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1The Philosophy of Progress…PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1978 (2): 530-547. 1978.Philosophical dialogue is a curious activity. Arguments are expected to be rigorous, but no demand is made that there must be evidence for the premisses. Terminology is expected to be precise, but its appropriateness to the subject matter under discussion can be left unexplored. Officially, nothing is conceded; but, in fact, a great deal is taken for granted. Ad argumentum mingles indiscriminately with ad hominem; and, above all, the evidential warrant for one’s philosophical claims is, like the…Read more
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113Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum (edited book)D. Reidel. 1983.GEOMETRY AND SEMANTICS: AN EXAMINATION OF PUTNAM'S PHILOSOPHY OF GEOMETRY There are many ways to shed light on how and why our conception of geometry changed during the last two centuries. One fruitful strategy is to relate those ...
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3Aliados extraños: la inferencia a la mejor explicación y el estándar de prueba penalProblema. Anuario de Filosofía y Teoria Del Derecho 1 (1): 305-327. 2007.In this short essay the author deals with the fundamental question of whether the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) model has sufficient grounds to be considered as a substitute of the current criminal standard of proof (proof Beyond All Reasonable Doubt). After giving an overview of the IBE model as proposed in more general fields such as epistemology and the philosophy of science, and after concluding that the IBE has failed as a model of the acceptance and rejection of scientific theori…Read more
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Convergence or divergence in the evolution of (criminal) rights? : a case study of the multiple incoherencies of the presumption of innocenceIn Gustavo Ortiz-Millán & Juan Antonio Cruz Parcero (eds.), Mind, Language and Morality: Essays in Honor of Mark Platts, Routledge. 2018.
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4Scientific Progress and Content LossIn Eliot Deutsch (ed.), Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives, University of Hawaii Press. pp. 561-569. 1991.
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3The Rules of Trial, Political Morality and the Costs of Error: Or, Is Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Doing More Harm than Good?In Leslie Green & Brian Leiter (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law: Volume 1, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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14Commentary: Science at the Bar–Causes for ConcernScience, Technology and Human Values 7 (4): 16-19. 1982.
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682The Epistemic, the Cognitive, and the SocialIn Peter Machamer & Gereon Wolters (eds.), Science, values, and objectivity, University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 14-23. 2004.
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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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1Scrutinizing Science: Empirical Studies of Scientific ChangeBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (4): 1063-1065. 1994.
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Beyond Positivism and Relativism: Theory, Method, and EvidenceBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3): 447-454. 1997.
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14VI. Thomas Reid and the Newtonian Turn of British Methodological ThoughtIn John W. Davis & Robert E. Butts (eds.), The Methodological Heritage of Newton, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 103-131. 1971.
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The Idea of a Physical Theory From Galileo to Newton: Studies in Seventeenth-Century MethodologyDissertation, Princeton University. 1966.
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145The Elementary Epistemic Arithmetic of Criminal JusticeEpisteme 5 (3): 282-294. 2008.This paper propounds the following theses: 1). that the traditional focus on the Blackstone ratio of errors as a device for setting the criminal standard of proof is ill-conceived, 2). that the preoccupation with the rate of false convictions in criminal trials is myopic, and 3). that the key ratio of interest, in judging the political morality of a system of criminal justice, involves the relation between the risk that an innocent person runs of being falsely convicted of a serious crime and th…Read more
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Progress and Its Problems: Towards a New Theory of Scientific GrowthSynthese 42 (3): 443-464. 1979.
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4Truth, Error, and Criminal Law: An Essay in Legal EpistemologyCambridge University Press. 2006.Beginning with the premise that the principal function of a criminal trial is to find out the truth about a crime, Larry Laudan examines the rules of evidence and procedure that would be appropriate if the discovery of the truth were, as higher courts routinely claim, the overriding aim of the criminal justice system. Laudan mounts a systematic critique of existing rules and procedures that are obstacles to that quest. He also examines issues of error distribution by offering the first integrate…Read more
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Anomaly of affirmative defensesIn 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. 2009.
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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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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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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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126William Whewell on the Consilience of InductionsThe Monist 55 (3): 368-391. 1971.Most contributions to Whewell scholarship have tended to stress the idealistic, antiempirical temper of Whewell’s philosophy. Thus, the only two monograph-length studies on Whewell, Blanché’s Le Rationalisme de Whewell and Marcucci’s L’ ‘Idealismo’ Scientifico di William Whewell, are, as their titles suggest, concerned primarily with Whewell’s departures from classical British empiricism. Particularly in his famous dispute with Mill, it has proved tempting to parody Whewell’s position in the deb…Read more
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282Demystifying underdeterminationIn C. Wade Savage (ed.), Scientific Theories, University of Minnesota Press. pp. 267-97. 1990.
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2Progress or rationalityIn David Papineau (ed.), The Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press. pp. 194--214. 1996.
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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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1107Beyond Positivism and Relativism: Theory, Method, and EvidenceWestview Press. 1996.By targeting and critiquing these assumptions, he lays the groundwork for a post-positivist philosophy of science that does not provide aid and comfort to the enemies of reason. This book consists of thirteen essays.
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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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Teorias do Método Científico de Platão a MachCadernos de História E Filosofia da Ciéncia 10 (2). 2000.Este artigo, originalmente publicado em History of Science, vol. 7 , pp. 1-63, contém talvez a mais completa bibliografia existente sobre as teorias do método, além de fornecer preciosas indicações para o seu uso e para o estudo da história da metodologia em geral. Agradecemos ao Professor Larry Laudan por ter preparado, especialmente para a tradução brasileira, um suplemento bibliográfico contendo muitos títulos novos. Embora o texto do ensaio original permaneça praticamente inalterado, algumas…Read more
Areas of Specialization
20th Century Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Law |
General Philosophy of Science |