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106Explanatory Elucidation and Scientific RealismEpistemologia 1 59-70. 2012.Explanatory elucidation occurs when a theory has one or more of its assumptions explained by another independently successful theory. Because explanatory elucidation springs from independently supported theories, it improves the credibility of the assumptions it casts light on, hence its relevance for realists. But cases can be pointed to where explanatory elucidation has badly failed to identify truthful components. One way to address this challenge is by trying to find additional epistemic sup…Read more
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81Are GRW tails as bad as they say?Philosophy of Science 66 (3): 71. 1999.GRW models of the physical world are criticized in the literature for involving wave function "tails" that allegedly create fatal interpretive problems and even compromise standard arithmetic. I find such objections both unfair and misguided. But not all is well with the GRW approach. One complaint I articulate in this paper does not have to do with tails as such but with the specific way in which past physical structures linger forever in the total GRW wave function. By pushing the total propos…Read more
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44Realism and Underdetermination: Some Clues from the Practices-UpPhilosophy of Science 68 (S3). 2001.Recent attempts to turn Standard Quantum Theory into a coherent representational system have improved markedly over previous offerings. Important questions about the nature of material systems remain open, however, as current theorizing effectively resolves into a multiplicity of incompatible statements about the nature of physical systems. Specifically, the most cogent proposals to date land in effective empirical equivalence, reviving old anti-realist fears about quantum physics. In this paper…Read more
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Possibility, actuality, and the growth of imagination: The many-worlds approach to quantum physicsOntology Studies: Cuadernos de Ontología 93-102. 2008.Las interpretaciónes de la física cuántica de Everett-DeWitt hablan de una multiplicidad de mundos físicamente coexistenrtes. Éstas imaginativas reacciones a los problemas conceptuales de la mecánica cuántica estándar forman una família de propuestas de “universos múltiples” que, sin pleno éxito, han sido tachadas de incoherentes.Everett-DeWitt interpretations of quantum physics speak of a multiplicity of physically coexisting worlds. These imaginative reactions to the conceptual problems of sta…Read more
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9Interpreting State Reduction from the Practices-UpPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 263-275. 1990.This paper examines some physical sources of the concept of objective state reduction in quantum mechanics. Using case studies from nuclear physics and quantum chemistry, the question of whether one can induce a collapse theory from the practices of scientists working on specific problems is considered. A specific proposal is explored, with emphasis on such features as coherence, testability, unifying power and fertility. It is shown that, contrary to recent suggestions by David Albert, collapse…Read more
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22Diachronic Realism about Successful TheoriesProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 43 51-66. 2008.The success of a scientific theory T is not an all-or-nothing matter; nor is a theory something one can usually accept or reject in toto (i.e. one may take T as being "approximately true", or take as true just certain "parts" of it, without necessarily affirming every posit and claim specific to T as being either completely right or completely wrong). This, however, raises questions about precisely which parts of T deserve to be taken as approximately true. on the basis of its success. A line of…Read more
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20Pluralism, Scientific Values, and the Value of ScienceIn Evandro Agazzi & Fabio Minazzi (eds.), Science and ethics: the axiological contexts of science, P.i.e. Peter Lang. pp. 101--114. 2008.
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10Evolutionary Ideas and Contemporary NaturalismIn Evandro Agazzi & Alberto Cordero (eds.), Philosophy and the Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 399--439. 1991.
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17What Conditions is Physics Expected to Fulfil in Order to Provide Bases for Weltanschauungen?Philosophie Et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie 5 204-208. 1988.
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34Contemporary Nativism, Scientific Texture, and the Moral Limits of Free InquiryPhilosophy of Science 72 (5): 1220-1231. 2005.Some thinkers distrust Darwinist explorations of complex human behaviors, particularly investigations into possible differences in valued skills between genders, races or classes. Such projects, it is claimed, tend to have adverse effects on people who are already disadvantaged. A recent argument by Philip Kitcher both clarifies and generalizes this charge to cover a whole genre of scientific projects. In this paper I try to spell out and analyze Kitcher's argument. The argument fails, I suggest…Read more
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129Summary: Responding to Laudan’s skeptical reading of history an influential group of realists claim that the seriously wrong claims past successful theories licensed were not really implicated in the predictions that once singled them out as successful. For example, in the case of Fresnel’s theory of light, it is said that although he appealed to the ether he didn’t actually need to in order to derive his famous experimental predictions—in them, we are assured, the ether concept was “idle,” “ine…Read more
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