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79For Method: or, Against FeyerabendIn J. R. Brown & J. Mittelstrass (eds.), An Intimate Relation: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Presented to Robert E. Butts on His 60th Birthday (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science), Springer. 1989.
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77Towards a Reassessment of Comte’s ‘Methode Positive’Philosophy of Science 38 (1): 35-53. 1971.In this study of Auguste Comte's philosophy of science, an attempt is made to explicate his views on such methodological issues as explanation, prediction, induction and hypothesis. Comte's efforts to resolve the dual problems of demarcation and meaning led to the enunciation of principles of verifiability and predictability. Comte's hypothetico-deductive method is seen to permit conjectures dealing with unobservable entities
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77Thoughts on HPS: 20 years laterStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 20 (1): 9-13. 1989.
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73Dominance and the disunity of method: Solving the problems of innovation and consensusPhilosophy of Science 56 (2): 221-237. 1989.It is widely supposed that the scientists in any field use identical standards for evaluating theories. Without such unity of standards, consensus about scientific theories is supposedly unintelligible. However, the hypothesis of uniform standards can explain neither scientific disagreement nor scientific innovation. This paper seeks to show how the presumption of divergent standards (when linked to a hypothesis of dominance) can explain agreement, disagreement and innovation. By way of illustra…Read more
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69Is reasonable doubt reasonable?Legal Theory 9 (4): 295-331. 2003.It is difficult, if not impossible, to so define the term as to satisfy a subtle and metaphysical mind, bent on the detection of some point, however attenuated, upon which to hang a criticism. —Supreme Court of Virginia 1
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63The Philosophy of Progress..PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1978. 1978.
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56The history of science and the philosophy of scienceIn R. C. Olby, G. N. Cantor, J. R. R. Christie & M. J. S. Hodge (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science, Routledge. pp. 47--59. 1990.
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54A problem-solving approach to scientific progressIn Ian Hacking (ed.), Scientific revolutions, Oxford University Press. 1981.
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50Error and Legal EpistemologyIn Deborah G. Mayo & Aris Spanos (eds.), Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science, Cambridge University Press. pp. 376. 2010.
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49Thinking about error in the lawIn Alvin I. Goldman & Dennis Whitcomb (eds.), Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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48Put “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” out to pasture?In Marmor Andrei (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law, Routledge. pp. 317. 2012.
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48Damn the Consequences!Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 69 (2). 1995.
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47Reply to Mary HesseThe Monist 55 (3): 525-525. 1971.I am happy to see Dr. Hesse’s clarification of her earlier discussion of consilience. I shall not comment here on her interesting, if controversial, thesis that a confirmed theory confers no likelihood on its untested entailments, except insofar as the latter are analogous to previously confirmed entailments of that theory. It would be premature to comment on the thesis until Hesse has spelled out in more detail her account of analogy.
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40Methodology's ProspectsPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986. 1986.For positivists and post-positivists alike, methodology had a decidedly suspect status. Positivists saw methodological rules as stipulative conventions, void of any empirical content. Post-positivists (especially naturalistic ones) see such rules as mere descriptions of how research is conducted, carrying no normative force. It is argued here that methodological rules are fundamentally empirical claims, but ones which have significant normative bite. Methodology is thus divorced both from founda…Read more
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39Conceptual problems re-visitedStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 19 (4): 531-534. 1988.
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32Views of progress: Separating the pilgrims from the rakesPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 10 (3): 273-286. 1980.
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30Two puzzles about science: Reflections on some crises in the philosophy and sociology of science (review)Minerva 20 (3-4): 253-268. 1982.
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29Problems, truth, and consistencyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 13 (1): 73-80. 1982.
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28The re-emergence of hyphenated history-and-philosophy-of-science and the testing of theories of scientific changeStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 59 74-77. 2016.
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28Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific GrowthPhilosophical Review 87 (4): 614. 1978.
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27This book consists of a collection of essays written between 1965 and 1981. Some have been published elsewhere; others appear here for the first time. Although dealing with different figures and different periods, they have a common theme: all are concerned with examining how the method of hy pothesis came to be the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of science and the quasi-official methodology of the scientific community. It might have been otherwise. Barely three centuries ago, hypothetico de…Read more
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25El desarrollo y la resolución de las crisis epistemológicas: Estudios de caso en la ciencia y el derecho durante el siglo XVIISignos Filosóficos 5 83-119. 2001.The authorsinterest goes to make the detailed exam of the changes of paradigms ofunderstanding, ends and means for it, in two historical examples happenedin the XVII century: the science and the right. Both examples are conceived as case studies which utility here is for responding to the question:..
Areas of Specialization
20th Century Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Law |
General Philosophy of Science |