Jack Ritchie

Structural realism is an attempt to balance the competing demands of the No Miracles Argument and the Pessimistic Meta-Induction. In this paper I trace the development of the structuralist idea through the work of one of its leading advocates, John Worrall. I suggest that properly thought through what the structuralist is offering or should be offering is not an account of how to divide up a theory into two parts—structure and ontology—but (perhaps surprisingly) a certain kind of theory of meaning—semantic holism. I explain how a version of structural realism can be developed using Davidson’s theory of meaning and some advantages this has over the Ramsey-sentence version of structuralism.

Many contemporary Anglo-American philosophers describe themselves as naturalists. But what do they mean by that term? Popular naturalist slogans like, "there is no first philosophy" or "philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences" are far from illuminating. "Understanding Naturalism" provides a clear and readable survey of the main strands in recent naturalist thought. The origin and development of naturalist ideas in epistemology, metaphysics and semantics is explained through the works of Quine, Goldman, Kuhn, Chalmers, Papineau, Millikan and others. The most common objections to the naturalist project - that it involves a change of subject and fails to engage with "real" philosophical problems, that it is self-refuting, and that naturalism cannot deal with normative notions like truth, justification and meaning - are all discussed. "Understanding Naturalism" distinguishes two strands of naturalist thinking - the constructive and the deflationary - and explains how this distinction can invigorate naturalism and the future of philosophical research.

In this paper I discuss the bearing of Hacking’s ideas about Scientific Styles on traditional debates in the philosophy of science concerning rationality and realism. I argue that a kind of deflationary position with regard to realism debates is a natural consequence of Hacking’s claim that styles are self-authenticating. I then go on to argue, using an example of van Fraassen’s, that Hacking should allow a methodological role for realism debates and hence they are not idle, as he has claimed, although their resolution may not be important

Since its introduction, multivariate pattern analysis, or ‘neural decoding’, has transformed the field of cognitive neuroscience. Underlying its influence is a crucial inference, which we call the decoder’s dictum: if information can be decoded from patterns of neural activity, then this provides strong evidence about what information those patterns represent. Although the dictum is a widely held and well-motivated principle in decoding research, it has received scant philosophical attention. We critically evaluate the dictum, arguing that it is false: decodability is a poor guide for revealing the content of neural representations. However, we also suggest how the dictum can be improved on, in order to better justify inferences about neural representation using MVPA.

Orthodox physicalism has a problem with mental causation. If physics is complete and mental events are not identical to physical events (as multiple-realisation arguments imply) it seems as though there is no causal work for the mental to do. This paper examines some recent attempts to overcome this problem by analysing causation in terms of counterfactuals or conditional probabilities. It is argued that these solutions cannot simultaneously capture the force of the completeness of physics and make room for mental causation

Às vezes o naturalismo é apresentado como uma visão de mundo geral. Na maioria das vezes quando o naturalismo é assim apresentado, ele é identificado com o fisicalismo: a visão de que tudo é físico ou em algum sentido dependente do que é físico. Mas o fisicalismo enfrenta um problema muito sério e bastante conhecido, o dilema de Hempel. O problema pode ser colocado do seguinte modo: quando dizemos que tudo é físico, o que fazemos é utilizar o termo “físico” como é concebido pelo fisicalismo. Significamos o físico em termos da física atual? Se sim, então essa visão é provavelmente falsa. Esperamos que a física atual possa ser revisada assim como a ciência, a qual se desenvolve em caminhos desconhecidos, e, assim, algumas das reivindicações atualmente aceitas pelos físicos possam ser rejeitadas como falsas no futuro. Queremos com isso alguma física futuramente idealizada? Desde que não temos ideia do que essa física futuramente idealizada seja, não temos uma ideia real de qual é o conteúdo que o fisicalismo deve ter sob tal definição. Se nos dizem que física aqui significa apenas a disciplina que abarca todos os fatos dos quais todos os outros fatos são dependentes, então as reivindicações do fisicalismo são tautológicas.

I argue a useful way to conceptualise all of Hacking’s work is through his styles project. This provides us with a simple structure to organise many of Hacking’s main texts and brings into sharp relief two of his major philosophical projects. The first is to explain the stability of science. The second is metaphilosophical: to understand why scientific activity gives rise to certain philosophical difficulties, for example realism disputes. In its most ambitious form, Hacking called his project Philosophical Anthropology, and his aim was to explain how creatures like us, in a world like this have happened to alight on methods of finding out that work so well. I end with a brief discussion of how successfully he realised his goals and an even briefer comparison with two naturalist philosophers, Mark Wilson and Penelope Maddy, who share some of his interests and ambitions.

Michela Massimi has written a book broad in scope and ambition but full of wonderful details. It moves from technical philosophical discussions of conditionals to detailed case studies of work in child literacy. From perspectival art to dark matter. From Borges to blown glass – and much else in between. It is impossible not to be impressed. Massimi's book is a detailed elaboration and defence of a position, perspectival realism, she has been developing over several years. Perspectival realism offers a new twist on realism debates in science. Standard scientific realist views focus on the products of science. They are concerned with questions like whether our current scientific theories are approximately true or our best models accurate. Massimi's perspectival realism, in contrast, focuses on the process of scientific investigation. She is interested in the question of how scientific communities come to produce reliable knowledge. Massimi addresses that question by offering the reader several detailed case studies. The centrepiece of the book is a long and multi-part discussion in Chapter 4 in which she describes the development of models in nuclear physics, climate science, and developmental psychology. The central message of each case study is the same: scientific knowledge emerges through the interaction of diverse scientific communities. For example, crucial to the development of models explaining nuclear stability was prior work done by petrologists, vulcanologists, meteorologists, and others in establishing a consistent pattern of isotopic abundances through a variety of environments. It was this knowledge which in conjunction with other accepted physical constraints, like Pauli's exclusion principle, that led to the development of a series of nuclear models, culminating in Goeppert Mayer and Jensen's Nobel Prize-winning shell model.