What does "nature" mean? This general question, central to the social construction of nature, is addressed here by examining one of nature's particulars, Pacific salmon, and by looking at how one group of people, salmon biologists, imbue the fish with meaning. Based upon historical, comparative, and qualitative data, it appears that nature is socially constructed through both cognitive and physical processes. "Salmon"- and indirectly nature - emerges not as a monolithic, timeless, certain entity, but rather as (...) one that is manipulable, fleeting, and the product of a variety of social relations. In particular, public policy and economics appear to have profoundly influenced salmon biologists' cognitive and physical constructions of salmon. (shrink)

"Examines Western culture's... alienation from nature by focusing on the relationship between people and salmon--weaving together key narratives about the Norwegian salmon industry as well as wild salmon in indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest"--Amazon.com.

Does Keith Donnellan's referential/attributive distinction have ‘semantic significance’? Howard Wettstein has claimed (in several papers) that it does; Nathan Salmon has responded (in several papers) that it does not. Specifically, while Wettstein has claimed that definite descriptions, used referentially, function semantically as demonstratives, Salmon has responded to Wettstein's claims by defending a unitary Russellian account of such expressions, according to which they invariably function as quantifiers. This paper involves a critique of the debate between Wettstein and Salmon, (...) and offers a tentative resolution of that debate: one that favors Wettstein's ‘ambiguity’ account over the unitary Russellian account defended by Salmon. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes (...) a robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

Reviews the scope, nature, and applications of the philosophical discipline, focusing on methods for distinguishing between valid and fallacious arguments and inferences.

Alonzo Church famously provided three principal competing criteria for “strict synonymy,” i.e., sameness of semantic content. These are his Alternatives (0), (1), and (2)—numbered in order of increasing course-grainedness of content. On Alternative (2), expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are logically equivalent. This criterion seems hopeless as an account of the objects of propositional attitude. On Alternative (1), expressions are deemed synonymous iff they are λ-convertible. Alternative (1) also evidently conflicts with discourse about the attitudes. On Alternative (0), (...) expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are “synonymously isomorphic” in Church’s sense. On Alternative (0), semantic content is so fine-grained that not even “Romeo loves Juliet” and “Juliet is loved by Romeo” qualify as strictly synonymous. A fourth alternative, here called “Alternative (3),” deems expressions strictly synonymous iff they are co-intensional, i.e., they have the same semantic extension with respect to the same possible worlds. This criterion’s notion of content is even more course grained than that of Alternative (2). Several objections to Alternative (3) are considered. (This article is wholly contained within the author’s more definitive essay, “Singular Concepts”.). (shrink)

Toward a theory of n-tuples of individuals and concepts as surrogates for Russellian singular propositions and singular concepts. Alonzo Church proposed a powerful and elegant theory of sequences of functions and their arguments as singular-concept surrogates. Church’s account accords with his Alternative (0), the strictest of his three competing criteria for strict synonymy. The currently popular objection to strict criteria like (0) on the basis of the Russell-Myhill paradox is here rebutted. Russell-Myhill is not a problem specifically for Alternative (0). (...) Rather it is a disproof of unrestricted concept comprehension. Unrestricted comprehension is also inconsistent with facts about sets of properties. It is demonstrated furthermore that the principal rival conception of propositions--propositions conceived as classes of possible worlds--is subject to a fatal philosophical collapse: It follows on that conception, given that each of us is fallible, that everyone believes everything. Although it is far superior to its principal rival conception, Church’s proposed theory is vulnerable under (0) to a version of Russell’s notorious Gray’s /Elegy/ objection. Some amendments to Church’s proposal are proffered that address Russell’s objection, including an amendment first proposed in the present author’s /Frege’s Puzzle/ (1986). Church’s response (personal correspondence) is considered. (shrink)

University of California, Santa Barbara.

Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald, Evidence and Explanation in Social Science. ... Kauffman, Stuart, "Articulation of Parts Explanation in Biology and the Rational ...

Wesley Salmon is renowned for his seminal contributions to the philosophy of science. He has powerfully and permanently shaped discussion of such issues as lawlike and probabilistic explanation and the interrelation of explanatory notions to causal notions. This unique volume brings together twenty-six of his essays on subjects related to causality and explanation, written over the period 1971-1995. Six of the essays have never been published before and many others have only appeared in obscure venues. The volume includes a (...) section of accessible introductory pieces, as well as more advanced and technical pieces, and will make essential work in the philosophy of science readily available to both scholars and students. (shrink)

"A rich collection. Since it holds a number of introductory pieces along with advanced essays and review articles, the volume will be accessible to a broad audience and will work well in philosophy of science courses....Essential."--Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan.

This is the second edition of an award-winning 1981 book (Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation) considered to be a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language.

This volume of articles is a follow-up to the late Wesley C. Salmon's widely read collection Causality And Explanation. It contains both published and unpublished articles, and focuses on two related areas of inquiry: First, is science a rational enterprise? Secondly, does science yield objective information about our world, even the aspects that we cannot observe directly? Salmon's own take is that objective knowledge of the world is possible, and his work in these articles centers around proving that (...) this can be so. Salmon's influential standing in the field ensures that this volume will be of interest to both undergraduates and professional philosophers, primarily in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The contributions to this special collection concern issues and problems discussed in or related to the work of Wesley C. Salmon. Salmon has long been noted for his important work in the philosophy of science, which has included research on the interpretation of probability, the nature of explanation, the character of reasoning, the justification of induction, the structure of space/time and the paradoxes of Zeno, to mention only some of the most prominent. During a time of increasing preoccupation (...) with historical and sociological approaches to under standing science (which characterize scientific developments as though they could be adequately analysed from the perspective of political movements, even mistaking the phenomena of conversion for the rational appraisal of scientific theories), Salmon has remained stead fastly devoted to isolating and justifying those normative standards distinguishing science from non-science - especially through the vindi cation of general principles of scientific procedure and the validation of specific examples of scientific theories - without which science itself cannot be (even remotely) adequately understood. In this respect, Salmon exemplifies and strengthens a splendid tradi tion whose most remarkable representatives include Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap and Carl G. Hempel, all of whom exerted a profound influence upon his own development. (shrink)

This paper presents a drastically revised version of the theory of causality, based on analyses of causal processes and causal interactions, advocated in Salmon (1984). Relying heavily on modified versions of proposals by P. Dowe, this article answers penetrating objections by Dowe and P. Kitcher to the earlier theory. It shows how the new theory circumvents a host of difficulties that have been raised in the literature. The result is, I hope, a more satisfactory analysis of physical causality.

Outlines many different types of human understanding, and shows how scientific explanations enable us to understand the universe in which we live. It reflects on the great increases in scientific understanding during the past century, and exhibits the value of such understanding as we move into the twenty‐first century. The author recognizes the serious issues concerning values that face humanity at this time, and does not believe that science alone can solve these problems. He argues nevertheless that increased scientific understanding (...) can furnish the information we all need to formulate a responsible social policy. (shrink)

This paper discusses several distinct process theories of causality offered in recent years by Phil Dowe and me. It addresses problems concerning the explication of causal process, causal interaction, and causal transmission, whether given in terms of transmission of marks, transmission of invariant or conserved quantities, or mere possession of conserved quantities. Renouncing the mark-transmission and invariant quantity criteria, I accept a conserved quantity theory similar to Dowe's--differing basically with respect to causal transmission. This paper also responds to several fundamental (...) constructive criticisms contained in Christopher Hitchcock's discussion of both the mark-transmission and the conserved quantity theories. (shrink)

An advanced introduction to the new philosophical anthropology and an understanding of the most contemporary developments in it.

Challenges the widely held thesis that scientific explanations are arguments by posing three questions that seem to raise difficulties for it: Why are irrelevancies harmless to arguments but fatal to explanations? Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? Or, to reformulate essentially the same question, is genuine scientific explanation possible if indeterminism is true? Why should requirements of temporal asymmetry be imposed upon explanations but not upon arguments? In addition to showing the untenability of the “third dogma,” this chapter (...) signals the development of a causal theory of explanation that will supplement the simple statistical‐relevance model of explanation advocated in earlier works by the author. (shrink)

We defend hylomorphism against Maegan Fairchild’s purported proof of its inconsistency. We provide a deduction of a contradiction from SH+, which is the combination of “simple hylomorphism” and an innocuous premise. We show that the deduction, reminiscent of Russell’s Paradox, is proof-theoretically valid in classical higher-order logic and invokes an impredicatively defined property. We provide a proof that SH+ is nevertheless consistent in a free higher-order logic. It is shown that the unrestricted comprehension principle of property abstraction on which the (...) purported proof of inconsistency relies is analogous to naïve unrestricted set-theoretic comprehension. We conclude that logic imposes a restriction on property comprehension, a restriction that is satisfied by the ramified theory of types. By extension, our observations constitute defenses of theories that are structurally similar to SH+, such as the theory of singular propositions, against similar purported disproofs. (shrink)

This collection of essays reexamines the origins of logical empiricism and offers fresh insights into its relationship to contemporary philosophy of science.

My title is meant to suggest a continuation of the sort of philosophical investigation into the nature of language and modality undertaken in Rudolf Carnap’s Meaning and Necessity and Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity. My topic belongs in a class with meaning and naming. It is demonstratives—that is, expressions like ‘that darn cat’ or the pronoun ‘he’ used deictically. A few philosophers deserve particular credit for advancing our understanding of demonstratives and other indexical words. Though Naming and Necessity is concerned (...) with proper names, not demonstratives, it opened wide a window that had remained mostly shut in Meaning and Necessity but that, thanks largely to Kripke, shall forevermore remain unbarred. Understanding of demonstrative semantics grew by a quantum leap in David Kaplan’s remarkable work, especially in his masterpiece “Demonstratives” together with its companion “Afterthoughts.” In contrast to the direct-reference propensities of these two contemporary figures, Gottlob Frege, with his uncompromisingly thoroughgoing intensionalism, shed important light on the workings of demonstratives in “Der Gedanke”—more specifically, in a few brief but insightful remarks from a single paragraph concerning tense and temporal indexicality. (shrink)