-
28Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific GrowthPhilosophical Review 87 (4): 614. 1978.
-
102For more than a half-century, evidence scholars have been exploring whether the criminal standard of proof can be grounded in decision theory. Such grounding would require the emergence of a social consensus about the utilities to be assigned to the four outcomes at trial. Significant disagreement remains, even among legal scholars, about the relative desirability of those outcomes and even about the formalisms for manipulating their respective utilities. We attempt to diagnose the principal rea…Read more
-
161Commentary: Science at the Bar-Causes for ConcernScience, Technology, and Human Values 7 (41): 16-19. 1982.
-
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.
-
49Thinking about error in the lawIn Alvin I. Goldman & Dennis Whitcomb (eds.), Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, Oxford University Press. 2011.
-
287How about bust? Factoring explanatory power back into theory evaluationPhilosophy of Science 64 (2): 306-316. 1997.1. Introduction. The papers by Hellman and Mayo offer up a rich menu of problems and proposed solutions, so there is much here for a friendly critic to fasten on. In order to bring a modicum of focus to my commentary, I shall limit my remarks to the Duhem problem and its radiations in epistemology and methodology. Both Mayo and Hellman claim to have solutions to that hoary old problem and they tout these solutions as key indicators of the explanatory power of their respective technical epistemol…Read more
-
123Science and Relativism: Some key controversies in the philosophy of scienceUniversity of Chicago Press. 1990.Some Key Controversies in the Philosophy of Science Larry Laudan. the mouths of my realist, relativist, and positivist. (By contrast, there is at least one person who hews to the line I have my prag- matist defending.) But I have gone to some ...
-
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.
-
49Put “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” out to pasture?In Marmor Andrei (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law, Routledge. pp. 317. 2012.
-
145Two dogmas of methodologyPhilosophy of Science 43 (4): 585-597. 1976.This paper argues that it has been widely assumed by philosophers of science that the cumulative retention of explanatory success is a "sine qua non" for making judgements about the progress or rational preferability of one theory over another. It has also been assumed that it is impossible to make objective, Comparative judgements of the acceptability of rival theories unless all the statements of both theories could be translated into a common language. This paper seeks to show that both these…Read more
-
„A Confutation of Convergent Realism “in Yuri Balashov and Alex RosenbergIn Yuri Balashov & Alexander Rosenberg (eds.), Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings, Routledge. pp. 211--33. 2002.
-
256Normative naturalismPhilosophy of Science 57 (1): 44-59. 1990.Normative naturalism is a view about the status of epistemology and philosophy of science; it is a meta-epistemology. It maintains that epistemology can both discharge its traditional normative role and nonetheless claim a sensitivity to empirical evidence. The first sections of this essay set out the central tenets of normative naturalism, both in its epistemic and its axiological dimensions; later sections respond to criticisms of that species of naturalism from Gerald Doppelt, Jarrett Leplin …Read more
-
115Some problems facing intuitionist meta-methodologiesSynthese 67 (1). 1986.Intuitionistic meta-methodologies, which abound in recent philosophy of science, take the criterion of success for theories of scientific rationality to be whether those theories adequately explicate our intuitive judgments of rationality in exemplary cases. Garber's (1985) critique of Laudan's (1977) intuitionistic meta-methodology, correct as far as it goes, does not go far enough. Indeed, Garber himself advocates a form of intuitionistic meta-methodology; he merely denies any special role for…Read more
-
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.
-
32Views of progress: Separating the pilgrims from the rakesPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 10 (3): 273-286. 1980.
-
75Dominance 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
-
The methodological foundations of Mach's anti-atomism and their historical rootsIn Peter K. Machamer & Robert G. Turnbull (eds.), Motion and Time, Space and Matter, Ohio State University Press. pp. 390--417. 1976.
Areas of Specialization
20th Century Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Law |
General Philosophy of Science |