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105New Tools for Theory Choice and Theory DiagosisStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3): 318-329. 2013.Theory choice can be approached in at least four ways. One of these calls for the application of decision theory, and this article endorses this approach. But applying standard forms of decision theory imposes an overly demanding standard of numeric information, supposedly satisfied by point-valued utility and probability functions. To ameliorate this difficulty, a version of decision theory that requires merely comparative utilities and plausibilities is proposed. After a brief summary of this …Read more
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813Cleansing the Doors of Perception: Aristotle on InductionIn Konstantine Boudouris (ed.), Greek Philosophy and Epistemology, International Association For Greek Philosophy. 2001.This chapter has two objectives. The first is to clarify Aristotle’s view of the first principles of the sciences. The second is to stake out a critical position with respect to this view. The paper sketches an alternative to Aristotle’s intuitionism based in part on the use of quantitative inductive logics.
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62Referential inscrutability: Coming to terms without itSouthern Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 263-273. 1984.According to Quine, terms of divided reference like 'rabbit' have two sorts of problems: problems of direct and deferred ostension. Hence the reference of these terms is inscrutable. This article holds that the problems of deferred ostension can be handled by Goodman's theory of projection, and that the problems of direct ostension turn out to be pedestrian problems of signs.
John R. Welch
Saint Louis University - Madrid Campus
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Saint Louis University - Madrid CampusRetired faculty
Areas of Interest
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Decision Theory |
Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Probability |