}$. By theorems of Fraïssé and Pouzet, an infinite structure ${\mathbb Y}$ is almost chainable iff the (...) profile of ${\mathbb Y}$ is bounded; namely, iff there is a positive integer m such that ${\mathbb Y}$ has $\leq m$ non-isomorphic substructures of size n, for each positive integer n. A complete first order L-theory ${\mathcal T}$ having infinite models is called almost chainable iff all models of ${\mathcal T}$ are almost chainable and it is shown that the last condition is equivalent to the existence of one countable almost chainable model of ${\mathcal T}$. In addition, it is proved that an almost chainable theory has either one or continuum many non-isomorphic countable models and, thus, the Vaught conjecture is confirmed for almost chainable theories. (shrink)

The papers comprising Zur Farbenlehre, best known portion of Goethe's writings on color and optics, appeared between 1808 and 1810. Portions of Zur Farbenlehre, translated by the painter Charles Lock Eastlake and frequently reprinted under the title Theory of Colours, achieved immediate notoriety because of Goethe's insistent questioning of Newton's methodology. Acknowledging no mentors except Theophrastus and the physicist Robert Boyle, Goethe compared the Newtonian theory of colors--indelicately, some think--to a once proud castle still revered long after it (...) has fallen into decay. The furor aroused by this intemperate analogy has not fully subsided yet. During the twentieth century Max Planck answered the impertinence with a vigorous ad hominem attack and Rudolph Carnap followed suit. We still lack a serious analysis of Goethe's color theories or his arguments against Newton. And the early vituperation seems quaint. Questioning Newton's methodology--or even his epistemology--is a legitimate activity and has even become commonplace. The 1840 edition of Eastlake's translation enjoys a perennial popularity among artists and a few perceptual psychologists, who have been allowed to monopolize for too long a book which is primarily a highly provocative inquiry in the philosophy of science. Someday an imaginative publisher may be inspired to make available more extensive translations of Goethe's copious writings on color, complemented by the type of careful editing, annotation and analysis which I. Bernard Cohen and Alexander Koyré provide for the writings of Newton. Until then one is grateful for Eastlake.--P. S. (shrink)

The thesis of underdetermination presents a major obstacle to the epistemological claims of scientific realism. That thesis is regularly assumed in the philosophy of science, but is puzzlingly at odds with the actual history of science, in which empirically adequate theories are thin on the ground. We propose to advance a case for scientific realism which concentrates on the process of scientific reasoning rather than its theoretical products. Developing an account of causal–explanatory inference will make it easier to resist the (...) thesis of underdetermination. For, if we are not restricted to inference to the best explanation only at the level of major theories, we will be able to acknowledge that there is a structure in data sets which imposes serious constraints on possible theoretical alternatives. We describe how Differential Inference, a form of inference based on contrastive explanation, can be used in order to generate causal hypotheses. We then go on to consider how experimental manipulation of differences can be used to achieve Difference Closure, thereby confirming claims of causal efficacy and also eliminating possible confounds. The model of Differential Inference outlined here shows at least one way in which it is possible to ‘reason from the phenomena’. (shrink)

The major competing statistical paradigms share a common remarkable but unremarked thread: in many of their inferential applications, different probability interpretations are combined. How this plays out in different theories of inference depends on the type of question asked. We distinguish four question types: confirmation, evidence, decision, and prediction. We show that Bayesian confirmation theory mixes what are intuitively “subjective” and “objective” interpretations of probability, whereas the likelihood-based account of evidence melds three conceptions of what constitutes an (...) “objective” probability. (shrink)

This paper provides a general framework for analyzing self-confirming policies. We study self-confirming equilibria in recurrent decision problems with incomplete information about the true stochastic model. We characterize stationary monetary policies in a linear-quadratic setting.

In this dissertation, I explore the work of Donald Davidson, reveal an inconsistency in it, and resolve that inconsistency in a way that complements a debate in philosophy of science. In Part One, I explicate Davidson's extensional account of meaning; though not defending Davidson from all objections, I nonetheless present his seemingly disparate views as a coherent whole. In Part Two, I explicate Davidson's views on the dualism between conceptual schemes and empirical content, isolating four seemingly different arguments that Davidson (...) makes against the dualism; I demonstrate that, though the arguments fail, each is ultimately meant to rely on his account of meaning. ;In Part Three, I show that Davidson's extensional account of meaning gives rise to the analytic-synthetic distinction, while simultaneously needing to reject it. I then propose a resolution to Davidson's dilemma. Rather than treating interpretation of meaning as continuous with the holistic enterprise of science, as Quine treats translation, one should treat it as conceptually prior to science, as Kant treats epistemology. Nonetheless I recognize four reasons why Davidson himself would reject doing so. I therefore propose a view called 'transcendental semantics', based on Davidson's, that accepts my resolution. Further, transcendental semantics, like Kant's own transcendental idealism, posits a single conceptual scheme; nonetheless Kant's is concerned with Newtonian physics, transcendental semantics' with interpretation. ;Finally, in Part Four, I show how positing such a scheme allows transcendental semantics to complement a promising neo-Carnapian account of theory confirmation in science proposed by Michael Friedman. Scientists are first and foremost interpreters, a fact that allows transcendental semantics to help Friedman establish the possibility of rational continuity through scientific revolutions. In fact, transcendental semantics, by complementing Friedman's project, reunites two of Carnap's own concerns, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. I conclude that philosophy of language without philosophy of science is empty , while philosophy of science without philosophy of language is blind. (shrink)

Necessity and sufficiency are the building blocks of all successful explanations. Yet despite their importance, these notions have been conceptually underdeveloped and inconsistently applied in explainable artificial intelligence, a fast-growing research area that is so far lacking in firm theoretical foundations. In this article, an expanded version of a paper originally presented at the 37th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, we attempt to fill this gap. Building on work in logic, probability, and causality, we establish the central role of (...) necessity and sufficiency in XAI, unifying seemingly disparate methods in a single formal framework. We propose a novel formulation of these concepts, and demonstrate its advantages over leading alternatives. We present a sound and complete algorithm for computing explanatory factors with respect to a given context and set of agentive preferences, allowing users to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for desired outcomes at minimal cost. Experiments on real and simulated data confirm our method’s competitive performance against state of the art XAI tools on a diverse array of tasks. (shrink)

This is a challenging and original work on the concept of justification and its application to ethical statements. The book divides into two parts. The first part is devoted to a systematic treatment of the nature of justification. It begins with a critical rejection of the deductive model. Wellman presents plausible arguments for the existence of non-deductive evidences in ethics and shows how ethical theories can be tested by "thought-experiment" as analogous to the confirmation of scientific theories by laboratory (...) trials. An interesting kind of inference termed "conductive reasoning" is described. It is argued that this third form of reasoning can be validly used in justifying ethical conclusions. Distinctive of conductive reasoning is its non-formal and inconclusive feature. Its validity is alleged to lie in its dependence upon the content of the argument. But by and large there is no way to judge the validity of these basic ethical arguments but by thinking them through and feeling their logical force." Wellman goes on to develop a challenge-response model for understanding the nature of justification. Justification is "to be understood essentially as a process of responding to challenges made." However, Wellman makes no attempt to consider the role of moral concepts in determining the validity of conductive reasoning and its role in the justification of ethical statements. Part II considers the dimensions of ethical justification in terms of the model of challenge and response. Seven species of challenge are described: truth, truth-value, meaningfulness, validity, validity-value, competence, and knowability. On the whole the book contains challenging views and material for the epistemology of ethics.--A. S. C. (shrink)

Quantum cognition is a new theoretical framework for constructing cognitive models based on the mathematical principles of quantum theory. Due to its increasing empirical success, one wonders what it tells us about the underlying process of cognition. Does it imply that we have quantum minds and there is some sort of quantum structure in the brain? In this paper, I address this important issue by using a new result in the research of quantum foundations. Based on the PBR theorem (...) about the reality of the wave function, I show, given certain assumptions, that the wave function assigned to a cognitive system such as our brain, which is used to calculate probabilities of thoughts/judgment outcomes in quantum cognition, is a real representation of the cognitive state of the system, not a mere representation of incomplete knowledge about the state of the system. This result supports a realist interpretation of quantum cognition, according to which the cognitive state of our brain and its dynamics are not classical but quantum in quantum cognition. In short, quantum cognition implies quantum minds. However, this result does not mean that we have quantum minds and our brain is a quantum computer, since quantum cognition by its standard formulation has not been fully confirmed by experiments. The hope is that more crucial experiments can be done in the near future to determine whether or not quantum cognition is real. (shrink)

An opponent thesis to that of incommensurability—the commensurability approach—is proposed. The new thesis is based on the delineation of an empirical comparative metatheory for comparing theories of different paradigms. The method of multidimensional scaling together with the proximity-predictability hypothesis instantiate and substantiate this metatheory. The scaling of mind body theories, and the confirmation of certain predictions derived from MDS and the PP hypothesis concerning the relations that exist among these theories, are brought as actual examples supporting the present paper's (...) approach. (shrink)

The discrete-time system has more complex and chaotic dynamical behaviors as compared to the continuous-time system. This paper extends a discrete Leslie–Gower predator-prey system with the Allee effect in the predator’s population, whose dynamics are analyzed and explored. We have determined the equilibrium points and studied their local stability properties. We find that the system undergoes flip bifurcation and Neimark–Sacker bifurcation around the interior equilibrium point by choosing the Allee parameter as a bifurcation parameter. We discuss the stability and direction (...) of both bifurcations with the help of the normal form theory and center manifold theorem. The flip bifurcation and Neimark–Sacker bifurcation are the most common routes to the chaotic orbit in the discrete system. Moreover, we utilize state feedback, pole placement, and hybrid control methods to control the chaos in the system. The work is complete with the numerical simulations to confirm the analytical findings. (shrink)

Scientific realism is, roughly, the thesis according to which science is an epistemically progressive enterprise and current well-confirmed theories are at least approximately true. Putnam has argued that scientific realism is the only philosophy of science that does not make the success of science a miracle. This “explanationist” defense of scientific realism has come under attack by philosophers such as Arthur Fine, Chuang Liu, and Putnam himself. In this paper, I defend the explanationist defense against some of these objections.

This paper discusses an almost sixty year old problem in the philosophy of science -- that of a logic of confirmation. We present a new analysis of Carl G. Hempel's conditions of adequacy (Hempel 1945), differing from the one Carnap gave in §87 of his Logical Foundations of Probability (1962). Hempel, it is argued, felt the need for two concepts of confirmation: one aiming at true theories and another aiming at informative theories. However, he also realized that these (...) two concepts are conflicting, and he gave up the concept of confirmation aiming at informative theories. We then show that one can have Hempel's cake and eat it, too: There is a (rank-theoretic and genuinely nonmonotonic) logic of confirmation -- or rather, theory assessment -- that takes into account both of these two conflicting aspects. According to this logic, a statement H is an acceptable theory for the data E if and only if H is both sufficiently plausible given E and sufficiently informative about E. Finally, the logic sheds new light on Carnap's analysis (and solves another problem of confirmation theory). (shrink)